This weekend marks the 155th anniversary of a key Civil War victory for Union troops known as the Battle of Cedar Creek. On that same day, a Confederate raid took place in St. Albans, Vermont — robbing a local bank and killing one citizen before escaping to Canada.
And while much is known about Vermont's generals and sharpshooters, what about the Vermont women who sustained the home front?
Local historian Howard Coffin joins Vermont Edition to talk about the two concurrent events on October 19, 1864 and his new research on the role women in Vermont played during the Civil War.
While the state’s able-bodied men were away at war, Vermont women managed the operations of more than 30,000 farms and worked in factories to manufacture much-needed supplies for soldiers. Others joined the war effort by editing anti-slavery newspapers, speaking out against slavery, and teaching classes to newly-freed slaves in the South.
Coffin's research draws from letters and diaries of Vermont women during the Civil War to tell their stories in their own words — including that of one Vermont woman, who appears to have secretly enlisted and fought in a Vermont regiment.
Coffin, who is a seventh-generation Vermonter, has written four books on Vermonters in the Civil War, including:
- Something Abides: Discovering the Civil War in Today’s Vermont
- Full Duty: Vermonters in the Civil War
- Nine Months to Gettysburg
- The Battered Stars
Broadcast live on Friday, Oct. 18, 2019 at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.
