The Wound Dresser

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Title: The Wound Dresser
A Series of Letters Written from the Hospitals in Washington
during the War of the Rebellion
Author: Walt Whitman
Editor: Richard Maurice Bucke
Release Date: March 30, 2011 [EBook #35725]
Language: English
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THE WOUND DRESSER
A Series of Letters
Written from the Hospitals in Washington
During the War of the Rebellion
By WALT WHITMAN
Edited by
RICHARD MAURICE BUCKE, M.D.
One of Whitman's Literary Executors
Boston
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
1898
_Copyright, 1897, by Small, Maynard & Company_
_But in silence, in dreams' projections,
While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on,
So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints off the
sand,
With hinged knees returning I enter the doors, (while for you up there,
Whoever you are, follow without noise and be of strong heart.)_
_I onward go, I stop,
With hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds,
I am firm with each, the pangs are sharp yet unavoidable,
One turns to me his appealing eyes--poor boy! I never knew you,
Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would
save you._
_I am faithful, I do not give out,
The fractur'd thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen,
These and more I dress with impassive hand, (yet deep in my breast a
fire, a burning flame.)_
_Thus in silence, in dreams' projections,
Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals,
The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand,
I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young,
Some suffer so much, I recall the experience sweet and sad,
(Many a soldier's loving arms about this neck have cross'd and rested,
Many a soldier's kiss dwells on these bearded lips.)_
_The Wound Dresser._
PREFACE
As introduction to these letters from Walt Whitman to his mother, I have
availed myself of three of Whitman's communications to the press covering
the time during which the material which composes this volume was being
written. These communications (parts of which, but in no case the whole,
were used by Whitman in his "Memoranda of the Secession War") seem to me
to form, in spite of certain duplications, which to my mind have the
force, not the weakness, of repetition, quite an ideal background to the
letters to Mrs. Whitman, since they give a full and free description of
the circumstances and surroundings in the midst of which those were
composed. Readers who desire a still more extended account of the man
himself, his work and environment at that time, may consult with profit
the Editor's "Walt Whitman" (pp. 34-44), O'Connor's "Good Gray Poet"
(included in that volume, pp. 99-130), "Specimen Days" (pp. 26-63,
included in Walt Whitman's "Complete Prose Works"), and above all the
section of "Leaves of Grass" called "Drum-Taps." I do not believe that it
is in the power of any man now living to make an important addition to the
vivid picture of those days and nights in the hospitals drawn by Whitman
himself and to be found in his published prose and verse, and, above all,
in the living words of the present letters to his mother. These last were
written on the spot, as the scenes and incidents, in all their living and
sombre colors, passed before his eyes, while his mind and heart were full
of the sights and sounds, the episodes and agonies, of those terrible
hours. How could any one writing in cold blood, to-day, hope to add words
of any value to those he wrote then?
Perhaps, in conclusion, it may be as well to repeat what was said in the
introduction to a former volume,--that these letters make no pretensions
as literature. They are, as indeed is all that Whitman has written (as he
himself has over and over again said), something quite different from
that--something much less to the average cultured and learned man,
something much more to the man or woman who comes within range of their
attraction. But doubtless the critics will still insist that, if they are
not literature, they ought to be, or otherwise should not be printed,
failing (as is their wont) to comprehend that there are other qualities
and characteristics than the literary, some of them as important and as
valuable, which may be more or less adequately conveyed by print.
R. M. B.
CONTENTS
Page
THE GREAT ARMY OF THE WOUNDED 1
LIFE AMONG FIFTY THOUSAND SOLDIERS 11
HOSPITAL VISITS 21
LETTERS OF 1862-3 47
LETTERS OF 1864 143
THE GREAT ARMY OF THE WOUNDED
The military hospitals, convalescent camps, etc., in Washington and its
neighborhood, sometimes contain over fifty thousand sick and wounded men.
Every form of wound (the mere sight of some of them having been known to
make a tolerably hardy visitor faint away), every kind of malady, like a
long procession, with typhoid fever and diarrhoea at the head as
leaders, are here in steady motion. The soldier's hospital! how many
sleepless nights, how many women's tears, how many long and waking hours
and days of suspense, from every one of the Middle, Eastern, and Western
States, have concentrated here! Our own New York, in the form of hundreds
and thousands of her young men, may consider herself here--Pennsylvania,
Ohio, Indiana, and all the West and Northwest the same--and all the New
England States the same.
Upon a few of these hospitals I have been almost daily calling as a
missionary, on my own account, for the sustenance and consolation of some
of the most needy cases of sick and dying men, for the last two months.
One has much to learn to do good in these places. Great tact is required.
These are not like other hospitals. By far the greatest proportion (I
should say five sixths) of the patients are American young men,
intelligent, of independent spirit, tender feelings, used to a hardy and
healthy life; largely the farmers are represented by their sons--largely
the mechanics and workingmen of the cities. Then they are soldiers. All
these points must be borne in mind.
People through our Northern cities have little or no idea of the great and
prominent feature which these military hospitals and convalescent camps
make in and around Washington. There are not merely two or three or a
dozen, but some fifty of them, of different degrees of capacity. Some have
a thousand and more patients. The newspapers here find it necessary to
print every day a directory of the hospitals--a long list, something like
what a directory of the churches would be in New York, Philadelphia, or
Boston.
The Government (which really tries, I think, to do the best and quickest
it can for these sad necessities) is gradually settling down to adopt the
plan of placing the hospitals in clusters of one-story wooden barracks,
with their accompanying tents and sheds for cooking and all needed
purposes. Taking all things into consideration, no doubt these are best
adapted to the purpose; better than using churches and large public
buildings like the Patent office. These sheds now adopted are long,
one-story edifices, sometimes ranged along in a row, with their heads to
the street, and numbered either alphabetically, Wards A or B, C, D, and so
on; or Wards 1, 2, 3, etc. The middle one will be marked by a flagstaff,
and is the office of the establishment, with rooms for the ward surgeons,
etc. One of these sheds, or wards, will contain sixty cots; sometimes, on
an emergency, they move them close together, and crowd in more. Some of
the barracks are larger, with, of course, more inmates. Frequently there
are tents, more comfortable here than one might think, whatever they may
be down in the army.
Each ward has a ward-master, and generally a nurse for every ten or twelve
men. A ward surgeon has, generally, two wards--although this varies. Some
of the wards have a woman nurse; the Armory-square wards have some very
good ones. The one in Ward E is one of the best.
A few weeks ago the vast area of the second story of that noblest of
Washington buildings, the Patent office, was crowded close with rows of
sick, badly wounded, and dying soldiers. They were placed in three very
large apartments. I went there several times. It was a strange, solemn,
and, with all its features of suffering and death, a sort of fascinating
sight. I went sometimes at night to soothe and relieve particular cases;
some, I found, needed a little cheering up and friendly consolation at
that time, for they went to sleep better afterwards. Two of the immense
apartments are filled with high and ponderous glass cases crowded with
models in miniature of every kind of utensil, machine, or invention it
ever entered into the mind of man to conceive, and with curiosities and
foreign presents. Between these cases were lateral openings, perhaps
eight feet wide, and quite deep, and in these were placed many of the
sick; besides a great long double row of them up and down through the
middle of the hall. Many of them were very bad cases, wounds and
amputations. Then there was a gallery running above the hall, in which
there were beds also. It was, indeed, a curious scene at night when lit
up. The glass cases, the beds, the sick, the gallery above and the marble
pavement under foot; the suffering, and the fortitude to bear it in the
various degrees; occasionally, from some, the groan that could not be
repressed; sometimes a poor fellow dying, with emaciated face and glassy
eyes, the nurse by his side, the doctor also there, but no friend, no
relative--such were the sights but lately in the Patent office. The
wounded have since been removed from there, and it is now vacant again.
Of course there are among these thousands of prostrated soldiers in
hospital here all sorts of individual cases. On recurring to my note-book,
I am puzzled which cases to select to illustrate the average of these
young men and their experiences. I may here say, too, in general terms,
that I could not wish for more candor and manliness, among all their
sufferings, than I find among them.
Take this case in Ward 6, Campbell hospital: a young man from Plymouth
county, Massachusetts; a farmer's son, aged about twenty or twenty-one; a
soldierly, American young fellow, but with sensitive and tender feelings.
Most of December and January last he lay very low, and for quite a while
I never expected he would recover. He had become prostrated with an
obstinate diarrhoea: his stomach would hardly keep the least thing down;
he was vomiting half the time. But that was hardly the worst of it. Let me
tell his story--it is but one of thousands.
He had been some time sick with his regiment in the field, in front, but
did his duty as long as he could; was in the battle of Fredericksburg;
soon after was put in the regimental hospital. He kept getting
worse--could not eat anything they had there; the doctor told him nothing
could be done for him there. The poor fellow had fever also; received
(perhaps it could not be helped) little or no attention; lay on the
ground, getting worse. Toward the latter part of December, very much
enfeebled, he was sent up from the front, from Falmouth station, in an
open platform car (such as hogs are transported upon North), and dumped
with a crowd of others on the boat at Aquia creek, falling down like a rag
where they deposited him, too weak and sick to sit up or help himself at
all. No one spoke to him or assisted him; he had nothing to eat or drink;
was used (amid the great crowds of sick) either with perfect indifference,
or, as in two or three instances, with heartless brutality.
On the boat, when night came and when the air grew chilly, he tried a long
time to undo the blankets he had in his knapsack, but was too feeble. He
asked one of the employees, who was moving around deck, for a moment's
assistance to get the blankets. The man asked him back if he could not get
them himself. He answered, no, he had been trying for more than half an
hour, and found himself too weak. The man rejoined, he might then go
without them, and walked off. So H. lay chilled and damp on deck all
night, without anything under or over him, while two good blankets were
within reach. It caused him a great injury--nearly cost him his life.
Arrived at Washington, he was brought ashore and again left on the wharf,
or above it, amid the great crowds, as before, without any
nourishment--not a drink for his parched mouth; no kind hand had offered
to cover his face from the forenoon sun. Conveyed at last some two miles
by the ambulance to the hospital, and assigned a bed (Bed 49, Ward 6,
Campbell hospital, January and February, 1863), he fell down exhausted
upon the bed. But the ward-master (he has since been changed) came to him
with a growling order to get up: the rules, he said, permitted no man to
lie down in that way with his own clothes on; he must sit up--must first
go to the bath-room, be washed, and have his clothes completely changed.
(A very good rule, properly applied.) He was taken to the bath-room and
scrubbed well with cold water. The attendants, callous for a while, were
soon alarmed, for suddenly the half-frozen and lifeless body fell limpsy
in their hands, and they hurried it back to the cot, plainly insensible,
perhaps dying.
Poor boy! the long train of exhaustion, deprivation, rudeness, no food, no
friendly word or deed, but all kinds of upstart airs and impudent,
unfeeling speeches and deeds, from all kinds of small officials (and some
big ones), cutting like razors into that sensitive heart, had at last done
the job. He now lay, at times out of his head but quite silent, asking
nothing of any one, for some days, with death getting a closer and a surer
grip upon him; he cared not, or rather he welcomed death. His heart was
broken. He felt the struggle to keep up any longer to be useless. God, the
world, humanity--all had abandoned him. It would feel so good to shut his
eyes forever on the cruel things around him and toward him.
As luck would have it, at this time I found him. I was passing down Ward
No. 6 one day about dusk (4th January, I think), and noticed his glassy
eyes, with a look of despair and hopelessness, sunk low in his thin,
pallid-brown young face. One learns to divine quickly in the hospital, and
as I stopped by him and spoke some commonplace remark (to which he made no
reply), I saw as I looked that it was a case for ministering to the
affection first, and other nourishment and medicines afterward. I sat down
by him without any fuss; talked a little; soon saw that it did him good;
led him to talk a little himself; got him somewhat interested; wrote a
letter for him to his folks in Massachusetts (to L. H. Campbell, Plymouth
county); soothed him down as I saw he was getting a little too much
agitated, and tears in his eyes; gave him some small gifts, and told him I
should come again soon. (He has told me since that this little visit, at
that hour, just saved him; a day more, and it would have been perhaps too
late.)
Of course I did not forget him, for he was a young fellow to interest any
one. He remained very sick--vomiting much every day, frequent diarrhoea,
and also something like bronchitis, the doctor said. For a while I visited
him almost every day, cheered him up, took him some little gifts, and gave
him small sums of money (he relished a drink of new milk, when it was
brought through the ward for sale). For a couple of weeks his condition
was uncertain--sometimes I thought there was no chance for him at all; but
of late he is doing better--is up and dressed, and goes around more and
more (February 21) every day. He will not die, but will recover.
The other evening, passing through the ward, he called me--he wanted to
say a few words, particular. I sat down by his side on the cot in the
dimness of the long ward, with the wounded soldiers there in their beds,
ranging up and down. H. told me I had saved his life. He was in the
deepest earnest about it. It was one of those things that repay a
soldiers' hospital missionary a thousandfold--one of the hours he never
forgets.
A benevolent person, with the right qualities and tact, cannot, perhaps,
make a better investment of himself, at present, anywhere upon the varied
surface of the whole of this big world, than in these military hospitals,
among such thousands of most interesting young men. The army is very
young--and so much more American than I supposed. Reader, how can I
describe to you the mute appealing look that rolls and moves from many a
manly eye, from many a sick cot, following you as you walk slowly down one
of these wards? To see these, and to be incapable of responding to them,
except in a few cases (so very few compared to the whole of the suffering
men), is enough to make one's heart crack. I go through in some cases,
cheering up the men, distributing now and then little sums of money--and,
regularly, letter-paper and envelopes, oranges, tobacco, jellies, etc.,
etc.
Many things invite comment, and some of them sharp criticism, in these
hospitals. The Government, as I said, is anxious and liberal in its
practice toward its sick; but the work has to be left, in its personal
application to the men, to hundreds of officials of one grade or another
about the hospitals, who are sometimes entirely lacking in the right
qualities. There are tyrants and shysters in all positions, and especially
those dressed in subordinate authority. Some of the ward doctors are
careless, rude, capricious, needlessly strict. One I found who prohibited
the men from all enlivening amusements; I found him sending men to the
guard-house for the most trifling offence. In general, perhaps, the
officials--especially the new ones, with their straps or badges--put on
too many airs. Of all places in the world, the hospitals of American young
men and soldiers, wounded in the volunteer service of their country, ought
to be exempt from mere conventional military airs and etiquette of
shoulder-straps. But they are not exempt.
W. W.
_From the New York_ Times, _February 26, 1863_.
LIFE AMONG FIFTY THOUSAND SOLDIERS
Our Brooklyn people, not only from having so many hundreds of their own
kith and kin, and almost everybody some friend or acquaintance, here in
the clustering military hospitals of Washington, would doubtless be glad
to get some account of these establishments, but also to satisfy that
compound of benevolence and generosity which marks Brooklyn, I have
sometimes thought, more than any other city in the world. A military
hospital here in Washington is a little city by itself, and contains a
larger population than most of the well-known country towns down in the
Queens and Suffolk county portions of Long Island. I say one of the
Government hospitals here is a little city in itself, and there are some
fifty of these hospitals in the District of Columbia alone. In them are
collected the tens of thousands of sick and wounded soldiers, the legacies
of many a bloody battle and of the exposure of two years of camp life. I
find these places full of significance. They have taken up my principal
time and labor for some months past. Imagine a long, one-story wooden
shed, like a short, wide ropewalk, well whitewashed; then cluster ten or a
dozen of these together, with several smaller sheds and tents, and you
have the soldiers' hospital as generally adopted here. It will contain
perhaps six or seven hundred men, or perhaps a thousand, and occasionally
more still. There is a regular staff and a sub-staff of big and little
officials. Military etiquette is observed, and it is getting to become
very stiff. I shall take occasion, before long, to show up some of this
ill-fitting nonsense. The harvest is large, the gleaners few. Beginning at
first with casual visits to these establishments to see some of the
Brooklyn men, wounded or sick, here, I became by degrees more and more
drawn in, until I have now been for many weeks quite a devotee to the
business--a regular self-appointed missionary to these thousands and tens
of thousands of wounded and sick young men here, left upon Government
hands, many of them languishing, many of them dying. I am not connected
with any society, but go on my own individual account, and to the work
that appears to be called for. Almost every day, and frequently in the
evenings, I visit, in this informal way, one after another of the wards of
a hospital, and always find cases enough where I can be of service. Cases
enough, do I say? Alas! there is, perhaps, not one ward or tent, out of
the seven or eight hundred now hereabout filled with sick, in which I am
sure I might not profitably devote every hour of my life to the abstract
work of consolation and sustenance for its suffering inmates. And indeed,
beyond that, a person feels that in some one of these crowded wards he
would like to pick out two or three cases and devote himself wholly to
them. Meanwhile, however, to do the best that is permitted, I go around,
distributing myself and the contents of my pockets and haversack in
infinitesimal quantities, with faith that nearly all of it will, somehow
or other, fall on good ground. In many cases, where I find a soldier "dead
broke" and pretty sick, I give half a tumbler of good jelly. I carry a
good-sized jar to a ward, have it opened, get a spoon, and taking the head
nurse in tow, I go around and distribute it to the most appropriate cases.
To others I give an orange or an apple; to others some spiced fruits; to
others a small quantity of pickles. Many want tobacco: I do not encourage
any of the boys in its use, but where I find they crave it I supply them.
I always carry some, cut up in small plugs, in my pocket. Then I have
commissions: some New York or Connecticut, or other soldier, will be going
home on sick leave, or perhaps discharged, and I must fit him out with
good new undershirt, drawers, stockings, etc.
But perhaps the greatest welcome is for writing paper, envelopes, etc. I
find these always a rare reliance. When I go into a new ward, I always
carry two or three quires of paper and a good lot of envelopes, and walk
up and down and circulate them around to those who desire them. Then some
will want pens, pencils, etc. In some hospitals there is quite a plenty of
reading matter; but others, where it is needed, I supply.
By these and like means one comes to be better acquainted with individual
cases, and so learns every day peculiar and interesting character, and
gets on intimate and soon affectionate terms with noble American young
men; and now is where the real good begins to be done, after all. Here, I
will egotistically confess, I like to flourish. Even in a medical point of
view it is one of the greatest things; and in a surgical point of view,
the same. I can testify that friendship has literally cured a fever, and
the medicine of daily affection, a bad wound. In these sayings are the
final secret of carrying out well the rôle of a hospital missionary for
our soldiers, which I tell for those who will understand them.
As I write, I have lying before me a little discarded note-book, filled
with memoranda of things wanted by the sick--special cases. I use up one
of these little books in a week. See from this sample, for instance, after
walking through a ward or two: Bed 53 wants some liquorice; Bed
6--erysipelas--bring some raspberry vinegar to make a cooling drink, with
water; Bed 18 wants a good book--a romance; Bed 25--a manly, friendly
young fellow, H. D. B., of the Twenty-seventh Connecticut, an independent
young soul--refuses money and eatables, so I will bring him a pipe and
tobacco, for I see he much enjoys a smoke; Bed 45--sore throat and
cough--wants horehound candy; Bed 11, when I come again, don't forget to
write a letter for him; etc. The wants are a long and varied list: some
need to be humored and forgotten, others need to be especially remembered
and obeyed. One poor German, dying--in the last stage of
consumption--wished me to find him, in Washington, a German Lutheran
clergyman, and send him to him; I did so. One patient will want nothing
but a toothpick, another a comb, and so on. All whims are represented, and
all the States. There are many New York State soldiers here; also
Pennsylvanians. I find, of course, many from Massachusetts, Connecticut,
and all the New England States, and from the Western and Northwestern
States. Five sixths of the soldiers are young men.
