A Review of Kate: The Journal of a Confederate Nurse (LSU Press, 1998) edited by Richard Barksdale Harwell
Kate Cumming was born in Scotland in 1835. She was very young when her family immigrated to Canada and then moved to the prosperous port of Mobile, Alabama, where she grew up. In April of 1862, she volunteered to join a group of women who would become nurses to the Confederate sick and wounded in hospitals near the battle fronts. Her first assignment was a hospital in Corinth, Mississippi, and after a short stint in that place she went on to serve as a matron in hospitals in Tennessee and Georgia until the end of the war.
What is truly amazing about this journal (and countless other Southern primary wartime sources) is the author’s diabolical cunning in inserting into her diary so many obviously false observations and ideas upholding the so-called “Lost Cause Myth” before she even knew that the cause was lost. (The Lost Cause Myth is defined in part by the infallible and beneficent Wikipedia as a pseudohistorical narrative that argues that the purposes of the Confederate States were morally just and heroic, when in fact it was only the purposes of the Union which were just and heroic). Let me give you some examples of her laudatory fabrications:
On April 11, 1862, she wrote of the Confederate army: “I am certain of one thing: that neither the Roman nor Greek armies, brave as history has portrayed them, were composed of more high-minded and determined men than those of ours.”
On September 3, 1863, she made this up about the Confederate soldiers in the hospitals: “I can not tell whether our army is an exception to the rule or not, but about it I can say, as regards real native refinement, that which all the Chesterfields in the world can not give, a more perfect army of gentlemen could not be than they are.”
On September 13, 1863, Miss Cumming came up with this whopper, claiming that men of Anglo-Saxon descent “never could make good soldiers without they were fighting for some principle; or, in other words, had good consciences, and felt that their honor was at stake. We all know that the enemy have nothing of that kind to fight for.”
Miss Cumming claims that the Federal prisoners in the hospitals received the same food and care as the Confederate sick and wounded, but while falsely praising the Confederate army, she slanders and vilifies the Union soldiers as well as the Northern people and their leaders on many occasions. She calls Yankees “fiends in human shape” and even falsely asserts that the Yankee soldiers were fighting only to preserve the union, and not for the noble purpose of freeing the slaves!
May 9, 1862: “I have conversed with a number of the [Union] prisoners; they all express the same opinion as the others, that they dislike Lincoln and the abolitionists as much as we do, but they are fighting for the Union.”
October 18, 1863: “I was conversing with [Captain Desha] one day relative to the ignorance of our men. He said there was no doubt it was very great, but not greater than that of the northerners. He had seen hundreds of letters from the people in the North, and they were not only illiterate, but vulgar. This I have often heard said before.”
July 17, 1864: “The enemy have a particular liking for ladies’ wardrobes. I suppose they send them to their lady-loves in the North. I wonder how they feel in their stolen finery! I do not suppose the men would rob us as they do if they were not incited by the importunities of their women. Many letters, taken from dead Federals on the battle-fields, contain petitions from the women to send them valuables from the South. One says she wants a silk dress; another, a watch; and one writer told her husband that now was the time to get a piano, as they could not afford to buy one.”
August 6, 1864: “There was a Captain Shortz of Iowa who had one of his hands cut off…I told him I had more sympathy for him than I had for our own men. He asked me why. I answered, his conscience could not be at rest, like theirs. He said that was a difference of opinion. All the men there told us the same old story—they were fighting for the Union.” [This was Eliot Shurtz, 1828-1902, who served in Sherman’s army in Georgia.]
April 20, 1865: “I am told that the [Yankee] captain boasted that, last year, when Sherman went through the eastern portion of [Georgia], he, along with many others, had come to Griffin, dressed in Confederate uniform, calling themselves Wheeler’s men. They then broke open stores and took out what they pleased. They said they had often done so. This will, likely, account for the bad repute of [General] Wheeler’s men.”
May 4, 1865: “The armistice was proclaimed before Wilson’s army reached Macon. The mayor and a number of citizens met the army some miles from the city, and informed [Union] General Wilson of the armistice, and begged him not to come any further; but he pretended not to believe it, and marched his troops right in. Robbery and scenes of violence are as common as if peace had not been restored…[Wilson’s soldiers] use the negroes shamefully, and kill them on the least provocation.”
