Women Soldiers - Florena Budwin, Union soldier 

“Blood, Sweat, and Bravery”

In 1934, near the Shiloh battlefield, a mass grave was discovered to contain the bones of nine Union soldiers killed in that 1862 battle.  One of the bodies was that of a woman… No one knows how many women served as soldiers in the Civil War, but it is estimated that no fewer than 400 disguised themselves as men and performed the same duties as any soldier.  Any woman in the ranks of either army would have been banished once detected, but some served as soldiers without their sex ever being known. They had many reasons for doing this, to be with their husbands, sons, or from their sense of duty, and just being frustrated at being a women and not being allowed to fight.  Even though many did their part by nursing, spying, and just maintaining the family and home front.

 One of these women was Florena Budwin, the wife of a Pennsylvania soldier.  She disguised herself as a man and joined the Union army with her husband.  They were both captured and sent to Andersonville prison in Georgia, where her husband died.  After Union forces moved into Georgia, Florena was transferred to the Confederate prison at Florence, SC. Where she became very ill.  After a doctor discovered her identity as a female, during a routine examination, she was given a private room and special care.  She went on to work in the hospital and the ladies of Florence donated food and clothing.  But it was to no avail, having caught pneumonia, and at the age of 20 she died in prison on Jan. 25, 1865, one month before all sick prisoners were paroled to the North.  Florena is believed to be the first woman service member to be buried in a National Cemetery.  She lies buried in grave D-2480.  By the end of February 1865 the Florence Stockade was empty and by the end of the war the National Cemetery in Florence had 2,322 soldiers buried in it. 

 September 17, 1864:

Finally we escape Charleston! No shelter, barely any food, smallpox, yellow fever, the intolerable heat and humidity. It’s a wonder that anyone survived. Now I am not sure where we are going.  The Rebs just piled us onto these freight cars and started rolling.  At first the countryside was flat and smothered with trees, but now it is becoming a bit swampy. All the guards do is bring in fresh water twice a day and dump out the dead bodies.

 September 18, 1864:

We reached our new pen sometime last night.  The guards pushed us out of our cars and herded us into a cornfield to spend a cold and restless night.  Our suffering ended around nine in the morning when we were finally marched ten miles to the Florence Stockade.  It looks just like Andersonville, four huge walls enclosing about 15 acres and a small stream, a gate in the west wall, a road, and of course the narrow ditch that means death to any one who steps over it – the dead line. Only here, the guards walk around the outside of the walls on an embankment, where they can harass the prisoners and lure them over the dead line to shoot them. There is not much in the way of anything inside, just several stumps left from the construction of the walls. I was among the first to get in, so I dug up some stumps and built a little hovel.  There was even a little left over to use as fuel, I think I will need it this winter.

September 29, 1864:

This place gets colder ever day, and it does not help when your clothes are falling apart.  The vermin are still a huge problem, as well as the hunger and insanity. To make things worst, some of the women of the town come stand on the embankments and mock us in their taffeta and silk.  Do you know how much I miss silk? Well, some of the men have taken steps to improve their conditions. Do you remember Ripple, the fiddle player? He started playing for the guards one day, and one asked him if he would play for a party in town. Ripple said he would, but he did not know if he could. The guard asked why, and the man replied, “I can not play without my band, and I definitely can not play wearing a potato sack!” So Ripple and some of his friends got a good scrubbing and some decent clothes in return for playing at a square dance. After the dance they were allowed to eat as much of the leftover food as they could, but they could not take any back for us. Typical Southern hospitality! I can not be too harsh though. One woman used to come by with a basket of food and throw it over the walls to us. The guards kept trying to stop her and finally banned her from ever coming back.

 December 23, 1864:

The year is almost over and there is no end in sight to the suffering.  Every day men drop like flies. As I was walking through the companies the other day, a man stuck his blackened foot out of his dugout and asked me to cut his toes off! He was not brave enough to do it himself, but he knew it had to be done to save the rest of his foot. Some men are not so lucky, John January had to hack off both of his feet in order to save his life. Last week the pen was inspected, so we each received a mandatory check up. There was no way to avoid it and I could not hide my identity, so the Rebs finally found me out. To my surprise they treated me well and I am now in my own partition of the stockade, with my own special rations and clothing provided by the women of Florence. Now, I work in the clinic with the sick men. I know their suffering better than any Confederate doctor could, so I try to give them an extra measure of comfort. Most of them are too far gone to save, so I just try to ease them on their way. 

January 20, 1865:

This winter seems never to end, I get the feeling it will outlast me. I managed to pick up pneumonia from the hospital, and I have been in bed for weeks. The Southerners have all been very kind towards me, but I do not think it will help. I just have no will to return to the horrid life I had been living. I am sick of the hate and the fear and the needless death and suffering. This place is enough to make anyone lose her faith in humanity.

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For a senior class project Rebecca Lundin researched the Florence Prison Stockade in Florence, South Carolina. She titled her paper “Blood, Sweat, and Bravery”. The stockade was used to house Union POWs during the Civil War, the journal you just read was written by her from the perspective of Florena Budwin, as Rebecca thought she would have written it and from her research.  Copyright 2000 – Rebecca Lundin, SC. Reprinted with permission.