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“Are We Not All Soldiers?”: Northern Women in the Civil War Hospital Service

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Jane E. Schultz
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A photograph of three women in dark dresses, white aprons, and beehivelike white hats has been used by historians throughout the 20th Century as evidence that young, uniformed nurses served in general hospitals during the Civil War. This is a fine example of historical halftruth: the women in the photograph were young and uniformed, but they were not Civil War nurses. They were New Yorkers who had volunteered to work in a food concession at the Sanitary Commission's metropolitan fundraising fair in April, 1864, and they were dressed in traditional Normandy costumes to sell Normandy cakes. The 20th-century historian who first identified this photograph expected nurses to wear white hats, even though no female hospital worker in Civil War America to my knowledge ever wore professional headgear or a uniform.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 20 , October 1995 , pp. 39 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

NOTES

1. Beers, Anna L. to Bickerdyke, Mary Ann, 10 22, 1886Google Scholar, Mary Ann Bickerdyke Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

2. The photograph appeared most recently in Culpepper, Marilyn Mayer, Trials and Triumphs: Women of the American Civil War (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; and in Burns, Ken's 1991Google Scholar PBS documentary, “The Civil War”.

3. See the New York Illustrated News of 04 23, 1864, page 404Google Scholar, U.S.Sanitary Commission Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

4. Union Army nursing superintendent Dorothea Dix advised appointees to dress soberly, but never required uniforms. Catholic nurses did wear uniforms and headgear, but of their religious orders and not the hospital service. See Matthew Brady photograph of Sister Verona, Sisters of Charity, at the National Archives Photographic Division, Washington, D.C.

5. See the commemorative volumes published by Moore, Frank, Women of the War: Their Heroism and Self-Sacrifice (Hartford, Conn.: S. S. Scranton, 1866)Google Scholar; and Brockett, Linus P. and Vaughan, Mary, Woman's Work in the Civil War: A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience (Philadelphia: Zeigler, McCurdy, 1867).Google Scholar

6. For a discussion of postwar domestic rhetoric, see Leonard, Elizabeth R., “Northern Women of the Civil War: Gender Systems and Pressure Points” (Ph.D.diss., University of California-Riverside, 1992).Google Scholar

7. Marilyn Mayer Culpepper uses other historians' estimate of three thousand nurses, which is based on the pension commission report (see Culpepper, , Trials and Triumphs, 315, 353).Google Scholar Pension officials estimated that Dorothea Dix appointed 3, 214 women to nursing positions. The figures did not, of course, include Confederate workers. Captain and Assistant Surgeon F. C. Ainsworth wrote that the figures “do not represent the total number of females employed in the hospital service during the war, but only those whose names have been found of record. Many records are missing and others are so imperfect that the information they contain is of but little value. The total number of female employes of each class was undoubtedly much larger than above stated” (see “Classified Schedule of Female Hospital Employes,” 04 10, 1890Google Scholar, Record and Pension Division, Adjutant General's Office, record group 94, National Archives).

8. Estimates of no more than ten thousand female workers have been made by Austin, Ann L. and Stewart, Isabel, A History of Nursing from Ancient to Modern Times: A World View, 5th ed. (New York: Putnam's, 1962), 132Google Scholar; Maher, Mary Denis, To Bind Up the Wounds: Catholic Sister Nurses in the U.S. Civil War (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1989), 2Google Scholar; Philip, A. and Kalisch, Beatrice J., The Advance of American Nursing, 2nd ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1986), 79Google Scholar; Stimson, Julia C. and Thompson, Ethel C. S., “Women Nurses with the Union Forces During the Civil War,” Military Surgeon 62, no. 1 (1928), 221ff.Google Scholar; and Nina Smith, Bennett, “The Women Who Went to the War: The Union Army Nurse in the Civil War” (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1981), 3.Google Scholar

9. See Massey, Mary Elizabeth, Bonnet Brigades (New York: Knopf, 1966), 52.Google Scholar

10. It should be noted that a large portion of the Confederate Surgeon General's records were lost in the burning of Richmond in 1865.

11. See Carded Service Records of Hospital Attendants, Matrons, and Nurses, 1861–65, record group 94, National Archives.

12. These estimates are based on a statistical tabulation of the raw data in the Carded Service Records. For narrative evidence of married hospital and relief workers, see, for example the Carlisle Family Papers, Bentley Library, Michigan Historical Collections, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Livermore, Mary, My Story of the War (Hartford, Conn.: Worthington, 1889)Google Scholar; Anon., Campaign of Mrs. Julia Silk (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Courier, 1892)Google Scholar; and Juliet Opie Hopkins Papers, Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, Alabama.

