Louisa on the Front Lines Read online

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2019 by Samantha Seiple

  Cover design by Kerry Rubenstein

  Cover image Bettmann Archive

  Cover copyright © 2019 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  First Edition: February 2019

  Published by Seal Press, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Seal Press name and logo is a trademark of the Hachette Book Group.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Seiple, Samantha, author.

  Title: Louisa on the front lines: Louisa May Alcott in the Civil War / Samantha Seiple.

  Description: First edition. | New York, NY: Seal Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018032967| ISBN 9781580058049 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781580058032 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Alcott, Louisa May, 1832-1888. | Alcott, Louisa May, 1832-1888—Career in nursing. | Women authors, American—19th century—Biography. | United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865—Hospitals. | United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865—Women. | Military nursing—United States—History—19th century. Classification: LCC PS1018 .S45 2019 | DDC 813/.4 [B]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018032967

  ISBNs: 978-1-58005-804-9 (hardcover), 978-1-58005-803-2 (ebook)

  E3-20181229-JV-NF-ORI

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Introduction: The Heroine’s Journey

  Part One • THE WAR AT HOME

  CHAPTER 1 Wayward Daughter

  CHAPTER 2 Stitches

  CHAPTER 3 A Soldier’s Story

  CHAPTER 4 Help Wanted

  CHAPTER 5 Georgetown or Bust

  CHAPTER 6 Burnside’s Blunder

  CHAPTER 7 The Hurly-Burly House

  CHAPTER 8 A Bitter Pill

  CHAPTER 9 Duty’s Faithful Daughter

  CHAPTER 10 A Gift

  Part Two • WHERE GLORY WAITS

  CHAPTER 11 Unfulfilled Destiny

  CHAPTER 12 The Chariot of Glory

  EPILOGUE Still on the Front Lines

  Acknowledgments

  Praise for Louisa on the Front Lines

  Selected Bibliography

  Source Notes

  Index

  For Todd with love

  Mr. March did not go to the war, but Jo did.

  —Louisa May Alcott [Jo March], responding to fans wanting to know what is true in her beloved semiautobiographical book, Little Women

  Introduction

  THE HEROINE’S JOURNEY

  DURING THE HEIGHT OF THE HOLIDAY SEASON, IN December 1860, Louisa May Alcott and her neighbors in the tranquil town of Concord, Massachusetts, were buzzing with worry over the bitter divide of the United States. In November, Abraham Lincoln had won a contentious presidential election and had plans to prevent slavery in the westward-expanding nation. Shortly after he was elected, South Carolina was the first slave state to rebel and secede from the Union, and more Southern states were threatening to follow.

  The Alcott family supported Lincoln, and if women had been allowed to vote, Louisa would have joined her father, Bronson, at the Concord Town Hall to cast her ballot. It was no secret that the Alcotts were red-hot abolitionists as well as feminists. They were outspoken and unwavering in their belief that men and women, regardless of race, deserved equal rights and opportunities.

  Louisa was so passionate in her belief that when the Civil War broke out in April 1861, she wanted to be a soldier in the Union army. Since women weren’t allowed to join the military, Louisa resigned herself to any opportunity to help abolish slavery and focused on more ladylike, acceptable pursuits, such as sewing uniforms for soldiers.

  But then the door of opportunity opened just a crack, and Louisa was eager to push her way through. The Union army announced it was allowing women to be paid nurses, an unheard-of development at a time when it was not considered respectable work for a woman. Even so, practicality and the needs of wartime won out in this particular gender fight. The fierce and bloody battles of the war had resulted in an overwhelming number of casualties. There were too many sick and wounded and not enough male nurses to help, convincing the military to relent. Despite this new opportunity, there wasn’t a mad rush of women signing up. Louisa, however, made the exceptional decision to enlist right away.

  But Louisa wasn’t from a typical family, and she wasn’t a conventional woman. An avid runner—also unheard of for women at the time—and single still at age twenty-eight, her belief system had been shaped intellectually and emotionally by the environment she grew up in, and it was one of exceptional educational riches and desperate poverty. Her parents, who were friends with some of the greatest philosophers and reformers of the time, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, embraced ideals and beliefs that remain progressive by today’s standards. Louisa had a front row seat watching her father and mother risk their livelihood, freedom, and lives hiding, teaching, and even living among freed and fugitive slaves.

  But her father’s self-absorption in pursuing his philosophical dreams and his careless disregard for his family’s most basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter kept the Alcotts teetering on the brink of ruin. Louisa’s mother tried to find work to support the family, but there were few respectable and profitable job opportunities for women. Many times, Louisa’s mother felt like a beggar, having to ask her relatives again and again for money, writing, “My life is one of daily protest against the oppression and abuses of society.”

  While her mother fought for the family’s survival, Louisa was writing her observations, thoughts, and feelings in her journals and letters. She was working on her plan to not only rescue her family from poverty but also to help drive change in the fight for human rights. Like her parents showed her, Louisa was going to lead by example.

