civil war

Elizabeth Baker sat at a small, burl walnut desk, frantically scribbling on thick sheets of paper.  A silhouette of her image cast on the fabric covered walls showed her flipping through the sheets paper.  She was inspecting a variety of crude drawings of ships.  The flame from a lit candle on the desk next to...

Southern belle Elizabeth Van Lew stared sadly out the window of the hospital at the Libby Prison near Richmond, Virginia, at the current of disheveled, emaciated, Union soldiers milling about a small, barren enclosure.  The scene inside the facility was equally as distressing.  Beds, almost touching one another, were crowded together and filled with sick...

An article in the May 14, 1893, edition of the New York Times categorized women as the “weaker, gentler sex whose special duty was the creation of an orderly and harmonious sphere for husbands and children.  Respectable women, true women, do not participate in debates on the public issues or attract attention to themselves.”  Kate...

Her smile could be shy; her glance at times demurs, but her ears never missed a secret.  She was a master of disguises; could change her accent at will, infiltrate social gatherings, and collect information no man was able to obtain.  She cried on command; was stoic while interrogating a suspect, and composed when necessary....