WEBVTT - Who Wears the Pants? Sarah Emma Edmonds, That's Who 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:05.400 Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda land Audio in 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:14.960 partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:18.320 third season of Criminalia. Our first season was all about 0:00:18.320 --> 0:00:22.080 women poisoners. Our second season was all about stalkers. And 0:00:22.200 --> 0:00:24.959 this season we were exploring the lives and motivations of 0:00:25.000 --> 0:00:28.640 some of the most notorious impostors in history. I'm Maria 0:00:28.680 --> 0:00:32.520 Tremarqui and I'm Holly Fry. And today we are talking 0:00:32.560 --> 0:00:35.320 about a woman who did not dawn, a new identity 0:00:35.360 --> 0:00:38.720 for financial or social game, which many of the impostors 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:43.440 were talking about this season due Sarah Emma Edmondson pretended 0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:45.680 to be a man so that she could enlist in 0:00:45.720 --> 0:00:50.280 the army during the American Civil War. Sarah or Emma 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:52.680 as she was known, was born in December of eighteen 0:00:52.800 --> 0:00:56.280 forty one to Isaac Edmondson and Elizabeth Leeper's in Mackadavick, 0:00:56.400 --> 0:01:00.360 which is in the province of New Brunswick, Canada. Isaac 0:01:00.400 --> 0:01:02.720 and Elizabeth had had a son who was born with 0:01:02.760 --> 0:01:06.800 epilepsy before Sarah arrived. Isaac had been hoping for another 0:01:06.840 --> 0:01:09.160 son to help him with the family farm, but that 0:01:09.440 --> 0:01:12.800 wasn't meant to be, and beginning with her birth, Isaac 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:16.920 resented his daughter. In eighteen fifty seven, at the age 0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:20.560 of sixteen, Emma left home to escape not only her 0:01:20.560 --> 0:01:25.080 father's abuse, but also to escape an impending arranged marriage. 0:01:25.520 --> 0:01:29.039 She changed her name slightly to Sarah Emma Edmonds, and 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:31.480 she worked in a milliner's shop in the town of Moncton, 0:01:31.560 --> 0:01:34.000 which was about a hundred and forty miles from her family. 0:01:34.400 --> 0:01:37.360 Since we are talking about Canada, will do the translation here, 0:01:37.520 --> 0:01:41.119 that's about two thirty kilometers. And after about a year 0:01:41.240 --> 0:01:44.679 she decided to escape her father completely and get out 0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:47.520 of the country. So she immigrated to the United States 0:01:48.600 --> 0:01:52.280 to travel undetected and also to find a decent paying job. 0:01:52.440 --> 0:01:54.760 Emma cut her hair and put on a men's suit, 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:59.160 disguising herself as a man. She began calling herself Franklin 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:02.520 Thompson or Frank. She landed her first job in the 0:02:02.560 --> 0:02:06.440 United States as a traveling Bible salesman based out of Hartford, Connecticut. 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:09.680 Much later, and this was long after her deception had 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:12.720 been exposed. Her employer recalled in the last thirty years 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:17.080 he'd been hiring salesman that no one ever sold Frank 0:02:17.120 --> 0:02:21.600 Thompson Emma had by this time developed Frank's reputation as 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:25.560 an upstanding young man. By eighteen sixty, that is, three 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:29.560 years after leaving the family farm, Emma moved to Flint, Michigan. 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:32.680 In the following year. In April, the Civil War began. 