Kate: The Journal of a Confederate Nurse (review)

316civil war history his own set of values), who could take his wife to task for calling their newborn babe "cherub," or who could disrupt an army post by publicly charging his commanding officer with unauthorized hanky-panky involving a servant girl? Not until I had read this book did I fully realize just how unattractive a person Stonewall really was. Mr. Chambers necessarily covers a good bit of familiar ground. The story of the industrious orphan boy who plodded his way through West Point, of the promising young junior officer in the Mexican War, of the pedestrian professor at the Virginia Military Institute, and of the spectacularly successful Confederate commander is one that is already generally known. It is the author's contention that the thirty-nine years of Jackson's life divide naturally into two periods: the first thirty-seven and the last two. He believes that the character traits which made for greatness in the field were already fully developed when that officer marched away to war in 1861. The maps are excellent; they make it relatively easy to follow the author's narrative. A mild complaint might be lodged against the decision to place all the notes in the back of the second volume, though this is admittedly a minor criticism of a major work. Otis A. Singletary The University of Texas Kate: The Journal of a Confederate Nurse. Edited by Richard Barksdale Harwell. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 1959. Pp. xx, 321. $6.00.) copies of Kate cumming's diary published in 1866 have come to rest primarily in various rare book collections, known only to serious students of the Civil War. However, Richard Harwell's edition of this work, Kate: The Journal of a Confederate Nurse, brings the informative, meticulously kept record to all who have an interest in the period. It is an eyewitness account of the war, and more particularly, of the inner workings of the hospital service, as described by a discerning, intelligent woman who gave three years of her life to nursing the sick and wounded. The Scottish-born, Alabama-bred Kate Cumming was, as Mr. Harwell so aptly characterizes her, "a lady." Indeed, she was in so many ways a typical Victorian lady, despite the fact that she dared to enter a heretofore masculine profession, that of an army nurse. She was in her late twenties or early thirties (there is some doubt as to her exact age, which may make her typical of her sex) when she decided to offer her services to the Confederacy over the protests of her family. In April, 1862, she reported for duty in Okolona, Mississippi, in time to nurse the Shiloh casualties, and from that time until the end of the war she served in hospitals attached to the Army of Tennessee in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Georgia. Wherever the hospitals moved, Miss Cumming moved with them, proving herself more adjustable to the nomadic life than did many of her colleagues, male or female. Her days were filled with problems and heart-rending experiences, but seldom did she complain, for they were but a part of the job she had Book Reviews317 undertaken to do. Daily irritations, privations, hardships, and inconveniences did not overwhelm and defeat Kate Cumming as they did many of her contemporaries. Miss Cumming was not an effervescent person, and her diary does not abound with sparkling chit-chat which characterizes many similar accounts. Hers is not filled with idle gossip and trivialities, or with petty and malicious comments. Rather, it is the record of a serious-minded woman who kept busy attending to the tasks assigned her. When she inserted a current rumor in the record, it was briefly stated and usually dismissed with an air of indifference. She was determined and dedicated, and much of the time she was stolid and stoical to an almost annoying degree, but she was also efficient, business-like, selfless, and courageous. She graciously rendered any service she thought necessary, and she could be cook or confidante, seamstress or supervisor, fugitive or forager as circumstances demanded. Amid it all, she seldom gave vent to her emotions, but the one thing that did...