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Women were not known to have jobs outside of being a homemaker until the Civil War. When the war started, men, who were originally the nurses, were sent to fight for their country. Women had to take over the role of men and care for the wounded soldiers. Most ladies were thrown into this field not knowing what a nursing role was or knew what it was and had never had any experience. They worked as caregivers to the soldiers, helping them medically, but also helped them by playing music and keeping them as happy as they could be. A few ladies that I am going to talk about are Adalaide Spurgeon, Caroline Burghardt, Sarah E. Thompson, Emma Southwick Brinton, Mary Ann Bickerdyke, Mary Livermore, and Amanda Akin. These ladies had very interesting stories on how they became a nurse or what they were while they were a nurse. Two of the ladies, Mary Livermore and Amanda Akin, wrote autobiographies to talk about their war experience. These women experienced something that someone today would have no idea about.

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On September 6, 1862, published a drawing titled "The Influence of Women". In the engraving, women fulfill many important roles for the war effort, from sewing shirts and knitting socks as part of the sanitary commission, to washing clothing for soldiers as camp aides, as well as acting as "sisters of charity" ministering to soldiers in the field hospitals and helping wounded soldiers write letters back home. Many of these women depict efforts to heal and care for soldiers. The Harper's Weekly picture shows the culmination of women's efforts to take a more active and public role in the medical field serving as nurses treating wounded soldiers during the Civil War.

Prior to the Civil War, there were very few female nurses who publicly practiced medicine. Privately women often took care of sick family members within the home, but most doctors were men and did not routinely use the help of nurses. One of the few aspects of public medicine that few women practiced in the 19 th century was midwifery in which they helped other women bear a child. When the Civil War began, both the Confederate and Union medical departments preferred having men rather than female nurses work in hospitals. Medical officers did not think that women had the constitution and hardiness for the hard work and were willing to follow military etiquette. Logistically, officers not want to expend the effort to provide the separate accommodations that were thought necessary for women to stay at the hospitals. However, this changed during the first few months of the war as medical departments on both sides were unprepared for the number of wounded soldiers that needed treatment in the hospitals. For example, throughout April and May 1861 too few medical stewards (male nurses) were assigned to hospitals. As a result, soldiers recovering from a disease or minor injuries were often ordered to assist their fellow patients. One soldier recovering in a hospital who experience this system remarked:
In the hospital, men lie on rotten straw...the nurses are convalescent soldiers, so nearly sick themselves that they ought to be in the wards, and from their very feebleness they are selfish and sometimes inhuman in their treatment of patients. If we could be sure of being half-way well cared for when we get sick or wounded, it would take away immensely from the horrors of army life.
Having sick and wounded soldiers caring for others did not work well and as early as June 1861 private aid groups such as Sanitary Commissions and Relief Societies, as well as the military, started to recruit female nurses to work in the hospitals. One of the most famous women who helped recruit nurses over the course of the Civil War was Dorothea Dix, who was appointed as the Superintendent of Nurses for the Union Army in June 1861. Dorothea Dix helped set the standard of qualifications for women in the nursing corps.

In order for a woman to become a nurse, she had to be between the age of 35-50, be in good health, be of decent character or "plain looking", be able to commit to at least three months of service, and be able to follow regulations and the directions of supervisors. Dix even went so far as to say that women had to wear unhooped black or brown dresses, with no jewelry or cosmetics.

Women were able to join the war effort as nurses in a variety of ways. They could apply to join the nursing corps through the approval of sanitary commissions or superintendents such as Dorothea Dix, or they could be contract nurses hired on location based on need. In addition to white women, African American women worked in hospitals. Freed women were sometimes hired as contract nurses to both Confederate and Union hospitals, while some enslaved women were hired out to Confederate hospitals by their enslavers. If a woman was assigned to work in a hospital, she completed a wide variety of tasks to care for and treat the wounded.

Similar to their pre-war experiences at home, women stepped into the domestic and caring aspects of the hospitals treating wounded soldiers. Not only did they provide medical care changing bandages and administering medicine, they also fed, clothed, and washed patients. In addition to providing physical care, they also offered mental care, comforting soldiers by writing letters, praying with them, and reading to them. Nurses also worked behind the scenes assisting with the management of supplies and operating the hospital kitchens and laundries. However, roles assigned to women often varied by race and class. Throughout the South, enslaved and free Black women were assigned more tedious positions such as cooks, laundresses, and chambermaids (cleaning bedpans and other messes). In many Union hospitals, the only patients they treated were African American soldiers, contrabands, and the other nurses while they were ill. Similar discrimination was seen in other Northern hospitals with lower-class and immigrant women being assigned the more menial roles in the hospitals.

The tasks for a nurse were both physically and mentally challenging. Most women never experienced a military hospital before and faced a steep learning curve once they encountered wounded soldiers. For some women, their first experiences were emotionally draining. Cornelia McDonald struggled on her first day working in a Winchester hospital after she stumbled over a pile of amputated limbs and was asked to clean a soldier's face wound. Another Virginian nurse, Sarah Pryor, even passed out on her first day. Amy Morris Bradley, who was aiding the wounded at Fair Oaks was told by a surgeon to stop crying. It was only then she realized "that tears must be choked back...ACTION was the watchword of the hour!". Not only where the sights of a hospital a struggle for nurses to overcome, the work was physically demanding as well.

Typically, nurses in hospitals were divided into shifts. At the Academy Hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee nurses were divided into two shifts of twelve hours with "the first watch from 6 to 12, the 2d from 12 to 6 o'clk". During each one of these shifts, the floors were to be "scrubbed or dry-rubbed, and swept, bedding changed or arranged, and everything put in order between the hours of 5 ½ and 6 ½ o'clock in the morning, both watches assisting in this labor". During their shifts, nurses would make rounds to check in on their patients, feeding them, changing bandages, and administering medicines. It was during this time that some nurses could stop to talk with patients, write their letters, and provide comfort. Amanda Akin Stearns who worked at the Armory Hospital in Washington D.C, regularly worked an eighteen-hour day. She was "up at six, dispensed medicines, served breakfast, dispensed medicines, served dinner, wrote letters, dispensed medicine, served supper, and wrote letters". Sometimes nurses even made the rounds with the surgeons, assisting with medical procedures if needed. In an Indiana hospital, Elvira Powers was asked to help a surgeon probe a soldier's gangrenous arm. She later wrote in her diary, "It will be necessary to imbibe a little more of the heroic before I can be of much help during an operation" for she nearly fainted.

The number of patients and the types of wounds nurses cared for varied on the location of the hospitals. In the general hospitals further away from the battle lines, nurses cared for soldiers who had already been treated in field hospitals, who after being stabilized had been sent to the general hospitals to recover. Nurses in the hospitals closer to the front lines experienced more battle wounds and critically ill soldiers than the general hospitals. Throughout the city of Richmond, Phoebe Yates Pember cared for as many as 600 patients at Chimborazo Hospital while across the city a group of nuns cared for 500 at a time. In the Union hospitals in Washington D.C. and Alexandria, the number of occupied beds varied from just over 100 in some hospitals to over 2,000. Nurses also had to prepare beds for future battles. Prior to the Battle of the Wilderness, Emily Mason was directed to prepare 800 beds in a hospital outside of Fredericksburg for the incoming wounded. Another nurse in Fredericksburg in 1862 reported that "in one day she had singlehandedly cooked and served 926 rations of soup, farina (a cooked cereal), tea, and coffee".

Serving as nurses in the hospitals was not without danger. Being exposed to wounded soldiers (some with infections) or illness made women vulnerable to getting sick themselves. Additionally, the germ theory was not fully discovered yet and so surgeons and nurses were not wearing gloves, washing hands regularly, nor sanitizing equipment as often as needed. As a result, getting sick in a hospital was a common danger. Louisa May Alcott, author of Hospital Sketches and Little Women served as a nurse at the Union Hospital in Washington D.C. beginning in December 1862. By January 1863 she was sick with typhoid pneumonia and was so ill she went home, ending her short career as a Civil War nurse. Many nurses over the course of the Civil War contracted a variety of diseases. While many survived, some died. Amanda Kimble served in a hospital south of Philadelphia and worked for only thirty-five days treating patients returning from the prison camp at Andersonville when she succumbed to typhoid. Several hospitals also had wards for soldiers infected with smallpox. Because of the severity of the disease, many of the women assigned to these wards were often either African Americans or immigrants. In Knoxville's Asylum General Hospital, Malinda McFarland Jackson contracted smallpox and soon died. She was only fifteen years old.

At the start of the Civil War, some women argued that the war "was as much a woman's war as it was a man's war". Over 21,000 women served in Union military hospitals and a similar number is estimated for the Confederacy, with 10% of those women being African American. However, because many Southerners nursed soldiers in local homes or churches, their service was never entered into the military service and so an exact number is unknown. Serving in the hospitals was one of the few ways that women could participate in the war and one of the ways they felt the most useful. One nurse, Ella Wolcott wrote:

I have been a 'female nurse' since a year ago last October and only regret that I did not go in the beginning when a mistaken humility is all that withheld me...I went in with many misgivings-but now I KNOW that women are worth in the hospitals. It is no light thing to hear a man say he owes you his life and then to know that mother, wife, sister, or child bless you in their prayers.

The Civil War allowed women to take a more active role outside of the home, serving as nurses in the hospitals, taking leading roles in sanitary commissions, as well as taking work in clerical roles in the government. Once women started working in public, it ultimately proved difficult for all women to return back to the domestic sphere after the war, paving the way for future generations to join the workforce, receive an education, vote, and take a more active role in society that many take for granted today.

Further Reading

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On September 6, 1862, published a drawing titled "The Influence of Women". In the engraving, women fulfill many important roles for the war effort, from sewing shirts and knitting socks as part of the sanitary commission, to washing clothing for soldiers as camp aides, as well as acting as "sisters of charity" ministering to soldiers in the field hospitals and helping wounded soldiers write letters back home.

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Adelaide Spurgeon was originally born in England, but came to the United States in 1860. She worked with smallpox patients while other nurses did not want to. She got sick with blood poisoning, but this led to her second job, keeping soldiers in line.

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Caroline Burghardt was related to one of the Generals, but she still had to get special permission to become a nurse due to her being under 30 years old. At this time, a woman had to be 30 or older to become a nurse for the war. She was able to get the role easier because she did have some experience at a previous hospital. Unfortunately, “During her years of service, she contracted smallpox and yellow fever, which allowed her to receive an invalid's pension” (Lange). She was highly respected by Dorothea Dix, “Superintendent of Army nurses” (Lange).

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Sarah E. Thompson did not start out as a nurse for the Civil War. At 16, she married Sylvanius Thompson and also gave birth to two daughters. Sylvanius joined the Army as a recruiter and she worked alongside him. During this time, her husband was killed by the other side, so she did all she could to find the man that did this. John H. Morgan, the person that shot Thompson’s Husband, was found by her and was shot and killed. After this she served as Army nurse throughout the war. She then made a living by talking about her experience in the war. She still had to support her daughters.

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Sarah Elizabeth Thompson
Tennessee Widow and Spy
1838 - 1909 A.D.
By Anne Adams

On that day in September 1864 as Greenville, Tennessee widow Sarah Elizabeth Thompson was working in her kitchen her ordinary domestic routine turned into an encounter with a Confederate "freebooter," a ride for help, and then a quick glance into a neighbor's garden. All events that would change her life.

Though Tennessee did not officially secede from the union during the Civil War, its citizens were divided, with some supporting the Union and others the Confederacy. In East Tennessee, where Sarah lived, it was generally Union in sentiment though there were a few Confederate sympathizers. And those were the ones who supported Confederate General John Hunt Morgan who led his men in raids on communities throughout the several states, raids that destroyed a great amount of property, civilian and military.

Then in June 1863, Morgan and his men crossed the Ohio River to conduct raids in the area of Cincinnati; but he was eventually cornered, captured and imprisoned in Columbus. However, by April 1864 Morgan and some of his men escaped as the Federals began to track him down.

Though he was on the run with only a small force, Morgan decided to attack a Union cavalry detachment under the command of General Alvan Gillem at Bull's Gap, north of Greeneville so he headed in that direction. When he arrived in the area in September 1864, and entered Sarah's home it was an unfortunate time - for him. For she was anxious to get revenge on the man she thought had inspired her husband's murder.