0:02:33.720 --> 0:02:36.240 Fueled by a love of her new country and a 0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:40.240 desire to stamp out slavery, Emma went to Detroit and 0:02:40.280 --> 0:02:44.280 they're volunteered to fight for the Union Armies. So it 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:47.000 may sound a little weird that a Canadian woman would 0:02:47.080 --> 0:02:50.760 enlist in the United States Army to fight an American war, 0:02:51.240 --> 0:02:54.920 but it actually wasn't that unheard of. While Emma may 0:02:54.960 --> 0:02:57.600 have been the only female Canadian to enlist, which we 0:02:57.639 --> 0:03:00.560 can't be one sure that she was or wasn't, she 0:03:00.680 --> 0:03:03.840 certainly wasn't the only Canadian to do so. There was 0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:08.920 an estimated fifty thousand who fought, mostly motivated to end slavery. 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:12.200 But it absolutely should sound a little weird that a 0:03:12.240 --> 0:03:15.639 woman enlisted, because that was not at all legal at 0:03:15.639 --> 0:03:19.120 the time of the Civil War. Regardless, though a lot 0:03:19.240 --> 0:03:22.919 of women put on pants to volunteer, up to two 0:03:22.960 --> 0:03:25.840 hundred and fifty women disguised themselves as men to serve 0:03:25.840 --> 0:03:29.360 in the Confederate armies, and historians have found that an 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:32.840 estimated four hundred to one thousand women and perhaps even 0:03:32.840 --> 0:03:36.839 more fought on the Union side because they were disguised. 0:03:36.840 --> 0:03:39.800 Though this makes all of this reckoning a little bit difficult. 0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:43.320 It is impossible to know just how many female soldiers 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:46.240 actually served in the war because they all would have 0:03:46.320 --> 0:03:52.000 been in some sort of disguise. So it actually took 0:03:52.040 --> 0:03:55.320 a few tries for Emma to enlist, and it wasn't 0:03:55.320 --> 0:03:57.680 because she had a poor disguise. It was because she 0:03:57.800 --> 0:04:01.040 was five six, which meant that inc was five six, 0:04:01.440 --> 0:04:04.320 and that was just shy of the army's height requirement, 0:04:04.360 --> 0:04:09.000 which Holly and I think was about five eight or so, 0:04:09.080 --> 0:04:12.480 maybe a little bit shorter. Yeah, there are some differing 0:04:13.160 --> 0:04:16.000 statistics about that, but it's almost always mentioned that her 0:04:16.040 --> 0:04:19.279 height was the the factor that kept her out. Yeah, 0:04:19.360 --> 0:04:21.839 so we're looking at probably five seven, five eight, you know, 0:04:21.920 --> 0:04:25.599 not not too off from the five six um. But regardless, 0:04:25.640 --> 0:04:30.080 it wasn't until President Lincoln ordered seventy additional troops to 0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:33.920 fight that height really became a non issue. Yeah, those 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:38.479 rules got loosened a bit a bit. What changed, you 0:04:38.520 --> 0:04:40.920 may wonder between her first physical and the one that 0:04:40.960 --> 0:04:45.680 she passed well. Although army regulations required all recruits to 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:48.800 have a physical, both the Confederate and the Union armies 0:04:49.120 --> 0:04:52.640 were at this point so desperate for troops that examinations 0:04:52.880 --> 0:04:57.119 became we'll call it lax, Yeah, a little, a little lax. 0:04:58.040 --> 0:05:01.120 I would call it sloppy gelop. But I say that 0:05:01.160 --> 0:05:06.320 there weren't in it at all. Historian Dane Blanton explained 0:05:06.360 --> 0:05:09.479 this in the following way quote, Often they just have 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:13.160 recruits walk by, and if they weren't lame or blind, 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:16.760 and if their trigger finger worked, they were in some 0:05:16.880 --> 0:05:24.080 standards right there. Um So, on May eighteen sixty one, 0:05:24.240 --> 0:05:29.080 Emma became Private Franklin Thompson and was mustered into Company 0:05:29.120 --> 0:05:32.599 F of the second Michigan Regiment of Volunteer Infantry as 0:05:32.640 --> 0:05:36.440 a three year recruit. On an interesting historical note here, 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:40.440 it wasn't actually until eighteen seventy two when army physicals 0:05:40.440 --> 0:05:45.200 became actually important, and because of that change, it would 0:05:45.200 --> 0:05:48.640 have been almost impossible, if not impossible, for Emma or 0:05:48.680 --> 0:05:52.960 any other woman to disguise herself an enlist. It makes 0:05:52.960 --> 0:05:55.640 you wonder how many people realized this was going on 0:05:55.839 --> 0:05:57.680 kind of turned a blind eye, and then we're like, 0:05:57.880 --> 0:06:00.800 we're gonna have to change those rules. Actually, that's going 0:06:00.839 --> 0:06:03.680 to have to stop. Somebody's going to ask us a question, 0:06:03.720 --> 0:06:06.320 and I don't want to be the one to answer right. 