During my second year at Oberlin, the Southern states seceded from the Union to form their own country, a situation our new president Abraham Lincoln promised to resolve as soon as he was inaugurated on March 4, 1861. Scarcely a month later, on April 12, the Confederate army launched the War Between the States when it fired on Fort Sumpter. By then, I was fighting battles of my own.

         After my first year of preparatory classes, I’d been accepted as an official student at the college. By the end of that second year at Oberlin, I was an accomplished young woman, knowledgeable about history and literature, and conversant in two languages. I excelled in my art classes, where I found myself moving closer to understanding...

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