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The Nuns of the Battlefield Memorial Unveiled in Washington DC on September 20, 1924

 


Photo Credit: National Park Service/ Nathan King

On Saturday, September 20, 1924, the Nuns of the Battlefield Memorial was unveiled in Washington, DC before thousands of people who attended the ceremony from around the nation. The monument is listed on the National Mall and Memorial Parks of the National Park Service 

The memorial honors the Catholic nuns who worked in the battlefields and on floating ships during the Civil War to aid wounded and dying soldiers regardless of what side the fought on. By the time it was unveiled in 1924, the memorial was also relevant to those caregivers who served during World War I.

The 12 orders of nuns represented on the relief include Sisters of St. Joseph, Carmelites, Dominican Order, Ursulines, Sisters of the Holy Cross, Poor Sisters of St. Francis, Sisters of Mercy, Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, and Congregation of Divine Providence.


Photo Credit: Wikimedia

The sculpture features a large bronze bas relief panel of 12 nuns dressed in their traditional habits. On each end of the memorial is a bronze figure representing an angel and patriotism. Irish-born sculptor Jerome Connor created the memorial, which is located at the intersection of Rhode Island and Connecticut avenues and M Street.

The ten-year effort to create the memorial was led by Ellen Ryan Jolly of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, a leader of the Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians. She first raised the idea for a memorial in 1914, and a year later, she toured Boston with the Parks Commissioner Gibson and a sculptor to look for a suitable location. But Hibernians in Philadelphia protested the Boston location and it was agreed to site the memorial in the nation’s capital.

Rhode Island Congressman Ambrose Kennedy filed a bill in 1915 to site the memorial at Arlington Cemetery, but it was later decided that downtown DC would be ideal. In March, 1918, Congress agreed to authorize the memorial, but did not fund it. The $50,000 cost was raised entirely by Hibernians, women and military families.

William Cardinal O’Connell of Boston was the principle speaker at the unveiling, and Congressman Kennedy also spoke. A large contingent of New England Catholics traveled to DC for the ceremonies.

At the moment of the unveiling, “a flock of doves was released from a basket at the foot of the monument, circled about overhead, living symbols of the principles of peace typified by the memorial itself,” recounted the Lake Shore Visitor newspaper of Eire, PA. 

The disrespect and abuse directed at Catholic nuns in early America was an ongoing tradition, especially in places like Boston, where an anti-Catholic strain had existed since the Puritans arrived here in 1630.  In 1834 the Ursuline Academy in Charlestown was burned to the ground by local men who objected to them being there.  In the Know-Nothing decade of the 1850s, preachers regularly condemned nuns and priests, and all Catholics in general, from the pulpit.  

During the Civil War, which lasted much longer than anticipated, nuns and nurses were desperately needed on battlefields to help the sick and wounded.  Catholic nuns answered the call without question, marking an eventual change in attitude toward Catholics in this country.

"The sisters being honored in the nation's capital represented a group many Americans had once scorned as members of a suspect religion and a vilified immigrant race,” wrote scholar Kathleen Szpila in American Catholic Studies Journal in 2012. “The sisters' untiring and unwavering dedication to the soldiers they nursed changed American attitudes toward Catholicism in a profound way.”

Inscriptions

They comforted the dying, nursed the wounded, carried hope to the imprisoned, gave in his name a drink of water to the thirsty.

To the memory and in honor of 
The Various Orders of Sisters
who gave their services as nurses on battlefields
and in hospitals during the Civil War.

Erected by the Ladies Auxiliary to the Ancient Order of Hibernians of America, A.D. 1924 by authorities of the Congress of the United States.

To commemorate the centennial of the Nuns of the Battlefield Monument, the Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians is holding a series of events "to honor the memory of the Sisters who served as nurses on the battlefields of the American Civil War."


Research + Texts, Michael Quinlin








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