Sarah's husband Sylvanis had been a recruiter for the Union forces in the Greenville area, but he had been shot and killed in January that year, possibly by brigands attached to Morgan's command. Though details were sketchy, Sarah was sure that Morgan's men had done it and thus she took his visit as a chance to get her revenge.

She herself was involved in espionage for the Union, and in fact just a few weeks before Morgan arrived she had ridden more than 100 miles to and from Knoxville, carrying dispatches. At this time she was 25 and had two young daughters, Lilly and Harriett.

When Morgan arrived at her home she was busy in the kitchen. He swaggered around the house, telling her he was headed for Knoxville, and when he arrived he would send for her since "she would make some Rebel a good wife," as she wrote later. She listened in bitter frustration, but things didn't get any better when some of Morgan's men began to raid her pantry and steal what they could - including her breadbasket.

When he left to head for the nearby home of friends, Sarah decided to take action. Somehow she knew of Morgan's plan to attack the Union detachment at nearby Bull's Gap and she reasoned that if he spent the day and night drinking with his friends he would be in no condition to attack. So to get Federals on the scene before he recovered, she reasoned she needed to inform General Gillem that Morgan was in Greenville.

She avoided Morgan's men on the edge of town, and mounted on a horse acquired from a farmer, she cantered out in a downpour through a dark countryside. Racing past several sleeping communities, eventually she met a mounted sentry with a lantern. Within a few minutes she was speaking with a skeptical General Gillem who not only did not believe Morgan was in Greenville but also didn't want to accept a "woman's tale" as he called it.

Then two of his officers vouched for Sarah since they knew her previous service, so when she returned to Greenville she was accompanied with a force of Union men.

At dawn at his friend's house, Morgan woke up, calling for brandy, but when he saw that the Yankees had arrived he pulled on his trousers over his nightshirt and scrambled out of the door. He sought refuge in a hotel, then a church.

The Union forces with Sarah met no opposition since Morgan's men had fled but they began to search the town for their commander as Sarah returned home to find her children still asleep. She decided to search for herself, so she changed clothes and then set out for the nearby home where Morgan had been staying.

Meanwhile, Morgan had returned to the house but he was hiding nearby after he ducked under the board fence and hid in a grape arbor adjoining the house. He was crouching there as Sarah came by.

Spotting the trouser/nightshirt clad figure among the vines, she called to a Union soldier and told him: "Sir, if you will tear the fence down I assure you will find Morgan!" The soldier pulled the fence board aside, recognized Morgan and called him to surrender. Thinking Morgan was reaching for a weapon; the man fired and killed Morgan.

By evening the rest of Gillem's force arrived just in time to rescue Sarah after her home was invaded by Confederate supporters. Since she obviously couldn't safely stay in town, she was moved with her children out of state where she eventually worked in Federal hospitals.

There arose some controversy as to who exactly identified Morgan, but one supporter of hers claims it was Andrew Johnson, a former neighbor. In a letter of introduction signed in November 1864 just months before he became Vice President, Johnson wrote: "It affords me pleasure to state that the bearer thereof, Mrs. Thompson, .. is pusonally [sic] known to me as an East Tennessee lady of the highest respectability and unquestionably loyal to the Federal Government..."

After the war Sarah went on lecture tours, remarried and had two more children. Then after her second husband's death she moved to Washington seeking employment and though she recently held a $600 a year clerical position at the Treasury Department when funding dried she was unemployed.

A now desperate and also bitter Sarah wrote pleading letters to Congress and the War Department seeking financial support or employment and then with the endorsement of officers who had served at Bull's Gap, she found a job with the Postal Inspector's office.

In the late 1880s Sarah married again but after her husband died she finally obtained a pension by means of an act of Congress. The same bill also offered congressional endorsement of her part in Morgan's death.

After 1900 Sarah lived in Washington where she was active in her local church as well as the women's auxiliary to a national veteran's group. Then after she retired in 1903 to live with a son she was killed in a traffic accident in 1909 and was buried with full military honors at Arlington Cemetery. Today a small regulation headstone marks her grave.

