Navy Nurses in the Civil War

USS Red Rover on the Mississippi River

The Civil War was a time of many "firsts" for the Navy.  Now that it is the first day of Women's history month, it would seem poignant to talk about the historic first contributions of females in the Navy.  Like African Americans, these minority members of sea service exemplified the three tenets of the U.S. Navy: Honor, Courage, and Commitment. 

Although nurses were not recruited in high numbers during this time period (especially for the Navy), effective clinicians would eventually become integral to the health and stability of any military.  It is no surprise then that disease, not combat, was the greatest killer of the American Civil War. 

Mother Mary Ann Bickerdyke

According to Susan H. Godson, the influx of nurses in the United States (Union) military grew early on as a result of  "the growing carnage on the battlefields."  Efforts were increased from newly created organizations like the Women's Central Association of Relief and the U.S. Sanitary Commission.  When fighting began on Virginia's peninsula in the spring of 1862, steamboats were converted into floating hospitals to transport the evacuated wounded.  The U.S. Sanitary commission paid for the staffing of these ships with surgeons, dressers, and now male and female nurses.  Female nurses "prepared food, stocked shelves, and made the inform as comfortable as possible."   One of the more famous eastern transporters, the City of Memphis, was led by Mother Mary Ann Bickerdyke, perhaps the most famous nurse of the war. 

USS Red Rover

In the West, ships did not have the luxury of swift transport to a shore hospital, so floating hospitals like the Red Rover were commissioned.  Commissioned on 26 December 1862, the Red Rover served with the Mississippi River Squadron for the remainder of the war.  The medical personnel included four nuns of the Sisters of the Holy Cross as well as five black women - Alice Kennedy, Sarah Kinno, Ellen Campbell, Betsy Young, and Dennis Downs, who assisted the nuns.  These women were the very first women to serve on a U.S. Navy ship, and the predecessors to the Navy Nurse Corps of the 19th century. 

Source: 
Godson, Susan H.  Serving Proudly: A History of Women in the U.S. Navy.  Annapolis: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2001. 

Black History Month Highlight: Siah Carter

Siah Carter aboard USS Monitor

Like many other African American slaves, Siah Carter sought freedom adn refure in the Union Navy along the  myriad waterways of the southern interior.  At the time he joined the Union Navy, Carter was a slave at the Shirley Plantation in Charles City, Virginia.  He became the first of eigtheen slaves to escape from Shirley Plantation in 1862,  Twenty-two year old Carter fled down the James River two months after the Battle of Hampton Roads, finding USS Monitor laying at anchor.  He enlisted aboard the ironclad as a "first class boy," serving as a coal heaver and cook's assistant for the duration of the ship's short existance.  Carter survived the sinking of the famed vessels in December 1862, going on to serve on several other Union ships until the end of the war.  He was discharged from the Union Navy in May 1865 and returned to Shirley Plantation to wed former slave Eliza Tarrow.  They eventually settled in Bermuda Hundred, Virginia, and raised thirteen children. 

Siah Carter's in children's popular literature

African American Sailors and the Sesquicentennial: A Trend Worth Following

The social history of the sailor will take priority in how we continue to interpret the navy’s role.  Scholarship continues to detail how sailors dealt with the tedium of the blockade and the horrors of close-quartered combat on western rivers.  Sailors who fought were a historically diverse group of individuals dating back to the Revolutionary War.  When you begin to narrow down the focus of social history in the navies, one critical aspect merges each commemorative anniversary of the past to the current one: African American sailors.  Problems of race and reconciliation during the semi-centennial and centennial are now rectified in a bevy of recent events, including the 2010 Signature Conference of the Virginia Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission at Norfolk State University.  Their involvement during the war will likely take center stage throughout the next four years.

National recognized organizations like the National Park Service’s Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System (CWSS) are working to document and record the names of every Civil War sailor, black and white.  Pushing this index forward is a historian’s steering committee comprising historians and researchers representing Howard University, the Naval History and Heritage Command, National Park Service, and other academic experts.  According to the CWSS website, the online database, which features African Americans sailors as its primary focus, has approximately 8,000 names to search through.  With over 18,000 African Americans serving in the Union Navy during the war, their work so far covers almost half of those accounted for.

Even if the Union Navy’s rank and file were not always progressive towards the abolition of slavery, one blogger commented that “the demands of war caused them to adapt to the vagaries of war and they were soon singing the praises of the African Americans serving on their vessels.”

The naval “melting pot” on both sides best represents how the majority of Americans want to remember the Civil War.  The title of the 2010 Virginia Civil War Sesquicentennial was “Race, Slavery, and the Civil War: The Tough Stuff of American History and Memory.”  Despite disagreements over the institution of slavery by both sides, all different races, colors, and creeds marched to the flag.  For the Union Navy in particular, the role of the African American sailor is a way for Americans today to connect with their history and heritage.  African Americans made the conscientious choice to fight for their freedom, regardless of conditions they faced.  “African American sailors were needed,” historian Stephen Ramold remarked in the closing comments of a 2004 interview with The Journal of African American History.  According to Ramold, “they were Americans who didn’t hesitate to fight for their country.” He goes on to say that the Union Navy “was remarkably modern [. . .] where everything was not a racial struggle.”

In the century before Executive Order #9981 ordered the full racial integration of American armed forces in 1948, sailors operating around the world during the war fought and died amongst their black brethren.  Military equality paved its way on the shoulders of these sailors, although some are more notable than others within the public consciousness.  The armed forces couldn’t ask for better PR today.  Robert Smalls, the South Carolina slave pilot of the Planter who escaped with his family to the Union lines for freedom, became “the closest thing to a national black war hero from the Civil War.”

Long before the 54^th Massachusetts gloriously attacked Fort Wagner, African Americans forged the identity of today’s Navy through their service.  Blacks in blue jackets represented the fighting spirit for the cause of freedom.  This will undoubtedly arise and draw interest from the public in an ever-increasing time of uncertainty with military service in general.  The story of black sailors serves as a constant reminder to Americans how far we have come.

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Sources:

Jimmy Price, “James Mcpherson - Slavery, Freedom, and the Union Navy,” The Sable Arm, entry posted September 24, 2010, http://sablearm.blogspot.com/2010/09/james-mcpherson-slavery-freedom-and.html (accessed December 13, 2011).

Helen Hannon, “African Americans in the Navy during the Civil War,” The Journal of African American History 89, no. 4 (Autumn 2004), 361.

David Blight, Race and Reunion, 195.