Woman on the American Frontier: A Valuable and Authentic History of the Heroism, Adventures, Privations, Captivities, Trials, and Noble Lives and Deaths of the "Pioneer Mothers of the Republic"Fowler, William Worthington
History
Woman on the American Frontier: A Valuable and Authentic History of the Heroism, Adventures, Privations, Captivities, Trials, and Noble Lives and Deaths of the "Pioneer Mothers of the Republic"
Fowler, William Worthington
Frontier and pioneer life -- United States; Women -- United States -- Biography
Her only food was the wormy bread and half-cured pork which was served out
to the soldiers, and her drink was brackish water from the ditch that
surrounded the earth-work. The cannonading during the day was so furious
that the fort was often almost reduced to ruins, but in the night the
destruction was repaired. A fleet of gunboats joined the land batteries in
bombarding the fort, and at last succeeded in making it no longer tenable.
Guns had been dismounted, the bomb-proof had been destroyed, and the sides
of the earth-work were full of breaches where the huge ten-inch balls had
ploughed their way.
During all these terrifying and dreadful scenes, our heroine stayed at her
post of love and duty beside her husband. When the little garrison
evacuated the fort at night and retired to the city, she was carried in an
ambulance drawn by four of the soldiers in honor of her courage and
devotion.
One of the most singular and romantic stories of the late war, is that of
two young women who enlisted at the same time, and were engaged in active
service for nearly a year without any discovery being made or even a
suspicion excited as to their true sex.
Sarah Stover and Maria Seelye, for these were the names of these heroines
of real life, being homeless orphans, and finding it difficult to earn a
subsistence on a small farm in Western Missouri, where they lived,
determined to enlist as volunteers in the Federal Army. Accordingly, having
donned male attire and proceeded to St. Louis early in 1863, they joined a
company which was soon after ordered to proceed to the regiment, which was
a part of the army of the Potomac.
Within two weeks after their arrival at the scene of conflict in the East,
the battle of Chancellorsville was fought, the two girls participating in
it and seeing something of the horrors of the war in which they were
engaged as soldiers. In one of the minor battles which occurred the
following summer they were separated in the confusion of the fight, and
upon calling the muster, Miss Stover, known in the regiment as Edward
Malison, was found among the missing. Her comrade, after searching for her
among the killed and wounded in vain, at last ascertained that she had been
taken prisoner and conveyed to Richmond.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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