Woman's Work in the Civil War Part 12

The provision made by the Medical Bureau of the Government at this time for the care and comfort of the wounded and fever-stricken was small and often inappropriate. Where tents were provided, they were either of the wedge pattern or the bivouacking tent of black cloth, and in the hot sun of a Virginia summer absorbed the sun's rays till they were like ovens; many of the sick were put into the cabins and miserable shanties of the vicinity, and not unfrequently in the attics of these, where amid the intense heat they were left without food or drink except when the Sanitary Commission's agents or some of the ladies connected with other organizations, like Mrs. Harris, ministered to their necessities. One case of this kind, not by any means the worst, but told with a simple pathos deserves to be quoted:

"Pa.s.sing a forlorn-looking house, we were told by a sentinel that a young Captain of a Maine regiment laid in it very sick; we went in, no door obstructing, and there upon a stretcher in a corner of the room opening directly upon the road lay an elegant-looking youth struggling with the last great enemy. His mind wandered; and as we approached him he exclaimed: 'Is it not cruel to keep me here when my mother and sister, whom I have not seen for a year, are in the next room; they might let me go in?' His mind continued to wander; only for an instant did he seem to have a glimpse of the reality, when he drew two rings from his finger, placed there by a loving mother and sister, handed them to an attendant, saying: 'Carry them home,' and then he was amid battle scenes, calling out, 'Deploy to the left;' 'Keep out of that ambuscade;' 'Now go, my braves, double quick, and strike for your flag! On, on,' and he threw up his arms as if cheering them, 'you'll win the day;' and so he continued to talk, whilst death was doing its terrible work. As we looked upon the beautiful face and manly form, and thought of the mother and sister in their distant home, surrounded by every luxury wealth could purchase, worlds seemed all too cheap to give to have him with them. But this could not be. The soldier of three battles, he was not willing to admit that he was sick until his strength failed, and he was actually dying. He was carried to this cheerless room, a rude table the only furniture; no door, no window-shutters; the western sun threw its hot rays in upon him,--no cooling shade for his fevered brow: and so he lay unconscious of the monster's grasp, which would not relax until he had done his work. His last expressions told of interest in his men. He was a graduate of Waterville College. Twenty of his company graduated at the same inst.i.tution. He was greatly beloved; his death, even in this Golgotha, was painfully impressive. There was no time to talk to him of that spirit-land upon which he was so soon to enter.

Whispered a few verses of Scripture into his ear; he looked with a sweet smile and thanked me, but his manner betokened no appreciation of the sacred words. He was an only son. His mother and sister doted on him. He had everything to bind him to life, but the mandate had gone forth."

Of the scenes of the retreat from the Chickahominy to Harrison's Landing, Mrs. Harris was an active and deeply interested witness; she remained at Savage Station caring for the wounded, for some time, and then proceeded to Seven Pines, where a day was pa.s.sed in preparing the wounded for the operations deemed necessary, obtaining, at great personal peril, candles to light the darkness of the field hospital, and was sitting down, completely exhausted with her trying and wearisome labors, when an army chaplain, an exception it is to be hoped to most of his profession, in his unwillingness to serve the wounded, came to her and said, "They have just brought in a soldier with a leg blown off; he is in a horrible condition; could you wash him?" Wearied as she was, she performed the duty tenderly, but it was scarcely finished when death claimed him. Her escape to White House, and thence to Harrison's Landing, was made not a minute too soon; she was obliged to abandon her stores, and to come off on the steamer in a borrowed bonnet.

At this trying time, her const.i.tutional tendency to despondency took full possession of her. "The heavens are filled with blackness," she writes; "I find myself on board the Nelly Baker, on my way to City Point, with supplies for our poor army, if we still have one; I am not always hopeful, you see. * * * Alarming accounts come to us. Prepare for the worst, but hope for the best. We do not doubt we are in a very critical condition, out of which only the Most High can bring us." This is not the language of fear or cowardice. There was no disposition on her part to seek her own personal safety, but while she despaired of success, she was ready to brave any danger for the sake of the wounded soldiers. This courage in the midst of despair, is really greater than that of the battle-field.