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:10.000 And there were a variety of reasons a woman would 0:06:10.000 --> 0:06:13.080 decide to join the army. So some enlisted to follow 0:06:13.080 --> 0:06:15.640 a man, whether that was a member of the family 0:06:15.839 --> 0:06:18.560 or just a friend or a lover, while others were 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:22.720 simply looking for adventure or wanted to outrun a bad situation. 0:06:23.200 --> 0:06:25.120 And some of them, though we should say, we're in 0:06:25.160 --> 0:06:28.400 it for the money. Many of the women who volunteered 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:31.599 were girls who worked in factories or as seamstresses, and 0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:34.760 in those jobs you would make about four dollars a month, 0:06:35.120 --> 0:06:37.120 and if you were looking for a better paycheck, and 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:40.080 if you were looking for freedom from the traditional domestic 0:06:40.200 --> 0:06:43.200 role of women at the time, the thirteen dollars a 0:06:43.240 --> 0:06:46.360 month that the Union paid an army private probably sounded 0:06:46.400 --> 0:06:50.480 pretty great. Emma, disguised as Frank, was not, of course, 0:06:50.520 --> 0:06:52.640 as we said, fighting for any of that. She was 0:06:52.720 --> 0:06:56.479 motivated by her love for her adopted country, and she 0:06:56.560 --> 0:07:01.440 also wanted to be a nurse as Private Thompson. Emma 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:04.480 did actually find herself in the role of nurse as 0:07:04.560 --> 0:07:08.640 well as an active fighter in the war. She participated 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:13.000 in several major battles, among them the Skirmish at Blackburn's Ford, 0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:16.720 the Peninsular Campaign, the Battle of Antietam, and the Battle 0:07:16.720 --> 0:07:20.440 of Fredericksburg. At Fredericksburg, she served actually as an orderly 0:07:20.600 --> 0:07:24.520 for her commander, who was Colonel Orlando po So. As 0:07:24.560 --> 0:07:27.400 we said earlier, in addition to a woman enlisting in 0:07:27.400 --> 0:07:31.800 the army, there is another unusual part to this story. 0:07:32.040 --> 0:07:36.000 Emma was able to serve for two years undetected, disguised 0:07:36.040 --> 0:07:39.760 as Frank. We have to put an asterisk here because 0:07:39.760 --> 0:07:47.600 that's kind of like mostly she was undetected. She was right. 0:07:47.720 --> 0:07:51.320 There is some very small, small evidence that has come 0:07:51.400 --> 0:07:54.480 up that was written in two journals. One was written 0:07:54.480 --> 0:07:57.280 by a male nurse named Jerome Robbins and the other 0:07:57.440 --> 0:08:01.520 was written by a Lieutenant Reid. By October of eighteen 0:08:01.560 --> 0:08:05.960 sixty one, Emma had begun a possible romantic relationship with 0:08:06.000 --> 0:08:09.520 one of those two soldiers, and at least one fellow soldier, 0:08:10.000 --> 0:08:16.280 probably Jerome, actually knew her true identity. Scandalous and so 0:08:16.400 --> 0:08:20.560 many levels. Uh. So, we we know that Emma is 0:08:20.600 --> 0:08:23.160 a master at deception, and we know she's really good 0:08:23.200 --> 0:08:26.160 at it because she's a private in the army. But 0:08:26.720 --> 0:08:29.920 she was so stealthy that she was sometimes asked to 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:34.120 serve as a spy. So as Frank, Emma actually made 0:08:34.200 --> 0:08:37.640 at least eleven trips, if not more or way more 0:08:37.679 --> 0:08:41.360 behind Confederate lines, disguised as one of a few different characters. 