Louisa on the Front Lines
Page 18
“As yet, no one except his constitutional advisors”: Alexandria Gazette, October 6, 1862, 1. http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85025007/1862-10-06/ed-1/seq-1.
“it would add to my comfort”: Matteson, “Finding Private Suhre,” 114–115.
“Give my love [to] Mother”: Ibid., 115.
Chapter 4: Help Wanted
“I am getting ready to go to Washington”: Louisa May Alcott to Mrs. Joseph Chatfield Alcox, LMA, Letters, 80.
“I reviewed every rag I possessed”: L. M. Alcott, Hospital Sketches (Boston: James Redpath, 1863), 11.
“powerfully impatient”: Ibid.
“Father writing & talking”: Louisa May Alcott to Mrs. Joseph Chatfield Alcox, LMA, Letters, 80.
“Do you like ladies”: Julian Hawthorne, “The Woman Who Wrote Little Women,” Ladies Home Journal, October 1922, 120. Also in Julian Hawthorne, The Memoirs of Julian Hawthorne, ed. Edith Garrigues Hawthorne (New York: Macmillan, 1938), 68–71.
“My conceptions of bathing”: Ibid.
“We and the Emersons often go”: Ibid.
“The Alcott girls were society”: Hawthorne, “The Woman Who Wrote Little Women,” 120.
“Old Boys”: Louisa May Alcott to Edward J. Bartlett and Garth Wilkinson James, December 4, 1862, LMA, Letters, 81.
“Wilkie was incomparable”: Hawthorne, Memoirs, 121.
“I had been brought up in the belief”: Garth W. James, “War Papers: The Assault on Fort Wagner” (paper presented at the Commandery of the State of Wisconsin, Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, November 12, 1880).
“jollification & comfort”: LMA, Letters, 81.
“Ned! Your sisters say”: Ibid., 81.
“Now boys… If you intend to be smashed”: Ibid., 82.
“The work is immensely hard”: Massachusetts Historical Society. “Letter from Hannah Stevenson to Family and Friends, 8 August 1861.” Accessed August 1, 2017. https://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=2163&pid=25.
“I cannot get over my surprise”: Ibid.
“to be very careful, for you talk & laugh”: Sarah Low Papers, 1844–1965, 1965.010, diary, pp. 13–14, New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord, NH.
“Miss Dix has nothing to do”: Ibid., 17.
“Miss Dix has always been very insolent”: Ibid., 12–13.
“They think so highly of Miss Stevenson”: Ibid., 20.
“My old ankle will give out”: Letter from Hannah Stevenson to Dearies [family], August 10, 1862, Ms. N-288, Box 5, Folders 12, 13, & 14, Curtis-Stevenson Family Papers, Hannah Elizabeth Stevenson Civil War Correspondence, 1862, Massachusetts Historical Society.
“a hard place”: Louisa May Alcott, December 1862, LMA, The Journals, 110.
“Decided to go to Washington as nurse”: Ibid.
“The Civil War so kindled her”: Hawthorne, “The Woman Who Wrote Little Women,” 120.
“You may begin at Plato”: Matteson, Eden’s Outcasts, 270.
“We catch glimpses of a dark mysterious”: Louisa May Alcott to Adeline May, LMA, Letters, 57.
“I packed my ‘go-abroady’ possessions”: Alcott, Hospital Sketches, 3.
“to the very mouth”: Caroline Ticknor, May Alcott: A Memoir (Boston: Little, Brown, 1928), 54.
“I realized that I had”: LMA, The Journals, 110.
Chapter 5: Georgetown or Bust
“I’m a bashful individual”: Alcott, Hospital Sketches, 14.
“It was evident that I had made as absurd”: Ibid.
“I turned desperate”: Ibid.
“animated wet blanket”: Ibid., 15.
“I’m going to Washington at five”: Ibid., 16.
“I’m a woman’s rights woman”: Ibid., 17.
“I don’t imagine he knew the anguish”: Ibid., 19.
“A fat, easy gentleman”: Ibid., 20.
“Appearances are proverbially deceitful”: Daisy Eyebright, A Manual of Etiquette with Hints on Politeness and Good Breeding (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1868), 39.
“Having heard complaints of the absurd”: Alcott, Hospital Sketches, 22.
“I put my bashfulness in my pocket”: Ibid.
“We must secure our berths”: Ibid., 23.
“If it ever intends to blow up”: Ibid., 23–24.
“I’ve no intention of folding my hands”: Ibid., 24.
“Think that my sandwiches”: Ibid., 25.
“should enjoy throwing a stone”: Ibid., 27.
