Burkittsville civil war hospital care3/19/2023 Often, soldiers lay upon the battlefield for days before receiving what might pass for aid. She then made recommendations to Governor Salomon on how that care might be improved.Įarly in the war, reliable ambulance and hospital services had yet to be developed out West in fact, in some areas, medical care was at best rudimentary. Expressing genuine concern for the soldiers’ welfare, she began touring various military hospitals in which ill and wounded Wisconsin troops were receiving care. Governor Edward Salomon, who had replaced Louis Harvey in Madison, prevailed upon her to take a position as a “sanitary agent” and begin working on behalf of Wisconsin’s wounded soldiers. Now, no longer Wisconsin’s first lady, Cordelia was suddenly directionless. The society supplied Wisconsin troops with everything from handsewn uniforms to pencils and paper for writing letters home. While attempting to board a steamer on the Tennessee River, he slipped and fell into the water, drowning in the swift current.ĭuring her 94-day tenure as Wisconsin’s first lady, Cordelia had served as president of the Madison Ladies Aid Society, a group formed in support of the war effort. Shortly after the Battle of Shiloh on April 6-7, 1862, Harvey gathered supplies and medical staff, and accompanied them to Tennessee to provide aid to Wisconsin’s sick and wounded soldiers. He was Wisconsin’s seventh governor, and also the first in the state to die in office. In November 1861, with the Civil War in its seventh month, Harvey was elected governor-part of a statewide Republican sweep. Cordelia would bear him a daughter, Mary, who unfortunately would soon die of scarlet fever. Harvey, editor of Southport’s local newspaper and a young businessman with political aspirations. Fortunately, Cordelia Harvey was one such individual.īorn Cordelia Perrine in 1840, she moved with her family from a small community in upstate New York to Wisconsin at the age of 16, settling in Kenosha (then called Southport). It required tremendous fortitude and self-confidence for a woman in the early 1860s to effect changes that would permanently alter the course of the nation’s health care system and improve the survival rate of soldiers at war. How One Civil War Widow Revolutionized Health Care Close
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