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THE NORTHERN HOME FRONT
The northern home front rallied to the Union cause with remarkable
fervor considering that Lincoln was elected by a minority and many
blamed this first Republican president for the outbreak of war. When
South Carolina seceded, much like the fireworks over states' rights
during Andrew Jackson's presidency, when John C. Calhoun resigned as
vice-president, many Americans thought it would be another family
squabble rather than the full-scale conflict that ensued. If the battle
was a brothers' war, then Northerners cast themselves as the good and
dutiful sons loyally serving the interests of the Founding Fathers,
unlike their rebel siblings, who were willing to turn their backs on
ancestors, to grasp avariciously for themselves alone. One colonel
explicitly expressed this family metaphor to his troops: "This great
nation is your father, and has greater claim on you than anybody else in
the world . . . . This great father of yours is fighting for his life,
and the question is whether you are going to stay and help the old man
out, or whether you're going to sneak home and sit down by the chimney
corner in ease and comfort while your comrades by the thousands and
hundreds of thousands are marching, struggling, fighting and crying on
battlefields and in prison pens to put down this wicked rebellion and
save the old Union." And so paternal fealty—devotion to the
fatherland—pushed many a northern soldier onward and kept many
hitched to army life despite hardship.
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PATRIOTIC PENNSYLVANIA LASSES POSING WHILE SEWING A FLAG AT THE
PHILADELPHIA ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS IN 1861. (LLOYD OSTENDORF COLLECTION)
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Because so many believed in the Union cause, they met the call for
sacrifice as thousands took up arms. Panic spread fear in the streets of
Washington, D.C., during the spring of 1861. Lincoln responded with a
show of force, increasing his authority to meet the crisis. Following
Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeus corpus, nearly 13,000 arrests
were made between 1861 and 1863 to maintain order. All individual
interests and liberties were suborned to the interests of the
state—the preservation of the Union. Women, most of all, needed to
pledge their faith to the Union—and only through such steadfast
feminine support could victory emerge.
Yankee females expressed their sentiments openly in letters to one
another. Ellen Wright of Massachusetts wrote to her friend Lucy McKim in
Pennsylvania: "Away with melancholy is the tune for us
nowadays—Chirp up . . . stir the fire—relish your lemonade and
'make believe' a little longer." Many of these girls found it harder and
harder to make believe as the death toll rose. Ellen Wright commiserated
when Dick and William (Bev) Chase, her cousins, decided to enlist in
1862. She wanted her friend Lucy to join her so they could become
nurses. When Dick died at Murfreesboro, she bitterly confessed, "There
is nothing earthly worth a life of a young man like Dick." Wright was
perhaps even more shattered when Bev, too, became a casualty of war.
Many Yankee women strongly supported the war without bloodthirsty
declarations or fiery calls for enlistment.
The patriotism of northern women was frequently contrasted to the
fierce chauvinism of female Confederates, as one Yankee primly defended:
"The feelings of Northern women are rather deep than violent; their
sense of duty is quiet and constant rather than headlong or impetuous
impulse." This notion of female devotion was integral to the Union image
of itself. Volunteerism as the secular faith swept men into the army and
women into war work, including the nursing corps.
Women as caretakers of the family well prepared them for nursing in
theory. In reality, it was considered improper for women to have such
intimate contact with strangers. Hospitals, far from the bastions of
cleanliness and order we hope they are today, had no such illusions in
the nineteenth century. These institutions were filled with filth and
carnage during the antebellum period, and wartime dramatically escalated
the degree of exposure to unpleasantries. Christian-sponsored as well as
secular efforts eased women's entrance into controversial new roles, but
it was still an uphill battle for women to contribute outside their own
homes and family.
The two largest voluntary organizations in the North during this
period were the Christian Commission and the Sanitary Commission. The
Christian Commission wanted to "promote the spiritual good of the
soldiers in the army and incidentally, their intellectual improvement
and social and physical comfort." Leaders of the Young Men's Christian
Association, temperance advocates, and members of Sunday school unions
channeled their zeal into this national organization. Spiritual welfare
was the primary focus of the group, a unified effort that crossed
sectarian lines. The board was filled with politicians and
philanthropists and held its annual meetings in the House of
Representatives, attended by important dignitaries, including, on at
least one occasion, Lincoln himself.
