The Role Of Nurses During The Civil War

Union nurses during the Civil War played an important role inside and outside the battle, their decision to join the war, duties, and experiences helped shape the American Woman while creating a new piece of history. The Civil War began April 12, 1861 and ended in April 9, 1865 when General Robert E. Lee, of the Confederate Army, surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant, General Chief of the United States Forces, in Virginia. However, during the battle between the Union and the Confederacy, the Union needed places in which they could transport and take care of the wounded soldiers from the battles. The U.S. government then decided to create makeshift stations in churches and hotels to military hospitals in large cities. The wounded soldiers were transported
Before the Civil War, if a family member was sick they were taken care of in their homes and they rarely visited medical institutions. Additionally, few military institutions existed because they depended on small dispensaries from forts. While most women decided to stay in their homes and take care of their husband’s businesses, there was a small amount of women that decided to work outside the comfort of their homes (Schultz, p. 363). This small amount of women were proud to medically support the Civil War. However, there was a group of people who believed military hospitals were not suitable for female nurses since before the Civil War, nurses consisted mainly of men. Among the few amount of women that decided to become nurses, were adolescent slaves (under chattel obligation), catholic sisters, free black women, upper class white widows, and farm women (Schultz, p. 364). It included mothers, grandmothers, childless, and unmarried
As Amanda Akin mentions in “The Lady Nurse of Ward E”, the day of a nurse started at six in the morning and did not end until nine at night. Their duties included, overseeing medicine and diets, bathing soldiers, writing letters, reading to soldiers, cooking, laundering, cleaning, assisting in surgeries, and dressing wounds. These tasks were not simple for women who might have never received any type of training in the medical area. For example, the act of bathing a soldier seemed to have been very scandalous to a female nurse since being in such proximity and intimateness with a male soldier was such a vulnerable act which was quickly resolved in a professional manner. In “Hospital Sketches”, Louisa May Alcott states that the first days as a nurse were filled with death and taking over a ward of over forty beds. The environment of death and sickness were at times so palpable that she “… [sat] in a very hard chair, with pneumonia on one side, diphtheria on the other, five typhoids in the opposite, and a dozen of dilapidated patriots…all staring more or less at the new “ness”, who suffered untold agonies, but concealed them …” (Alcott, p. 32). However, the nurses had to professionally and compassionately take care of the wounded soldiers who were in many different forms of emotional states. In order to cheer the wounded soldiers, the