~*~

Anne Adams, a resident of Athens, Texas, is a retired church staffer and has been a writer for many years, publishing in Christian and secular publications. Presently she has a weekly historical column in the Athens Review.

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A magazine highlighting the extraordinary achievements of women throughout history and recognizing the obstacles they have had to overcome in order to reach their goals.

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Emma Southwick Brinton first started working at Mansion House Hospital, then moved to Armory Square Hospital during the war. She was one of very few nurses who was sent to Virginia to work in 10 buildings where men were very hurt and could not care for themselves. “the nurses slept on the floor in the slave quarters of one of the houses.” (Lange). She became sick with typhoid fever and received an invalid’s pension. When the war was over, she married a Civil War surgeon, but he died around 30 years later. After that she worked for the newspaper and traveled.

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Emma Southwick Brinton (née, Southwick; April 7, 1834 – February 25, 1922) was an American Civil War army nurse, traveler, and foreign correspondent.

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Mary Ann Bickerdyke focused more on herbs and medicine and today would be known as a nutritionist. She is so well known for this that she got the nickname ““Mother”” (Sartin).

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Mary Ann Bickerdyke (July 19, 1817 - November 8, 1901), also known as Mother Bickerdyke, was a hospital administrator for Union soldiers during the American Civil War and a lifelong advocate for veterans. She was responsible for establishing 300 field hospitals during the war and served as a lawyer assisting veterans and their families with obtaining pensions after the war.

Mary Ann Ball was born on July 19, 1817, in Knox County, Ohio, to Hiram and Annie Rodgers Ball. She is cited as one of the first women who attended Oberlin College in Ohio, but official records show no proof of attendance. In 1847, she married Robert Bickerdyke, who died in 1859, two years before the Civil War. Together, the Bickerdykes had two sons.

She later moved to Galesburg, Illinois, where she worked as botanic physician and primarily worked with alternative medicines using herbs and plants. Bickerdyke began to attend the Congregational Church in Galesburg shortly after she became a widow.

An engraving of Bickerdyke by Alexander Hay Ritchie, c. 1867

Mary Bickerdyke served in the Civil War from June 9, 1861, to March 20, 1865, working in a total of nineteen battles. Bickerdyke was described as a determined nurse who did not let anyone stand in the way of her duties. Her patients, the enlisted soldiers, referred to her as "Mother" Bickerdyke because of her caring nature. When a surgeon questioned her authority to take some action, she replied, "On the authority of Lord God Almighty, have you anything that outranks that?" In reality, her authority came from her reputation with the Sanitary Commission and her popularity with the enlisted men.

Dr. Woodward, a surgeon with the 22nd Illinois Infantry and a friend of Bickerdyke's, wrote home about the filthy, chaotic military hospitals at Cairo, Illinois. The letter was read aloud in their church and Galesburg's citizens collected $500 worth of supplies and selected Bickerdyke to deliver them (no one else would go). After meeting Mary Livermore, she was appointed a field agent for the Northwestern branch of the Sanitary Commission. Livermore also helped Bickerdyke find care for her two sons in Beloit, Wisconsin, while she was in the field with the army during the later part of the war. Her sons complained about living in Beloit. She stayed in Cairo as a nurse, and while there, she organized the hospitals and gained Grant's appreciation. Grant endorsed her efforts and detailed soldiers to her hospital train, and when his army moved down the Mississippi, Bickerdyke went, too, setting up hospitals where they were needed. Bickerdyke became a matron of the hospital in only five months.

She later joined a field hospital at Fort Donelson, working alongside Mary J. Safford. Bickerdyke cites Fort Donelson, specifically February 15 and 16, as the first battle she witnessed. At Fort Donelson, she realized that laundry services were lacking in the field hospitals. She packed up the soiled clothes and bedding that had been used by the men, added disinfectants, and sent it on a steamer bound for Pittsburg Landing to be cleaned by the Chicago Sanitary Commission. She also requested that her colleagues in Chicago send washing machines, portable kettles, and mangles. She then organized escaped and former slaves to provide laundry services for the hospitals she set up in the field.