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THE CONSECRATION (1861) BY GEORGE COCHRAN LAMBDIN. A SENTIMENTALIZED
RENDERING OF WOMEN'S "SACRED" ROLE IN WARTIME. (© INDIANAPOLIS
MUSEUM OF ART, JAMES S. ROBERTS FUND)
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THE U.S. CHRISTIAN COMMISSION ESTABLISHED DOZENS OF BRANCHES TO
DISTRIBUTE SUPPLIES TO NEEDY SOLDIERS. (LC)
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The Christian Commission provided a much needed coordinating system,
which funneled supplies to soldiers. By 1864 over 2,000 "delegates" were
involved in the campaign, distributing more than half a million Bibles,
half a million hymnals, and over four million "knapsack books." Funds
were solicited directly, and Yankee cities were consistently generous,
especially in the wake of a major battle. During the Wilderness
Campaign, Pittsburgh contributed $35,000, Philadelphia $50,000, and
Boston $60,000. Over the course of the war, the commission collected
nearly $6 million. Delegates were not only generous solicitors but
supportive dispensers of goods and care: handing out fresh fruits and
sweets, taking dictation from men too ill to write home, holding prayer
meetings, and passing out religious tracts. They believed in the
personal touch, a hands-on promotion of Christian values. (The social
gospel philosophy at the end of the century grew directly out of this
movement.) Their heartfelt mission was to touch the lives of Union
soldiers, to replace the families from which they had been taken. Jane
Swisshelm, who volunteered to work in Union hospitals, described an
experience:
"'What is your name?' a wounded solider at Fredericksburg asked.
'My name is mother,' she replied. 'Mother. Oh my God! I have not seen
my mother for two years. Let me feel your hand.'"
Swisshelm reported that some men feared their emotive responses might
be misconstrued as immature behavior, but she comforted most with the
thought that their soldiering was a test of their manhood, and after
being wounded, they deserved maternal care.
Scores of dedicated women workers saw their missions transformed from
genteel taskmistresses to women warriors.
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The Sanitary Commission was a formidable institution which perhaps
drew strength from its diversity. Hundreds of ladies' aid societies
solicited and donated hospital supplies. Scores of dedicated women
workers saw their missions transformed from genteel taskmistresses to
women warriors. Many took to the podium as well, like Mary Livermore, a
teacher turned writer whose stumping on behalf of the commission reaped
tremendous rewards. Feeding the soldiers became a challenge, and a
manual on diet and cooking prepared by Annie Wittenmyer became a
standard and much appreciated contribution. Wittenmyer did on-the-job
training as superintendent of all army kitchens. Mary Shelton, Jane
Hoge, and Eliza Porter were equally significant contributors to the
commission's success.
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CIVILIANS ENTHUSIASTICALLY SUPPORTED EFFORTS TO CHEER AND COMFORT UNION
SOLDIERS—"OUR BOYS AWAY FROM HOME"—AS SHOWN IN THIS 1861
LITHOGRAPH. (COLLECTION OF THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY)
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The Sanitary Commission also established a transport service to
evacuate sick and wounded to hospitals. Eliza Howland and her sister
Georgeanne Woolsey contributed, along with their five other sisters and
mother, to nursing soldiers. Katherine Prescott Wormeley gave up her
role as mere philanthropist to jump into the fray of service, working in
one of the commission's "floating hospitals." Wormeley wrote of her
female comrades, "They are as efficient, wise, active as cats, merry,
light-hearted, thoroughbred and without the fearful tone of
self-devotion which sad experience makes one expect in benevolent
women." One of the most dynamic women working within and outside the
Sanitary Commission's domain, Mary Anne Bickerdyke was so beloved by
Union soldiers that they nicknamed her "mother." During her four years,
she wore a Quaker bonnet as she crisscrossed the border states, cleaning
up the messes the army left behind. Eventually, Bickerdyke became so
concerned with the fatality rate in hospitals that she set up facilities
all too near the battlefield, which made many commanders nervous.
Bickerdyke was a colorful figure and widely admired. Dorothea Dix was an
equally spirited and headstrong leader of a group of nurses, as many of
these ventures were privately funded. But estimates are as high as two
thousand women serving as nurses to the Union army. After a brief stint
of service in Washington, Louisa May Alcott returned home to
Massachusetts and penned her Hospital Sketches, followed by
Little Women and other popular titles.
