20. Joining the War
Soon after the Civil War began, a surgeon in an Illinois regiment and a friend of Mary Ann Bickerdyke wrote home about the abysmal conditions in military hospitals in Cairo, Illinois. Bickerdyke’s community collected $500 worth of supplies, and she was the only volunteer willing to deliver them.
She ended up getting appointed as a field agent for the US Sanitary Commission – a private relief agency created to support sick and wounded soldiers. A strong-willed woman, she was determined to let nothing stand in the way of her quest to bring order to field hospitals and improve a lot of the soldiers being treated in them.