Written and researched by Ashley Carr
If you’re a young woman from a working class family from New Jersey in the years leading up to the outbreak of the Civil War, chances are, you would feel that growing tension, feel it about to burst, and want to do something about it. But for a woman, who has been told she has no use on the battlefield, and no voice in politics, options are limited.
You could be a nurse, but, if you don’t have the stomach for gore, like Elizabeth Carter didn’t, you take up work on the home front.[1] Elizabeth moved to Erie, Pennsylvania to be a school teacher, working hard so she could send money back to her family in New Jersey, who depended on her. Amid the terror and freedom of being a young woman on her own in the world for the first time, she met the man who would become her husband, and a Brigadier General of the Union Army: Strong Vincent.[2]
A while into their budding relationship, Elizabeth and Strong were walking the streets of Erie together when man cat-called Elizabeth. We don’t know what was said, but we do know that Strong Vincent, her knight in shining wool uniform, punched him. Right in the face.[3]
The name “Strong” was a family surname before it was given to him.[4] But never was there a man more fit for it than Strong Vincent.
[patriotic, uplifting music]
Perhaps because of a powerful sense of patriotism, or perhaps because he was sick of sitting behind a desk at a law firm, Vincent enlisted into the 83rd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry Regiment of the Union Army.[5] He and Elizabeth Carter married that same day, he packed his bag, and was gone.[6]
Sending off your brand new husband into what would become the bloodiest war in American history sounds debilitating, life altering, tragic. But, if you come from a working class family, and the men are off at war, you don’t have time to feel sorry for yourself. You keep going.
And so life went on in Erie without Strong Vincent, and the other men of the Pennsylvania 83rd. Elizabeth, now Mrs. Vincent, continued teaching. News of the war and of the daily life of battle trickled in.
Essentially alone once more, Elizabeth again experienced an exhilarating sense of freedom, this time underlined with the kind of dread that only work could distract from. So, she and the other women of Erie worked, volunteering to put together food, supplies, and clothing for the soldiers.[7] There was no reward for this, no glory, no recognition for the sacrifice of daily stability and what little money she and the other women had. But, they did it anyway.
Not long into their marriage, and, into the war, Elizabeth realized she was pregnant. She gave birth, alone, to a daughter, Blanche Strong Vincent, whose names, all three, were of her husband’s family, not her own. And she buried that child after less than a year of life, alone.
Of course, she did have the family of her new husband to keep her company, and the women of her community, but, when the people you most want near you are away, your husband, your own family, the presence of others can do very little.
We don’t have many letters written by Elizabeth or Vincent, but we do have records of what other soldiers wrote home. Some detailed the mundane and trivial of daily life; I got a tear in my uniform, or the sunset was beautiful today. Others were heavier; my friend just died, or I’ve been wounded, or tell the children I love them, though they may never see me again.
Two years into the war, Strong Vincent had been in and out of battle, and moved up the ranks to Lieutenant Colonel.[8] The infamous battle of Gettysburg loomed around the corner. At 26, Vincent had none of the youthful misconceptions of immortality left in him. In one letter to Elizabeth, just before Gettysburg, he wrote, “If I fall, remember you have given your husband to the most righteous cause that ever widowed a woman.”[9]
[“oh shit this is getting real” music]
What can you do when your husband tells you he might die? When you live in a world where you are nothing without your husband? When your only child died within a year of birth, your family cannot financially support you, and you are hundreds of miles away from being able to physically put your body in anyone else’s place?
You wait. You wait, and you pray, and you busy yourself with work. You try not to allow yourself to think of what you fear might happen, what you don’t dare to imagine, and what happens anyway.
Because the pain of being the one left behind is demanded of you. You must suffer gracefully, for surely others have suffered more in the name of your country.
Elizabeth didn’t know what happened in that fateful battle until days later, when she received word that her husband, fiery Strong Vincent, Colonel and commander of the brigade, had been mortally wounded in Gettysburg, had been shot just after giving a rallying speech to his men, standing on top of a rock.[10]
Elizabeth pieced together the story bit by bit.
