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Women's Diaries and Letters of the South
A Woman Doctor's Civil War: The Diary of Esther Hill Hawks
A physician, a Northerner, a teacher, a school administrator, a suffragist, and an abolitionist, Esther Hill Hawks was the antithesis of Southern womanhood. And those very differences destined her to chronicle the era in which she played such a strange part.
While most women of the 1860s stayed at home, tending husband and house, Esther Hill Hawks went south to minister to black Union troops and newly freed slaves as both a teacher and a doctor. She kept a diary and described the South she saw—conquered but still proud. Her pen, honed to a fine point by her abolitionist views, missed mothing as she traveled through a hungary and ailing land.
In the well-known Diary from Dixie, Mary Boykin Chestnut depiced her native Southland as one of cavaliers with their ladies, statesmen and politicians, honor and glory. But Hawks painted a much different picture. And unlike Chestnut's characters, hers were liberated slaves and their hungary children, swaggering carpetbaggers, occupation troops far from home, and zealous missionaries. Revealed in the pages of this diary is a woman of vast energy, intelligence, and fortitude, who transformed her idealism into action.
While most women of the 1860s stayed at home, tending husband and house, Esther Hill Hawks went south to minister to black Union troops and newly freed slaves as both a teacher and a doctor. She kept a diary and described the South she saw—conquered but still proud. Her pen, honed to a fine point by her abolitionist views, missed mothing as she traveled through a hungary and ailing land.
In the well-known Diary from Dixie, Mary Boykin Chestnut depiced her native Southland as one of cavaliers with their ladies, statesmen and politicians, honor and glory. But Hawks painted a much different picture. And unlike Chestnut's characters, hers were liberated slaves and their hungary children, swaggering carpetbaggers, occupation troops far from home, and zealous missionaries. Revealed in the pages of this diary is a woman of vast energy, intelligence, and fortitude, who transformed her idealism into action.
289 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 29, 2019
Esther Hill Hawks was an abolitionist, suffragette, teacher, and one of the first women in the United States to become a doctor. In an era where it would have been perfectly acceptable to sit home and sip tea, she packed her bags and followed her husband to the war-ravaged South to provide medical aid and schooling to the black Union regiments based in South Carolina. A Woman Doctor's Civil War - edited and with contexualizing biographical introduction and afterword by Gerald Schwartz - contains her personal account of her life from 1862 through 1866.
Unlike several other Civil War-era diaries I've read, Hawks's was not polished and rearranged for publication during her lifetime. Schwartz notes that she did take a second pass at some of the entries to clean them up, probably with an eye to potential publication - because apparently all God's children in the 19th century sent their private journals out for mass consumption, so don't talk to me about Millennials on Instagram, yo - but if that was a plan it never came to fruition, and all the material here is the happy result of someone rescuing three composition books from a dumpster in Essex County, MA in 1975. As a result, no organizing structure has been superimposed upon Hawks' memories, no attempts made to add a through-line or narrative flow leading to the justification of some grand viewpoint or another (looking at you, Thomas Wentworth Higginson!). Important events crop up now and again - the Battle of Olustee, the end of the war, Lincoln's assassination - but mostly Hawks concerns herself with the day to day minutiae of her life as she bounces back and forth between South Carolina and Florida. She talks about the weather, and the limited social opportunities provided by life in camp, and her work as a teacher with the Freedmen's Bureau, but there's surprisingly little mention of her efforts as a physician. Given that the entries here represent the more or less un-redacted version of Hawks's thoughts, there's also surprisingly little about her relationship with her husband, abolitionist Dr. John Milton Hawks. By the end, I honestly could not have told you whether she loved him, hated him, or only remembered his existence when he happened to send her a letter or show back up in town.
My specific interest in Hawks's diaries relates to her time in Jacksonville, Florida, where she lived or visited from February-July 1864, December 1864-March 1865, August-September 1865, December 1865-January 1866, and November 1866. (And probably after, but the fourth volume of Hawks's diaries, whose existence Schwartz postulates and which might cover her later time in Florida, has never been found.) Hawks provides an account of her founding of the first integrated school in town, housed in the Odd Fellow's Hall, and describes the state of the town during the fourth and final Union occupation of Jacksonville and after the war. A few local luminaries garner passing mentions (the book contains the only social references I've seen to Dr. Daniel Dustin Hanson, who founded Hansontown), but unsurprisingly Hawks mostly associated with the Union soldiers and New England abolitionists in her own circle.
While Esther Hawks lead a fascinating life, the personal nature of the diary entries here does little to reflect that. Had Schwartz not gone out of his way to include a detailed biographical introduction and excellent contextual footnotes, my main takeaway from this book would be that people used to fall off horses a lot, getting on on a boat during the Civil War was more or less dicing with death, and 19th century marriages were very odd. What A Woman Doctor's Civil War does well is provide a ground-level view of the conflict, so I'd suggest it's best paired with a general history that helps provide an overall view and structure to Hawks' story.
