Want to learn more about the United States Sanitary Commission and Civil War nursing?

Here are some books we recommend:

Civil War Sisterhood, The U.S. Sanitary Commission and Women's Politics in Transition
Judith Ann Geisberg - 2000

Insightful examination of the women (and men) who served in the U.S. Sanitary Commission. Challenges established scholarship on the history of women's public activism and demonstrates convincingly that the Civil War generation of women provided a crucial link between the local evangelical crusades of the early 19th C. and the sweeping national reform and suffrage movements of the postwar period.

Debris of Battle - The Wounded at Gettysburg
Gerard A. Patterson - 1997

Documents the collective efforts of Gettysburg residents and hundreds of volunteers, from both North and South, who came to the site of this great battle to provide assistance to the wounded.

History of the U.S. Sanitary Commission in the War of the Rebellion
Charles J. Stillé - 1866

Commissioned as the official history of the organization, and written by one of the USSC's standing committee members, this is the most thorough reference on the organization, its structure, and accomplishments.

Hospital Days - Reminiscence of a Civil War Nurse
Jane Stuart Woolsey - 1868

Jane Woolsey served as Superintendent of Nurses at the Union Hospital in Alexandria, Virginia, and provides an intimate portrait of the life of a Civil War nurse.

Hospital Sketches
Louisa May Alcott - 1863

The author of "Little Women" records her experiences in an Army hospital.

My Heart Toward Home - Letters of a Family During the Civil War
Georgeanna Woolsey Bacon and Eliza Woolsey Howland - 2001

The story of one New York family who represented the northern Civil War experience. Five daughters served in military hospitals, one worked with the Women's Central Association of Relief, and Mother Woolsey rushed to the Gettysburg battlefield to nurse the wounded.

My Story of the War
Mary A. Livermore - 1887

The Civil War memoirs of the famous nurse, relief organizer and suffragette. Livermore was one of a handful of women to achieve national prominence and a position of leadership within the U.S. Sanitary Commission.

The Other Side of the War - On the Hospital Transports with the Army of the Potomac
Katharine Prescott Wormeley - 1889

Wormeley compiles letters from the headquarters of the USSC during the Peninsular Campaign in Virginia in 1862.

Patriotic Toil - Northern Women and the American Civil War
Jeanie Attie - 1998

An exploration of the economic and ideological conflicts that surrounded women's unpaid labor on behalf of the Union army, and the impact of the Civil War on the gender structure of nineteenth-century America.

With Courage and Delicacy - Civil War on the Peninsula - Women and the U.S. Sanitary Commission
Nancy S. Garrison - 1999

An excellent portrait of the USSC, and the activities of the women who served as nurses with the Peninsula Campaign.

Women of the War - Frank Moore Papers, 1865-1866
Frank Moore - 1866

An account of Northern women's service during the war. Collection consists chiefly of letters from and about the women featured in the book who served as nurses or in a related capacity.