Influential Women of the Civil War Period

[Eva Elisabeth]

Audrey, please excuse another hairsplitting "challenge" - the same goes for "Post-War Influencers (Although Lincoln was deceased, his legacy lived on)" - Lincoln might have influenced women's suffrage (and had "advocated" this already in1836, when he wrote to the editor of the Sangamo Journal: "I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms - by no means excluding females"), but again, this doesn't match your overall title (topic?). Women's suffrage is not an "Influential Women of the Civil War Period" that had a "Relationship to and Influence on Abraham Lincoln". If the one who assigned the topic is ok. with such liberties it's fine. (I just know some can be very hard on such matters, and candidates have to re-write an entire paper.)

Despite this title question, as I said, to me it depends on how you define "influence".

The OXFORD ADVANCED LEARNER'S DICTIONARY defines "influence" as:

"1. the effect that somebody/something has on the way a person thinks or behaves or on the way that something works or develops

2. the power that somebody/something has to make somebody/something behave in a particular way

3. a person or thing that affects the way a person behaves and thinks."

As for having an effect (#1) on A. L., I agree on your choice. As for #2, i.e. having the power to make him behave in a particular way (which is the definition I initially had in mind), I still tend to believe his wife who said "no man or woman could rule him". (Definition #3 seems to me somewhere in between #1&#2.)
Upon reconsideration and expanding "my" definition I especially think Mary supported and encouraged him a lot in his political career, finally leading to the presidency.

One last interesting "aside" on the origin/history of the word "influence"(also from the OALD):
"The word originally had the general sense ‘an influx, flowing matter’, also specifically (in astrology) ‘the flowing in of ethereal fluid (affecting human destiny)’. The current sense was established in Scholastic Latin by the 13th cent., but not recorded in English until the late 16th cent."
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/defini.../influence
(Of course, this might not be the appropriate/only source for a definition to refer to in an assignment paper.)

Again, please forgive my "hairsplitting" comments on your title - they are meant well! I second Toia, your assignment/paper sounds absolutely intriguing, and I, too, would love to read the outcome...In any case the best of success to you and your endeavor!