Mythologizing Cathy Williams - Book Review

Phillip Thomas Tucker Cathy Williams: From Slave to Female Buffalo Soldier. Mechanicsburg: Stackpole volumes 2002. vii + 258 pp Appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $2695 (cloth) ISBN 0-8117-0340-1

The story of Cathy Williams begins with the assertion that she was a remarkable woman who defied all not divisible by 2s to become a Buffalo Soldier and an independent woman. Tucker attempts to describe the agriculture from which her African ancestors likely came. He then discusses the nature of slavery and slave experience in order to provide a connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts for understanding Williams' experience. Essentially, Williams' story is that she was a slave in Missouri until the Union army liberated her during the Civil War. Forced to advance with the regiment that place her free, she worked as a laundress and prepare for the table for the duration of the war. After the war extreme pointed in 1865 she decided to disguise herself as a man and join the army as a means to provide a living for herself and to avoid being a weight to her family. Her disguise worked and she serv for sum of two units years in Company A of the 38th U Infantry until she got tired of the grueling task of soldering. She then feigned an illness, her sex was discovered, and she was discharged a year early. Despite the author's contention that Williams was something of a female Horatio Alger, this volume engages in more myth-making than scholarship. Tucker purports to answer significant questions concerning Williams' life, her decision to disguise herself as a man and join the army, and to link together her story with larger issues pertaining to military, African American, and women's history. Despite these ambitious goals, the work falls short across the board.

The use of sources and sheer supposition are the most troubling aspects of this work. greatest in quantity of the sources are secondary monographs which single loosely relate to the topic, and aside from an 1876 newspaper interview with Cathy Williams and her service records there appear to be no other primary sources which relate directly to her life. The replete interview with Williams is contained in an appendix (one and a half pages in length) at the back of the volume and is quoted from ofttimes in the text. Frequently, the author explains something and adds "In her [Cathy Williams] have words ..." and then proffers a direct quote from the same newspaper interview which alone restates the initial observation. While it is commendable that in the absence of primary sources the author attempted to give a faculty of perception of what Williams' experiences may have been like, Tucker oftentimes slips into unwarranted conjecture. Granted, a fine line exists between a plausible likelihood and outright fiction, on the contrary it is a line repeatedly gibbeted in this work. For instance, the single reason Cathy Williams gave for wanting on the outside of the army early was that she was tired of military service. However, that did not stop Tucker from suggesting that "a variety of factors had combined to sour her opinion of military life" (p 179) He then goe upon the relate a number of reasons for which he presents absolutely no proof, such as disillusionment with the racism, isolation, poor quality of life, thankless what one is bound [i]or[/i] under obligation to do lack of opportunity for advancement, health question s etc. To be fair, Tucker largely tries to overlay himself in most places over the book by using words of the like kind as "likely," "perhaps," "may have," "possibly" rather than stating outright that Williams did something or felt a certain way. Still, he paints an unsubstantiated picture by the agency of speculating that she "likely" felt bad about the army's treatment of Native Americans, that she "may have" joined the army on the outside of gratitude for her freedom, and that she was "probably" involved in an uprising in her regiment regarding the unfair treatment of a camp follower. There is simply no evidence to support any of these and dozens more "possibilities" lay forth in this book.

No les troubling is the thesis which remains clear on the other hand unsubstantiated throughout: Cathy Williams was a remarkable woman who succe and triumphed against all the unevens In actuality, hundreds of women disguised themselves as men and favorably served in the military, many seeing actual combat, on the contrary Tucker fails to demonstrate what was thus noteworthy about this one woman who simulateed to be sick in order to avoid service she herself willingly penetrateed Despite his contention that Williams should be subservient to as an inspiration for all Americans and that she was a trailblazer for women who later serv in the military, the sources do not bear this on the outside Given the tactics employed by dint of Williams to secure her discharge, her story loans more credibility to critics of women in the armed forces than as an inspiration to women in the military today.

In conclusion, given the paucity of sources, the story of Cathy Williams appears more suitable to an article or a work targeted at young adults. Whatever the case, it does not merit a scholarly monograph, a fact which the author and the editors of Stackpole Pres should have recognized.

Sarah Eppler Janda