‘I have been trying veryhard to be powerful “nice” …’: the correspondence of Sister M. De Sales (Brennan) during the American Civil War

Abstract

Roman Catholic Irish nuns formed a large part of the American Civil War nursing experience in both the North and the South. In fact, when Confederate President Robert E. Lee beseeched the assistance of Irish-born Patrick Lynch, then Bishop of Charleston, South Carolina, to provide nurses for his hospitals, Roman Catholic sisters from a local convent were pressed into service. Sister M. De Sales (Brennan), born in County Kilkenny, Ireland, became instrumental in establishing two hospitals in the Virginias. During the war years she penned over 1000 pages of letters to him. Initially, the paper provides an overview of the cultural milieu and medical knowledge that existed prior to the onset of the conflict. Attending to soldiers whose wounds changed both the nature of medicine and the approach to it, women willing to move beyond the confines of predominantly private and family-oriented care assisted on battlefields and in field hospitals of various kinds. In these settings, widows, adventure seekers, good-hearted women and Irish Catholic nuns alike offered many kinds of on-the-job training. Their duties ranged from the more traditional tasks of setting up kitchens, organising laundries and writing letters, to the more daunting services of ‘cupping’, administering anaesthetics such as whiskey and chloroform, and surgically removing limbs. By virtue of the sheer magnitude of the suffering, the experiences endured by these women altered their confidence in their abilities to minister, changed their perspectives on public life, and ultimately redefined their futures in organisation and administration. De Sales' letters serve as a case study by which to examine how, as a result of the American Civil War, the Roman Catholic Church gained ground and its Irish nuns acquired a stronger foothold in American nursing.

Keywords:

• Irish Catholic nuns
• epistolary genre
• American Civil War letters
• Confederate hospitals
• self-representation

Notes

 1. Farren, A Call to Care, 15.

 2. In this paper, I use the words ‘sister’ and ‘nun’ interchangeably, although ‘sister’ was the word of choice during the American Civil War.

 3. Maher, To Bind Up the Wounds, 110.

 4. Pocock, Social Anthropology, 99.

 5. Laurence, ‘“Begging Pardon for all Mistakes or Errors in this Writeing I Being a Woman & Doeing Itt Myselfe”: Family Narratives in Some Early Eighteenth-Century Letters’, 194–206.

 6. Hahn, Sickness and Healing, 132.

 7. For fuller accounts on women's and nuns' roles in nursing during the Civil War, see Barton, Angels of the Battlefield; Besselien, ‘A Cavalryman's Crash Course in Medicine’; Culpepper and Adams, ‘Nursing in the Civil War’; Doyle, ‘Nursing by Religious Orders in the United States,’ Parts 1 and 2; Fitzpatrick, ‘The Mercy Brigade’; and Kelly, Song of the Hills.

 8. Schultz, ‘Letter-writing Instruction in 19th Century Schools’, 109–30.

 9. Unless otherwise noted, all references to the De Sales quotes can be found in the Episcopal papers of the Roman Catholic Archdiocesan Archives in Charleston, South Carolina (Ref. no. 1790-1845, Correspondence of Sr. M. De Sales).

10. The Encyclopedia of the Irish in America, ‘South Carolina’.

11. Gleeson, The Irish in the South 1815–1877.

12. In Germany, princes lost land rights and were forced to flee; in Italy, land reforms meant that many peasants were no longer secure on former farms etc.

13. For fuller discussions of the causes of Irish immigration in the nineteenth century, see Diner, Erin's Daughters in America; Harris and Jacobs, The Search for Missing Friends; Harzig, Peasant Maids, City Women; and Miller , Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America.

14. The Encyclopedia of the Irish in America, ‘South Carolina’.

15. ‘The Universe of Battle’, The Civil War.

16. Collier's Encyclopedia, 42nd ed., s.v. ‘“Know Nothing” (or American) Party’.

17. Leonard, ‘Catholic Nursing Sisters and Nursing in the Civil War’, 65–81.

18. These hospitals often fell under the aegis of Protestant philanthropists. For further information about the Roman Catholic healthcare field in the nineteenth century, see Kauffman, Ministry and Meaning; and Stepsis and Liptak, Pioneer Healers.

19. Doyle, ‘Nursing by Religious Orders in the United States’, 775–86. Doyle, citing a Sister of Charity's explanation of this prioritising as necessary, stresses that caring for ‘the poor and helpless’ as well as the orphans took place within the institution of the academy.

20. McNamara, Sisters in Arms, 623.

21. Bergin, ‘Caring in War and Peace’.

22. Bergin, ‘Caring in War and Peace’, 2.

23. As reported in the United States Catholic Miscellany's entry for Charleston, South Carolina, on Saturday 31 March 1849.

