But I found myself thoroughly reinstated—with surgeons, matrons and Miss Deborah—when I appeared a few days later, accompanied by a man bearing a basket of clean, well-rolled bandages, with promise of more to come. The Petersburg women had gone to work with a will upon my table-cloths, sheets, and dimity counterpanes—and even the chintz furniture covers. My springlike green and white chintz bandages appeared on many a manly arm and leg. My fine linen underwear and napkins were cut, by the sewing circle at the Spotswood, according to the surgeons’ directions, into two lengths two inches wide, then folded two inches, doubling back and forth in a smaller fold each time, until they formed pointed wedges or compresses.
Such was the sudden and overwhelming demand for such things that but for my own and similar donations of household linen the wounded men would have suffered. The war had come upon us suddenly. Many of our ports were already closed and we had no stores laid up for such an emergency.
The bloody battle of Gaines’ Mill soon followed. Then Frazier’s farm, within the week, and at once the hospital was filled to overflowing. Every night a courier brought me tidings of my husband. When I saw him at the door my heart would die within me. One morning John came in for certain supplies. After being reassured as to his master’s safety, I asked, “Did he have a comfortable night, John?”
“He sholy did. Marse Roger sart’nly was comfortable las’ night. He slep’ on de field ’twixt two daid horses.”
The women who worked in Kent & Paine’s hospital never seemed to weary. After a while the wise matron assigned us hours, and we went on duty with the regularity of trained nurses. My hours were from 7 to 7 during the day, with the promise of night service should I be needed. Efficient, kindly colored women assisted us. Their motherly manner soothed the prostrate soldier, whom they always addressed as “son.”
Many fine young fellows lost their lives for want of prompt attention. They never murmured. They would 88 give way to those who seemed to be more seriously wounded than themselves, and the latter would recover, while from the slighter wounds gangrene would supervene from delay. Very few men ever walked away from that hospital. They died, or friends found quarters for them in Richmond. None complained. Unless a poor man grew delirious, he never groaned. There was an atmosphere of gentle kindness; a suppression of emotion for the sake of others.
Every morning the Richmond ladies brought for our patients such luxuries as could be procured in that scarce time. The city was in peril, and distant farmers feared to bring in their fruits and vegetables. One day a patient-looking, middle-aged man said to me, “What would I not give for a bowl of chicken broth like my mother used to give me when I was a sick boy?” I perceived one of the angelic matrons of Richmond at a distance, stooping over the cots, and found my way to her and said, “Dear Mrs. Maben, have you a chicken? And could you send some broth to No. 39?” She promised, and I returned with her promise to the poor, wounded fellow. He shook his head. “To-morrow will be too late,” he said.
I had forgotten the circumstance next day, but at noon I happened to look toward cot No. 39, and there was Mrs. Maben herself. She had brought the chicken broth in a pretty china bowl, with napkin and silver spoon, and was feeding my doubting Thomas, to his great satisfaction.
It was at this hospital, I have reason to believe, that the little story originated, which was deemed good enough to be claimed by other hospitals, of the young girl who approached a sick man with a pan of water in her hand and a towel over her arm.
“Mayn’t I wash your face?” said the girl, timidly.
“Well, lady, you may if you want to,” said the man, wearily. “It has been washed fourteen times this morning. It can stand another time, I reckon.”
I discovered that I had not succeeded, despite many efforts, in winning Miss Deborah. I learned that she was affronted because I had not shared my offerings of jelly 89 and fruit with her, for her special patients. Whenever I ventured to ask a loan from her, of a pan or a glass of water, or the little things of which we never had enough, she would reply, “I must keep them for the nurses who understand reciprocity. Reciprocity is the rule some persons never seem to comprehend.” When this was hammered into my slow perception, I rose to the occasion. I turned over the entire contents of a basket the landlord of the Spotswood had given me to Miss Deborah, and she made my path straight before me ever afterward.
At the end of a week the matron had promoted me. Instead of carving the fat bacon, to be served with corn bread, for the hospital dinner, or standing between two rough men to keep away the flies, or fetching water, or spreading sheets on cots, I was assigned to regular duty with one patient.
The first of these proved to be a young Colonel Coppens, of my husband’s brigade. I could comfort him very little, for he was wounded past recovery. I spoke little French, and could only try to keep him, as far as possible, from annoyance. To my great relief, place was found for him in a private family. There he soon died—the gallant fellow I had admired on his horse a few months before.
