The Wound Dresser Part 10

XXVI

_Was.h.i.+ngton, June 7, 1864._ DEAREST MOTHER--I cannot write you anything about the 51st, as I have not heard a word. I felt very much disturbed yesterday afternoon, as Major Hapgood came up from the paymaster general's office, and said that news had arrived that Burnside was killed, and that the 9th Corps had had a terrible slaughter. He said it was believed at the paymaster general's office. Well, I went out to see what reliance there was on it. The rumor soon spread over town, and was believed by many--but as near as I can make it out, it proves to be one of those unaccountable stories that get started these times. Sat.u.r.day night we heard that Grant was routed completely, etc. etc.--so that's the way stories fly. I suppose you hear the same big lies there in Brooklyn. Well, the truth is sad enough, without adding anything to it--but Grant is not destroyed yet, but I think is going into Richmond yet, but the cost is terrible. Mother, I have not felt well at all the last week. I had spells of deathly faintness and bad trouble in my head too, and sore throat (quite a little budget, ain't they?) My head was the worst, though I don't know, the faint spells were not very pleasant--but I feel so much better this forenoon I believe it has pa.s.sed over. There is a very horrible collection in Armory building, (in Armory-square hospital)--about 200 of the worst cases you ever see, and I had been probably too much with them. It is enough to melt the heart of a stone; over one third of them are amputation cases. Well, mother, poor Oscar Cunningham is gone at last. He is the 82d Ohio boy (wounded May 3d, '63). I have written so much of him I suppose you feel as if you almost knew him. I was with him Sat.u.r.day forenoon and also evening.

He was more composed than usual, could not articulate very well. He died about 2 o'clock Sunday morning--very easy they told me. I was not there.

It was a blessed relief; his life has been misery for months. The cause of death at last was the system absorbing the pus, the bad matter, instead of discharging it from [the] wound. I believe I told you I was quite blue from the deaths of several of the poor young men I knew well, especially two I had strong hopes of their getting up. Things are going pretty badly with the wounded. They are crowded here in Was.h.i.+ngton in immense numbers, and all those that come up from the Wilderness and that region, arrived here so neglected, and in such plight, it was awful--(those that were at Fredericksburg and also from Ball Plain). The papers are full of puffs, etc., but the truth is, the largest proportion of worst cases got little or no attention. We receive them here with their wounds full of worms--some all swelled and inflamed. Many of the amputations have to be done over again. One new feature is that many of the poor afflicted young men are crazy. Every ward has some in it that are wandering. They have suffered too much, and it is perhaps a privilege that they are out of their senses. Mother, it is most too much for a fellow, and I sometimes wish I was out of it--but I suppose it is because I have not felt first rate myself. I am going to write to George to-day, as I see there is a daily mail to White House. O, I must tell you that we get the wounded from our present field near Richmond much better than we did from the Wilderness and Fredericksburg. We get them now from White House. They are put on boats there, and come all the way here, about 160 or 170 miles.

White House is only twelve or fifteen miles from the field, and is our present depot and base of supplies. It is very pleasant here to-day, a little cooler than it has been--a good rain shower last evening. The Western reg'ts continue to pour in here, the 100 days men;--may go down to front to guard posts, trains, etc.

Well, mother, how do things go on with you all? It seems to me if I could only be home two or three days, and have some good teas with you and Mat, and set in the old bas.e.m.e.nt a while, and have a good time and talk with Jeff, and see the little girls, etc., I should be willing to keep on afterward among these sad scenes for the rest of the summer--but I shall remain here until this Richmond campaign is settled, anyhow, unless I get sick, and I don't antic.i.p.ate that. Mother dear, I hope you are well and in fair spirits--you must try to. Have you heard from sister Han?

WALT.

You know I am living at 502 Pennsylvania av. (near 3d st.)--it is not a very good place. I don't like it so well as I did cooking my own grub--and the air is not good. Jeff, you must write.

