Louisa May Alcott was brought up by her father Bronson, and by the ideals of New England Transcendentalism, to be an abolitionist. When the North went to war, she volunteered as a nurse, and was assigned to a Washington hospital. She was 30 years old, but she had been such a tomboy in youth that her father could still get a laugh on the streets of Concord with his joke that he was proudly sending his only son to war. When she returned home, he continued to praise -- and patronize -- her, this time in a poem about "duty's faithful child." ... FULL STORY »
