Historian Marilyn Weymouth Seguin Tells of Courage of Teens Making History!

English: Belle Boyd. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
"Suddenly, Belle realized she would have to run through the gunfire of both armies if she was to reach General Jackson in time to keep the Yankees from destroying the bridges. Belle lifted her heavy skirts of her dress and ran into the crossfire. Artillery shot and shells whistled over her head, not six inches from her leg. Belle was sorry now that she'd worn the white apron, which surely must make her a more visible target in the murky smoke of the gunfire. Still, she continued to run on towards the Confederate lines..."

Young and Courageous:
American Girls Who  Made History

By Marilyn Weymouth Seguin



Seguin has a passion for history and has devoted her professional life to teaching and sharing through her non fiction and fiction writing, such as No Ordinary Lives which I earlier reviewed and which included diaries of teenagers from Maine, including Nathaniel Hawthorne. Her latest is based upon younger girls who became known historically.Based on that history, Marilyn Weymouth Seguin provides fictional short stories for young and old readers and includes a challenge in her Introduction:


"Courage is not the absence of fear. It is acting in spite of it." —Mark Twain

“Courage is grace under pressure.”—Ernest Hemingway

How courageous are you?

• Like Sacagawea, would you leave your relatives and travel thousands of miles through the wilderness to help strangers?
• Like Abbie and Rebecca Bates, would you be brave enough to stand up to an entire army?
• Like Emily and Mary Edmonson, would you leave behind your family and everyone you knew and loved for a chance to live free?
• Like Belle Boyd, would you risk going to prison, getting shot at, possibly even getting killed, in order to save what you believe in?
• Like Minnie Freeman, would you risk freezing to death yourself in order to save the lives of others?

~~~

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Most of us remember Sacagawea from our American History high school classes, but the story presented makes her so much more real! I did not know that her husband was actually the guide, but soon Sacagawea's knowledge and early training showed that she was better able to meet the needs of Lewis and Clark!

http://greensleeves.typepad.com/berkshires
/2008/05/the-legend-of-r.html

Not so well known are Abbie and Rebecca Bates who saved their town against the British, playing the fife and drum!

Of course, nobody knew it, except for the story later told by the two girls. Me, I believe it! And if it is really just a legend, after all, I really don't mind, because it obviously meant something to the people of that time, and has been carried forward as a wonderful message for the youth that followed...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Edmonson_sisters

I just know that if I had been alive back when Mary and Emily Edmonson were trying various ways to escape and become free, I would have been helping if I could...Emily was just 13 when she quietly left through the back door to meet Samuel, her brother and then to go on to where Mary worked. She, too, had been waiting .. Would you believe it was when I was also 13 that I met my friend, Marian Davis. She was the first African-American I had ever seen and we became close friends, riding the bus to school together and hanging with others, mostly white. Funny, we never thought about Marian as anything but our friend, who happened to be a lovely shade of chocolate...

Paul Edmonson, their father was a freedman, but their mother was a slave, making all 14 of the children slaves as well... Their attempt to escape didn't happen, but they never stopped working to be freed...And when they were, they became involved in abolitionist circles! And admired for their bravery...

There were quite a number of women acting as spies during the Civil War. I had met Belle Boyd in a novel by Francis Hamit and was pleased to see her included in this book spotlighting the courage of young girls.One of her most famous actions was getting word to General Jackson that there was a plan to capture him, then later to burn the bridges. Neither of these plans were successful due to Belle Boyd!

I would like to have found a picture of Minnie Freeman, the main character in the last story. Although the story of her saving the children she was teaching during an extreme blizzard is still found on several sites, none of the searches I found show a picture--I wondered how old she was at the time. I've seen historical movies where many high school graduates immediately became teachers in their school, so perhaps she was around 17 or 18... And charged with the responsibility of other children who would have been very close in age, but also those who were quite young...

Yet, when an emergency arose, in 1988, Minnie took charge. The Blizzard had been totally unexpected and most of the children had dressed for the warm day that began...but they were later caught in their one-room school! After it was all over, Minnie received 80 marriage proposals! Hey, the men knew they would get a good, courageous wife if she accepted! LOL

Readers will learn of the courage inside of each of the teens who were faced with making decisions, even as early as at the age of 13...Do you have a young daughter, niece, or grandchild that may at some time be faced with the need for acting independently to save her own or somebody else's life? Would she be ready? This might make a perfect stocking stuffer for those you love...

One never knows what is  happening today that will affect tomorrow's history. Aside from helping our young learn about people in history, Reading about the past can help any of us form our future choices and decisions...Check out the many books by Marilyn Weymouth Seguin. I especially enjoy when a historian uses their research to give us fictional stories, based upon actual historical events. If you do too, then I highly recommend Young and Courageous!


GABixlerReviews

Marilyn Weymouth Seguin teaches in the writing program of the English Department at Kent State University in Ohio. 

She is the author of sixteen books (both fiction and nonfiction) and dozens of newspaper and feature articles. She holds degrees in English and Communication from the University of Maine and the University of Akron.

She lives with her husband in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio and Gray, Maine. She has two grown children. Visit her at her website at www.marilynwseguin.com

Review: The Shenadoah Spy Begins Exciting Civil War Series!

The Shenandoah SpyBy Francis Hamit
