Angels of the Battlefield

Angels of the Battlefield. . , The women in dark habits, rosaries at their waists, moved among the beds in the makeshift hospital. The Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati were no strangers to the devastation of war. They had tended smallpox victims at Camp Dennison in Ohio, and ministered to the wounded after the battles at Shiloh, Tennessee, and Corinth, Mississippi. When Chief Union medical officer Dr. Bernard Irwin asked for their help, six sisters headed into Confederate-held Kentucky with forty Union ambulance wagons., "We witnessed sights, the most appalling; the grounds were covered with wounded, dying and dead bodies," Sister Anthony O'Connell wrote. The men had fallen at the August 30, 1862, Battle of Richmond., For weeks the Sisters nursed the soldiers housed at the city's female academy. In October, they accompanied those able to travel to the order's Cincinnati hospital, St. John's. The most serious cases remained in "comfortable quarters" in Richmond; others were taken to Lexington., St. Elizabeth Seton founded the Sisters of Charity in 1809 to provide nurses for the sick and poor. The order rose to the challenges brought by this nation's greatest tragedy, nursing the sick and wounded from Maryland to Mississippi. Grateful soldiers called them "Angels of the Battlefield.", (Captions):, The Sisters of Charity nursed wounded Union soldiers housed at Madison Female Institute on Second Street. The academy for girls was converted into a temporary hospital after the Battle of Richmond. , Eastern Kentucky University Special Collections and Archives, Richmond, Kentucky., Sisters of Charity treating the wounded after the April 6-7, 1862, Battle of Shiloh. When the Civil War began the country had only 600 trained nurses, all Catholic nuns. Despite their experience and abilities, they faced discrimination because of their gender and faith., Upon her death in 1897, Sister Anthony O'Connell - one of the few women admitted to the Grand Army of the Republic - was given a full military funeral.