[She discusses here specifics of supplies needed and provisions that they have been able to feed the wounded.]
It took nearly five days for some three hundred surgeons to perform the amputations that occurred here, during which time the rebels lay in a dying condition without their wounds being dressed or scarcely any food. If the rebels did not get severely punished for this battle, then I am no judge. We have but one rebel in our camp now; he says he never fired his gun if he could help it, and, therefore, we treat him first rate. . . .
I could stand by and see a man’s head taken off I believe—you get so used to it here. . . . William says I am very popular here as I am such a contrast to some of the office-seeking women who swarm around hospitals. I am black as an Indian and dirty as a pig and as well as I ever was in my life—have a nice bunk and about twelve feet square. I have a bed that is made of four crotch sticks and some sticks laid across and pine boughs laid on that with blankets on top. It is equal to any mattress ever made.
• • •
I received, a few days ago, a Silver Medal worth twenty dollars. The inscription on one side is “Miss Cornelia Hancock, presented by the wounded soldiers 3rd Division 2nd Army Corps.” On the other side is “Testimonial of regard for ministrations of mercy to the wounded soldiers at Gettysburg, Pa.—July 1863.”
There have been in the Corps Hospital I suppose some thirty women, and it seems I am the favored one in the lot. Several, since they have seen mine, have started a subscription for two other ladies. Most of the ladies are dead heads completely.
City Point, 1st Div. 2nd Corps Hospital
July 18th, 1864.
To Joanna Dickerson, Pres. Of Ladies Aid, Hancock’s Bridge, Salem Co., N.J.
My dear friends:
At Fredericksburg we received the wounded from the [Battle of the] Wilderness. There was more suffering there for want of food than I ever witnessed anywhere. From Fredericksburg we went to Port Royal. Had the base of operations there for a short time only when all moved to White House. There the wounded were brought from the fight upon the North Anna River and it was another dreadful scene. I joined the train which had been three days coming from the field having had no attention except what could be given to them lying in the ambulances. . . .
I was with the San[itary] Com[mission] train and in the wagon were stores plenty. Mrs. Lee in company with me cooked them a bountiful meal and I took water from the river and washed the face and hands of all in our Div[ision] train. To wash one’s face and hands when on duty is considered a luxury at any time, but no one can know the relief one feels in using water after a three days’ march, especially when wounded. Some men you could hardly recognize if you knew them intimately.
There has been no day’s work that I have done since this campaign that gave such extreme relief as cleansing those poor fellows’ faces. All were cases of severe wounds. At dark night while it was raining the long train moved over a newly constructed bridge and loaded the men in transports. In the second Corps hospital the wounded continued rapidly to arrive until they laid out in the open field without any shelter. Here I dressed more wounds than in all my experience before. There were not surgeons near enough who were willing to stay in the sun and attend to the men and it was too awful to leave them uncared for. Just for one moment consider a slivered arm having been left three days, without dressing and the person having ridden in an army wagon for two days with very little food. They mostly arrived at night when all the ladies would fill their stores and feed them as they came in. They would then remain in the ambulance until morning when probably no shelter could be procured for them and here they lay in the scorching sun during 1/2 the day. It was at this time there was such crying need to dress their wounds, some of which had not been opened for thirty-six hours. Such tired, agonized expressions no pen can describe. By the time one set of men were got in and got comfortable another set would arrive, and so it continued night and day for about two weeks. At that time there was a very good opportunity to make a visit to the hospital up at the extreme front. There I stayed for a week, the men were then in the rifle-pits and if they moved out to get a drink of water were shot in the action. I saw them as soon as they were wounded but the custom is here to operate upon the wound and immediately send them to the rear.
[The Sanitary Commission train then attempts to relocate, but it is delayed a week waiting for a cavalry escort.]
The monotony was broken upon the 20th of June by the Rebels planting a battery upon a hill and shelling our train for six hours, in which time it behooved all to make the best of the situation and keep out of the shells as best we could. One shell struck in the rear of the carriage I was in and one rifled cannon came between Mrs. Husbands and myself while we were walking along the beach. However, suffice it to say no lives were lost in our train except three horses.
Susie King Taylor
(1848–1912)
U.S. Army
In April 1862, fourteen-year-old slave Susie King and an uncle went aboard a Federal gunboat near Savannah and gained their freedom, becoming “contraband of war.” Her uncle joined the First South Carolina Volunteers, a black regiment led by a white colonel. Educated in two secret schools taught by black women in Savannah, King found herself serving not only as unit laundress but also as a valued literacy teacher for off-duty troops. She nursed wounded when the First South Carolina Volunteers and the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Volunteers, one of the Union Army’s first official African American regiments, engaged in guerrilla actions along the swampy southern Atlantic coast. In 1862 she married Edward [King], a sergeant in the First South Carolina Volunteers. After the war, King settled in Savannah and opened a private school, where she taught children during the day and adult freedmen at night. Edward died unexpectedly in 1866, leaving King pregnant with their first child; through 1869 she supported her family on her teaching salary, receiving no freedmen’s relief funds. In the 1870s she moved to Boston, remarried, and served in the Women’s Relief Corps. In 1902 she privately published her memoir, A Black Woman’s Civil War Memoirs: Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd U.S. Colored Troops, Late 1st South Carolina Volunteers, from which the excerpt below is taken.