13. For examples of women seeking nursing appointments, see Alvord, H. J. to Felch, Alpheus, 09 15, 1862Google Scholar, Alpheus Felch Papers, Bentley Library, Michigan Historical Collections, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and Mrs. Emily Bostick to Gov. Joseph Brown, June 16, 1862, Georgia Department of Archives and History, Atlanta, Georgia. After a Montgomery, Alabama, newspaper ran an ad in 1861 asking for female volunteers to staff a state hospital in Richmond, Confederate nurse Juliet Opie Hopkins was besieged by letters from aspiring applicants (see Juliet Opie Hopkins Papers).

14. Hancock, Cornelia, South After Gettysburg: Letters of Cornelia Hancock, 1863–1868, ed. Jaquette, Henrietta Stratton (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1937), 7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. See the Clara Barton Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

16. See the Benjamin F. and Catherine Oliphant Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; and Newcomb, Mary A., Four Years of Personal Reminiscences of the War (Chicago: H. S. Mills, 1893).Google Scholar

17. Rainwater, Percy L., “The Civil War Letters of Cordelia Scales,” Journal of Mississippi History 1 (1939), 169–81.Google Scholar

18. See, for example, Medical Department List of Employees, Chimborazo Hospital No. 1, Richmond, , Virginia, 1862–1863Google Scholar, and Medical Department Morning Reports of Patients in General Hospitals, Records of the Confederate Surgeon General, record group 109, National Archives. For a discussion of socially confining prescriptions for Southern women, see Scott, Ann Firor, The Southern Lady from Pedestal to Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).Google Scholar

19. Maria Lydig Daly felt that her friend Harriet Whetten was making a “mistake” in entering the hospitals (see Daly, , Diary of a Union Lady, 1861–1865, ed. Hammond, Harold Earl [New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1962], 76, 173).Google Scholar

20. Lewis, Lizzie D. to Hopkins, Juliet Opie, 06 11 and 24, 1861Google Scholar, Hopkins Papers; the Diary of Ada Bacot, Manuscripts, South Caroliniana Library, Columbia; and Beers, Fannie A., Memories: A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1891), 34–35.Google Scholar The discussion about her service, wrote Beers, “ended in a truce of a few days, during which it was hoped I would repent and rescind my determination.” See also Wilson, Augusta Evans's letter of 10 28, 1863Google Scholar, in Richard, J. Fraise, The Florence Nightingale of the Southern Army: Experiences of Mrs. Ella K. Newsom (New York: Broadway, 1914), 93.Google Scholar

21. Tuttle, Elizabeth letter, 03 11, 1863Google Scholar, Manuscripts Department, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington.

22. Phoebe Yates Pember to Eugenia Levy Phillips, September 13, 1863, Philip Phillips Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; and Pember, Pheobe Yates, A Southern Woman's Story: Life in Confederate Richmond, ed. Wiley, Bell I. (Jackson, Tenn.: McCowat-Mercer, 1959), 146.Google Scholar See also Faust, Drew Gilpin, “Altars of Sacrifice: Confederate Women and the Narratives of War,” Journal of American History 76 (03 1990), 1215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23. Cumming, Kate, Kate: The Journal of a Confederate Nurse, ed. Harwell, Richard B. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959), 146.Google Scholar See also Cumming's satirical comment about sisters of charity being able to “do with honor what is wrong for other Christian women to do” (178).Google Scholar

24. Hancock, , South After Gettysburg, 17–18.Google Scholar

25. At least three nurses did marry men they had met in the service: Georgeanna Woolsey and Amanda Akin married physicians, and Lois Dennett married a soldier she had nursed in her first assignment. See also the pension file of Minerva Trigg Dillard Washington (no. 1330575), record group 15, National Archives.

26. Beers, , Memories, 123.Google Scholar

27. Alcott, Louisa May, Hospital SketchesGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Alternative Alcott, ed. Showalter, Elaine (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1988), 38–46.Google Scholar

28. For examples of women called “Mother” by their patients, see N. M. Daily letter, October 4, 1864, Sarah Gregg Diary, Illinois State Historical Library, Springfield, Illinois; Harriet Eaton Diary, March 14, 1863, Manuscripts, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Palmer, Sarah A., The Story of Aunt Becky's Army Life (New York: John F. Trow, 1867), 127Google Scholar; and Powers, Elvira J., Hospital Pencillings (Boston: Edward L. Mitchel, 1866), 15.Google Scholar

29. Army Morris Bradley Diary, November 28, 1861, Bradley Papers, Manuscripts, Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; and Newcomb, Four Years, 17.Google Scholar

30. See Schultz, Jane E., “Embattled Care: Narrative Authority in Louisa May Alcott's Hospital Sketches,” Legacy 9 (Fall 1992).Google Scholar Ada Bacot, a widow who had lost two children to disease, and Fanny Beers, the mother of a young child left at home, expressed relief in having a conduit for their maternal energies.

