Half a Century Part 32

"The Surgeon-General has no authority to send a young girl down there alone."

"She is not going alone."

"Who is going with her?" she asked, tartly.

"I am."

"Who are you?"

I told her, and she ceased to be insulting long enough to expostulate on the great impropriety of the proceeding, as well as to explain the total lack of any need of help in Fredericksburg. She had just returned from that city, where she had arranged everything in the most satisfactory manner. Hospitals had been established, with surgeons and nurses. There was therefore not the slightest occasion for our going further; but she was about to organize relief for the men while waiting at the Was.h.i.+ngton wharf to be taken to hospitals. Here I might be useful, and here she would be glad to have me work; but as for that handsome young girl, she wondered at me for bringing her into such a place.

Georgie was not merely handsome. She was grand, queenly; and I told Miss Dix that I differed with her about the kind of women who should go into such places. We wanted young, vigorous women--women whose self-respect and social position would command the respect of those to whom they ministered. She grew angry again, and said:

"She shall not go to Fredericksburg; I will have her arrested!"

I was kneeling beside a man whose wounds I was bathing; for I had not suspended my work to talk with her, who stood, straight as a telegraph pole, holding a bottle which she ever and anon applied to her nose; but when she reached this climax, I raised my head, looked into her face, and said:

"I shall not be sorry Miss Dix, if you do; for then I shall apply to my friends, Mrs. Abraham Lincoln and Secretary Stanton, and have your authority tested."

I went on with my work; she growled something and left the boat, but did not disturb us further.

Going down the river I grew worse, and thought I might be obliged to return with the boat, and stay at home; but consulted a surgeon on his way to the front, who talked with another, and said:

"There is no immediate danger in your case. It is only secondary hemorrhage; and with care you may go on, but must not attempt to do anything. You can, however, be of incalculable service, simply by being in Fredericksburg; can sit down and see that people do their duty. What our wounded need most, is people who have an interest in their welfare--friends. You can do a great deal toward supplying this want, this great need; but be careful and do not try to work."

After some time this surgeon brought, and introduced Col. Chamberlain, of Maine, evidently an invalid, and a man of the purely intellectual type. Two other surgeons were with him, and all three endeavored to persuade him to return to Was.h.i.+ngton, as his lack of health made it very dangerous, if not quite useless, for him to go to the front. I thought the surgeons right; and told him I feared he was throwing away his life, in an effort to do the impossible.

He explained that he was in command of a brigade of eight regiments; that in them were hundreds of his neighbors and pupils, for he had resigned a professors.h.i.+p in a college to enlist. Said he knew his own const.i.tution better than any one else could know it; knew he would be stronger when he reached his post, and that the danger would be in any attempt to keep out of danger--the danger which his men must face.

Turning to me he said:

"If you had eight children down there, you would go to them, if you could!"

We arranged that if he should be wounded so as to suffer a thigh amputation, he should let me know, that I might nurse him through.

At Belle Plaine, Georgie went to look for transportation, and I to the Sanitary Commission boat, where I was introduced to Mrs. Gen. Barlow and Miss Hanc.o.c.k, both busy furnis.h.i.+ng hot coffee to those being embarked for Was.h.i.+ngton. Mrs. Barlow was a tall, superbly formed woman, very handsome, and full of health and spirits. She looked down on me compa.s.sionately, and said:

"Oh, you poor little thing! What ever brought you here? We have sick folks enough now! Do sit down until I get you a cup of tea!"

While I drank the tea, she stood looking at me, and said meditatively:

"Oh, you queer little thing," and hurried off to her work.

Soon a Colonel with a badly wounded head came on board, leaned against, a post and groaned. I found a basin of water and a towel, and began bathing his head, wetting those torturing dressings and making him comparatively comfortable, when she stopped in her hurried walk, looked on an instant, and exclaimed:

"Oh, you nice little thing! Now I see what you are good for! I could not do that; but you will take care of their wounds and I will feed them!

That will be grand!"

Soon Georgie came to say there was no transportation to be had, but she had found a Campbell surgeon in charge of a hospital tent, and he wanted me; said he was worn out, and had plenty of work for both of us. The doctor had a large tent, filled with wounded lying on loose hay. His patients seemed to want for nothing, but he must needs give so much time to receiving and forwarding those pouring in from the front, that he needed us. He had a little tent put up for us, and that was the only night I have ever slept in a tent.

Next morning while we were attending to a Colonel, and Lieutenant Colonel, both of the same regiment, and both badly wounded and just brought in, one said to the other: "My G.o.d, if our men in Fredericksburg could have a little of this care!" "Why?" said I, "I have heard that everything possible was being done for them?"