0:08:41.800 --> 0:08:45.360 Um one was an Irish immigrant, there was a black 0:08:45.440 --> 0:08:48.200 enslaved woman, and I believe I read that there was 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:51.240 a white boy that she would sometimes go in as, 0:08:51.280 --> 0:08:54.960 and sometimes a black man. However, let's have a side 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:59.720 conversation about this espionage business, because in eighteen sixty five, 0:09:00.400 --> 0:09:03.439 Emma wrote a book of memoirs entitled Nurse and Spy 0:09:03.600 --> 0:09:06.959 in the Union Army. And though she writes about her 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:11.880 experiences crossing enemy lines, some historians today question if it 0:09:12.120 --> 0:09:15.960 actually happened or if she had added some embellishment to 0:09:16.040 --> 0:09:19.920 her story. So, after this espionage intrigue go, there's actually 0:09:19.920 --> 0:09:22.480 one more thing in her memoirs that we learned about 0:09:22.520 --> 0:09:26.319 her career in the military, and it sounds so commonplace 0:09:26.400 --> 0:09:30.120 compared to spy. But she from time to time also 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:35.680 served as a mail carrier. I feel like there's a 0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:39.680 fun play on words with the mail, but too lazy 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:42.120 to make the connection right now. Well, well I'll just 0:09:42.160 --> 0:09:45.520 make it for you. We are going to take a 0:09:45.559 --> 0:09:48.480 break and have a quick word from a sponsor, and 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:51.040 when we're back, we are going to talk about how 0:09:51.200 --> 0:09:54.080 and why the war challenged the traditional role of the 0:09:54.120 --> 0:10:06.680 American woman. Welcome back to Criminalia. We're back to talk 0:10:06.720 --> 0:10:09.440 about how the Civil War became a formative part of 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:14.280 the proto feminist movement. Okay, So this image of the 0:10:14.320 --> 0:10:17.840 woman warrior appears in the myths and histories of various 0:10:17.880 --> 0:10:21.360 cultures throughout human history. Joan of Arc is a very 0:10:21.400 --> 0:10:23.959 well known example, as are the Amazons, but there are 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:27.880 way more out there. There is a famous and perhaps 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:31.080 infamous depending on your point of view, eighteenth century British 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:34.959 woman named Mary Reid who disguised herself as a man 0:10:35.120 --> 0:10:37.960 named Mark Reid to serve in the infantry and the 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:41.800 cavalry in the War of the Spanish Succession. And all 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:44.800 of that was before she more famously became a pirate, 0:10:45.880 --> 0:10:48.680 and all the way back to the American Revolutionary War, 0:10:48.880 --> 0:10:53.080 historians know that Deborah Sampson, Margaret Corbin, and Nancy Hart 0:10:53.160 --> 0:10:56.360 all fought for the North American colonies. Like Emma, these 0:10:56.400 --> 0:10:58.440 were women who saw the war as an opportunity to 0:10:58.440 --> 0:11:01.600 fight for their country and for their meets. During the 0:11:01.640 --> 0:11:06.400 Civil War, Southern black women were known to work as spies, scouts, careers, 0:11:06.440 --> 0:11:10.120 and guides to support the Union, Harriet Tubman being the 0:11:10.160 --> 0:11:15.160 most famous among them. We also immediately think of Kathy Williams, 0:11:15.200 --> 0:11:18.880 who fought under the name William Cathy and as William. 0:11:19.120 --> 0:11:21.920 She became the first black woman to enlist and became 0:11:21.960 --> 0:11:26.800 the only documented female Buffalo soldier. The Buffalo Soldiers were 0:11:26.840 --> 0:11:29.840 a regiment known for their buffalo coats and really their 0:11:29.920 --> 0:11:37.719 general badassess. Maria Lewis is another great example. She was 0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:40.400 a black woman who was able to pass as a 0:11:40.440 --> 0:11:44.760 white male soldier in the eighth New York Cavalry. The 0:11:44.880 --> 0:11:48.400 Civil War, regardless of a woman's desire to join the 0:11:48.440 --> 0:11:52.640 military or not, also challenged what was considered the traditional 0:11:52.760 --> 0:11:55.760 role of an American woman. Up until the war began. 0:11:55.960 --> 0:11:59.520 An American woman was expected to be submissive and domestic. 