Then I was placed beside the cot of Mr. (or Captain) Boyd, of Mecklenburg, and was admonished by the matron not to leave him alone. He was the most patient sufferer in the world—gentle, courteous, always considerate, never complaining.
“Are you in pain, Captain?”
“No, no,” he would say gently.
One day when I returned from my “rest,” I found the matron sitting beside him.
She motioned me to take her place, and then added, “No, no; I will not leave him.”
The captain’s eyes were closed, and he sighed wearily at intervals. Presently he whispered slowly: “There everlasting spring abides;” then sighed, and seemed to sleep for a moment.
The matron felt his pulse and raised a warning hand. The sick man’s whisper went on: “Bright fields beyond 90 the swelling flood, Stand dressed in living green;” and in a moment more the Christian soldier had crossed the river and lain down to rest under the trees.
Each of the battles of those seven days brought a harvest of wounded to our hospital. I used to veil myself closely as I walked to and from my hotel, that I might shut out the dreadful sights in the streets—the squads of prisoners, and worst of all, the open wagons in which the dead were piled. Once I did see one of these dreadful wagons. In it a stiff arm was raised, and shook as it was driven down the street, as though the dead owner appealed to Heaven for vengeance—a horrible sight, never to be forgotten.
After one of the bloody battles—I know not if it was Gaines’ Mill or Frazier’s Farm or Malvern Hill—A splendid young officer, Colonel Brokenborough, was taken to our hospital, shot almost to pieces. He was borne up the stairs and placed in a cot—his broken limbs in supports swinging from the ceiling. The wife of General Mahone and I were permitted to assist in nursing him. A young soldier from the camp was detailed to help us, and a clergyman was in constant attendance, coming at night that we might have rest. Our patient held a court in his corner of the hospital. Such a dear, gallant, cheery fellow, handsome, and with a grand air even as he lay prostrate. Nobody ever heard him complain. He would welcome us in the morning with the brightest smile. His aid said, “He watches the head of the stairs and calls up that look for your benefit.”
“Oh,” he said one day, “you can’t guess what’s going to happen. Some ladies have been here and left all these roses, and cologne, and such; and somebody has sent champagne. We are going to have a party.”
Ah! but we knew he was very ill. We were bidden to watch him every minute and not be deceived by his own spirits. Mrs. Mahone spent her life hunting for ice. My constant care was to keep his canteen—to which he clung with affection—filled with fresh water from a spring not far away, and I learned to give it to him so well that I 91 allowed no one to lift his head for his drink during my hours.
One day, when we were alone, I was fanning him, and thought he was asleep. He said gravely, “Mrs. Pryor, beyond that curtain they hung up yesterday, poor young Mitchell is lying. They don’t know. But I heard when they brought him in. As I lie here I listen to his breathing. I haven’t heard it now for some time. Would you mind seeing if he is all right?”
I passed behind the curtain. The young soldier was dead. His wide-open eyes seemed to meet mine in mute appeal. I had never seen or touched a dead man, but I laid my hands upon his eyelids and closed them. I was standing thus when his nurse, a young volunteer like myself, came to me.
“I couldn’t do that,” she said. “I went for the doctor. I’m so glad you could do it.”
When I returned Colonel Brokenborough asked no questions and I knew that his keen senses had already instructed him.
To be cheerful and uncomplaining was the unwritten law of our hospital. No bad news was ever mentioned; no foreboding or anxiety. Mrs. Mahone was one day standing beside Colonel Brokenborough when a messenger from the front suddenly announced that General Mahone had received a flesh wound. Commanding herself instantly, she exclaimed merrily: “Flesh wound. Now you all know that is just impossible.”
The general had no flesh. He was thin and attenuated as he was brave.
As Colonel Brokenborough grew weaker, I felt self-reproach that no one had offered to write letters for him. His friend the clergyman had said to me: “That poor boy is engaged to a lovely young girl. I wonder what is best? Would it grieve him to speak of her. You ladies have so much tact; you might bear it in mind. An opportunity might offer for you to discover how he feels about it.”
The next time I was alone with him I ventured: “Now, Colonel, one mustn’t forget absent friends, you know, 92 even if fair ladies do bring perfumes and roses and what not. I have some ink and paper here. Shall I write a letter for you? Tell me what to say.”
He turned his head and with a half-amused smile of perfect intelligence looked at me for a long time. Then an upward look of infinite tenderness; but the message was never sent—never needed from a true heart like this.
