"Commissioned by God: Mother Bickerdyke during the Civil War

Military Medicine, Oct 2003 by Sartin, Jeffrey S

Following Donelson, Bickerdyke left the Cairo General Hospital, which was by then more or less self-sufficient, and followed Grant's army as an unofficial medical officer, still without an official position. General Grant had decided to move on Corinth, Tennessee to assault General Albert Sydney Johnston's Confederate army in the next step toward Vicksburg and control of the vital Mississippi River. However, Johnston surprised his old Mexican War colleague and attacked unexpectedly at Shiloh River on April 7, 1862. The casualties were horrendous by 19th Century American standards: 1,754 killed and 8,408 wounded for the Union, and 1,723 killed and 8,012 wounded for the Confederates.7 The Confederates left the battlefield the nominal loser without their leader, who had been killed by a Union bullet, although the charge that Grant "lost" Shiloh through drunkenness or neglect cost him command for a time and would dog him for the rest of 1862.

As usual, Mother Bickerdyke threw herself into the job of casualty care energetically, and as usual she attracted the opprobrium of the official military. A military surgeon came upon her as she was simultaneously dressing wounds and comforting the wounded, and directing the field kitchen: "Where did you get these articles, and under whose authority are you at work?" Bickerdyke replied, in Livermore's account, "I have received my authority from the Lord God Almighty. Have you anything that ranks higher than that" (p 490)?2

After the bloodbath at Shiloh, Mother Bickerdyke was physically exhausted and was persuaded by Grant to go back home on leave. She accepted a formal Sanitary Commission appointment and made numerous speeches on its behalf in Galesburg and Chicago. Her plain-spoken manner induced a flood of donations for Sanitary Commission coffers for the purpose of buying food, clothing, and necessary medical supplies. She next rejoined the Union effort in January 1863 at Fort Pickering in Memphis.

Once again, she ran afoul of the medical director of the general hospital system, Dr. J. D. Irwin. He found fault in her "coddling" of the young soldiers who were convalescing from typhoid and other serious camp diseases. The doctor had finally had enough of Mother Bickerdyke's outspoken methods and confronted her in the presence of fellow Sanitary Commission nurse Mary Livermore, who recorded that Dr. Irwin was "vulgarly angry, and raved in a manner that was very damaging to his dignity" (p 508).2 Bickerdyke retorted in her typical unique voice: "I've come down here to stay, and I mean to stay until this thing is played out. . . . I guess you hadn't better get into a row with me, for whenever anybody does one of us always goes to the wall. And 'tain't never me!" (p 508-509).2 (Dr. Irwin obviously realized the truth of her statement, because he not only backed down, but later became one of her staunch supporters.)

Mother Bickerdyke accompanied Grant's army at the final stages of the assault on Vicksburg in the spring of 1863, where frequent fighting and a high rate of infectious illnesses kept the medical corps busy. Vicksburg fell to Union hands in July 1863, almost simultaneous with Meade's victory over Lee at Gettysburg. Nevertheless, although the Confederacy's days were numbered, the war was only half over, with many bloody campaigns yet to come. At Vicksburg, Bickerdyke became acquainted with fellow Ohioan General William "Billy" Sherman, the 15th Corps commander who had grown up a few scant miles from her Knox County birthplace. Their admiration was mutual, and when Sherman was tasked with marching his men east into Tennessee and Georgia in late 1863, she accompanied them. She was the only woman he would allow to travel with his hard-fighting troops, and she was one of the few persons of either sex who ever called him "Billy" to his face.