Strong Vincent had intercepted an order that otherwise would have gone unfulfilled. His men had been marching for days to offer their support in the battle, many going long hours, and even days, without sleep, shoes torn to pieces, and precious little ammo left. The order Vincent intercepted was from Union General Meade, commanding another battalion to cover one crucial hill called Little Round Top. What the messenger and Meade did not know, though, is that that commander was not there yet to receive the order.
In one of Vincent’s most famous moments, he said, “I will take the responsibility of taking my brigade there.”
This hill, if surrendered to the Confederate Army, would have given a vantage point from which they could gun down the entirety of the Union’s forces. This was a matter of life and death, not just for Vincent and his men, but for the ideal of a free nation.[11]
His last words, just after he was shot, were “Don’t give an inch”.[12] And his men didn’t. The battle was won, and Vincent was moved to a hospital where he was treated for several days.
Union General Meade sent a telegraph to President Lincoln, petitioning him to promote Vincent to Brigadier General for his heroism at Little Round Top in Gettysburg.[13]Lincoln granted this request, and there is debate about whether Strong Vincent was conscious at the time his promotion was announced. He died soon after.
To have buried a child and been widowed by the age of 24 is a tragedy few can imagine, and even fewer can endure. After the death of Strong Vincent in the battle of Gettysburg, historians don’t seem to have paid attention to Elizabeth, but her life did go on. Her husband’s service had bought her some social and financial security.
She lived, fulfilling the dream of the Union, peacefully existing in a nation of states that were once again united. Strong Vincent never got to see that. But Elizabeth did, and she lived it, for the both of them, and for their child who never got to grow up to see the reunited nation her father defended.
Elizabeth Carter Vincent lived until 1914. [14] She is buried next to Strong Vincent and their child in the Erie Cemetery, where to this day visitors place pennies on their headstones, Lincoln-side up, in remembrance of Strong Vincent’s sacrifice.[15]
The last line of a poem by Wilfred Owen reads “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”, which translates “It is sweet and honorable to die for your country.”[16] But, what we forget so often about so many wars is that it is sweet and honorable to live for your country, too.
This episode of Hurstories was researched and produced by me, Ashley Carr. A special thanks to the Mercyhurst University Digital Storytelling class and Dr. Averill Earls for research and editing assistance.
[1]Nina Silber, Daughters of the Union: Northern Women Fight the Civil War. Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2005, page 75.
[2] Michael Schellhammer, The 83rd Pennsylvania Volunteersin the Civil War. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2003, page 171.
[3]Nina Silber, Daughters of the Union: Northern Women Fight the Civil War. Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2005, page 77.
[5]Michael Schellhammer, The 83rd Pennsylvania Volunteersin the Civil War. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2003, page 170.
[6]Michael Schellhammer, The 83rd Pennsylvania Volunteersin the Civil War. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2003, page 171.
[7] Stonesifer, Roy P. Brigadier General Strong Vincent A Hero of Gettysburg. Erie, PA: Edinboro University, 1996, page 2.
[8] Michael Schellhammer, The 83rd Pennsylvania Volunteersin the Civil War. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2003, page 171.
[9] Stonesifer, Roy P. Brigadier General Strong Vincent A Hero of Gettysburg. Erie, PA: Edinboro University, 1996, page 3.
[10] Stonesifer, Roy P. Brigadier General Strong Vincent A Hero of Gettysburg. Erie, PA: Edinboro University, 1996, page 5.
[11] Michael Schellhammer, The 83rd Pennsylvania Volunteersin the Civil War. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2003, page 169.
[12] Stonesifer, Roy P. Brigadier General Strong Vincent A Hero of Gettysburg. Erie, PA: Edinboro University, 1996, page 6.
[13] Stonesifer, Roy P. Brigadier General Strong Vincent A Hero of Gettysburg. Erie, PA: Edinboro University, 1996, page 6.
[16] Wilfred Owen, “Dulce Et Decorum Est”, Viking Press, 1921.