After serving at Fort Donelson, she was appointed matron at Gayoso Block Hospital in Memphis. Gayoso had 900 patients, including 400 Native Americans. Like her other hospitals, "Mother" Bickerdyke employed escaped and former slaves at Gayoso. She had left Gayoso to run errands and returned to find the medical director had sent away the escaped and former slaves who helped her provide care for the hospital's patients. She left for dinner but did not return right away. Rather, she visited General Hurlbut's headquarters. She was given written authority to keep her employees until such time as Hurlbut himself revoked the order. She also set about acquiring cows and hens to provide dairy products for the hospital. General Hurlbut set aside President's Island for their pasture and the escaped and former slaves cared for the animals.

Bickerdyke also worked closely with Eliza Emily Chappell Porter of Chicago's Northwestern branch of the United States Sanitary Commission. She later worked on the first hospital boat. During the war, she became chief of nursing under the command of General Ulysses S. Grant, and served at the Battle of Vicksburg. As chief of nursing, Bickerdyke sometimes deliberately ignored military procedure, and when Grant's staff complained about her behavior, Union Gen. William T. Sherman reportedly threw up his hands and exclaimed, "She outranks me. I can't do a thing in the world." Sherman acknowledged that she was "one of his best generals" and other officers referred to her as the "Brigadier Commanding Hospitals." Sherman was especially fond of this volunteer nurse, who followed the western armies. Bickerdyke held the favor of both General Sherman and General Grant, who often provided her whatever she requested of them.

On October 27, 1863, Bickerdyke reported to Chattanooga and was witness to the battle of Lookout Mountain, nicknamed "the battle above the clouds." "I watched the dreadful combat until the clouds hid all from view," she wrote in a letter to Mary Holland, "In fancy I can hear General Hooker's artillery now." Bickerdyke set up the field hospital of the Fifteenth Army Corps for the Battle of Missionary Ridge, where she was the only female attendant for four weeks. Part of her work during this campaign was to collect personal items of soldiers killed in battle and return them to the soldiers' homes. On the march to capture Atlanta, Georgia, despite General Sherman's orders to inflict "all the damage you can against [the enemy's] war resource," Bickerdyke worked to build hospitals for Confederate soldiers.

By the end of the war, with the help of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, Mother Bickerdyke had built 300 hospitals and aided the wounded on 19 battlefields including the Battle of Shiloh and Sherman's March to the Sea. "Mother" Bickerdyke was so loved by the army that the soldiers would cheer her when she appeared. At Sherman's request, she rode at the head of the XV Corps in the Grand Review of the Armies in Washington at the end of the war.

Bickerdyke Memorial in Galesburg, Illinois.

After the war ended, Bickerdyke was employed in several domains. She worked at the Home for the Friendless in Chicago, Illinois in 1866. With the aid of Colonel Charles Hammond, who was president of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad, she helped fifty veterans' families move to Salina, Kansas, as homesteaders. She ran a hotel there with the aid of General Sherman. Originally known as the Salina Dining Hall, it came to be called the Bickerdyke House. Later, she became an attorney, helping Union veterans with legal problems, including obtaining pensions.

General Logan helped her get a job in the San Francisco Mint. She also worked for the Salvation Army there. While in California, she was elected as the first president of Lyon Women's Relief Corps, No. 6 of Oakland, California. She declined, but is on their membership rolls as a charter member.

Bickerdyke received a special pension of $25 a month from Congress after Mary Livermore lobbied on her behalf. This special bill was introduced by Representative Long of Massachusetts. Generals Grant, Sherman, Pope, and Long testified on it. The bill passed on May 9, 1886.

Bickerdyke retired to Bunker Hill, Kansas, to live with her son. In 1901, she died peacefully after a minor stroke and was buried in Galesburg.

Bickerdyke is featured in a memoir of the war, written by Mary Livermore and published in 1887, entitled My Story of the War. Livermore was an official in the U.S. Sanitation Commission.

Clara Barton wrote a poem entitled "The Women Who Went to the Field" that honored Bickerdyke, Cornelia Hancock, Dorothea Dix, Mary Livermore, and Annie Etheridge.

Statues of her have been erected in Galesburg, Illinois and in Mount Vernon, Ohio. The United States government recognized her military achievements with a hospital ship and liberty ship named the SS Mary Bickerdyke launched in October 1943.