One night I was awakened from my sleep by a knock at my door, and a summons to “come to Colonel Brokenborough.” When I reached his bedside I found the surgeon, the clergyman, and the colonel’s aid. The patient was unconscious; the end was near. We sat in silence. Once, when he stirred, I slipped my hand under his head, and put his canteen once more to his lips. After a long time his breathing simply ceased, with no evidence of pain. We waited awhile, and then the young soldier who had been detailed to nurse him rose, crossed the room, and stooping over, kissed me on my forehead, and went out to his duty in the ranks.
Two weeks later I was in my room, resting after a hard day, when a haggard officer, covered with mud and dust, entered. It was my husband. “My men are all dead,” he said, with anguish, and, falling across the bed, he gave vent to the passionate grief of his heart.
Thousands of Confederate soldiers were killed, thousands wounded. Richmond was saved!
[From Southern Historical Papers.]
Orangeburg, S. C., June 2, 1884.
I feel warranted in informing you of the death of Mrs. Sarah K. Rowe, which occurred yesterday, the 1st of June, at her country home in this county. Mrs. Rowe was known for four and a half years, ’61 to ’65, as “the soldiers’ friend.” I detract nothing from great women all over the South, Cornelias of heroic type, when I state that Mrs. Rowe was pre-eminently the soldiers’ friend. 93 If this should meet the eye of Hood’s Texans, of Polk’s Tennesseeans, of Morgan’s Kentuckians, or of Pickett’s Virginians, any of whom passed on the South Carolina Railroad during the war, her face beaming with benevolence, her arms loaded with food, will be remembered as one of the sunny events of a dark time. From the first note of war Mrs. Rowe gave all she had and could collect by wonderful energy to the soldiers. She had her organized squads. The gay, strong soldier to Virginia was fed and cheered on; the mangled and sick were nursed and cared for. She had a mother’s blessing for the brave; a mother’s tears and sympathy for the dying and the dead. Mrs. Rowe emphatically lived and spent herself for the cause, and when it failed, like a noble woman she submitted, with the remark, “It is all right.” The sight of a bandaged head or limb under her soft touch was an everyday picture. The echo of a thousand cheers as the troop trains passed her was recurring every day. She bandaged and waved God-speed as well. A few days ago Mrs. Rowe showed by request a part of her great legacy—the letters from the soldiers she had nursed to life again. Truly her reward was rich. She passed away, of paralysis, at a ripe old age. The soldiers and survivors buried her. The Young and “Old Guard” lowered her remains to mother earth. When Fame makes up its roll her precious name should stand out—the soldiers’ friend.
Yours truly,
John A. Hamilton.
[Phoebe Y. Pember, in Hospital Life.]
Pleasant episodes often occurred to vary disappointments and lighten duties of hospital life.
“Kin you writ a letter?” drawled a whining voice from a bed in one of the wards, a cold day in ’62.
The speaker was an up-country Georgian, one of the kind called “Goobers” by the soldiers generally—lean, 94 yellow, attenuated, with wispy strands of hair hanging over his high, thin cheek-bones. He put out a hand to detain me and the nails were like claws.
“Why do you not let the nurse cut your nails?”
“Because I aren’t got any spoon, and I use them instead.”
“Will you let me have your hair cut then? You can’t get well with all that dirty hair hanging about your eyes and ears.”
“No, I can’t git my hair cut, kase as how I promised my mammy that I would let it grow till the war be over. Oh, it’s unlucky to cut it.”
“Then I can’t write any letter for you. Do what I wish you to do, and then I will oblige you.”
This was plain talking. The hair was cut (I left the nails for another day), my portfolio brought, and sitting by the side of his bed I waited for further orders. They came with a formal introduction,—“for Mrs. Marthy Brown.”
“My dear mammy:
“I hope this finds you well, as it leaves me well, and I hope that I shall git a furlough Christmas, and come and see you, and I hope you will keep well, and all the folks be well by that time, as I hopes to be well myself. This leaves me in good health, as I hope it will find you and—”
But here I paused as his mind seemed to be going round in a circle, and asked him a few questions about his home, his position during the last summer’s campaign, how he got sick, and where his brigade was at that time. Thus furnished with some material to work upon, the letter proceeded rapidly. Four sides were conscientiously filled, for no soldier would think a letter worth sending home that showed any blank paper. Transcribing his name, the number of his ward and proper address, so that an answer might reach him—the composition was read to him. Gradually his pale face brightened, a sitting posture was assumed with difficulty (for, in spite of his determined effort to write a letter “to be well,” he was far from convalescence). As I folded and directed it, contributed the expected five-cent stamp, and handed it to 95 him, he gazed cautiously around to be sure there were no listeners.
