Frances clayton civil war biography essay
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One female soldier was discharged after making a grab for her non-existent apron to catch a thrown apple. She fought alongside her husband at the Battle of Stones River in Tennessee, waged between December 31, 1862, and January 2, 1863. Women who cited love for country or love for a man as their motivations for joining the fight garnered the most attention.
Another woman, Loreta Janeta Velasquez, served the Confederacy as a frontline soldier and spy under the name of Harry Buford.
Women, especially those with masculine features, were able to hide themselves under the bulky army uniforms and by avoiding public latrines.
Those who were discovered, typically after being wounded, were discharged.
Frances hid her identity well. Additionally, she had pictures taken of herself in a Union military uniform in 1865, which became some of the most well-known photographs of women soldiers during the Civil War. However, the authenticity of her story has been questioned by historians due to contradictory information reported in newspapers, such as which battles she fought in and the regiments she served in.
What is certain, however, is that “more women took to the field during [the Civil War] than in any previous military affair [in the United States’ history].”5
What we know of Clayton comes from newspaper reports and men’s eyewitness accounts. One was exposed through her aptitude for female work, including the “peculiar” way she wrung out a dish cloth and her fine sewing skills.
Answering the call that year were two men, one named Frank Clayton and the other Jack Williams.
They were from Minnesota but traveled south to Missouri to enlist. We do not know the full scope of female service as soldiers in the war. See Jim Miklaszewski and Halimah Abdullah, “All Combat Roles Now Open to Women, Pentagon Says,” December 3, 2015, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/pentagon-nbc-news-all-combat-roles-now-open-women-n473581, accessed October 11, 2022.
2 Wikipedia, s.v., “Frances Clayton,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Clayton, accessed October 11, 2022.
3 DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M.
Cook, They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War (Baton Rouge, Louisiana: LSU Press, 2002), 2.
4 Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 7.
5 Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 6.
6 Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 75.
7 Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 149-151.
8 Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 34.
9 Bonnie Tsui, She Went to the Field: Women Soldiers of the Civil War (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 66.
10 Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 11.
11 Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 34 and 150.
12 Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 48.
13 Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, 58.
14 My emphasis on the photographic portrait.
Apples proved the downfall of two women. A response came quickly, and the war began.
From all over the US, young and old men alike began enlisting in the ranks of the Union Army. When the call came to fix bayonets, [she] stepped over his body and charged.”10 Clayton was discharged in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1863.11
Frances Clayton.
In July 1863, a Union burial detail at Gettysburg was astonished to find a dead woman wearing the uniform of a Confederate private.
Jennie Hodges, who fought under the name of Albert Cashier, was said to have fought in more than 40 engagements. Lizze Compton, who went by the name Jack or Johnny, was detected seven times. For months, the two fought side by side until her husband succumbed to a bullet on the front lines at the Battle of Stones River.
Clayton told newspapers a sad tale. The Minnesota couple joined a Missouri regiment with Frances disguised as a man and under the alias, Jack Williams.
Popular notions of women during the Civil War center on self-sacrificing nurses, romantic spies, or brave ladies maintaining the home front in the absence of their men.