Women Nurses in the Civil War

Before the Civil War, most nurses in the United States were male. Women in the U.S. knew of Florence Nightingale, a British nurse who successfully served on the battlefield, but social taboos prevented well-to-do women from working outside the home. A "working woman" was an object of pity or scorn in Victorian America.

At the beginning of the war, Union Army leadership realized that they needed more medical staff and decided to accept women nurses to fill the gap. Dorothea Dix was chosen as the first superintendent of U.S. Army nurses in June 1861. Dix insisted that her nurses be between thirty-five and fifty years old, in good health, of high moral standards, not too attractive, and willing to dress plainly. Over three thousand nurses served the Union through Dix's appointments.

Northern women also found ways to volunteer as nurses without going through Dix. Regional aid societies would certify women as official nurses if they had already proven their worth as volunteers in Union hospitals, regardless of Dix's guidelines. Some experienced female nurses served, such as Catholic nuns, but any matronly, responsible woman could qualify during the Civil War. The escalating war required still more medical staff, and in 1863 the Union Army allowed surgeons to choose their own nurses.

Army surgeons and other male staff were not always happy to see women entering their domain. Without authority over hospitals or other medical staff, women nurses found ways to accomplish their goals despite male resistance. When they could not cajole, reason, or shame Army doctors into improving conditions for the patients, the women worked around them.

In addition to providing medical care, the women nurses comforted and fed patients, wrote letters, read, and prayed. They managed supplies and staffed hospital kitchens and laundries. African-American nurses were often confined to menial labor jobs, ordered to work among the most dangerously ill patients, or assigned to care for African-American soldiers.

Female nurses in the North and South went bravely where few Victorian women had dared tread. Many would consider their experiences to be among the definitive ones of their lives, leading many to further social and political service. Showing a high level of determination, knowledge, and emotional and physical strength, these women succeeded in opening the nursing profession to future women.

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Nurse Annie Bell with patients after the Battle of Nashville. This image was used by the Sanitary Commission during its Northwest Sanitary Fair in Chicago in 1865.

Burghardt, born in Massachusetts, was working as a governess in New York when the Civil War began. One of the youngest applicants accepted by Dorothea Dix, she served as a nurse in Washington, D.C., Antietam, Gettysburg, Fortress Monroe, Winchester, and Alexandria. <br><br>

She was one of five nurses sent to Wilmington, North Carolina, to receive and care for Union soldiers who were released from Andersonville Prison. Burghardt's dark hair reportedly turned white from the strain of her one month of service there. Her fellow nurses were not as lucky—three died, and the other became an invalid for life from diseases contracted from the men. Burghardt returned to Washington with a load of forty men who had lost their feet while imprisoned in the South. <br><br>

Burghardt served until September 1865, making her the second longest serving nurse under Dix's authority. After the war, she attended Howard University, then the only college in Washington that accepted female students. She graduated from the Medical Department in 1878. Dr. Burghardt practiced medicine in Washington and also worked for the Treasury Department. When Burghardt died in 1922, she was buried in Arlington National Cemetery in a section with her fellow Army nurses of the Civil War.

Ropes of Massachusetts married in 1834, but when her husband left the family for unknown reasons, she was left to raise their two children alone. As head of her own household, she became active in her community as a nurse and a member of the abolitionist movement. Her strong beliefs led her to briefly immigrate to Kansas in 1855 to further the anti-slavery cause in that contested territory. Forced by escalating violence to leave Kansas in April 1856, Ropes published a book about her experiences. This was followed three years later by a novel; meanwhile, her activities with political and benevolent projects increased. <br><br>

In June 1862, Ropes settled her affairs at home and traveled to Washington, D.C., to volunteer as a nurse in a military hospital. She was assigned as matron at Union Hotel Hospital in Georgetown, one of the poorest facilities in the Washington area. Ropes took steps to improve conditions and management of the hospital for the good of the enlisted soldiers there. When the surgeon general refused to assist in her efforts, she took her complaints to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, resulting in the arrest of the chief surgeon and steward of the hospital. Louisa May Alcott, who worked as nurse at the hospital, was impressed by Ropes's genuine concern for her patients. Ropes's dedication cost her life—after only six months of service, she died of typhoid pneumonia contracted in the course of her duties.

Alcott, best remembered as the author of Little Women, was raised in Boston and Concord, Massachusetts. Educated as a school teacher, she began teaching at age sixteen, but found that she preferred writing. In November 1862, she applied for a nursing position to more actively support the Union war effort.<br><br>

Arriving at Georgetown's Union Hotel Hospital in December 1862, Alcott soon dubbed it the "Hurly-burly House." Conditions in the small hospital were terrible, a fact also noted by the United States Sanitary Commission in a July 1861 report. Alcott contracted typhoid fever while working at the hospital. She would suffer the effects of her illness, and its treatment with medicine containing poisonous mercury, for the rest of her life.
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Sent home to recover, Alcott turned her six weeks of experience into Hospital Sketches, first published as a serial in a magazine and later compiled as a book. Hospital Sketches exposed conditions in the military hospitals causing a public outcry that led to hospital reform. Demand for more of her writings led to literary success after the war.

"Aunty" Bigelow, a native of Washington, D.C., became a regular visitor at Indiana Hospital in the Patent Office Building during 1861. Although not an official nurse, her demonstrated skill was welcomed in the crowded wards. When unable to visit, she would send special foods for the soldiers, especially her hot cakes, mush and milk, and custards. Bigelow opened her home to sick soldiers who did not want to stay in the hospitals and to hospital workers who were new to the city. As the war progressed, she became a distributer of donations from aid societies in the North. Bigelow continued her labors through the end of the war despite the loss of her husband to illness.

Sisters Georgeanna and Eliza were two of four sisters of the Woolsey family who volunteered as nurses during the Civil War. Georgeanna volunteered as a nurse through the Women's Central Relief Agency of New York and had one month of training with them before her first assignment at the Georgetown Hospital. She then assisted in setting up a hospital in the Patent Offices in Washington, D.C., a building that now houses the National Portrait Gallery.
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Eliza ministered to the men serving under her husband, Colonel Joseph Howland of the 16th New York Infantry Regiment, until they began an active campaign. Unable to get permission to follow her husband, Eliza, along with Georgeanna, worked as a nurse in the headquarters of the U.S. Sanitary Commission Hospital Transport Service during the spring of 1862.
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Georgeanna was then assigned as assistant superintendent of Portsmouth Grove General Hospital in Washington. She lived with Eliza who served in hospitals in the capital until war ended. In the spring of 1863, Georgeanna was assigned to serve in the field, serving at Falmouth, Gettysburg, Belle Plain, Port Royal, Fredericksburg, White House, and City Point, Virginia. In 1863, Georgeanna published a book about her experiences at Gettysburg and in 1899 published the family's letters describing the sisters' experiences as nurses.