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:03.600 Mostly women played the rules of nurses, cooks, and laundresses 0:12:03.679 --> 0:12:05.880 during the war, but sometimes it was necessary for a 0:12:05.880 --> 0:12:09.240 woman to defend herself and that was usually with a gun. 0:12:10.440 --> 0:12:13.080 All of this was considered the honorable work of a 0:12:13.120 --> 0:12:16.360 woman while men went to war. But things were a 0:12:16.360 --> 0:12:19.720 little different for women who were disguising themselves as men 0:12:19.840 --> 0:12:23.120 in order to enlist. The act of dressing in men's 0:12:23.120 --> 0:12:26.200 clothing was a brazen choice at the time, and it 0:12:26.280 --> 0:12:29.559 actually wasn't until the twentieth century, early twentieth century when 0:12:29.559 --> 0:12:33.280 it was acceptable for women to wear pants, and then 0:12:33.559 --> 0:12:39.080 only on very few occasions like bicycling. Right, we just 0:12:39.120 --> 0:12:42.160 gotta you gotta wear some pants, as we've said on 0:12:42.280 --> 0:12:46.280 the show before, illegal in France to wear pants until 0:12:46.320 --> 0:12:53.239 the modern era. We're not lying so today, many historians 0:12:53.280 --> 0:12:56.400 considered the American Civil War to really be a formative 0:12:56.440 --> 0:13:00.840 part of the proto feminist movement in the US. Feminism 0:13:00.880 --> 0:13:03.040 is a concept that has come up for us before. 0:13:03.440 --> 0:13:07.760 It's the first flavor of feminism that happened specifically before 0:13:07.800 --> 0:13:12.000 the turn of the twentieth century. During this period in history, 0:13:12.080 --> 0:13:15.560 some women were eyeing or even enjoying the freedom that 0:13:15.679 --> 0:13:19.360 came from living disguise as a man. A woman named 0:13:19.360 --> 0:13:23.000 Lizzie Cook told The Missouri Democrat that her quote strong 0:13:23.160 --> 0:13:26.560 impulse to shoulder a musket came from her desire to 0:13:26.720 --> 0:13:31.200 quote escape the monotony of a woman's life. But you know, 0:13:31.400 --> 0:13:35.600 of course, there are always the dissenters. So not all 0:13:35.720 --> 0:13:40.400 women saw equality as a positive thing, and many argued 0:13:40.480 --> 0:13:44.320 that Many among that group argued that politics weren't proper 0:13:44.360 --> 0:13:47.400 for women. Women's rights might have been some sort of 0:13:47.520 --> 0:13:50.959 new and possibly threatening thing to men of the time, 0:13:51.520 --> 0:13:55.200 but to these women, it was just unacceptable. Some pronounced 0:13:55.280 --> 0:13:58.199 that voting might cause women to and I'm going to 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:03.319 quote this here because it's that great grow beards. When 0:14:03.320 --> 0:14:05.560 I had to start shaving after I turned eighteen and 0:14:05.640 --> 0:14:09.319 started voting, I mean very difficult. I mean, you're eighteen, 0:14:11.240 --> 0:14:17.440 so embarrassing my stubble. Well, you cover it nicely, right, 0:14:17.480 --> 0:14:20.160 And here's the thing, right, that also presumes that women 0:14:20.240 --> 0:14:22.520 never have facial hair like it's based on a very 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:27.400 specific identity of what femininity and womanhood is. That's already 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:31.200 messed up. So there are layers to this onion of wrongitude. 0:14:31.680 --> 0:14:33.920 I would love to hear some of the other things 0:14:33.960 --> 0:14:37.480 that this group of women thought was proper and It 0:14:37.600 --> 0:14:40.480 was Clara Barton, who is known for founding the American 0:14:40.520 --> 0:14:43.600 Red Cross, who once claimed that the four year Civil 0:14:43.600 --> 0:14:46.560 War advanced the social role of women by at least 0:14:46.600 --> 0:14:52.440 fifty years. Additionally, in their eight one manifesto called History 0:14:52.560 --> 0:14:56.320 of Woman Suffrage, written by women's rights activist Susan B. Anthony, 0:14:56.640 --> 0:15:00.400 Elizabeth Katie Stanton, and Matilda Gauge, it was a serted 0:15:00.480 --> 0:15:03.000 that females who served on the front line of the 0:15:03.040 --> 0:15:05.440 Civil War should be granted the same rights as men 0:15:05.520 --> 0:15:08.160 who defend their country. We don't have to make a 0:15:08.240 --> 0:15:10.520 quick side step here, because that movement, if you know 0:15:10.640 --> 0:15:14.600 much about it, was unfortunately riddled with problems, uh, particularly 0:15:14.680 --> 0:15:18.800 racial divisions. It was basically all about white women's suffrage 0:15:18.880 --> 0:15:21.720 rather than voting rights for all women or even all people. 