Among other cases of young men from our own city of Brooklyn I have
encountered and have had much to do with in hospital here, is John Lowery,
wounded, and arm amputated, at Fredericksburg. I saw this young fellow
down there last December, immediately after the battle, lying on a blanket
on the ground, the stump of his arm bandaged, but he not a bit
disheartened. He was soon afterward sent up from the front by way of Aquia
creek, and has for the past three months been in the Campbell hospital
here, in Ward 6, on the gain slowly but steadily. He thinks a great deal
of his physician here, Dr. Frank Hinkle, and as some fifty other soldiers
in the ward do the same, and bear testimony in their hearty gratitude, and
medical and surgical imprisonment, to the quality of Dr. H., I think he
deserves honorable mention in this letter to the people of our
city--especially as another Brooklyn soldier in Ward 6, Amos H. Vliet,
expresses the same feeling of obligation to the doctor for his
faithfulness and kindness. Vliet and Lowery both belong to that old war
regiment whose flag has flaunted through more than a score of
hot-contested battles, the Fifty-first New York, Colonel Potter; and it is
to be remembered that no small portion of the fame of this old veteran
regiment may be claimed near home, for many of her officers and men are
from Brooklyn. The friends of these two young soldiers will have a chance
to talk to them soon in Brooklyn. I have seen a good deal of Jack Lowery,
and I find him, and heard of him on the field, as a brave, soldierly
fellow. Amos Vliet, too, made a first-rate soldier. He has had frozen feet
pretty bad, but now better. Occasionally I meet some of the Brooklyn
Fourteenth. In Ward E of Armory hospital I found a member of Company C of
that regiment, Isaac Snyder; he is now acting as nurse there, and makes a
very good one. Charles Dean, of Co. H of the same regiment, is in Ward A
of Armory, acting as ward-master. I also got very well acquainted with a
young man of the Brooklyn Fourteenth who lay sick some time in Ward F; he
has lately got his discharge and gone home. I have met with others in the
H-street and Patent-office hospitals. Colonel Fowler, of the Fourteenth,
is in charge, I believe, of the convalescent camp at Alexandria.
Lieutenant-Colonel Debevoise is in Brooklyn, in poor health, I am sorry to
say. Thus the Brooklyn invalids are scattered around.
Off in the mud, a mile east of the Capitol, I found the other day, in
Emory hospital there, in Ward C, three Brooklyn soldiers--Allen V. King,
Michael Lally, and Patrick Hennessy; none of them, however, are very sick.
At a rough guess, I should say I have met from one hundred and fifty to
two hundred young and middle-aged men whom I specifically found to be
Brooklyn persons. Many of them I recognized as having seen their faces
before, and very many of them knew me. Some said they had known me from
boyhood. Some would call to me as I passed down a ward, and tell me they
had seen me in Brooklyn. I have had this happen at night, and have been
entreated to stop and sit down and take the hand of a sick and restless
boy, and talk to him and comfort him awhile, for old Brooklyn's sake.
Some pompous and every way improper persons, of course, get in power in
hospitals, and have full swing over the helpless soldiers. There is great
state kept at Judiciary-square hospital, for instance. An individual who
probably has been waiter somewhere for years past has got into the high
and mighty position of sergeant-of-arms at this hospital; he is called
"Red Stripe" (from his artillery trimmings) by the patients, of whom he is
at the same time the tyrant and the laughing-stock. Going in to call on
some sick New York soldiers here the other afternoon, I was stopped and
treated to a specimen of the airs of this powerful officer. Surely the
Government would do better to send such able-bodied loafers down into
service in front, where they could earn their rations, than keep them here
in the idle and shallow sinecures of military guard over a collection of
sick soldiers to give insolence to their visitors and friends. I found a
shallow old person also here named Dr. Hall, who told me he had been
eighteen years in the service. I must give this Judiciary establishment
the credit, from my visits to it, of saying that while in all the other
hospitals I met with general cordiality and deference among the doctors,
ward officers, nurses, etc., I have found more impudence and more dandy
doctorism and more needless airs at this Judiciary, than in all the
twoscore other establishments in and around Washington. But the corps of
management at the Judiciary has a bad name anyhow, and I only specify it
here to put on record the general opinion, and in hopes it may help in
calling the attention of the Government to a remedy. For this hospital is
half filled with New York soldiers, many noble fellows, and many sad and
interesting cases. Of course there are exceptions of good officials here,
and some of the women nurses are excellent, but the Empire State has no
reason to be over-satisfied with this hospital.
But I should say, in conclusion, that the earnest and continued desire of
the Government, and much devoted labor, are given to make the military
hospitals here as good as they can be, considering all things. I find no
expense spared, and great anxiety manifested in the highest quarters, to
do well by the national sick. I meet with first-class surgeons in charge
of many of the hospitals, and often the ward surgeons, medical cadets,
and head nurses, are fully faithful and competent. Dr. Bliss, head of
Armory-square, and Dr. Baxter, head of Campbell, seem to me to try to do
their best, and to be excellent in their posts. Dr. Bowen, one of the ward
surgeons of Armory, I have known to fight as hard for many a poor fellow's
life under his charge as a lioness would fight for her young. I mention
such cases because I think they deserve it, on public grounds.
I thought I would include in my letter a few cases of soldiers, especially
interesting, out of my note-book, but I find that my story has already
been spun out to sufficient length. I shall continue here in Washington
for the present, and may-be for the summer, to work as a missionary, after
my own style, among these hospitals, for I find it in some respects
curiously fascinating, with all its sadness. Nor do I find it ended by my
doing some good to the sick and dying soldiers. They do me good in return,
more than I do them.
W. W.
_From the Brooklyn_ Eagle, _March 19, 1863_.
HOSPITAL VISITS
As this tremendous war goes on, the public interest becomes more general
and gathers more and more closely about the wounded, the sick, and the
Government hospitals, the surgeons, and all appertaining to the medical
department of the army. Up to the date of this writing (December 9, 1864)
there have been, as I estimate, near four hundred thousand cases under
treatment, and there are to-day, probably, taking the whole service of the
United States, two hundred thousand, or an approximation to that number,
on the doctors' list. Half of these are comparatively slight ailments or
hurts. Every family has directly or indirectly some representative among
this vast army of the wounded and sick.
The following sketch is made to gratify the general interest in this field
of the war, and also for a few special persons through whose means alone I
have aided the men. It extends over a period of two years, coming down to
the present hour, and exhibits the army hospitals at Washington, the camp
hospitals in the field, etc. A very few cases are given as specimens of
thousands. The account may be relied upon as faithful, though rapidly
thrown together. It will put the reader in as direct contact as may be
with scenes, sights, and cases of these immense hospitals. As will be
seen, it begins back two years since, at a very gloomy period of the
contest.
Began my visits (December 21, 1862) among the camp hospitals in the Army
of the Potomac, under General Burnside. Spent a good part of the day in a
large brick mansion on the banks of the Rappahannock, immediately opposite
Fredericksburg. It is used as a hospital since the battle, and seems to
have received only the worst cases. Outdoors, at the foot of a tree,
within ten yards of the front of the house, I notice a heap of amputated
feet, legs, arms, hands, etc.--about a load for a one-horse cart. Several
dead bodies lie near, each covered with its brown woollen blanket. In the
dooryard, toward the river, are fresh graves, mostly of officers, their
names on pieces of barrel staves or broken board, stuck in the dirt. (Most
of these bodies were subsequently taken up and transported North to their
friends.)
The house is quite crowded, everything impromptu, no system, all bad
enough, but I have no doubt the best that can be done; all the wounds
pretty bad, some frightful, the men in their old clothes, unclean and
bloody. Some of the wounded are rebel officers, prisoners. One, a
Mississippian--a captain--hit badly in the leg, I talked with some time;
he asked me for papers, which I gave him. (I saw him three months
afterward in Washington, with leg amputated, doing well.)
I went through the rooms, down stairs and up. Some of the men were dying.
I had nothing to give at that visit, but wrote a few letters to folks
home, mothers, etc. Also talked to three or four who seemed most
susceptible to it, and needing it.
December 22 to 31.--Am among the regimental brigade and division hospitals
somewhat. Few at home realize that these are merely tents, and sometimes
very poor ones, the wounded lying on the ground, lucky if their blanket is
spread on a layer of pine or hemlock twigs, or some leaves. No cots;
seldom even a mattress on the ground. It is pretty cold. I go around from
one case to another. I do not see that I can do any good, but I cannot
leave them. Once in a while some youngster holds on to me convulsively,
and I do what I can for him; at any rate stop with him, and sit near him
for hours, if he wishes it.
Besides the hospitals, I also go occasionally on long tours through the
camps, talking with the men, etc.; sometimes at night among the groups
around the fires, in their shebang enclosures of bushes. I soon get
acquainted anywhere in camp with officers or men, and am always well used.
Sometimes I go down on picket with the regiments I know best.
As to rations, the army here at present seems to be tolerably well
supplied, and the men have enough, such as it is. Most of the regiments
lodge in the flimsy little shelter tents. A few have built themselves huts
of logs and mud, with fireplaces.
I might give a long list of special cases, interesting items of the
wounded men here, but have not space.
Left Falmouth, January, 1863, by Aquia creek railroad, and so on
Government steamer up the Potomac. Many wounded were with us on cars and
boat. The cars were just common platform ones. The railroad journey of ten
or twelve miles was made mostly before sunrise. The soldiers guarding the
road came out from their tents or shebangs of bushes with rumpled hair and
half-awake look. Those on duty were walking their posts, some on banks
over us, others down far below the level of the track. I saw large cavalry
camps off the road. At Aquia Creek Landing were numbers of wounded going
North. While I waited some three hours, I went around among them. Several
wanted word sent home to parents, brothers, wives, etc., which I did for
them (by mail the next day from Washington). On the boat I had my hands
full. One poor fellow died going up.
Am now (January, February, etc., 1863) in and around Washington, daily
visiting the hospitals. Am much in Campbell, Patent-office, Eighth-street,
H-street, Armory-square, and others. Am now able to do a little good,
having money (as almoner of others home), and getting experience. I would
like to give lists of cases, for there is no end to the interesting ones;
but it is impossible without making a large volume, or rather several
volumes. I must, therefore, let one or two days' visits at this time
suffice as specimens of scores and hundreds of subsequent ones, through
the ensuing spring, summer, and fall, and, indeed, down to the present
week.
Sunday, January 25.--Afternoon and till 9 in the evening, visited Campbell
hospital. Attended specially to one case in Ward I, very sick with
pleurisy and typhoid fever, young man, farmer's son--D. F. Russell,
Company E, Sixtieth New York--down-hearted and feeble; a long time before
he would take any interest; soothed and cheered him gently; wrote a letter
home to his mother, in Malone, Franklin county, N. Y., at his request;
gave him some fruit and one or two other gifts; enveloped and directed his
letter, etc. Then went thoroughly through Ward 6; observed every case in
the ward (without, I think, missing one); found some cases I thought
needed little sums of money; supplied them (sums of perhaps thirty,
twenty-five, twenty, or fifteen cents); distributed a pretty bountiful
supply of cheerful reading matter, and gave perhaps some twenty to thirty
persons, each one some little gift, such as oranges, apples, sweet
crackers, figs, etc., etc., etc.
Thursday, January 29.--Devoted the main part of the day, from 11 to 3.30
o'clock, to Armory-square hospital; went pretty thoroughly through Wards
F, G, H, and I--some fifty cases in each ward. In Ward H supplied the men
throughout with writing paper and a stamped envelope each, also some
cheerful reading matter; distributed in small portions, about half of it
in this ward, to proper subjects, a large jar of first-rate preserved
berries; also other small gifts. In Wards G, H, and I, found several cases
I thought good subjects for small sums of money, which I furnished in each
case. The poor wounded men often come up "dead broke," and it helps their
spirits to have even the small sum I give them. My paper and envelopes all
gone, but distributed a good lot of amusing reading matter; also, as I
thought judicious, tobacco, oranges, apples, etc. Some very interesting
cases in Ward I: Charles Miller, Bed No. 19, Company D, Fifty-third
Pennsylvania, is only sixteen years of age, very bright, courageous boy,
left leg amputated below the knee; next bed below him, young lad very
sick--gave the two each appropriate gifts; in the bed above also
amputation of the left leg--gave him a part of a jar of raspberries; Bed
No. 1, this ward, gave a small sum also; also to a soldier on crutches,
sitting on his bed near.
Evening, same day.--Went to see D. F. R., Campbell hospital, before
alluded to; found him remarkably changed for the better--up and dressed
(quite a triumph; he afterwards got well and went back to his regiment).
Distributed in the wards a quantity of note-paper and forty or fifty,
mostly paid, envelopes, of which the men were much in need; also a
four-pound bag of gingersnaps I bought at a baker's in Seventh street.
Here is a case of a soldier I found among the crowded cots in the Patent
hospital--(they have removed most of the men of late and broken up that
hospital). He likes to have some one to talk to, and we will listen to
him. He got badly wounded in the leg and side at Fredericksburg that
eventful Saturday, 13th December. He lay the succeeding two days and
nights helpless on the field, between the city and those grim batteries,
for his company and his regiment had been compelled to leave him to his
fate. To make matters worse, he lay with his head slightly down hill, and
could not help himself. At the end of some fifty hours he was brought off,
with other wounded, under a flag of truce.
We ask him how the Rebels treated him during those two days and nights
within reach of them--whether they came to him--whether they abused him?
He answers that several of the Rebels, soldiers and others, came to him,
at one time and another. A couple of them, who were together, spoke
roughly and sarcastically, but did no act. One middle-aged man, however,
who seemed to be moving around the field among the dead and wounded for
benevolent purposes, came to him in a way he will never forget. This man
treated our soldier kindly, bound up his wounds, cheered him, gave him a
couple of biscuits gave him a drink of whiskey and water, asked him if he
could eat some beef. This good Secesh, however, did not change our
soldier's position, for it might have caused the blood to burst from the
wounds where they were clotted and stagnated. Our soldier is from
Pennsylvania; has had a pretty severe time; the wounds proved to be bad
ones. But he retains a good heart, and is at present on the gain.
It is not uncommon for the men to remain on the field this way, one, two,
or even four or five days.
I continue among the hospitals during March, April, etc., without
intermission. My custom is to go through a ward, or a collection of wards,
endeavoring to give some trifle to each, without missing any. Even a sweet
biscuit, a sheet of paper, or a passing word of friendliness, or but a
look or nod, if no more. In this way I go through large numbers without
delaying, yet do not hurry. I find out the general mood of the ward at the
time; sometimes see that there is a heavy weight of listlessness
prevailing, and the whole ward wants cheering up. I perhaps read to the
men, to break the spell, calling them around me, careful to sit away from
the cot of any one who is very bad with sickness or wounds. Also I find
out, by going through in this way, the cases that need special attention,
and can then devote proper time to them. Of course I am very cautious,
among the patients, in giving them food. I always confer with the doctor,
or find out from the nurse or ward-master about a new case. But I soon get
sufficiently familiar with what is to be avoided, and learn also to judge
almost intuitively what is best.
I do a good deal of writing letters by the bedside, of course--writing all
kinds, including love letters. Many sick and wounded soldiers have not
written home to parents, brothers, sisters, and even wives, for one reason
or another, for a long, long time. Some are poor writers; some cannot get
paper and envelopes; many have an aversion to writing, because they dread
to worry the folks at home--the facts about them are so sad to tell. I
always encourage the men to write, and promptly write for them.
As I write this, in May, 1863, the wounded have begun to arrive from
Hooker's command, from bloody Chancellorsville. I was down among the first
arrivals. The men in charge of them told me the bad cases were yet to
come. If that is so, I pity them, for these are bad enough. You ought to
see the scene of the wounded arriving at the landing here, foot of Sixth
street, at night. Two boat-loads came about half-past seven last night. A
little after eight it rained, a long and violent shower. The poor, pale,
helpless soldiers had been debarked, and lay around on the wharf and
neighborhood, anywhere. The rain was, probably, grateful to them; at any
rate they were exposed to it.
The few torches light up the spectacle. All around on the wharf, on the
ground, out on side places, etc., the men are lying on blankets, old
quilts, etc., with the bloody rags bound around their heads, arms, legs,
etc. The attendants are few, and at night few outsiders also--only a few
hard-worked transportation men and drivers. (The wounded are getting to be
common, and people grow callous.) The men, whatever their condition, lie
there and patiently wait till their turn comes to be taken up. Near by the
ambulances are now arriving in clusters, and one after another is called
to back up and take its load. Extreme cases are sent off on stretchers.
The men generally make little or no ado, whatever their sufferings--a few
groans that cannot be repressed, and occasionally a scream of pain as they
lift a man into the ambulance.
To-day, as I write, hundreds more are expected; and to-morrow and the next
day more, and so on for many days.
The soldiers are nearly all young men, and far more Americans than is
generally supposed--I should say nine tenths are native born. Among the
arrivals from Chancellorsville I find a large proportion of Ohio, Indiana,
and Illinois men. As usual there are all sorts of wounds. Some of the men
are fearfully burnt from the explosion of artillery caissons. One ward has
a long row of officers, some with ugly hurts. Yesterday was perhaps worse
than usual: amputations are going on; the attendants are dressing wounds.
As you pass by you must be on your guard where you look. I saw, the other
day, a gentleman, a visitor, apparently from curiosity, in one of the
wards, stop and turn a moment to look at an awful wound they were probing,
etc.; he turned pale, and in a moment more he had fainted away and fallen
on the floor.
I buy, during the hot weather, boxes of oranges from time to time, and
distribute them among the men; also preserved peaches and other fruits;
also lemons and sugar for lemonade. Tobacco is also much in demand. Large
numbers of the men come up, as usual, without a cent of money. Through the
assistance of friends in Brooklyn and Boston, I am again able to help many
of those that fall in my way. It is only a small sum in each case, but it
is much to them. As before, I go around daily and talk with the men, to
cheer them up.
My note-books are full of memoranda of the cases of this summer, and the
wounded from Chancellorsville, but space forbids my transcribing them.
As I sit writing this paragraph (sundown, Thursday, June 25) I see a train
of about thirty huge four-horse wagons, used as ambulances, filled with
wounded, passing up Fourteenth street, on their way, probably, to
Columbian, Carver, and Mount Pleasant hospitals. This is the way the men
come in now, seldom in small numbers, but almost always in these long, sad
processions. Through the past winter, while our army lay opposite
Fredericksburg, the like strings of ambulances were of frequent occurrence
along Seventh street, passing slowly up from the steam-boat wharf, from
Aquia creek.
This afternoon, July 22, 1863, I spent a long time with a young man I have
been with considerable, named Oscar F. Wilber, Company G, One Hundred
Fifty-fourth New York, low with chronic diarrhoea and a bad wound also.
He asked me to read him a chapter in the New Testament. I complied and
asked him what I should read. He said, "Make your own choice." I opened at
the close of one of the first books of the Evangelists, and read the
chapters describing the latter hours of Christ and the scenes at the
crucifixion. The poor wasted young man asked me to read the following
chapter also, how Christ rose again. I read very slowly, for Oscar was
feeble. It pleased him very much, yet the tears were in his eyes. He asked
me if I enjoyed religion. I said, "Perhaps not, my dear, in the way you
mean, and yet may-be it is the same thing." He said, "It is my chief
reliance." He talked of death, and said he did not fear it. I said, "Why,
Oscar, don't you think you will get well?" He said, "I may, but it is not
probable." He spoke calmly of his condition. The wound was very bad; it
discharged much. Then the diarrhoea had prostrated him, and I felt that
he was even then the same as dying. He behaved very manly and
affectionate. The kiss I gave him as I was about leaving, he returned
fourfold. He gave me his mother's address, Mrs. Sally D. Wilber, Alleghany
post-office, Cattaraugus county, N. Y. I had several such interviews with
him. He died a few days after the one just described.
August, September, October, etc.--I continue among the hospitals in the
same manner, getting still more experience, and daily and nightly meeting
with most interesting cases. Through the winter of 1863-4, the same. The
work of the army hospital visitor is indeed a trade, an art, requiring
both experience and natural gifts, and the greatest judgment. A large
number of the visitors to the hospitals do no good at all, while many do
harm. The surgeons have great trouble from them. Some visitors go from
curiosity--as to a show of animals. Others give the men improper things.
Then there are always some poor fellows, in the crises of sickness or
wounds, that imperatively need perfect quiet--not to be talked to by
strangers. Few realize that it is not the mere giving of gifts that does
good; it is the proper adaption. Nothing is of any avail among the
soldiers except conscientious personal investigation of cases, each for
itself; with sharp, critical faculties, but in the fullest spirit of human
sympathy and boundless love. The men feel such love more than anything
else. I have met very few persons who realize the importance of humoring
the yearnings for love and friendship of these American young men,
prostrated by sickness and wounds.
February, 1864.--I am down at Culpepper and Brandy station, among the camp
of First, Second, and Third Corps, and going through the division
hospitals. The condition of the camps here this winter is immensely
improved from last winter near Falmouth. All the army is now in huts of
logs and mud, with fireplaces; and the food is plentiful and tolerably
good. In the camp hospitals I find diarrhoea more and more prevalent,
and in chronic form. It is at present the great disease of the army. I
think the doctors generally give too much medicine, oftener making things
worse. Then they hold on to the cases in camp too long. When the disease
is almost fixed beyond remedy, they send it up to Washington. Alas! how
many such wrecks have I seen landed from boat and railroad and deposited
in the Washington hospitals, mostly but to linger awhile and die, after
being kept at the front too long.
The hospitals in front, this winter, are also much improved. The men have
cots, and often wooden floors, and the tents are well warmed.
March and April, 1864.--Back again in Washington. They are breaking up the
camp hospitals in Meade's army, preparing for a move. As I write this, in
March, there are all the signs. Yesterday and last night the sick were
arriving here in long trains, all day and night. I was among the
new-comers most of the night. One train of a thousand came into the depot,
and others followed. The ambulances were going all night, distributing
them to the various hospitals here. When they come in, some literally in a
dying condition, you may well imagine it is a lamentable sight. I hardly
know which is worse, to see the wounded after a battle, or these wasted
wrecks.
I remain in capital health and strength, and go every day, as before,
among the men, in my own way, enjoying my life and occupation more than I
can tell.
Of the army hospitals now in and around Washington, there are thirty or
forty. I am in the habit of going to all, and to Fairfax seminary,
Alexandria, and over Long Bridge to the convalescent camp, etc. As a
specimen of almost any one of these hospitals, fancy to yourself a space
of three to twenty acres of ground, on which are grouped ten or twelve
very large wooden barracks, with, perhaps, a dozen or twenty, and
sometimes more than that number, of small buildings, capable all together
of accommodating from five hundred to a thousand or fifteen hundred
persons. Sometimes these large wooden barracks, or wards, each of them,
perhaps, from a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet long, are arranged in
a straight row, evenly fronting the street; others are planned so as to
form an immense V; and others again arranged around a hollow square. They
make all together a huge cluster, with the additional tents, extra wards
for contagious diseases, guard-houses, sutler's stores, chaplain's house,
etc. In the middle will probably be an edifice devoted to the offices of
the surgeon in charge and the ward surgeons, principal attachés, clerks,
etc. Then around this centre radiate or are gathered the wards for the
wounded and sick.
These wards are either lettered alphabetically, Ward G, Ward K, or else
numerically, 1, 2, 3, etc. Each has its ward surgeon and corps of nurses.
Of course there is, in the aggregate, quite a muster of employees, and
over all the surgeon in charge. Any one of these hospitals is a little
city in itself. Take, for instance, the Carver hospital, out a couple of
miles, on a hill, northern part of Fourteenth street. It has more inmates
than an ordinary country town. The same with the Lincoln hospital, east of
the Capitol, or the Finley hospital, on high grounds northeast of the
city; both large establishments. Armory-square hospital, under Dr. Bliss,
in Seventh street (one of the best anywhere), is also temporarily enlarged
this summer, with additional tents, sheds, etc. It must have nearly a
hundred tents, wards, sheds, and structures of one kind and another. The
worst cases are always to be found here. A wanderer like me about
Washington pauses on some high land which commands the sweep of the city
(one never tires of the noble and ample views presented here, in the
generally fine, soft, peculiar air and light), and has his eyes attracted
by these white clusters of barracks in almost every direction. They make a
great show in the landscape, and I often use them as landmarks. Some of
these clusters are very full of inmates. Counting the whole, with the
convalescent camps (whose inmates are often worse off than the sick in the
hospitals), they have numbered, in this quarter and just down the Potomac,
as high as fifty thousand invalid, disabled, or sick and dying men.
My sketch has already filled up so much room that I shall have to omit
any detailed account of the wounded of May and June, 1864, from the
battles of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, etc. That would be a long
history in itself. The arrivals, the numbers, and the severity of the
wounds, out-viewed anything that we have seen before. For days and weeks a
melancholy tide set in upon us. The weather was very hot. The wounded had
been delayed in coming, and much neglected. Very many of the wounds had
worms in them. An unusual proportion mortified. It was among these that,
for the first time in my life, I began to be prostrated with real
sickness, and was, before the close of the summer, imperatively ordered
North by the physician to recuperate and have an entire change of air.
What I know of first Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Wilderness, etc.,
makes clear to me that there has been, and is yet, a total lack of science
in elastic adaptation to the needs of the wounded after a battle. The
hospitals are long afterward filled with proofs of this.
I have seen many battles, their results, but never one where there was
not, during the first few days, an unaccountable and almost total
deficiency of everything for the wounded--appropriate sustenance, nursing,
cleaning, medicines, stores, etc. (I do not say surgical attendance,
because the surgeons cannot do more than human endurance permits.)
Whatever pleasant accounts there may be in the papers of the North, this
is the actual fact. No thorough previous preparation, no system, no
foresight, no genius. Always plenty of stores, no doubt, but always miles
away; never where they are needed, and never the proper application. Of
all harrowing experiences, none is greater than that of the days following
a heavy battle. Scores, hundreds, of the noblest young men on earth,
uncomplaining, lie helpless, mangled, faint, alone, and so bleed to death,
or die from exhaustion, either actually untouched at all, or with merely
the laying of them down and leaving them, when there ought to be means
provided to save them.
The reader has doubtless inferred the fact that my visits among the
wounded and sick have been as an independent missionary, in my own style,
and not as an agent of any commission. Several noble women and men of
Brooklyn, Boston, Salem, and Providence, have voluntarily supplied funds
at times. I only wish they could see a tithe of the actual work performed
by their generous and benevolent assistance among the suffering men.
He who goes among the soldiers with gifts, etc., must beware how he
proceeds. It is much more of an art than one would imagine. They are not
charity-patients, but American young men, of pride and independence. The
spirit in which you treat them, and bestow your donations, is just as
important as the gifts themselves; sometimes more so. Then there is
continual discrimination necessary. Each case requires some peculiar
adaptation to itself. It is very important to slight nobody--not a single
case. Some hospital visitors, especially the women, pick out the
handsomest looking soldiers, or have a few for their pets. Of course some
will attract you more than others, and some will need more attention than
others; but be careful not to ignore any patient. A word, a friendly turn
of the eye or touch of the hand in passing, if nothing more.
One hot day toward the middle of June I gave the inmates of Carver
hospital a general ice-cream treat, purchasing a large quantity, and going
around personally through the wards to see to its distribution.
Here is a characteristic scene in a ward: It is Sunday afternoon (middle
of summer, 1864), hot and oppressive, and very silent through the ward. I
am taking care of a critical case, now lying in a half lethargy. Near
where I sit is a suffering Rebel from the Eighth Louisiana; his name is
Irving. He has been here a long time, badly wounded, and lately had his
leg amputated. It is not doing very well. Right opposite me is a sick
soldier boy laid down with his clothes on, sleeping, looking much wasted,
his pallid face on his arm. I see by the yellow trimming on his jacket
that he is a cavalry boy. He looks so handsome as he sleeps, one must
needs go nearer to him. I step softly over, and find by his card that he
is named William Cone, of the First Maine Cavalry, and his folks live in
Skowhegan.
Well, poor John Mahay is dead. He died yesterday. His was a painful and
lingering case. I have been with him at times for the past fifteen
months. He belonged to Company A, One Hundred and First New York, and was
shot through the lower region of the abdomen at second Bull Run, August,
1862. One scene at his bedside will suffice for the agonies of nearly two
years. The bladder had been perforated by a bullet going entirely through
him. Not long since I sat a good part of the morning by his bedside, Ward
E, Armory-square; the water ran out of his eyes from the intense pain, and
the muscles of his face were distorted, but he utters nothing except a low
groan now and then. Hot moist cloths were applied, and relieved him
somewhat. Poor Mahay, a mere boy in age, but old in misfortune, he never
knew the love of parents, was placed in his infancy in one of the New York
charitable institutions, and subsequently bound out to a tyrannical master
in Sullivan county (the scars of whose cowhide and club remained yet on
his back). His wound here was a most disagreeable one, for he was a
gentle, cleanly, and affectionate boy. He found friends in his hospital
life, and, indeed, was a universal favorite. He had quite a funeral
ceremony.
Through Fourteenth street to the river, and then over the long bridge and
some three miles beyond, is the huge collection called the convalescent
camp. It is a respectable sized army in itself, for these hospitals,
tents, sheds, etc., at times contain from five to ten thousand men. Of
course there are continual changes. Large squads are sent off to their
regiments or elsewhere, and new men received. Sometimes I found large
numbers of paroled returned prisoners here.
During October, November, and December, 1864, I have visited the military
hospitals about New York City, but have not room in this article to
describe these visits.
I have lately been (November 25) in the Central-park hospital, near One
Hundred and Fourth street; it seems to be a well-managed institution.
During September, and previously, went many times to the Brooklyn city
hospital, in Raymond street, where I found (taken in by contract) a number
of wounded and sick from the army. Most of the men were badly off, and
without a cent of money, many wanting tobacco. I supplied them, and a few
special cases with delicacies; also repeatedly with letter-paper, stamps,
envelopes, etc., writing the addresses myself plainly--(a pleased crowd
gathering around me as I directed for each one in turn.) This Brooklyn
hospital is a bad place for soldiers, or anybody else. Cleanliness, proper
nursing, watching, etc., are more deficient than in any hospital I know.
For dinner on Sundays I invariably found nothing but rice and molasses.
The men all speak well of Drs. Yale and Kissam for kindness, patience,
etc., and I think, from what I saw, there are also young medical men. In
its management otherwise, this is the poorest hospital I have been in, out
of many hundreds.
Among places, apart from soldiers', visited lately (December 7) I must
specially mention the great Brooklyn general hospital and other public
institutions at Flatbush, including the extensive lunatic asylum, under
charge of Drs. Chapin and Reynolds. Of the latter (and I presume I might
include these county establishments generally) I have deliberately to put
on record about the profoundest satisfaction with professional capacity,
completeness of house arrangements to ends required, and the right vital
spirit animating all, that I have yet found in any public curative
institution among civilians.
In Washington, in camp and everywhere, I was in the habit of reading to
the men. They were very fond of it, and liked declamatory, poetical
pieces. Miles O'Reilly's pieces were also great favorites. I have had many
happy evenings with the men. We would gather in a large group by
ourselves, after supper, and spend the time in such readings, or in
talking, and occasionally by an amusing game called the game of Twenty
Questions.
For nurses, middle-aged women and mothers of families are best. I am
compelled to say young ladies, however refined, educated, and benevolent,
do not succeed as army nurses, though their motives are noble; neither do
the Catholic nuns, among these home-born American young men. Mothers full
of motherly feeling, and however illiterate, but bringing reminiscences of
home, and with the magnetic touch of hands, are the true women nurses.
Many of the wounded are between fifteen and twenty years of age.
I should say that the Government, from my observation, is always full of
anxiety and liberality toward the sick and wounded. The system in
operation in the permanent hospitals is good, and the money flows without
stint. But the details have to be left to hundreds and thousands of
subordinates and officials. Among these, laziness, heartlessness, gouging,
and incompetency are more or less prevalent. Still, I consider the
permanent hospitals, generally, well conducted.
A very large proportion of the wounded come up from the front without a
cent of money in their pockets. I soon discovered that it was about the
best thing I could do to raise their spirits and show them that somebody
cared for them, and practically felt a fatherly or brotherly interest in
them, to give them small sums, in such cases, using tact and discretion
about it.
A large majority of the wounds are in the arms and legs. But there is
every kind of wound in every part of the body. I should say of the sick,
from my experience in the hospitals, that the prevailing maladies are
typhoid fever and the camp fevers generally, diarrhoea, catarrhal
affections and bronchitis, rheumatism and pneumonia. These forms of
sickness lead, all the rest follow. There are twice as many sick as there
are wounded. The deaths range from six to ten per cent of those under
treatment.
I must bear my most emphatic testimony to the zeal, manliness, and
professional spirit and capacity generally prevailing among the surgeons,
many of them young men, in the hospitals and the army. I will not say much
about the exceptions, for they are few (but I have met some of those few,
and very foolish and airish they were). I never ceased to find the best
young men, and the hardest and most disinterested workers, among these
surgeons, in the hospitals. They are full of genius, too. I have seen many
hundreds of them, and this is my testimony.
During my two years in the hospitals and upon the field, I have made over
six hundred visits, and have been, as I estimate, among from eighty
thousand to one hundred thousand of the wounded and sick, as sustainer of
spirit and body in some slight degree, in their time of need. These visits
varied from an hour or two, to all day or night; for with dear or critical
cases I watched all night. Sometimes I took up my quarters in the
hospital, and slept or watched there several nights in succession. I may
add that I am now just resuming my occupation in the hospitals and camps
for the winter of 1864-5, and probably to continue the seasons ensuing.
To many of the wounded and sick, especially the youngsters, there is
something in personal love, caresses, and the magnetic flood of sympathy
and friendship, that does, in its way, more good than all the medicine in
the world. I have spoken of my regular gifts of delicacies, money,
tobacco, special articles of food, knick-knacks, etc., etc. But I
steadily found more and more that I could help, and turn the balance in
favor of cure, by the means here alluded to, in a curiously large
proportion of cases. The American soldier is full of affection and the
yearning for affection. And it comes wonderfully grateful to him to have
this yearning gratified when he is laid up with painful wounds or illness,
far away from home, among strangers. Many will think this merely
sentimentalism, but I know it is the most solid of facts. I believe that
even the moving around among the men, or through the ward, of a hearty,
healthy, clean, strong, generous-souled person, man or woman, full of
humanity and love, sending out invisible, constant currents thereof, does
immense good to the sick and wounded.
To those who might be interested in knowing it, I must add, in conclusion,
that I have tried to do justice to all the suffering that fell in my way.
While I have been with wounded and sick in thousands of cases from the New
England States, and from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and from
Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, and the Western States, I have
been with more or less from all the States North and South, without
exception. I have been with many from the border States, especially from
Maryland and Virginia, and found far more Union Southerners than is
supposed. I have been with many Rebel officers and men among our wounded,
and given them always what I had, and tried to cheer them the same as
any. I have been among the army teamsters considerably, and indeed always
find myself drawn to them. Among the black soldiers, wounded or sick, and
in the contraband camps, I also took my way whenever in their
neighborhood, and I did what I could for them.
W. W.
_From the New York_ Times, _December 11, 1864_.
[Illustration: LOUISA (VAN VELSOR) WHITMAN
From a Daguerreotype taken about 1855
THE HELIOTYPE PRINTING CO. BOSTON]
LETTERS OF 1862-3
I
_Washington, Monday forenoon, Dec. 29, 1862._ DEAR, DEAR MOTHER--Friday
the 19th inst. I succeeded in reaching the camp of the 51st New York, and
found George[1] alive and well. In order to make sure that you would get
the good news, I sent back by messenger to Washington a telegraphic
dispatch (I dare say you did not get it for some time) as well as a
letter--and the same to Hannah[2] at Burlington. I have staid in camp with
George ever since, till yesterday, when I came back to Washington, about
the 24th. George got Jeff's[3] letter of the 20th. Mother, how much you
must have suffered, all that week, till George's letter came--and all the
rest must too. As to me, I know I put in about three days of the greatest
suffering I ever experienced in my life. I wrote to Jeff how I had my
pocket picked in a jam and hurry, changing cars, at Philadelphia--so that
I landed here without a dime. The next two days I spent hunting through
the hospitals, walking day and night, unable to ride, trying to get
information--trying to get access to big people, etc.--I could not get
the least clue to anything. Odell would not see me at all. But Thursday
afternoon, I lit on a way to get down on the Government boat that runs to
Aquia creek, and so by railroad to the neighborhood of Falmouth, opposite
Fredericksburg--so by degrees I worked my way to Ferrero's[4] brigade,
which I found Friday afternoon without much trouble after I got in camp.
When I found dear brother George, and found that he was alive and well, O
you may imagine how trifling all my little cares and difficulties
seemed--they vanished into nothing. And now that I have lived for eight or
nine days amid such scenes as the camps furnish, and had a practical part
in it all, and realize the way that hundreds of thousands of good men are
now living, and have had to live for a year or more, not only without any
of the comforts, but with death and sickness and hard marching and hard
fighting (and no success at that) for their continual experience--really
nothing we call trouble seems worth talking about. One of the first things
that met my eyes in camp was a heap of feet, arms, legs, etc., under a
tree in front of a hospital, the Lacy house.
George is very well in health, has a good appetite--I think he is at times
more wearied out and homesick than he shows, but stands it upon the whole
very well. Every one of the soldiers, to a man, wants to get home.
I suppose Jeff got quite a long letter I wrote, from camp, about a week
ago. I told you that George had been promoted to captain--his commission
arrived while I was there. When you write, address, Capt. George W.
Whitman, Co. K., 51st New York Volunteers, Ferrero's brigade, near
Falmouth, Va. Jeff must write oftener, and put in a few lines from mother,
even if it is only two lines--then in the next letter a few lines from
Mat, and so on. You have no idea how letters from home cheer one up in
camp, and dissipate homesickness.
While I was there George still lived in Capt. Francis's tent--there were
five of us altogether, to eat, sleep, write, etc., in a space twelve feet
square, but we got along very well--the weather all along was very
fine--and would have got along to perfection, but Capt. Francis is not a
man I could like much--I had very little to say to him. George is about
building a place, half hut and half tent, for himself, (he is probably
about it this very day,) and then he will be better off, I think. Every
captain has a tent, in which he lives, transacts company business, etc.,
has a cook, (or a man of all work,) and in the same tent mess and sleep
his lieutenants, and perhaps the first sergeant. They have a kind of
fire-place--and the cook's fire is outside on the open ground. George had
very good times while Francis was away--the cook, a young disabled
soldier, Tom, is an excellent fellow and a first-rate cook, and the second
lieutenant, Pooley, is a tip-top young Pennsylvanian. Tom thinks all the
world of George; when he heard he was wounded, on the day of the battle,
he left everything, got across the river, and went hunting for George
through the field, through thick and thin. I wrote to Jeff that George was
wounded by a shell, a gash in the cheek--you could stick a splint through
into the mouth, but it has healed up without difficulty already.
Everything is uncertain about the army, whether it moves or stays where it
is. There are no furloughs granted at present. I will stay here for the
present, at any rate long enough to see if I can get any employment at
anything, and shall write what luck I have. Of course I am unsettled at
present. Dear mother; my love.
WALT.
If Jeff or any writes, address me, care of Major Hapgood, paymaster, U. S.
A. Army, Washington, D. C. I send my love to dear sister Mat,[5] and
little Sis[6]--and to Andrew[7] and all my brothers. O Mat, how lucky it
was you did not come--together, we could never have got down to see
George.
II
_Washington, Friday morning, Jan. 2, 1863._ DEAR SISTER[8]--You have heard
of my fortunes and misfortunes of course, (through my letters to mother
and Jeff,) since I left home that Tuesday afternoon. But I thought I would
write a few lines to you, as it is a comfort to write home, even if I have
nothing particular to say. Well, dear sister, I hope you are well and
hearty, and that little Sis[9] keeps as well as she always had, when I
left home so far. Dear little plague, how I would like to have her with
me, for one day; I can fancy I see her, and hear her talk. Jeff must have
got a note from me about a letter I have written to the _Eagle_--you may
be sure you will get letters enough from me, for I have little else to do
at present. Since I laid my eyes on dear brother George, and saw him alive
and well--and since I have spent a week in camp, down there opposite
Fredericksburg, and seen what well men, and sick men, and mangled men
endure--it seems to me I can be satisfied and happy henceforward if I can
get one meal a day, and know that mother and all are in good health, and
especially be with you again, and have some little steady paying
occupation in N. Y. or Brooklyn.
