You know the old adage: behind every great man, there is a great woman, but as with most things in life, it’s a lot more complicated than that. Most accounts of American Civil War have largely neglected the extraordinary and influential lives of Jessie Frémont, Nelly McClellan, Ellen Sherman, and Julia Grant, the wives of Abraham Lincoln’s top generals. They were their husbands’ closest confidantes and had a profound impact on the generals’ ambitions and actions. In Lincoln’s Generals’ Wives: Four Women Who Influenced the Civil War – for Better and for Worse, Candice Shy Hooper triangulates Lincoln, his top generals and their wives to show how the wives’ views of Lincoln impacted their husbands, and ultimately, the course of the Civil War.  One prominent Civil War historian wrote that the book helps us better understand how the generals’ wives “helped shape them into heroes — or failures.”

Guest Speaker:
Candice Shy Hooper built an early career on Capitol Hill as an aide to Congressman Charlie Wilson and later as a lobbyist, before returning to school to earn a Master’s in military history from George Washington University — the pursuit that became her true intellectual passion. Her first book, Lincoln’s Generals’ Wives (Kent State University Press, 2016), won three national awards, and her second, Delivered Under Fire: Absalom Markland and Freedom’s Mail (Potomac Books, 2023), has earned wide praise and recognition in history and biography. Her work has appeared in The New York Times and The Journal of Military History, and she has spoken at the Society for Military History, the Society for Civil War Historians, and the U.S. Naval Academy; she also serves on several advisory boards, including the Ulysses S. and Julia D. Grant Historical Home Advisory Board and the Editorial Advisory Board of The Journal of Military History.