0:15:21.840 --> 0:15:24.840 Because at one point they were like, no, no, we 0:15:24.880 --> 0:15:27.400 want black people to vote, but after we get it 0:15:27.440 --> 0:15:31.200 for us, which I laughed that, but I'm just laughing 0:15:31.240 --> 0:15:37.320 because it's ridiculous thought. Yeah, yeah, we only want those 0:15:37.320 --> 0:15:42.680 bearded women. They wanted their rights first, and they will 0:15:42.720 --> 0:15:46.680 help you, we swear, but us first. I promise that 0:15:46.760 --> 0:15:53.560 I won't leave you by yourself. So um, continuing women 0:15:53.560 --> 0:15:57.040 who disguised themselves as men, fought for the North and 0:15:57.120 --> 0:16:00.920 the South, and virtually every major battle of the Civil War. 0:16:01.400 --> 0:16:03.960 We know that four Confederate women were promoted to the 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:07.400 rank of captain and at least one held the rank 0:16:07.480 --> 0:16:11.160 of major. Historians report that at least eight women fought 0:16:11.240 --> 0:16:14.280 at the Battle of Antietam, which is considered the bloodiest 0:16:14.400 --> 0:16:18.000 day in American history. And as a side note, I 0:16:18.040 --> 0:16:19.680 did look it up to see if it still was 0:16:19.720 --> 0:16:24.040 the bloodiest day in American history, and it is. Union fighters. 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:28.120 Catherine Davidson's right arm was amputated, and Mary Galloway was 0:16:28.160 --> 0:16:31.320 shot in the neck. A woman fighting for the Confederacy 0:16:31.440 --> 0:16:34.960 died in the cornfield. Five women also fought at Gettysburg, 0:16:35.120 --> 0:16:37.760 and one Confederate woman was shot in the leg, and 0:16:37.800 --> 0:16:43.120 the list goes on and on. So these discovered women, 0:16:43.200 --> 0:16:46.280 which is what you'll often see them called, we're often 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:49.640 discovered after being wounded and sent to a field hospital 0:16:49.720 --> 0:16:53.560 for care. Clara Barton, who we mentioned earlier, was caring 0:16:53.600 --> 0:16:56.840 for wounded soldiers when Mary Galloway was brought in with 0:16:56.880 --> 0:17:00.000 a neck wound that she received at the Battle of Antietam, 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:04.200 and at that point her true identity was revealed to Clara. 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:07.520 Women were also discovered if they got sick, or if 0:17:07.520 --> 0:17:10.439 they were taken prisoner, or as with a New Jersey 0:17:10.480 --> 0:17:15.240 sergeant and five other soldiers gave birth, which I have 0:17:15.400 --> 0:17:17.680 to tell you, just the fact that they were fighting 0:17:17.800 --> 0:17:21.919 right up until that point. I like to think that 0:17:21.960 --> 0:17:24.439 there was like some colonels somewhere who was like, we 0:17:24.560 --> 0:17:27.080 can even give birth in the military. We don't know 0:17:27.160 --> 0:17:32.840 anybody else, so finding a woman in their ranks wasn't 0:17:32.880 --> 0:17:37.040 really a problem. Men during the war described being surprised 0:17:37.119 --> 0:17:40.200 and for some even feelings of respect similar to what 0:17:40.240 --> 0:17:42.399 we just discovered. I I can't believe you managed all 0:17:42.440 --> 0:17:46.000 of this and had a child. However, this also served 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:51.119 as a reminder that war was considered a man's job. Yes, 0:17:51.480 --> 0:17:55.200 getting caught could mean one's moral character could be questioned, 0:17:55.240 --> 0:17:58.959 and I wouldn't want that. You could also be discharged 0:17:59.000 --> 0:18:01.720 and sent home noe. Most wouldn't be punished Beyond that, 0:18:01.800 --> 0:18:05.920 although there are a couple of reports of women being imprisoned, 0:18:05.920 --> 0:18:08.440 but very very few, hard to know if they're real. 0:18:09.080 --> 0:18:12.159 And though there were hundreds of women fighting, the press 0:18:12.240 --> 0:18:15.600 was actually more interested in covering the women dressed in 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:19.199 men's uniforms, than whether or not the women were good soldiers, 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:22.320 or even the philosophical take on whether or not women 0:18:22.359 --> 0:18:26.200 should be fighting at all. Well, because one sells papers 0:18:26.240 --> 0:18:32.239 and the other harder, I