Sallie Pleasants

Sally Newell "Sallie" Bannan Pleasants" (1837 - October 15, 1860) was the daughter of Philadelphia newspaper publisher Benjamin Bannan, and the wife of mining engineer Henry Pleasants. She took ill and died after less than a year of marriage. The American Civil War began the following year. Romantic tradition holds that the grief-stricken Pleasants desired to join her in death, and enlisted in the United States Army with the hope of being killed in combat.

In The Guns of the South, the fictionalized Pleasants, having settled in the Confederate States after that nation wins the Second American Revolution, has a heartfelt conversation with Nate Caudell about Sallie's memory. He credits Sallie's strong belief in abolitionism as part of his aversion to owning slaves.