The Seminary/Kellogg Street overpass in Galesburg, Illinois opened on November 30, 2014, and is officially named "Bickerdyke Bridge".

Baker, Nina Brown (1952). Cyclone in Calico: The Story of Mary Ann Bickerdyke. Boston: Little, Brown. OCLC 655701.

Chase, Julia A. Houghton (1896). Mary A. Bickerdyke, "Mother". The Life Story of One Who, As Wife, Mother, Army Nurse, Pension Agent and City Missionary, Has Touched the Heights and Depths of Human Life. Lawrence, Kansas: Journal Publishing House. OCLC 15538435.

Tsui, Bonnie (2006). She Went to the Field: Women Soldiers of the Civil War. Guilford, Connecticut: TwoDot. ISBN 9780762743841. OCLC 154202084.

Davis, Margaret B. Mother Bickerdyke: Her Life and Labors for the Relief of Our Soldiers : Sketches of Battle Scenes and Incidents of the Sanitary Service. San Francisco, Cal: A.T. Dewey, 1886. OCLC 36049272 Available online from Internet Archive

Gordon, Sarah H. Bickerdyke, Mary Ann Ball. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Kahler, Bruce R. "Mary Ann "Mother" Bickerdyke: A Gilded Age Icon". John Brown to Bob Dole, 2006. OCLC 68968114

McKown, Robin. Heroic Nurses. New York: Putnam, 1966. OCLC 953066

Moore, Frank (1867). Women of the war. Hartford, CT: S. S. Scranton. pp. 465-472. OL 23268880M.

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Mary Ann Bickerdyke (July 19, 1817 - November 8, 1901), also known as Mother Bickerdyke, was a hospital administrator for Union soldiers during the American Civil War and a lifelong advocate for veterans. She was responsible for establishing 300 field hospitals during the war and served as a lawyer assisting veterans and their families with obtaining pensions after the war.

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Mary Livermore was born into a rich family and was a writer and school teacher. At a young age, she witnessed slavery and was “bitterly opposed” (Choperena) which led her to fight for abolition of slavery for the rest of her life. When the war started, she became a nurse and helped in the “frontlines and in offices” (Choperena).  Livermore helped wounded soldiers, obtained supplies for them, and helped make sure areas and surfaces were sanitized so it would be less likely for an infection to occur if a soldier had an open wound. After the war, she lectured like a lot of women did to talk about their time in the war, but she also wrote a book called My Story of the War (Choperena). In her book, since she was for women’s rights, she talked about her experience as a nurse showing what women can do and what they should be able to do. At this time, women were starting to have jobs like men did instead of being a homemaker, but this brought along issues. “The debate about women's rights became generalized, and a social scenario in which women could publicly examine their own lives was promoted (Conway, 1998; Piepmeier, 2004)” (Choperena), but some people, mostly men, were still against this. Going back to nursing, there were no specialized nurses during the Civil War. Livermore writes in her autobiography that she helped a surgeon when he needed to be assisted dressing a wound (Choperena). She did so many jobs as a nurse, people today would be impressed by what women had to do in the nursing field during the Civil War.

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Amanda Akin's day as a nurse would start at 6:00am and not end until 9:00pm. After dinner time, probably around 5:00pm or so, their medical tasks would be done and they would “[write] letters for the men and attending to the many hospital visitors.” (Small). Instead of just doing the nursing duties for these men, they were their entire caretakers. They would entertain them with music and make sure that they weren’t bored. Some of the letters that she wrote were to be sent to her sister talking about what was happening and was also a way to vent. Akin talks about how seeing some soldiers being brought through with missing limbs almost brought her back to reality realizing home much she had become immune to being around the injured, and not seeing it as any different than any other day. At the place that she worked, they had a paper called the ““soldier paper”” (Small) where the soldiers and nurses would submit pieces, such as inspiration, religious pieces, or an informative of who had passed. It even included letters from their friends and family. Newspapers were the way to keep people updated on what was happening during the war.

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The nurses were located in the North and South. Most of the ladies I mentioned worked in Washington, D.C or Virginia because that is where the hospitals they worked at were located.