I am writing this in the office of Major Hapgood, way up in the top of a
big high house, corner of 15th and F street; there is a splendid view,
away down south of the Potomac river, and across to the Georgetown side,
and the grounds and houses of Washington spread out beneath my high point
of view. The weather is perfect--I have had that in my favor ever since
leaving home--yesterday and to-day it is bright, and plenty warm enough.
The poor soldiers are continually coming in from the hospitals, etc., to
get their pay--some of them waiting for it to go home. They climb up here,
quite exhausted, and then find it is no good, for there is no money to pay
them; there are two or three paymasters' desks in this room, and the
scenes of disappointment are quite affecting. Here they wait in
Washington, perhaps week after week, wretched and heart-sick--this is the
greatest place of delays and puttings off, and no finding the clue to
anything. This building is the paymaster-general's quarters, and the
crowds on the walk and corner of poor, sick, pale, tattered soldiers are
awful--many of them day after day disappointed and tired out. Well, Mat, I
will suspend my letter for the present, and go through the city--I have a
couple of poor fellows in the hospital to visit also.
WALT.
_Saturday evening, Jan. 3_ [1863.] I write this in the place where I have
my lodging-room, 394 L street, 4th door above 14th street. A friend of
mine, William D. O'Connor,[10] has two apartments on the 3rd floor, very
ordinarily furnished, for which he pays the _extra_ordinary price of $25 a
month. I have a werry little bedroom on the 2nd floor. Mr. and Mrs.
O'Connor and their little girl have all gone out "down town" for an hour
or two, to make some Saturday evening purchases, and I am left in
possession of the premises--so I sit by the fire, and scribble more of my
letter. I have not heard anything from dear brother George since I left
the camp last Sunday morning, 28th Dec. I wrote to him on Tuesday last. I
wish to get to him the two blue woolen shirts Jeff sent, as they would
come very acceptable to him--and will try to do it yet. I think of sending
them by mail, if the postage is not more than $1.
Yesterday I went out to the Campbell hospital to see a couple of Brooklyn
boys, of the 51st. They knew I was in Washington, and sent me a note, to
come and see them. O my dear sister, how your heart would ache to go
through the rows of wounded young men, as I did--and stopt to speak a
comforting word to them. There were about 100 in one long room, just a
long shed neatly whitewashed inside. One young man was very much
prostrated, and groaning with pain. I stopt and tried to comfort him. He
was very sick. I found he had not had any medical attention since he was
brought there; among so many he had been overlooked; so I sent for the
doctor, and he made an examination of him. The doctor behaved very
well--seemed to be anxious to do right--said that the young man would
recover; he had been brought pretty low with diarrhoea, and now had
bronchitis, but not so serious as to be dangerous. I talked to him some
time--he seemed to have entirely given up, and lost heart--he had not a
cent of money--not a friend or acquaintance. I wrote a letter from him to
his sister--his name is John A. Holmes, Campello, Plymouth county, Mass. I
gave him a little change I had--he said he would like to buy a drink of
milk when the woman came through with milk. Trifling as this was, he was
overcome and began to cry. Then there were many, many others. I mention
the one, as a specimen. My Brooklyn boys were John Lowery, shot at
Fredericksburg, and lost his left forearm, and Amos H. Vliet--Jeff knows
the latter--he has his feet frozen, and is doing well. The 100 are in a
ward, (6), and there are, I should think, eight or ten or twelve such
wards in the Campbell hospital--indeed a real village. Then there are 38
more hospitals here in Washington, some of them much larger.
_Sunday forenoon, Jan. 4, 1863._ Mat, I hope and trust dear mother and all
are well, and everything goes on good home. The envelope I send, Jeff or
any of you can keep for direction, or use it when wanted to write to me.
As near as I can tell, the army at Falmouth remains the same. Dear sister,
good-bye.
WALT.
I send my love to Andrew and Jesse and Eddy and all. What distressing news
this is of the loss of the Monitor.[11]
III
_Washington, Friday noon, February 6, 1863._ DEAREST MOTHER--Jeff must
have got a letter from me yesterday, containing George's last letter. The
news of your sickness and the strange silence of Han made me feel somewhat
gloomy. I wrote to George yesterday, conveying the news--and to-day I have
sent him another letter, with much more comforting news, for I was so glad
to hear from Han (her letter enclosed in Jeff's received this morning)
that I wrote him right away, and sent Han's letter.
Mother, I am quite in hopes George will get a furlough--may-be my
expectations are unfounded, but I almost count on it. I am so glad this
morning to hear you are no worse, but changed for the better--and dear
sister Mat too, and Sissy, I am so glad to think they are recovering.
Jeff's enclosure of $10 through Mr. Lane, from the young engineers for the
soldiers in hospitals, the most needy cases, came safe of course--I shall
acknowledge it to Mr. Lane to-morrow. Mother, I have written so much about
hospitals that I will not write any in this letter.
We have had bad weather enough here lately to most make up for the
delightful weather we had for five weeks after I came from home.
Mother, I do hope you will be careful, and not get any relapse--and hope
you will go on improving. Do you then think of getting new apartments,
after the 1st of May? I suppose Jeff has settled about the lot--it seems
to me first rate as an investment--the kind of house to build is quite a
consideration (if any house). I should build a _regular Irish shanty_
myself--two rooms, and an end shed. I think that's luxury enough, since I
have been down in the army.
Well, mother, I believe I will not fill out the sheet this time, as I want
to go down without delay to the P. O. and send George's letter and this
one. Good-bye, dear mother.
WALT.
IV
_Washington, Monday morning, Feb. 9, 1863._ DEAREST MOTHER--I write to
enclose you a letter I have just received from George. His corps (Ninth
Army) and perhaps one other are to move either to Fort Monroe, or
somewhere down there--some say Suffolk. I am in hopes that when they get
there, George will still have a sight for a furlough. I have written him I
should think four letters since the 27th Jan. (and have sent him Han's
letter to you in one). I hope he has got most of them before this. I am
afraid the $3 change I sent him is gone. He will write to you as soon as
he gets settled wherever they go to. I don't know as it makes any
difference in respect to danger, or fighting, from this move. One reason
they have to move from the Rappahannock, up there, is that wood is all
gone for miles, forage is scarce to get, and I don't know as there is any
need of their staying there, for any purpose. In some haste, dearest
mother, as I am off to visit for an hour or so, one of my hospitals. Your
affectionate son,
WALT.
V
_Office Major Hapgood, cor. 15th & F sts, Washington, Feb. 13, 1863._ DEAR
BROTHER[12]--Nothing new; still I thought I would write you a line this
morning. The $4, namely $2 from Theo A. Drake and $2 from John D. Martin,
enclosed in your letter of the 10th, came safe. They too will please
accept the grateful thanks of several poor fellows, in hospital here.
The letter of introduction to Mr. Webster, chief clerk, State department,
will be very acceptable. If convenient, I should like Mr. Lane to send it
on immediately. I do not so much look for an appointment from Mr. Seward
as his backing me from the State of New York. I have seen Preston King
this morning for the second time (it is very amusing to hunt for an
office--so the thing seems to me just now, even if one don't get it). I
have seen Charles Sumner three times--he says ev'ry thing here moves as
part of a great machine, and that I must consign myself to the fate of the
rest--still [in] an interview I had with him yesterday he talked and acted
as though he had life in him, and would exert himself to any reasonable
extent for me to get something. Meantime I make about enough to pay my
expenses by hacking on the press here, and copying in the paymasters'
offices, a couple of hours a day. One thing is favorable here, namely, pay
for whatever one does is at a high rate. I have not yet presented my
letters to either Seward or Chase--I thought I would get my forces all in
a body, and make one concentrated dash, if possible with the personal
introduction and presence of some big bug. I like fat old Preston King
very much--he is fat as a hogshead, with great hanging chops. The first
thing he said to me the other day in the parlor chambers of the Senate,
when I sent in for him and he came out, was, "Why, how can I do this
thing, or any thing for you--how do I know but you are a Secessionist? You
look for all the world like an old Southern planter--a regular Carolina
or Virginia planter." I treated him with just as much hauteur as he did
me with bluntness--this was the first time--it afterward proved that
Charles Sumner had not prepared the way for me, as I supposed, or rather
not so strongly as I supposed, and Mr. King had even forgotten it--so I
was an entire stranger. But the same day C. S. talked further with Mr.
King in the Senate, and the second interview I had with the latter (this
forenoon) he has given me a sort of general letter, endorsing me from New
York--one envelope is addressed to Secretary Chase, and another to Gen.
Meigs, head Quartermaster's dept. Meantime, I am getting better and better
acquainted with office-hunting wisdom and Washington peculiarities
generally. I spent several hours in the Capitol the other day. The
incredible gorgeousness of some of the rooms, (interior decorations,
etc.)--rooms used perhaps but for merely three or four committee meetings
in the course of the whole year--is beyond one's flightiest dreams. Costly
frescoes of the style of Taylor's saloon in Broadway, only really the best
and choicest of their sort, done by imported French and Italian artists,
are the prevailing sorts. (Imagine the work you see on the fine china
vases in Tiffany's, the paintings of Cupids and goddesses, etc., spread
recklessly over the arched ceiling and broad panels of a big room--the
whole floor underneath paved with tesselated pavement, which is a sort of
cross between marble and china, with little figures, drab, blue, cream
color, etc.) These things, with heavy elaborately wrought balustrades,
columns, and steps--all of the most beautiful marbles I ever saw, some
white as milk, other of all colors, green, spotted, lined, or of our old
chocolate color--all these marbles used as freely as if they were common
blue flags--with rich door-frames and window-casings of bronze and
gold--heavy chandeliers and mantles, and clocks in every room--and indeed
by far the richest and gayest, and most un-American and inappropriate
ornamenting and finest interior workmanship I ever conceived possible,
spread in profusion through scores, hundreds, (and almost thousands) of
rooms--such are what I find, or rather would find to interest me, if I
devoted time to it. But a few of the rooms are enough for me--the style is
without grandeur, and without simplicity. These days, the state our
country is in, and especially filled as I am from top to toe of late with
scenes and thoughts of the hospitals, (America seems to me now, though
only in her youth, but brought already here, feeble, bandaged, and bloody
in hospital)--these days I say, Jeff, all the poppy-show goddesses, and
all the pretty blue and gold in which the interior Capitol is got up, seem
to me out of place beyond anything I could tell--and I get away from it as
quick as I can when that kind of thought comes over me. I suppose it is to
be described throughout--those interiors--as all of them got up in the
French style--well, enough for a New York.
VI
_Washington, March 31, 1863._ DEAREST MOTHER--I have not heard from
George, except a note he wrote me a couple of days after he got back from
his furlough. I think it likely the regiment has gone with its corps to
the West, the Kentucky or Tennessee region--Burnside at last accounts was
in Cincinnati. Well, it will be a change for George, if he is out there. I
sent a long letter to Han last Saturday--enclosed George's note to me.
Mother, when you or Jeff writes again, tell me if my papers and MSS. are
all right; I should be very sorry indeed if they got scattered, or used up
or anything--especially the copy of "Leaves of Grass" covered in blue
paper,[13] and the little MS. book "Drum-Taps," and the MS. tied up in the
square, spotted (stone-paper) loose covers--I want them all carefully
kept.
Mother, it is quite a snow-storm here this morning--the ground is an inch
and a half deep with snow--and it is snowing and drizzling--but I feel
very independent in my stout army-boots; I go anywhere. I _have_ felt
quite well of my deafness and cold in my head for four days or so, but it
is back again bad as ever this morning.
Dear mother, I wrote the above in my room--I have now come down to Major
Hapgood's office. I do not find anything from home, and no particular news
in the paper this morning--no news about the Ninth Army Corps, or where
they are. I find a good letter from one of my New York boys, (Fifth
avenue) a young fellow named Hugo Fritsch, son of the Austrian
Consul-General--he writes me a long, first-rate letter this morning. He
too speaks about the Opera--like Jeff he goes there a good deal--says that
Medori, the soprano, as Norma made the greatest success ever seen--says
that the whole company there now, the singers, are very fine. All this I
write for Jeff and Mat--I hope they will go once in a while when it is
convenient.
It is a most disagreeable day here, mother, walking poshy and a rain and
drizzle.
There is nothing new with me, no particular sight for an office that I can
count on. But I can make enough with the papers, for the present
necessities. I hear that the paymaster, Major Yard, that pays the 51st,
has gone on West, I suppose to Cincinnati, or wherever the brigade has
gone--of course to pay up--he pays up to 1st of March--all the Army is
going to be paid up to 1st March everywhere.
Mother, I hope you are well and hearty as usual. I am so glad you are none
of you going to move. I would like to have the pleasure of Miss
Mannahatta Whitman's company, the first fine forenoon, if it were
possible; I think we might have first-rate times, for one day at any rate.
I hope she will not forget her Uncle Walt. I received a note from
Probasco, requesting me not to put his name in my next letter. I
appreciate his motive, and wish to please him always--but in this matter I
shall do what I think appropriate. Mother, I see some very interesting
persons here--a young master's mate, who was on the Hatteras, when
surprised and broadsided by the Alabama, Capt Semmes--he gave me a very
good acc't of it all--then Capt. Mullen, U. S. Army, (engineer) who has
been six years out in the Rocky mts. making a Gov't road 650 miles from
Ft. Benton to Walla Walla--very, very interesting to know such men
intimately, and talk freely with them. Dearest mother, I shall have great
yarns to spin, when I come home. I am not a bit homesick, yet I should
like to see you and Mat very, very much--one thinks of the women when he
is away.
WALT.
Shall send the shirts in a day or two.
VII
_Washington, Wednesday forenoon, April 15, 1863._ DEAREST MOTHER--Jeff's
letter of the 11th, acknowledging the books, also the one about five days
previous, containing the $10 from Van Anden, came safe. Jeff's letters
are always first rate and welcome--the good long one with so much about
home, and containing Han's and George's, was especially so. It is a great
pleasure, though sometimes a melancholy one, to hear from Han, under her
own hand. I have writ to George--I wrote last Friday. I directed the
letter to "Lexington or elsewhere, Kentucky"--as I saw in a letter in a
Cincinnati paper that Gen. Ferrero was appointed provost marshal at
Lexington. The 51st is down there somewhere, and I guess it is about as
well off there as anywhere. There is much said about their closing up the
regimental companies--that is, where there are ten companies of 40 men
each, closing them up to five companies, of 80 men each. It is said the
Government purposes something of this kind. It will throw a good many
captains and lieutenants out. I suppose you know that Le Gendre is now
colonel of the 51st--it's a pity if we haven't Americans enough to put
over our old war regiments. (I think less and less of foreigners, in this
war. What I see, especially in the hospitals, convinces me that there is
no other stock, for emergencies, but native American--no other name by
which we can be saved.)
Mother, I feel quite bad about Andrew--I am so in hopes to hear that he
has recovered--I think about him every day. He must not get fretting and
disheartened--that is really the worst feature of any sickness. Diseases
of the throat and bronchia are the result always of bad state of the
stomach, blood, etc. (they never come from the throat itself). The throat
and the bronchia are lined, like the stomach and other interior organs,
with a fine lining like silk or crape, and when all this gets ulcerated or
inflamed or what-not (it is Dr. Sammis's _mucous membrane_, you know) it
is bad, and most distressing. Medicine is really of no great account,
except just to pacify a person. This lining I speak of is full of little
blood vessels, and the way to make a _real cure_ is by gentle and steady
means to recuperate the whole system; this will tell upon the blood, upon
the blood vessels, and so finally and effectually upon all this coating I
speak of that lines the throat, etc. But as it is a long time before this
vital lining membrane (_very important_) is injured, so it is a long time
before it can be made all healthy and right again; but Andrew is young and
strong enough and [has a] good constitution for basis--and of course by
regular diet, care, (and nary whiskey under any circumstances) I am sure
he would not only get over that trouble, but be as well and strong as he
ever was in his life. Mother, you tell him I sent him my love, and
Nancy[14] the same, and the dear little boys the same--the next time you
or Mat goes down there you take this and show him.
Mat, I am quite glad to hear that you are not hurried and fretted with
work from New York this spring--I am sure I should think Sis and
housekeeping, etc., would be enough to attend to. I was real amused with
Sis's remarks, and all that was in the letter about her. You must none of
you notice her smartness, nor criticisms, before her, nor encourage her to
spread herself nor be critical, as it is not good to encourage a child to
be too sharp--and I hope Sissy is going to be a splendid specimen of good
animal health. For the few years to come I should think more of that than
anything--that is the foundation of all (righteousness included); as to
her mental vivacity and growth, they are plenty enough of themselves, and
will get along quite fast enough of themselves, plenty fast enough--don't
stimulate them at all. Dear little creature, how I should like to see her
this minute. Jeff must not make his lessons to her in music anyways strong
or frequent on any account--two lessons a week, of ten minutes each, is
enough--but then I dare say Jeff will think of all these things, just the
same as I am saying. Jeff writes he wonders if I am as well and hearty,
and I suppose he means as much of a beauty as ever, whether I look the
same. Well, not only as much but more so--I believe I weigh about 200, and
as to my face, (so scarlet,) and my beard and neck, they are terrible to
behold. I fancy the reason I am able to do some good in the hospitals
among the poor languishing and wounded boys, is, that I am so large and
well--indeed like a great wild buffalo, with much hair. Many of the
soldiers are from the West, and far North, and they take to a man that has
not the bleached shiny and shaved cut of the cities and the East. I
spent three to four hours yesterday in Armory hospital. One of my
particular boys there was dying--pneumonia--he wanted me to stop with him
awhile; he could not articulate--but the look of his eyes, and the holding
on of his hand was deeply affecting. His case is a relapse--eight days ago
he had recovered, was up, was perhaps a little careless--at any rate took
cold, was taken down again and has sank rapidly. He has no friends or
relatives here. Yesterday he labored and panted so for breath, it was
terrible. He is a young man from New England, from the country. I expected
to see his cot vacated this afternoon or evening, as I shall go down then.
Mother, if you or Mat was here a couple of days, you would cry your eyes
out. I find I have to restrain myself and keep my composure--I succeed
pretty well. Good-bye, dearest mother.
WALT.
Jeff, Capt. Muller remains here yet for some time. He is bringing out his
report. I shall try to send you a copy. Give my best respects to Dr.
Ruggles.
Mother, my last letter home was a week ago to-day--we are having a dark
rainy day here--it is now half-past 3. I have been in my room all day so
far--shall have dinner in half an hour, and then down to Armory.
VIII
_Washington, April 28, 1863._ DEAREST MOTHER--A letter from Jeff came this
morning. Mother, I was sorry to hear you had a return of your
rheumatism--I do hope you will favor yourself more, it depends so much on
that--and rheumatism is so obstinate, when it gets hold of one. Mother,
you received a letter from me sent last Wednesday, 22nd, of course, with a
small quantity of shinplasters. Next time you or Jeff writes, I wish you
would tell me whether the letters come pretty regularly, the next morning
after I write them--this now ought to reach you Wednesday forenoon, April
29th. Mother, did a Mr. Howell call on you? He was here last week to see
about his boy, died a long while ago in hospital in Yorktown. He works in
the Navy Yard--knows Andrew. You will see about him (the boy) in a letter
I sent yesterday to the _Eagle_--it ought to appear to-day or to-morrow.
Jeff, I wish you would take 10¢ I send in this letter and get me ten
copies of the _Eagle_ with it in--put in five more of my pictures (the big
ones in last edition "Leaves"), and a couple of the photographs carte
visites (the smaller ones), and send me to the same direction as before;
it came very well. I will send an _Eagle_ to Han and George. The stamps
and 10¢ are for Jeff for the papers and postage.
