How Many Women Soldiers Were There? Solving for X.

I address this topic in my book as well as in the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) section found in the menu at the top of my blog.  But I wanted to expand on it here.   First of all, as a mathematics instructor, I can tell you that you can make numbers say pretty much anything you want.  Trust me.  I have had some rather innovative students, and I have marveled at their creations.  Now, some of them were wrong, but creative nevertheless.

So what do the numbers say regarding women soldiers of the Civil War? 

Women Soldiers and Suicide

I tried to compose this post weeks ago.  But other projects kept coming up, and I had to put this one aside.  And then in the matter of a week, I learned that two friends lost their sons to suicide.  The younger one was only sixteen.   They  both succumbed to depression.  I still hurt for them.  My thoughts soon turned back to this post, and I immediately dismissed it as one that needed to remain hidden.  But it kept creeping back into my consciousness, and I relented.

The following women did not meet their fates on a battlefield as others did.  As a matter of fact, only one of them may have encountered the enemy at all.  Instead, the foe these women faced was within themselves, and they either perished by their own hand - or nearly did.  Their stories are tragic and should be told.  We should remember them not completely out of pity, but because they provide us with a connection to our own flawed, mortal, and often wounded psyche.