The first colored troops did not receive any pay for eighteen months, and the men had to depend wholly on what they received from the commissary, established by General Saxton. A great many of these men had large families, and as they had no money to give them, their wives were obliged to support themselves and [their] children by washing for the officers of the gunboats and the soldiers, and making cakes and pies which they sold to the boys in camp. Finally, in 1863, the government decided to give them half pay, but the men would not accept this. They wanted “full pay” or nothing. They preferred rather to give their services to the state, which they did until 1864, when the government granted them full pay, with all the back pay due.I remember hearing Captain Heasley telling his company, one day, “Boys, stand up for your full pay! I am with you, and so are all the officers.” This captain was from Pennsylvania, and was a very good man, all the men liked him. . . .
I taught a great many of the comrades in Company E to read and write, when they were off duty. Nearly all were anxious to learn. My husband taught some also when it was convenient for him. I was very happy to know my efforts were successful in camp, and also felt grateful for the appreciation of my services. I gave my services willingly for four years and three months without receiving a dollar. I was glad, however, to be allowed to go with the regiment, to care for the sick and afflicted comrades. . . . .
Outside of the fort [Fort Wagner, the site of a significant engagement in which the First South Carolina and 54th Massachusetts Volunteers sustained heavy casualties] were many skulls lying about; I have often moved them one side out of the path. The comrades and I would have quite a debate as to which side the men fought on. Some thought that they were the skulls of our boys; others thought they were the enemy’s; but as there was no definite way to know, it wa
s never decided which could lay claim to them. They were a gruesome sight, those fleshless heads and grinning jaws, but by this time I had become accustomed to worse things and did not feel as I might have earlier in my camp life.
It seems strange how our aversion to seeing suffering is overcome in war,—how we are able to see the most sickening sights, such as men with their limbs blown off and mangled by the deadly shells, without a shudder; and instead of turning away, how we hurry to assist in alleviating their pain, bind up their wounds, and press the cool water to their parched lips, with feelings only of sympathy and pity.
Cathy Williams
(ca. 1844–n.d.)
U.S. Army
The Eighth Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment impressed seventeen-year-old freedwoman Cathy Williams into service as a cook and laundress during the 1861 Union occupation of Jefferson City, Missouri. Williams accompanied the regiment in the Battle of Pea Ridge and the Red River Campaign. She dressed as a man and joined the segregated Thirty-Eighth Infantry Regiment—later known as the “Buffalo Soldiers”—on November 15, 1866, for a three-year enlistment. She contracted smallpox soon after her enlistment, recovered, and was ordered to New Mexico. As a result of the smallpox, the heat, or the effects of years of marching, she began to require frequent hospitalization. The post surgeon discovered that she was a woman. Her commanding officer, Capt. Charles E. Clarke, discharged her from the Army on October 14, 1868. Although she is presumed to have been illiterate, she told her story to a reporter who published it in the January 2, 1876, issue of the St. Louis Daily Times.
My father was a free man, but my mother a slave, belonging to William Johnson, a wealthy farmer who lived at the time I was born near Independence, Jackson County, Missouri. While I was a small girl my master and family moved to Jefferson City. My master died there and when the war broke out and the United States soldiers came to Jefferson City they took me and other colored folks with them to Little Rock. Col. Benton of the 13th army corps was the officer that carried us off. I did not want to go. He wanted me to cook for the officers, but I had always been a house girl and did not know how to cook. I learned to cook after going to Little Rock and was with the army at the battle of Pea Ridge. Afterwards the command moved over various portions of Arkansas and Louisiana. I saw the soldiers burn lots of cotton and was at Shreveport when the rebel gunboats were captured and burned on Red River. We afterwards went to New Orleans, then by way of the Gulf to Savannah, Georgia, then to Macon and other places in the South. Finally I was sent to Washington City, and at the time Gen. Sheridan made his raids in the Shenandoah Valley I was cook and washwoman for his staff. I was sent from Virginia to some place in Iowa and afterwards to Jefferson Barracks, where I remained some time. You will see by this paper that on the 15th day of November 1866, I enlisted in the United States army at St. Louis, in the Thirty-eighth United States Infantry, company A, Capt. Charles E. Clarke commanding.
I ENLISTED TO SERVE THREE YEARS!
The regiment I joined wore the Zouave uniform and only two persons, a cousin and a particular friend, members of the regiment, knew that I was a woman. They never “blowed” on me. They were partly the cause of my joining the army. Another reason was I wanted to make my own living and not be dependent on relations or friends. Soon after I joined the army, I was taken with the small-pox and was sick at a hospital across the river from St. Louis, but as soon as I got well I joined my company in New Mexico. I was
A GOOD SOLDIER.
