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Reviews in American History 33.1 (2005) 71-77



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You've Come A Long Way . . .

Jane E. Schultz. Women at the Front: Hospital Workers in Civil War America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. 376 pp. Illustrations, figures, appendix, bibliography, and index. $34.95.

Jane E. Schultz examines female hospital workers in a valuable study that debunks many myths that have grown up around the "angels of mercy" that ministered to the wounded of America's deadliest conflict. Women at the Front represents a solid contribution to the social history of the Civil War and, more specifically, to the role of women in that war. That is, her book is representative of a growing literature that not only provides a more accurate understanding of the significant place women had in the conflict, but also demonstrates gender as a useful category of analysis in Civil War studies.1

In other words, Schultz's book embodies a growing sophistication and maturity in the history of women in the Civil War, a field that has come a long way since such early groundbreaking studies as Mary Elizabeth Massey's Bonnet Brigades (1966). While Schultz clearly empathizes with the women she studies in Women at the Front, her study captures the complexities of Civil War hospital work, nuances that do not always reflect well on these women, but shows them to be complicated human beings attempting to cope with their place in such a large and horrific struggle. Her book also is sensitive to the differences between the experience of northern and southern hospital workers, and she takes pains to differentiate between elite women and their more humble counterparts who usually made up the bulk of the workforce.

After a brief introduction, Schultz confidently dives into the wartime experiences of female hospital workers. She begins by examining what sort of women went into hospital work during the Civil War and the nature of the medical system they encountered, North and South. Not surprisingly taking into account the intense mobilization of human resources in both sections, Schultz finds, "Female hospital workers were as diverse as the population of the United States in 1860" (p. 12). Given the competing philosophies of federal versus states' rights, it is also not surprising Schultz finds there was a more centralized hospital system in the North and a more decentralized and informal hospital system in the South. In both sections, elite volunteers led [End Page 71] the effort while working-class women were the bulk of the labor force. She finds that many of the ordinary workers often were paid for their labor; one that encompassed a wide variety of tasks beyond nursing and required much larger numbers (men as well as women) than has previously been credited. Hospital workers quickly developed a hierarchy based on the tasks they performed, with nursing held in the highest regard, and cooking, laundering, and other support tasks less valued. Understandably, Schultz finds elite women gravitated to the high prestige work.

After examining who toiled in Civil War hospitals, Women at the Front then deals with how women actually got involved in this work. With separate spheres at its zenith, women in both sections initially encountered resistance as female trailblazers attempted to leave home for hospital work. Yet over time, Schultz asserts, public disapproval of women's medical work declined, especially among the comfortable middle class, as its necessity became apparent to the northern and southern public horrified by the war's terrible human toll. In assessing motives for joining hospital service, she finds they varied considerably from the highly idealistic to women who simply needed the wages hospital work would bring. As Schultz puts it, "the decision to volunteer for hospital work was like soldiers' enlistment. Women were moved variously by patriotism, self-sacrifice, the prospect of adventure, and, of course, money" (p. 47).

Hence, Women at the Front advances the notion that women hospital workers saw their service as on par with the troops at the front. Schultz believes these similarities between male soldiers and female hospital workers...

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