I have written to Han, and sent her George's last two letters from
Kentucky; one I got last week from Mount Sterling. I write to George and
send him papers. Sam Beatty is here in Washington again. I saw him, and he
said he would write to George. Mother, I have not got any new clothes yet,
but shall very soon I hope. People are more rough and free and easy drest
than your way. Then it is dusty or muddy most of the time here. Mother
dear, I hope you have comfortable times--at least as comfortable as the
law allows. I am so glad you are not going to have the trouble of moving
this 1st of May. How are the Browns? Tell Will I should like to see him
first rate--if he was here attached to the suite of some big officer, or
something of that kind, he would have a good time and do well. I see lots
of young fellows not half as capable and trustworthy as he, coming and
going in Washington, in such positions. The big generals and head men all
through the armies, and provosts etc., like to have a squad of such smart,
nimble young men around them. Give my respects to Mr. and Mrs. Brown.
Tell Jeff I am going to write to Mr. Lane either to-day or to-morrow. Jeff
asks me if I go to hospitals as much as ever. If my letters home don't
show it, you don't get 'em. I feel sorry sometimes after I have sent them,
I have said so much about hospitals, and so mournful. O mother, the young
man in Armory-square, Dennis Barrett, in the 169th N. Y., I mentioned
before, is probably going to get up after all; he is like one saved from
the grave. Saturday last I saw him and talked with him and gave him
something to eat, and he was much better--it is the most unexpected
recovery I have yet seen. Mother, I see Jeff says in the letter you don't
hear from me very often--I will write oftener, especially to Jeff. Dear
brother, I hope you are getting along good, and in good spirits; you must
not mind the failure of the sewer bills, etc. It don't seem to me it makes
so much difference about worldly successes (beyond just enough to eat and
drink and shelter, in the moderatest limits) any more, since the last four
months of my life especially, and that merely to live, and have one fair
meal a day, is enough--but then you have a family, and that makes a
difference.
Matty, I send you my best love, dear sister--how I wish I could be with
you one or two good days. Mat, do you remember the good time we had that
awful stormy night we went to the Opera, New York, and had the front seat,
and heard the handsome-mouthed Guerrabella? and had the good oyster supper
at Fulton market--("pewter them ales.") O Mat, I hope and trust we shall
have such times again.
Tell Andrew he must remember what I wrote about the throat, etc. I am sure
he will get all right before long, and recover his voice. Give him my
love--and tell Mannahatta her Uncle Walt is living now among the sick
soldiers. Jeff, look out for the _Eagles_, and send the portraits.
Dearest mother, I must bid you and all for the present good-bye.
WALT.
IX
_Washington, Tuesday, May 5, 1863._ DEAREST MOTHER--Your letter came safe,
and was very welcome, and always will be. Mother, I am sorry about your
rheumatism--if it still continues I think it would be well for me to write
a line to Mrs. Piercy, and get Jeff to stop with it, so that you could
take the baths again, as I am sure they are very beneficial. Dear mother,
you write me, or Jeff must in the next letter, how you are getting along,
whether it is any better or worse--I want to know. Mother, about George's
fund in the bank; I hope by all means you can scratch along so as to leave
$250 there--I am so anxious that our family should have a little ranch,
even if it is the meanest kind, off somewhere that you can call your own,
and that would do for Ed etc.--it might be a real dependence, and
comfort--and may-be for George as much as any one. I mean to come home one
of these days, and get the acre or half acre somewhere out in some
by-place on Long Island, and build it--you see if I don't. About Hannah,
dear mother, I hardly know what advice to give you--from what I know at
present I can't tell what course to pursue. I want Han to come home, from
the bottom of my heart. Then there are other thoughts and considerations
that come up. Dear mother, I cannot advise, but shall acquiesce in
anything that is settled upon, and try to help.
The condition of things here in the hospitals is getting pretty bad--the
wounded from the battles around Fredericksburg are coming up in large
numbers. It is very sad to see them. I have written to Mr. Lane, asking
him to get his friends to forward me what they think proper--but somehow I
feel delicate about sending such requests, after all.
I have almost made up my mind to do what I can personally, and not seek
assistance from others.
Dear mother, I have not received any letter from George. I write to him
and send papers to Winchester. Mother, while I have been writing this a
very large number of Southern prisoners, I should think 1,000 at least,
has past up Pennsylvania avenue, under a strong guard. I went out in the
street, close to them. Poor fellows, many of them mere lads--it brought
the tears; they seemed our flesh and blood too, some wounded, all
miserable in clothing, all in dirt and tatters--many of them fine young
men. Mother, I cannot tell you how I feel to see those prisoners marched.
X
_Washington, Wednesday forenoon, May 13, 1863._ DEAREST MOTHER--I am late
with my letter this week--my poor, poor boys occupy my time very much--I
go every day, and sometimes nights. I believe I mentioned a young man in
Ward F, Armory-square, with a bad wound in the leg, very agonizing--had to
have it propt up, and an attendant all the while dripping water on night
and day. I was in hopes at one time he would get through with it, but a
few days ago he took a sudden bad turn and died about 3 o'clock the same
afternoon--it was horrible. He was of good family--handsome, intelligent
man, about 26, married; his name was John Elliot, of Cumberland Valley,
Bedford co., Penn.--belonged to 2nd Pennsylvania Cavalry. I felt very bad
about it. I have wrote to his father--have not received any answer yet; no
friend nor any of his folks was here, and have not been here nor
sent--probably don't know of it at all. The surgeons put off amputating
the leg, he was so exhausted, but at last it was imperatively necessary to
amputate. Mother, I am shocked to tell you that he never came alive off
the amputating table--he died under the operation--it was what I had
dreaded and anticipated. Poor young man, he suffered much, very, _very_
much, for many days, and bore it so patiently--so that it was a release to
him. Mother, such things are awful--not a soul here he knew or cared
about, except me--yet the surgeons and nurses were good to him. I think
all was done for him that could be--there was no help but take off the
leg; he was under chloroform--they tried their best to bring him
to--three long hours were spent, a strong smelling bottle held under his
nostrils, with other means, three hours. Mother, how contemptible all the
usual little worldly prides and vanities, and striving after appearances,
seems in the midst of such scenes as these--such tragedies of soul and
body. To see such things and not be able to help them is awful--I feel
almost ashamed of being so well and whole.
Dear mother, I have not heard from George himself; but I got a letter from
Fred McReady, a young Brooklyn man in 51st--he is intimate with George,
said he was well and hearty. I got the letter about five days ago. I wrote
to George four days since, directed to Winchester, Kentucky. I got a
letter from a friend in Nashville, Tenn., yesterday--he told me the 9th
Army Corps was ordered to move to Murfreesboro, Tenn. I don't know whether
this is so or not. I send papers to George almost every day. So far I
think it was fortunate the 51st was moved West, and I hope it will
continue so. Mother, it is all a lottery, this war; no one knows what will
come up next.
Mother, I received Jeff's letter of May 9th--it was welcome, as all Jeff's
letters are, and all others from home. Jeff says you do not hear from me
at home but seldom. Mother, I write once a week to you regular; but I will
write soon to Jeff a good long letter--I have wanted to for some time, but
have been much occupied. Dear brother, I wish you to say to Probasco and
all the other young men on the Works, I send them my love and best
thanks--never anything came more acceptable than the little fund they
forwarded me the last week through Mr. Lane. Our wounded from Hooker's
battles are worse wounded and more of them than any battle of the war, and
indeed any, I may say, of modern times--besides, the weather has been very
hot here, very bad for new wounds. Yet as Jeff writes so downhearted I
must tell him the Rebellion has lost worse and more than we have. The more
I find out about it, the more I think they, the Confederates, have
received an irreparable harm and loss in Virginia--I should not be
surprised to see them (either voluntarily or by force) leaving Virginia
before many weeks; I don't see how on earth they can stay there. I think
Hooker is already reaching after them again--I myself do not give up
Hooker yet. Dear mother, I should like to hear from Han, poor Han. I send
my best love to sister Mat and all. Good-bye, dearest mother.
WALT.
XI
_Washington, Tuesday forenoon, May 19, 1863._ DEAREST MOTHER--... I sent
George a letter yesterday--have not got any letter myself from Georgy, but
have sent him quite a good many and papers. Mother, what a tramp the 51st
has had--they only need now to go to California, and they will finish the
job complete. O mother, how welcome the shirts were--I was putting off and
putting off, to get some new ones. I could not find any one to do them as
I want them, and it would have cost such a price--and so my old ones had
got to be. When they came back from the wash I had to laugh; they were a
lot of rags, held together with starch. I have a very nice old black aunty
for a washwoman, but she bears down pretty hard, I guess, when she irons
them, and they showed something like the poor old city of Fredericksburg
does, since Burnside bombarded it. Well, mother, when the bundle came, I
was so glad--and the coats too, worn as they are, they come in very
handy--and the cake, dear mother, I am almost like the boy that put it
under his pillow and woke up in the night and eat some. I carried a good
chunk to a young man wounded I think a good deal of, and it did him so
much good--it is dry, but all the better, as he eat it with tea and it
relished. I eat a piece with him, and drinked some tea out of his cup, as
I sat by the side of his cot. Mother, I have neglected, I think, what I
ought to have told you two or three weeks ago, that is that I have
discarded my old clothes--somewhat because they were too thick, and more
still because they were worse gone in than any I have ever yet wore, I
think, in my life, especially the trowsers. Wearing my big boots had
caused the inside of the legs just above the knee to wear two beautiful
round holes right through cloth and partly through the lining, producing
a novel effect, which was not necessary, as I produce a sufficient
sensation without--then they were desperately faded. I have a nice plain
suit of a dark wine color; looks very well, and feels good--single
breasted sack coat with breast pockets, etc., and vest and pants same as
what I always wear (pants pretty full), so upon the whole all looks
unusually good for me. My hat is very good yet, boots ditto; have a new
necktie, nice shirts--you can imagine I cut quite a swell. I have not
trimmed my beard since I left home, but it is not grown much longer, only
perhaps a little bushier. I keep about as stout as ever, and the past five
or six days I have felt wonderful well, indeed never did I feel better.
About ten or twelve days ago, we had a short spell of very warm weather
here, but for about six days now it has been delightful, just warm enough.
I generally go to the hospitals from 12 to 4--and then again from 6 to 9;
some days I only go in the middle of the day or evening, not both--and
then when I feel somewhat opprest, I skip over a day, or make perhaps a
light call only, as I have several cautions from the doctors, who tell me
that one must beware of continuing too steady and long in the air and
influences of the hospitals. I find the caution a wise one.
Mother, you or Jeff must write me what Andrew does about going to North
Carolina. I should think it might have a beneficial effect upon his
throat. I wrote Jeff quite a long letter Sunday. Jeff must write to me
whenever he can, I like dearly to have them--and whenever you feel like it
you too, dear mother. Tell Sis her uncle Walt will come back one of these
days from the sick soldiers and take her out on Fort Greene again. Mother,
I received a letter yesterday from John Elliot's father, in Bedford co.,
Pennsylvania (the young man I told you about, who died under the
operation). It was very sad; it was the first he knew about it. I don't
know whether I told you of Dennis Barrett, pneumonia three weeks since,
had got well enough to be sent home. Dearest Mother, I hope you will take
things as easy as possible and try to keep a good heart. Matty, my dear
sister, I have to inform you that I was treated to a splendid dish of
ice-cream Sunday night; I wished you was with me to have another. I send
you my love, dear sister. Mother, I hope by all means it will be possible
to keep the money whole to get some ranch next spring, if not before; I
mean to come home and build it. Good-bye for the present, dear mother.
WALT.
XII
_Washington, Tuesday forenoon, May 26, 1863._ DEAREST MOTHER--I got a long
letter from George, dated near Lancaster, Kentucky, May 15th; he seems to
be well and in good spirits--says he gets some letters from me and papers
too. At the time he wrote the 51st was doing provost duty at Lancaster,
but would not probably remain so very long--seem to be moving towards
southeast Kentucky--had a good camp, and good times generally. Le Gendre
is colonel--Gen. Ferrero has left the service--Col. Potter (now
brig.-gen.) is in Cincinnati--Capt. Sims, etc., are all well. George
describes Kentucky as a very fine country--says the people are about half
and half, Secesh and Union. This is the longest letter I have yet received
from George. Did he write you one about the same time? Mother, I have not
rec'd any word from home in over a week--the last letter I had from Mr.
Lane was about twelve days ago, sending me $10 for the soldiers (five from
Mr. Kirkwood and five from Mr. Conklin Brush). Mother dear, I should like
to hear from Martha; I wish Jeff would write me about it. Has Andrew gone?
and how is your wrist and arm, mother? We had some very hot weather
here--I don't know what I should have done without the thin grey coat you
sent--you don't know how good it does, and looks too; I wore it three
days, and carried a fan and an umbrella (quite a Japanee)--most everybody
here carries an umbrella, on account of the sun. Yesterday and to-day
however have been quite cool, east wind. Mother, the shirts were a real
godsend, they do first rate; I like the fancy marseilles collar and
wrist-bands. Mother, how are you getting along--I suppose just the same as
ever. I suppose Jess and Ed are just the same as ever. When you write,
you tell me all about everything, and the Browns, and the neighborhood
generally. Mother, is George's trunk home and of no use there? I wish I
had it here, as I must have a trunk--but do not wish you to send until I
send you word. I suppose my letter never appeared in the _Eagle_; well, I
shall send them no more, as I think likely they hate to put in anything
which may celebrate me a little, even though it is just the thing they
want for their paper and readers. They altered the other letter on that
account, very meanly. I shall probably have letters in the N. Y. _Times_
and perhaps other papers in about a week. Mother, I have been pretty
active in hospitals for the past two weeks, somewhere every day or night.
I have written you so much about cases, etc., I will not write you any
more on that subject this time. O the sad, sad things I see--the noble
young men with legs and arms taken off--the deaths--the sick weakness,
sicker than death, that some endure, after amputations (there is a great
difference, some make little of it, others lie after it for days, just
flickering alive, and O so deathly weak and sick). I go this afternoon to
Campbell hospital, out a couple of miles.
Mother, I should like to have Jeff send me 20 of the large-sized portraits
and as many of the standing figure; do them up flat. I think every day
about Martha. Mother, have you heard any further about Han? Good-bye for
the present, dearest mother.
WALT.
XIII
_Washington, Tuesday morning, June 9, 1863._ DEAREST MOTHER--Jeff's letter
came yesterday and was very welcome, as I wanted to hear about you all. I
wrote to George yesterday and sent Jeff's letter enclosed. It looks from
some accounts as though the 9th Army Corps might be going down into East
Tennessee (Cumberland Gap, or perhaps bound for Knoxville). It is an
important region, and has many Southern Unionists. The staunchest Union
man I have ever met is a young Southerner in the 2nd Tennessee (Union
reg't)--he was ten months in Southern prisons; came up from Richmond
paroled about ten weeks ago, and has been in hospital here sick until
lately. He suffered everything but death--he is [the] one they hung up by
the heels, head downwards--and indeed worse than death, but stuck to his
convictions like a hero--John Barker, a real manly fellow; I saw much of
him and heard much of that country that can be relied on. He is now gone
home to his reg't.
Mother, I am feeling very well these days--my head that was stopt up so
and hard of hearing seems to be all right; I only hope you have had
similar good fortune with your rheumatism, and that it will continue so. I
wish I could come in for a couple of days and see you; if I should succeed
in getting a transportation ticket that would take me to New York and back
I should be tempted to come home for two or three days, as I want some
MSS. and books, and the trunk, etc.--but I will see. Mother, your letter
week before last was very good--whenever you feel like it you write me,
dear mother, and tell me everything about the neighborhood and all the
items of our family.
And sister Mat, how is she getting along--I believe I will have to write a
letter especially to her and Sis one of these times.
It is awful dry weather here, no rain of any consequence for five or six
weeks. We have strawberries good and plenty, 15 cents a quart, with the
hulls on--I go down to market sometimes of a morning and buy two or three
quarts, for the folks I take my meals with. Mother, do you know I have not
paid, as you may say, a cent of board since I have been in Washington,
that is for meals--four or five times I have made a rush to leave the
folks and find a moderate-priced boarding-house, but every time they have
made such a time about it that I have kept on. It is Mr. and Mrs. O'Connor
(he is the author of "Harrington"); he has a $1600 office in the Treasury,
and she is a first-rate woman, a Massachusetts girl. They keep house in a
moderate way; they have one little girl (lost a fine boy about a year
ago); they have two rooms in the same house where I hire my rooms, and I
take breakfast (half-past 8) and dinner (half-past 4) with them, as they
will have it so. That's the way it has gone on now over five months, and
as I say, they won't listen to my leaving--but I shall do so, I think. I
can never forget the kindness and real friendship, and it appears as
though they would continue just the same, if it were for all our lives.
But I have insisted on going to market (it is pleasant in the cool of the
morning) and getting the things at my own expense, two or three times a
week lately. I pay for the room I occupy now $7 a month--the landlord is a
mixture of booby, miser, and hog; his name is G----; the landlady is a
good woman, Washington raised--they are quite rich; he is Irish of the
worst kind--has had a good office for ten years until Lincoln came in.
They have bought another house, smaller, to live in, and are going to move
(were to have moved 1st of June). They had an auction of the house we live
in yesterday, but nobody came to buy, so it was ridiculous--we had a red
flag out, and a nigger walked up and down ringing a big bell, which is the
fashion here for auctions.
Well, mother, the war still goes on, and everything as much in a fog as
ever--and the battles as bloody, and the wounded and sick getting worse
and plentier all the time. I see a letter in the _Tribune_ from Lexington,
Ky., June 5th, headed "The 9th Army Corps departing for Vicksburg"--but I
cannot exactly make it out on reading the letter carefully--I don't see
anything in the letter about the 9th Corps moving from Vicksburg; at any
rate I think the 2nd division is more likely to be needed in Kentucky (or
as I said, in Eastern Tennessee), as the Secesh are expected to make
trouble there. But one can hardly tell--the only thing is to resign
oneself to events as they occur; it is a sad and dreary time, for so many
thousands of parents and relatives, not knowing what will occur next.
Mother, I told you, I think last week, that I had wrote to Han, and
enclosed George's last letter to me--I wrote a week ago last Sunday--I
wonder if she got the letter. About the pictures, I should like Jeff to
send them, as soon as convenient--might send 20 of the big head, 10 or 12
of the standing figure, and 3 of the carte visite.
I am writing this in Major Hapgood's office--it is bright and pleasant,
only the dust here in Washington is a great nuisance. Mother, your shirts
do first rate--I am wearing them; the one I have on to-day suits me better
than any I have ever yet had. I have not worn the thin coat the last week
or so, as it has not been very hot lately. Mother, I think something of
commencing a series of lectures and reading, etc., through different
cities of the North, to supply myself with funds for my hospital and
soldiers' visits, as I do not like to be beholden to the medium of others.
I need a pretty large supply of money, etc., to do the good I would like
to, and the work grows upon me, and fascinates me--it is the most
affecting thing you ever see, the lots of poor sick and wounded young men
that depend so much, in one word or another, upon my petting or soothing
or feeding, sitting by them and feeding them their dinner or supper--some
are quite helpless, some wounded in both arms--or giving some trifle (for
a novelty or a change, it isn't for the value of it), or stopping a little
while with them. Nobody will do but me--so, mother, I feel as though I
would like to inaugurate a plan by which I could raise means on my own
hook, and perhaps quite plenty too. Best love to you, dearest mother, and
to sister Mat, and Jeff.
WALT.
XIV
_Washington, Monday morning, June 22, 1863._ DEAR MOTHER--Jeff's letter
came informing me of the birth of the little girl,[15] and that Matty was
feeling pretty well, so far. I hope it will continue. Dear sister, I
should much like to come home and see you and the little one; I am sure
from Jeff's description it is a noble babe--and as to its being a girl, it
is all the better. (I am not sure but the Whitman breed gives better women
than men.)
Well, mother, we are generally anticipating a lively time here, or in the
neighborhood, as it is probable Lee is feeling about to strike a blow on
Washington, or perhaps right into it--and as Lee is no fool, it is perhaps
possible he may give us a good shake. He is not very far off--yesterday
was a fight to the southwest of here all day; we heard the cannons nearly
all day. The wounded are arriving in small squads every day, mostly
cavalry, a great many Ohio men; they send off to-day from the Washington
hospitals a great many to New York, Philadelphia, etc., all who are able,
to make room, which looks ominous--indeed, it is pretty certain that there
is to be some severe fighting, may-be a great battle again, the pending
week. I am getting so callous that it hardly arouses me at all. I fancy I
should take it very quietly if I found myself in the midst of a desperate
conflict here in Washington.
