Hands of Mercy

Six hundred nuns from twelve religious communities served as U.S. Army nurses during the Civil War. They served on the battlefield and gave their lives. A group of Sisters of Mercy traveling to St. Louis on a Union steamboat took fire from a Confederate gun battery and worked through it, tending the wounded. At Gettysburg one St. Joseph sister wiped the blood-covered face of a young soldier to discover that he was her 18 year-old brother.

When the Sisters of Providence took over the military hospital in Indianapolis during the Civil War, they found that “it was dirty beyond belief. A scouring brigade was formed, and the nuns went down on their knees, scrubbing every inch of the stained and dirty floors. They washed walls and windows, threw out dirty mattresses, and soon had the wards clean and sweet-smelling. Next they set up kitchens, special diet kitchens, and a laundry.”

Soldiers, doctors, military officials, civilians—all learned to respect and admire the Sisters, who came to be known as the Sisters of Charity.

In the years following the Civil War, nuns established 800 hospitals, the basis for a network of Catholic hospitals that now serves one in six patients, the largest private group in the U.S.

This wonderful book by Norah Smaridge provides a glorious in-depth portrait of the many Sister-Nurses during the Civil War years.