The Sisters of Charity in Nineteenth-Century America: Civil War Nurses and Philanthropic Pioneers

Abstract

This thesis seeks to answer the following question: What was the legacy of the Sisters of Charity in the history of philanthropy, women’s history, medicine and nursing? The Sisters of Charity was a Catholic religious order that provided volunteer nurses, and became highly visible, during the American Civil War. Several hundred Catholic sister nurses served; they supported both the Union and Confederacy by caring for soldiers from both armies. The sisters’ story is important because of the religious and gender biases they overcame. As nurses, the Sisters of Charity interacted with different people: they cared for soldiers, worked at the direction of surgeons and alongside lay relief workers. The war propelled them into public view, and the sisters acted as agents of change. Their philanthropy eroded some of the antebellum cultural proscriptions that previously confined Catholics, women and nurses. This thesis argues the Sisters of Charity created and implemented an antebellum philanthropic model, key aspects of which the majority, non-Catholic culture emulated after the war. The Sisters of Charity were agents of social change: they broke down religious, social and gender barriers, and developed a prototype for a healthcare model that the secular world emulated. Many women responded to the unprecedented suffering and cataclysmic conditions of the Civil War in a multitude of ways, and philanthropy was forever changed as a result. Wartime benevolence provided templates for large-scale voluntary organizations, illuminated the issue of payment for charity workers, moved the practice of philanthropy from individual to institutional, and led to the development of nursing as a profession. Female voluntarism shifted into the front and center of the public sphere. Charitable work moved along the continuum from individual to institutional, from volunteer to professional. Questions regarding the respective roles of payment to charitable workers developed. Nursing gained recognition as a profession, and formal training began. The Sisters of Charity were leaders in all these areas, and their orders served as models for the future of philanthropy. Yet they are often absent from analyses of the trajectory of nineteenth-century philanthropy, and this thesis delivers them to the discussion.