Angels of the Battlefield: A History of the Labors of the Catholic Sisterhoods in the Late Civil War

In 1897, George Barton accomplished something no historian had attempted: he preserved the stories of Catholic nuns who served as nurses during the American Civil War. These women crossed enemy lines to tend wounded soldiers from both North and South, working in makeshift hospitals amid carnage that would break lesser spirits. Barton interviewed surviving sisters and mined archives to rescue their sacrifices from oblivion, giving voice to women so dedicated to humility that they left almost no records of their own. The book reads as both reverent tribute and necessary correction to a historical narrative that had entirely omitted their contributions. More than a catalog of medical devotion, it documents a remarkable phenomenon: women who took vows of poverty and silence, then found themselves performing amputations by candlelight and holding dying men as they prayed their last breaths. This edition ensures their story survives another century.