Massachusetts in The American Civil War - Relief Organizations

Relief Organizations

Several instrumental leaders of soldiers' aid and relief organizations came from Massachusetts. These included Dorothea Dix, who had traveled across the nation working to promote proper care for the poor and insane before the war. After the outbreak of the war, she convinced the U.S. Army to establish a Women's Nursing Bureau on April 23, 1861 and became the first woman to head a federal government bureau. Although army officials were dubious about the use of female nurses, Dix proceeded to recruit many women who had previously been serving as unorganized volunteers. One of her greatest challenges, given the biases of the era, was to demonstrate that women could serve as competently as men in army hospitals. Dix had a reputation for rejecting nurses who were too young or attractive, believing that patients and surgeons alike would not take them seriously. U.S. Army surgeons often resented the nurses of Dix's bureau, claiming that they were obstinate and did not follow military protocol. Despite such obstacles, Dix was successful at placing female nurses in hospitals throughout the North.

Henry Whitney Bellows determined to take a different approach, establishing a civilian organization of nurses separate from the U.S. Army. Bellows was the founder of the United States Sanitary Commission and served as its only president. An influential minister, born and raised in Boston, Bellows went to Washington in May 1861 as head of a delegation of physicians representing the Women's Central Relief Association of New York and other organizations. Bellows's aim was to convince the government to establish a civilian auxiliary branch of the Army Medical Bureau. The Sanitary Commission, established by President Lincoln on June 13, 1861, provided nurses (mostly female) with medical supplies and organized hospital ships and soldiers' homes.

Clara Barton, a former teacher from Oxford, Massachusetts and clerk in the U.S. Patent Office, created a one-woman relief effort. In the summer of 1861, in response to a shortage of food and medicine in the growing Union army, she began personally purchasing and distributing supplies to wounded soldiers in Washington. Growing dissatisfied with bringing supplies to hospitals, Barton eventually moved her efforts to the battlefield itself. She was granted access through army lines and helped the wounded in numerous campaigns, soon becoming known as the "Angel of the Battlefield." She achieved national prominence, and high-ranking army surgeons requested her assistance in managing their field hospitals.