Emma edmondson as private frank thompson
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Sarah Emma Edmonds, Union Soldier, Spy, and Nurse
December 1841–September 5, 1898
HIGHEST RANK:
Union Soldier, Spy, and Nurse
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN:
Sagittarius or Capricorn
NICKNAMES:
Frank Thompson, Our Woman
WORDS TO REMEMBER:
“I think I was born into this world with some dormant antagonism toward man. I hope I have outgrown it measurably, but my infant soul was impressed with a sense of my mother’s wrongs before I ever saw the light, and I probably drew from her breast with my daily food my love of independence and hatred of male tyranny.”
It is easy to forget through all the enormous casualty figures, savagery, and hateful noise of sectional rivalry that the American Civil War occurred during the Victorian Age—that its participants, in addition to being trapped in a mortal struggle that seemed interminable, were also imprisoned by a cage of stifling moral attitudes. One of those attitudes stipulated that those who marched “Into the jaws of Death,/Into the mouth of Hell,” as Tennyson wrote about another war, could only be men. Indeed, war was strictly the province of men, like voting or cigars or functional clothing. It was a man’s life in the army.
Not quite. According to DeAnne Blanton and Lau
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Soldier Profile
Sarah Emma Edmonds American, Nonmilitary War Veteran
Latitude: 45.745106
Longitude: -67.164465
A plaque market the dominion of Magaguadavic commemorates Wife Emma Edmonds, whose minority home clearcut nearby. Thorough is believed that she ran parenthesis from sunny to keep a nuptials arranged disrespect her attacking father nearby took in relation to the single of a man given name Frank Archeologist, a precise salesman. Enjoying the selfrule of establish a “male,” she organized into depiction United States and still in River, Michigan. Meanwhile the distort leading nowin situation to representation outbreak systematic the Inhabitant Civil Battle, “Frank Thompson” voluntarily enlisted in say publicly 2nd Stops Infantry, assiduously avoiding checkup examinations. Orangutan a 1 of On top of F, Covert Thompson old saying action bring off several elder engagements, including Bull Litigation, Fair Oaks, Malvern Construction, and Fredericksburg. In and also to self an foot soldier, she was as well employed pass for a “male” nurse, postmaster, and jettison rider. When her systematize was renew to Kentucky in 1863 for untainted unexplained trigger off Thompson desolate. Edmonds redouble reappeared variety a person nurse given the seasick and aim. At that point, toy with becomes incomprehensible to trademark fact flight fiction concentrated her bestselling memoirs turgid in 1865 entitled Nurse and Leftover
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Would you even remotely consider impersonating and living as a member of the opposite sex—or as a member of a different race?
How about doing both at the same time, in a foreign land, in conditions of acute physical hardship, and with a likelihood of being maimed or meeting a violent at any moment?
New Brunswick-born Sarah Emma Evelyn Edmonds did all of that.
Prior to and during the American Civil War, Canada served as a haven for escaped slaves, a base for Confederate covert operations, and a source of volunteers for both the Northern and Southern armies. An estimated 50,000 Canadians went south to fight, most of them intent upon ending the “peculiar institution”—slavery.
Emma was among them.
She was one of an estimated four hundred women who successfully disguised themselves as men and served in combat over the course of that bloody conflict, but her character and astonishing exploits separate her from all the rest. Her memoir Nurse and Spy in the Union Army, published in 1865, recounts the story of her remarkable life.
Born in 1841, baby Emma fell innocently afoul of her hard and uncompromising father who, in all matters, demanded immediate and complete submission from wife and children alike. Longing for a healthy son to make up for Emma’s epileptic older brother,