Seldom thanked, never praised, and scarcely recognized: Gender and racism in civil war hospitals

Civil War History

Volumn 48, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 220-236

  Schultz, Jane E ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 67649525920     PISSN: 00098078     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/cwh.2002.0045     Document Type: Review

References (93)

1. Louisa May Alcott, Hospital Sketches, in Alternative Alcott, ed. Elaine Showalter (New Brunswick: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1988), 58
2. Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work and the Family from Slavery to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 1985)
3. Joseph Glatthaar, Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers (New York: Meridian, 1991)
4. Catherine Clinton, "Reconstructing Freedwomen," in Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War, ed. Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber (New York: Oxford, 1992), 307-19
5. Peter Bardaglio, "The Children of Jubilee: African-American Childhood in Wartime," in Divided Houses, ed. Clinton and Silber, 214-28
6. and Drew Gilpin Faust, "'Ours as Well as that of Men': Women and Gender in the Civil War," in Writing the Civil War: The Quest to Understand, ed. James McPherson and William J. Cooper (Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1998), 232-33
7. Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland, eds., Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War (New York: New Press, 1992)
8. Ira Berlin and Leslie S. Rowland, eds., Families and Freedom: A Documentary History of African-American Kinship in the Civil War Era (New York: New Press, 1997)
9. Ella Forbes, African-American Women During the Civil War (New York: Garland, 1998)
10. Thavolia Glymph, "'This Species of Property': Female Slave Contrabands in the Civil War," in A Woman's War: Southern Women, Civil War, and the Confederate Legacy, eds. Edward Campbell and Kym Rice (Charlottesville: Univ. Press of Virginia, 1997), 54-71
11. Noralee Frankel, "The Southern Side of Glory: Mississippi African-American Women During the Civil War," Minerva: Quarterly Report on Women and the Military 8 (Fall 1990): 28-36
12. Leslie Schwalm, A Hard Fight for We: Women's Transition from Slavery to Freedom in South Carolina (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1997)
13. Mary Elizabeth Massey first made this clear in Bonnet Brigades (New York: Knopf, 1966)
14. See also Elizabeth Leonard, Yankee Women: Gender Battles in the Civil War (New York: Norton, 1994)
15. Lori Ginzberg, Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1990)
16. George Rable, Civil Wars; Women and the Crisis of Southern Nationalism (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1989)
17. Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1996)
18. Jane E. Schultz, "The Inhospitable Hospital: Gender and Professionalism in Civil War Medicine," Signs 17 (Winter 1992): 363-92
19. Kristie Ross, "Women Are Needed Here: Northern Protestant Women as Nurses During the Civil War, 1861-1865" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia Univ., 1993)
20. Peggy Brase Seigel, "She Went to War: Indiana Women Nurses in the Civil War," Indiana Magazine of History 86 (Mar. 1990): 1-27
21. For pay statistics, see Circular of Apr. 3, 1863, Surgeon General's Office, entry 63, RG 112, NARA
22. Quoted in James McPherson, The Negro's Civil War; How American Negroes Felt and Acted During the War for the Union (New York: Pantheon Books, 1965), 144
23. Pension application of Matilda Cleaver John (#1162117), RG 15, NARA
24. Alcott, Louisa May Alcott; Her Life, Letters, and Journals, ed. Ednah D. Cheney (Boston: Little, Brown, 1928)
25. Hannah Ropes, Civil War Nurse: The Diary and Letters of Hannah Ropes, ed. John R. Brumgardt (Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1980)
26. Forbes, African-American Women During the Civil War, ix