“Did you writ all that?” he asked, whispering, but with great emphasis.
“Yes.”
“Did I say all that?”
“I think you did.”
A long pause of undoubted admiration—astonishment—ensued. What was working in that poor mind? Could it be that Psyche had stirred one of the delicate plumes of her wing and touched that dormant soul?
“Are you married?” The harsh voice dropped very low.
“I am not. At least, I am a widow.”
He rose still higher in bed. He pushed away desperately the tangled hay on his brow. A faint color fluttered over the hollow cheek, and stretching out a long piece of bone with a talon attached, he gently touched my arm and with constrained voice whispered mysteriously:
“You wait!”
[By Anna B. A. Brown, in Memphis Commercial World.]
In these hurried days, when we spend the major portion of our lives trying to keep up with the electric currents that control the universe, it is good to be able to turn aside for a while in the byways of the South and feel the restfulness of old plantation life, whether it be a reality or an echo from the past. A day spent in touch with old Southern home life is a day full of restful peace and happy memories.
In Madison County, Mississippi, one finds many bits of ante-bellum life that the turbulent tide of commerce has not yet swept away—big plantations, historic old mansions, tumble-down slave quarters—that are the abiding proofs of the prosperity and hospitality of a people who lived and loved when knighthood was yet in flower, and whose children live yet to preserve the old traditions. 96 Many of the old plantations are still tilled by the descendants of the original owners. Many have passed into stranger’s hands. Some stand tenantless and lonely, with ghostly visitants slipping at midnight down the great stairways to tread a stately measure on the ball floor, a silent assemblage of long-ago belles and beaux returned from the cities of the dead or from the still trenches of Seven Pines, Chickamauga, or Shiloh.
One of these silent homes is Annandale, a bit of historic Mississippi architecture that stands near Canton, once the home of Southern chivalry and romance, now empty, save for the memories that cluster thickly within its walls. Annandale is the property, and was until recently the home of the Mississippi branch of the Johnstone family, and preserves to memory the name of the county in Scotland that cradled the ancestors who bore this illustrious name. It is still known as their home, though Vicksburg now claims the daughter of the house, and only in the summers are the doors opened again for that lavish hospitality for which the old place was noted. Two brothers of the Johnstone family came over from Scotland in 1734, having been sent by George III, on business of great import to the colonies. One had the appointment of governor to his majesty’s colony of North Carolina, the other that of surveyor-general. The Johnstone family remained loyal to their king as long as native pride would permit, and then, true to the spirit that demanded the Magna Charta at Runnymede centuries before, they went to the American settlements in the fight for liberty. They were prominent in the Revolution, and after the war took part in the political work of building up the nation.
John T. Johnstone, a prominent member of this family, moved from North Carolina to Mississippi in 1836 and bought large tracts of land in Madison County. On the plantation near Annandale he built a comfortable home—a fine house for those days of pioneer effort. His neighbors were the families of Hardeman, Hinton, Ricks, Winters and Christmas, and there are still marvelous tales told in that locality of the lavish manner of living, the wonderful hospitality dispensed and the gay companies 97 that assembled in the old home. A few years of this charmed life Mr. Johnstone called his, and then he was gathered to his illustrious fathers, and the burden of this great estate fell on the shoulders of his young widow. She stood the test of generalship, as other Southern women of her day have done, and the affairs of the plantation, the slave quarters and the household moved as smoothly as clock work and success smiled on her. The material side of her plantation’s progress did not overshadow the religious side, and services for bond and free were held daily in a gothic church on the estate, the chapel of the cross which Mrs. Johnstone had erected in memory of her husband. The daughter of the house was carefully educated, and as she neared womanhood Mrs. Johnstone had a new home built, the present Annandale, and the same lavish hospitality was continued.
Then came the war. There was no husband, brother or son to send to the front, but the women, true to the patriotic sentiments of their house, gave of their best. The big mansion was turned into a factory for supplying Confederate needs. Mrs. Johnstone and her fair daughter, Helen, became the head of a busy body of working women, who gave of their time and talent for the South. All day was heard the whir of spinning-wheels, the slipping of the shuttles in the looms; all day busy fingers carded, wove, spun and sewed, that the soldiers might be made more comfortable. One company of soldiers was equipped throughout the war solely at Miss Johnstone’s expense, while she and her mother furnished clothing to two hundred others. The setting of dainty stitches, the manufacture of rolled and whipped ruffles, were laid aside for the time. The rich carpets were torn from the floors and made into blankets; the rare bronzes and brasses were torn from their pedestals or their fastenings and sent to the foundries to be made into cannon; silk dresses were transformed into banners to lead the gray-clad men to victory, and dainty linen and cambric garments and rare household napery and linen were ruthlessly torn in strips to bandage the wounds of the men in the hospitals. 98 The granaries, smokehouses, and wine cellars gave up their stores for the Confederacy, the wealth of these two loyal women being laid gladly on their country’s altar. Yet, through all this troublous season, hospitality and merriment still reigned. The rebel lads adored the loyal women; the Union soldiers tried more than once to burn the house that sheltered such secessionists.
During the war the fair daughter of the house was married to Rev. George Carroll Harris, of Nashville, and for many years rector of Christ Church, and widely known throughout the South.
In 1880 Mrs. Johnstone died, and historic Annandale passed into her daughter’s hands, and is still owned by her. A few years ago the son of Dr. and Mrs. Harris, George Harris, married Miss Cecile Nugent, of Jackson, Mississippi, and they live on his place in the Delta, and with the marriage of the daughter Helen to the son of the late Bishop Thompson the younger generation of Annandale closed another chapter of romances for the old home. But even though the windows are darkened and no material form passes daily over the threshold, the inner air is still palpitant with memories, and who knows what gay revels the ghostly companies of the past may not hold in the grand salon when midnight has come and the human world is wrapped in slumber?
[In Southern Soldier Stories, pages 203-205.]
It was nearing the end. Every resource of the Southern States had been taxed to the point of exhaustion. The people had given up everything they had for “the cause.” Under the law of a “tax in kind,” they had surrendered all they could spare of food products of every character. Under an untamable impulse of patriotism they had surrendered much more than they could spare in order to feed the army.
It was at such a time that I went to my home county on 99 a little military business. I stopped for dinner at a house, the lavish hospitality of which had been a byword in the old days. I found before me at dinner the remnants of a cold boiled ham, some mustard greens, which we Virginians called “salad,” a pitcher of buttermilk, some corn pones and—nothing else. I carved the ham, and offered to serve it to the three women of the household. But they all declined. They made their dinner on salad, buttermilk, and corn bread, the latter eaten very sparingly, as I observed. The ham went only to myself and to the three convalescent wounded soldiers who were guests in the house. Wounded men were at that time guests in every house in Virginia.
I lay awake that night and thought over the circumstance. The next morning I took occasion to have a talk on the old familiar terms with the young woman of the family, with whom I had been on a basis of friendship in the old days that even permitted me to kiss her upon due and proper occasion.
“Why didn’t you take some ham last night?” I asked urgently.
“Oh, I didn’t want it,” she replied.
“Now, you know you are fibbing,” I said. “Tell me the truth, won’t you?”
She blushed, and hesitated. Presently she broke down and answered frankly: “Honestly, I did want the ham. I have hungered for meat for months. But I mustn’t eat it, and I won’t. You see the army needs all the food there is, and more. We women can’t fight, though I don’t see at all why they shouldn’t let us, and so we are trying to feed the fighting men—and there aren’t any others. We’ve made up our minds not to eat anything that can be sent to the front as rations.”
“You are starving yourselves,” I exclaimed.
“Oh, no,” she said. “And if we were, what would it matter? Haven’t Lee’s soldiers starved many a day? But we aren’t starving. You see we had plenty of salad and buttermilk last night. And we even ate some of the corn bread. I must stop that, by the way, for corn meal is a good ration for the soldiers.” 100 A month or so later this frail but heroic young girl was laid away in the Grub Hill church-yard.
Don’t talk to me about the “heroism” that braves a fire of hell under enthusiastic impulse. That young girl did a higher self-sacrifice than any soldier who fought on either side during the war ever dreamed of doing.
[In Southern Historical Papers, Volume 22, pages 54-55. From the Richmond Star, July 21, 1894.]
On the evening of October 15th an entertainment was given in Fredericksburg, Virginia, to raise funds to erect a monument to the memory of Mrs. Lucy Ann Cox, who, at the commencement of the war, surrendered all the comfort of her father’s home, and followed the fortunes of her husband, who was a member of Company A, Thirteenth Virginia Regiment, until the flag of the Southern Confederacy was furled at Appomattox. No march was too long or weather too inclement to deter this patriotic woman from doing what she considered her duty. She was with her company and regiment on their two forays into Maryland, and her ministering hand carried comfort to many a wounded and worn soldier. While Company A was the object of her untiring solicitude, no Confederate ever asked assistance from Mrs. Cox but it was cheerfully rendered.
