What Happened When a Civil War Soldier Found Out His Tentmate Was a Woman?

Your tentmate is the smallest soldier in the company. He sleeps in his clothes, washes alone downstream, and hardly says a word. You'll share half a tent with him for three years of war, and you won't find out who he really was until you're both old men. What happened when a Civil War soldier found out his tentmate was a woman? This is the true story of Albert D. J. Cashier of Company G, 95th Illinois Infantry: the medical exam that checked nothing, life in a two-man dog tent, the fallen tree at Vicksburg, the disaster at Guntown, and nearly fifty years of life as Albert in a small Illinois town. Then the accident in 1911, the newspapers, the state hospital that forced an old soldier into a dress, and the old men of Company G who stood up for their comrade in front of the United States government. Along the way: Sarah Emma Edmonds, Rosetta Wakeman, Malinda Blalock, and the hundreds of women who served on both sides. Chapters 00:00 The Smallest Soldier 01:01 Belvidere, 1862 02:51 The Exam That Checked Nothing 03:44 Hundreds of Them 04:33 Half a Tent 08:08 How Women Got Caught 09:17 Deserted to Keep a Secret 11:04 Sam Was Malinda 12:57 Vicksburg 15:16 The Fallen Tree 17:04 A Secret on the Red River 19:30 Guntown 20:51 Nashville to Mobile 22:27 Fifty Years as Albert 24:31 The Accident 26:09 The Newspaper 27:05 The Dress 28:23 The Old Men Testify 31:52 Buried a Soldier 33:00 Who Was Albert? 34:23 The Stone in Saunemin Sources: Albert D. J. Cashier pension file (National Archives), including the testimony of Charles W. Ives and Robert D. Hannah; DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook, They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War (2002); Lauren Cook Burgess (ed.), An Uncommon Soldier: The Civil War Letters of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman (1994); Sarah Emma Edmonds, Nurse and Spy in the Union Army (1865); Mary Livermore, My Story of the War (1887); Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Billy Yank; NPR Illinois / Illinois Issues, "Little Soldier, Big Mystery" (2018). Subscribe to True Civil War Soldiers, and help us bring more of the men in blue and gray back to life. #CivilWar #CivilWarSoldier #AmericanHistory #WomenInHistory #History