Worth a Dozen Men: Women and Nursing in the Civil War South

1. State and Private Hospitals

17 state and private hospitals K one K The Confederacy lacked even a rudimentary medical system in April 1861. In the midst of creating a functioning government, the South was grossly unprepared for the inundation of sickness and casualties early in the war, creating an emergency situation that necessitated state and civilian involvement in medical care. State governments sponsored hospitals in Richmond to treat their own troops. Chaos and extreme suffering caused by influxes of sick and wounded into Southern cities and towns pulled local women into nursing and enabled both groups and individuals to establish private hospitals. The gap between the onset of war and the consolidation of an overarching hospital system in September 1862 provided an opportunity for Confederate women to carve out positions of independence and authority and to gain valuable experience with medical care. Female efforts, moreover, helped alleviate emergency conditions and sustain the troops until and after the government assumed control of or closed state, private, and wayside hospitals. By that time, female-run institutions in Richmond had so impressed legislators with their low mortality rates that they authorized official matron positions for women in general hospitals. The training afforded by private hospitals created a cadre of experienced nurses and managers who then became official matrons or continued to serve as volunteers on their own initiative. With both sides expecting a short war, Washington and Richmond became the respective initial loci of medical care. As the war intensified and moved west, it became obvious that general hospitals needed to be dispersed, but early confusion and attempts to organize Confederate medical care centered on the capital city.1 Contagion accompanying the concentration of huge numbers of men in camp, the First Battle of Manassas (July 21, 1861), and the 1862 summer campaigns around Richmond filled the city with sick and wounded and overwhelmed the limited capacity of government hospitals. General hospitals state and private hospitals 18 served any man regardless of state or regimental affiliation, and in 1861 they operated on the paltry sum of $50,000 authorized by the Confederate Congress for military hospitals.2 With the Confederate government only newly arrived in Richmond and still forming, civilian aid was encouraged. The Richmond Whig urged citizens to take in cases “sufficiently convalescent to justify their removal to private residences, where sympathy and attention of the household may ensure a more speedy recovery.”3 The series of battles near Richmond in May, June, and early July 1862 presented an even greater challenge, for the city was overrun with wounded, many of whom were placed in churches, where local women cared for them.4 After the Battle of Fair Oaks, abandoned buildings, warehouses, tobacco factories, and schools were converted into hospitals, private homes took in excess wounded, and citizens established private hospitals to help the “illprepared ” Confederate government handle the medical crisis. Civilians initiated an informal ambulance service, going out in their own vehicles with food to “aid the very limited ambulance corps of the army.”5 Richmond “waked up to a keen realization of the horrors of war,” wrote Sara Pryor, who watched as ambulances ferried in the wounded and dead.6 Like her fellow postwar commentators, Pryor insisted that every woman in Richmond should assist in some way, and every private home opened its doors to the wounded. Constance Cary also described the “ghastly procession of wounded,” and both women felt compelled to help. “There was not enough of anything to meet the sudden and appalling call of many strong men stricken unto death,” Cary recalled. To meet the emergency, surgeons issued calls for what they needed and women began making bedding and bandages. Donations eased the situation, and “gradually some order came out of the chaos of over tasked hospital service.”7 Those who lived in Richmond in 1861 and 1862 vividly remembered the wounded arriving and the community response. “It will never be forgotten,” wrote Margaret Loughborough, “the scenes that ensued when a car bearing wounded would come in. The sidewalks would be lined with women and children each carrying something edible.”8 The image of Richmond’s women as essential caretakers of the sick and wounded remained indelibly stamped in the minds of many, even after the Confederate government assumed control of medical affairs in late 1862. “The care of the sick and wounded fell on the shoulders of young and old women,” another woman remarked, “and bravely they did their part.”9 Richmond’s status as the center of the Confederacy...