Booknotes: A Mother's Work

New Arrival:

• A Mother's Work: Mary Bickerdyke, Civil War–Era Nurse by Megan VanGorder (UNC Press, 2026).

If you ask general Civil War readers and enthusiasts to name the most famous, or most important, Civil War nurse, it is doubtless the case that the most common answer would be Clara Barton, that response also likely influenced by Barton's postwar leadership role in the origins of the International Red Cross's American branch. However, others might bring up the name of Mary Ann "Mother" Bickerdyke, a figure whose efforts and accomplishments in the Union Army's military nursing field certainly ranked among the highest.

From the description: "Mary Ann Bickerdyke led a remarkable life. A widowed mother from Illinois, she became an influential traveling nurse and Sanitary Commission agent during the American Civil War. She followed the Union army through four years and nineteen battles, established hundreds of hospitals, assisted surgeons with amputations, treated fevers, and fed the soldiers in her care. Known affectionately as “Mother” to thousands of soldiers, Bickerdyke bridged the private world of home caregiving and the public demands of wartime and institutional medicine."

Megan VanGorder's A Mother's Work: Mary Bickerdyke, Civil War–Era Nurse is not a cradle to grave biography written in a popular narrative format. Instead, the author describes her work as approaching "life writing" through the "self-determined American school of microhistory," its tenets consisting of "a small unit of primary analysis; a micro-macro link or some indication of the wider implications of the analysis; transparency, in which the author acknowledges unanswered questions as they arise in the research process; and the use of an academic narrative style" (pg. 8).

The concept of motherhood as contextualized both internally and externally throughout Bickerdyke's public life (she apparently fully embraced the "Mother" moniker) is undoubtedly the primary micro-macro link referenced above. More from the description: "Drawing on a rich archive of personal letters, military records, and newspapers, Megan VanGorder explores how Bickerdyke used her maternal identity to challenge norms, advocate for soldiers, and pioneer compassionate care practices before, during, and after the Civil War." VanGorder's examination "uses key episodes from Bickerdyke’s life to reveal broader truths about motherhood, medicine, and women’s roles in the nineteenth century, and offers an intimate and historically grounded portrait of one woman’s evolving identity and the moniker that made her famous. In reassessing Bickerdyke’s work and legacy, this book also serves as a new perspective on how white working-class women contributed to the transitional period of the Civil War era and reshaped public health, social care, and national memory."