The Civil War opened up the field of nursing to women, breaking down yet another barrier of the strict gender roles placed on women during the nineteenth century. Women from both the North and the South joined the Civil War as both nurses and “matrons”. The comparison of the way Faust presents Northern and Southern women in the book Mothers of Inventions, lends insight on the similarities and differences between Union and Confederate nurses.
According to Faust, Florence Nightingale influenced both Northern and Southern women decision to join nursing during the Civil War (pg 92). Florence Nightingale led a team of nurses, which improved the unsanitary conditions at a British military hospital, during the Crimean War. The patriotism of Florence Nightingale influenced both Northern and Southern women in a similar way. For both Northern and Southern women, Lawrence Nightingale represented a woman who was doing more than just sitting on the sidelines of war waiting for the husband to come home.
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According to Faust (pg.111), the legacy of northern nurses is greater than that of Southern nurses. There are many reasons why the legacy of Northern nurses lived on while the Southern nurses lay in the shadows of history. When one side of a major conflict wins, their side of history persists over the other. When the North won the legacy of nurses like Dorothea Dix persisted over the legacy of southern nurses like Cummings. Furthermore, after the war, Northerners established schools for nursing, but not the south. The devastation of the war caused Southerners to rebuild their lives and their homes leaving very little time, want, and need for building nursing schools. In addition, many Southern women reverted into the family life of the South, leaving very few who wanted to become