"Commissioned by God: Mother Bickerdyke during the Civil War

Military Medicine, Oct 2003 by Sartin, Jeffrey S

Mother Bickerdyke's accomplishments during and after the war, the latter which can only be dealt with in an abbreviated fashion here, reveal the heights to which determination and character can scale given the right challenge. Neither physical stresses nor the pervasive sexism of her day daunted her. Perhaps most impressive is how her "cyclonic" personality was leavened with tenderness toward the young men she encountered as victims of battle. Mary Ann Livermore recounted how middle-aged veterans would become tearful when talking about the careful attention they received: "I tell you, it seemed as if my own mother was doing for me, she was so gentle. She. . . nursed me as if I were her son" (p 545).2

In 1886, Dr. A. Goslin, one of her enthusiastic physician supporters during the war, testified on behalf of a pension for Bickerdyke before the U.S. Senate: "Her services were simply indispensable. I could not have conducted this great hospital without her. . . . She was truly a mother to the hundreds of sick and dying soldiers. Her services were worth more to General Sherman's army during the Atlanta campaign than any brigadier-general in it."9 In 1887, her bachelor son James persuaded her to "retire" at his house in Bunker Hill, Kansas.

"Mother" Mary Ann Bickerdyke died on November 8, 1901 at her son's home in Bunker Hill, Kansas, of the consequences of a stroke. She was mourned at magnificent funerals in Bunker Hill and Galesburg, Illinois, and was transported back to Galesburg to be buried next to her deceased husband and a daughter who had died in infancy. Friend and biographer Julia Chase of Hiawatha, Kansas, presented the following encomium before the Kansas State Historical Society in 1902: "[Mother Bickerdyke] as wife, mother, army nurse, pension agent, and city missionary touched the heights and depths of human life, [yet] craved no titled decoration. . . . Though in truth she reigns in many hearts an uncrowned queen, she better liked the sacred name of 'Mother'."10

References

1. Chase JA: Mary A. Bickerdyke, "Mother." Lawrence, KS, Journal Publishing House, 1896.

2. Livermore MA: My Story of the War: A Woman's Narrative of Life and Work in Union Hospitals and in the Sanitary Service of the Rebellion, pp 476-546. Washington, DC, A.D. Worthington and Co, 1887.

3. Baker NB: Cyclone in Calico: The Story of Mary Ann Bickerdyke, pp 53-4. Boston, MA, Little, Brown and Co, 1952.

4. Adams GE: Doctors in Blue: The Medical History of the Union Army in the Civil War, pp 176-84. Dayton, OH, Morningside Press, 1985.

5. Whitman W: Specimen days. In Hospital and Camp: The Civil War through the Eyes of Its Doctors and Nurses. Edited by Straubing HE. Harrisburg, PA, Stackpole Books, 1993. (Previously published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York City.)

6. Sartin JS: Infectious diseases during the Civil War: the triumph of the "Third Army." Clin Infect Dis 1992; 16: 580-4.

7. Foote S: The Civil War: A Narrative. Fort Sumter to Perryville, Vol. 1. New York, Random House, 1974.