mean, it's right. Okay, We're 0:18:32.280 --> 0:18:34.639 going to take a quick break here, and when we 0:18:34.720 --> 0:18:37.520 come back we will talk about how Emma, as Frank 0:18:38.040 --> 0:18:50.480 was considered a deserter. Welcome back to Criminalia. We're going 0:18:50.520 --> 0:18:53.600 to talk now about Frank as a deserter and what 0:18:53.760 --> 0:18:58.240 that meant for Emma. In April of eighteen sixty three, 0:18:58.480 --> 0:19:00.919 the Second Michigan were so in to the Army of 0:19:00.960 --> 0:19:04.080 the Cumberland and they were sent to Kentucky, and by 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:08.120 the time they arrived near Vicksburg, Mississippi, Emma had contracted malaria. 0:19:08.200 --> 0:19:09.959 That's something that actually claimed the lives of a lot 0:19:10.040 --> 0:19:14.359 of people during the Civil War. And as Frank requested 0:19:14.400 --> 0:19:19.199 a furlough, but that request was denied. Not wanting to 0:19:19.240 --> 0:19:22.439 be discovered by one of the nurses, she disguised herself 0:19:22.480 --> 0:19:25.360 again and she sneaked out of her camp and it 0:19:25.400 --> 0:19:28.960 was then that Franklin Thompson was charged with desertion, which 0:19:29.000 --> 0:19:31.680 can of course be punishable by death. During this time. 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:37.359 So after Emma escape, she resurfaced in one of two places, 0:19:37.520 --> 0:19:41.040 um and so it was maybe Pittsburgh, but it was 0:19:41.160 --> 0:19:46.119 also maybe and more likely that she resurfaced in Oberlin, Ohio. 0:19:46.720 --> 0:19:50.640 Some sources report that she enrolled at Oberlin College. This 0:19:50.720 --> 0:19:53.400 was the first college to offer higher education to both 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:57.359 men and women, and they began admitting women long before this. 0:19:57.400 --> 0:20:00.480 I think it was back in seven So it was 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:04.960 either there Pennsylvania or Ohio where she recuperated from malaria. 0:20:05.119 --> 0:20:08.439 And there is no record she studied at Oberlin, but 0:20:08.520 --> 0:20:11.760 there is proof she worked at the Christian Commission as 0:20:11.800 --> 0:20:15.560 a nurse from June until the end of the war. 0:20:15.960 --> 0:20:19.280 And it's right around this time when she resumed using 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:23.119 her female identity end name right. Why would you go 0:20:23.200 --> 0:20:25.600 to the trouble of keeping up the ruse if you 0:20:25.640 --> 0:20:28.439 do not have to? Exactly it doesn't I don't know 0:20:28.480 --> 0:20:30.480 if she kept wearing pants though, I mean I went 0:20:30.520 --> 0:20:36.840 they're comfortable. Almost immediately following the Civil War was what's known, 0:20:36.880 --> 0:20:39.679 of course, is the Progressive era, and this was a 0:20:39.720 --> 0:20:43.199 time budding with activists and reformers who wanted to end 0:20:43.200 --> 0:20:47.160 the political corruption and improve the lives of all citizens 0:20:47.200 --> 0:20:52.119 and expand government intervention to protect citizens. One end the 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:55.560 goal through the suffrage movement was to grant women equal rights, 0:20:55.640 --> 0:20:58.880 including of course, the right to vote, and that took 0:20:58.920 --> 0:21:01.880 some time, when men were not granted full voting rights 0:21:01.960 --> 0:21:06.840 until long after Emma had passed away. On August nineteen twenty, 0:21:06.960 --> 0:21:11.120 state legislatures ratified the nineteenth Amendment giving women the right 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:17.719 to vote. Okay, So, while that's a super important history lesson. Actually, um, 0:21:17.760 --> 0:21:21.879 this is all happening right around the time that Emma 0:21:22.080 --> 0:21:25.520 decides to move to Harper's Ferry, which is in West Virginia, 0:21:25.720 --> 0:21:27.600 and it's there where she worked as a nurse with 0:21:27.640 --> 0:21:31.040 the Christian Commission. Again um, but it's also in Harper's 0:21:31.040 --> 0:21:33.960 Ferry where she met and fell in love with Lina Seely. 0:21:34.080 --> 0:21:38.080 He was a carpenter who was like Emma from New Brunswick, Canada. 