Catherine Clinton Speech

I found Catherine Clinton's speech about women during the Civil War not as informative as I would have liked. Clinton chose to attack historians such as Ken Burns for not portraying women's roles more on the home front. Why then does Clinton take the majority of her speech telling of women cross dressing as men and engaging in battle. Is this a home front activity? Clinton has chosen to sensationalize the topic and tell intriguing stories of daring women risking their lives along side men. True as these stories are, it only puts deeper into the shadows the true story of women that stayed behind and fended off raiding armies, milked cattle, plowed gardens, cut wood, tended to children and did real home front work. By telling her glamorous stories, she has proven that an audience doesn't want to hear a true story about a soldier that guarded the Green River Railroad Bridge for fourteen months in 1864 and never saw battle or bloodshed. No one will sit through a speech about a blind farmer that couldn't go to war. Will a book be popular about the life of a soldier that only battled dysentery in an army camp? Likewise, most are not interested in hearing of true monotonous un-heroic daily lives. There were women during the Civil War that were not nurses, cross dressers, or prostitutes, but their stories may never be told due to historians only attacking other historians or focusing on exhilarating topics. A few parts of Clinton's speech were informative and do give women their rightful place in history, but she focused more on audience interest than true facts of the common Civil War woman. At least a mention during the speech about Kentuckian Mary Todd Lincoln would have been greatly appreciated.