When I took a poll from my readers about where they would like to see Jennifer Cloud time travel in the next book, the American Civil War was a strong front runner. Ok, I thought. I can do the Civil War. Visions of Margaret Mitchell’s Rhett Butler and Scarlet O’Hara swam in my head. How fun for Jen to be a Southern Belle?
As I began to research and write a few chapters, just to get my fingers wet, I found Jen in the midst of intense battles and under the leadership of great generals. Accepting my denial, I succumbed she was destined to go to war, not sit on the sidelines sipping punch and pining for the men lost. She’s just that kind of gal.
Now the challenge lies in how to weave my lighthearted writing into the horror of war. A challenge indeed, but like Jennifer Cloud, I’m up for it. It’s taking me a bit longer due to family illnesses, research, and finding my voice, but the editing process has begun. I’m hoping to release before the year ends.
Aside from the writing, I wanted to share stories from the Civil War with you. Some funny, some not. To begin, I wanted to note a few stats and ground you in the famous battles over states’ rights because that’s where it began. It didn’t start over slavery, but it ended there.
Many great leaders political and military served both sides of the war. President Abraham Lincoln, General Ulysses S. Grant, Jefferson Davis, General Robert E. Lee, General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, and Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, to name a few.
The record books guesstimate about 620,000 Americans died in the conflict, with more than half of those dying off the battlefield from disease or festering wounds, but in December 2011, historian J David Hacker published a paper that used demographic methods and sophisticated statistical software to study newly digitized US census records from 1850 to 1880. Add this to the casualties, people lost through death, wounds, injury, sickness, internment, capture, or through being missing in action, and the number rises to an estimated 1.5 million. That’s the size of a small country lost in one war.
Since I like to write tongue in cheek humor, I’ll try to give you stories of bravery that also have a little bit of fun in them. Stay tuned for future posts and the release of book five in the Jennifer Cloud Series.
Where I found the information:
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17604991
The Civil War: A Narrative by Shelby Foote
Forever Crazy,
Janet Leigh
