Women at the front : hospital workers in Civil War America

Resource Information

The work Women at the front : hospital workers in Civil War America represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in San Francisco Public Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Women at the front : hospital workers in Civil War America

Title remainder

hospital workers in Civil War America

Statement of responsibility

Jane E. Schultz

Creator

• Schultz, Jane E

Contributor

• hoopla digital

Subject

• Hospitals -- Confederate States of America -- Staff | History
• Hospitals -- United States -- Employees | History -- 19th century
• Military nursing -- Confederate States of America -- History
• Military nursing -- United States -- History -- 19th century
• United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Hospitals
• Electronic books
• United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Women
• Women -- Confederate States of America -- History
• Women -- United States -- History -- 19th century
• United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Medical care

Language

eng

Summary

As many as 20,000 women worked in Union and Confederate hospitals during America's bloodiest war. Black and white, and from various social classes, these women served as nurses, administrators, matrons, seamstresses, cooks, laundresses, and custodial workers. Jane E. Schultz provides the first full history of these female relief workers, showing how the domestic and military arenas merged in Civil War America, blurring the line between homefront and battlefront.Schultz uses government records, private manuscripts, and published sources by and about women hospital workers, some of whom are familiar--such as Dorothea Dix, Clara Barton, Louisa May Alcott, and Sojourner Truth--but most of whom are not well-known. Examining the lives and legacies of these women, Schultz considers who they were, how they became involved in wartime hospital work, how they adjusted to it, and how they challenged it. She demonstrates that class, race, and gender roles linked female workers with soldiers, both black and white, but became sites of conflict between the women and doctors and even among themselves.Schultz also explores the women's postwar lives--their professional and domestic choices, their pursuit of pensions, and their memorials to the war in published narratives. Surprisingly few parlayed their war experience into postwar medical work, and their extremely varied postwar experiences, Schultz argues, defy any simple narrative of pre-professionalism, triumphalism, or conciliation. As many as 20,000 women worked in Union and Confederate hospitals during America's bloodiest war. Black and white, and from various social classes, these women served as nurses, administrators, matrons, seamstresses, cooks, laundresses, and custodial workers. Jane Schultz provides the first full history of these female relief workers, showing how the domestic and military arenas merged in Civil War America, blurring the line between homefront and battlefront. Examining the lives and legacies of Dorothea Dix, Clara Barton, Susie King Taylor, and others, Schultz demonstrates that class, race, and gender roles linked female workers with soldiers, both black and white. These same factors also stoked conflict between the hospital women and doctors and even among the women themselves

Cataloging source

Midwest

Dewey number

973.7/76/082

Index

no index present

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

dictionaries

Series statement

Civil War America

Target audience

adult