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•Whitman, Walt. The Sacrificial Years: A Chronicle of Walt Whitman’s Experiences in the Civil War. Edited by John Harmon McElroy. Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc., 1999.
Walt Whitman, a northerner living in the south prior and during the early years of the Civil War, traveled north in 1862 to find his wounded brother in Virginia. What he found and saw in Virginia shocked and astonished him; rows of unburied dead, piles of amputated limbs, thousands of wounded men lying on the ground without protection from the elements and hospital staff overworked and undermanned. Due to these sights, Whitman decided to volunteer and soon became a trusted nurse. He tended the sick and wounded, and consoled the dying. At great personal and professional sacrifice, Whitman continued to nurse men in and around Washington, D.C. until the war’s end four years later. Although he never kept a personal diary of his experiences, he wrote hundreds of letters and newspaper articles on his time in the nursing corps.
•Twichell, Joseph. The Civil War Letters of Joseph Hopkins Twichell: A Chaplain’s Story. Edited by Peter Messent and Steve Courtney. University of Georgia Press, 2006.
Books on the Civil War are full of battles, generals and tactics, but not many of them focus on the non-combatants in the armies, the chaplains. Joseph Twichell left his studies to become a Chaplin in New York’s Excelsior Brigade, a Protestant Chaplin in a Brigade made up of mostly poor Irish-American Catholics. Twichell’s letters to his family speaks of life on campaign, in camp, being a Protestant among Catholics, of battle, and of the aftermath of battle. He was involved in seven major battles, from the Wilderness to Fredericksburg to Gettysburg. In addition to writing about “army” life, Twichell writes on politics, slavery, blessing the dead and dying and on the end of the war.
•Eggleston, Larry G. Women in the Civil War: Extraordinary Stories of Soldiers, Spies, Nurses, Doctors, Crusaders, and Others. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2003.
Women in the Civil War looks at women in the Civil War from a unique perspective, not only as non-combatants, but as spies, soldiers, nurses and doctors. While other books portray women only as keepers of the home while the men went to war, Women in the Civil War shows that women North and South saw it as a civic duty to do more. Some went so far as to dress like men and enlist, 400-700 women did this, and 60 or more were killed or wounded during the war. In addition to soldering, women also engaged in spying, nursing, guerrilla raids, and as combat doctors on the frontlines. Women played a larger role in the Civil War than many realized.
•Hancock, Cornelia. Letters of a Civil War Nurse: Cornelia Hancock, 1863-1865. Edited by Henrietta Stratton Jaquette. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998.
Often called the “Florence Nightingale of America,” Cornelia Hancock worked tirelessly in field and evacuating hospitals, and on the battlefield. She was a constant companion to those wounded and dying, from Gettysburg to Appomattox. She was one of the great heroines of not only the nursing corps, but of the entire medical field. She wrote to her family of the neglect of wounded soldiers, black refugees and of those in contraband camps.
•McGaugh, Scott. Surgeon in Blue: Jonathan Letterman, the Civil War Doctor Who Pioneered Battlefield Care. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2013.
Jonathan Letterman was a medical doctor before the Civil War and was stationed in the Western territories including Indian country. Soon after the Civil War started, he was withdrawn to Washington, D.C., where he was appointed Chief Medical Officer of the Union Army. This new position allowed him to reinvent combat medicine by creating the first ambulance corps, and reorganize the field hospital system. In addition, he was instrumental in improving the health, hygiene and dietary standards of the army.
•Hamilton, Leni. Clara Barton. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988.
Clara Barton was a remarkable women, she was not only schooled formally but also in the finer details of farm life including horseback riding thanks to her brother. Clara Barton by Leni Hamilton incorporates quotes and passages from her letters and journals. Not only was she well educated, but she also volunteered as a nurse during the Civil War, a passion had since childhood. Clara is best know for establishing the American Red Cross and her dedication to the Nursing Corps. She nursed hundreds of soldiers and civilians from the battlefields of the American Civil War to battlefields of France and Germany during the Franco-Prussian War in the early 1870s. Clara Barton was a central figure in the Nursing Corps for the Union Army, and continued to be until her death in 1912.