Come enjoy this special afternoon Speaker Series lecture by Candice Shy Hooper about her book, Lincoln’s Generals’ Wives: Four Women Who Influenced the Civil War – For Better and for Worse
To RSVP, please call 843-723-9912 or email dreutter@charlestonlibrarysociety.org
The story of the American Civil War is not complete without examining the extraordinary lives of Jessie Frémont, Nelly McClellan, Ellen Sherman, and Julia Grant, wives of Abraham Lincoln’s top generals. They were their husbands’ closest confidantes and had a profound impact on the generals. Once shots were fired on Fort Sumter, their relationships with their husbands and their personal opinions of Abraham Lincoln had national and historical consequences. Relying on letters and memoirs —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.
Candice Shy Hooper was born on Guam to a U. S. Navy Hospital Corpsman and his intrepid Hoosier wife. With an undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Illinois and a law degree from Georgetown University, it was only 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 that she “discovered” her true intellectual passion. In 2008, she earned an MA in history, with a concentration in military history, from George Washington University.
Hooper’s work has appeared in the New York Times, The Journal of Military History, and The Michigan War Studies Review, and she has lectured at the U. S. Naval Academy.
Candice is a Member of the Board of Directors of President Lincoln’s Cottage at the National Soldiers’ Home in Washington, DC. She is also a member of the Ulysses S. and Julia D. Grant Historical Home Advisory Board in Detroit, Michigan. Hooper is currently president of the Johann Fust Library Foundation in Boca Grande, Florida, where she spends half the year with her husband Lindsay. The rest is divided between Arlington, Virginia, and Wilson, Wyoming.