“A most interesting journey into a new world”: Louisa May Alcott, December 1862, LMA, The Journals, 110.
“I quite warmed to the excellent man”: Alcott, Hospital Sketches, 27.
“We often passed colored people”: Ibid., 28.
“Pennsylvania Avenue, with its bustle”: Ibid., 30.
“I’ll pay it out of my own pocket first”: Margaret Leech, Reveille in Washington, 1860–1865 (Garden City, NY: Garden City, 1945), 294.
“My poor boy.… He was too good”: Brady Dennis, “Willie Lincoln’s Death: A Private Agony for a President Facing a Nation of Pain,” Washington Post, October 7, 2011, accessed August 15, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/willie-lincolns-death-a-private-agony-for-a-president-facing-a-nation-of-pain/2011/09/29/gIQAv7Z7SL_story.html?utm_term=.ff0d5717daef.
“A solemn time, but I’m glad”: LMA, The Journals, 110.
Chapter 6: Burnside’s Blunder
“By direction of the President of the United States, it is ordered”: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, series 1, vol. 21 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1888), 82.
“The responsibility is so great”: Wilmer L. Jones, Generals in Blue and Gray, vol. 1: Lincoln’s Generals (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2004), 152.
“the most distressed man in the army”: Ibid.
“Poor Burn feels dreadfully, almost crazy”: George B. McClellan to Mary Ellen McClellan, George B. McClellan, The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan, ed. Stephen W. Sears (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1989), 520.
“The President has just assented to your plan”: War of the Rebellion, 84.
“A chicken could not live on the field”: James Longstreet, “The Battle of Fredericksburg,” in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Grant-Lee Edition, vol. 3, part 1 (New York: Century, 1888), 79.
“The bombardment was terrific”: Warren Lee Goss, Recollections of a Private: A Story of the Army of the Potomac (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1890), 123.
“[In] the old mansion of Douglas Gordon”: Alexandria Gazette, December 17, 1862, 2.
“The carrying out of your plan”: Jones, Generals in Blue and Gray, 160.
“The action was close-handed and men fell”: National Park Service, “Battle of Fredericksburg History: Prospect Hill,” accessed September 9, 2017, https://www.nps.gov/frsp/learn/historyculture/hist-fburg-prospect.htm.
“like a steady dripping of rain”: Jones, Generals in Blue and Gray, 161.
“Ye Gods! It is no longer a battle”: Ibid.
“Halt—lie down—you will all be killed”: The Woman’s Club of Mercersburg Pennsylvania, Old Mercersburg (New York: Frank Allaben Genealogical, 1912), 179.
“The stone wall was a sheet of flame”: Andrew A. Humphreys, “Report of Brig. Gen. Andrew A. Humphreys, U.S. Army, Commanding Third Division,” in War of the Rebellion, 432.
“a most terrific fire”: Samuel P. Bates, History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861–1865, vol. 4 (Harrisburg, PA: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1870), 264.
“the cries of the wounded rose up”: Carol Reardon, “Humphrey’s Pennsylvania Division,” in The Fredericksburg Campaign: Decision on the Rappahannock, ed. Gary W. Gallagher (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 99.
Chapter 7: The Hurly-Burly House
“I resigned myself to my fate”: Alcott, Hospital Sketches, 70.
“care a fig”: Hannah Stevenson to De
aries [family], September 17, 1862, Ms. N-288, Box 5, Folders 12, 13, & 14, Curtis-Stevenson Family Papers, Hannah Elizabeth Stevenson Civil War Correspondence.
“She is quite a feeble person”: Hannah Stevenson to [family], July 21, 1862, Ms. N-288, Box 5, Folders 12, 13, & 14, Curtis-Stevenson Family Papers, Hannah Elizabeth Stevenson Civil War Correspondence.
“Why did you give this homely hen”: Hannah Ropes, Civil War Nurse: The Diary and Letters of Hannah Ropes, ed. John R. Brumgardt (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1980), 12.
“loaded pistols and a bowie-knife”: Ibid., 17.
“I take the place of his mother”: Ibid., 15.
“jackal”: Hannah Stevenson to Dearies [family], September 29, 1862, Ms. N-288, Box 5, Folders 12, 13, & 14, Curtis-Stevenson Family Papers, Hannah Elizabeth Stevenson Civil War Correspondence.
“walked around the ward”: Ibid.
“Between surgeons, stewards, nurses and waiters”: Ropes, Civil War Nurse, 69.
