Senior lecturer in History and Tompkins County Historian Carol Kammen explores the role of women during the Civil War in a November 14, 2013 lecture presented by the Cornell Association of Professors Emeriti (CAPE).
The Civil War was fought on the battlefield, but it was also fought in many ways on the home front. Four local women stepped beyond the domestic sphere to become nurses during that war taking their skills into hospitals and battlefields at a time when most people thought war was "no place for a woman."
We can follow their journey through their memoirs, a diary, and letters that detail their experience and give a first-hand look at the origins of the professionalization of the field of nursing. Their journey into and during the war is important to remember as we commemorate the sesquicentennial of that war.