Our Army Nurses: Stories from Women In the Civil War, and: Angels of Mercy: An Eyewitness Account of the Civil War and Yellow Fever (review)

book reviews183 Marten's review of adult conceptions of, and prescriptions for, wartime children sets the stage for his investigation of how children became "actors in their own right in the great national drama" (5). Because most of the fighting took place within the Confederacy, many Southern children, particularly slaves and contrabands, suffered acute deprivation and witnessed the war's stark brutality up close, while few Northern children came face to face with the cruelty of war. Marten argues that despite this difference, children in both regions became"politicians and home-front warriors" who usually remained firm in their loyalties and often displayed rabid partisanship (149). Both male and female children took on new responsibilities within their families, and many contributed publicly to the war effort by raising funds for flags, gunboats, soldiers' homes, and hospitals. In his extensive discussion of the adult lives of Civil War children, Marten explores the struggles of these home-front veterans to define the war's meaning. Although politicians, writers, memorialists, and everyday folks sought to explain the war in both regions, the conflict loomed larger in the memories of southerners than it did in the recollections of northerners. Marten is to be commended for the scope of his study. Although at times the breadth of the work diminishes its analytical force, The Children 's Civil War covers an astonishing array of topics, from the production of amateur newspapers by Northern children to the participation in mass emancipation celebrations by freedchildren. Marten consistently demonstrates the tremendous diversity of children's home-front experiences and frequently acknowledges the influence of gender, race, and region on children's wartime lives. Surprisingly , although Marten maintains that "the war's most immediate impact on the lives of children was to rip apart their families," he pays relatively little attention to the domestic world of children during the war and does not consider the war's legacy for the family lives that Civil War children constructed as adults (70). While Marten's desire to treat children as more than simply members of families is laudable, he ultimately overemphasizes the individualism of children . Still, thoroughly researched and nicely illustrated, The Children's Civil War will be a touchstone for historians and generalists who seek to gain a fuller understanding of life on the home front between 1861 and 1865. Antoinette G. van Zelm Boone, North Carolina Our Army Nurses: Stories from Women In the Civil War. Compiled by Mary Gardner Holland. Introduction by Daniel John Hoisington (Roseville, MN: Edinborough Press, 1998. Pp. viii, 306. $19.95.) Angels ofMercy: An Eyewitness Account ofthe Civil War and Yellow Fever. By Sister Ignatius Sumner. Edited by Sister Mary Paulinus Oakes, R.S.M. (Baltimore : Cathedral Foundation Press, 1998. Pp. xv, 112. $16.00.) Both of these works offer primary source material on women involved in Civil War nursing; both could be described as labors of love. Mary Gardner Holland, l84CIVIL WAR HISTORY herself a veteran nurse, decided in the 1 890s to locate as many former Union nurses as she could and request photographs and accounts oftheir wartime nursing experiences. First published in 1 895, with a second edition in 1 897, Our Army Nurses included "stories" from almost a hundred women among more than five thousand who nursed the sick and wounded Union soldiers during the Civil War. Some sketches are less than a page; others are much longer, describing specific activities and incidents. Gardner herself included biographical material from newspapers for several prominent figures (Dorothea Dix, Clara Barton, Mary Bickerdyke), and in the second edition she added a brief account of the wartime nursing of Catholic sisters. If the women in this small sample are representative of the thousands who served, most were of "oldYankee stock," as Hoisington's useful introduction to this reprint edition points out. Many women followed husbands into service, occasionally leaving young children with relatives. Sometimes when a soldier was wounded, his wife went to the base hospital to care for him and stayed on, after his recovery or his death, to nurse other sick and wounded "boys in blue." Some nurses received a few dollars a month; some received no pay at all. Many were never...