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MEMBERS OF THE SANITARY COMMISSION AT A UNION ENCAMPMENT NEAR
FREDERICKSBURG, VIRGINIA. (LC)
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Clara Barton began her work with Massachusetts troops and soon
traveled far and wide to serve at the front. She showed up at Antietam
in an oxcart loaded down with supplies. She tried to maintain her
ladylike composure but complained that the conditions were neither fit
for men nor women on the front lines, recounting a story of a wounded
soldier shot in her arms as she gave him water. Barton suffered two
severe bouts of illness during the war, and estimates are as high as one
in ten female nurses succumbed to fatigue or disease and was forced into
bed rest. Several suffered permanent impairment, and a few died of
complications following prolonged nursing service.
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A WARTIME ILLUSTRATION OF WOUNDED BEING TENDED TO IN A UNION HOSPITAL.
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FAMILIES WERE OCCASIONALLY REUNITED IN CAMP BETWEEN BATTLES. (USAMHI)
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Although soldiers welcomed the nurses, individual Union men raised
objections, especially about their own wives and relations endangering
themselves in army hospitals. Ulysses S. Grant said he would send his
wife home if she did not stay out of the camp hospital. Nevertheless,
tributes rather than threats were more common. Frederick Law Olmsted
praised the "glorious women" in the Sanitary Commission, commenting,
"God knows what we should have done without them, they have worked like
heroes night and day." Women worked against the prejudices of men and
earned high praise.
In 1863 Sanitary Commission worker Mary H. Thompson opened the
Chicago Hospital for Women and Children to provide an alternative for
female nurses and doctors. Later that year the New York Medical College
for Women took in its first class, and the struggle for medical
education accelerated with wartime challenges. Men's biases did not fall
by the wayside but were suspended because of wartime necessity.
Certainly the hard work women provided—to nurse and comfort, to
feed and forage, to clothe and cleanse—left men free to carry on
crushing burdens of war.
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UNION NURSES PREVAIL CONFRONTING THE HORRORS OF WAR
Sophronia Bucklin was like many young women of her generation-bright,
committed, patriotic. When the Civil War broke out, this schoolteacher
from Auburn, New York, applied to be a nurse in the Union army. Dorothea
Dix had been appointed superintendent of women nurses in June 1861 and
exacted strict requirements from those under her supervision. Only women
over thirty and "plain in appearance" needed to apply. Despite Bucklin's
youth, she must have passed muster with Dix, as she was accepted into
the nursing corps and began her service at the Judiciary Square Hospital
in Washington.
Bucklin found her initial encounter with male medical staff
challenging. Female nurses discovered that most military officers and
surgeons were resentful of women's presence in Union hospitals. Bucklin
served the needs of her patients with a stiff upper lip but confided
that she felt the army doctors were "determined by a systematic course
of ill treatment . . . to drive women from the service."
Nevertheless, Bucklin, like thousands of women volunteers, triumphed
in the battles against the male bureaucracy and made invaluable
contributions. Her vivid memoir, In Hospital and Camp: A Woman's
Record of Thrilling Incidents Among the Wounded in the Late War
(1869), provides gripping detail. Bucklin's graphic descriptions of the
horrors of war encountered by this genteel generation of ladies are
compelling:
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MANY PRIVATE HOMES LIKE THIS ONE NEAR WASHINGTON. D.C., WERE USED AS
INFIRMARIES DURING THE WAR. (USAMHI)
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About the amputating tent lay large piles of human flesh—legs,
arms, feet and hands. They were strewn promiscuously about—often a
single one lying under our very feet, white and bloody—the
stiffened members seeming to be clutching offtimes at our clothing. . .
. Death met us on every hand. It was a time of intense excitement.
Scenes of fresh horror rose up before us each day. Tales of suffering
were told, which elsewhere would have well-nigh frozen the blood with
horror. We grew callous to the sight of blood. . . . A soldier came to
me one day, when I was on the field, requesting me to dress his wound,
which was in his side. He had been struck by a piece of shell, and the
cavity was deep and wide enough to insert a pint bowl. . . . Often they
[the patients] would long for a drink of clear, cold water, and lie on
the hard ground, straining the filthy river water through closely set
teeth. So tortured were we all, in fact, by this thirst, which could not
be allayed that even now, when I lift to my lips a drink of pure cold
water, I cannot swallow it without thanking God for the priceless
gift.
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