“gross inattention, rudeness to philanthropic”: “The Alleged Abuses of Sick and Wounded Soldiers,” New York Daily Tribune, September 19, 1862, 4.
“Food of the most miserable quality”: Ibid.
“Surg[eon] Gen[eral] Hammond is said”: Hannah Stevenson to Dearies [family], June 14, 1862, Ms. N-288, Box 5, Folders 12, 13, & 14, Curtis-Stevenson Family Papers, Hannah Elizabeth Stevenson Civil War Correspondence.
“As though I had not better business”: Ropes, Civil War Nurse, 69.
“How I came to judge him”: Ibid., 76–77.
“Call the Provost Marshall”: Ibid., 81–85.
“If the thing should happen again”: Ibid., 89.
“I wrote you all about her”: Ibid., 59.
“Now, it would not do for you”: Ibid., 61–62.
“The healing process is very slow”: Ibid., 58.
“I sat looking at the twenty strong faces”: December 1862, LMA, The Journals, 110.
“We get lousy!”: Ropes, Civil War Nurse, 115–116.
“pneumonia on one side”: Alcott, Hospital Sketches, 32.
“A strange day, but I did my best”: December 1862, LMA, The Journals, 111.
“We are cheered by the arrival of Miss Alcott”: Ropes, Civil War Nurse, 112.
“They’ve come, they’ve come!… It’s the wounded from Fredericksburg”: Alcott, Hospital Sketches, 31.
“I am free to confess”: Ibid., 32.
“My ardor experienced a sudden chill”: Ibid., 32–33.
“The hall was full of these wrecks”: Ibid.
“The wounded are brought in”: Robert Whitehouse, “Sarah Low Civil War Nurse,” Dover Public Library, accessed October 18, 2017, http://www.dover.nh.gov/government/city-operations/library/history/sarah-low-civil-war-nurse.html.
“The sight of several stretchers”: Alcott, Hospital Sketches, 34.
“with their clothes all on”: Sarah Low to Aunt, September 1862, 1965.010, Sarah Low Papers, 1844–1965.
“I pitied them so much”: Alcott, Hospital Sketches, 35.
“bigger than a pound of soap”: Sarah Low Papers, 1844–1965, 1965.010, diary, p. 22.
“Wash as fast as you can”: Alcott, Hospital Sketches, 35.
“If she had requested me to shave”: Ibid.
“If I had come expecting to enjoy myself”: “Letter from Louisa May Alcott to Hannah Stevenson, 26 December 1862,” Massachusetts Historical Society, accessed August 1, 2017, http://www.masshist.org/database/2168.
“He was so overpowered by the honor”: Alcott, Hospital Sketches, 35.
“I took heart and scrubbed away”: Ibid., 36.
“The little Sergeant was merry”: Ibid., 37.
“Now don’t you fret yourself”: Ibid.
“Being a red-hot Abolitionist”: Ibid., 38.
“Shall I try to make you… No”: Ibid.
“Thank you, ma’am… I don’t think I’ll ever eat”: Ibid., 41.
“I laid a sheet over the quiet sleeper”: Ibid., 42.
“He… seemed to regard a dilapidated body”: Ibid., 42.
“He had a way of twitching off a bandage”: Ibid., 97–98.
“The poor souls had to bear their pains”: Ibid., 43.
“Be so good as to hold this… a strong desire to insinuate”: Ibid., 98.
“was so mortified that the flesh dropped off”: Whitehouse, “Sarah Low Civil War Nurse.”
“It seems… the maggot actually does damage”: C. Keith Wilbur, Civil War Medicine 1861–1865 (Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 1998), 72.
“This I like to do for they put in such odd things”: January 1863, LMA, The Journals, 114.
“I presently discovered that it took a very bad wound”: Alcott, Hospital Sketches, 44.
“I find Mrs. Ropes very motherly”: “Letter from Louisa May Alcott to Hannah Stevenson, 26 December 1862.”
“By eleven, the last labor of love was done”: Alcott, Hospital Sketches, 44.
“purely sympathetic”: Ropes, Civil War Nurse, 121.
“Though often homesick, heartsick, and worn out”: January 1863, LMA, The Journals, 114.
“The air is bad enough to breed a pestilence”: LMA, The Journals, 114.
“continue to open doors and windows as if my life”: Ibid.
“It is as much work to take care of 25 here”: Sarah Low to her mother, September 25, 1862, 1965.010, Sarah Low Papers, 1844–1965.
“inevitable fried beef, salt butter, husky bread”: LMA, The Journals, 114.
“the most faithful of workers”: “Letter from Louisa May Alcott to Hannah Stevenson, 26 December 1862.”