"Everything possible!" exclaimed one, and both together began the most terrible recital of the neglect and abuse of the wounded in that horrible place--men dying of thirst, and women spitting in their faces, kicking and spurning them. We set down our basins; Georgie started in one direction and I in another, to find transportation.

The surgeon in command of the station stood superintending the loading of oats while he looked at my pa.s.s, and said he could not possibly send us, adding: "Fredericksburg is no place for a lady. It is impossible to describe the condition of things there."

"But, Doctor, I am not a lady! I am a hospital nurse. The place where men are suffering must be the place for me. I do not look strong, but you cannot think how much I can do.

"But, Madam, you forget that our army is cut off from its base of supplies, and must be furnished with subsistence, and that we have not half the transportations we need."

"Doctor, you are sending bags of oats in ambulances! I do not weigh much more than one, and will be worth six when you get me there."

He promised to send me that afternoon, but I doubted him; went to the Christian Commission tent, found a man who knew me by reputation, and told him they had better send me to Fredericksburg, or put me under arrest, for I was in a mood to be dangerous. He feigned fright, caught up his hat, and said:

"We'll get you out of this in the shortest possible s.p.a.ce of time."

An hour after I was on the way, and Georgie a few moments in advance. I had seen bad roads in northern and western Pennsylvania, but this was my first ride over no road. We met a steady stream of such wounded as were able to walk, but comparatively few were brought in ambulances.

It was raining when we reached Fredericksburg, at four o'clock on Sabbath, and I went to the surgeon in command, reported, and asked him to send me to the worst place--the place where there was most need.

"Then I had better send you to the Old Theater, for I can get no one to stay there."

He gave me my appointment, and I went to a Corps Surgeon, who signed it, and advised me not to go to the theater--I could do nothing, as the place was in such dreadful condition, while I could be useful in many other places.

CHAPTER LXVII.

THE OLD THEATER.

This building was on Princess Ann street. The bas.e.m.e.nt floor was level with the sidewalk, but the ground sloped upward at the back; so that the yard was higher than the floor. Across the front was a vestibule, with two flights of stairs leading up to the auditorium; behind the vestibule a large, low room, with two rows of pillars supporting the upper floor; and behind this three small rooms, and a square hall with a side entrance. The fence was down between the theater and Catholic church, next door. I stopped in the church to see Georgie, who was already at work there, came and left by the back door, and entered the theater by the side hall.

The mud was running in from the yard. Opposite the door, in a small room, was a pile of knapsacks and blankets; and on them lay two men smoking. To get into the large room, I must step out of the hall mud over one man, and be careful not to step on another. I think it was six rows of men that lay close on the floor, with just room to pa.s.s between the feet of each row; they so close in the rows that in most places I must slide one foot before the other to get to their heads.

The floor was very muddy and strewn with _debris_, princ.i.p.ally of crackers. There was one hundred and eighty-two men in the building, all desperately wounded. They had been there a week. There were two leather water-buckets, two tin basins, and about every third man had saved his tin-cup or canteen; but no other vessel of any sort, size or description on the premises--no sink or cess-pool or drain. The nurses were not to be found; the men were growing reckless and despairing, but seemed to catch hope as I began to thread my way among them and talk. No other memory of life is more sacred than that of the candor with which they took me into their confidence, as if I had been of their own s.e.x, yet ever sought to avoid wounding the delicacy they ascribed to mine.

I found some of the nurses--cowards who had run away from battle, and now ran from duty--galvanized them into activity, invented subst.i.tutes for things that were wanting--making good use of an old knapsack and pocket-knife--and had tears of grat.i.tude for pay.

One man lay near the front door, in a scant flannel s.h.i.+rt and cotton drawers, his left thigh cut off in the middle and the stump supported on the only pillow in the house. It was six by ten inches, stuffed with straw. His head was supported by two bits of board and a pair of very muddy boots. He called me, clutched my dress, and plead:

"Mother, can't you get me a blanket, I'm so cold; I could live if I could get any care!"

I went to the room where the men lay smoking on the blankets; but one of them wearing a surgeon's shoulderstraps, and speaking in a German accent, claimed them as his private property, and positively refused to yield one. The other man was his orderly, and words were useless--they kept their blankets.

Going into a room behind that, I found a man slightly wounded sitting on the floor, supporting another who had been shot across the face, and was totally blind. He called, and when I came and talked with them, said:

"Won't you stay with us?"

"Stay with you?" I replied, "Well, I rather think I will, indeed; I came to stay, and am one of the folks it is hard to drive away!"