  The Civil War offered Louisa the opportunity to go to the front lines, where she would push the boundaries for women and test her beliefs, while gaining life experiences that would translate into an influential and lasting literary contribution—Little Women.

  When it was first published in 1868, Little Women was a “radical manifesto.” Louisa expertly wove her progressive beliefs and empathetic insights into her novel, creating original and unforgettable characters. Little Women was an instant best seller and has never been out of print. Millions of copies later (and counting), the trials and tribulations of the March sisters are still relatable, speaking universally to the hearts and minds of readers worldwide. Reading Louisa May Alcott’s classic coming-of-age story is a rite of passage for most young girls, many of whom find themselves reading it again and again throughout their lifetime and passionately recommending it to the next generation of little women.

  Part One

  THE WAR AT HOME

  Chapter
1

  WAYWARD DAUGHTER

  December 1860–February 1861, Concord, Massachusetts

  A few months before the start of the Civil War

  CHRISTMAS WASN’T CHRISTMAS WITHOUT PRESENTS. OR merrymaking. But twenty-eight-year-old Louisa May Alcott was, unfortunately, all too familiar with the grim reality of being “poor as rats” and nearly forgotten by everyone.

  “We are used to hard times, and, as Mother says, ‘while there is a famine in Kansas we mustn’t ask for sugar-plums,’” Louisa, who was affectionately called Lu (or Louy) by her family and friends, noted in her journal.

  Despite the crackling fire in the parlor, Christmas had been quiet and cheerless in the drafty clapboard house, which Lu jokingly called “Apple Slump”—much to the chagrin of her father. He preferred the name Orchard House, in honor of the apple trees he lovingly nurtured.

  Even so, there had been fewer apples in the harvest this year, and, without the luxury of a furnace, it was impossible to stay warm inside Orchard House. The uncomfortable draft was just another reminder of Lu’s situation.

  But, several days later, when New Year’s came around, Lu received a welcome surprise in the form of gifts from friends and acquaintances.

  “A most uncommon fit of generosity seemed to seize people on my behalf,” she wrote. “And I was blessed with all manner of nice things, from a gold and ivory pen to mince-pie and a bonnet.”

  When the holidays ended, though, the bleakness of winter settled in even further, and for the next several weeks Lu and the residents in her sleepy village of Concord, Massachusetts, experienced relentlessly frigid temperatures with a deep blanket of snow covering the ground. Those who dared to brave the cold were rewarded with the jingling of sleigh bells as horses trudged through the snow and seeing the children ice skating on Goose Pond.

  The first slight thaw of the winter occurred on February 2, 1861, and, on that morning, Lu woke up at dawn and took her daily run. Even though most women were forbidden to run—it was considered unladylike and downright dangerous—Lu threw caution to the bitter wind. She loved running, and her parents encouraged physical exercise. For Lu, not only did running make her feel free but it was a spiritual experience, making her feel closer to God.

  So Lu wasn’t worried about what her neighbors would think. By now, they were used to seeing her run with the deftness of a deer through the open meadow near Orchard House and into Walden Woods, with only the sound of her feet pattering and her petticoat ruffling. When Lu was a child, no boy could be her friend until she outran him in a race. Lu’s physical strength and endurance made her seem different from other women, but she was considered the most beautiful and fastest runner in Concord.

  After her run, Lu sat down at her desk, which was shaped like a half moon and positioned between two windows. Her father, who was an accomplished carpenter, had made the writing desk especially for her.

  Lu was working feverishly on a novel, a love-triangle romance she called Moods. She was using her new gold and ivory pen, dipping it carefully into her inkstand and trying not to get too much ink on her fingers. She didn’t want to accidentally stain her red merino dress.

  New clothes were hard to come by, and most of her dresses were hand-me-downs from her wealthy cousins and friends. Lu had worn her last silk dress for six years, mending it so many times it was “more patch and tear than gown.”

  When Lu finally had a little extra money, she bought some wine-colored wool and sewed the red gown herself. The dress was nice but not nice enough for all occasions. Just before Christmas, Lu turned down an invitation to the one-year anniversary meeting of John Brown’s death because she didn’t have a “good gown” to wear.

  The radical abolitionist Brown had been a close family friend of the Alcotts, who were themselves active and outspoken abolitionists. Lu and her family believed in complete racial equality, including interracial marriage. They attended antislavery meetings and put their own freedom on the line as participants in the secret and illegal Underground Railroad. For as long as Lu could remember, her family had harbored fugitive slaves.

  When Lu was fourteen years old, a runaway slave stayed with them for a week and ate his meals at their table before leaving for Canada. Her father recorded in his journal, “We supplied him with the means of journeying, and bade him a good god-speed to a freer land.… His stay with us has given image and a name to the dire entity of slavery, and was an impressive lesson to my children, bringing before them the wrongs of the black man and his tale of woes.” Throughout her life, Lu had met many of the legendary leaders who were risking their lives to abolish slavery—from Harriet Tubman, who stayed at the Alcott home, to Frederick Douglass.

