Stephanie DotyIn the spring of 1914, a Civil War veteran named Albert Cashier arrived at the Illinois state hospital for the insane with symptoms of advanced dementia. As a young private, Cashier had fought at the siege of Vicksburg, where he and his comrades broke the spine of the Confederacy, and his name was inscribed on the Illinois victory monument there. He had lived out the intervening years in modest circumstances, working as a farm hand, a laborer and, on occasion, a street lamplighter, one of the many former soldiers whose civilian lives never achieve the glory of their wartime service. He was destined for the same obscurity in death, had it not been for a secret that the state hospital made public: Albert Cashier was actually a woman named Jennie Hodgers.
Women's Issues Matter
February 1, 2014
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