presentation to the
Civil War Round Table of the District of Columbia
on June 12, 2018,
at Fort Myer, in Arlington, Virginia
at Fort Myer, in Arlington, Virginia
Questions and answers follow the presentation.
A PDF of the PowerPoint slides related to her presentation is available at
About the Topic:
The story of the American Civil War is not complete without examining 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. Most important, the women’s own attitudes toward, and relationships with, Lincoln had major historical significance.
Candice Shy Hooper’s account covers the early lives of her subjects, as well as their families, their education, their political attitudes, and their personal beliefs. Once shots were fired on Fort Sumter, the women were launched out of their private spheres into a wholly different universe, where their relationships with their husbands and their personal opinions of the president of the United States had national and historical consequences.
Relying on a close reading of letters, memoirs, and other primary sources—and, for the first time, mapping the women’s wartime travels—Hooper explores the very different ways in which these remarkable women responded to the unique challenges of being Lincoln’s generals’ wives.
Ms. Hooper's book, The Lincoln’s Generals’ Wives: Four Women Who Influenced the Civil War - For Better and for Worse, has been awarded: the 2018 Gold Medal in Nonfiction, Sarton Women’s Book Awards; the 2017 Silver Benjamin Franklin Book Prize in History, Independent Book Publishers Association; and the 2017 Bronze Medal in History, Independent Publisher Book Awards.
About Our Speaker:
Born on Guam to a U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman and his intrepid Hoosier wife, Candice Shy Hooper attended more than half a dozen schools before her high school graduation. The one constant in her nomadic life were libraries from Saipan to Norfolk, Virginia, which her parents made the family’s first stop after every household move.
Ms. Hooper received her undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Illinois and a law degree from Georgetown University. After a career on Capitol Hill as aide to the late Congressman Charlie Wilson (“Charlie Wilson’s War”) and as a lobbyist with her husband, Ms. Hooper “discovered” her true intellectual passion. Returning to school in 2006, she earned an MA in history, with a concentration in military history, from George Washington University.
Ms. Hooper’s work has appeared in the New York Times, The Journal of Military History, and The Michigan War Studies Review. She has spoken at the Society for Military History annual conference, Film & History annual conference, and the Society for Civil War Historians/ She has also lectured at the U. S. Naval Academy and George Washington University.
In addition, Ms. Hooper is an award-winning poet, whose work was selected for inclusion in District Lines, an anthology published by the renowned independent bookstore Politics & Prose.
Ms. Hooper serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of The Journal of Military History and is a member of the Ulysses S. and Julia D. Grant Historical Home Advisory Board in Detroit, Michigan. She has served on the Board of Directors of President Lincoln’s Cottage at the National Soldiers’ Home in Washington, DC, and is past president of the Johann Fust Library Foundation in Boca Grande, Florida, where she spends half the year with her husband Lindsay. They spend the other half in Lindsay’s home state of Wyoming.
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