Women in the Civil War

by Larry G. Eggleston

  Mary Ann Ball Bickerdyke. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

  Mary Ann later caught one of the ward masters wearing clothing meant for the wounded soldiers. She made the disgraced ward master stand in front of the patients, strip down to his underwear, and return the clothing.

  She had no real authority but her strong manner and determination was such that very few ever questioned her. Once when a surgeon challenged her as to who gave her authority to do what she was doing, she replied, “I have received my authority from the Lord God Almighty. Have you anything that ranks higher than that?”

  She later had to challenge a military order when supplies were not getting to the wounded soldiers fast enough. General Sherman issued an order to ban rail travel. She left her duties in the field and went to see him at his headquarters. Bursting into his office unannounced, she demanded that he lift the ban so she could get needed supplies and food to the wounded and sick soldiers. She told him to have a little common sense. He looked at her and asked her if she had ever heard of insubordination. She quickly responded, “You bet I’ve heard of it … it’s the only way I ever get anything done in this army.” General Sherman relented and signed an order allowing trains to carry food and supplies to the troops.

  When General Grant headed down the Mississippi River, Mother Bickerdyke went along to set up field hospitals. She soon realized that the troops were not getting enough dairy products and without proper diets their health could be at risk. She headed back up the river to Illinois where she convinced the local farmers to donate 200 milk cows and 1,000 hens to the army. She also organized a convoy to take the animals down river to the troops near Memphis, Tennessee.

  She was always searching for ways to help the sick and wounded soldiers. She was usually the last one off the battlefield at night, as she searched to see that all wounded soldiers were taken to the aid stations for treatment.

  After one major battle, Major General John Alexander “Black Jack” Logan was resting in his tent when he noticed a light out on the battlefield. He had his orderly check it out and bring whoever it was to him. It was Mary Ann Bickerdyke. She was turning bodies over to make sure that anyone still alive had not been missed. General Logan was very impressed with Mary Ann and often called on her to provide for his men. He also invited her to ride by his side in the gala parade in Washington, D.C., after the war was over.

  Mary Ann Bickerdyke was also active in the Underground Railroad. She would use runaway Negro slaves to help her in the hospitals and nursing stations. She would teach them and feed them in return for their help.

  In early 1865 while speaking for the Sanitary Commission in a church in Brooklyn, New York, she was explaining how she had on many occasions bound the stumps of soldiers’ amputated legs and arms with old rags and how there was a need for bandages. To the surprise of the congregation she then asked all the ladies in the church to stand up and pull up their dresses. She asked that they each drop one of their many petticoats so she could use them for bandages. Once they understood what she was asking, the ladies complied with the request. She filled three trunks with the petticoats and within three weeks she was using them to bandage the terrible sores of the many sick prisoners released from the Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia.

  At the end of the war she marched at the head of General Sherman’s army in a parade past the White House.

  She resigned from the Sanitary Commission after the Civil War was over and devoted the rest of her life to charitable causes. She died in 1901.

  Mary Ann Bickerdyke served her country with courage and dedication. Her efforts in the hospitals and on the battlefields of 19 major battles saved many soldiers from disease and death.

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  Clara Barton: Union Nurse and Humanitarian

  She was the first woman to be hired for a government job in Washington, D.C., the first woman to be the head of a government agency and the first woman nurse to arrive on the Civil War battlefields. These are among the great accomplishments of Clara Barton, one of history’s most extraordinary women.

  Clara Barton was born on Christmas Day, 1821, in North Oxford, Massachusetts, and named Clarissa Harlow Barton. Clara was the youngest of five children in her family.

  Clara was quite a gifted young woman with a knack for organization, teaching, and helping others. She began teaching at the age of 15. She taught in North Oxford for ten years and then at the Clinton Liberal Institute in Clinton, New York, for two years. She left teaching to go to Washington, D.C., and accepted a job with the U.S. Patent Office as a clerk. She was the first woman to be hired for a government job in Washington.

  Clara was 39 years old and still working at the U.S. Patent Office in April 1861 when the Civil War began. After the Battle of First Manassas/Bull Run on July 21, 1861, the wounded soldiers were brought into Washington for treatment. The Senate Chambers were used as a temporary hospital. Clara began spending time away from the Patent Office helping nurse the fallen soldiers. Her superiors reprimanded her for not staying on the job in the Patent Office, but she ignored the reprimand and continued to aid the wounded soldiers. She was soon terminated for not heeding the warning. This did not bother Clara because she had discovered her true calling in life.

  There were over 3,000 sick and wounded soldiers housed in the Senate building. Clara wrote a letter to the Worcester, Massachusetts, Spy asking for donations of food, clothing, and bandages for the wounded soldiers. The response was overwhelming and supplies began to pour in. Clara was now sure of her mission. She began writing other newspaper ads for money and supplies for the camps and battlefields around Washington, D.C. These ads were carried in most of the newspapers in the northeast.