Mother, I have nothing particular to write about--I see and hear nothing
but new and old cases of my poor suffering boys in hospitals, and I dare
say you have had enough of such things. I have not missed a day at
hospital, I think, for more than three weeks--I get more and more wound
round. Poor young men--there are some cases that would literally sink and
give up if I did not pass a portion of the time with them. I have quite
made up my mind about the lecturing, etc., project--I have no doubt it
will succeed well enough the way I shall put it in operation. You know,
mother, it is to raise funds to enable me to continue my hospital
ministrations, on a more free-handed scale. As to the Sanitary commissions
and the like, I am sick of them all, and would not accept any of their
berths. You ought to see the way the men, as they lay helpless in bed,
turn away their faces from the sight of those agents, chaplains, etc.
(hirelings, as Elias Hicks would call them--they seem to me always a set
of foxes and wolves). They get well paid, and are always incompetent and
disagreeable; as I told you before, the only good fellows I have met are
the Christian commissioners--they go everywhere and receive no pay.
Dear, dear mother, I want much to see you, and dear Matty too; I send you
both my best love, and Jeff too. The pictures came--I have not heard from
George nor Han. I write a day earlier than usual.
WALT.
We here think Vicksburg is ours. The probability is that it has
capitulated--and there has been no general assault--can't tell yet whether
the 51st went there. We are having very fine weather here to-day--rained
last night.
XV
_Washington, June 30th, 1863._ DEAREST MOTHER--Your letter, with Han's, I
have sent to George, though whether it will find him or not I cannot tell,
as I think the 51st must be away down at Vicksburg. I have not had a word
from George yet. Mother, I have had quite an attack of sore throat and
distress in my head for some days past, up to last night, but to-day I
feel nearly all right again. I have been about the city same as usual
nearly--to the hospitals, etc., I mean. I am told that I hover too much
over the beds of the hospitals, with fever and putrid wounds, etc. One
soldier brought here about fifteen days ago, very low with typhoid fever,
Livingston Brooks, Co. B., 17th Penn. Cavalry, I have particularly stuck
to, as I found him to be in what appeared to be a dying condition, from
negligence and a horrible journey of about forty miles, bad roads and fast
driving; and then after he got here, as he is a simple country boy, very
shy and silent, and made no complaint, they neglected him. I found him
something like I found John Holmes last winter. I called the doctor's
attention to him, shook up the nurses, had him bathed in spirits, gave him
lumps of ice, and ice to his head; he had a fearful bursting pain in his
head, and his body was like fire. He was very quiet, a very sensible boy,
old fashioned; he did not want to die, and I had to lie to him without
stint, for he thought I knew everything, and I always put in of course
that what I told him was exactly the truth, and that if he got really
dangerous I would tell him and not conceal it. The rule is to remove bad
fever patients out from the main wards to a tent by themselves, and the
doctor told me he would have to be removed. I broke it gently to him, but
the poor boy got it immediately in his head that he was marked with death,
and was to be removed on that account. It had a great effect upon him, and
although I told the truth this time it did not have as good a result as my
former fibs. I persuaded the doctor to let him remain. For three days he
lay just about an even chance, go or stay, with a little leaning toward
the first. But, mother, to make a long story short, he is now out of any
immediate danger. He has been perfectly rational throughout--begins to
taste a little food (for a week he ate nothing; I had to compel him to
take a quarter of an orange now and then), and I will say, whether anyone
calls it pride or not, that if he _does_ get up and around again it's me
that saved his life. Mother, as I have said in former letters, you can
have no idea how these sick and dying youngsters cling to a fellow, and
how fascinating it is, with all its hospital surroundings of sadness and
scenes of repulsion and death. In this same hospital, Armory-square, where
this cavalry boy is, I have about fifteen or twenty particular cases I see
much to--some of them as much as him. There are two from East Brooklyn;
George Monk, Co. A, 78th N. Y., and Stephen Redgate (his mother is a widow
in East Brooklyn--I have written to her). Both are pretty badly
wounded--both are youngsters under 19. O mother, it seems to me as I go
through these rows of cots as if it was too bad to accept these
_children_, to subject them to such premature experiences. I devote myself
much to Armory-square hospital because it contains by far the worst cases,
most repulsive wounds, has the most suffering and most need of
consolation. I go every day without fail, and often at night--sometimes
stay very late. No one interferes with me, guards, nurses, doctors, nor
anyone. I am let to take my own course.
Well, mother, I suppose you folks think we are in a somewhat dubious
position here in Washington, with Lee in strong force almost between us
and you Northerners. Well, it does look ticklish; if the Rebs cut the
connection then there will be fun. The Reb cavalry come quite near us,
dash in and steal wagon trains, etc.; it would be funny if they should
come some night to the President's country house (Soldiers' home), where
he goes out to sleep every night; it is in the same direction as their
saucy raid last Sunday. Mr. Lincoln passes here (14th st.) every evening
on his way out. I noticed him last evening about half-past 6--he was in
his barouche, two horses, guarded by about thirty cavalry. The barouche
comes first under a slow trot, driven by one man in the box, no servant or
footman beside; the cavalry all follow closely after with a lieutenant at
their head. I had a good view of the President last evening. He looks more
careworn even than usual, his face with deep cut lines, seams, and his
_complexion gray_ through very dark skin--a curious looking man, very sad.
I said to a lady who was looking with me, "Who can see that man without
losing all wish to be sharp upon him personally?" The lady assented,
although she is almost vindictive on the course of the administration
(thinks it wants nerve, etc.--the usual complaint). The equipage is rather
shabby, horses indeed almost what my friends the Broadway drivers would
call _old plugs_. The President dresses in plain black clothes, cylinder
hat--he was alone yesterday. As he came up, he first drove over to the
house of the Sec. of War, on K st., about 300 feet from here; sat in his
carriage while Stanton came out and had a 15 minutes interview with him (I
can see from my window), and then wheeled around the corner and up
Fourteenth st., the cavalry after him. I really think it would be safer
for him just now to stop at the White House, but I expect he is too proud
to abandon the former custom. Then about an hour after we had a large
cavalry regiment pass, with blankets, arms, etc., on the war march over
the same track. The regt. was very full, over a thousand--indeed thirteen
or fourteen hundred. It was an old regt., veterans, _old fighters_, young
as they were. They were preceded by a fine mounted band of sixteen (about
ten bugles, the rest cymbals and drums). I tell you, mother, it made
everything ring--made my heart leap. They played with a will. Then the
accompaniment: the sabers rattled on a thousand men's sides--they had
pistols, their heels were spurred--handsome American young men (I make no
acc't of any other); rude uniforms, well worn, but good cattle,
prancing--all good riders, full of the devil; nobody shaved, very
sunburnt. The regimental officers (splendidly mounted, but just as roughly
dressed as the men) came immediately after the band, then company after
company, with each its officers at its head--the tramps of so many horses
(there is a good hard turnpike)--then a long train of men with led horses,
mounted negroes, and a long, long string of baggage wagons, each with four
horses, and then a strong rear guard. I tell you it had the look of _real
war_--noble looking fellows; a man feels so proud on a good horse, and
armed. They are off toward the region of Lee's (supposed) rendezvous,
toward Susquehannah, for the great anticipated battle. Alas! how many of
these healthy, handsome, rollicking young men will lie cold in death
before the apples ripen in the orchard. Mother, it is curious and stirring
here in some respects. Smaller or larger bodies of troops are moving
continually--many just-well men are turned out of the hospitals. I am
where I see a good deal of them. There are getting to be _many black
troops_. There is one very good regt. here black as tar; they go around,
have the regular uniform--they submit to no nonsense. Others are
constantly forming. It is getting to be a common sight. [_The rest of the
letter is lost._--ED.]
XVI
_Washington, July 10, 1863._ DEAR MOTHER--I suppose you rec'd a letter
from me last Wednesday, as I sent you one Tuesday (7th). Dear mother, I
was glad enough to hear from George, by that letter from Snyder's Bluffs,
June 28th. I had felt a little fear on acc't of some of those storming
parties Grant sent against Vicksburg the middle of June and up to the
20th--but this letter dispels all anxiety. I have written to George many
times, but it seems he has not got them. Mother, I shall write
immediately to him again. I think he will get the letter I sent last
Sunday, as I directed it to Vicksburg--I told him all the news from home.
Mother, I shall write to Han and enclose George's letter. I am real glad
to hear from Mat and the little one, all so favorable. We are having
pleasant weather here still. I go to Campbell hospital this afternoon--I
still keep going, mother. The wounded are doing rather badly; I am sorry
to say there are frequent deaths--the weather, I suppose, which has been
peculiarly bad for wounds, so wet and warm (though not disagreeable
outdoors). Mother, you must write as often as you can, and Jeff too--you
must not get worried about the ups and downs of the war; I don't know any
course but to resign oneself to events--if one can only bring one's mind
to it. Good-bye once more, for the present, dearest mother, Mat, and the
dear little ones.
WALT.
Mother, do you ever hear from Mary?[16]
XVII
_Washington, Wednesday forenoon, July 15, 1863._ DEAR MOTHER--So the mob
has risen at last in New York--I have been expecting it, but as the day
for the draft had arrived and everything was so quiet, I supposed all
might go on smoothly; but it seems the passions of the people were only
sleeping, and have burst forth with terrible fury, and they have destroyed
life and property, the enrolment buildings, etc., as we hear. The accounts
we get are a good deal in a muddle, but it seems bad enough. The feeling
here is savage and hot as fire against New York (the mob--"Copperhead mob"
the papers here call it), and I hear nothing in all directions but threats
of ordering up the gunboats, cannonading the city, shooting down the mob,
hanging them in a body, etc., etc. Meantime I remain silent, partly
amused, partly scornful, or occasionally put a dry remark, which only adds
fuel to the flame. I do not feel it in my heart to abuse the poor people,
or call for a rope or bullets for them, but, that is all the talk here,
even in the hospitals. The acc'ts from N. Y. this morning are that the
Gov't has ordered the draft to be suspended there--I hope it is true, for
I find that the deeper they go in with the draft, the more trouble it is
likely to make. I have changed my opinion and feelings on the subject--we
are in the midst of strange and terrible times--one is pulled a dozen
different ways in his mind, and hardly knows what to think or do. Mother,
I have not much fear that the troubles in New York will affect any of our
family, still I feel somewhat uneasy about Jeff, if any one, as he is more
around. I have had it much on my mind what could be done, if it should so
happen that Jeff should be drafted--of course he could not go without its
being the downfall almost of our whole family, as you may say, Mat and
his young ones, and sad blow to you too, mother, and to all. I didn't see
any other way than to try to raise the $300, mostly by borrowing if
possible of Mr. Lane. Mother, I have no doubt I shall make a few hundred
dollars by the lectures I shall certainly commence soon (for my hospital
missionary purposes and my own, for that purpose), and I could lend that
am't to Jeff to pay it back. May-be the draft will not come off after all;
I should say it was very doubtful if they can carry it out in N. Y. and
Brooklyn--and besides, it is only one chance out of several, to be drawn
if it does. I don't wonder dear brother Jeff feels the effect it would
have on domestic affairs; I think it is right to feel so, full as strongly
as a man can. I do hope all will go well and without such an additional
trouble falling upon us, but as it can be met with money, I hope Jeff and
Mat and all of you, dear mother, will not worry any more about it. I wrote
to Jeff a few lines last Sunday, I suppose he got. Mother, I don't know
whether you have had a kind of gloomy week the past week, but somehow I
feel as if you all had; but I hope it has passed over. How is dear sister
Mat, and how is Miss Mannahatta, and little Black Head? I sometimes feel
as if I _must_ come home and see you all--I want to very much.
My hospital life still continues the same--I was in Armory all day
yesterday--and day and night before. They have the men wounded in the
railroad accident at Laurel station (bet. here and Baltimore), about 30
soldiers, some of them horribly injured at 3 o'clock A. M. last Saturday
by collision--poor, poor, poor men. I go again this afternoon and night--I
see so much of butcher sights, so much sickness and suffering, I must get
away a while, I believe, for self-preservation. I have felt quite well
though the past week--we have had rain continually. Mother, I have not
heard from George since, have you? I shall write Han to-day and send
George's letter--if you or Jeff has not written this week, I hope Jeff
will write on receiving this. Good-bye for present, dearest mother, and
Jeff, and Mat.
WALT.
Mother, the army is to be paid off two months more, right away. Of course
George will get two months more pay. Dear Mother, I hope you will keep
untouched and put in bank every cent you can. I want us to have a ranch
somewhere by or before next spring.
XVIII
_Washington, Aug. 11, 1863._ DEAR MOTHER--I sent Jeff a letter on
Sunday--I suppose he got it at the office. I feel so anxious to hear from
George; one cannot help feeling uneasy, although these days sometimes it
cannot help being long intervals without one's hearing from friends in
the army. O I do hope we shall hear soon, and that it is all right with
him. It seems as if the 9th Corps had returned to Vicksburg, and some
acc'ts say that part of the Corps had started to come up the river
again--toward Kentucky, I suppose. I have sent George two letters within a
week past, hoping they might have the luck to get to him, but hardly
expect it either.
Mother, I feel very sorry to hear Andrew is so troubled in his throat yet.
I know it must make you feel very unhappy. Jeff wrote me a good deal about
it, and seems to feel very bad about Andrew's being unwell; but I hope it
will go over, and that a little time will make him recover--I think about
it every day.
Mother, it has been the hottest weather here that I ever experienced, and
still continues so. Yesterday and last night was the hottest. Still, I
slept sound, have good ventilation through my room, little as it is (I
still hire the same room in L street). I was quite wet with sweat this
morning when I woke up, a thing I never remember to have happened to me
before, for I was not disturbed in my sleep and did not wake up once all
night. Mother, I believe I did not tell you that on the 1st of June (or a
while before) the O'Connors, the friends I took my meals with so long,
moved to other apartments for more room and pleasanter--not far off
though, I am there every day almost, a little--so for nearly two months
and a half I have been in the habit of getting my own breakfast in my room
and my dinner at a restaurant. I have a little spirit lamp, and always
have a capital cup of tea, and some bread, and perhaps some preserved
fruit; for dinner I get a good plate of meat and plenty of potatoes, good
and plenty for 25 or 30 cents. I hardly ever take any thing more than
these two meals, both of them are pretty hearty--eat dinner about 3--my
appetite is plenty good enough, and I am about as fleshy as I was in
Brooklyn. Mother, I feel better the last ten days, and at present, than I
did the preceding six or eight weeks. There was nothing particular the
matter with me, but I suppose a different climate and being so continually
in the hospitals--but as I say, I feel better, more strength, and better
in my head, etc. About the wound in my hand and the inflammation, etc., it
has thoroughly healed, and I have not worn anything on my hand, nor had
any dressing for the last five days. Mother, I hope you get along with the
heat, for I see it is as bad or worse in New York and Brooklyn--I am
afraid you suffer from it; it must be distressing to you. Dear mother, do
let things go, and just sit still and fan yourself. I think about you
these hot days. I fancy I see you down there in the basement. I suppose
you have your coffee for breakfast; I have not had three cups of coffee in
six months--tea altogether (I must come home and have some coffee for
breakfast with you).
Mother, I wrote to you about Erastus Haskell, Co. K, 141st, N. Y.--his
father, poor old man, come on here to see him and found him dead three
days. He had the body embalmed and took home. They are poor folks but very
respectable. I was at the hospital yesterday as usual--I never miss a day.
I go by my feelings--if I should feel that it would be better for me to
lay by for a while, I should do so, but not while I feel so well as I do
the past week, for all the hot weather; and while the chance lasts I would
improve it, for by and by the night cometh when no man can work (ain't I
getting pious!). I got a letter from Probasco yesterday; he sent $4 for my
sick and wounded--I wish Jeff to tell him that it came right, and give him
the men's thanks and my love.
Mother, have you heard anything from Han? And about Mary's Fanny--I hope
you will write me soon and tell me everything, tell me exactly as things
are, but I know you will--I want to hear family affairs before anything
else. I am so glad to hear Mat is good and hearty--you must write me about
Hat and little Black Head too. Mother, how is Eddy getting along? and
Jess, is he about the same? I suppose Will Brown is home all right; tell
him I spoke about him, and the Browns too. Dearest Mother, I send you my
love, and to Jeff too--must write when you can.
WALT.
XIX
_Washington, Aug. 18, 1863._ DEAR MOTHER--I was mighty glad to get
George's letter, I can tell you--you have not heard since, I suppose. They
must be now back again in Kentucky, or that way, as I see [by] a letter
from Cairo (up the Mississippi river) that boats had stopt there with the
9th Corps on from Vicksburg, going up towards Cincinnati--I think the
letter was dated Aug. 10. I have no doubt they are back again up that way
somewhere. I wrote to George four or five days ago--I directed it Ohio,
Mississippi, or elsewhere. Mother, I was very glad indeed to get your
letter--I am so sorry Andrew does not get any better; it is very
distressing about losing the voice; he must not be so much alarmed, as
that continues some times years and the health otherwise good. ..........
Mother, I wrote to Han about five days ago; told her we had heard from
George, and all the news--I must write to Mary too, without fail--I should
like to hear from them all, and from Fanny. There has been a young man
here in hospital, from Farmingdale; he was wounded; his name is
Hendrickson; he has gone home on a furlough; he knows the Van Nostrands
very well--I told him to go and see Aunt Fanny. I was glad you gave Emma
Price my direction here; I should [like] to hear from Mrs. Price and her
girls first rate, I think a great deal about them--and mother, I wish you
to tell any of them so; they always used me first rate, and always stuck
up for me--if I knew their street and number I should write.
It has been awful hot here now for twenty-one days; ain't that a spell of
weather? The first two weeks I got along better than I would have thought,
but the last week I have felt it more, have felt it in my head a little--I
no more stir without my umbrella, in the day time, than I would without my
boots. I am afraid of the sun affecting my head and move pretty cautious.
Mother, I think every day, I wonder if the hot weather is affecting mother
much; I suppose it must a good deal, but I hope it cannot last much
longer. Mother, I had a letter in the N. Y. _Times_ of last Sunday--did
you see it? I wonder if George can't get a furlough and come home for a
while; that furlough he had was only a flea-bite. If he could it would be
no more than right, for no man in the country has done his duty more
faithful, and without complaining of anything or asking for anything, than
George. I suppose they will fill up the 51st with conscripts, as that
seems the order of the day--a good many are arriving here, from the North,
and passing through to join Meade's army. We are expecting to hear of more
rows in New York about the draft; it commences there right away I
see--this time it will be no such doings as a month or five weeks ago; the
Gov't here is forwarding a large force of regulars to New York to be ready
for anything that may happen--there will be no blank cartridges this time.
Well, I thought when I first heard of the riot in N. Y. I had some
feeling for them, but soon as I found what it really was, I felt it was
the devil's own work all through. I guess the strong arm will be exhibited
this time up to the shoulder. Mother, I want to see you and all very much.
As I wish to be here at the opening of Congress, and during the winter, I
have an idea I will try to come home for a month, but I don't know when--I
want to see the young ones and Mat and Jeff and everybody. Well, mother, I
should like to know all the domestic affairs at home; don't you have the
usual things eating, etc.? Why, mother, I should think you would eat
nearly all your meals with Mat--I know you must when they have anything
good (and I know Mat will have good things if she has got a cent left).
Mother, don't you miss _Walt_ loafing around, and carting himself off to
New York toward the latter part of every afternoon? How do you and the
Browns get along?--that hell hole over the way, what a nuisance it must be
nights, and I generally have a very good sleep. Mother, I suppose you
sleep in the back room yet--I suppose the new houses next door are
occupied. How I should like to take a walk on old Fort Greene--tell
Mannahatta her Uncle Walt will be home yet, from the sick soldiers, and
have a good walk all around, if she behaves to her grandmother and don't
cut up. Mother, I am scribbling this hastily in Major Hapgood's office; it
is not so hot to-day, quite endurable. I send you my love, dear mother,
and to all, and wish Jeff and you to write as often as you can.
