Inside the Confederate Hospital: Community and Conflict during the Civil War

In September 1862, manpower shortages forced Confederate officials to hire civilian employees in military hospitals. The Hospital Act revolutionized Confederate medical care because henceforth, each general hospital was a microcosm of southern society. Inside the Confederate hospital were men and women, whites and blacks, slaves and free people, elites and plainfolk, soldiers and civilians, and medical professionals and amateurs. Medical officers faced the herculean task of organizing the labor of these diverse groups of people in an invaded and blockaded country. Aided by elite white female matrons, officers endeavored to create the sense that hospital inhabitants, both patients and workers, were an extended family. The use of familial language and the fact that they faced a common foe served to strengthen the hospital community. This “family,” however, failed to embrace slaves or free blacks despite the fact that African-Americans comprised the hospitals’ largest class of laborers. Yet slaves established their own community beyond white purview and some, taking advantage of the changing nature of slavery, were able to exercise a modicum of control over their daily lives. Thus, the study of Confederate hospitals reveals both the ferocity of war and the balm of human compassion.