The months of July and August, 1862, except a brief visit home, were spent at Harrison's Landing, amid the scenes of distress, disease, wounds and suffering, which abounded there. The malaria of the Chickahominy swamps had done much to demoralize the finest army ever put into the field; tens of thousands were ill with it, and these, with the hosts of wounded acc.u.mulated more rapidly than the transports, numerous as they were, could carry them away. Their condition at Harrison's Landing was pitiable; the medical bureau seemed to have shared in the general demoralization. The proper diet, the necessary hospital arrangements, everything required for the soldiers' restoration to health, was wanting; the pasty, adhesive mud was everywhere, and the hospital tents, old, mildewed, and leaky, were pitched in it, and no floors provided; hard tack, salt junk, fat salt pork, and cold, greasy bean soup, was the diet provided for men suffering from typhoid fever, and from wounds which rendered liquid food indispensable. Soft bread was promised, but was not obtained till just before the breaking up of the encampment. Nor was the dest.i.tution of hospital clothing less complete.

In that disastrous retreat across the peninsula, many of the men had lost their knapsacks; the government did not provide s.h.i.+rts, drawers, unders.h.i.+rts, as well as mattresses, sheets, blankets, etc., in anything like the quant.i.ty needed, and men had often lain for weeks without a change of clothing, in the mud and filth. So far as a few zealous workers could do it, Mrs. Harris, and her willing and active coadjutors sought to remedy these evils; the clothing, and the more palatable and appropriate food they could and did provide for most of those who remained. Having accomplished all for these which she could, and the army having left the James River, after spending a few days at the hospitals near Fortress Monroe, Mrs. Harris came up the Potomac in one of the Government transports, reaching Alexandria on the 31st of August.

Here she found ample employment in bestowing her tender care upon the thousands of wounded from Pope's campaigns.

On the 8th of September, she followed, with her supplies, the army on its march toward South Mountain and Antietam. She reached Antietam the day after the battle, and from that time till the 3rd of November, aided by a corps of most devoted and earnest laborers in the work of mercy, among whom were Mrs. M. M. Husband, Miss M. M. C. Hall, Mrs. Mary W.

Lee, Miss Tyson, and others. Mrs. Harris gave herself to the work of caring for the wounded. Sad were the sights she was often called to witness. She bore ample testimony to the patience and the uncomplaining spirit of our soldiers; to their filial devotion, to the deep love of home, and the dear ones left behind, which would be manifested in the dying hour, by brave, n.o.ble-hearted men, and to the patriotism which even in the death agony, made them rejoice to lay down their lives for their country.

Early in November, 1862, Mrs. Harris left Smoketown General Hospital, near Antietam, and came to Was.h.i.+ngton. In the hospitals in and around that city thirty thousand sick and wounded men were lying, some of them well and tenderly cared for, some like those in the Parole and Convalescent Camps near Alexandria, (the "Camp Misery" of those days), suffering from all possible privations. She did all that she could to supply the more pressing needs of these poor men. After a few weeks spent in the vicinity of the Capitol, news of the disastrous battle of Fredericksburg came to Was.h.i.+ngton. Though deeply depressed by the intelligence, she hastened to the front to do what she could for the thousands of sufferers. From this time till about the middle of June, 1863, Mrs. Harris had her quarters in the Lacy House, Falmouth, and aided by Mrs. Beck and Mrs. Lee, worked faithfully for the soldiers, taking measures to relieve and cure the ailing, and to prevent illness from the long and severe exposures to which the troops were subject on picket duty, or special marches, through that stormy and inclement winter. This work was in addition to that in the camp and field hospitals of the Sixth Corps. Another part of her work and one of special interest and usefulness, was the daily and Sabbath wors.h.i.+p at her rooms, in which such of the soldiers as were disposed, partic.i.p.ated.

The contrabands were also the objects of her sympathy and care, and she a.s.sembled them for religious wors.h.i.+p and instruction on the Sabbath.

