Religious orders also responded to this new opportunity for service by sending their own trained nurses to staff field hospitals near the front. In all, eight Catho-lic orders sent nuns to serve in the war. Although not a nurse, Dix was nationally known as a crusader for enlightened care of the mentally ill, and her grandfather, Elijah Dix, had been a prominent Boston physician.
Secretary of War Simon Cameron quickly named her to superintend the women nurses assigned to the U. By nature compassionate and giving, Dix was also a no-nonsense and often quirky leader. At first she required nursing applicants to be at least 30 years of age—old by the standards of the time—and "plain looking," wearing brown or black clothing with no ornaments, bows, curls, jewelry or hoops. She steadfastly denied admission to nuns or other representatives of religious sisterhoods.
As casualties mounted, Dix was forced to relax her standards, and after the First Battle of Bull Run in July she accepted anyone willing to work. Sanitary Commission all helped care for sick and wounded soldiers.
Dix operated from houses she personally rented in Washington, and she did not take off a single day during her four years of service. Her hospitality was always available to nurses and discharged servicemen who lacked shelter.
Louisa May Alcott, who became ill with typhoid fever soon after entering her brief service as a nurse, gratefully recalled Dix "stealing a moment from her busy life to watch over the stranger of whom she was as thoughtfully tender as any mother. In her zeal to reduce suffering and death, Dix constantly prowled the hospitals. Her intolerance of hospital administrators and nurses who did not meet her exacting standards caused constant friction.
Finally, in October , Secretary of War Edwin Stanton transferred part of the responsibility for appointing nurses to the surgeon general and gave medical officers at each hospital jurisdiction over their own female nurses.
Dix was heartbroken but responded with a magnanimity that drew admiration from even her staunchest opponents. Throughout the rest of her life, Dix begged biographers to de-emphasize her Civil War years. But in , long after she was dead and could not protest the well-deserved honor, she was featured on a U.
While Dix was gathering her forces in Washington, Mary Ann Bickerdyke was taking matters into her own equally dedicated hands in Galesburg, Ill.
Before the war, she had received training in botanic and homeopathic medicine and had been engaged in private-duty nursing. Recently bereaved by the untimely death of both her husband and young daughter, she felt divinely called to spend her remaining life relieving human suffering.
When the congregation asked her to accompany a load of food, clothing and medical supplies to Cairo on behalf of the church, she was ready. Except for short visits, that was the last her two young sons saw of her until the end of the war. When Bickerdyke saw the poor condition of the hospital in Cairo, she took a room in town and immediately began a determined cleanup effort that quickly spread to the other five military hospitals in the area.
Although he granted her a grudging welcome at first, Dr. Woodward, a surgeon with the 22nd Illinois Infantry, later praised Bickerdyke as "strong as a man, muscles of iron, nerves of finest steel; sensitive, but self-reliant, kind and tender; seeking all for others, nothing for herself. Throughout the war, "Mother" Bickerdyke moved from one trouble spot to another, acting on her belief that bodies healed best when they were bathed, placed in clean surroundings and fed well.
She evinced a special concern for enlisted men and stopped at nothing to get supplies that would bring comfort to her "boys. Many times, when government rations were waylaid or ran out, she found a way to feed the troops.
Her tireless zeal earned her the nickname "Cyclone in Calico. In the early period of her service, Bickerdyke held no authority other than semiofficial status granted occasionally by Union Army officers.
Her manner, however, was so forthright and compelling that she was rarely questioned. When one surgeon dared to ask where she received permission to do what she was doing, Bickerdyke retorted she was given orders by "the Lord God Almighty. Have you anything that ranks higher than that? In spite of her brusque and aggressive behavior, Bickerdyke gained the friendship of a few high-ranking officers, among them Generals Ulysses S.
Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman. Toward the end of the war, when someone complained about Bickerdyke to Sherman, he commented that she was the only person around who outranked him, and he suggested the complainer refer the matter to President Abraham Lincoln.
On one occasion, when she was besieging Sherman at an inopportune moment, the oft-prickly general asked whether she had ever heard of insubordination. She demonstrated that point one day when troops passed one of her hospitals en route to battle at Corinth, Miss. When Bickerdyke invited the captain to halt his exhausted men so that she and her staff could feed them, he refused. As he led the men on, a deep voice cried, "Halt! Their bewilderment was replaced with glee when a group of women led by Bickerdyke quickly served them soup and coffee and gave them bread, fruit and fresh water to take along on the march.
By the time anyone realized Bickerdyke had given the spurious order to halt, all the men had been served and sent off with the only food they were to see for two days. A formal reprimand brought no firm promise of reform from the unrepentant Bickerdyke. Major General John "Black Jack" Logan also crossed paths with Bickerdyke, meeting her for the first time late one night after a battle. While lying in his tent, he observed a lone figure with a lamp crisscrossing the battlefield and sent an orderly to bring the person in for questioning.
Bickerdyke explained that she could not rest until she was satisfied that no living man remained on the field. The story was picked up by the press and contributed to her folk-hero status.
As matron of many temporary field hospitals, Mother Bickerdyke often crossed swords with surgeons and other staff members. In some cases, her complaints to superior officers brought disciplinary action; other situations she resolved in her own way.
She reserved special vengeance for anyone she suspected of snitching supplies or delicacies she had set aside for the sick and wounded. Once, after repeated warnings to kitchen workers, she decided to set a trap. She cooked some peaches, secretly spiked them with a potent but harmless purgative, and left them to cool while she worked elsewhere.
Soon, agonized cries from the kitchen attested that she finally had made her point. Bickerdyke drafted anyone within reach of her voice to help with the endless labor. Healthy soldiers and camp visitors were either bribed with hot meals or badgered into service.
When gentlemen from the Christian Commission came to restore wounded souls, she suggested that they would have a better chance of success if they began with wounded bodies. Formerly active in the Underground Railroad, Bickerdyke respected blacks and often sought their help. Many contrabands cheerfully worked hard for her, and, in turn, she fought for their fair treatment and taught them skills they could use later in postwar America. Bickerdyke was equally effective on her occasional speaking forays for the Sanitary Commission.
Suddenly, she asked the startled women to rise, lift their dresses, and drop one of their many petticoats to the floor. The collected garments filled three trunks, and within a few weeks, Bickerdyke was using the petticoats to bandage the terrible sores of prisoners released from Andersonville in Georgia. When the last Illinois man was discharged, Bickerdyke resigned from the Sanitary Commission to devote the rest of her life to her family and to charitable deeds.
She died in , and a sturdy freighter named for her carried on her work in the 20th century by ferrying Spam and sulfa drugs to American servicemen isolated on Pacific islands in World War II. Another tireless champion of wounded enlisted men during the Civil War was Hannah Ropes. The daughter and sister of prominent Maine lawyers, she was over 50 when the war started. An experienced nurse, she had gained prewar recognition as a reformer and abolitionist and was acquainted with many New England political leaders.
Like Dix and Bickerdyke, she believed every soldier deserved proper sanitation, good food and humanitarian treatment, and never hesitated to go to the top to obtain such creature comforts.
Secretary of War Stanton personally took action against officers and stewards she found to be slovenly and incompetent. There even have been numerous discoveries of women who disguised themselves as men in order to serve as soldiers. Throughout history, war has often provided opportunities for women to go outside their sphere.
The advancements made by women during war have not always been permanent in their time, but women did show what they were capable of doing. During the Civil War, women wanted to alleviate the suffering and, in the view of many, simply do their duty as the men did theirs. After the war, women would look back on their experiences as something that shaped them, and the war. Inside is a brown cloth lining with a gathered pocket. A distorted thimble was also inside the pocket, along with a tied lock of hair.
A worn brown ribbon ties the piece together when not in use. Most Civil War soldiers owned just one set of clothing, which was quick to wear out during long marches and bitter fighting.
As you can imagine, mending clothes was a must for soldiers. They contained the items necessary to darn socks, replace buttons, or fix a whole in a jacket. Some were made for soldiers by wives, mothers, daughters, and friends. Other commercial examples were sold by the camp sutlers.
They are always on display in Civil War museums, such as Gettysburg and the Museum of the Confederacy see pictures.
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