She marched as the infantry did, seldom taking advantage of offered rides in ambulances and wagon trains. When Mrs. Cox died, a few years ago, it was her latest expressed wish that she be buried with military honors, and, so far as it was possible, her wish was carried out. Her funeral took place on a bright autumn Sunday, and the entire town turned out to do honor to this noble woman.
The camps that have undertaken the erection of this monument do honor to themselves in thus commemorating the virtues of the heroine, Lucy Ann Cox.
[Phoebe Y. Pember, in Hospital Life.]
There was little conversation carried on, no necessity for introductions, and no names ever asked or given. This indifference to personality was a peculiarity strongly exhibited in hospitals; for after nursing a sick or wounded patient for months, he has often left without any curiosity as regarded my name, my whereabouts, or indeed anything connected with me. A case in point was related by a friend. When the daughter of our general had devoted much time and care to a sick man in one of the hospitals, he seemed to feel so little gratitude for the attention paid him that her companion to rouse him told him that Miss Lee was his nurse. “Lee, Lee?” he said. “There are some Lees down in Mississippi who keeps a tavern there. Is she one of them Lees?”
Almost of the same style, although a little worse, was the remark of one sick, poor fellow who had been wounded in the head and who, though sensible enough ordinarily, would feel the effect of the sun on his brain when exposed to its influence. After advising him to wear a wet paper doubled into the crown of his hat, more from a desire to show some interest in him than from any belief in its efficacy, I paused at the door long enough to hear him ask the ward-master, “who that was?”
“Why, that is the matron of the hospital; she gives you all the food you eat, and attends to things.”
“Well,” said he, “I always did think this government was a confounded sell, and now I am sure of it, when they put such a little fool to manage such a big hospital as this.”
[In Southern Historical Papers, Volume 32, pages 146-150. T. C. DeLeon, in New Orleans Picayune.]
The great German who wrote:
“Honor to woman! to her it is given
To garden the earth with roses of heaven!”
precisely described the Confederate conditions—a century in advance. True, constant, brave and enduring, the men were; but the women set even the bravest and most steadfast example. Nor was this confined to any one section of the country. The “girl with the calico dress” of the lowland farms; the “merry mountain maid” of the hill country, and the belles of society in the cities, all vied with each other in efforts to serve the men who had gone to the front to fight for home and for them. And there was no section of the South where this desire to do all they might and more was oftener in evidence than another. In every camp of the early days of the great struggle the incoming troops bore trophies of home love, and as the war progressed to need, then to dire want, the sacrifices of those women at home became almost a poem, and one most pathetic. Dress—misconceived as the feminine fetich—was forgotten in the effort to clothe the boys at the front; the family larder—ill-stocked at the best—was depleted to nothingness, to send to distant camps those delicacies—so equally freighted with tenderness and dyspepsia—which too often never reached their destination. And later, the carpets were taken from the floors, the curtains from the windows—alike in humble homes and in dwellings of the rich—to be cut in blankets for the uncomplaining fellows, sleeping on freezing mud.
So wide, so universal, was the rule of self-sacrifice, that no one reference to it can do justice to the zeal and devotion of “Our Girls.” And the best proof of both was in the hospitals, where soon began to congregate the maimed and torn forms of those just sent forth to glory and victory. This was the trial that tested the grain and purity of our womanhood, and left it without alloy of fear or selfishness. And some of the women who wrought in home and hospital—even in trench and on the firing line—for the “boys,” had never before handled aught rougher than embroidery, or seen aught more fearsome than its needle-prick. Yes, these untried women, young and old, stood fire like veteran regulars, indeed, even more bravely in moral view, for they missed the stimulus of the charge—the tonic in the thought of striking back.
During the entire war—and through the entire South—it was the hospital that illustrated the highest and best traits of the tried and stricken people. Doubtless, there was good work done by the women of the North, and much of it. Happily, for the sanity of the nation, American womanhood springs from one common stock. It is ever true to its own, as a whole—and, for aught I shall deny—individually. But behind that Chinese wall of wood and steel blockade, then nursing was not an episode. It was grave duty, grim labor; heartbreaking endurance—all self-imposed, and lasting for years, yet shirked and relinquished only for cause.
