The modern woman who tries to juggle private and public roles with
equilibrium will discover a spiritual ancestor in Alice Kirk
Grierson. The colonel's lady spent most of her life at army
outposts on the nineteenth-century western frontier, where she
faced the problems of raising a large family while fulfilling the
duties of a commanding officer's wife. Fortunately for history, she
left a large and extraordinarily candid correspondence, which has
now been edited by Shirley Anne Leckie.
Alice was the wife of Benjamin B. Grierson, a major general in
the Civil War who won fame for a raid that contributed to the fall
of Vicksburg. Her letters begin in 1866, when her husband reentered
the army as colonel of the legendary "buffalo soldiers" of the
Tenth Cavalry, and end with her death in 1888. During these years
she chronicles the criticism experienced by her husband in
commanding one of the army's two black mounted regiments and the
frustration when he is repeatedly passed over for promotion, in
part because he advocated a more humane Indian policy. All the
while her position requires her to assume heavy responsibilities as
a hostess. Her letters are just as unflinching in describing the
daily hard-ships of raising a family at frontier posts like Forts
Riley, Gibson, Sill, Concho, Davis, and Grant, where two of her
seven children died young and two suffered from manic-depressive
psychosis. They are extraordinary for their insight into
nineteenth-century attitudes toward birth control, childbearing,
marital roles, race relations, and mental illness.
General
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