JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

I found this in the files this evening, a cartoon from Harper’s Weekly from October 26, 1861, from when the Civil War was but half a year old or so and there was still three and a half years of fighting to go. This was a modest suggestion on what to do with female traitors–the sections are pretty self-explanatory, and I’ve provided a transcription for them if difficult to read in the original:

The captions:

• “Let them See but not touch all the latest novelties
  in Hats, Dry Goods, etc.”
• “Send them to the Alms House to nurse refractory babies”
• “Have the fashionable intelligence read in their hearing to their intense aggravation”
• “Make them wear very unfashionable uniform as e.g. the above”
• “Let them do Housework under the Superintendence of Biddy”