Margaret Creighton is a professor of history at Bates College and the author of several books including: THE COLORS OF COURAGE: Gettysburg’s Forgotten History: Immigrants, Women, And African Americans in the Civil War’s Defining Battle (Basic Books, 2005), RITES AND PASSAGES: The Experience of American Whaling (Cambridge University Press, 1995), and co-editor of IRON MEN, WOODEN WOMEN: Gender and Seafaring in the Atlantic World, 1700-1920 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). She lives in Yarmouth, Maine.