But the dainty little hands that tied the red bandages, or “held the artery” unflinching; the nimble feet that wearied not by fever cot, or operating table, the active months of war, grew nimbler still on bridle, or in the dances when “the boys” came home. This was sometimes on “flying furlough,” or when an aid, or courier, with dispatches, was told to wait. Then “the one girl” was mounted on anything that could carry her; and the party would ride far to the front, in full view of the enemy, and often in point-blank range. Or, it was when frozen ruts made roads impassable for invader and defender; and the furlough was perhaps easier, and longer. Then came those now historic dances, the starvation parties, where rank told nothing, and where the only refreshment came in that intoxicant—a woman’s voice and eyes.
Then came the “Dies Irae,” when the Southern Rachel sat in the ashes of her desolation and her homespun was sackcloth. And even she rose supreme. By her desolate hearth, with her larder empty, and only her aching heart full, she still forced a smile for the home-coming “boy” through the repressed tears for the one left, somewhere in the fight.
In Richmond, Atlanta, Charleston and elsewhere was she bitter and unforgiving? If she drew her faded skirt—ever a black one, in that case—from the passing blue, was it “treason,” or human nature? Thinkers who wore the blue have time and oft declared the latter. Was she “unreconstructed?” Her wounds were great and 104 wondrous sore. She was true, then, to her faith. That she is to-day to the reunited land let the fathers of Spanish war heroes tell. She needs no monument; it is reared in the hearts of true men, North and South.
[In Southern Historical Papers, Volume 22, pages 63-64. From the Memphis, Tenn., Appeal-Avalanche, June 30, 1894.]
Just upon the eve of preparations by ex-Confederates to celebrate the Fourth of July in a becoming manner and spirit, the sad news is announced of the death of the venerable Mrs. Law, known all over the South as one of the mothers of the Confederacy. She was also truly a mother in Israel, in the highest Christian sense. Her life had been closely connected with that of many leading actors in the late war, in which she herself bore an essential part. She passed away, June 28th, at Idlewild, one of the suburbs of Memphis, nearly 89 years of age.
She was born on the River Yadkin, in Wilson County, North Carolina, August 27, 1805, and at the time of her death was doubtless the oldest person in Shelby County. Her mother’s maiden name was Charity King. Her father, Chapman Gordon, served in the Revolutionary War, under Generals Marion and Sumter. She came of a long-lived race of people. Her mother lived to be 93 years of age, and her brother, Rev. Hezekiah Herndon Gordon, who was the father of General John B. Gordon (now Senator from Georgia), lived to the age of 92 years.
Sallie Chapman Gordon was married to Dr. John S. Law, near Eatonton, Georgia, on the 28th day of June, 1825. A few years later she became a member of the Presbyterian Church, in Forsyth, Georgia, and her name was afterward transferred to the rolls of the Second Presbyterian Church in Memphis, of which church she remained a member as long as she lived.
She became an active worker in hospitals, and when 105 nothing more could be done in Memphis she went through the lines and rendered substantial aid and comfort to the soldiers in the field. Her services, if fully recorded, would make a book. She was so recognized that upon one occasion General Joseph E. Johnston had 30,000 of his bronzed and tattered soldiers to pass in review in her honor at Dalton. Such a distinction was, perhaps, never accorded to any other woman in the South—not even Mrs. Jefferson Davis or the wives of great generals. Yet, so earnest and sincere in her work was she that she commanded the respect and reverence of men wherever she was known. After the war she strove to comfort the vanquished and encourage the down-hearted, and continued in her way to do much good work.
[In Christ in Camp, pages 94-98; J. William Jones, D. D.]
Here is another sketch of a soldier’s friend who labored in some of our largest hospitals.
“She is a character,” writes a soldier. “A Napoleon of her department, with the firmness and courage of Andrew, she possesses all the energy and independence of Stonewall Jackson. The officials hate her; the soldiers adore her. The former name her ‘The Great Eastern,’ and steer wide of her track, the latter go to her in all their wants and troubles, and know her by the name of ‘Miss Sally.’ She joined the army in one of the regiments from Alabama, about the time of the battle of Manassas, and never shrunk from the stern privations of the soldier’s life from the moment of leaving camp to follow her wounded and sick Alabamians to the hospitals of Richmond. Her services are not confined, however, to the sick and wounded from Alabama. Every sick soldier has now a claim on her sympathy. Why, but yesterday, my system having succumbed to the prevailing malaria of the hospital, she came to my room, though a stranger, with my ward nurse, and in the kindest manner offered me her 106 pillow of feathers, with case as tidy as the driven snow. The very sight of it was soothing to an aching brow, and I blessed her from heart and lips as well. I must not omit to tell why ‘Miss Sally’ is so disliked by many of the officials. Like all women of energy, she has eyes whose penetration few things escape, and a sagacity fearful or admirable, as the case may be, to all interested. If any abuse is pending, or in progress in the hospital, she is quickly on the track, and if not abated, off ‘The Great Eastern’ sails to headquarters. A few days ago one of the officials of the division sent a soldier to inform her that she must vacate her room instantly. ‘Who sent you with that message to me?’ she asked him, turning suddenly around. ‘Dr. ——,’ the soldier answered. ‘Pish!’ she replied, and swept on in ineffable contempt to the bedside, perhaps, of some sick soldier.”
