Civil War Nurse: The Diary and Letters of Hannah Ropes (review)

286civil war history ministers nurtured the myth through jeremiads, organizations, and Lost Cause colleges. It has already been shown that there developed an orthodox version of the history of the war which was celebrated with its own rituals, slogans, and special days, but Wilson details how this orthodoxy combined with the evangelical Protestantism of the South. And he counterpoints this Lost Cause cult against the American civil religion as discussed by Robert E. Bellah, Sidney Mead, and Will Herberg. Even with his study of the major southern church sources, Wilson's approach has a handicapping narrowness. He ignores the nonmainstream churches that attracted those who saw the Lost Cause as a rich man's war and a poor man's fight. Also, labeling the Lost Cause a civil religion would be even more convincing if he had more consistently included secular sources. Religious periodicals and clerical utterances would be expected to put such a momentous event, indeed any event, in a religious context. The rather exclusive focus on Christian leadership in Wilson's religious myth leaves out the bivouacs, marches, charges, wins and losses that consumed the time and interest of most Civil War devotees. The clergyman William Nelson Pendleton was a defender of the Christ-like Lee, but he was also a fomenter of the attack on Longstreet's specific actions at Gettysburg. Yet Baptized in Blood is still a small, useful building block in constructing the total ediface of the Lost Cause which will hopefully some day be constructed in Civil War historiography. Susan Durant University of Kentucky Ctot/ War Nurse: The Diary and Letters of Hannah Ropes. Edited by John R. Brumgardt. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1980. Pp. xiv, 149. $11.50.) The role nurses played during the Civil War was an extensive one; in fact, they were the backbone of the North's Sanitary Commission. Despite their invaluable work, their experiences have not been related in depth. Ctut'Z War Nurse is a welcome addition to the primary literature on the United States medical corps. It is the story ofHannah Ropes, wife and mother (although her husband deserted her), abolitionist, feminist, and nurse. Born and raised in Maine, she spent a short time in Kansas before finally settling in Massachusetts. She was also an author: she wrote a book about her life in the West, titled Six Months in Kansas, Bya Lady (1856), and a fictional work titled Cranston House: A Novel (1859) . There is evidence that she also intended to publish the diary she kept during the Civil War. Ropes was appointed matron of the Union Hospital in Georgetown in July 1862. It is her tenure at the hospital which is recorded in Civil War Nurse. Not only do her diary and correspondence (which is mainly with BOOK REVIEWS287 her daughter Alice) provide details of the daily work, but they also give insight on other matters as well. Ropes described her ongoing battles with the chief surgeon and the surgeon general in improving hospital conditions for "her boys." She was greatly concerned about thepatients' welfare and did everything in her power to see that they were well-fed and cared for and protected from the petty larceny that was rampant among the hospital staff. Ropes had some political clout, which aided her in fighting government bureaucracy. She was well acquainted with Senator Charles Sumner and greatly admired him. Ropes also knew Edwin M. Stanton; she believed him to be a decent person who cared about the soldiers' welfare. It was Stanton who came down on Ropes's side in getting á dishonest chief hospital steward fired and jailed. What comes through in Ropes's diary and letters is a portrait of a caring, yet astute individual who would go to great lengths to help those in her charge. Unfortunately, the record she left behind is all too tantalizingly brief and incomplete; she died in January 1863 of typhoid pneumonia. John Brumgardt has done an admirable job in editing Ropes's papers. He provides a lengthy introduction recounting her life and work prior to the Civil War. He has also included commentary throughout the text itself, where he discusses the progress of the war, personalities involved...