WALT.
XX
_Washington, Aug. 25, 1863._ DEAR MOTHER--The letter from George, and your
lines, and a few from Jeff came yesterday, and I was glad indeed to be
certain that George had got back to Kentucky safe and well--while so many
fall that we know, or, what is about as bad, get sick or hurt in the
fight, and lay in hospital, it seems almost a miracle that George should
have gone through so much, South and North and East and West, and been in
so many hard-fought battles, and thousands of miles of weary and
exhausting marches, and yet have stood it so, and be yet alive and in good
health and spirits. O mother, what would we [have] done if it had been
otherwise--if he had met the fate of so many we know--if he had been
killed or badly hurt in some of those battles? I get thinking about it
sometimes, and it works upon me so I have to stop and turn my mind on
something else. Mother, I feel bad enough about Andrew, and I know it must
be so with you too--one don't know what to do; if we had money he would be
welcome to it, if it would do any good. If George's money comes from
Kentucky this last time, and you think some of it would do Andrew any real
good, I advise you to take some and give him--I think it would be proper
and George would approve of it. I believe there is not much but trouble
in this world, and if one hasn't any for himself he has it made up by
having it brought close to him through others, and that is sometimes worse
than to have it touch one's self. Mother, you must not let Andrew's case
and the poor condition of his household comforts, etc., work upon you, for
I fear you will--but, mother, it's no use to worry about such things. I
have seen so much horrors that befall men (so bad and such suffering and
mutilations, etc., that the poor men can defy their fate to do anything
more or any harder misfortune or worse a-going) that I sometimes think I
have grown callous--but no, I don't think it is that, but nothing of
ordinary misfortune seems as it used to, and death itself has lost all its
terrors--I have seen so many cases in which it was so welcome and such a
relief.
Mother, you must just resign yourself to things that occur--but I hardly
think it is necessary to give you any charge about it, for I think you
have done so for many years, and stood it all with good courage.
We have a second attack of hot weather--Sunday was the most burning day I
ever yet saw. It is very dry and dusty here, but to-day we are having a
middling good breeze--I feel pretty well, and whenever the weather for a
day or so is passably cool I feel really first rate, so I anticipate the
cooler season with pleasure. Mother, I believe I wrote to you I had a
letter in N. Y. _Times_, Sunday, 16th--I shall try to write others and
more frequently. The three _Eagles_ came safe; I was glad to get them--I
sent them and another paper to George. Mother, none of you ever mention
whether you get my letters, but I suppose they come safe--it is not
impossible I may miss some week, but I have not missed a single one for
months past. I wish I could send you something worth while, and I wish I
could send something for Andrew--mother, write me exactly how it is with
him.... Mother, I have some idea Han is getting some better; it is only my
idea somehow--I hope it is so from the bottom of my heart. Did you hear
from Mary's Fanny since? And how are Mat's girls? So, Mannahatta, you tear
Uncle George's letters, do you? You mustn't do so, little girl, nor Uncle
Walt's either; but when you get to be a big girl you must have them all
nice, and read them, for Grandmother will perhaps leave them to you in her
will, if you behave like a lady. Matty, my dear sister, how are you
getting along? I really want to see you bad, and the baby too--well,
may-be we shall all come together and have some good times yet. Jeff, I
hope by next week this time we shall be in possession of Charleston--some
papers say Burnside is moving for Knoxville, but it is doubtful--I think
the 9th Corps might take a rest awhile, anyhow. Good-bye, mother.
WALT.
XXI
_Washington, Sept. 1, 1863._ DEAR MOTHER--I have been thinking to-day and
all yesterday about the draft in Brooklyn, and whether Jeff would be
drafted; you must some of you write me just as soon as you get this--I
want to know; I feel anxious enough I can tell you--and besides, it seems
a good while since I have received any letters from home. Of course it is
impossible for Jeff to go, in case it should turn out he was drafted--the
way our family is all situated now, it would be madness. If the Common
Council raise the money to exempt men with families dependent on them, I
think Jeff ought to have no scruples in taking advantage of it, as I think
he is in duty bound--but we will see what course to take, when we know the
result, etc.; write about it right away.
The _Eagles_ came; this is the second time; I am glad to get them--Jeff,
wait till you get four or five, and then send them with a two-cent stamp.
I have not had any letter from George. Mother, have you heard anything?
did the money come? Dear mother, how are you nowadays? I do hope you feel
well and in good spirits--I think about you every day of my life out here.
Sometimes I see women in the hospitals, mothers come to see their sons,
and occasionally one that makes me think of my dear mother--one did very
much, a lady about 60, from Pennsylvania, come to see her son, a captain,
very badly wounded and his wound gangrened, and they after a while
removed him to a tent by himself. Another son of hers, a young man, came
with her to see his brother. She was a pretty full-sized lady, with
spectacles; she dressed in black--looked real Velsory.[17] I got very well
acquainted with her; she had a real Long Island old-fashioned way--but I
had to avoid the poor captain, as it was that time that my hand was cut in
the artery, and I was liable to gangrene myself--but she and the two sons
have gone home now, but I doubt whether the wounded one is alive, as he
was very low. Mother, I want to hear about Andrew too, whether he went to
Rockland lake. You have no idea how many soldiers there are who have lost
their voices, and have to speak in whispers--there are a great many, I
meet some almost every day; as far as that alone is concerned, Andrew must
not be discouraged, as the general health may be good as common
irrespective of that. I do hope Andrew will get along better than he
thinks for--it is bad enough for a poor man to be out of health even
partially, but he must try to look on the bright side. Mother, have you
heard anything from Han since, or from Mary's folks? I got a letter from
Mrs. Price last week; if you see Emma tell her I was pleased to get it,
and shall answer it very soon. Mother, I have sent another letter to the
N. Y. _Times_--it may appear, if not to-day, within a few days. I am
feeling excellent well these days, it is so moderate and pleasant weather
now; I was getting real exhausted with the heat. I thought of you too, how
it must have exhausted you those hot days. I still occupy the same 3rd
story room, 394 L st., and get my breakfast in my room in the morning
myself, and dinner at a restaurant about 3 o'clock--I get along very well
and very economical (which is a forced put, but just as well). But I must
get another room or a boarding-house soon, as the folks are all going to
move this month. My good and real friends the O'Connors live in the same
block; I am in there every day. Dear mother, tell Mat and Miss Mannahatta
I send them my love--I want to see them both. O how I want to see Jeff and
you, mother; I sometimes feel as if I should just get in the cars and come
home--and the baby too, you must always write about her. Dear mother,
good-bye for present.
WALT.
XXII
_Washington, Sept. 8, 1863, Tuesday morning._ DEAREST MOTHER--I wrote to
Jeff Sunday last that his letter sent Sept. 3rd, containing your letter
and $5 from Mr. Lane, had miscarried--this morning when I came down to
Major Hapgood's office I found it on my table, so it is all
right--singular where it has been all this while, as I see the postmark on
it is Brooklyn, Sept. 3, as Jeff said. Mother, what to do about Andrew I
hardly know--as it is I feel about as much pity for you as I do for my
poor brother Andrew, for I know you will worry yourself about him all the
time. I was in hopes it was only the trouble about the voice, etc., but I
see I was mistaken, and it is probably worse. I know you and Jeff and Mat
will do all you can--and will have patience with all (it is not only the
sick who are poorly off, but their friends; but it is best to have the
greatest forbearance, and do and give, etc., whatever one can--but you
know that, and practice it too, dear mother). Mother, if I had the means,
O how cheerfully I would give them, whether they availed anything for
Andrew or not--yet I have long made up my mind that money does not amount
to so much, at least not so very much, in serious cases of sickness; it is
judgment both in the person himself, and in those he has to do with--and
good heart in everything. (Mother, you remember Theodore Gould, how he
stuck it out, though sickness and death has had hold of him, as you may
say, for fifteen years.) But anyhow, I hope we will all do what we can for
Andrew. Mother, I think I must try to come home for a month--I have not
given up my project of lecturing I spoke about before, but shall put it in
practice yet; I feel clear it will succeed enough. (I wish I had some of
the money already; it would be satisfaction to me to contribute something
to Andrew's necessities, for he must have bread.) I will write to you, of
course, before I come. Mother, I hope you will live better--Jeff tells me
you and Jess and Ed live on poor stuff, you are so economical. Mother, you
mustn't do so as long as you have a cent--I hope you will, at least four
or five times a week, have a steak of beef or mutton, or something
substantial for dinner. I have one good meal of that kind every day, or at
least five or six days out of the seven--but for breakfast I have nothing
but a cup of tea and some bread or crackers (first-rate tea though, with
milk and good white sugar). Well, I find it is hearty enough--more than
half the time I never eat anything after dinner, and when I do it is only
a cracker and cup of tea. Mother, I hope you will not stint yourselves--as
to using George's money for your and Jess's and Ed's needful living
expenses, I know George would be mad and hurt in his feelings if he
thought you was afraid to. Mother, you have a comfortable time as much as
you can, and get a steak occasionally, won't you? I suppose Mat got her
letter last Saturday; I sent it Friday. O I was so pleased that Jeff was
not drawn, and I know how Mat must have felt too; I have no idea the
Government will try to draft again, whatever happens--they have carried
their point, but have not made much out of it. O how the conscripts and
substitutes are deserting down in front and on their way there--you don't
hear anything about it, but it is incredible--they don't allow it to get
in the papers. Mother, I was so glad to get your letter; you must write
again--can't you write to-morrow, so I can get it Friday or
Saturday?--you know though you wrote more than a week ago I did not get it
till this morning. I wish Jeff to write too, as often as he can. Mother, I
was gratified to hear you went up among the soldiers--they are rude in
appearance, but they know what is decent, and it pleases them much to have
folks, even old women, take an interest and come among them. Mother, you
must go again, and take Mat. Well, dear mother, I must close. I am first
rate in health, so much better than a month and two months ago--my hand
has entirely healed. I go to hospital every day or night--I believe no men
ever loved each other as I and some of these poor wounded sick and dying
men love each other. Good-bye, dearest mother, for present.
WALT.
_Tuesday afternoon._ Mother, it seems to be certain that Meade has gained
the day, and that the battles there in Pennsylvania have been about as
terrible as any in the war--I think the killed and wounded there on both
sides were as many as eighteen or twenty thousand--in one place, four or
five acres, there were a thousand dead at daybreak on Saturday morning.
Mother, one's heart grows sick of war, after all, when you see what it
really is; every once in a while I feel so horrified and disgusted--it
seems to me like a great slaughter-house and the men mutually butchering
each other--then I feel how impossible it appears, again, to retire from
this contest, until we have carried our points (it is cruel to be so
tossed from pillar to post in one's judgment). Washington is a pleasant
place in some respects--it has the finest trees, and plenty of them
everywhere, on the streets and grounds. The Capitol grounds, though small,
have the finest cultivated trees I ever see--there is a great variety, and
not one but is in perfect condition. After I finish this letter I am going
out there for an hour's recreation. The great sights of Washington are the
public buildings, the wide streets, the public grounds, the trees, the
Smithsonian institute and grounds. I go to the latter occasionally--the
institute is an old fogy concern, but the grounds are fine. Sometimes I go
up to Georgetown, about two and a half miles up the Potomac, an old
town--just opposite it in the river is an island, where the niggers have
their first Washington reg't encamped. They make a good show, are often
seen in the streets of Washington in squads. Since they have begun to
carry arms, the Secesh here and in Georgetown (about three fifths) are not
insulting to them as formerly.
One of the things here always on the go is long trains of army
wagons--sometimes they will stream along all day; it almost seems as if
there was nothing else but army wagons and ambulances. They have great
camps here in every direction, of army wagons, teamsters, ambulance camps,
etc.; some of them are permanent, and have small hospitals. I go to them
(as no one else goes; ladies would not venture). I sometimes have the
luck to give some of the drivers a great deal of comfort and help. Indeed,
mother, there are camps here of everything--I went once or twice to the
contraband camp, to the hospital, etc., but I could not bring myself to go
again--when I meet black men or boys among my own hospitals, I use them
kindly, give them something, etc.--I believe I told you that I do the same
to the wounded Rebels, too--but as there is a limit to one's sinews and
endurance and sympathies, etc., I have got in the way, after going
lightly, as it were, all through the wards of a hospital, and trying to
give a word of cheer, if nothing else, to every one, then confining my
special attentions to the few where the investment seems to tell best, and
who want it most. Mother, I have real pride in telling you that I have the
consciousness of saving quite a number of lives by saving them from giving
up--and being a good deal with them; the men say it is so, and the doctors
say it is so--and I will candidly confess I can see it is true, though I
say it of myself. I know you will like to hear it, mother, so I tell you.
I am finishing this in Major Hapgood's office, about 1 o'clock--it is
pretty warm, but has not cleared off yet. The trees look so well from
where I am, and the Potomac--it is a noble river; I see it several miles,
and the Arlington heights. Mother, I see some of the 47th Brooklyn every
day or two; the reg't is on the heights back of Arlington house, a fine
camp ground. O Matty, I have just thought of you--dear sister, how are
you getting along? Jeff, I will write you truly. Good-bye for the
present, dearest mother, and all.
WALT.
XXIII
_Washington, Sept. 15, 1863._ DEAR MOTHER--Your letters were very
acceptable--one came just as I was putting my last in the post office--I
guess they all come right. I have written to Han and George and sent
George papers. Mother, have you heard anything whether the 51st went on
with Burnside, or did they remain as a reserve in Kentucky? Burnside has
managed splendidly so far, his taking Knoxville and all together--it is a
first-class success. I have known Tennessee Union men here in hospital,
and I understand it, therefore--the region where Knoxville is is mainly
Union, but the Southerners could not exist without it, as it is in their
midst, so they determined to pound and kill and crush out the
Unionists--all the savage and monstrous things printed in the papers about
their treatment are true, at least that kind of thing is, as bad as the
Irish in the mob treated the poor niggers in New York. We North don't
understand some things about Southerners; it is very strange, the
contrast--if I should pick out the most genuine Union men and real
patriots I have ever met in all my experience, I should pick out two or
three Tennessee and Virginia Unionists I have met in the hospitals,
wounded or sick. One young man I guess I have mentioned to you in my
letters, John Barker, 2nd Tennessee Vol. (Union), was a long while a
prisoner in Secesh prisons in Georgia, and in Richmond--three times the
devils hung him up by the heels to make him promise to give up his
Unionism; once he was cut down for dead. He is a young married man with
one child. His little property destroyed, his wife and child turned
out--he hunted and tormented--and any moment he could have had anything if
he would join the Confederacy--but he was firm as a rock; he would not
even take an oath to not fight for either side. They held him about eight
months--then he was very sick, scurvy, and they exchanged him and he came
up from Richmond here to hospital; here I got acquainted with him. He is a
large, slow, good-natured man, somehow made me often think of father;
shrewd, very little to say--wouldn't talk to anybody but me. His whole
thought was to get back and fight; he was not fit to go, but he has gone
back to Tennessee. He spent two days with his wife and young one there,
and then to his regiment--he writes to me frequently and I to him; he is
not fit to soldier, for the Rebels have destroyed his health and strength
(though he is only 23 or 4), but nothing will keep him from his regiment,
and fighting--he is uneducated, but as sensible a young man as I ever met,
and understands the whole question. Well, mother, Jack Barker is the most
genuine Union man I have ever yet met. I asked him once very gravely why
he didn't take the Southern oath and get his liberty--if he didn't think
he was foolish to be so stiff, etc. I never saw such a look as he gave me,
he thought I was in earnest--the old devil himself couldn't have had put a
worse look in his eyes. Mother, I have no doubt there are quite a good
many just such men. He is down there with his regiment (one of his
brothers was killed)--when he fails in strength he gets the colonel to
detach him to do teamster's duty for a few days, on a march till he
recruits his strength--but he always carries his gun with him--in a battle
he is always in the ranks--then he is so sensible, such decent manly ways,
nothing shallow or mean (he must have been a giant in health, but now he
is weaker, has a cough too). Mother, can you wonder at my getting so
attached to such men, with such love, especially when they show it to
me--some of them on their dying beds, and in the very hour of death, or
just the same when they recover, or partially recover? I never knew what
American young men were till I have been in the hospitals. Well, mother, I
have got writing on--there is nothing new with me, just the same old
thing, as I suppose it is with you there. Mother, how is Andrew? I wish to
hear all about him--I do hope he is better, and that it will not prove
anything so bad. I will write to him soon myself, but in the meantime you
must tell him to not put so much faith in medicine--drugs, I mean--as in
the true curative things; namely, diet and careful habits, breathing good
air, etc. You know I wrote in a former letter what is the cause and
foundation of the diseases of the throat and what must be the remedy that
goes to the bottom of the thing--sudden attacks are to be treated with
applications and medicines, but diseases of a seated character are not to
be cured by them, only perhaps a little relieved (and often aggravated,
made firmer).
Dearest mother, I hope you yourself are well, and getting along good.
About the letter in the _Times_, I see ever since I sent they have been
very crowded with news that must be printed--I think they will give it
yet. I hear there is a new paper in Brooklyn, or to be one--I wish Jeff
would send me some of the first numbers without fail, and a stray _Eagle_
in same parcel to make up the 4 ounces. I am glad to hear Mat was going to
write me a good long letter--every letter from home is so good, when one
is away (I often see the men crying in the hospital when they get a
letter). Jeff too, I want him to write whenever he can, and not forget the
new paper. We are having pleasant weather here; it is such a relief from
that awful heat (I can't think of another such siege without feeling sick
at the thought).
Mother, I believe I told you I had written to Mrs. Price--do you see Emma?
Are the soldiers still on Fort Greene? Well, mother, I have writ quite a
letter--it is between 2 and 3 o'clock--I am in Major Hapgood's all
alone--from my window I see all the Potomac, and all around
Washington--Major and all gone down to the army to pay troops, and I keep
house. I am invited to dinner to-day at 4 o'clock at a Mr. Boyle's--I am
going (hope we shall have something good). Dear mother, I send you my
love, and some to Jeff and Mat and all, not forgetting Mannahatta (who I
hope is a help and comfort to her grandmother). Well, I must scratch off
in a hurry, for it is nearly an hour [later] than I thought. Good-bye for
the present, dear mother.
WALT.
XXIV
_Washington, Sept. 29, 1863._ DEAR MOTHER--Well, here I sit this forenoon
in a corner by the window in Major Hapgood's office, all the Potomac, and
Maryland, and Virginia hills in sight, writing my Tuesday letter to you,
dearest mother. Major has gone home to Boston on sick leave, and only the
clerk and me occupy the office, and he not much of the time. At the
present moment there are two wounded officers come in to get their
pay--one has crutches; the other is drest in the light-blue uniform of the
invalid corps. Way up here on the 5th floor it is pretty hard scratching
for cripples and very weak men to journey up here--often they come up here
very weary and faint, and then find out they can't get their money, some
red-tape hitch, and the poor soldiers look so disappointed--it always
makes me feel bad.
Mother, we are having perfect weather here nowadays, both night and day.
The nights are wonderful; for the last three nights as I have walked home
from the hospital pretty late, it has seemed to me like a dream, the moon
and sky ahead of anything I ever see before. Mother, do you hear anything
from George? I wrote to him yesterday and sent him your last letter, and
Jeff's enclosed--I shall send him some papers to-day--I send him papers
quite often. (Why hasn't Jeff sent me the _Union_ with my letter in? I
want much to see it, and whether they have misprinted it.)
Mother, I don't think the 51st has been in any of the fighting we know of
down there yet--what is to come of course nobody can tell. As to Burnside,
I suppose you know he is among his _friends_, and I think this quite
important, for such the main body of East Tennesseans are, and are far
truer Americans anyhow than the Copperheads of the North. The Tennesseans
will fight for us too. Mother, you have no idea how the soldiers, sick,
etc. (I mean the American ones, to a man) all feel about the Copperheads;
they never speak of them without a curse, and I hear them say, with an air
that shows they mean it, they would shoot them sooner than they would a
Rebel. Mother, the troops from Meade's army are passing through here night
and day, going West and so down to reinforce Rosecrans I suppose--the
papers are not permitted to mention it, but it is so. Two Army Corps, I
should think, have mostly passed--they go through night and day--I hear
the whistle of the locomotive screaming away any time at night when I wake
up, and the rumbling of the trains.
