Sally Louisa Tompkins (November 9, 1833 – July 26, 1916) was a humanitarian, nurse, and philanthropist. She is best-remembered for privately sponsoring a hospital in Richmond, Virginia to treat soldiers wounded in the American Civil War. Under her supervision, although little was known about the cause of infections, her insistence on cleanliness is said to have been a major key to the lowest mortality rate of any such military hospital, Union or Confederate, during the Civil War.Whatever her devotion and work earned the label "Angel of the Confederacy". [1]
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Sally Tompkins was born to Colonel Christopher Tompkins, an American Revolutionary War veteran, and Maria Patterson Tompkins in Mathews County, Virginia, in the Tidewater Region of Virginia's Middle Peninsula. She had been active in restoring her local Episcopal Church, an older structure, as a youth. Sally had a natural talent for nursing and could often be found tending the sick, both free and slave, on nearby plantations. When her father died, she and her mother moved to Richmond, Virginia. [2]
Richmond became the capital city of the Confederacy after Virginia became one of the last of the Confederate states to secede from the Union in April, 1861. It was generally thought by both North and South alike that the armed conflict which was growing would last only a short time.
The First Battle of Bull Run, also known as the First Battle of Manassas on July 21, 1861, was a southern tactical victory which opened the Civil War in the first major hand-to-hand combat. Despite the word of victory, the Confederate capital city was ill-prepared for the hundreds of wounded soldiers who subsequently poured in, many arriving via the Virginia Central Railroad. The shock brought the reality of the horrors of warfare directly home even as officials and citizens scrambled to take care of the deluge.
Only 28 years old, Tomkins was among the civilians who responded by opening the home of Judge John Robertson as a hospital. After the initial crisis had passed, Confederate President Jefferson Davis instituted regulations requiring military hospitals be under military command. However, The Robertson Hospital had done such an outstanding job and was prepared to continue that he commissioned Tompkins as a captain so that she could continue her work. She was the only woman officially commissioned as an officer in the Confederate States Army.[3][4] She refused any payment for her services. On her military commission, dated 9 September 1861, she wrote, "I accepted the above commission as Captain in the C.S.A. when it was offered. But, I would not allow my name to be placed upon the pay roll of the army." [5]
The Robertson Hospital, as it was known, treated patients continuously throughout the war, discharging its last soldier on 13 June 1865. During its four-year existence, Robertson Hospital treated 1,333 wounded with only seventy-three deaths, the lowest mortality rate of any military hospital during the Civil War. [6] Author and Civil War diarist Mary Chesnut was a frequent visitor to the hospital. She recorded "Our Florence Nightingale is Sally Tompkins." The more than 1,300 men fortunate to be sent to Robertson Hospital called her simply "Captain Sally."
Sally's family fortune had been depleted after the Civil War, although she stayed active for many years in charitable work. She remained unmarried throughout her life. Eventually, she went to live in the charitable Richmond Home for Confederate Women in 1905. [7]
Upon her death in 1916, Sally Tompkins was buried with full military honors at Christ Church in Mathews County. She joins the ranks of women like Clara Barton who responded to the urgent needs which were presented during the Civil War, especially after the Battle of First Bull Run when the realities of warfare became stark in both the Union and Confederate capital cities. They helped develop nursing into the skilled profession it was to become. Sally Tompkins reported obsession with cleanliness led to progress in sanitation during treatment. Her proven lower mortality rates as a result are exceptionally notable among her many legacies to the United States and medical providers everywhere, practices still in widespread use.