XXVII

_Was.h.i.+ngton, June 10, 1864._ DEAREST MOTHER--I got your letter dated last Wednesday. I do not always depend on ----'s accounts. I think he is apt to make things full as bad as they are, if not worse.

Mother, I was so glad to get a letter from Jeff this morning, enclosing one from George dated June 1st. It was so good to see his handwriting once more. I have not heard anything of the reg't--there are all sorts of rumors here, among others that Burnside does not give satisfaction to Grant and Meade, and that it is expected some one else will be placed in command of 9th Corps. Another rumor more likely is that our base of the army is to be changed to Harrison's Landing on James river instead of White House on Pamunkey.

Mother, I have not felt well again the last two days as I was Tuesday, but I feel a good deal better this morning. I go round, but most of the time feel very little like it. The doctor tells me I have continued too long in the hospitals, especially in a bad place, Armory building, where the worst wounds were, and have absorbed too much of the virus in my system--but I know it is nothing but what a little relief and sustenance of [the] right sort will set right. I am writing this in Major Hapgood's office. He is very busy paying off some men whose time is out; they are going home to New York. I wrote to George yesterday. We are having very pleasant weather here just now. Mother, you didn't mention whether Mary had come, so I suppose she has not. I should like to see her and Ansel too. The wounded still come here in large numbers--day and night trains of ambulances. Tell Jeff the $10 from Mr. Lane for the soldiers came safe. I shall write to Jeff right away. I send my love to Mat and all. Mother, you must try to keep good heart.

WALT.

XXVIII

_Was.h.i.+ngton, June 14, 1864._ DEAREST MOTHER. I am not feeling very well these days--the doctors have told me not to come inside the hospitals for the present. I send there by a friend every day; I send things and aid to some cases I know, and hear from there also, but I do not go myself at present. It is probable that the hospital poison has affected my system, and I find it worse than I calculated. I have spells of faintness and very bad feeling in my head, fullness and pain--and besides sore throat. My boarding place, 502 Pennsylvania av., is a miserable place, very bad air.

But I shall feel better soon, I know--the doctors say it will pa.s.s over--they have long told me I was going in too strong. Some days I think it has all gone and I feel well again, but in a few hours I have a spell again. Mother, I have not heard anything of the 51st. I sent George's letter to Han. I have written to George since. I shall write again to him in a day or two. If Mary comes home, tell her I sent her my love. If I don't feel better before the end of this week or beginning of next, I may come home for a week or fortnight for a change. The rumor is very strong here that Grant is over the James river on south side--but it is not in the papers. We are having quite cool weather here. Mother, I want to see you and Jeff so much. I have been working a little at copying, but have stopt it lately.

WALT.

XXIX

_Was.h.i.+ngton, June 17, 1864._ DEAREST MOTHER. I got your letter this morning. This place and the hospitals seem to have got the better of me. I do not feel so badly this forenoon--but I have bad nights and bad days too. Some of the spells are pretty bad--still I am up some and around every day. The doctors have told me for a fortnight I must leave; that I need an entire change of air, etc.

I think I shall come home for a short time, and pretty soon. (I will try it two or three days yet though, and if I find my illness goes over I will stay here yet awhile. All I think about is to be here if any thing should happen to George).

We don't hear anything more of the army than you do there in the papers.

WALT.

Mother, if I should come I will write a day or so before.

_The letter of June 17, 1864, is the last of Whitman's, written from Was.h.i.+ngton at or about this time, that has been preserved and come down to us. Many, probably many more than have been kept, have been lost; indeed, it is a wonder that so many were saved, for they were sent about from one member of the family to another, and when once read seem to have been little valued. The reader will have noticed a certain change of tone in the later letters, showing that Whitman was beginning to feel the inroads which the fatigues, the unhealthy surroundings of the hospitals, and especially the mental anxiety and distress inseparable from his work there, were making upon even his superb health. Down to the time of his hospital work he had never known a day's sickness, but thereafter he never again knew, except at intervals which grew shorter and less frequent as time went on, the buoyant vigor and vitality of his first forty-four years. From 1864 to the end of 1872 the attacks described in his "Calamus"

letters became from year to year more frequent and more severe, until, in January, 1873, they culminated in an attack of paralysis which never left him and from the indirect effects of which he died in 1892._

