CUMMING, Kate

Born 1828, Edinburgh, Scotland; died 5 June 1909, Birmingham, Alabama

Daughter of David and Jessie Cumming

Kate Cumming's family moved from their native Scotland to Mobile, Alabama, when she was a child. There she attended school and became attached to her adopted homeland and its way of life. After the war, Cumming, who never married, moved to Birmingham with her father. There she taught school and did religious and charitable work. Later in life she was active in Confederate veterans organizations.

Early in the Civil War, Cumming was one of a number of women who volunteered their services to the Confederacy as nurses. The government was at first reluctant to accept them: 19th-century conventions held that a woman's delicate nature would not allow her to tolerate the sights, sounds, and smells of a hospital without permanent damage to her central nervous system. In addition, because of women's alarming propensity to faint at the slightest distress, physicians feared they would be more trouble than the patients they were assigned to tend. However, Cumming and other women soon proved themselves sturdier than was imagined and were quickly accepted as an integral part of the Confederate medical system.

Cumming was not a nurse in the modern sense of the term. The morality of the day did not permit women to bathe or dress male patients, nor could they administer medications or treatments. The former was done by male nurses and convalescent patients, the latter by the physicians themselves. The women were, rather, matrons—the administrators of the wards and super-visors of the kitchens. It was their job to see that beds were prepared for incoming patients, diets prepared by the kitchen staff according to the physician's instructions, laundry done, and the patient kept as comfortable as possible by all those under their command. Often the matrons wrote letters home for the soldiers, read the Bible to them, and prayed with them in the absence of chaplains. In death, they gathered up the personal belongings, cut off a lock of hair, and sent them back to grieving families.

The matron's work was not easy. In her journal, published in 1866 as A Journal of Hospital Life in the Confederate Army of Tennessee, Cumming describes a typical day: "Mrs. Williamson and I live like Sisters of Charity; we get up in the morning about 4 o'clock, and breakfast by candle-light, which meal consists of real coffee without milk, but sugar, hash, and bread; we eat it in our room. Unless we get up early, we find it impossible to get through with our duties. Mrs. Williamson prepared toddies and egg-nogs; I see that the delicacies for the sick are properly prepared. After the duties of the day are over, we then write letters for the men, telling their relations they are here, or informing them of their decease; other times mending some little articles for them. Mrs. Williamson is up many a night till 12 o'clock, working for her 'dear boys,' as she calls them."

Cumming served in a number of hospitals in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Georgia. While some of the hospitals were well equipped, others were hastily thrown together to accommodate increasing numbers of wounded, and abandoned just as quickly when the enemy drew too close. Confederate medical care in general was often a compromise between what one wanted and what one could obtain under difficult conditions. It was not always possible to obtain delicacies like coffee or milk to tempt the appetites of wounded men, or the drugs to ease their pain. The Journal reflects Cumming's helplessness, anger, and final acceptance of death which she cannot prevent or even make less painful.

Cumming's journal does not display the wit or fine eye for characterization of many other Civil War diaries. It is a straightforward account of life in Confederate hospitals, and does not tell the reader much about Cumming herself. We know that she was devoted to the Confederacy and took her work and responsibilities seriously, but learn little about her hopes and dreams for the future or what she did during off-duty hours. Cumming appears to us quiet and capable, rather than engaging or passionate.

Other Works:

Gleanings from the Southland (1895).

Bibliography:

Harwell, R., ed., Kate, The Journal of a Confederate Nurse (1959). Massey, M. E., Bonnet Brigades: American Women and the Civil War (1966). Scott, A. F. The Southern Lady (1971).

—JANET E. KAUFMAN