West Virginia in the American Civil War West Virginia in the American Civil War The U.S. state of West Virginia was formed out of western Virginia and added to the Union as a direct result of the American Civil War (see History of West Virginia), in which it became the only state to declare its independence from the Confederacy. In the summer of 1861, Union troops, which included a number of newly-formed Unionist "Virginia" regiments under General George McClellan, drove off Confederate troops under General Robert E. Lee. This essentially freed Unionists in the northwestern counties of Virginia to form a functioning government of their own as
Sex in the American Civil War history "Women and the Civil War: Their Heroism and Their Sacrifice" prominently featured an entire chapter on the female soldiers of the war. Although it establishes the fact that women warriors were clearly objects of curiosity for the American public, Moore significantly softened and romanticised their experiences in order to make them more palatable to a general audience. For instance, Moore refers to one particular female soldier as an “American Joan of Arc”, attempting to frame her wartime exploits within a recognisable paradigm of holy war and divine inspiration. Regardless of generally warm popular opinion, however, female soldiers actually faced