Around 20,000 women worked for the Union forces. Working-class white women and free and enslaved African-American women worked as laundresses and cooks and around 3,000 middle-class white women worked as nurses. Dorothea Dix, the superintendent of Army nurses, put out a call for responsible, maternal volunteers who would not distract the troops or behave badly. Army nurses traveled from hospital to hospital, providing care for wounded, sick and dying soldiers. They also acted as mothers and housekeepers for the soldiers that were in their care.