  So, when John Brown was executed for trying to arm a slave rebellion, the Alcotts considered him a martyr and saint. “Glad I have lived to see the Antislavery movement and this last heroic act in it,” Lu wrote after Brown led the Harpers Ferry raid. “Wish I could do my part in it.”

  To honor the one-year anniversary of John Brown’s death, Lu decided to write a poem in the midst of working on Moods. But she couldn’t find the right words to express her feelings, and she didn’t think it was any good, lamenting, “I’m a better patriot than poet.” Even so, she sent it out anyway, and, according to her notes from the time, it was published in a newspaper.

  Whenever Lu sat down at her desk to write, she liked to wear an old green and red party shawl, which she called her “glory cloak.” It kept her warm and helped protect her dress from ink stains. It matched the brimless green silk hat that her mother, Abba (later known as Marmee), had made for her and adorned with a red bow.

  Lu’s hat covered her long, chestnut-colored hair, which, when it wasn’t pinned up in a simple, becoming style, nearly touched the floor. It was her favorite, and, in her opinion, best feature. “If I look in my glass, I try to keep down vanity about my long hair, my well-shaped head, and my good nose,” Lu revealed in her journal. She could remember a time when her family was so desperate for money that she had seriously considered cutting off her hair and selling it to a wigmaker. “I went to a barber, let down my hair, and asked him how much he would give me for it,” she said to a friend. “When he told me the sum, it seemed so large to me that I then and there determined I would part with my most precious possession if during the next week the clouds did not lift.”

  But on that particular occasion, a family friend came to the rescue. “That was not the first time he had helped father, nor was it indeed the last,” Lu said. That friend was Ralph Waldo Emerson. He and his family lived down the road from the Alcotts, not far from Henry David Thoreau, another one of their good friends. Like Emerson and Thoreau, Lu’s father was a transcendentalist.

  Although the most influential philosophers of the transcendentalist movement at the time lived in the small village of Concord, most of the townspeople didn’t really understand what the term “transcendental” meant. But they did consider it completely unorthodox. It was a radical notion at that time to believe in a direct relationship with God and a oneness with nature, and that a divine spirit is present in every human and in all of nature. As a transcendentalist, Bronson stuck fiercely to his principles, not caring about money or material things, even if it meant that his family went hungry.

  “Philosophers are always poor,” Lu wrote. “And too modest to pass round their own hats.”

  Although Bronson was not as famous as Emerson and hadn’t attended Harvard University like Emerson (and Thoreau), his loyal and well-respected friend looked up to him and considered him “the most transcendental of the Transcendentalists.” Bronson’s ideas had influenced Emerson in his defining essay, Nature, which launched Emerson’s career. He had paraphrased passages from Bronson’s journals, and considered him a genius and half god. Emerson believed that Bronson was the one philosopher who could have held a conversation with Plato. But he also likened Bronson to Don Quixote—a naïve and impractical idealist. Unlike Emerson, others looked down on Bronson, calli
ng him a fool, a madman, pompous, and, perhaps even worse, a bore.

  BRONSON’S CONNECTION to the transcendentalists ran so deep that Emerson even had a hand in the family’s geography. In 1845, when the Alcotts were living forty-five miles west of Boston near the rural town of Harvard and Bronson found himself out of work, Emerson urged him to move to Concord, closer to Boston, and even helped him buy a home. When the Alcotts moved into their house on Lexington Road, the villagers were atwitter with worry, casting a suspicious eye and shunning the Alcotts. Bronson’s reputation as “a fanatic in belief and habit” had preceded him.

  Early in his career, he had made a name for himself as a schoolteacher—and not always in a good way. Bronson, who was the oldest son of an illiterate farmer, lacked a high school and college degree. But when he wasn’t working with his father on the family farm, his doting mother had taught him to read and write. The only formal education he received was when he earned a scholarship to Cheshire Academy, a private prep school that admitted boys and girls. Although he yearned to learn, when he found himself surrounded by better-dressed students from more privileged backgrounds, Bronson didn’t feel worthy, more like a country bumpkin, and left after a short time. Despite dropping out of school, he would later earn his teaching certificate and spend his lifetime feeding his intellect—and prove to be a trailblazer with his ideas of education reform.

  But, like many trailblazers, his progressive ideas would also be his undoing. Bronson’s teaching methods were considered radical at a time when children learned by rote memorization and strict discipline. Bronson believed that education should inspire the mind and awaken the soul. He came up with the idea of recess, and, in the classroom, instead of encouraging memorization, he tried to engage his students in discussions and draw out their ideas.

  Instead of using physical punishment, Bronson handled discipline problems by discussing them as a group with his pupils. Sometimes Bronson would extend his hand and tell the misbehaving student to strike it because it was he who had failed as a teacher. Bronson believed this instilled shame and triggered feelings of guilt, so the behavior would, in theory, stop.