Unlike several other Civil War-era diaries I've read, Hawks's was not polished and rearranged for publication during her lifetime. Schwartz notes that she did take a second pass at some of the entries to clean them up, probably with an eye to potential publication - because apparently all God's children in the 19th century sent their private journals out for mass consumption, so don't talk to me about Millennials on Instagram, yo - but if that was a plan it never came to fruition, and all the material here is the happy result of someone rescuing three composition books from a dumpster in Essex County, MA in 1975. As a result, no organizing structure has been superimposed upon Hawks' memories, no attempts made to add a through-line or narrative flow leading to the justification of some grand viewpoint or another (looking at you, Thomas Wentworth Higginson!). Important events crop up now and again - the Battle of Olustee, the end of the war, Lincoln's assassination - but mostly Hawks concerns herself with the day to day minutiae of her life as she bounces back and forth between South Carolina and Florida. She talks about the weather, and the limited social opportunities provided by life in camp, and her work as a teacher with the Freedmen's Bureau, but there's surprisingly little mention of her efforts as a physician. Given that the entries here represent the more or less un-redacted version of Hawks's thoughts, there's also surprisingly little about her relationship with her husband, abolitionist Dr. John Milton Hawks. By the end, I honestly could not have told you whether she loved him, hated him, or only remembered his existence when he happened to send her a letter or show back up in town.
My specific interest in Hawks's diaries relates to her time in Jacksonville, Florida, where she lived or visited from February-July 1864, December 1864-March 1865, August-September 1865, December 1865-January 1866, and November 1866. (And probably after, but the fourth volume of Hawks's diaries, whose existence Schwartz postulates and which might cover her later time in Florida, has never been found.) Hawks provides an account of her founding of the first integrated school in town, housed in the Odd Fellow's Hall, and describes the state of the town during the fourth and final Union occupation of Jacksonville and after the war. A few local luminaries garner passing mentions (the book contains the only social references I've seen to Dr. Daniel Dustin Hanson, who founded Hansontown), but unsurprisingly Hawks mostly associated with the Union soldiers and New England abolitionists in her own circle.
While Esther Hawks lead a fascinating life, the personal nature of the diary entries here does little to reflect that. Had Schwartz not gone out of his way to include a detailed biographical introduction and excellent contextual footnotes, my main takeaway from this book would be that people used to fall off horses a lot, getting on on a boat during the Civil War was more or less dicing with death, and 19th century marriages were very odd. What A Woman Doctor's Civil War does well is provide a ground-level view of the conflict, so I'd suggest it's best paired with a general history that helps provide an overall view and structure to Hawks' story.
May 31, 2023
This collection of Ester Hawks' diaries is super interesting. I will say that the title and the entries don't really fit. What I mean by that is you have an expectation of seeing Hawks using her medical knowledge and administering aid to the military side of the war when in reality she was a teacher during the Civil War and didn't really use her medical knowledge all that often except for civilian issues. I still found the book fascinating but I was a little disappointed at the misleading title.
I actually learned a lot from the book. I was surprised to be reading about interracial marriages, the feelings of southern women, the interworkings of an 1800s marriage between two highly educated people, the treatment of black soldiers, and the female perspective of running a military operation and government. Despite Hawks' education, her husband treated her in many ways like a child. He did not consult with her on issues that affected them both, and it really just shows how much women were treated like property rather than equal partners in the marriage.
One thing that drove me nuts was the editor's decision not to alter the diary in any way really. Instead of writing out names thy editor left in abbreviations for people's names and used footnotes or parentheses to say what they were. It would have been easier to just make a note in the foreword that this was edited and give the full names because it was too much of a pain to keep trying to keep everything straight. Another thing that I wish the editor had done was fix her spelling. Sometimes the words were spelled incredibly wrong and it took forever to figure out what she meant. It once again would have been simple enough to note these changes in a foreword or afterward or end note situation and fix them. There are also some words that I could not find definitions of or were slang, a disused word of the past, or just a general confusing word. One of the biggest examples of this issue that took me forever to figure out was Hawks' use of secesh. It took me FOREVER to realize she was using an abbreviation of secessionist. It would have been helpful to have had a footnote. The footnotes provided weren't really helpful because they only were used for really naming the people she interacted with and what part of the military they were a part of. I just felt like the book could have been more engaging if the editor had provided the reader with more details and context.
I actually learned a lot from the book. I was surprised to be reading about interracial marriages, the feelings of southern women, the interworkings of an 1800s marriage between two highly educated people, the treatment of black soldiers, and the female perspective of running a military operation and government. Despite Hawks' education, her husband treated her in many ways like a child. He did not consult with her on issues that affected them both, and it really just shows how much women were treated like property rather than equal partners in the marriage.
One thing that drove me nuts was the editor's decision not to alter the diary in any way really. Instead of writing out names thy editor left in abbreviations for people's names and used footnotes or parentheses to say what they were. It would have been easier to just make a note in the foreword that this was edited and give the full names because it was too much of a pain to keep trying to keep everything straight. Another thing that I wish the editor had done was fix her spelling. Sometimes the words were spelled incredibly wrong and it took forever to figure out what she meant. It once again would have been simple enough to note these changes in a foreword or afterward or end note situation and fix them. There are also some words that I could not find definitions of or were slang, a disused word of the past, or just a general confusing word. One of the biggest examples of this issue that took me forever to figure out was Hawks' use of secesh. It took me FOREVER to realize she was using an abbreviation of secessionist. It would have been helpful to have had a footnote. The footnotes provided weren't really helpful because they only were used for really naming the people she interacted with and what part of the military they were a part of. I just felt like the book could have been more engaging if the editor had provided the reader with more details and context.
August 30, 2015
Skimmed for content.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews