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Kate: The Journal of A Confederate Nurse
Scottish-born, Alabama-bred Kate Cumming was one of the first women to offer her services for the care of the South’s wounded soldiers. Her detailed journal, first published in 1866, provides a riveting look behind the lines of Civil War action in depicting civilian attitudes, army medical practices, and the administrative workings of the Confederate hospital system.
321 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1998
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About the author
Kate Cumming
21 books2 followersAmerican Civil War era nurse.
Kate Cumming is best known for her dedicated service to sick and wounded Confederate soldiers. She spent much of the latter half of the Civil War (1861-65) as a nurse in hospitals throughout Georgia.
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, circa 1830 (sources differ on the exact date), Cumming migrated with her family to North America as a young child, stopping first in Montreal, Canada, before permanently settling in Mobile, Alabama. Inspired by both the Reverend Benjamin M. Miller, who in an address urged the women of Mobile in early 1862 to aid wounded and sick Confederates, and by Florence Nightingale, the heroic British nurse who served in the Crimean War, Cumming, despite having no formal nursing training, decided to offer her services. Much to the distress of her parents, who firmly believed that ladies did not belong at the battlefield, she left Mobile in April 1862, along with forty other local women, including the novelist Augusta Jane Evans (although Evans did not make it to the front), for the Mississippi-Tennessee border. There, until June 1862, she cared for Confederate soldiers injured at the Battle of Shiloh (April 1862).
Unlike most women nurses, who served only temporarily, Cumming continued as an active nurse for the duration of the war. After a two-month respite in Mobile during the summer of 1862, she traveled to Chattanooga, Tennessee, to volunteer at Newsome Hospital, where she remained for the next year. While there, the Confederate government reluctantly decreed in September 1862 that hospitals could legally pay nurses rather than rely on them as volunteers. Thus Cumming's status changed from volunteer to professional; for the war's duration, she was officially enlisted in the Confederate Army Medical Department.
After the fall of Chattanooga in the summer of 1863, Cumming moved on to Georgia, where she served in numerous mobile field hospitals established throughout the state in response to the destruction inflicted by Union general William T. Sherman's troops. As the major military forces moved southward and eastward, so did the location of these facilities. Confederate field hospitals were set up in many Georgia locations, including Catoosa Springs, Cherokee Springs, Dalton, Kingston, Marietta, Ringgold, Rome, and Tunnel Hill, during the Atlanta campaign of 1864. Later they were established in other Georgia locales: Americus, Athens, Augusta, Barnesville, Columbus, Covington, Forsyth, Fort Gaines, Greensboro, Griffin, LaGrange, Macon, Madison, Milner, Newnan, Oxford, Thomaston, and Vineville. Though not employed in all these hospitals, Cumming spent considerable time in several of them, specifically those at Americus, Cherokee Springs, Dalton, Newnan, and Ringgold. When the war ended in April 1865, she was working in southwest Georgia.
Cumming returned to Mobile after the war, and in 1866 she published A Journal of Hospital Life in the Confederate Army of Tennessee from the Battle of Shiloh to the End of the War, a chronicle of her day-to-day nursing experiences on the Civil War battlefields of Tennessee and Georgia. In 1874 she moved with her father to Birmingham, Alabama. She never married. She resided there as a teacher and active member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy until her death on June 5, 1909. She is buried in Mobile.
~ [source: http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/ng...]
Kate Cumming is best known for her dedicated service to sick and wounded Confederate soldiers. She spent much of the latter half of the Civil War (1861-65) as a nurse in hospitals throughout Georgia.
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, circa 1830 (sources differ on the exact date), Cumming migrated with her family to North America as a young child, stopping first in Montreal, Canada, before permanently settling in Mobile, Alabama. Inspired by both the Reverend Benjamin M. Miller, who in an address urged the women of Mobile in early 1862 to aid wounded and sick Confederates, and by Florence Nightingale, the heroic British nurse who served in the Crimean War, Cumming, despite having no formal nursing training, decided to offer her services. Much to the distress of her parents, who firmly believed that ladies did not belong at the battlefield, she left Mobile in April 1862, along with forty other local women, including the novelist Augusta Jane Evans (although Evans did not make it to the front), for the Mississippi-Tennessee border. There, until June 1862, she cared for Confederate soldiers injured at the Battle of Shiloh (April 1862).
Unlike most women nurses, who served only temporarily, Cumming continued as an active nurse for the duration of the war. After a two-month respite in Mobile during the summer of 1862, she traveled to Chattanooga, Tennessee, to volunteer at Newsome Hospital, where she remained for the next year. While there, the Confederate government reluctantly decreed in September 1862 that hospitals could legally pay nurses rather than rely on them as volunteers. Thus Cumming's status changed from volunteer to professional; for the war's duration, she was officially enlisted in the Confederate Army Medical Department.
After the fall of Chattanooga in the summer of 1863, Cumming moved on to Georgia, where she served in numerous mobile field hospitals established throughout the state in response to the destruction inflicted by Union general William T. Sherman's troops. As the major military forces moved southward and eastward, so did the location of these facilities. Confederate field hospitals were set up in many Georgia locations, including Catoosa Springs, Cherokee Springs, Dalton, Kingston, Marietta, Ringgold, Rome, and Tunnel Hill, during the Atlanta campaign of 1864. Later they were established in other Georgia locales: Americus, Athens, Augusta, Barnesville, Columbus, Covington, Forsyth, Fort Gaines, Greensboro, Griffin, LaGrange, Macon, Madison, Milner, Newnan, Oxford, Thomaston, and Vineville. Though not employed in all these hospitals, Cumming spent considerable time in several of them, specifically those at Americus, Cherokee Springs, Dalton, Newnan, and Ringgold. When the war ended in April 1865, she was working in southwest Georgia.
Cumming returned to Mobile after the war, and in 1866 she published A Journal of Hospital Life in the Confederate Army of Tennessee from the Battle of Shiloh to the End of the War, a chronicle of her day-to-day nursing experiences on the Civil War battlefields of Tennessee and Georgia. In 1874 she moved with her father to Birmingham, Alabama. She never married. She resided there as a teacher and active member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy until her death on June 5, 1909. She is buried in Mobile.
~ [source: http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/ng...]
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 9, 2008
Although Kate Cumming was definitely a woman of her times and a tried and true Confederate (including her feelings regarding race and class), I still found this book very interesting. She discusses the conditions of the Confederate hospitals, talks about them having to move around all the time, and gives name after name of who died the night before... Since it's her journal, it really give you her first-person account of day to day life during the Civil War.
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August 7, 2011Very good primary source for civil war women
June 30, 2025
As a historical document, this is, I think, an honest rendition of the experiences of this one woman, Kate Cumming, and of her reactions to and understanding of those experiences, her thoughts and feelings, her observations. I think it accurately reflects what a lot of people thought and felt about ‘things in general.’
As for my own observations, the reader does not encounter much of what we today think of as ‘nursing’, so one doesn’t learn much about medical practices of the era. About 3/4 of the way through the book, KC states that she had dressed a wound for the first (and possibly only) time, and at one point mentions grinding charcoal to put on wounds. It seems that many, doctors as well as society at large, had notions that women should not be involved in medical care activities. Indeed, most of what KC does we would call hospital administration; procuring food and supplies, cooking or engaging cooks and other types of non-medical workers, delivering meals to patients and maybe feeding them, washing patients’ faces, writing letters for patients (sometimes to their surviving relatives) and reading to them, being with them when they died. All important stuff, no doubt, but not exactly what primarily we think of as nursing.
Interestingly, she once mentions the Roman Catholic Sisters of Charity as running the best hospitals, but she never seems to inquire why that is so or to learn from their practices or try to incorporate them into her own way of doing things.
Whatever the case, there were always shortages, overwork, liars & thieves, corruption, and endless death and suffering, enough to go around. Must have been horrendous.
What sort of surprises me most, however, is that she never wavers from her insistence that the South had the Right to secede from the Union (a position with which I actually agree) and that they (southerners) were fighting for their own Liberty (which I think is nonsense), and that she could not imagine how God could let the South fail since its Cause was so self-evidently Just and Right. KC really took that ‘God could only be on our side’ stuff totally seriously. It’s quite an amazing mind-set that I suspect was pretty widely shared by her fellow Rebels.
But I still can’t understand how, at the end of it all, after all the suffering that the South brought upon itself, she never steps back and says, “You know, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea…” It never enters her mind that the South could be Wrong, or that even if it were Right in some things, there might have been a better way. This is the point at which I lay at least some of the blame for the Civil War—which I consider the stupidest war in all history—in the laps of southern women. It never should have happened. They should have told their men to not be idiots for once in their lives.
But, alas…
On the upside, one lesson the South (as well as the rest of the country) does seem to have learned is, if you’re going to have a war, have it in someone else’s country. What did Southerners expect from war with an economically superior power? Devastation? Apparently not. Stupid and blind they were. From KC’s account, it’s clear, despite the occasional military victory, that the South was losing from Day 1, and the South’s suffering is ALWAYS the Yankee’s fault.
In an attempt to extract an emblematic (and ironic) quote from her text, I offer the following:
“We reached Macon on the 6th, and I went to the Blind School Hospital, where my friend, Miss Rigby, is matron. It is a new hospital, and the building had been a school for the blind. It stands on a very elevated spot, and the view of the city from it is very fine.”
As for KC’s views on the races and race relations, she actually has a few valuable insights: to wit, many northerners as well as southerners were not at all ready to accept the logical consequences of emancipation and political much less social equality. She also recognizes that the range of relationships between owners and slaves could not be reduced to the Simon Legree model. The intellectual argument against slavery (an argument which she rejects) is simple; the lived reality was much more complex, for both races.
In any case, the book is a glimpse into a time, into a mind set, and into a small slice of the war. It is a worthy read, even if I don’t actually like the person who wrote it.
As for my own observations, the reader does not encounter much of what we today think of as ‘nursing’, so one doesn’t learn much about medical practices of the era. About 3/4 of the way through the book, KC states that she had dressed a wound for the first (and possibly only) time, and at one point mentions grinding charcoal to put on wounds. It seems that many, doctors as well as society at large, had notions that women should not be involved in medical care activities. Indeed, most of what KC does we would call hospital administration; procuring food and supplies, cooking or engaging cooks and other types of non-medical workers, delivering meals to patients and maybe feeding them, washing patients’ faces, writing letters for patients (sometimes to their surviving relatives) and reading to them, being with them when they died. All important stuff, no doubt, but not exactly what primarily we think of as nursing.
Interestingly, she once mentions the Roman Catholic Sisters of Charity as running the best hospitals, but she never seems to inquire why that is so or to learn from their practices or try to incorporate them into her own way of doing things.
Whatever the case, there were always shortages, overwork, liars & thieves, corruption, and endless death and suffering, enough to go around. Must have been horrendous.
What sort of surprises me most, however, is that she never wavers from her insistence that the South had the Right to secede from the Union (a position with which I actually agree) and that they (southerners) were fighting for their own Liberty (which I think is nonsense), and that she could not imagine how God could let the South fail since its Cause was so self-evidently Just and Right. KC really took that ‘God could only be on our side’ stuff totally seriously. It’s quite an amazing mind-set that I suspect was pretty widely shared by her fellow Rebels.
But I still can’t understand how, at the end of it all, after all the suffering that the South brought upon itself, she never steps back and says, “You know, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea…” It never enters her mind that the South could be Wrong, or that even if it were Right in some things, there might have been a better way. This is the point at which I lay at least some of the blame for the Civil War—which I consider the stupidest war in all history—in the laps of southern women. It never should have happened. They should have told their men to not be idiots for once in their lives.
But, alas…
On the upside, one lesson the South (as well as the rest of the country) does seem to have learned is, if you’re going to have a war, have it in someone else’s country. What did Southerners expect from war with an economically superior power? Devastation? Apparently not. Stupid and blind they were. From KC’s account, it’s clear, despite the occasional military victory, that the South was losing from Day 1, and the South’s suffering is ALWAYS the Yankee’s fault.
In an attempt to extract an emblematic (and ironic) quote from her text, I offer the following:
“We reached Macon on the 6th, and I went to the Blind School Hospital, where my friend, Miss Rigby, is matron. It is a new hospital, and the building had been a school for the blind. It stands on a very elevated spot, and the view of the city from it is very fine.”
As for KC’s views on the races and race relations, she actually has a few valuable insights: to wit, many northerners as well as southerners were not at all ready to accept the logical consequences of emancipation and political much less social equality. She also recognizes that the range of relationships between owners and slaves could not be reduced to the Simon Legree model. The intellectual argument against slavery (an argument which she rejects) is simple; the lived reality was much more complex, for both races.
In any case, the book is a glimpse into a time, into a mind set, and into a small slice of the war. It is a worthy read, even if I don’t actually like the person who wrote it.
February 20, 2025
Kate was a good book.
I was looking for more detailed accounts of her nursing duties and being with wounded soldiers etc.
This book seemed to touch more on activities outside of her nursing duties. There are instances and stories of when she was on duty, but very short accounts.
I really don't recommend if you want the gory full blown account of what she had seen and done as a nurse. It's just not there.
I was looking for more detailed accounts of her nursing duties and being with wounded soldiers etc.
This book seemed to touch more on activities outside of her nursing duties. There are instances and stories of when she was on duty, but very short accounts.
I really don't recommend if you want the gory full blown account of what she had seen and done as a nurse. It's just not there.
January 7, 2019
Cumming led an interesting, busy life as a nurse and hospital matron during the American Civil War. What comes across the most in her published diary is that she was angry and had no intention of "forgive and forget" in post war America. I have a feeling she was just as bitter and angry in old age as she was when this was first published!
January 31, 2021
Fascinating first hand account of the atrocities of the Civil War. Written by a Confederate nurse who truly believed in the right to succession, it was both interesting and disheartening to hear her defense of the cause. Her feelings are so deep rooted that it is no wonder that equality is still a work in progress almost 200 years later.
August 26, 2017
She never considered herself a nurse just said she was doing women's duties. A view of the war of one living throuth it. She gives her candid thoughts and opinions in her journal. A great source for a real southern woman of the time.
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April 8, 2023While this is well written and the diarist does appear to be a committed Christian I can't get over the impression that quite a bit of the diary is little more than her repeating of rumors that she has heard. I don't think that this is a book that I can recommend.
August 23, 2025
Enjoyable and very interesting read.
Extremely well written. keeps your interest while detailing the observations and hands on experiences of nursing during the Civil war. Describes the positive s and negatives extremely well referenced.
Great read.
Extremely well written. keeps your interest while detailing the observations and hands on experiences of nursing during the Civil war. Describes the positive s and negatives extremely well referenced.
Great read.
August 24, 2015
This book is an amazing real world look at war. I have now read two nonfiction accounts of the Civil War by women, one from a Union perspective and one from a Confederate perspective. Politics aside, war is ugly. People follow their leaders blindly without hesitation and take a side not realizing the losses they will incur. It seems we should be able to learn that fighting isn't the answer, that intelligent negotiation would make so much more sense than primitive reactionary violence.
I learned a lot from Kate's story. I picked up this book in a Civil War museum in Corinth, MS and I am so appreciative for the parks and recreation facilities who keep these historic landmarks relevant for generations of visitors.
I highly recommend this book to women, to nurses, to history buffs and to anyone who is considering writing a journal of timely events.
I learned a lot from Kate's story. I picked up this book in a Civil War museum in Corinth, MS and I am so appreciative for the parks and recreation facilities who keep these historic landmarks relevant for generations of visitors.
I highly recommend this book to women, to nurses, to history buffs and to anyone who is considering writing a journal of timely events.
September 18, 2014
Very interesting diary of a Confederate Nurse during the Civil War. The footnotes help keep her view on facts in perspective
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews