Kate Cumming was a Civil War nurse and diarist whose writings are an invaluable source on southern nursing, Confederate hospitals, and women’s experiences in the war. Born in Scotland, Cumming spent her formative years in Mobile and strongly identified herself as a southerner. After the end of the Civil War, nurses were among the first southerners to publish their observations of the conflict, and Cumming published her now-famous diary in 1866.
Photos courtesy of: Alabama Department of Archives and History, Archive.org, Getty Images, Library of Congress