Brass Cannon Books
ISBN: 9781595959027
433 Pages


I met Belle Boyd this past weekend, thanks to Francis Hamit, and was thrilled to meet and spend all my time with her! This first book in a series starts with The Shenandoah Spy: Being the True Life Adventures of Belle Boyd, CSA, “The Confederate Cleopatra.”

“Belle Boyd was a real person, and became world famous as a spy for the Confederate Government...in September, 1862, [she] became the first woman in American history to be formally commissioned an Army officer.” (Foreword) The book centers on her role as a scout and spy for the Confederate Army. If only a small percentage of the story were true, Belle was...one gutsy woman! I am thankful that Hamit is publishing her story, for she is a woman to be much admired and embraced by all Americans and especially our younger generation!

Belle was a true Southerner but she was not the typical “belle” as we think of most women of the south. True, she might have worn the big-hooped gowns, learned how to flirt with gentlemen as part of her training, and had her first “season” in Washington with the intent to find a suitable husband. However, when the war began, she was just 17 and she automatically sought to find ways to support the south.

Her first major role was to assist and then nurse at the hospitals. Perhaps it was her required intimacy with those men that first started her reputation. Or perhaps it was her shooting a drunk Yankee soldier who had attacked her mother. But it was her scouting and spying efforts that firmly established Belle’s as a spy that could easily flirt and then finagle from the Yanks to learn and gain information to pass on to H. Turner Ashby, her immediate commanding officer, Jackson and other Confederate officers.

Hamit has created an exciting story of the civil war against which he tells Belle’s story. Through extensive reading and research, he presents the major players and battles of the war, and includes his characters that effectively supplement actual soldiers and officers. He also considers the political issues as to why the war was started and by whom, whether slavery was a major or minor point and highlights the role of the professional soldiers who moved from war to war, fighting for pay rather than through dedication to the people and the cause they supported.

Two other points of interest for me were the drinking, theft and lack of courtesy shown by the majority of Yankee soldiers and the role of the slaves/servants as they chose to support their families (owners) rather than their supposed liberators.

As the author stated in his foreword, he wrote the novel to entertain readers. Whether or not he took license with the truth in telling the story, I for one believe he did exactly what he said he was doing! This is truly an entertaining, fantastic tale of the past and provides all the excitement, intrigue, action and suspense that readers expect and enjoy!

Francis Hamit has the knowledge, experience and interest to have picked a remarkable character from our historical documents upon which to build this series. I highly recommend that you get the first book, The Shenandoah Spy, now and watch for the next one coming, hopefully soon!

G. A. Bixler

Francis Hamit, Author of The Shenandoah Spy, Publishes Second in Confederate Secret Service Series!

The Queen of Washington


By Francis Hamit






I never enjoyed history in school; however, I have found that learning more about early America, and, especially, about the women involved, has been a wonderfully refreshing experience. Hamit's first book, The Shenandoah Spy (Check out my review!) shared a little known story of Belle Boyd, a Confederate Army spy and scout...

His second novel is an alternative history story leading up to the Civil War! I'll be reading soon and providing my review, but here's some preliminary information:

From Brass Cannon Books
Pine Mountain Club
Frazier Park, CA
Brass Cannon Books.net

Brass Cannon Books Announces the Release of the Second Book in Francis Hamit's Confederate Secret Service Mega-Narrative

Socialite and political operative Rose Greenhow, a "proud Southern woman" was "The Queen of Washington" during the years immediately before the Civil War. As the country split apart, she used her connections to create a very effective spy ring that developed the intelligence that allowed the South to prevail at the first battle of Manassas (or Bull's Run).

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greenhow.gif

The widow of a State Department official and the protege of such power players as John Calhoun and Colley Madison, Rose used her romantic relations with Union government officials to gather information for the South, until her arrest by Allan Pinkerton on August 23, 1861. She was then held under very adverse conditions in her own house and then in the Old Capitol prison until being sent South ten months later. Her ordeal was shared by her eight-year-old daughter.

Hamit's book is an alternative "what-if" history that asks when her spying career actually began. "There are indicators that she may have already been a spy and agent of influence for the French and British legations for years before, perhaps even before the Mexican War," Hamit said. "She was certainly involved in some shady attempts to bring Cuba into the United States as a Slave state through one or more 'filibustering' expeditions, and she was also involved in the Limantour land claims in California, testifying in support of them. These were finally dismissed by the Federal District Court as 'the most audacious fraud in history.'" Her husband's last job was as an Associate Law Counsel for the California Land Commission, and the record seems to indicate that he opposed these claims before he died under mysterious circumstances in San Francisco in 1854.

"This gave me an opportunity to look at the run-up to the Civil War and the geo-political game that was being played out between the forces of Manifest Destiny and the French and the British efforts to divide the Unites States and keep it from becoming a Great Power. This part of the conflict is usually overlooked now, but by starting this novel in 1850 and looking at possible alternative explanations, we can not just provide an entertaining novel but provoke some thoughtful discussions."

Hamit's first novel in this narrative is "The Shenandoah Spy" which examined the early career of Confederate Army spy and scout Belle Boyd, the first woman in American History to be commissioned an army officer. It was published in 2008 to widespread favorable reviews and is still in print.

Related articles

• Heroes of The Civil War: Belle Boyd (socyberty.com)