But the invasion of Pennsylvania was approaching, and she went forward to Harrisburg, which was at first thought to be threatened, on the 25th of June. After two or three days, finding that there was no probability of an immediate battle there, she returned to Philadelphia, and thence to Was.h.i.+ngton, which she reached on the 30th of June. The next three days were spent in the effort to forward hospital stores, and obtain transportation to Gettysburg. The War Department then, as in most of the great battles previously, refused to grant this privilege, and though she sought with tears and her utmost powers of persuasion, the permission to forward a single car-load of stores, she was denied, even on the 3rd of July. She could not be restrained, however, from going where she felt that her services would be imperatively needed, and at five P. M., of the 3rd of July, she left Was.h.i.+ngton carrying only some chloroform and a few stimulants, reached Westminster at four A. M., of the 4th, and was carried to the battle-field of Gettysburg, in the ambulance which had brought the wounded General Hanc.o.c.k to Westminster.

The next week was spent day and night amid the horrors of that field of blood, horrors which no pen can describe. That she and her indefatigable aid, (this time a young lady from Philadelphia), were able to alleviate a vast amount of suffering, to give nourishment to many who were famis.h.i.+ng; to dress hundreds of wounds, and to point the dying sinner to the Saviour, or whisper words of consolation to the agonized heart, was certain. On the night of the 10th of July, Mrs. Harris and her friend Miss B. left for Frederick, Maryland, where a battle was expected; but as only skirmis.h.i.+ng took place, they kept on to Warrenton and Warrenton Junction, where their labors were incessant in caring for the great numbers of wounded and sick in the hospitals. Constant labor had so far impaired her health, that on the 18th of August she attempted to get away from her work for a few days rest; but falling in with the sick men of the Sixth Michigan Cavalry, she went to work with her usual zeal to prepare food and comforts for them, and when they were supplied returned to her work; going to Culpepper Court House, where there were four hospitals, and remaining there till the last of September.

The severe battle of Chickamauga, occurring on the 19th and 20th of September, roused her to the consciousness of the great field for labor, offered by the Western armies, and about the 1st of October, she went to Nashville, Tennessee, taking her friends Miss Tyson and Mrs. Beck with her. It was her intention to go on to Chattanooga, but she found it impossible at that time to procure transportation, and she and her friends at once commenced work among the refugees, the "poor white trash," who were then crowding into Nashville. For a month and more they labored zealously, and with good results, among these poor, ignorant, but loyal people, and then Mrs. Harris, after a visit to Louisville to provide for the inmates of the numerous hospitals in Nashville, a Thanksgiving dinner, pushed forward to the front, reaching Bridgeport, on the 28th of November, and Chattanooga the next day. Here she found abundant work, but her protracted labors had overtasked her strength, and she was for several weeks so ill that her life was despaired of. She was unable to resume her labors until the latter part of January, 1864, and then she worked with a will for the half starved soldiers in the hospitals, among whom scurvy and hospital gangrene were prevailing.

After two months of faithful labor among these poor fellows, she went back to Nashville, and spent four or five months more among the refugees. She returned home early in May, 1864, hoping to take a brief period of rest, of which she was in great need; but two weeks later, she was in Fredericksburg, attending to the vast numbers of wounded brought from the battles of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania, and followed on with that sad procession of the wounded, the dead, and the dying, to Port Royal, White House, and City Point. Never had been there so much need for her labors, and she toiled on, though suffering from constant prostration of strength, until the close of June, when she was obliged to relinquish labor for a time, and restore the almost exhausted vital forces. In September, she was again in the field, this time with the Army of the Shenandoah, at Winchester, where she ministered to the wounded for some weeks. She was called home to attend her mother in her last illness, and for three or four months devoted herself to this sacred duty. Early in the spring of 1865, she visited North Carolina, and all the sympathy of her nature was called out in behalf of the poor released prisoners from Andersonville and Salisbury, to whom she ministered with her usual faithfulness. At the close of the war, she returned to her home, more an invalid than ever from the effects of a sun-stroke received while in attendance on a field hospital in Virginia.

MRS. ELIZA C. PORTER

Mrs. Eliza C. Porter, the subject of the following sketch, is the wife of the Rev. Jeremiah Porter, a Presbyterian clergyman of Chicago, Illinois.

Of all the n.o.ble band of Western women who during the late war devoted time, thought, and untiring exertions to the care of our country's defenders, very few, if any are more worthy of honorable mention, and the praise of a grateful nation, than Mrs. Porter. Freely she gave all, withholding not even the most precious of her possessions and efforts--her husband, her sons, her time and strength, the labor of hands and brain, and, above all, her prayers. Few indeed at a time when sacrifices were general, and among the women of our country the rule rather than the exception, made greater sacrifices than she. Her home was broken up, and the beloved circle scattered, each member in his or her own appropriate sphere, actively engaged in the great work which the war unfolded.

