GMALL – Lincoln’s Generals’ Wives

You know the old adage: behind every great man, there is a great woman, but as with most things in life, it’s a lot more complicated than that. Most accounts of American Civil War have largely neglected the extraordinary and influential lives of Jessie Frémont, Nelly McClellan, Ellen Sherman, and Julia Grant, the wives of Abraham Lincoln’s top generals. They were their husbands’ closest confidantes and had a profound impact on the generals’ ambitions and actions. In Lincoln’s Generals’ Wives: Four Women Who Influenced the Civil War – for Better and for Worse, Candice Shy Hooper triangulates Lincoln, his top generals and their wives to show how the wives’ views of Lincoln impacted their husbands, and ultimately, the course of the Civil War. One prominent Civil War historian wrote that the book helps us better understand how the generals’ wives “helped shape them into heroes — or failures.”