• “We Are Now at Gettysburg”Gender and Place in the Iowa Woman’s Relief Corps’ Monument to Jennie Wade
• Lindsey R. Peterson (bio)

While visiting Gettysburg National Military Park in 1899, a small group of the Iowa Woman’s Relief Corps (WRC) broke away from its delegation to visit the home and gravesite of Mary Virginia “Jennie” Wade. Wade was the only recorded civilian casualty during the Battle of Gettysburg and sister of prominent Iowa WRC leader, Georgianna “Georgia” Wade McClellan.¹ Despite several attempts by Pennsylvanians living outside of Gettysburg, little had been done to memorialize Wade in the thirty-six years since her death. Astounded that nothing honored “the heroine who gave her life for her country,” Iowa WRC member Margaret Hinman proclaimed, “a monument ought to mark her resting place,” and “Iowa women ought to be the first to move in this matter.”² Fellow Iowa WRC members agreed, and in September 1901 they gathered in Gettysburg’s Evergreen Cemetery to unveil the modest monument they had erected in Wade’s memory. Northerners rarely constructed monuments to Union women; therefore, the Jennie Wade Monument is a rare example of not only a monument commemorating a Northern woman but also—and even more extraordinary—a monument campaign led by Northern women. [End Page 373]

While historians have examined Wade’s death, less attention has been paid to the efforts to commemorate her.³ Gettysburg residents’ reluctance to commemorate Wade and Iowa women’s eagerness, however, illuminate the complexities of commemoration. The Gettysburg community renounced Wade because some believed she had failed to obey rigid nineteenth-century gender roles, therefore marking herself as unworthy of remembrance. Historian Margaret Creighton skillfully demonstrates how Gettysburg women resented the attention paid to Wade at the expense of their own wartime service.⁴ While Creighton’s scholarship is largely focused on Pennsylvania, the Iowa WRC devoted a great deal of time and money to the Jennie Wade Monument at a moment when Iowa veterans were erecting numerous monuments to their military service in the western theater. Capitalizing on Iowa’s association with McClellan and Mc-Clellan’s connection to Wade and therefore Gettysburg, the Iowa WRC enthusiastically commemorated Wade to bring recognition to Iowa women’s work for the Union cause and its remembrance. Fighting in the western theater during the war, Iowa’s troops were not present at the Battle of Gettysburg, but through the Jennie Wade Monument, the Iowa WRC celebrated Iowa at the famed battle site. The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) often obscured Northern women’s wartime contributions, but Iowa veterans did not block efforts to erect the Jennie Wade Monument because the monument did not compete with any Iowa GAR-sponsored monuments.⁵ Iowa WRC women’s efforts to commemorate Wade reveal that place and region affected how Northerners decided who was deemed worthy of commemoration in the Civil War North.

The monument to Wade was one of few—and perhaps the first—successful WRC-sponsored monuments to Northern women.⁶ The Northern public infrequently [End Page 374] celebrated Northern women’s contributions to the Union, and “on the whole, women’s war work was relegated to a footnote” in Civil War remembrances.⁷ There were a few notable exceptions, however. In 1863, Pennsylvanians placed a commemorative tablet listing the female victims who had died the previous year in the Allegheny Arsenal explosion. Similarly, in 1865 a monument was erected at Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC, to commemorate the twenty women who died in the 1864 Washington Arsenal fire. Despite these token commemorations honoring Northern women’s war work and sacrifice, historian Judith Giesberg notes the dominant trend was toward forgetting rather than remembering the catastrophes that effectively blurred the line between home and battle fronts.⁸

Likewise, the WRC seldom sponsored monuments of any kind, let alone those aimed at honoring Northern women. Historian Nina Silber argues that when the Tennessee department expressed interest in erecting a memorial to Northern women in 1896, its members “agreed to forgo a monument . . . because their main work, they believed, had to focus on ‘the needy veteran and his family.’”⁹ Silber contends the Tennessee WRC’s decision signifies that...

• “我们现在在葛底斯堡”爱荷华州妇女救济队珍妮·韦德纪念碑中的性别和位置
• 林赛·R·彼得森（简历）

1899 年访问葛底斯堡国家军事公园时，爱荷华州妇女救济队 (WRC) 的一小部分人脱离了代表团，前往参观玛丽·弗吉尼亚·“珍妮”·韦德的家和墓地。韦德是葛底斯堡战役中唯一有记录的平民伤亡，也是爱荷华州 WRC 著名领导人乔治安娜·“乔治亚”·韦德·麦克莱伦的妹妹。¹尽管生活在葛底斯堡以外的宾夕法尼亚人多次尝试过，但在韦德去世后的 36 年里，人们几乎没有采取任何措施来纪念她。爱荷华州 WRC 成员玛格丽特·辛曼 (Margaret Hinman) 称，“为国家献出生命的女英雄”没有任何荣誉感，这令她震惊，“应该建立一座纪念碑来标记她的安息之所”，“爱荷华州的女性应该在这件事上率先行动。” ²爱荷华州 WRC 的其他成员同意了，并于 1901 年 9 月聚集在葛底斯堡的常青公墓，揭开他们为纪念韦德而竖立的不起眼的纪念碑。北方人很少为联邦妇女建造纪念碑；因此，珍妮韦德纪念碑是一个罕见的例子，它不仅是纪念北方女性的纪念碑，而且是——甚至更不寻常的——由北方女性领导的纪念碑运动。[结束第 373 页]

虽然历史学家研究了韦德的死因，但人们对纪念她的努力却很少关注。³葛底斯堡居民不愿纪念韦德和爱荷华州妇女的热心，然而，这说明纪念活动的复杂性。葛底斯堡社区放弃了韦德，因为有些人认为她没有遵守 19 世纪严格的性别角色，因此将自己标记为不值得纪念。历史学家玛格丽特·克赖顿 (Margaret Creighton) 巧妙地展示了葛底斯堡女性如何以牺牲自己的战时服务为代价而对韦德的关注感到不满。⁴虽然 Creighton 的奖学金主要集中在宾夕法尼亚州，但爱荷华州 WRC 在爱荷华州退伍军人在西部战区为他们的兵役建造众多纪念碑的时候，投入了大量时间和金钱在珍妮·韦德纪念碑上。利用爱荷华州与麦克莱伦的联系以及麦克莱伦与韦德以及葛底斯堡的联系，爱荷华州 WRC 热情地纪念韦德，以表彰爱荷华州妇女为联盟事业所做的工作及其纪念活动。战争期间在西部战区作战，爱荷华州的部队没有出现在葛底斯堡战役中，而是通过珍妮·韦德纪念碑，爱荷华州WRC在著名的战场庆祝爱荷华州。共和国大军（GAR）经常掩盖北方妇女的战时贡献，⁵爱荷华州 WRC 女性为纪念韦德所做的努力表明，那个地方和地区影响了北方人如何决定谁被认为值得在内战北方纪念。

韦德纪念碑是 WRC 赞助的北方妇女纪念碑中为数不多的——也许是第一座——成功的纪念碑之一。⁶北方公众很少[End Page 374]庆祝北方妇女对联邦的贡献，并且在内战纪念中“总体而言，妇女的战争工作被降级为脚注”。⁷然而，也有一些值得注意的例外。1863 年，宾夕法尼亚人放置了一块纪念牌位，上面列出了前一年在阿勒格尼兵工厂爆炸中丧生的女性受害者。同样，1865 年在华盛顿特区的国会公墓竖立了一座纪念碑，以纪念在 1864 年华盛顿阿森纳大火中丧生的 20 名妇女。尽管这些象征性的纪念活动是为了纪念北方妇女的战争工作和牺牲，但历史学家朱迪思·吉斯伯格指出，主要趋势是忘记而不是记住那些有效地模糊了家庭和前线之间界限的灾难。⁸

同样，WRC 也很少赞助任何类型的纪念碑，更不用说那些旨在纪念北方女性的纪念碑了。历史学家尼娜·西尔伯认为，当田纳西州部门在 1896 年表示有兴趣为北方妇女竖立一座纪念碑时，其成员“同意放弃纪念碑”。. . 因为他们认为，他们的主要工作必须集中在“有需要的退伍军人及其家人”上。” ⁹ Silber 认为田纳西州 WRC 的决定意味着......