Civi War

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, North Carolina had no hospitals or trained nurses.  There was no standard training or credentialing required before one could use the title of nurse.   Most nursing duty fell to infantrymen.  However, as the casualties increased from both battle and disease, many Southern women volunteered their services. 

The first recorded Confederate nurse was Sallie Chapman Gordon Law, a North Carolinian by birth, who was living in Memphis when the War began.  Women from each state in the Confederacy traveled to states where battles were occurring and nursed soldiers from their own home state.  Margaret Elizabeth Clewell of Salem, North Carolina, left this rare, unpublished account of these early attempts of nursing the troops.  Her memoir titled "A Volunteer Nurse" reads in part:

"I remember that day September 19, 1861, when I left Salem with a party of volunteer nurses, to go to Fauquier County, Virginia where the 21st NC Regiment was in camp.  We were given the use of a fine old Virginia home, Blantyre, which we soon made as comfortable as possible and as many sick solders were brought in as the house could hold.  We had carried many things with us, knowing we could get nothing in the way of supplies when we reached the camp.  One thing I remember was a large box, containing a barrel of good whiskey packed in dry fruit.  Both whiskey and fruit were of great benefit to us, the former being used only when requested in the way of medicine.  The regiment was ordered away to some other place where we could not move our hospital, so we closed up and came home November 20, 1861.  I resuming my duties at Salem Female Academy."  (Manuscript was found in the Perkins Library, Duke University)

In March 1862, women in Columbia, South Carolina began the first Wayside Hospital.  Schools, churches, barns and other large buildings near train depots were quickly converted into facilities to care for ailing soldiers.  The needs were so great and the concept so appealing that Wayside Hospitals sprang up all over the Confederacy.  In an article in Confederate Veteran, Mrs. C. B. Welborn recounts some of the history of her parents' hotel, the Barbee Hotel, which was converted into a Wayside Hospital in High Point from 1863 to 1865.  Although High Point in the 1860's was only a village, the townspeople cared for 5,795 soldiers with only 50 deaths.  After major battles, the Barbee Wayside Hospital could not handle all the casualties so they were cared for at the High Point Female Academy as well as the Methodist and Presbyterian churches.

Approximately 1000 women nursed for the Confederacy during this War primarily working in their own communities.  For many, Florence Nightingale's Notes on Nursingwhich detailed her success nursing British soldiers during the Crimean War served as their only instruction manual.  Carpet bags were prepared for women going off to war and invariably they would have their own copy of Notes on Nursingwhich had been published in the US in 1860. 

Nurses' contributions to the war effort came in many forms.  Mrs. Fatima Worth of Fayetteville offered her plantation house as a Confederate hospital and converted 26 acres of land to the growth of poppies which were used to make the painkiller opium.  The juice extracted from the seeds and leaves was converted into powder which was distributed throughout North Carolina.

By the end of the Civil War, women had established fifteen military hospitals in North Carolina alone.  Jane Wilkes of Charlotte wondered why North Carolina should have hospitals only during wartime.  She worked with St. Peter's Episcopal Church to establish the first civilian hospital in 1876.  By custom and law, St. Peter's could only admit white patients, so Jane Wilkes began raising funds for a hospital for Charlottes African-American populations.  Good Samaritan Hospital opened in 1891.