They came from the paneled drawing rooms of the nation’s great mansions, the log lean-tos of the far frontier and the chaste confines of Eastern convents. Women also likely donated the coverlets warming the men. U.S.A.M.H.I., Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, Photo by Jim EnosĪ nurse prepares to spoon-feed soldiers in this photograph taken inside a Union hospital.

Louisa May Alcott is known worldwide as the author of Little Women, but less known is the fact that she served as a volunteer nurse during the civil war, seeing action in the battle of Fredericksburg.

The most famous civil war nurse was Clara Barton, who established an agency to supply soldiers and worked in many battles, often behind the lines, delivering care to wounded soldiers on both sides. But after Battle Of Bull Run, Clara Barton and Dorethea Dix organized a nursing corps to help care for the wounded soldiers. At the beginning of the war, nurses were merely volunteers who showed up at military hospitals. There is very little written record of their service though a few of the more famous names left accounts, including Louisa May Alcott, Jane Stuart Woolsey, susie King Taylor and Katherine Prescott Wormeley. Information and Articles About Civil War Nurses, one of the many roles filled by women of the civil warĬivil War Nurses summary: Thousands of women served as volunteer nurses during the Civil War.

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