Portraits: Women of the Civil War

Approximately 620,000 soldiers died from bullets or disease in the Civil War. We can never know the number of women who died of broken hearts. Two love letters from “Sallie“ (who also calls herself “Birdie“) to an unidentified Confederate Army major. Her January 5, 1865 letter expresses love for him (“Do you not believe I love you, or I would never have overleaped the bounds of conventionality and addressed you first“) but by January 19 she complains, “Why don’t you write to me? Why don’t you answe