A correspondent thus describes Mrs. Porter; "Mrs. Porter is from forty-five to fifty years of age, a quiet, modest, lady-like woman, very gentle in her manners, and admirably qualified to soothe, comfort and care for the sick and wounded." But this description, by no means includes, or does justice to the admirable fitness for the work which her labors have developed, her quiet energy, her great executive and organizing ability, and her tact ever displayed in doing and saying the right thing at precisely the right time. Of the value of this latter qualification few can form an estimate who have not seen excellent and praiseworthy exertions so often wither unfruitfully for the lack alone of an adjunct so nearly indispensable.

Mrs. Porter was early stimulated to exertion and sacrifice. In the spring of 1861, immediately after the breaking out of the war, while sitting one morning at her breakfast table, her husband, eldest son and two nephews being present, she exclaimed fervently; "If I had a hundred sons, I would gladly send them all forth to this work of putting down the rebellion."

The three young men then present all entered the army. One of them after three years' service was disabled by wounds and constant labor. The other two gave themselves anew to their country, all they could give.

During the summer of 1861 Mrs. Porter visited Cairo where hospitals had been established, and in her labors and experiences there carried what things were most needed by the sick and wounded soldiers. In October of that year, Illinois was first roused to co-operation in the work of the Sanitary Commission. The Northwestern Sanitary Commission was established, and at the request of Mr. E. W. Blatchford and others, Mrs.

Porter was induced to take charge of the Commission Rooms which were opened in Chicago. Her zeal and abilities, as well as the hospital experiences of the summer, had fitted her for the arduous task, and as opening to her a field of great usefulness, she accepted the appointment. How she devoted herself to that work, at what sacrifice of family comfort, and with what success, is well known to the Commission, and to thousands of its early contributors.

In April, 1862, she became satisfied that she could be more useful in the field, by taking good nurses to the army hospitals, and herself laboring with them. Her husband, who the previous winter had been commissioned as Chaplain of the First Illinois Light Artillery, was then at Cairo, where he had been ordered to labor in hospitals; and Mrs.

Porter, visiting Cairo and Paducah, entered earnestly into the work of placing the nurses she had brought with her from Chicago. Some of these devoted themselves constantly to the service, and proved equally successful and valuable.

At Cairo, Mrs. Porter made the acquaintance of Miss Mary J. Safford, since known as the "Cairo Angel," and co-operating with her there, and with Mr. Porter and various surgeons and philanthropists, aided in receiving, and temporarily caring for seven hundred men from the field of Pittsburgh Landing, and in transferring them to the hospitals of Mound City, Illinois.

From four o'clock in the morning until ten at night, Mrs. Porter and her friends labored, and then, their work accomplished and their suffering charges made as comfortable as circ.u.mstances would permit, they were forced, by the absence of hotel accommodations, to spend the night upon the steamer where the state-rooms being occupied, they slept upon chairs.

Soon afterward she went, accompanied by Miss Safford, to Pittsburgh Landing. There she obtained from the Medical Director, Dr. Charles McDougal, an order for several female nurses for his department. She hastened to Chicago, secured them, and accompanying them to Tennessee placed them at Savannah with Mrs. Mary Bickerd.y.k.e, who had been with the wounded since the battle of s.h.i.+loh. From thence she went to Corinth, then just taken by General Grant. She was accompanied by several benevolent ladies from Chicago, like herself bent on doing good to the sick and wounded. At Corinth she joined her husband, and he being ordered to join his regiment at Memphis, she went thither in his company.

Here, princ.i.p.ally in the hospital of the First Light Artillery at Fort Pickering, she labored through the summer of 1862, and afterwards returned to visit some of the southern towns of Illinois in search of stores from the farmers, which she added to the supplies forwarded by the Commission.

While at Memphis, Mrs. Porter became deeply interested in the welfare of the escaped slaves and their families congregated there.

Receiving aid from friends at the North, she organized a school for them, and spent all her leisure hours in giving them instruction. One of the nurses she had brought thither desired to aid in the work, and obtaining needful books and charts she organized a school for Miss Humphrey at s.h.i.+loh.

