Sarah Emma Edmonds (1841–1898)

This is a first-person account of a woman who enlisted in the Army of the Potomac in 1861, presenting herself as a man, to serve as a field nurse. She says little about why she did so. She became ill and left the field in 1863, and this was published a year or two later.

The book is typical of its time in being heavily padded with lengthy quotations from other published sources, contemporary sentimental poetry, and religious digressions both passionate and naive.

It reads as if the chapters were made for periodical serialization: each of the thirty chapters is approximately the same length. Also typical is that it appears to be factually unreliable; but in many cases it's ambiguous whether she's actually claiming to have been somewhere (such as Antietam), or innocently reporting other people's stories.

In spite of these flaws, it's more than reasonably well-written and has significant antiquarian interest. For those interested in finding out more about the author herself, there's a modern biography available (The Mysterious Private Thompson, by Laura Leedy Gansler).… (mer)