A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [71]
Mary and Sam were an eccentric pair. She was tight-lipped, fussy, and prone to shrillness; he was quiet, absent-minded, and passive. Despite having trained as a civil engineer under Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Sam had never been able to withstand the rigors of an occupation, and over the years his dependence on her had become absolute. The siblings had arrived in New Orleans in 1850 so Sam could take up yet another new position. His inevitable failure gave Mary the idea that they should start a school together. She would teach English, French, and music; Sam, if he were able, could teach mathematics.
“In my eyes,” wrote Mary, “the only blot I ever saw in the sunny South was slavery; but as a stranger, an alien, I had no right to meddle.”14 But her sympathy for the South did not extend to Sam volunteering: “I was, and still am, and ever will be, a British subject,” she wrote in her diary.15 Nevertheless, her brother had joined the Irish Brigade after a furious argument over the failure of the seminary. Mary woke up one morning in early June to discover he had packed his bags and disappeared. She had seen the placards calling for Irishmen to join the 6th Louisiana Volunteers, as the Irish Brigade was officially designated, but never once did she think that her introverted and clumsy brother might heed the call. Nor dared she imagine how the Irish Catholic volunteers would treat a Protestant whose loyalty was not to Ireland but to the Crown:
I tried all I could to get him free [Mary recalled]; went to Mr. Muir [sic], who was then Consul, to see what he could do, but with no good result. It nearly broke my heart to see my only brother and only near male relative leave me and leave the flag we were born under for a stranger, and perhaps get killed for his folly; so I concluded I would follow him to Virginia to care for him where I knew he would sadly want a woman’s care, and that I would, whenever needed, care for the wounded, the sick and the distressed. Miss Nightingale God bless her taught us, women of the British flag, this lesson of humanity.16
Sam’s regiment was in need of a nurse, and Colonel Isaac Seymour was willing to overlook the fact that Mary was unmarried, since he doubted that the forty-two-year-old spinster would interest the men. “So,” she recorded, “having no particular ties; being as the law has it, a femme sole, I made up my mind to this humane calling.” Two weeks later Mary jotted in her diary: “My brother quite miserable at the step he has taken. I am so glad I made up my mind to look after him.”17
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Mary Sophia Hill would have found it much more difficult to become a nurse in the North. There was no shortage of women wanting to help. British-born Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to qualify as a doctor in the United States, was deluged with nursing applicants after the Federal surrender of Fort Sumter.5.3 She was cross that the same society ladies who had previously claimed to be scandalized by the infirmary were now begging to be admitted for training.18 But she soon realized there would never be a better opportunity to attract support for her medical college. With the aid of Henry Bellows, the charismatic pastor of All Souls Unitarian Church, she invited “the women of New York” to attend a mass meeting at the Cooper Institute. They expected large numbers, but not the four thousand who crammed into the hall.
The result of this historic event was the creation of the Women’s Central Association of Relief. Elizabeth envisioned it as a kind of civilian central command that would direct the various relief efforts on the home front, from the training of nurses to the distribution of woolen socks. The WCAR would work side by side with the army, ensuring that the needs of soldiers were met as quickly as possible. The Reverend Henry Bellows and a delegation of male doctors went to Washington to seek government approval for the plan. But during the