by This latest installment of “Students in the Stacks” features a book that student assistant Claire Peterson discovered while exploring materials related to the Civil War. Throughout the semester, we’ll be posting more from Claire’s list of Civil War finds, so check back often. Espionage, abolition, sensationalist journalism, and women’s work in wartime are just some of the topics covered in this fascinating assortment of books.
The Secret Service is the memoir of Albert Deane Richardson, a war correspondent who worked for the New-York Daily Tribune beginning in 1861. It follows his work in the South, his capture by the Confederates in May of 1863, his year and a half in prison, and his eventual escape.
The work is illustrated by engravings of Richardson and seven other army correspondents, as well as by images of capture, prison life, and Richardson’s escape aided by an “unnamed heroine.”
In addition, the text includes a piece of sheet music, titled “A Song for the ‘Nameless Heroine’ Who Aided the Escaping Prisoners,” with words and music by B.R. Hanby.
The “nameless heroine” is identified as Miss Melvina Stevens in L.P. Brockett’s Woman’s Work in the Civil War (1867). Brockett calls Stevens “a young and beautiful girl who from the age of fourteen had guided escaping Union prisoners past the most dangerous of the rebel garrisons and outposts, on the borders of North Carolina and East Tennessee, at the risk of her liberty and life” (Brockett 782).
Stay tuned for more about Woman’s Work in the Civil War, which also made Claire’s list.