27. Emily Parsons, Civil War Nursing. Memoir of Emily Elizabeth Parsons (New York: Garland, 1984), 133, 148. Southern nurse Kate Cumming noted that a black woman cared for her nursing partner, Mrs. Williamson, when she contracted typhoid in October 1862. Though Southern hospital relations are not a focus here, such evidence indicates that certain racial practices were widespread
28. See Cumming, Kate: The Journal of a Confederate Nurse, ed. Richard B. Harwell (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1959), 74
29. Circular from Asst. Med. Dir. Sanford B. Hunt, June 4, 1864, Letters Received by Surg. Lincoln R. Stone, entry 228, RG 112, NARA
30. These and subsequent computations have been made from my statistical survey of the Carded Service Records. See Jane E. Schultz, Women at the Front: Female Hospital Workers in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, [forthcoming]), ch. 1
31. Pension applications of Malinda McFarland Jackson (#1161092) and Martha Spicer (#457620), RG 15, NARA; Mary Gardner Holland, Our Army Nurses (Boston: B. Wilkins, 1895), 244
32. For evidence of slaves fleeing to Union encampments, see Berlin et al. Free at Last, 86, 88-90
33. For examples of ex-slaves who sought hospital work, see the pension records of Nancy Dudson Carter (#1416752), Maria Bear Toliver (#1161879), Minerva Dillard Washington (#1330575), and Rachel Anderson (#1162327), RG 15, NARA
34. Glymph, "This Species of Property," 58
35. Maria R. Mann to William L. Ropes, April 13, 1863, Mary Tyler Peabody Mann Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C
36. Adelaide Smith, Reminiscences of an Army Nurse During the Civil War (New York: Greaves, 1911), 160
37. Susie King Taylor, Reminiscences of My Life in Camp (New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1968), 15
38. The Liberator, June 24, 1864
39. Abby Hopper Gibbons, Life of Abby Hopper Gibbons Told Chiefly Through Her Correspondence, ed. Sarah Hopper Emerson (New York: Putnam's, 1896-97), 2:4
40. Harriet H. A. Eaton diary, Dec. 23 and 28, 1862, Manuscripts, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N. C
41. McPherson, The Negro's Civil War, 144
42. For examples of wives joining their husbands in camp to perform regimental work, see Frankel, "The Southern Side of Glory"
43. Glymph, "This Species of Property"
44. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, ch. 5
45. Taylor, Reminiscences of My Life in Camp, 26, 21, 17
46. William Howell Reed reported that even though contraband laundresses "cast their lot with us [the medical staff]," the government made no provision for them. See Reed, Hospital Life in the Army of the Potomac (Boston: William V. Spencer, 1866), 153
47. and Kathleen C. Berkeley, "'Colored Ladies Also Contributed': Black Women's Activities from Benevolence to Social Welfare, 1866-96," in Black Women in American History, ed. Darlene Clark Hine (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1990), 68
48. Charles L. Stevens to Lt. J. H. Metcalf, Jan. 27, 1863, in Berlin et al., Free at Last, 184
49. White relief workers Abby Hopper Gibbons, Laura Haviland, Maria Mann, and Mary Newcomb all noted the lack of proper clothing for blacks, especially women. See Gibbons, Life of Abby Hopper Gibbons 1:374
50. Laura S. Haviland, A Woman's Life-Work Labors and Experiences of Laura S. Haviland (Salem, N. H.: Ayer, 1984), 246
51. Maria R. Mann to William L. Ropes, Mar. 16, 1863, Mann Papers
52. and Mary A. Newcomb, Four Years of Personal Reminiscences of the War (Chicago: H. S. Mills, 1893), 110, 123
53. Abby Hopper Gibbons reported that soldiers at Point Lookout were caught stealing food from contrabands in camp. See Gibbons, Life of Abby Hopper Gibbons 2:2
54. Asst. Surg. C. D. Dally to Surg. Gen. William Hammond, Nov. 5, 1863
55. George E. H. Lacy to the Surgeon General, Apr. 6, 1864
56. and Surg. W. P. Daast to the Surgeon General, Aug. 25, 1864, Letters Received, 1818-1870, Surgeon General's Office, RG 112, NARA
57. and Supt. of Freedmen J. W. Brinckerhoff to Brig. Gen. L. Thomas, July 25, 1865, Letters Received, 1818-1870, Surgeon General's Office, RG 112, NARA