Seriously, dear reader, as you can see from the above quotes from the diary, it is interesting reading. I bought a copy of Kate’s Journal, or diary, because I was doing research for a historical novel, and I soon discovered that it was one of the best personal narratives of the war I had ever read. Miss Cumming first published her journal in 1866, and in 1959, the Louisiana State University Press published an annotated and indexed edition edited by Richard Barksdale Harwell (the title reviewed here). The noted historian E. Merton Coulter wrote of her work: “As a realistic description of the Confederate hospital service, this journal is of first-rate importance.” It is full of illuminating historical details and touching, sometimes heart-rending anecdotes about the wounded and dying soldiers to whom she ministered. Miss Cumming was a well-educated, devout, intelligent young woman ardently devoted to the Confederate cause of independence.
Among the many interesting tidbits in her diary are mentions of foreign-born men serving in the Confederate army. One of them was James Barstow, a native of Yorkshire. England, who served in Company E of the 7th Arkansas Infantry Regiment and died in a Chattanooga hospital on May 19, 1863, at the age of 22. In October 1863 she wrote of Captain Prendergast (likely John L. Prendergast): “He had been in the British army, and is now a member of the Tenth Tennessee Regiment.” On 17 July 1864 she mentioned meeting a friend from Mobile, a Dr. Henderson: “He is an Englishman, and came out from England last fall. On his arrival he received a commission in our army.” The editor identifies him as James C. Henderson, but it is more likely he was William Henderson (1823-1873), the surgeon of the Cantey Hospital in Mobile, who is buried in the Church Street Cemetery in that city.
Miss Cumming also writes of a cousin, Edwin Lessel, a Canadian who “had been only a short time in this country” and was serving in the 2nd Alabama Infantry Regiment. “He is a native of Nova Scotia, and when the war broke out, he had only been a short time in this country. I told him he had better go home, as he could not have the same feeling toward the enemy as the southerners. He answered me, that was all a mistake; that from the time he was a little boy his highest ambition was to have a shot at them, and now the chance had come, he had no idea of throwing it away.” Research revealed that this was Edwin James King Lessel (1840-1880), who later became an Episcopal minister. In 1878, while serving as a rector in a Connecticut church, Lessel was assigned to the duty of establishing a missionary station in the notorious town of Deadwood in the Dakota Territory.
After the war Miss Cumming moved to Birmingham, Alabama, where she died in 1909. She never married, and spent her last years supporting the work of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the United Confederate Veterans. Other editions of her journal are available, but I recommend Richard B. Harwell’s edition published in 1959 and released again in 1987.
Editor’s note: This piece is tongue-in-cheek satire and is offered to expose the stupidity of the “Righteous Cause Myth” and those who argue that Southerners invented the “Lost Cause” when the War was over.
The views expressed at AbbevilleInstitute.org are not necessarily those of the Abbeville Institute.
Miss Kate should have married a Confederate hero and had a dozen children with him. And so on, and so on…it takes soldiers to win a war.
Thank you for your efforts in this struggle.
Fantastic story! It is hard to argue with primary sources!
Great job!
And also Ms. Stokes, nicely nuanced. Like Shelby Foote. The third time I fought through Ken Burns documentary on the War I realized that he had taken it over and made it his. And I think he only interviewed with Burns for like 4 hours.
When you put 20 years into a Narrative, not caring whether or not you win a Pulitzer…
Dear Ms Stokes,
It is generally a pleasure to read your material.
But, sorry, Ma’am, I must tell you that this piece is so over-laden with irony, it is hurts to read it.
You misuse Nurse Cumming’s narrative to point out the malicious nonsense that passes for history in the Yankee mind. That is a different story. A straighter rendering of her remarkable material would have served Nurse Cumming (and us) much better.
I second Chris’ thoughts. Sarcasm has its place, but it too easily devolves to “sarchasm”, with a “chasm” between what was intended and what is inferred. I had to read it twice and was still a bit unsure. I’m thankful for the highlighting of Nurse Cummings.