0:21:38.400 --> 0:21:42.960 The couple married on April eighteen sixty seven in Okay. Again, 0:21:43.000 --> 0:21:47.520 because this is actually getting funny to me, probably Cleveland, Ohio. 0:21:48.160 --> 0:21:51.440 It's really hard to pin Emma down because she moves 0:21:51.480 --> 0:21:54.840 around a lot, and at this time, just to make 0:21:54.880 --> 0:21:57.480 things even a little bit more confusing, Emma, now that 0:21:57.560 --> 0:22:00.320 she was married decided that she would start using her 0:22:00.359 --> 0:22:06.880 first name again. Sarah. I like that she's addicted to change. 0:22:08.280 --> 0:22:09.840 She just needs to jazz it up a little bit 0:22:09.840 --> 0:22:12.280 from time. I need a different locale, I need a 0:22:12.320 --> 0:22:16.280 different moniker. I got to switch it up. Sarah and 0:22:16.359 --> 0:22:18.920 Linus went on to have three children. They had two 0:22:19.000 --> 0:22:22.440 sons named Linus and Homer, and a daughter named Alice Louise, 0:22:23.520 --> 0:22:27.080 but their family was really beset by tragedy. Linus died 0:22:27.119 --> 0:22:30.240 just before his third birthday, and Homer passed away shortly 0:22:30.280 --> 0:22:33.480 after he was born. Alice too died while she was 0:22:33.520 --> 0:22:37.040 still very young, and their deaths were blamed on measles, 0:22:37.080 --> 0:22:40.520 although there isn't any verification of that. That's not unusual 0:22:40.640 --> 0:22:43.199 for children's deaths during this time for there to not 0:22:43.320 --> 0:22:46.560 be a lot of paperwork about it. Many sources report 0:22:46.600 --> 0:22:50.000 that the Seelye's also adopted two boys, that was George 0:22:50.000 --> 0:22:55.720 Frederick and Charles Finney. In eighteen seventies six, Sarah decided 0:22:55.760 --> 0:22:59.600 to attend a reunion of the Second Michigan and was 0:22:59.720 --> 0:23:04.280 war only welcomed by her fellow male soldiers. It always 0:23:04.320 --> 0:23:07.800 bothered Sarah that, as Frank Hopson, she was considered a deserter. 0:23:08.359 --> 0:23:11.439 She always maintained her reasons for leaving camp were the 0:23:11.520 --> 0:23:13.920 fear of being found out that she was a woman, 0:23:13.960 --> 0:23:18.680 of course um, but also exhaustion, and she always expected 0:23:18.720 --> 0:23:21.200 that she would return. But it turns out the men 0:23:21.280 --> 0:23:23.760 she fought side by side with didn't consider her a 0:23:23.800 --> 0:23:27.439 deserter either. The group began a writing campaign in an 0:23:27.480 --> 0:23:30.080 effort to get the U. S. War Department to recognize 0:23:30.080 --> 0:23:33.840 Sarah's service as Frank Thompson and to remove the charge 0:23:33.840 --> 0:23:37.280 of desertion from her military records. They were joined by 0:23:37.320 --> 0:23:40.560 others who had served with her, including former military officers 0:23:40.600 --> 0:23:46.679 and other distinguished men, and their campaign it worked. But 0:23:46.960 --> 0:23:49.240 even with all of that support behind her, there was 0:23:49.320 --> 0:23:53.560 still a lot of bureaucratic red tape surprise. It took 0:23:53.640 --> 0:23:57.400 eight long years for this to work, but it did work. 0:23:57.920 --> 0:24:01.960 On July before, in special Act of Congress, Sarah was 0:24:02.000 --> 0:24:05.840 granted an honorable discharge from the Army for quote her 0:24:05.880 --> 0:24:09.080 sacrifice in the line of duty, her splendid record as 0:24:09.080 --> 0:24:14.280 a soldier, her unblemished character and disabilities incurred in the service. 0:24:15.320 --> 0:24:18.479 Sarah also received a modest cash bonus, as well as 0:24:18.520 --> 0:24:21.840 a veterans pension of twelve dollars a month. She was 0:24:21.880 --> 0:24:24.879 the only woman to receive a veterans pension after the 0:24:24.920 --> 0:24:29.919 Civil War that was huge. For fifty years, the Adjudent 0:24:30.040 --> 0:24:35.879 General's office denied that female soldiers even existed. According to 0:24:35.960 --> 0:24:39.800 historian Blatin, who we mentioned earlier, Jewil Early, who was 0:24:39.920 --> 0:24:42.680 the Confederate general and also the head of the Southern 0:24:42.720 --> 0:24:47.520 Historical Society, dismissed females among Confederate troops, calling the whole 0:24:47.600 --> 0:24:52.720 idea a hoax. What we could wrongly but easily assume, 0:24:53.080 --> 0:24:55.199 if you listen to the rhetoric at the time, is 0:24:55.240 --> 0:24:59.040 that any discovered or dismissed female soldiers were and I'm 0:24:59.040 --> 0:25:05.080 going to quote this crazy whores or homosexual. Despite this 0:25:05.119 --> 0:25:07.040 whole judgment that she was going to get a pension, 0:25:07.200 --> 0:25:11.120