Dorothea Dix - The Civil War

The Civil War

During the American Civil War, Dix was appointed Superintendent of Army Nurses by the Union Army, beating out Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell. Unfortunately, the qualities that made her a successful crusader—independence, single-minded zeal—did not lend themselves to managing a large organization of female nurses.

Dix set guidelines for nurse candidates. Volunteers had to be between the ages of 35 and 50 and had to be plain-looking. They also had to wear drab and unhooped black or brown dresses and were forbidden to wear jewelry or cosmetics. Dix did this to avoid sending vulnerable, attractive young women into the hospitals, where she feared they would be exploited by the men there (doctors as well as patients). Dix would often fire volunteer nurses she hadn't personally trained or hired (earning the ire of supporting groups like the United States Sanitary Commission).

At odds with Army doctors, Dix feuded with them over control of medical facilities and the hiring and firing of nurses. She also had to deal with doctors and surgeons who did not want female nurses in their hospitals. To solve the impasse, the War Department introduced Order No.351 in October 1863. It granted both the Surgeon General (Joseph K. Barnes) and the Superintendent of Army Nurses (Dix) the power to appoint female nurses. However, it gave doctors the power of assigning employees and volunteers to hospitals. This relieved Dix of real responsibility and made her a figurehead. Meanwhile, her fame and influence was being eclipsed by other prominent women like Dr. Mary Edwards Walker and Clara Barton. She submitted her resignation in August 1865 and would later consider this "episode" in her career a failure.

However, her even-handed caring for Union and Confederate wounded alike, which may not have endeared her to Radical Republicans, assured her memory in the South. Her nurses provided what was often the only care available in the field to Confederate wounded. Georgeanna Woolsey, a Dix nurse, said, "The surgeon in charge of our camp...looked after all their wounds, which were often in a most shocking state, particularly among the rebels. Every evening and morning they were dressed." Another Dix nurse, Julia Susan Wheelock, said, "Many of these were Rebels. I could not pass them by neglected. Though enemies, they were nevertheless helpless, suffering human beings." When Robert E. Lee retreated from Gettysburg, over 5000 wounded Confederate soldiers were left behind which were then treated by Dix's nurses, like Cornelia Hancock who wrote about what she saw—"There are no words in the English language to express the suffering I witnessed today...."