Elizabeth Leonard is a professor of history at the College of New Rochelle and has specialized in the history of the United States. She has a speciality in history of the 19th century, especially women’s history in the civil war, and their culture in the colonial Latin America. The book fills the reader’s knowledge niche through a detailed analysis of the roles that were played by women in the civil war. It relates the struggle in the war to the gender issues arising, as well as the sacrifice and heroism portrayed by the women soldiers. We notice that, during the civil war, white slavery had ignited major movements and rattled the struggle for antislavery. Women played a minor role in the society, especially in the military. This was later changed by the coming of the civil war that necessitated the women to sacrifice their family roles, and go to war in defense of their land and ideologies; both in the north and the south. Despite the heavy opposition of their role in military operations, Leonard establishes that, they participated in various capacities, such as; spies, disguised male soldiers and medical aid, to the men on the battle fronts. For this review, we shall look into All the Daring of the Soldier: Women of the Civil War Armies in the light of the sacrifices made by women and gender issues at the time.

The book mainly dwells on documenting the women who dared face the challenge posed in the civil war and the documented proof that is already in place in a verification of their bold moves. The author manages to use documented data from various records of the war and comes up with a comprehensive definition of the women’s contribution in the civil war. Combing the essential government records, she advances her search to the records of the Adjutant general, veteran’s administration records and the records found in the office of the secretary of war to come up with official sources that contain long forgotten memoirs that were recorded by nurses of their accounts, on seeing women soldiers in the hospitals. In the authoring of the book, Leonard uses a collection made of old newspaper articles from the war period and discovers scanty but useful accounts of the forgotten heroines of the war.

Professional scholars are contented with the history that Leonard brings to their knowledge through the use of well documented occurrences during the time of the war. She presents the various examples portraying an intelligent perspective on the women’s part, especially those who made the household names and those that remained unknown and were known with ghost names. However, her book suffers a setback due to the lack of primary documentation. This is addressed through her initiatives to gather her information. She uses the various government records that she discovered for this purpose, and unravels the mythical past that was yet unknown of. In her work, she astonishes the reader through the documentation of infamous war heroines like Pauline Cushman, who had no detailed record known until Leonard comes up with the archival documents on her .

She notes in her account that, there are different reasons that send women to war. Some of them went to the war to follow their husbands who had been serving in the army; others sought adventure as the case in some of the recruits . There was also a group that was lured into the war by the probability of the existence of the soldier wage, which was a major move especially with the harsh economic climate in the recessionary economy . Some of the women were able to hide their identity as women, until they were down on ailment when they would be discovered. Gender paradigm undermined the ability of the women to an extent that soldiers such as Sarah Wakeman had to hide their gender for months . We understand that, from her accounts, she had left her family home and had chosen to come and fight for what she believed in.

Leonard also manages to unravel the plight of the different soldiers in the battle field. She notes that, for some of them, the battle field was worse than they had imagined and suffered as much as the males did . We also understand that they would also suffer from gunshot wounds and death just like the male soldiers, yet maintain their spirit and fight the next day when they were well. For some of the spies, they had to risk their lives to deliver information to the soldiers. We notice that, this was a major challenge as they could travel for very long distances, sometimes taking them days, to deliver the information. Fighting from the various fronts, the women’s contribution could not go unnoted.

In the book, Leonardo informs the reader that, there were women soldiers who fought on the battlefront, while their husbands remained at home . For most of the women, they sent letters to their families and sometimes found out that their husbands had remarried. This phenomenon happened for both men and the women in the war, both in the south and the north. However, they had their motivation and fought for their ideologies. For most of the northerners, they fought against the southern ideology on slavery and free labor while the southerners were motivated to fight for the presence of slaves who provided cheap labour and their recognition as the southern states, independent of the north.

We note that, the women soldiers died beside unsuspecting male soldiers in the battle field and remained to be addressed by their male names they had adopted for disguise. In her account, she notes that One Union general as outraged in a situation where, an unnamed female sergeant working under him was delivered of a baby. The sergeant was outraged and notes that it was in violation of all the military rules and regulations ever set. This enlightens the reader on the plight of the women noting of their sacrifice and devotion to fighting despite being pregnant.

In conclusion, women in the north devoted themselves more to the war as compared to the south. We note that, gender issues were more dominant in the south limiting the women from participation. More importantly, we recognize the significant contributions they made in the war, especially as spies, medical aides as well as disguised soldiers who fought beside men. Leonard manages to fulfill her purpose. That is, to document the accounts of the women soldiers, detailing their success and carrying out a comprehensive research on the different women who were not recognized due to documentary evidence abstention.