Mrs. Porter was very successful in this work. In her youth she had gathered an infant school among the half-breed children at Mackinac and Point St. Ignace, and understood well how to deal with these minds scarce awakened from the dense slumber of ignorance.

The school flourished, and others entered into the work, and other schools were established. Ministering to their temporal wants as well, clothing, feeding, medicating these unfortunate people, visiting their hospitals as well as those of the army, Mrs. Porter remained at Memphis and in its vicinity until June, 1863.

Her schools having by that time become well-established, and general interest in the scheme awakened, Mrs. Porter felt herself constrained to once more devote herself exclusively to the soldiers, a large number of whom were languis.h.i.+ng in Southern hospitals in an unhealthy climate.

Failing in her attempts to get them rapidly removed to the North, through correspondence with the Governors of Ohio and Illinois, she went North for the purpose of obtaining interviews with these gentlemen. At Green Bay, Wisconsin, she joined Mrs. Governor Harvey, who was striving to obtain a State Hospital for Wisconsin. Here she proposed to Senator T. O. Howe to draft a pet.i.tion to the President, praying for the establishment of such hospitals. Judge Howe was greatly pleased to comply, and accordingly drew up the pet.i.tion to which Mrs. Howe and others obtained over eight thousand names. Mrs. Harvey desired Mrs.

Porter to accompany her to Was.h.i.+ngton with the pet.i.tion, but she declined, and Mrs. Harvey went alone, and as the result of her efforts, succeeded in the establishment of the Harvey Hospital at Madison, Wisconsin.

Other parties took up the matter in Illinois, and Mrs. Porter returned to her beloved work at the South, visiting Natchez and Vicksburg. At the latter place she joined Mrs. Harvey and Mrs. Bickerd.y.k.e, all three ministering by Sanitary stores and personal aid to the sick and wounded in hospitals and regiments.

While on her way, at Memphis, she learned that the battery, in which were her eldest son and a nephew, had gone with Sherman's army toward Corinth, and started by rail to overtake them. At Corinth, standing in the room of the Sanitary Commission, she saw the battery pa.s.s in which were her boys. It was raining, and mud-bespattered and drenched, her son rode by in an ague chill, and could only give her a look of recognition as he pa.s.sed on to the camp two miles beyond. The next morning she went out to his camp, but missed him, and returning found him at the Sanitary Rooms in another chill. The next day she nursed him through a third chill, and then parting she sent her sick boy on his way toward Knoxville and Chattanooga.

After a short stay at Vicksburg she once more returned to Illinois to plead with Governor Yates to bring home his disabled soldiers, then went back, by way of Louisville and Nashville, to Huntsville, Alabama, where she met and labored indefatigably with Mrs. Lincoln Clark and her daughter, of Chicago, and Mrs. Bickerd.y.k.e.

After a few weeks spent there in comforting the sick, pointing the dying to the Saviour, and ministering to surgeons, officers, and soldiers, she followed our conquering arms to Chattanooga, Resaca, Kingston, Allatoona Pa.s.s, Marietta and Atlanta.

As a memorial of her earlier movements in this campaign, we extract the following letter from the Report for January and February, 1864, of the Northwestern Sanitary Commission.

"From a ma.s.s of deeply interesting correspondence on hand, we select the following letter from Rev. Mrs. Jeremiah Porter, who, with Mrs.

Bickerd.y.k.e, the widely known and very efficient Hospital Matron, has been laboring in the hospitals of the 15th Army Corps, most of the time since the battle of Chickamauga. Mrs. Bickerd.y.k.e was a.s.signed to hospital duty in this corps, at the request of General Sherman, and is still actively engaged there. This letter affords glimpses of the hards.h.i.+ps and privations of our brave men, whose sufferings in Southern and Eastern Tennessee during the months of December and January, have been unparalleled."

"IN CAMP, NOVEMBER 4TH FIELD HOSPITAL, "CHATTANOOGA, _January 24, 1864._

"I reached this place on New Year's Eve, making the trip of the few miles from Bridgeport to Chattanooga, in twenty-four hours. New Year's morning was very cold. I went immediately to the Field Hospital about two miles out of town, where I found Mrs. Bickerd.y.k.e hard at work, as usual, endeavoring to comfort the cold and suffering, sick and wounded. The work done on that day told most happily on the comfort of the poor wounded men.

