A Confederate Nurse: The Diary of Ada W. Bacot, 1860-1863 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS33I and firmly documented biography ofTruth, such questions are perhaps beyond the scope oftheir book. Indeed, it is possible to raise them only because oftheir fine and exhaustive work uncovering the realities of Sojourner Truth's life. Michael D. Pierson Illinois State University A Confederate Nurse: The Diary ofAda W Bacot, 1860-1863. Edited by Jean V. Berlin. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994. Pp. xm, 199. $29.95.) The crucial contributions of women, North and South, to the Civil War are chronicled and analyzed in a sizable and growing literature. A noteworthy addition is A Confederate Nurse: The Diary ofAda W. Bacot, 1860-1863, edited by Jean V. Berlin. Ada Bacot was a young and childless widow from a wealthy upcountry South Carolina family when the hostilities began. Motivated by a passionate patriotism for her state, the desire to aid the Confederate cause, and a growing discontent with the Southern patriarchy, she responded to a call for volunteer nurses, and from December 1 86 1 until late 1 863 served in a Charlottesville , Virginia, hospital—one of a number established on the Virginia front by the South Carolina Hospital Aid Association for the state's soldiers. But Bacot did little nursing, as these duties were largely performed by male ward attendants. She was primarily a housekeeper for the hospital, supervising the preparation of meals, laundering sheets and clothing, and visiting with patients and writing letters for them. As a result, the significance of this diary is not its descriptions of hospital life in the Confederacy but Bacot's narration of her social life in Charlottesville. Despite the disappointing dearth of medical content, Bacot's diary is a useful lens for the role loyal Southern women played in the Civil War and how the hostilities affected them. The war was a turning point in Ada Bacot's life. "For it was," Berlin writes, "the positive lessons she had learned about herself and her abilities during the war and the friendships she made in Charlottesville that brought her the personal satisfaction and independence ofher lateryears" (1 85). The transforming forces in Bacot's case included her deep and evangelical Christian faith, her strong sense of Southern nationalism, the war's expansion ofhorizons and opportunities for women, her desire for social and economic independence , and her hospital experiences. Other Southern women, Berlin contends , were similarly affected and, likeAda Bacot, "found greaterhappiness and fulfillment in their expanded opportunities for meaningful work and friendships outside their previous, and sometimes narrow, social circle" (14). Previously unpublished, Ada Bacot's diary, located at the University of South Carolina, extends from September 11,1 860, to January 1 8, 1 863, and consists of approximately a thousand pages. Because of overlapping and repetitious entries, only portions of the diary have been included in this volume. (The full text is available in the microfilm series American Women 's Diaries, 332CIVIL WAR HISTORY Southern Women, edited by Jan Begos.) Berlin adopted a conservative approach toward editing the diary, leaving Bacot's "loquacious narrative" (xn) virtually intact. Editorial intervention is largely seen in the text's indispensable footnotes which identify persons, places, and events. This newest number in the distinguished series, Women s Diaries and Letters of the Nineteenth-Century South, edited by Carol Bleser, makes a distinct contribution to the literature of the Civil War and to women's history. It especially complements the series's A Woman Doctor 's Civil War: Esther Hill Hawks ' Diary ( 1 984). James O. Breeden Southern Methodist University Confederate Hospitals on the Move: Samuel H. Stout and the Army of Tennessee . By Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994. Pp. 226. $29.95.) For his times, Dr. Samuel H. Stout was a hospital administrative wizard. A practitioner in a small Tennessee town when the Civil War opened, he soon rose to become medical director of hospitals of the Confederate Army of Tennessee. By chance and by design Stout preserved some fifteen hundred pounds of medical records relating to his operation of the hospitals of the Army of Tennessee. A Tennessean, Stout received the M.D. in 1 848 from the University of Pennsylvania . For several years he...