58. Charlotte McKay, Stories of Hospital and Camp (Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen, and Haffelfinger, 1876), 104
59. Sophronia Bucklin, In Hospital and Camp (Philadelphia: John E. Potter, 1869), 33-34
60. Amy Morris Bradley diary, July 7, 1862, Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, N.C
61. Maria R. Mann to Mary Mann, Mar. 21, 1863, Mann Papers
62. and Parsons, Civil War Nursing, 133
63. Bucklin, In Hospital and Camp, 69
64. Jane Hoge, The Boys in Blue; Or Heroes of the "Rank and File" (New York: E. B. Treat, 1867), 373
65. Alcott, Hospital Sketches, 58
66. Mary Phinney von Olnhausen, Adventures of an Army Nurse in Two Wars, Edited from the Diary and Correspondence of Mary Phinney, Baroness von Olnhausen, ed. James Phinney Munroe (Boston: Little, Brown, 1904), 191
67. Amy Morris Bradley to sister, Oct. 20, 1861, Aug. 31, 1862, Bradley letter-book; von Olnhausen, Adventures of an Army Nurse, 138
68. Esther Hill Hawks, A Woman Doctor's Civil War; Esther Hill Hawks' Diary, ed. Gerald Schwartz (Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1984), 51-54
69. von Olnhausen, Adventures of an Army Nurse, 211
70. Amanda Shelton also spoke of black regiments in glowing terms. See Amanda Shelton diary, May 5, 1864, University of Iowa Special Collections, Iowa City
71. For the language of military valor, see Gerald F. Linderman, Embattled Courage; The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War (New York: Free Press, 1987)
72. James McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York: Oxford, 1997)
73. Reid Mitchell, Civil War Soldiers: Their Expectations and Their Experiences (New York: Viking, 1988)
74. Haviland, A Woman's Life-Work
75. Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth, a Life, a Symbol (New York: Norton, 1996)
76. Olive Gilbert, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth, A Bondswoman of Olden Time (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1991)
77. Susie King Taylor, Reminiscences of My Life in Camp, 30
78. Charlotte L. Forten, The Journal of Charlotte L. Forten, ed. Ray Billington (New York: Norton, 1953), 192, 199
79. Clarissa Emily Gear Hobbs, "Excerpts from the Autobiography of Clarissa Emily Gear Hobbs," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 17 (Oct. 1924): 611-714
80. Elvira J. Powers, Hospital Pencillings (Boston: Edward L. Mitchell, 1866), 62-63
81. For a more elaborate argument on the valuing of nursing and its basis in proximity to soldiers, see Schultz, Women at the Front
82. For information on special diet kitchens, see Communications Received, 1862-1865, Central Office, U. S. Christian Commission, RG 94, NARA; Annie Turner Wittenmyer Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; Annie Turner Wittenmyer, Under the Guns: A Woman's Reminiscences of the Civil War (Boston: E. B. Stillings, 1895)
83. Leonard, Yankee Women, ch. 2
84. Parsons, Civil War Nursing, 27, 58
85. Bradley diary, June 11, 1862
86. Steven L. Roca has argued that black women were employed as naval nurses in part because of their familiarity with hard manual labor. See Roca, "Presence and Precedents: The U.S.S. Red Rover During the American Civil War, 1861-65," Civil War History 44 (June 1998): 91-110
87. Abby Hopper Gibbons in Notable American Women, ed. Edward T. James (Cambridge, Mass.; Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 1971) 2:29
88. Gibbons, Life of Abby Hopper Gibbons 1:365, 2:2, 34
89. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment (East Lansing: Michigan State Univ. Press, 1960), ch. 8
90. Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment, 192
91. Testimony of Joseph Miller, Nov. 26, 1864, in Berlin et al., Free at Last, 493-95
92. Hawks, A Woman Doctor's Civil War, 34
93. For a thorough discussion of black women's challenge to discourse that labeled them "lewd," see Hannah Rosen, "'Not that Sort of Women': Race, Gender, and Sexual Violence During the Memphis Riot of 1866," in Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History, ed. Martha Hodes (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1999): 267-93