A Confederate Nurse: The Diary of Ada W. Bacot, 1860-1863

by Jean V. Berlin (Editor)

Overview

Recounts the first experience of women nurses in an American war

Although the Civil War was the first major American conflict in which women nurses played a significant role, the dearth of information about these women makes the diary of a Southern medical worker an especially important document. A Confederate Nurse records the daily experiences, hardships, and joys of Ada W. Bacot, a plantation owner and childless widow whose Southern patriotism prompted her to leave her native South Carolina to care for wounded Confederates in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Bacot's journal sheds light on her own experiences and also on the themes that dominated the lives of Southern white women throughout the nineteenth century. A Confederate Nurse reveals the Confederate nationalism that motivated some Southern women and the work these women performed to sustain the war effort.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781570033865
Publisher:	University of South Carolina Press
Publication date:	08/31/2000
Series:	Women's Diaries and Letters of the South
Pages:	220
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jean V. Berlin is coeditor of Sherman's Civil War: Selected Correspondence of William T. Sherman, 1860–1865. A graduate of Haverford College and the University of Virginia, she has taught history at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Berlin lives in Chandler, Arizona.

Editorial Reviews

Berlin has done an excellent job of providing insights through the footnotes; most obvious are the contradictions between the war's realities and the news reports Bacot received. In a diary filled with names, the editor included pertinent details about many persons, but does not overwhelm her readers with an attempt to identify each individual mentioned. Berlin has contributed a worthy addition to the Women's Diaries and Letters of the Nineteenth-Century South series, by introducing her readers to a true Southern lady

Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

an important document of the opportunities for and limits of female citizenship in the Confederacy.the diary provides a needed perspective on the effects of war beyond the battlefields. Ada Bacot's journal and the series of which it is a part add to our knowledge of Confederate women's experiences during a critical period of national transformation.

The Virginia Magazine

Provides a rather rare glimpse into the Civil War as seen through the eyes of a southern woman from the planter and slaveholding class. Scholars and the general public alike will find A Confederate Nurse an entertaining and illuminating book, which will hopefully serve as a catalyst for future studies of Civil War nursing. This will broaden our understanding of the war and of nineteenth-century life in general.

Southern Historian

This touching, informative book will appeal to both scholars and general readers alike

Civil War News

Editor Jean Berlin's additions to the book—introduction, footnotes, and epilogue—provide information necessary for the reader to understand Ada Bacot's life before and after the war, and to know the places and people mentioned throughout the diaries. These additions, and Berlin's meticulous editing in which she maintains Ada's quaint spellings and wording, make this a thoroughly scholarly and fascinating picture of the life and wartime experiences of one confederate nurse.

Bulletin of the History of Medicine

Bacot's diary provides fascinating insights both into extraordinary events and into everyday life. The editor of Bacot's diary, Jean V. Berlin, does a superb job of both annotating and analyzing the text

Georgia Historical Quarterly

Bacot, a 27-year-old widowed South Carolina plantation owner who was devoted to God and the Confederacy, found an answer to her prayer for ``something to do'' when her state recruited nurses. With other volunteers she headed for Charlottesville, Va., and a converted hotel run by what Berlin describes as the ``chaotic Confederate medical system.'' While most of the medical duties were handled by men--the wards being considered ``scarcely a place for a lady''--Bacot and the other volunteers tended to housekeeping, cooking and laundering for the patients, one of whom she married. Still, there was time for social activity which she recounts with zest. Berlin, a former history professor at the University of Virginia, who annotates the diary, emphasizes the importance of Southern women's contribution to the war effort. And though Bacot's relationships to her own slaves are beyond the scope of her diary, Berlin points out that the author reflects the plantation owner's paternalistic belief in the inferiority of blacks. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Berlin, who coedited the correspondence of William T. Sherman, has selected entries from the Civil War diaries of a devout and intelligent slaveowner whose wartime nursing experiences proved both fulfilling and liberating. Few such diaries have been published, which makes Bacot's account of hospital routine especially valuable. Bacot was an intensely patriotic South Carolinian and Confederate. Her story will help to inform current scholarly debates over the role of women in the Confederacy (for another view, see Catherine Clinton's Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War , Oxford Univ. Pr., 1992). Bacot's difficulties in dealing with slaves will be of interest to readers of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's Within the Plantation Household ( LJ 12/88). Recommended for collections of Civil War history, women's history, Southern history, and medical history.-- Paul M. Pruitt Jr., Univ. of Alabama Sch. of Law Lib., Tuscaloosa

Library Journal