Many women during the Civil War worked on the battlefields and in hospitals to nurse wounded soldiers. Condidtions were crude at best.  Our idea of cleanliness, wound care and hospital conditions are a far cry from what medicine was in the 1860's.  But determined women forged their way into the military hospitals and brought with them orderliness and cleanliness.  Women like Mary Ann Bickerdyke "mother Bickerdyke" who when the war began took supplies collected by the town of Galesburg to the wounded.  She stayed after seeing what horrible conditions the men were trying to recuperate in.  She organized laundries ,kitchens and went wherever she was needed.  She was well respected by the troops and accompanied Sherman on his Atlanta campaign as his sanitation officer.
Clara Barton, a native of Massachusetts volunteered to treat casualties on the battlefield and frequently was working during the battle itself.  She soon created a network of volunteers who ministered to the wounded.  By the end of the war she was superentendant of nurses to the Army of the Cumberland.  She helped compile listes of missing troops and helped identify the unknown dead and after the was was responsible for organizing the American Red Cross.