by Marissa Moss
GENERAL PHILIP KEARNY
captain in the Mexican-American War, Kearny was shot in the arm during a daring cavalry charge, and his arm had to be amputated. After leaving the army, he spent time fighting in Europe, with the Austrians against Italy and then with Napoleon III’s Imperial Guard. He returned to the United States at the outbreak of the Civil War and was named brigadier general in command of the First New Jersey Brigade. Despite his disability, his troops performed strongly and he was given command of the Third Division of the III Corps, leading the men in the battles of Williamsburg and Fair Oaks. Kearny disagreed with McClellan’s overcautious approach in the Peninsula Campaign. Nevertheless, Kearny continued to perform with distinction and was promoted to major general on July 4, 1862. Two months later he was killed in the Battle of Chantilly, Virginia. Courageous to the end, (he plunged into heavy fighting after telling his troops that “the Rebel bullet that can kill me has not yet been molded”), he refused Confederate demands that he surrender. Kearny was killed while trying to break through superior Confederate forces, having led his men from the front rather than from the rear.
GENERAL GEORGE McCLELLAN
major general in the Civil War, McClellan organized the Army of the Potomac and acted as general-in-chief of the Union army. Although he managed to train and organize an army from scratch, his Peninsula Campaign was a complete failure. While he blunted General Lee’s advance north in the Battle of Antietam, his careful approach and indecisiveness allowed Lee to retreat to Virginia when more aggressive action might have led to the destruction of Lee’s army. Although he was deeply popular with the troops, President Lincoln no longer trusted him as a battlefield general. After being relieved of his command, he ran unsuccessfully against Lincoln in the 1864 presidential election on an antiwar platform.
GENERAL GEORGE MEADE
career army officer and civil engineer, Meade served in the Second Seminole War and the Mexican-American War. In the Civil War he started as a brigade commander in the Peninsula Campaign and the Seven Days Battles. In the horrible Union defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg, his division was the most successful. He was appointed to command the Army of the Potomac three days before Gettysburg. Although he won the battle, his hesitation allowed General Lee and the Rebels to escape back across the Potomac River into Virginia. He continued to lead the Army of the Potomac, but only under direct supervision of the general-in-chief, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant.
COLONEL ORLANDO POE
ike General Meade, Poe was a civil engineer. He organized volunteer soldiers from Ohio at the start of the Civil War and quickly joined Major General McClellan’s staff in western Virginia. He was promoted to colonel and given charge of the Second Michigan Volunteer Infantry, leading them in the Battle of Yorktown and through the Peninsula Campaign. Right before the Battle of Fredericksburg, Poe was promoted to brigadier general, but the promotion was taken away the following spring, possibly as punishment for following General Franklin in that calamitous battle. He was demoted to lieutenant, then was quickly promoted to captain and transferred to the Western Theater as General Sherman’s chief engineer of the XXIII Corps. He continued to serve as chief engineer for the rest of the war and oversaw the burning of Atlanta. After the war, he built many of the lighthouses on the Great Lakes.
MAJOR GENERAL JOHN POPE
career army officer, Pope was named brigadier general of volunteers at the start of the war. He was given command of the District of North and Central Missouri under Major General John Fremont. Fremont suspected Pope of treachery, but incompetence was more likely the issue. Through his ability to manipulate press coverage, he impressed Fremont’s replacement, Major General Henry Halleck, who appointed Pope commander of the Army of the Mississippi. His success in battles in Missouri and along the Mississippi River led to a promotion to major general. After McClellan’s dismissal following the disastrous Peninsula Campaign, Pope was named commander of the Army of Virginia. After his own terrible failures in the second Battle of Bull Run, Pope was relieved of command.
GENERAL EDWIN SUMNER
career army officer, Sumner was the oldest field commander on either side of the Civil War. He served with distinction on the western frontier in several Indian campaigns and in the Mexican-American War. With his booming voice and the legend that even cannonballs bounced off him (earning him the nickname “Bull Head”), he was the first general created for the new Union army. Despite that honor, he was immediately sent to California to replace Brigadier General Albert Johnston as commander of the Department of the Pacific for the first year of the war. Chosen to command the II Corps by President Lincoln himself, Sumner fought in the Peninsula Campaign and the Seven Days Battles. He did well in Virginia in the Battle of Seven Pines but was savagely criticized for his part in the Battle of Antietam. His divisions were among those massacred in the Battle of Fredericksburg. After General Hooker took over for General Burnside, Sumner asked to be relieved of duty. He died of a heart attack not long after.
A BRIEF CIVIL WAR TIMELINE
* Denotes battles and events in which Frank Thompson and/or her regiment participated.
DECEMBER 1860-FEBRUARY 1861: Spurred by the election of Abraham Lincoln as president, seven Southern states secede from the Union—South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana.
FEBRUARY-MARCH 1861: The seceding states form the Confederate States of America, with Jefferson Davis as provisional president, and begin seizing Union forts, customs houses, and mints.
MARCH 4, 1861: Abraham Lincoln inaugurated as president of the United States.
APRIL 12, 1861: Battle of Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. The opening shots mark the military start of what would come to be known as the War Between the States.
APRIL-MAY 1861: Inspired by the attack on Fort Sumter, four more states join the Confederacy—Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
MAY 1861: Private Frank Thompson enlists in the Second Michigan Infantry, Army of the Potomac.
JUNE 1861-MAY 1862: West Virginia is created when the western part of the state decides not to secede with the rest of Virginia and is admitted into the Union as its own separate state on June 20, 1863.
JUNE 1861: Union navy sets up a blockade along the Southern coast.
JULY 21, 1861: First Battle of Bull Run*, Manassas, Virginia (called the Battle of Manassas by the Rebels). Frank’s first battle.
JULY 1861: General George B. McClellan replaces General Irvin McDowell as commander of the Army of the Potomac following defeat at Bull Run.
FEBRUARY 6 AND FEBRUARY 11–16, 1862: Union forces, led by Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant, capture Fort Henry and Fort Donelson along the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers in Tennessee.
MARCH 8–9, 1862: In the first battle involving ironclad (armored) ships, the Union ship Monitor and the Confederate ship Virginia (originally a captured Union wooden ship called the Merrimac, which the Confederates had armored) fight to a draw at Hampton Roads in Virginia.
MARCH-JULY 1862: General McClellan leads the Army of the Potomac on the Peninsula Campaign*, trying unsuccessfully to reach the Confederate government in Richmond and end the war quickly.
APRIL 1862: Frank forages for provisions and takes a Southern woman prisoner after being shot at. Frank becomes a spy and goes on her first mission, infiltrating a Confederate camp at Yorktown.
APRIL 6–7, 1862: Battle of Shiloh in southwestern Tennessee is the first major battle of the war, causing heavy casualties on both sides.
APRIL 1862: Union navy captures New Orleans.
MAY 5, 1862: Battle of Williamsburg*, Virginia, first heavy fighting in Peninsula Campaign.
MAY 1862: Frank’s second spy mission, disguised as an Irish peddler.
MAY 31-JUNE 1, 1862: Battle of Fair Oaks*, Virginia. Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston is badly wounded. General Robert E. Lee takes over command of Confederate army. Frank acts as orderly for Brigadier General Phil
ip Kearny and is bitten savagely by her horse. Kearny awards Frank a Confederate sword for her valor.
JUNE 12–16, 1862: General J. E. B. Stuart’s cavalry raid around entire Union army. Frank’s train chases hijacked train.
JUNE 25-JULY 1, 1862: Seven Days Battles*—Six major battles (and a couple of minor ones) fought over seven days near Richmond, Virginia, as part of General McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign. Frank’s friend Jerome is captured and paroled. Frank captures colt and almost rides into the enemy. Battle of Oak Grove; Battle of Mechanicsville; Battle of Gaines’ Mill; Battle of Garrett’s and Golding’s Farms; Battle of Savage’s Station; Battle of White Oak Swamp; Battle of Glendale; Battle of Malvern Hill
AUGUST 1862: Army of the Potomac is ordered to assist General John Pope’s Army of Virginia, leaving General McClellan without a command.
AUGUST 28–30, 1862: Second Battle of Bull Run*, Virginia. Horrible Union defeat leads to General Pope being relieved of command, with General McClellan reinstated. Frank goes on a spy mission.
SEPTEMBER 1, 1862: Battle of Chantilly*, Fairfax County, Virginia. Frank’s regiment is in battle, but she misses it because of an accident with a mule. General Kearny is killed in battle. Frank goes on another spy mission.
SEPTEMBER 14, 1862: Battle of South Mountain, Turner’s Gap, Maryland.
SEPTEMBER 15, 1862: Battle of Harpers Ferry*, West Virginia.
SEPTEMBER 17, 1862: Battle of Antietem, Sharpsburg, Maryland. Frank goes on a spy mission, misses the battle.
SEPTEMBER 1862: Frank is caught in an ambush. Her horse is shot from under her and she is left for dead.
NOVEMBER 7, 1862: Due to his failure to pursue General Lee’s army following the victory at Antietam, General McClellan is replaced by General Ambrose E. Burnside.
DECEMBER 11–15, 1862: Battle of Fredericksburg*, Virginia.
JANUARY 1, 1863: President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation goes into effect, freeing slaves in Confederate states not occupied by forces of the United States.
JANUARY 25, 1863: After disaster at Fredericksburg and “Mud March,” General Joseph Hooker replaces General Burnside as Commander of Army of the Potomac.
FEBRUARY 1863: Frank goes undercover as a Southern cavalryman, stumbles onto a Confederate officer’s wedding, and is forcibly recruited into his newly formed regiment.
MARCH 1863: Frank works at a merchant’s shop in Louisville, spying on Confederate spies. She helps train another Union spy in undercover techniques.
MARCH 3, 1863: First Conscription Act is passed, calling for a general draft of all men aged twenty to forty-five, unless they can pay three hundred dollars or provide a substitute.
APRIL 20, 1863: Frank falls ill and sneaks out of camp to recover under a doctor’s care.
APRIL 30-MAY 4, 1863: Battle of Chancellorsville, Virginia. Stonewall Jackson is mortally wounded by his own soldiers and dies on May 10, 1863.
MAY 19-JULY 4, 1863: Siege and capture of Vicksburg, Mississippi.
JUNE 28, 1863: General George Meade is named Commander of the Army of the Potomac, replacing General Hooker after his defeat at Chancellorsville.
JULY 1–3, 1863: Battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The Army of the Potomac defeats General Lee, forcing his retreat to Virginia; combined with the fall of Vicksburg at the same time, the tide of war turns in favor of the Union.
SEPTEMBER 19–20, 1863: Battle of Chickamauga, Georgia.
OCTOBER 16, 1863: General Ulysses S. Grant is given command of all operations in the Western Theater.
NOVEMBER 19, 1863: President Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address, dedicating a portion of the Pennsylvania battlefield as a national cemetery.
NOVEMBER 23–25, 1863: Battle of Chattanooga, Tennessee.
1864: Unsexed, or the Female Soldier by Sarah Emma Edmonds becomes an instant bestseller, selling over 175, 000 copies. Later reprinted as Nurse and Spy in the Union Army: comprising the adventures and experiences of a woman in hospitals, camps, and battlefields.
MARCH 9, 1864: General Grant is made commander of all Union armies. William Tecumseh Sherman takes over the western command.
MAY 5–6, 1864: Battle of the Wilderness, Virginia.
MAY 10–12, 1864: Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, Virginia.
JUNE 1864-APRIL 1865: Battle and Siege of Petersburg, Virginia.
AUGUST 5, 1864: Battle of Mobile Bay, Alabama.
SEPTEMBER 2, 1864: Atlanta is captured by General Sherman after a month-long siege.
NOVEMBER 8, 1864: President Lincoln is reelected, defeating General McClellan.
NOVEMBER 15-DECEMBER 21, 1864: Sherman’s March to the Sea, resulting in the capture of Savannah, Georgia.
DECEMBER 15–16, 1864: Battle of Nashville, Tennessee.
JANUARY 31, 1865: U.S. Congress approves the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery.
MARCH 4, 1865: President Lincoln is inaugurated for his second term.
APRIL 1, 1865: Battle of Five Forks, southwest of Petersburg, Virginia.
APRIL 2, 1865: Confederate government abandons Richmond.
APRIL 4, 1865: President Lincoln tours Richmond.
APRIL 9, 1865: General Lee surrenders the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.
APRIL 14, 1865: President Lincoln is shot at Ford’s Theatre.
APRIL 15, 1865: President Lincoln dies. Vice President Andrew Johnson is sworn in as president.
APRIL 26, 1865: General Johnston surrenders last major Confederate army in the east to General Sherman near Durham, North Carolina. John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln’s assassin, is tracked down and killed after an eleven-day manhunt.
MAY 1865: Remaining Confederate soldiers surrender. Over 620, 000 men died during the four years of war, and over 50, 000 survivors returned home as amputees.
JULY 1884: Sarah Emma Edmonds Seelye, a.k.a. Frank Thompson, attends veterans’ reunion in Flint, Michigan.
JULY 3, 1884: Sarah Emma Edmonds Seelye is granted by an act of Congress an honorable discharge and any back pay due her as a private of Company F, Second Michigan. All charges of desertion are dropped from her record.
JULY 5, 1884: Sarah Emma Edmonds Seelye is granted by an act of Congress a military pension of $12 a month as a war veteran.
APRIL 1897: Sarah Emma Edmonds Seelye is mustered into the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.), the veterans’ organization for Civil War soldiers. She is the only woman to be so honored.
SEPTEMBER 5, 1898: Sarah Emma Edmonds Seelye dies from malaria, the swamp fever that plagued her since the start of the Peninsula Campaign.
MEMORIAL DAY, 1901: Sarah Emma Edmonds Seelye is reburied in the G.A.R. section of a cemetery in Houston, Texas, the only woman of the Civil War era to be given such an honor as a soldier and veteran.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
FOR SARAH EMMA Edmonds’s life story, I relied on her own memoir, Unsexed, or the Female Soldier, published first in 1864, reprinted as Nurse and Spy in 1865, as well as Sylvia G. L. Dannett’s She Rode with the Generals: The True and Incredible Story of Sarah Emma Seelye, alias Franklin Thompson, Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1960; The Mysterious Private Thompson: The Double Life of Sarah Emma Edmonds, Civil War Soldier by Laura Leedy Gansler, Bison Books, 1970; Where Duty Calls: The Story of Sarah Emma Edmonds, Soldier and Spy in the Union Army by Marilyn Seguin, Branden Books, 1999; and numerous books on women in the Civil War as well as on the Civil War in general. The ones I drew on most were: She Went to the Field: Women Soldiers of the Civil War by Bonnie Tsui, TwoDot, 2006; Women on the Civil War Battlefront by Richard Hall, University Press of Kansas, 2006; Women in the Civil War by Mary Elizabeth Massy, introduction by Jean Berlin, University of Nebraska Press, 1994; They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War by DeAnne Blanton and Lauren Cook, Vintage, 2003; Women at the Front: Hospital Workers in Civil War America, Jane E. Schultz, University of North Carolina Press, 2004; Women in the Civil War: Warriors, Patriots, Nurses, and Spies, edited by Phyllis Raybin Emert, His
tory Compass, 2007; Honor Unbound by Diane L. Abbott and Kristoffer Gair, Hamilton Books, 2004; Spies and Spymasters of the Civil War, Donald Markle, Hippocrene Books, 2004; South After Gettysburg: Letters of Cornelia Hancock from the Army of the Potomac, 1863–1865, Books for Libraries Press, 1971; Letters of a Civil War Nurse: Cornelia Hancock, 1863–1865, Bison Books, 1998; Women During the Civil War: An Encyclopedia by Judith Harper, Routledge, 2004.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THERE ARE MANY people who helped shape this book and have earned my thanks and appreciation: Paul Kleven, for historical issues; Elias Stahl, for describing battle scenes; Diane Frasier, Penny Kramer, Danielle Sunshine, Eleanor Vincent, Joan Lester, Elisa Kleven, Thacher Hurd, Asa Stahl, Adrienne Boutang, Martine Boutang, and Rob Scheifer for storytelling in general. And most of all Sarah Emma Edmonds, an inspiring force to me still.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MARISSA MOSS HAS written and illustrated many books for children, including the popular Amelia’s Notebook series; the picture book Nurse, Soldier, Spy; and a middle-grade novel, The Pharaoh’s Secret. She lives in Berkeley, California.
THIS BOOK WAS designed by Sara Corbett and art directed by Chad W. Beckerman.
The illustration on the cover is by Shane Rebenschied.
Its production was overseen by Kathy Lovisolo.