"The wind came sweeping around Lookout Mountain, and uniting with currents from the valleys of Mission Ridge, pressed in upon the hospital tents, overturning some, and making the inmates of all tremble with cold and anxious fear. The cold had been preceded by a great rain, which added to the general discomfort. Mrs. Bickerd.y.k.e went from tent to tent in the gale, carrying hot bricks and hot drinks to warm and to cheer the poor fellows. 'She is a power of good,' said one soldier. 'We fared mighty poor till she came here,'

said another. 'G.o.d bless the Sanitary Commission,' said a third, 'for sending women among us!' The soldiers fully appreciate 'Mother Bickerd.y.k.e,' as they call her, and her work.

"Mrs. Bickerd.y.k.e left Vicksburg at the request of General Sherman, and other officers of his corps, as they wished to secure her services for the then approaching battle. The Field Hospital of the 15th (Sherman's) Army Corps, was situated on the north bank of the Genesee river, on a slope at the base of Mission Ridge, where, after the struggle was over, seventeen hundred of our wounded and exhausted soldiers were brought. Mrs. Bickerd.y.k.e reached there before the din and smoke of battle were well over, and before all were brought from the field of blood and carnage. There she remained the only female attendant for four weeks. Never has she rendered more valuable service. Dr. Newberry arrived in Chattanooga with Sanitary goods which Mrs. Bickerd.y.k.e had the pleasure of using, as she says, 'just when and where needed,' and never were Sanitary goods more deeply felt to be _good goods_. 'What could we do without them?' is a question I often hear raised, and answered with a hearty 'G.o.d bless the Sanitary Commission!' which is now, everywhere, acknowledged as a great power for good.

"The Field Hospital was in a forest, about five miles from Chattanooga, wood was abundant, and the camp was warmed by immense burning 'log heaps,' which were the only fire-places or cooking-stoves of the camp or hospitals. Men were detailed to fell the trees and pile the logs to heat the air, which was very wintry.

And beside them Mrs. Bickerd.y.k.e made soup and toast, tea and coffee, and broiled mutton, without a gridiron, often blistering her fingers in the process. A house in due time was demolished to make bunks for the worst cases, and the brick from the chimney was converted into an oven, when Mrs. Bickerd.y.k.e made bread, yeast having been found in the Chicago boxes, and flour at a neighboring mill, which had furnished flour to secessionists through the war until now. Great mult.i.tudes were fed from these rude kitchens.

Companies of hungry soldiers were refreshed before those open fire-places, and from those ovens. On one occasion, a citizen came and told the men to follow him, he would show them a reserve of beef and sheep which had been provided for General Bragg's army, and about thirty head of cattle and twenty sheep was the prize.

Large potash kettles were found, which were used over the huge log fires, and various kitchen utensils for cooking were brought into camp from time to time, almost every day adding to our conveniences. After four weeks of toil and labor, all the soldiers who were able to leave were furloughed home, and the rest brought to the large hospital where I am now located. About nine hundred men are here, most of them convalescents, and waiting anxiously to have the men and mules supplied with food, so that they may have the benefit of the cars, which have been promised to take them home.

"There was great joy in the encampment last week, at the announcement of the arrival of a train of cars from Bridgeport. You at home can have little appreciation of the feelings of the men as that sound greeted their ears. Our poor soldiers had been reduced to half and quarter rations for weeks, and those of the poorest quality. The mules had fallen by the wayside from very starvation.

You cannot go a mile in any direction without seeing these animals lying dead from starvation--and this state of things had to continue until the railroad was finished to Chattanooga, and the cars could bring in sustenance for man and beast. You will not wonder then at the huzzas of the men in the hospitals and camps, as the whistle of the long looked for train was heard.

"The most harrowing scenes are daily witnessed here. A wife came on yesterday only to learn that her dear husband had died the morning previous. Her lamentations were heart-breaking. 'Why could he not have lived until I came? Why?' In the evening came a sister, whose aged parents had sent her to search for their only son. She also came too late. The brother had gone to the soldier's grave two days previous. One continued wail of sorrow goes up from all parts of this stricken land.