My Dear Wife, Rosetta, Always Rosetta, I can see us even now sitting on our Porch, Old and Weathered together and that is how I know we will have Our Farm. Maybe I will read this letter to our Children, to teach them something of their Mother, my Fighting Wife, my Stone Lady. Or maybe I will keep it until we are in our Last Days and show you then. Or some day when you are fussing at some fool thing I done. And you will see these words and know that even in my Dark Hours you are First in my thoughts.
It is my Hope that I can Provide for you and Protect you. That is what I aimed to do when I left Home and you there. You know I never meant for you to come here and that is why I want you to go back if anything should happen though I cannot believe I will die in this War.
I want for us to have everything we ever dreamed and spoke of. You belong on that Farm and me There with you. I am Grateful for Every Moment we stole, for Every Bit of Time Together we ever had, but if there is one thing I wish it is for more Years to Love you and be a better husband to you.
I don’t regret not for one day the things we done together or having you by my side but that I put you in Harm’s Way by being here. Even more than our Farm, I want for you to have a Long and Happy Life. If it is not God’s Will for us to share this life more than we already done, when I am gone you should go Home and be Safe. I will wait for you in Heaven and Look on you and see the Life you make and be happy for it.
I Shall be Near to You, Always, Your Husband,
Jeremiah Wakefield
AUTHOR’S NOTE
There was a real Rosetta who fought in the Civil War, though not in the 97th New York State Volunteers. That regiment did, however, see action at the battles of Second Manassas, South Mountain, and Antietam, all battles at which women soldiers disguised as men are known to have participated, including one woman who fought at Antietam during the second trimester of her pregnancy. And though this novel focuses on the Union side, there were women who fought for the Confederacy as well.
Studying the photograph of her in uniform, it is hard to imagine the real Rosetta, Sarah Rosetta Wakeman, as anything other than a soldier. As a private in the 153rd New York State Volunteers, she performed guard duty at Old Capitol and Carroll Prisons where she guarded two female Rebel spies and a Major in the Union Army who was discovered to be a woman. She saw combat during the Red River campaign in Spring 1864, contracted dysentery, and died on June 19, 1864. Buried as Lyons Wakeman in New Orleans, her true identity remained a secret until her family came forward with her letters, which were published in Lauren Cook Burgess’s An Uncommon Soldier: The Civil War Letters of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman alias Pvt. Lyons Wakeman, 153rd New York State Volunteers, 1862–1864.
The fictional Rosetta is greatly informed by the feisty and strong-willed voice that shines through Wakeman’s letters home. The questions her letters raised and yet never answered were the seed for this novel: How did Rosetta conceal her identity for so long? What did her family think of what she had done? What was she apologizing for in her letters home? Why did she get into a fistfight with a fellow soldier? What was it like, being a woman hidden among men? How did she feel guarding women imprisoned for what she herself was doing? Did she tell anyone her real identity? This book is my attempt to imagine the answers to those questions.
Though my primary inspiration was Rosetta Wakeman, Sarah Emma Edmonds’s Memoirs of a Soldier, Nurse and Spy: A Woman’s Adventures in the Union Army, provided a valuable firsthand look at the experiences of a woman in the ranks, as did the story of Jennie Hodgers, who after the war lived as a man for most of her life. Indeed, the fictional Rosetta’s experience as a soldier is an amalgamation of the experiences of the more than two hundred women who are known to have enlisted, and whose record of service is much more thoroughly catalogued and articulated in Deanne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook’s They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the Civil War. Just as the fictional Rosetta followed Jeremiah into the Army, many women joined up to be with fiancés, husbands, brothers, fathers. Not only did these women manage to pass the Army’s physical exam (often just a handshake), some of these women even managed to conceal their identity until the very moment they delivered their babies in the ranks, a fact that seems unthinkable to us now, but perhaps is more understandable during a time when seeing a woman in pants was a rarity and gender roles were more strictly delineated.