Civil War Nursing:
Camp Followers No More
Prior to the Civil War most nursing positions during wartime were filled by men, as going to war was seen as a man’s job. Women who toiled with army soldiers were often depicted as “camp followers” and had a reputation of being poor, in desperate need of a paying job, and often little more than prostitutes.[3]
Blazing the Trail
Dorothea Dix
Much credit for the professionalization of nursing goes to Florence Nightingale. Her book Notes on Nursing was widely read, including by Louisa May Alcott. Yet it was Dorothea Dix, as the Union Army’s first Superintendent of Women Nurses who organized and ultimately opened up the Union Army to female nurses. Dix was responsible for choosing and assigning women to Union military hospitals and while her work appears to convey a recognition of the skills that women could provide, Dix only had authority over the few general hospitals that had been set up in the Washington D.C. area to “care for cases with which the regimental facilities could not cope.”[4]
Women in War
At the beginning of the war, women were not trusted to be able to handle and provide care out on the battlefields. Throughout the war, however, women played a key role in Civil War nursing and medicine and Louisa May Alcott was one of approximately 3,200 female Union Army nurses. The role of women in the Civil War was tremendously important as nurses provided medical care and moral support to the many wounded soldiers. The female nurses also worked to break the traditional male sphere of army work.[5] Louisa May Alcott’s writings of her work as a Union Army nurse provide a significant record of a female Civil War nursing experience.