31. Among the women who saw the hospitals as seedbeds for Christian conversions were Harriet Eaton and Lovicy Eberhart (see Eaton Diary, October 23, 1864, December 3, 1864, and December 4, 1864; and Eberhart, Lovicy Ann, “Reminiscence of the Civil War, 1861–1865,” Chicago, 1894Google Scholar, Illinois State Historical Library, Springfield, Illinois).

32. See, for example, Powers, , Hospital Pencillings, 120Google Scholar; and Parsons, Emily Elizabeth, Civil War Nursing: Memoir of Emily Elizabeth Parsons (New York: Garland, 1984), 62.Google Scholar

33. For an account of workday hours, see Swisshelm, Jane Grey, Crusader and Feminist: Letters of Jane Grey Swisshelm, 1858–1865, ed. Larsen, Arthur J. (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1934), 232.Google Scholar Bilingual women were especially prized for their ability to translate for German-speaking patients. Two nurses who used German-language skills on the job were Carrie Cutter and Mary Phinney von Olnhausen (see n.a., “Carrie Eliza Cutter, the Florence Nightingale of the 21st [Massachusetts],” Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; and Mary Phinney von Olnhausen, Adventures of an Army Nurse in Two Wars, ed. Munroe, James Phinney [Boston: Little, Brown, 1904]).Google Scholar

34. Elizabeth Hyatt of the Fourth Wisconsin drove an ambulance from the battlefield at Centerville, Virginia, to field hospitals at Fairfax Court House (see Holland, Mary Gardner, Our Army Nurses [Boston: B. Wilkins, 1895], 449).Google Scholar Mary “Mother” Newcomb regularly used her own money to purchase milk and fresh produce for her patients (see Newcomb, Four Years).

35. Stearns, Amanda Akin, The Lady Nurse of Ward E (New York: Baker and Taylor, 1909), 16, 24.Google Scholar

36. Powers, , Hospital Pencillings, 128.Google Scholar

37. For examples of nurses who dispensed medicines, see Stearns, , Lady NurseGoogle Scholar; and Parsons, , Civil War Nursing, 38.Google Scholar For examples of nurses who dressed wounds, see Eaton Diary, December 14, 1862; Bradley, Diary, 06 11, 1862Google Scholar; and Morgan, Julia, How It Was Four Years Among the Rebels (Nashville: Publishing House of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1892), 107.Google Scholar For examples of nurses who assisted in surgical operations, see Newcomb, Four Years, 116Google Scholar; Beers, , Memories, 90, 135–36Google Scholar; and Maher, , To Bind Up, 111.Google Scholar

38. Powers, , Hospital Pencillings, 123–24.Google Scholar

39. Anon., Notes of Hospital Life from November, 1861, to August, 1863 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1864), 162Google Scholar; and Alcott, , Hospital Sketches, 69.Google Scholar

40. Cunningham, J. H. to Simmons, Barbara, 06 12, 1866Google Scholar, B. W. Simmons Family Papers, W. S. Hoole Special Collections, Gorgas Library, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama; and Delavan, George to Hawks, Esther Hill, 11 29, 1863Google Scholar, Esther Hill Hawks papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

41. See, for example, Rood, H. W. to Bickerdyke, Mary Ann, 09 26, 1891Google Scholar, and Hood, N. B. to Bickerdyke, Mary Ann, 12 9, 1895Google Scholar, Bickerdyke Collection.

42. See Schultz, Jane E. “The Inhospitable Hospital: Gender and Professionalism in Civil War Medicine,” Signs 17 (Winter 1992), 363–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43. To cite one example of the segregation of officers from the rank and file, see Foushee, Mary S. to Hopkins, Juliet Opie, 08 6, 1861Google Scholar, Hopkins Papers.

44. Pember, , Southern Woman's Story, 39.Google Scholar

45. Livermore, Mary, The Story of My Life (Hartford, Conn.: A. D. Worthington, 1899), 473.Google Scholar See also Anon., Notes of Hospital Life, xii.Google Scholar

46. Daly, , Diary, 172Google Scholar; and MrsTilton, L. to Bickerdyke, Mary Ann, 12 20, 1863Google Scholar, Bickerdyke Collection.