  Many different types of organizations began to send money and supplies. The responding organizations included churches, civic groups, clubs, sewing circles, and individual donors. She soon had amassed three warehouses full of goods and supplies and with the use of four borrowed army wagons she and her helpers made daily deliveries to the camps and battlefields and army hospitals around Washington, D.C.

  Clara continued her nursing of the fallen soldiers and in August 1861 the U.S. Congress finally approved the use of female nurses in the army hospitals. This was five months after the war began and was the result of the large number of soldiers needing help and the desperate shortage of trained male nurses. Statistics reveal that two and one-half Union soldiers died of disease to every one who was killed in battle. The rate for the Confederacy was three soldiers died from disease to every one killed in battle. The nursing requirements during the Civil War were enormous.

  In early 1862 Clara Barton decided that she would have a better chance of saving lives if she were on the battlefield. After some convincing by Clara, Surgeon General William A. Hammond approved her request to go onto the battlefields. She was supplied with an army wagon fully loaded with medical supplies and water, the first woman nurse to arrive and serve on the battlefields.

  By the end of 1862 Clara Barton had been on the battlefield during some of the fiercest battles of the war including the Battle of Second Manassas/Bull Run, the Battle of Chantilly, the Battle of Antietam, and the Battle of Fredericksburg. Her untiring efforts, bravery, and dedication soon earned her the nickname “The Angel of the Battlefield.”

  At the Battle of Antietam she set up a nursing station in a nearby farmhouse. In addition to the nursing station she also went on to the battlefield at Antietam to help wounded soldiers. She gave them what aid they needed and helped them to the nursing station.

  Clara had many close calls while on the battlefields. Her clothing would be riddled with holes from minié balls and shell fragments. On one occasion she was helping a fallen soldier at Antietam by holding him up so he could get a drink of water when a Confederate minié ball pierced her sleeve and struck the soldier she was holding. He died in her arms.

  Clara continued her service to the Union soldiers throughout the war even though she was never officially attached t
o the U.S. Army.

  On March 11, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln issued a press release for information on missing soldiers. This information was for a new government agency, which he set up, called Missing Soldiers Office. It was located on the third floor, room nine, in an office building halfway between the White House and the Capitol Building. President Lincoln appointed Clara Barton to head the office. She was the first woman to head a government agency in Washington, D.C.

  Clara Barton. Courtesy of Leib Image Archives.

  The press release from President Lincoln read as follows:

  March 11, 1865

  To the friends of missing persons; Miss Clara Barton has kindly offered to search for the missing prisoners of war. Please address her at Annapolis, giving her the name, regiment and company of any missing prisoner.

  A. Lincoln

  Clara headed the office for four years. In that time she helped over 22,000 families discover the fate of their missing loved ones.

  The number of missing soldiers located by Clara Barton’s agency was only a small portion of those unaccounted for. By the end of the Civil War, only 172,400 Union dead were identified and their graves marked, even though there were 315,515 graves found. There were also 43,973 more deaths recorded during the war than the amount of known graves.

  Some of the most valuable assistance she received while trying to locate missing prisoners of war was from a young Union corporal named Dorance Atwater of the 2nd New York Cavalry. Dorance was captured at Hagerstown, Maryland, on July 7, 1863. He was sent to Belle Island Prison in Richmond, Virginia. When the Confederacy closed Belle Island Prison and transferred all the prisoners to Camp Sumter in Andersonville, Georgia, Dorance Atwater was put in charge of the books in which a daily record of deaths were recorded.

  Dorance, realizing that this information could be valuable to relatives and loved ones, decided to make a duplicate record for himself. When he was exchanged in March 1865, he took the list with him, hidden in the lining of his coat. He notified Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and requested 30 days leave to publish the Death Register. He was called to the Secretary of War’s office where Major Samuel Breck offered Dorance $300 for the list. Dorance explained that he did not want to sell it, but only wished to have it published for the benefit of the soldiers’ families and friends. Major Breck then warned Dorance that he could either take the $300 or if he tried to publish the list it would be confiscated. Dorance Atwater accepted the $300 with a promise of a clerkship in the War Department and the return of his original register when the government was done with it.

  Dorance Atwater. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

  While waiting for the government to publish the list, Dorance learned of Clara Barton and her work to locate missing prisoners of war. He met with her and explained the method of burial of the soldiers and showed her the second copy of the list he had made for himself.

  Clara called on Commissary General of Prisons, Hoffman, and asked him to send an expedition to Andersonville, Georgia, to identify and mark the graves of the Union soldiers. The request was approved. The expedition was led by Captain James M. Moore and included two clerks, 12 carpenters, 12 letterers, and seven laborers along with Clara Barton and Dorance Atwater.

  Captain Moore was not pleased that Clara Barton came along on the expedition. He did not think a woman had any place in his crew. He avoided her and Dorance as much as possible. The crew built a fence around the cemetery, reburied some of the dead whose graves were exposed, and placed wooden markers on each grave showing the name, rank, regiment, and state of the soldier.