[Eggleston’s Recollections, pages 70-71.]
The ingenuity with which these good ladies discovered or manufactured onerous duties for themselves was surprising, and having discovered or imagined some new duty they straightway proceeded to do it at any cost.
An excellent Richmond dame was talking with a soldier friend, when he carelessly remarked that there was nothing which so greatly helped to keep up a contented and cheerful spirit among the men as the receipt of letters from their woman friends. Catching at the suggestion as a revelation of duty, she asked, “And cheerfulness makes better soldiers of the men, does it not?” Receiving yes for an answer, the frail little woman, already over-burdened with cares of an unusual sort, sat down and made out a list of all the men with whom she was acquainted even in the smallest possible way, and from that day until the end of the war she wrote one letter a week to each, a task which, as her acquaintance was large, taxed her time and strength very severely. Not 107 content with this, she wrote on the subject in the newspapers, earnestly urging a like course upon her sisters, many of whom adopted the suggestion at once, much to the delight of the soldiers, who little dreamed that the kindly, cheerful, friendly letters which every mail brought into camp were a part of woman’s self-appointed work for the success of the common cause. From the beginning to the end of the war it was the same.
[Phoebe Y. Pember, in Hospital Life.]
There is one subject connected with hospitals on which a few words should be said—the distasteful one that a woman must lose a certain amount of delicacy and reticence in filling any office in them. How can this be? There is no unpleasant exposure under proper arrangements, and if even there be, the circumstances which surround a wounded man, far from friends and home, suffering in a holy cause and dependent upon a woman for help, care and sympathy, hallow and clear the atmosphere in which she labors. That woman must indeed be hard and gross who lets one material thought lessen her efficiency. In the midst of suffering and death, hoping with those almost beyond hope in this world; praying by the bedside of the lonely and heart-stricken; closing the eyes of boys hardly old enough to realize man’s sorrow, much less suffer by man’s fierce hate, a woman must soar beyond the conventional modesty considered correct under different circumstances.
If the ordeal does not chasten and purify her nature, if the contemplation of suffering and endurance does not make her wiser and better, and if the daily fire through which she passes does not draw from her nature the sweet fragrance of benevolence, charity, and love,—then, indeed, a hospital has been no fit place for her.
[Electra Tyler Deloache, in Augusta Chronicle, October 29, 1905.]
Only a few of the present inhabitants of Millen know that it was once famous as the location of a Confederate Wayside Home, where, during the civil war, the soldiers were fed and cared for. The home was built by public subscription and proved a veritable boon to the soldiers, as many veterans now living can testify.
The location of the town has been changed slightly since the 60’s, for in those days the car sheds were several hundred yards farther up the Macon track, and were situated where the railroad crossing is now. The hotel owned and run by Mr. Gray was first opposite the depot, and the location is still marked by mock-orange trees and shrubbery.
The Wayside Home was on the west side of the railroad crossing and was opposite the house built in the railroad Y by Major Wilkins and familiarly known here as the Berrien House. The old well still marks the spot. The home was weather-boarded with rough planks running straight up and down. It had four large rooms to the front, conveniently furnished with cots, etc., for the accommodation of any soldiers who were sick or wounded and unable to continue their journey. A nurse was always on hand to attend to the wants of the sick. Back of these rooms was a large dining hall and kitchen, where the weary and hungry boys in gray could minister to the wants of the inner man. And right royally they performed this pleasant duty, for the table was always bountifully supplied with good things, donated by the patriotic women of Burke county, who gladly emptied hearts and home upon the altar of country. This work was entirely under the auspices of the women of Burke. Mrs. Judge Jones, of Waynesboro, was the first president of the home. She was succeeded by Mrs. Ransom Lewis, who was second and last. She was quite an active factor in the work, and it was largely due to her efforts that the home attained the prominence that it did among similar institutions.