47. Cheney, Ednah D., Louisa May Alcott; Her Life, Letters, and Journals (Boston: Little, Brown, 1928), 116–17Google Scholar; Bacon, Georgeanna Woolsey and Howland, Eliza Woolsey, Letters of a Family During the War for the Union, 1861–1865 (New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse and Taylor, 1899), 2: 371Google Scholar; Bradley, Diary, 02 8, 1863Google Scholar; and Fyfe, Jenny to Nell, , 05 7 and 24, 1864Google Scholar, Fyfe Family Papers, Bentley Library, Michigan Historical Collections, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

48. Reed, William Howell, Hospital Life in the Army of the Potomac (Boston: William V. Spencer, 1866), 80–82Google Scholar; and Parsons, , Civil War Nursing, 136, 88–89.Google Scholar Confederate nurse Kate Cumming was less sanguine about teaching literacy to blacks: “Many may learn to read and write, but I feel confident, as a rule, they will not go much further” (see Cumming, , Kate, 269).Google Scholar

49. Von Olnhausen, , Adventures, 211.Google Scholar Amanda R. Shelton speaks of the black regiments she observes in similarly glowing terms (see Shelton, Amanda R. Diary, 05 5, 1864Google Scholar, Shelton Family Papers, Special Collections, University of Iowa, Iowa City).

50. Hawks, Esther Hill, A Woman Doctor's Civil War, ed. Schwartz, Gerald (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1984), 51–52.Google Scholar

51. Ibid., 54.

52. Ibid., 34.

53. See, for example, Taylor, Susie King's Reminiscences of My Life in Camp (New York: Arno Press and the New York Times 1968)Google Scholar, in which Taylor, a fourteen-year-old slave from Georgia, tells of her escape into Union lines. See also the story of black laundress Wright, Fanny, in Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, Army Life in a Black Regiment (Williamstown, Mass.: Corner House, 1984), 247.Google Scholar

54. Southern free black women also held their own in Confederate hospitals where they earned wages and food and clothing rations. See, for example, Negroes Employed in Chimborazo No. 2, Medical Department Lists of Employees, Chimborazo Hospital No. 2, Richmond, , Virginia, 1862–1865Google Scholar, chap. 6, vol. 85, record group 109, National Archives.

55. Alcott, , Hospital Sketches, 53Google Scholar; and Stearns, , Lady Nurse, 68.Google Scholar

56. Wormeley, Katharine Prescott, The Other Side of War with the Army of the Potomac (Boston: Ticknor, 1889), 44Google Scholar; and Hoge, Jane, The Boys in Blue; or Heroes of the “Rank and File” (New York: E. B. Treat, 1867), 256–57.Google Scholar Fanny Beers had similar praise for Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Thornton, both surgeons' wives, in service at Ringgold, Georgia (see Beers, , Memories, 82).Google Scholar

57. Pember, Phoebe Yates to Gilmer, Lou, 12 30, 1863Google Scholar, Phoebe Yates Pember Letters, Manuscripts, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Pember, , Southern Woman's Story, 35–36Google Scholar; and Beers, , Memories, 61, 63.Google Scholar See also George Rable's discussion of Southern nurses' class conflicts in Civil Wars: Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 122–23.Google Scholar

58. Shelton, Amanda R. Diary, 05 9, 1864Google Scholar; and Hancock, , South After Gettysburg, 55.Google Scholar For an example of black women who cared for the children of white workers, see Higginson, Army Life, 185.Google Scholar

59. See Tuttle, letter, 05 17, 1863Google Scholar; Beers, , Memories, 170Google Scholar; Eaton Diary, October 27, 1864; and McCabe, John Collins to Hopkins, Juliet Opie, 11 14, 1861Google Scholar, Hopkins Papers.

60. Kathleen C. Berkeley argues that white reformers double-crossed blacks working in exchange for food when they insisted on fostering self-help programs that took away clothing and food rations (see Berkeley, , “‘Colored Ladies Also Contributed’: Black Women's Activities from Benevolence to Social Welfare, 1866–96,” Black Women in American History, ed. Hine, Darlene Clark [Brooklyn:Carlson, 1990], 61–83).Google Scholar

61. Amy Bradley, Morris to sister, 10 20, 1861Google Scholar, and August 31, 1862, Bradley Papers; Barton, Clara Diary, 06 16, 1863Google Scholar, Barton Collection; von Olnhausen, , Adventures, 138Google Scholar; and Parsons, , Civil War Nursing, 133.Google Scholar

62. Mann, Maria R. to Peabody Mann, Mary Tyler, 04 19, 1863Google Scholar, Mary Tyler Peabody Mann Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; and von Olnhausen, , Adventures, 191.Google Scholar See also Hoge, , Boys in Blue, 372Google Scholar; and Bucklin, Sophronia, In Hospital and Camp (Philadelphia: John E. Potter, 1869), 69.Google Scholar

63. Parsons, , Civil War Nursing, 138–39Google Scholar; and Alcott, , Hospital Sketches, 58.Google Scholar