As that paper says, I was never put in the guard house, no bayonet was ever put to my back. I carried my musket and did guard and other duties while in the army, but finally I got tired and wanted to get off. I played sick, complained of pains in my side, and rheumatism in my knees. The post surgeon found out I was a woman and I got my discharge. The men all wanted to get rid of me after they found out I was a woman. Some of them acted real bad to me. After leaving the army I went to Pueblo, Colorado, where I made money by cooking and washing. I got married while there, but my husband was no account. He stole my watch and chain, a hundred dollars in money and my team of horses and wagon. I had him arrested and put in jail, and then I came here. I like this town. I know all the good people here, and I expect to get rich yet. . . . I shall never live in the states again. You see I’ve got a good sewing machine and I get washing to do and clothes to make. I want to get along and not be a burden to my friends or relatives.
Mary Reynolds
(n.d.–n.d.)
U.S. Lighthouse Service
Mississippi governor Albert Gallatin Brown appointed Mary Reynolds, a woman with a “large family of orphan children,” keeper of the Biloxi Light on April 11, 1854, at an annual salary of four hundred dollars. Reynolds shifted her allegiance to the Confederacy after the war began. She remained at her post even though the citizens of Biloxi extinguished the light to prevent Union ships from using it for navigation. She continued to serve as lighthouse keeper until 1866. The following excerpt is from a letter she wrote to Governor Pettus, held in the Mississippi Department of Archives and History; his reply, if any, has not been preserved.
Biloxi, Nov. 26th, 1861
To His Excellency Gov. Pettus
Dear Sir,
With the request that you will pardon my informality in my letter, I beg to inform you that I am a woman entirely unprotected. I have for several years past been the Keeper of the Light House at Biloxi, the small salary accruing from which has helped me to support a large family of orphaned children.
[She explains that the children, orphans of her deceased relatives, are heirs to property in Maryland, but that due to the war the executor of their estate is unlikely to send the yearly stipend for their support.]
I do not know if my salary as the Keeper of the Light House will be continued.
On the 18th of June last, the citizens of Biloxi ordered the light to be extinguished which was immediately done and shortly after others came and demanded the key of the Light Tower which has ever since remained in the hands of a Company calling themselves “Home Guards.”
At the time they took possession of the Tower it contained valuable Oil, the quantity being marked on my books. I have on several occasions seen disreputable characters taking out the oil in bottles. Today they carried away a large stone jug capable of containing several gallons. They may take also in the night as no one here appeared to have any authority over them.
Their Captain, J. Fewell, is also Mayor of the City of Biloxi, and if you would have the kindness to write him orders to have the oil measured and placed under my charge at the dwelling of the Light House I would be very grateful to you for so doing.
I write to you merely as a Light Keeper believing that injustice has been and is still [being done] here. . . .
I have ever faithfully performed the duties of Light Keeper in storm and sunshine attending it. I ascended the Tower at and after the last destructive storm [in 1860] when men stood appalled at the danger I encountered.
After the Light was extinguished, I wrote to New Orleans and offered my services to make Volunteer Clothing [for Confederate soldiers]. Received a large bale of heavy winter clothing which I made during the hottest season of the year working day and night to have them done in time.
I do not speak thus of myself through vanity or idle boasting but to assure you that I have tried to do my share in our great and holy cause of freedom.
3
The Spanish-American War
“Upon Our Shoulders Rests a Great Responsibility”
The Cuban mosquito that bit Rose Heavren transferred an incurable virus into her bloodstream. The virus traveled to her lymph nodes and began to replicate. Overwork and the limited Army diet might have caused the fatigue and malaise she felt later in the week. But when the chills, high fever, and severe muscular pain began, the chief nurse at the Army yellow fever hospital in Havana must have suspected that she had contracted the very disease she had been fighting.
Heavren hated to watch the young sol
diers in her care die. Through a short week of severe illness, they remained conscious and free of delirium. Their livers released bile that yellowed their skin and the whites of their eyes. In a matter of days, some began to recover. But others developed hemorrhagic fever, marked by internal bleeding and black vomit. If the patient lost enough blood and fluid to cause convulsions, then shock, organ failure, and death followed in a matter of hours.
Heavren survived. She returned to her duties.
One day after she had recovered, an officer came to visit a critically ill patient. She had expected two officers, the patient’s friend and a friend of his father’s. Unfamiliar with rank insignia, she asked, “Are you Lieutenant Curry, or Captain Cary?”
The soldier looked her in the eye. “Neither, I’m afraid,” he replied. “I am Colonel Theodore Roosevelt.”
She apologized and explained that she had been expecting two other officers.
“He’s as much my boy as he is theirs,” Roosevelt said.
Heavren led the future president to the soldier’s bedside and left him alone.
Well aware of the historical significance of the contract nurses’ service and their contribution, Dr. Anita Newcom McGee suggested to the members of the Spanish-American War Nurses’ organization in 1903 that they compile a book. “I propose that we combine to ‘write a picture’ of ‘Nursing in the Spanish War,’ such as will give a vivid account of all sides of your lives with the army,” she said. “Each hospital should have a committee to see that . . . all sides—work, pathos, humor—are shown.” The book never materialized. Little writing from Spanish-American War contract nurses has survived. Some nurses published brief accounts for limited audiences such as the members of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), or in professional journals and newspaper interviews.
It's My Country Too Page 7