"Mercy Street" and Women Soldiers: "I Would Rather Have Been Shot Dead"

Did you watch the premier of Mercy Street last night?  This is PBS's new Civil War medical drama.  Of course, I couldn't help but to think about women soldiers and their experiences.  A trip to the "saw bones" typically meant the end of their stint in the military.  They were aware of this and sometimes attempted to evade a trip to the hospital.  After her case of malaria worsened and a furlough to seek treatment was denied, Sarah Emma Edmonds, alias "Franklin Thompson," deserted the 2nd Michigan Infantry rather than risk discovery. Her story would not come to light until she herself came forward with details of her service, which were confirmed by male comrades.


Others weren't so fortunate to escape with their ruse intact.

This video by the Smithsonian Channel details the story of Mary Galloway who was shot in the neck at Sharpsburg and treated by Clara Barton:

http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/videos/the-secret-lives-of-some-civil-war-soldiers/30035

In a letter from a hospital where he was recovering, Thomas Read of the 5th Michigan Infantry wrote his parents about a Confederate woman there, "...she was wounded at gettysburg but our doctors soon found her out.....the poor girl [h]as lost a leg."  (Blanton and Cook, They Fought Like Demons, p. 95-96)

Nurse Margaret Hamilton of Rochester, New York was serving as a Sister of Charity in the Satterlee Military Hospital in Philadelphia when one of the wounded they received from the Wilderness was a Federal woman "not more than twenty years of age."  She had followed a sweetheart into the army and was not discovered until her wounded shoulder was treated at the hospital.  Hamilton stated that "...the boys who brought her in with her said that no one in the company showed more bravery than she."  This is illustrated by the fact that she had risen to the rank of lieutenant.  She was discharged soon after entering the ward.  (Our Army Nurses, p. 341)

Surgeon James L. Dunn with the 109th (later consolidated with the 111th) Pennsylvania Infantry wrote after the Battle of Peachtree Creek, "Among the Rebel killed and wounded we found several women in men's clothing."  (Civil War Surgeon-Biography of James Langstaff Dunn, MD, p. 135.)

I wrote about Frances Hook's hospital stays (HERE) and (HERE).

And then there was the girl discovered at Overton Hospital in Memphis whom I wrote about (HERE).

This girl died as an unknown: her name, story, and the location of her final resting place lost to history.  As my friend, Greg Wade, says:  "This is the epitome of the tragedy that was the Civil War."

And this is just a small sampling of the stories that exist.

Without having done a statistical analysis, I estimate that it was amid the squalor of a hospital that a majority of these women were discovered.  This is such a profound part of their story because without surgeons and nurses discovering them while caring for them in a hospital, we wouldn't know the extent of their service, their story incomplete.

And because I wanted to teach people just how important this element is to the history of women soldiers and the Civil War in general, I attempted to recreate this event at a reenactment in Boscobel, Wisconsin in 2011.  I was able to fall into such a deep state of concentration while undertaking this role, that I honestly don't remember anything that happened.  It was actually kind of scary, and I have not been able to bring myself to perform this scene since then, despite Mark's urging. 

 

(Photos by Mr. Lance Myers)

Sarah Emma Edmonds wrote about her decision to forsake a trip to the hospital:  "Had I been what I represented myself to be, I should have gone to the hospital....But being a woman I felt compelled to suffer in silence....in order to escape detection of my sex.   I would rather have been shot dead, than to have been known to be a woman and sent away from the Army under guard like a criminal." (Edmondson File, National Archives)

How many women soldiers chose Edmonds's path and avoided the hospital to escape public humiliation only to succumb to their wounds or illnesses, ailments that may have been treatable?  How many crawled away to die of a wound after a battle, never to be found?  How many died of disease in a hospital, right under the gaze of others who were too busy to notice?  Sick soldiers in overcrowded hospitals were sometimes passed over by surgeons and nurses.  And while some women soldiers were discovered when their bodies were prepared for burial, how many were overlooked when they were quickly tossed in mass graves in order to keep their disease from spreading?

We'll never know.  Civil War tragedy indeed....

It will be interesting to see whether a woman soldier will show up on Mercy Street.

Until next formation.....rest.