In any military conflict, members of the military and civilians with a variety of backgrounds, characteristics, and talents play important roles for the countries they serve. In her essay collection Hospital Sketches, her first widely circulated publication in a distinguished writing career, American author Louisa May Alcott places nurses in the spotlight, emphasizing the centrality of the roles they played in support of the Union in the Civil War. Alcott illustrates the myriad challenges nurses in general and those who served in the Civil War in particular faced every day in treating the wounded and tending to their needs, medical and nonmedical alike. When the war erupted in April 1861, Alcott was a well-known abolitionist committed to the elimination of the immoral institution of slavery and a loyal supporter of President Abraham Lincoln and the Union cause.