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

3. Becoming a Nurse

57 becoming a nurse K three K As the Civil War quickly became a more protracted and engulfing conflict than most Americans had predicted, the scope of the medical emergency led to extensive civilian involvement in medical care. Because the war was fought by elected governments and citizen recruits, public opinion remained crucial for the maintenance of the war effort. The military precedent of using detailed and convalescent soldiers as hospital attendants came under public scrutiny. In the summer of 1861, as diseases raged through the encamped armies, quality medical care became a priority for the home front, government, and military. Disease, and soon wounds, quickly generated a need for good nurses in military hospitals and created an ambivalence regarding who would ideally occupy those positions. Women, Americans firmly believed, were naturally inclined to be better nurses because they had experience caring for sick relatives.1 During the nineteenth century, nursing was associated with femininity and motherhood. Nursing strangers in a hospital, however, went beyond a respectable woman’s role, for it placed her in the midst of unseemly conditions surrounded by unknown men from diverse backgrounds and removed her from her proper domestic world. The class of men to be served, the need to leave home, and American distrust of hospitals, more than the substance of the work, raised doubts about the advisability of women entering military hospitals. Families worried about women’s health and reputations, while many medical and military officers argued that female nurses would undermine discipline and the chain of command. Yet, at the same time, important aspects of medical care fell within the recognized domain and expertise of women, including comfort, feeding , emotional support, and death. As a result, though opposition always existed , so too did support for female hospital nursing. Hospital work for women, like many other aspects of Confederate ideology and experience, was fraught with inconsistencies.2 The Confederacy needed women’s support, especially becoming a nurse 58 given a dearth of manpower relative to the Union, but many Southerners resisted the innovation of female hospital nursing. Conflicting expectations produced ambivalence in potential nurses, soldiers , and families on the home front, limiting the number of women who successfully channeled their desire to help into actual hospital labor. On the other hand, the conditions of war opened up the field of institutional nursing to women willing to brave hostility, and those who persevered found immense gratitude from the soldiers and even public renown awaiting them. Physicians and the home front, initially divided on the issue of female nursing, increasingly came to accept the innovation as women proved their worth in hospitals. Those in favor of female nurses stressed women’s natural skills and sympathy as caregivers, their proclivity for self-sacrifice, and their duty to help protect the moral and physical integrity of their homes, men, and country. Women were motivated to seek positions as nurses by patriotic fervor, a sense of duty, and a belief they could be of use. Regardless of individual motivations , beliefs, and rationalizations, volunteering as a Civil War nurse was a decidedly political act, as women hoped to actively aid the cause. These women did not seek professional experience or hope to become career nurses. They reasoned that if they could not fight, they could at least take care of those who did, an extension of their domestic duties. Wartime hospital life, however, presented novel challenges that expanded women’s realm of experience and fostered an expanded sense of female agency and nationalism. As they developed strong bonds with their patients and realized that their labor significantly contributed to soldiers’ physical and mental well-being, matrons and nurses began to associate care of individual fighting men with maintaining the health and morale of the army and the nation. The initial motivations of Confederate and Union women overlapped. Jane Schultz has written that for many nurses “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.” Union and Confederate women enthusiastically supported their respective governments , and a number of Northern nurses had abolitionist leanings. Though primarily spurred by patriotic impulses, young Union women often openly cited adventure as a secondary motivation. On both sides, women wished they could fight and viewed nursing as their gendered wartime option. Confederate women always couched their sense of adventure in these terms. Southern women also remained far more circumspect about the issue of compensation throughout the war...