  Proper identification was made of 12,912 graves. However, on 460 of the grave markers, the statement “Unknown Union Soldier” was written.

  When Clara Barton and Dorance Atwater returned to Washington, Clara contacted a friend on the New York Tribune staff and supplied him the list of names from Andersonville. The story and the list were then published as a supplement to the paper.

  When Major Breck saw the list published he had Dorance arrested and court-martialed because he had previously warned Dorance not to publish the list. Dorance was tried by court martial and received a $300 fine, a dishonorable discharge, and 18 months in prison.

  Dorance was placed in Old Capitol Prison, which was the same prison in which Confederate Captain Henry Wirz was being held. Dorance remarked that Captain Wirtz was being tried for the murder of 13,000 Union prisoners while commandant of Andersonville Prison and he was being tried for copying the burial register of those murdered men and publishing it so the families and friends could know where their loved ones are buried.

  Clara Barton was quite angry when she learned of the treatment of Dorance Atwater. She began to call on all her contacts on Capitol Hill to intercede for him. She got a copy of the court martial proceedings and tried to get a new trial. Finally, after two months, Dorance Atwater was released from prison by a general presidential pardon for all persons convicted by court martial of crimes other than murder.

  Because of this great service to the Union, Dorance Atwater was appointed as United States Consul to the Seychelle Islands on the coast of Africa and later U.S. Consul to Tahiti. He married a Tahitian princess and lived out his remaining life in California where he died in 1910 at the age of 65.

  Clara Barton served with the International Red Cross during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. She followed German troops into Strasbourg after the 30-day siege and remained there for six months while setting up relief programs for the sick and wounded.

  In 1876, she had a nervous breakdown and was sent to a sanitarium in Dansville, New York, where she recovered over a two-year period.

  She went on to organize and set up the American National Red Cross, which received official recognition of the president in late 1881. She was the president of the American Red Cross until 1904.

  In 1898, at the age of 76, she went to Cuba during the Spanish American War to set up Red Cross relief on the battlefields.

  Clara Barton died at her Glen Echo home outside of Washington, D.C., in 1912 at the age of 91. She had actively participated in three major wars of the 19th century. She spent her life caring for others. Her compassion, courage, and dedication rank her very high among the great women of American history. The world is indeed a better place because of her.

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  Civil War Nurses

  The United States Congress approved the use of female nurses in military hospitals in August 1861. This change of policy prompted thousands of women to volunteer their services to help the sick and wounded soldiers.

  Louisa May Alcott—Nurse and Author

  One of these volunteers was a 30-year-old woman from Concord, Massachusetts, named Louisa May Alcott.

  Louisa May Alcott felt a deep patriotic desire to help her country. She volunteered to serve as a nurse in December 1862. When she was accepted she ran home to her family and announced, “I have enlisted!” This excitement and desire for adventure would soon change as she encountered her first glimpse of the horror of war.

  She was assigned to work in a Union hospital in Washington, D.C. The hospital was converted from an old musty Georgetown hotel. She arrived in Washington in early December and was assigned to oversee a 40 bed ward which had been the old hotel’s ballroom.

  She was proud and excited about this opportunity to serve her country. She stated that being a nurse was the next best thing to being a soldier.

  Louisa May spent her first morning watching a soldier die and comforting a boy with a bullet wound through his lungs. Within a few hours, wagonloads of wounded soldiers began to arrive from the Battle of Fredericksburg. The battle raged for two days from December 11 through December 12. The hospital became overcrowded with wounded soldiers.

  Being brought into such a situation from a relatively sheltered life, she was hor-

  rified and wished that she were back home in Concord. She commented, “The first thing I met was a regiment of the vilest odors that ever assailed the human nose
.” She carried a vial of lavender water with her to help overcome the odor as she worked on the wounded soldiers.

  She soon realized that nursing was more than just treating wounds. She spent a large part of her days washing the wounded soldiers, serving them food, administering medicine, reading papers to them, writing letters for them, tending the dressings on their wounds, consoling them, and at times even singing to them. Of these duties the one she disliked the most was scrubbing the wounded and maimed with cakes of brown soap.

  After serving for six months in the hospital she became very ill and was diagnosed as having typhoid pneumonia. She was taken home to Concord where she was expected to die. In time, she did recover but never regained her strength. While in the Washington hospital she was nursed by Dorothea Dix. She fondly recalled the experience of Dix, “stealing a moment from her busy life to watch over the stranger of whom she was thoughtfully tender as any mother.”

  During the six months she served at the hospital she wrote letters home to her family about some of the unusual and humorous incidents she encountered as a nurse. These rather amusing letters were first published in the Boston Commonwealth and in 1863 they were put into a book titled Hospital Sketches. The book was widely read and won her praise for her style of writing.

  Her experiences in Washington and the experiences of so many women whose men went to war prompted her to write Little Women, a story about northern sisters during the Civil War. The book was a great success and won her national fame.