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.Even extended families that stretched acrossstate boundaries from Virginia to Kentucky introduced men and women withcontrasting views on slavery and sectionalism.This region thus nurturedlatent divisions between men and women not necessarily acknowledged whenthey married at least not in the case of Catherine and Henry Hopkins.6According to Catherine s petition, she and Henry met in the late 1850s inPhiladelphia, where she was living with her mother and father, a prominentpharmacist.Henry had moved north from Virginia to pursue a medical educa-tion; by 1860 he was practicing medicine in the outlying town of Germantown,Pennsylvania.Henry apparently was smitten with Catherine from the start,but it took his promise to attend church for her to agree to marry him in Febru-ary 1860.The marriage ostensibly began smoothly, as Henry related well toCatherine s parents; indeed, he called her mother his mother-in-love. Theonly visible source of discord was their finances Henry had not achievedthe financial independence expected of a husband and could contribute only$250 to their expenses during their first two years of marriage.Catherine sparents compensated by giving them $100 each month and by purchasing thehouse in which they lived.That arrangement worked well at first, Catherinestated in her petition, and the couple went on to have a daughter within a yearof their marriage.7In December 1860 Catherine took an interest in the secession crisis heatingup around them.She began to notice that Henry s views on the issue wouldoften excite the indignation of his neighbors, and, after reading a newspaperarticle outlining the views of fire-eating Georgian Thomas R.R.Cobb, sheinitiated a discussion with her husband.This led to their ill-fated argumentwhen Catherine grew fearful of Henry s anger and insults.It proved to be aturning point after which Catherine began viewing their relationship through 38 marri age and courtshipthe lens of war.Henry s ongoing desire to visit his slaveholding mother sud-denly seemed less innocent; Catherine s suspicions were confirmed when thegovernment detectives found him with a supply of rebel clothing and a stashof Confederate money.His behavior forced her to question other aspects oftheir marriage, such as whether he had really married her for her money andwhether he had neglected her health during several fainting spells.Havinginherited the blood and principles of revolutionary patriots, Catherine spetition concluded, it was impossible to resume normal relations with her traitor husband. A traitor to his wife, his country, and his child, she wrotebluntly. I can never look upon union with this man, with any other feelingthan that of abhorrence. 8Henry Hopkins was shaken by his wife s divorce petition.The public air-ing of their private problems was painful yet inevitable, he conceded, butthe challenge to his national loyalty was another matter.He was particularlytroubled by Catherine s assertion of loyalty to the Union and questioned itssincerity.The sentiments expressed in her application could not be her own,he argued in his responding petition, but instead must have been directedby others, namely her parents.His wife with whom he emphasized he wasstill in love and wanted to reconcile had become a mouthpiece for herfather s Union politics.Even during that infamous argument in December1860, he asserted, her parents were in the room.To Henry, this was evidencethat Catherine s parents especially her father exerted a stifling influenceover her wartime loyalties.This was lamentable, because it showed that myinfluence was entirely superseded.[by] the principle of filial obedience. Catherine had chosen her father over her husband.9With these words Henry recast their marital conflict not as a clash of politi-cal loyalties, as Catherine had argued, but rather as the more familiar crisisof male authority
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