“a few very disagreeable women”: LMA, The Journals, 114.
“the sanctified nurse who sung hymns & prayed violently”: Louisa May Alcott to James Redpath, LMA, Letters, 93.
“Everything here strikes me as very odd”: “Letter from Louisa May Alcott to Hannah Stevenson, 26 December 1862.”
“both ludicrous and provoking”: LMA, The Journals, 114.
“The conversation is entirely among themselves”: Ibid.
“Gracious!… how can you?”: Alcott, Hospital Sketches, 82.
“a dangerous fanatic”: Ibid.
“The men would swear”: Ibid., 81.
“murder ground”: Ropes, Civil War Nurse, 114.
“soul-sickening slaughter”: “The Disaster at Fredericksburg,” Bedford Gazette, December 26, 1862, accessed July 7, 2017, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82005159/1862-12-26/ed-1/seq-2/.
“Burnside nobody blames”: Ropes, Civil War Nurse, 114.
“The popular heart beats low”: “Disaster at Fredericksburg.”
“They wish to get rid of me”: Orville Hickman Browning, December 1862, The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, vol. 1, 1850–1864, ed. Theodore Calvin Pease and James G. Randall (Springfield: Trustees of the Illinois State Historical Library, 1925), 600.
“Although you were not successful”: “President Lincoln’s Address,” Alexandria Gazette, December 24, 1862, accessed October 1, 2017, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85025007/1862-12-24/ed-1/seq-1/.
“full of amputated limbs”: Ropes, Civil War Nurse, 116.
“Till noon I trot, trot”: LMA, The Journals, 114.
“It is something like keeping house”: Sarah Low to her mother, September 25, 1862.
“If we had capable attendants things would go nicely”: “Letter from Louisa May Alcott to Hannah Stevenson, 26 December 1862.”
“ghost from six in the morning”: Ibid.
“I witnessed several operations”: Alcott, Hospital Sketches, 96.
“The amputation cases are dying”: Whitehouse, “Sarah Low Civil War Nurse.”
“Tables about breast high”: W. W. Blackford, War Years with Jeb Stuart (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1945), 27–28.
“The butchery practiced”: “News from Washington: Our Special Washington Dispatches,” New York Times, December 25, 1862, 4.
“I find him in a state of bliss”:
Alcott, Hospital Sketches, 72.
“My nerves belonged to the living”: Ibid., 97.
“plain, odd, sentimental”: LMA, The Journals, 115.
“Dr. John… goes purring about”: Ibid., 115.
“Do I hurt you… all three laughed and talked”: Alcott, Hospital Sketches, 99.
“Quotes Browning copiously”: LMA, The Journals, 115.
“I like it, as it leaves me time for a morning run”: Ibid.
“One, I visited armed with a dressing tray”: Alcott, Hospital Sketches, 47.
“Many a jovial chat have I enjoyed”: Ibid., 93.
“So just say that bit from Dickens”: Ibid.
“Baby B., because he tended his arm”: Ibid., 94.
“To tell the truth, I was a little afraid”: Ibid., 54–55.
“I [have] never [been]… in a stranger place”: January 1863, LMA, The Journals, 113.
“[The] topsey turvey letters [were] written”: Louisa May Alcott to Mary Elizabeth Waterman, LMA, Letters, 95.
“jingled into [her] sleepy brain”: Louisa May Alcott to Annie Adams Fields, June 24, 1863, LMA, Letters, 84.
“What is to be done? The good Doctor says”: Ropes, Civil War Nurse, 102.
“the family of Georgetown”: Sarah Low Papers, 1844–1965, 1965.010, diary, p. 16.
“Large quantities of provisions”: Alexandria Gazette, December 24, 1862, accessed November 18, 2017, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85025007/1862-12-24/ed-1/seq-1/.
“We trimmed up the rooms”: “Letter from Louisa May Alcott to Hannah Stevenson, 26 December 1862.”
“Though what we call a common man”: LMA, The Journals, 113.
“stony sort of room”: Ropes, Civil War Nurse, 118.
“fearful wound through the thigh”: Ibid.
“Thoughtful and often beautifully mild”: Alcott, Hospital Sketches, 55.
“Do you think I shall pull through”: Ibid., 56.
“Every breath he draws… Bless you”: Ibid.
“It was an easy thing for Dr. P.”: Ibid., 56–57.
“I had seen many suffer”: Ibid., 57.
“Let me help you bear it… I didn’t like to be a trouble”: Ibid.
“You shall not want”: Ibid.
“Now I knew that to him”: Ibid., 58.