Military.Com has discovered that the Defense Department has scrubbed an article on its web site that detailed the history of women nurses recruited during the Civil War who are now buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Military nursing had been an all-male profession, but when the war broke out many women tried to become army nurses. While it took the Union army some time before it accepted them, eventually many were enlisted and after the war they were recognized as veterans. During Reconstruction the Federal government came to recognize their service as entitled to pensions for those who were disabled by their work during the war. Later on, they were given pensions as they aged.
These women not only helped wounded soldiers, they also opened the nursing field up to women and demonstrated that women could be employed by the army.
The article was taken down and the URL was changed to include the letters “DEI.” A number of other disappeared pages dealing with women, Blacks, Latinos and immigrants have also been labeled “DEI.” The purged article still appears on the Internet Wayback Machine. I encourage you to read some of the article. You will see that the Department of Defense has designated it as DEI, but that term never appears in the original article. It is about women, which in 2025 makes it DEI for the Department of Defense.
Here are some excepts from the deleted article written by Katie Lange:
In Arlington National Cemetery’s Section 1, you’ll find a diverse mix of grave markers, from basic white headstones to massive, ornate monuments commissioned by generals and other U.S. leaders. Among them, you’ll also find the graves of 23 pioneering female Civil War nurses.
In the 19th century, nursing was a male profession. But by the middle of the century, U.S. leaders were intrigued by what women like Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole were doing overseas for British soldiers during the Crimean War. So, when the Civil War began, Congress authorized the hiring of female nurses to assist the Army. Other non-official nurses volunteered with local units, too, having been recruited by state or local officials. Many more followed their husbands to war to help soldiers in their units.
Very few of these nurses had professional medical training because it simply wasn’t available to women back then. Instead, they had on-the-job training on how to care for injured and ill patients.
“They would feed, clothe and wash soldiers, do their best to make them physically comfortable, and they would tend to their mental and spiritual needs,” explained Army historian Kathy Fargey, who recently gave a public tour of the Civil War nurses’ area of Arlington’s Section 1 to commemorate Women’s History Month. “They helped [soldiers] write letters, and they would read to them, talk with them and pray with them.”
Anna Platt
Anna Platt was born in 1820 in New York. She made her way south in February 1863 to help at Armory Square Hospital, a 1,000-bed war hospital in Washington, D.C., where she stayed through the end of the war.
Nurses at the hospital who documented their work at the Armory said they started their days at 6 a.m., feeding and giving patients medicine throughout the day, as well as changing their bandages and offering them comfort. They also arranged evening entertainment.
“Anna had a friend who sent her an accordion, so she played accordion music for the soldiers in the evening,” Fargey said. “They all had singing and music and public readings. Then the night watchers would finally arrive at 8:45 p.m. to take over from the nurses.”
Platt’s pension records were submitted to Congress in 1891. According to those records, the Army nurse suffered “a severe attack of typhoid and brain fever” while working at Armory Square, “from the effects of which she has never fully recovered.” Platt is one of 21 of the nurses buried in Arlington’s Section 1 to receive what was called an invalid’s pension — an antiquated term for a disabled veteran’s pension.
Platt died in November 1898. She was the first Civil War nurse to be buried in Arlington specifically because of her wartime service….
Caroline Burghardt
Born in 1833 in Massachusetts, Caroline Burghardt was a distant cousin of Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and joined the war effort in June 1861. Since she was under 30, which was the age requirement to become an Army nurse, Burghardt had to get a waiver from a doctor who endorsed her. However, unlike most female nurses of the time, she had received some training at Bellevue Hospital in New York.
Burghardt worked at several D.C.-area hospitals before travelling to battlefield sites, including Gettysburg and Antietam. During her years of service, she contracted smallpox and yellow fever, which allowed her to receive an invalid’s pension as well. Dorothea Dix, the superintendent of Army nurses and ardent advocate for the work of female nurses, said Burghardt earned the respect and confidence of surgeons and prolonged the lives of hundreds of soldiers.
After the war, Burghardt attended Howard University — one of few schools that allowed female medical students — and earned a medical degree in 1878 that allowed her to practice as a doctor in D.C. for many years. She also worked for the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments for more than 50 years, retiring in 1920 just before she turned 87.
Burghardt died on Feb. 6, 1922, at age 88.
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