24. The Encyclopedia of the Irish in America, ‘Lynch, Patrick Nelson’.

25. The Encyclopedia of the Irish in America, ‘Lynch, Patrick Nelson’

26. In 1700, Samuel Sewell's book The Selling of Joseph set forth the humanitarian principles that were to gain momentum from that time until the eve of the Civil War.

27. For more on this turbulent period, see William Lee Miller's, Arguing about Slavery: John Quincy Adams and the Great Battle in the United States Congress.

28. Miller, Arguing about Slavery, 79.

29. Collier's Encyclopedia, 42nd ed., s.v. ‘The Civil War’.

30. The Encyclopedia of the Irish in America, ‘Lynch, Patrick Nelson’.

31. Collier's Encyclopedia, 42nd ed., s.v. ‘The Civil War’.

32. Genosky, ‘Nursing in the Civil War’.

33. Welter, ‘The Cult of True Womanhood’, 151–74.

34. ‘The Universe of Battle’, The Civil War.

35. Carlacio, ‘“Ye Knew Your Duty, But Ye Did It Not”’, 248.

36. Lerner, ‘From Family Nursing to Volunteer Nursing in the Civil War’, 181.

37. Leonard, ‘Catholic Sisters and Nursing in the Civil War’, 65–81.

38. A Call to Care .

39. McNamara, Sisters in Arms, 624.

40. Wall, ‘Grace under Pressure’, 71–87.

41. Walker, ‘“Doe not suppose me a well mortified Nun dead to the world”’, 159–76.

42. A Call to Care.

43. Ewans, The Role of the Nun in Nineteenth Century America, 207.

44. Besnier, ‘Literacy and the Notion of Person on Nukulaelae Atoll’, 570–87.

45. Stewart, Marvels of Charity, 69.

46. Stewart, Marvels of Charity, 69.

47. Farren, A Call to Care, 3.

48. Maher, To Bind Up the Wounds, 73.

49. Stewart, Marvels of Charity, 200.

50. Bodell, Montgomery White Sulphur Springs, 29.

51. Stewart, Marvels of Charity, 200–1.

52. Dorothy H. Bodell, telephone interview with author, 27 November 2007.

53. Dorothy H. Bodell, telephone interview with author, 27 November 2007

54. Genosky, ‘Nursing in the Civil War’, 19.

55. Genosky, ‘Nursing in the Civil War’, 19, 20.

56. Genosky, ‘Nursing in the Civil War’, 19, 29.

57. ‘The Universe of Battle’, The Civil War.

58. ‘Valley of the Shadow of Death’, The Civil War.

59. ‘Valley of the Shadow of Death’, The Civil War

60. ‘The Universe of Battle’, The Civil War.

61. ‘Valley of the Shadow of Death’, The Civil War.

62. Maher, To Bind Up the Wounds, 114.

63. Maher, To Bind Up the Wounds, 31.

64. Bodell, Montgomery White Sulphur Springs, 33.

65. Bodell, Montgomery White Sulphur Springs, 24.

66. Instruction manuals provided examples of well-written letters that well-bred women were expected to imitate and copy; some, like Samuel Kerl's 1869 textbook Elements of Composition and Rhetoric, were very popular and circulated freely in the nineteenth century.

67. Stewart, Marvels of Charity, 27.

68. Magnusson, Shakespeare and Social Dialogue, 3.

69. Bergin, ‘Caring in War and Peace’, 3.

70. For more on the letter-writing genre as a cultural phenomenon, see Barton and Hall, Letter Writing as Social Practice; for more on the creation of a gendered persona in letter writing, see Daybell, ‘Scripting a Female Voice: Women's Epistolary Rhetoric in Sixteenth Century Letters of Petition.’

71. Dawson, Soldier Heroes, 23.

72. Holquist, M.M. Bakhtin, 280.

73. Magnusson, Shakespeare and Social Dialogue, 177.

74. Leech, Principles of Pragmatics, 144.

75. In ‘Caring in War and Peace’ Denis Bergin suggests that De Sales and the bishop may have been friends.

76. Ewens, The Role of the Nun in Nineteenth Century America, 227.

77. This is one of the few letters under discussion here that was written not to Patrick Lynch but to De Sales' mother superior in Charleston, Sister Teresa Barry.

78. ‘“Begging Pardon for all mistakes and errors in this writing I being a woman and doing it myself”’, 198.

79. Davis, Fiction in the Archives, 20.

80. Duilearga, ‘The Gaelic Storyteller’.

81. Ibid. For Irishwomen's formidability, see Ruthefurd, The Rebels of Ireland, 777–863.

82. Syman, ‘Gentle Companions’, 186–7.

83. Syman, ‘Gentle Companions’, 200.

84. Boutcher, ‘Literature, Thought or Fact?’, 137–63.

85. Syman, ‘Gentle Companions’, 186.

86. Weber, ‘“Dear Daughter”’, 246.

87. Weber, ‘“Dear Daughter”’, 239.

88. Bergin, ‘Caring in War and Peace’, 4.