_But for years, though often warned and sent away by the doctors, during his better intervals and until his splendid health was quite broken by hospital malaria and the poison absorbed from gangrenous wounds, he continued his ministrations to the sick and the maimed of the war. Those who joined the ranks and fought the battles of the Republic did well; but when the world knows, as it is beginning to know, how this man, without any encouragement from without, under no compulsion, simply, without beat of drum or any cheers of approval, went down into those immense lazar houses and devoted his days and nights, his heart and soul, and at last his health and life, to America's sick and wounded sons, it will say that he did even better._

_R. M. B._

_As at thy portals also death, Entering thy sovereign, dim, illimitable grounds, To memories of my mother, to the divine blending, maternity, To her, buried and gone, yet buried not, gone not from me, (I see again the calm benignant face fresh and beautiful still, I sit by the form in the coffin, I kiss and kiss convulsively again the sweet old lips, the cheeks, the closed eyes in the coffin;) To her, the ideal woman, practical, spiritual, of all of earth, life, love, to me the best, I grave a monumental line, before I go, amid these songs, And set a tombstone here._

_Printed by John Wilson and Son, at the University Press, Cambridge, U.S.A., in December, 1897._

Footnotes:

[1] His brother, Capt. (afterwards Col.) George W. Whitman, born 1829, now (1897) residing in Burlington, N. J.

[2] His favorite sister, Hannah Louisa Whitman (Mrs. C. L. Heyde), born 1823, now (1897) residing in Burlington, Vt.

[3] His brother, Thomas Jefferson Whitman, born 1833, died 1890.

[4] Brig.-Gen. Edward Ferrero, commanding Second Brigade, Second Division, Army of the Potomac, under whose command the 51st Brooklyn Regiment fought at Fredericksburg. George Whitman was a captain in this regiment.

[5] Martha, wife of "Jeff." She died in 1873. "1873.--This year lost, by death, my dear dear mother--and just before, my sister Martha--the two best and sweetest women I have ever seen or known, or ever expect to see"

(WALT WHITMAN, "Some Personal and Old Age Jottings").

[6] "Jeff's" little daughter, Mannahatta. She died in 1888.

[7] His brother, Andrew Jackson Whitman, born 1827, died 1863. His other brothers at this time, besides those previously mentioned, were Jesse Whitman, born 1818, died 1870, and Edward Whitman, born 1835, died 1892.

[8] Martha.

[9] Mannahatta.

[10] William Douglas O'Connor, born Jan. 2, 1832. He was a journalist in Boston in early life, went to Was.h.i.+ngton about 1861, first as clerk in the Light House Bureau, and later became a.s.sistant Superintendent of the United States Life-Saving Service; died in Was.h.i.+ngton, May 9, 1889. He was one of Whitman's warmest friends, and the author of "The Good Gray Poet."

[11] The Monitor foundered off Cape Hatteras in a gale December 29, 1862.

[12] "Jeff."

[13] A copy of the 1860 (first Boston) edition of "Leaves of Gra.s.s," which Whitman used for preparing the next (1867) edition. From various evidence this is the same copy, with his MS. alterations, which Secretary Harlan found in Whitman's desk at the Interior Department in 1865, and which he read surrept.i.tiously before discharging the poet from his position. It is now in the possession of Mr. Horace L. Traubel, of Camden, N. J.

The reference to "Drum-Taps," published in 1865, shows that it had already taken shape in MS.

[14] Andrew Whitman's wife.

[15] Jessie Louisa Whitman.

[16] His sister, Mary Elizabeth Whitman (Mrs. Van Nostrand) born 1821 now (1897) residing in Sag Harbor, L. I.