Armies South, Armies North by Alan Axelrod

Author:Alan Axelrod
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781493024070
Publisher: Lyons Press

Dorothea Lynde Dix, who had already become well known before the war as a tireless crusader for the humane treatment of prison inmates and the mentally ill, volunteered to lead the brand-new nursing corps of the US Army and was duly appointed superintendent of female nurses. In an era when nursing by women was often thought of as a form of prostitution, Dix set about recruiting women of impeccable moral character, strength of mind, and strength of will. Stern and overbearing, Dix ruled the nursing corps with an iron hand, earning the sobriquet “Dragon Dix.” Her nurses, however, were intensely loyal to her and doubtless saved many lives and relieved much suffering.

Another woman, Clara Barton, who had been a schoolteacher in Massachusetts and New Jersey and then a clerk in the US Patent Office in Washington, DC, applied for official military service as a nurse. Rejected, she responded by almost single-handedly organizing a private civilian agency to obtain and distribute supplies for wounded soldiers. She personally visited the battlefields and field hospitals, carrying supplies in a wagon she drove herself. Her kindly demeanor, the opposite of Dix’s steely sternness, won her the soldiers’ grateful affection, who dubbed her the “Angel of the Battlefield.”

If female nurses were resisted and finally accepted only grudgingly by the military medical establishment—both in the North and the South—female physicians were all but unheard of. Mary Edwards Walker, born in Oswego, New York, on November 26, 1832, bucked the male-dominated medical establishment first by winning admission to and then succeeding in graduating from Syracuse Medical College. During the prewar 1840s and 1850s, she struggled to survive in her Cincinnati, Ohio, practice and, at the outbreak of the war, volunteered her medical services to the Union army. Rejected as a physician, she was able to find some work as a nurse, but it was not until 1863 that the Army of the Cumberland at last hired her as a “Contract Acting Assistant Surgeon (civilian)” for six months. Remarkably, in October 1864, the 52nd Ohio Infantry appointed her a regimental assistant surgeon. During her tour of duty, she saw service not only as a physician, but also as a spy. Known for looking after wounded on both sides, including civilians, Walker was captured by Confederate troops when she stopped to treat a wounded rebel. She spent four months in a Southern prison camp.

Walker became the first woman to be awarded the Medal of Honor. In 1919, however, the Board of Medals revoked the award because Walker was not a sworn member of the armed forces. Six days before she died, the eighty-seven-year-old Walker refused to relinquish the medal. It was officially restored to her by President Jimmy Carter in 1977.

HOSPITALS AND AMBULANCE CORPS

In mid-nineteenth-century America, the sick and the injured were generally treated at home. In consequence, the nation had relatively few hospitals and almost none outside of the cities. Both the USA and CSA recognized that the situation of prolonged warfare required the establishment of dedicated military hospitals.

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