Mother dear, you must write to me soon, and so must Jeff. I thought Mat
was going to send me a great long letter--I am always looking for it; I
hope it will be full of everything about family matters and doings, and
how everybody really is. I go to Major's box three or four times a day. I
want to hear also about Andrew, and indeed about every one of you and
everything--nothing is too trifling, nothing uninteresting.
O mother, who do you think I got a letter from, two or three days ago?
Aunt Fanny, Ansel's mother--she sent it by a young man, a wounded soldier
who has been home to Farmingdale on furlough, and lately returned. She
writes a first-rate letter, Quaker all over--I shall answer it. She says
Mary and Ansel and all are well. I have received another letter from Mrs.
Price--she has not good health. I am sorry for her from my heart; she is a
good, noble woman, no better kind. Mother, I am in the hospitals as
usual--I stand it better the last three weeks than ever before--I go among
the worst fevers and wounds with impunity. I go among the smallpox, etc.,
just the same--I feel to go without apprehension, and so I go. Nobody else
goes; and as the darkey said there at Charleston when the boat run on a
flat and the Reb sharpshooters were peppering them, "somebody must jump in
de water and shove de boat off."
WALT.
XXV
_Washington, Oct. 6, 1863._ DEAREST MOTHER--Your letter and George's came
safe--dear brother George, one don't more than get a letter from him
before you want to hear again, especially as things are looking pretty
stormy that way--but mother, I rather lean to the opinion that the 51st is
still in Kentucky, at or near where George last wrote; but of course that
is only my guess. I send George papers and occasionally letters. Mother, I
sent him enclosed your letter before the last, though you said in it not
to tell him how much money he had home, as you wanted to surprise him; but
I sent it. Mother, I think Rosecrans and Burnside will be too much for the
Rebels down there yet. I myself make a great acc't of Burnside being in
the midst of _friends_, and such friends too--they will fight and fight up
to the handle, and kill somebody (it seems as if it was coming to that
pass where we will either have to destroy or be destroyed). Mother, I wish
you would write soon after you get this, or Jeff or Mat must, and tell me
about Andrew, if there is anything different with him--I think about him
every day and night. I believe I must come home, even if it is only for a
week--I want to see you all very much. Mother, I know you must have a
great deal to harass and trouble you; I don't mean about Andrew
personally, for I know you would feel to give your life to save his, and
do anything to nourish him, but about the children and Nancy--but, mother,
you must not let anything chafe you, and you must not be squeamish about
saying firmly at times not to have little Georgy too much to trouble you
(poor little fellow, I have no doubt he will be a pleasanter child when he
grows older); and while you are pleasant with Nancy you must be
sufficiently plain with her--only, mother, I know you will, and Jeff and
Mat will too, be invariably good to Andrew, and not mind his being
irritable at times; it is his disease, and then his temper is naturally
fretful, but it is such a misfortune to have such sickness--and always do
anything for him that you can in reason. Mat, my dear sister, I know you
will, for I know your nature is to come out a first-class girl in times of
trouble and sickness, and do anything. Mother, you don't know how pleased
I was to read what you wrote about little Sis. I want to see her so bad I
don't know what to do; I know she must be just the best young one on Long
Island--but I hope it will not be understood as meaning any slight or
disrespect to Miss Hat, nor to put her nose out of joint, because Uncle
Walt, I hope, has heart and gizzard big enough for both his little nieces
and as many more as the Lord may send.
Mother, I am writing this in Major Hapgood's office, as usual. I am all
alone to-day--Major is still absent, unwell, and the clerk is away
somewhere. O how pleasant it is here--the weather I mean--and other things
too, for that matter. I still occupy my little room, 394 L st.; get my own
breakfast there; had good tea this morning, and some nice biscuit
(yesterday morning and day before had peaches cut up). My friends the
O'Connors that I wrote about recommenced cooking the 1st of this month
(they have been, as usual in summer, taking their meals at a family hotel
near by). Saturday they sent for me to breakfast, and Sunday I eat dinner
with them--very good dinner, roast beef, lima beans, good potatoes, etc.
They are truly friends to me. I still get my dinner at a restaurant
usually. I have a very good plain dinner, which is the only meal of any
account I make during the day; but it is just as well, for I would be in
danger of getting fat on the least encouragement, and I have no ambition
that way. Mother, it is lucky I like Washington in many respects, and that
things are upon the whole pleasant personally, for every day of my life I
see enough to make one's heart ache with sympathy and anguish here in the
hospitals, and I do not know as I could stand it if it was not
counterbalanced outside. It is curious, when I am present at the most
appalling things--deaths, operations, sickening wounds (perhaps full of
maggots)--I do not fail, although my sympathies are very much excited, but
keep singularly cool; but often hours afterward, perhaps when I am home
or out walking alone, I feel sick and actually tremble when I recall the
thing and have it in my mind again before me. Mother, did you see my
letter in the N. Y. _Times_ of Sunday, Oct. 4? That was the long-delayed
letter. Mother, I am very sorry Jeff did not send me the _Union_ with my
letter in--I wish very much he could do so yet; and always when I have a
letter in a paper I would like to have one sent. If you take the _Union_,
send me some once in a while. Mother, was it Will Brown sent me those?
Tell him if so I was much obliged; and if he or Mr. and Mrs. Brown take
any interest in hearing my scribblings, mother, you let them read the
letters, of course. O, I must not close without telling you the highly
important intelligence that I have cut my hair and beard--since the event
Rosecrans, Charleston, etc., etc., have among my acquaintances been hardly
mentioned, being insignificant themes in comparison. Jeff, my dearest
brother, I have been going to write you a good gossipy letter for two or
three weeks past; will try to yet, so it will reach you for Sunday
reading--so good-bye, Jeff, and good-bye for present, mother dear, and
all, and tell Andrew he must not be discouraged yet.
WALT.
XXVI
_Washington, Oct. 11, 1863._ DEAR FRIEND[18]--Your letters were both
received, and were indeed welcome. Don't mind my not answering them
promptly, for you know what a wretch I am about such things. But you must
write just as often as you conveniently can. Tell me all about your folks,
especially the girls, and about Mr. A. Of course you won't forget
Arthur,[19] and always when you write to him send my love. Tell me about
Mrs. U. and the dear little rogues. Tell Mrs. B. she ought to be here,
hospital matron, only it is a harder pull than folks anticipate. You wrote
about Emma;[20] she thinks she might and ought to come as nurse for the
soldiers. Dear girl, I know it would be a blessed thing for the men to
have her loving spirit and hand, and whoever of the poor fellows had them
would indeed think it so. But, my darling, it is a dreadful thing--you
don't know these wounds, sickness, etc., the sad condition in which many
of the men are brought here, and remain for days; sometimes the wounds
full of crawling corruption, etc. Down in the field-hospitals in front
they have no proper care (can't have), and after a battle go for many days
unattended to.
Abby, I think often about you and the pleasant days, the visits I used to
pay you, and how good it was always to be made so welcome. O, I wish I
could come in this afternoon and have a good tea with you, and have three
or four hours of mutual comfort, and rest and talk, and be all of us
together again. Is Helen home and well? and what is she doing now? And
you, my dear friend, how sorry I am to hear that your health is not
rugged--but, dear Abby, you must not dwell on anticipations of the worst
(but I know that is not your nature, or did not use to be). I hope this
will find you quite well and in good spirits. I feel so well myself--I
will have to come and see you, I think--I am so fat, out considerable in
the open air, and all red and tanned worse than ever. You see, therefore,
that my life amid these sad and death-stricken hospitals has not told upon
me, for I am this fall so running over with health, and I feel as if I
ought to go on, on that account, working among all the sick and deficient;
and O how gladly I would bestow upon you a liberal share of my health,
dear Abby, if such a thing were possible.
I am continually moving around among the hospitals. One I go to oftenest
the last three months is "Armory-square," as it is large, generally full
of the worst wounds and sickness, and is among the least visited. To this
or some other I never miss a day or evening. I am enabled to give the men
something, and perhaps some trifle to their supper all around. Then there
are always special cases calling for something special. Above all the poor
boys welcome magnetic friendship, personality (some are so fervent, so
hungering for this)--poor fellows, how young they are, lying there with
their pale faces, and that mute look in their eyes. O, how one gets to
love them--often, particular cases, so suffering, so good, so manly and
affectionate! Abby, you would all smile to see me among them--many of them
like children. Ceremony is mostly discarded--they suffer and get exhausted
and so weary--not a few are on their dying beds--lots of them have grown
to expect, as I leave at night, that we should kiss each other, sometimes
quite a number; I have to go round, poor boys. There is little petting in
a soldier's life in the field, but, Abby, I know what is in their hearts,
always waiting, though they may be unconscious of it themselves.
I have a place where I buy very nice homemade biscuits, sweet crackers,
etc. Among others, one of my ways is to get a good lot of these, and, for
supper, go through a couple of wards and give a portion to each man--next
day two wards more, and so on. Then each marked case needs something to
itself. I spend my evenings altogether at the hospitals--my days often. I
give little gifts of money in small sums, which I am enabled to do--all
sorts of things indeed, food, clothing, letter-stamps (I write lots of
letters), now and then a good pair of crutches, etc., etc. Then I read to
the boys. The whole ward that can walk gathers around me and listens.
All this I tell you, my dear, because I know it will interest you. I like
Washington very well. (Did you see my last letter in the New York _Times_
of October 4th, Sunday?) I have three or four hours' work every day
copying, and in writing letters for the press, etc.; make enough to pay my
way--live in an inexpensive manner anyhow. I like the mission I am on
here, and as it deeply holds me I shall continue.
_October 15._ Well, Abby, I guess I send you letter enough. I ought to
have finished and sent off the letter last Sunday, when it was written. I
have been pretty busy. We are having new arrivals of wounded and sick now
all the time--some very bad cases. Abby, should you come across any one
who feels to help contribute to the men through me, write me. (I may then
send word some purchases I should find acceptable for the men). But this
only if it happens to come in that you know or meet any one, perfectly
convenient. Abby, I have found some good friends here, a few, but true as
steel--W. D. O'Connor and wife above all. He is a clerk in the
Treasury--she is a Yankee girl. Then C. W. Eldridge[21] in Paymaster's
Department. He is a Boston boy, too--their friendship has been unswerving.
In the hospitals, among these American young men, I could not describe to
you what mutual attachments, and how passing deep and tender these boys.
Some have died, but the love for them lives as long as I draw breath.
These soldiers know how to love too, when once they have the right person
and the right love offered them. It is wonderful. You see I am running off
into the clouds, but this is my element. Abby, I am writing this note this
afternoon in Major H's office--he is away sick--I am here a good deal of
the time alone. It is a dark rainy afternoon--we don't know what is going
on down in front, whether Meade is getting the worst of it or not--(but
the result of the big elections cheers us). I believe fully in
Lincoln--few know the rocks and quicksands he has to steer through. I
enclose you a note Mrs. O'C. handed me to send you--written, I suppose,
upon impulse. She is a noble Massachusetts woman, is not very rugged in
health--I am there very much--her husband and I are great friends too.
Well, I will close--the rain is pouring, the sky leaden, it is between 2
and 3. I am going to get some dinner, and then to the hospital. Good-bye,
dear friends, and I send my love to all.
WALT.
XXVII
_Washington, Oct. 13, 1863._ DEAREST MOTHER--Nothing particular new with
me. I am well and hearty--think a good deal about home. Mother, I so much
want to see you, even if only for a couple of weeks, for I feel I must
return here and continue my hospital operations. They are so much needed,
although one can do only such a little in comparison, amid these
thousands. Then I desire much to see Andrew. I wonder if I could cheer him
up any. Does he get any good from that treatment with the baths, etc.?
Mother, I suppose you have your hands full with Nancy's poor little
children, and one worry and another (when one gets old little things
bother a great deal). Mother, I go down every day looking for a letter
from you or Jeff--I had two from Jeff latter part of the week. I want to
see Jeff much. I wonder why he didn't send me the _Union_ with my letter
in; I am disappointed at not getting it. I sent Han a N. Y. _Times_ with
my last letter, and one to George too. Have you heard anything from George
or Han? There is a new lot of wounded now again. They have been arriving
sick and wounded for three days--first long strings of ambulances with the
sick, but yesterday many with bad and bloody wounds, poor fellows. I
thought I was cooler and more used to it, but the sight of some of them
brought tears into my eyes. Mother, I had the good luck yesterday to do
quite a great deal of good. I had provided a lot of nourishing things for
the men, but for another quarter--but I had them where I could use them
immediately for these new wounded as they came in faint and hungry, and
fagged out with a long rough journey, all dirty and torn, and many pale
as ashes and all bloody. I distributed all my stores, gave partly to the
nurses I knew that were just taking charge of them--and as many as I could
I fed myself. Then besides I found a lot of oyster soup handy, and I
procured it all at once. Mother, it is the most pitiful sight, I think,
when first the men are brought in. I have to bustle round, to keep from
crying--they are such rugged young men--all these just arrived are cavalry
men. Our troops got the worst of it, but fought like devils. Our men
engaged were Kilpatrick's Cavalry. They were in the rear as part of
Meade's retreat, and the Reb cavalry cut in between and cut them off and
attacked them and shelled them terribly. But Kilpatrick brought them out
mostly--this was last Sunday.
Mother, I will try to come home before long, if only for six or eight
days. I wish to see you, and Andrew--I wish to see the young ones; and
Mat, you must write. I am about moving. I have been hunting for a room
to-day--I shall [write] next [time] how I succeed. Good-bye for present,
dear mother.
WALT.
XXVIII
_Washington, Oct. 20, 1863._ DEAREST MOTHER--I got your last letter Sunday
morning, though it was dated Thursday night. Mother, I suppose you got a
letter from me Saturday last, as I sent one the day before, as I was
concerned about Andrew. If I thought it would be any benefit to Andrew I
should certainly leave everything else and come back to Brooklyn. Mother,
do you recollect what I wrote last summer about throat diseases, when
Andrew was first pretty bad? Well, that's the whole groundwork of the
business; any true physician would confirm it. There is no great charm
about such things; as to any costly and mysterious baths, there are no
better baths than warm water, or vapor (and perhaps sulphur vapor). There
is nothing costly or difficult about them; one can have a very good
sweating bath, at a pinch, by having a pan of warm water under a chair
with a couple of blankets around him to enclose the vapor, and heating a
couple of bricks or stones or anything to put in one after another, and
sitting on the chair--it is a very wholesome sweat, too, and not to be
sneezed at if one wishes to do what is salutary, and thinks of the sense
of a thing, and not what others do. Andrew mustn't be discouraged; those
diseases are painful and tedious, but he can recover, and will yet. Dear
mother, I sent your last letter to George, with a short one I wrote
myself. I sent it yesterday. I sent a letter last Wednesday (14th) to him
also, hoping that if one don't reach him another will. Hasn't Jeff seen
Capt. Sims or Lieut. McReady yet, and don't they hear whether the 51st is
near Nicholasville, Kentucky, yet? I send George papers now and then.
Mother, one of your letters contains part of my letter to the _Union_ (I
wish I could have got the whole of it). It seems to me mostly as I
intended it, barring a few slight misprints. Was my last name signed at
the bottom of it? Tell me when you write next. Dear mother, I am real
sorry, and mad too, that the water works people have cut Jeff's wages down
to $50; this is a pretty time to cut a man's wages down, the mean old
punkin heads. Mother, I can't understand it at all; tell me more of the
particulars. Jeff, I often wish you was on here; you would be better
appreciated--there are big salaries paid here sometimes to civil
engineers. Jeff, I know a fellow, E. C. Stedman; has been here till
lately; is now in Wall street. He is poor, but he is in with the big
bankers, Hallett & Co., who are in with Fremont in his line of Pacific
railroad. I can get his (Stedman's) address, and should you wish it any
time I will give you a letter to him. I shouldn't wonder if the big men,
with Fremont at head, were going to push their route works, road, etc.,
etc., in earnest, and if a fellow could get a good managing place in it,
why it might be worth while. I think after Jeff has been with the Brooklyn
w[ater] w[orks] from the beginning, and so faithful and so really
valuable, to put down to $50--the mean, low-lived old shoats! I have felt
as indignant about it, the meanness of the thing, and mighty inconvenient,
too--$40 a month makes a big difference. Mother, I hope Jeff won't get and
keep himself in a perpetual fever, with all these things and others and
botherations, both family and business ones. If he does, he will just wear
himself down before his time comes. I do hope, Jeff, you will take things
equally all round, and not brood or think too deeply. So I go on giving
you all good advice. O mother, I must tell you how I get along in my new
quarters. I have moved to a new room, 456 Sixth street, not far from
Pennsylvania avenue (the big street here), and not far from the Capitol.
It is in the 3d story, an addition back; seems to be going to prove a very
good winter room, as it is right under the roof and looks south; has low
windows, is plenty big enough; I have gas. I think the lady will prove a
good woman. She is old and feeble. (There is a little girl of 4 or 5; I
hear her sometimes calling _Grandma, Grandma_, just exactly like Hat; it
made me think of you and Hat right away.) One thing is I am quite by
myself; there is no passage up there except to my room, and right off
against my side of the house is a great old yard with grass and some trees
back, and the sun shines in all day, etc., and it smells sweet, and good
air--good big bed; I sleep first rate. There is a young wench of 12 or 13,
Lucy (the niggers here are the best and most amusing creatures you ever
see)--she comes and goes, gets water, etc. She is pretty much the only one
I see. Then I believe the front door is not locked at all at night. (In
the other place the old thief, the landlord, had two front doors, with
four locks and bolts on one and three on the other--and a big bulldog in
the back yard. We were well fortified, I tell you. Sometimes I had an
awful time at night getting in.) I pay $10 a month; this includes gas, but
not fuel. Jeff, you can come on and see me easy now. Mother, to give you
an idea of prices here, while I was looking for rooms, about like our two
in Wheeler's houses (2nd story), nothing extra about them, either in
location or anything, and the rent was $60 a month. Yet, quite curious,
vacant houses here are not so very dear; very much the same as in
Brooklyn. Dear mother, Jeff wrote in his letter latter part of last week,
you was real unwell with a very bad cold (and that you didn't have enough
good meals). Mother, I hope this will find you well and in good spirits. I
think about you every day and night. Jeff thinks you show your age more,
and failing like. O my dear mother, you must not think of failing yet. I
hope we shall have some comfortable years yet. Mother, don't allow things,
troubles, to take hold of you; write a few lines whenever you can; tell me
exactly how things are. Mother, I am first rate and well--only a little of
that deafness again. Good-bye for present.
WALT.
XXIX
_Washington, Oct. 27, 1863._ DEAREST MOTHER,--Yours and George's letter
came, and a letter from Jeff too--all good. I had received a letter a day
or so before from George too. I am very glad he is at Camp Nelson,
Kentucky, and I hope and pray the reg't will be kept there--for God knows
they have tramped enough for the last two years, and fought battles and
been through enough. I have sent George papers to Camp Nelson, and will
write to-morrow. I send him the _Unions_ and the late New York papers.
Mother, you or Jeff write and tell me how Andrew is; I hope he will prove
to be better. Such complaints are sometimes very alarming for awhile, and
then take such a turn for the better. Common means and steadily pursuing
them, about diet especially, are so much more reliable than any course of
medicine whatever. Mother, I have written to Han; I sent her George's
letter to me, and wrote her a short letter myself. I sent it four or five
days ago. Mother, I am real pleased to hear Jeff's explanation how it is
that his wages is cut down, and that it was not as I fancied from the
meanness of the old coons in the board. I felt so indignant about it, as I
took it into my head, (though I don't know why) that it was done out of
meanness, and was a sort of insult. I was quite glad Jeff wrote a few
lines about it--and glad they appreciate Jeff, too. Mother, if any of my
soldier boys should ever call upon you (as they are often anxious to have
my address in Brooklyn) you just use them as you know how to without
ceremony, and if you happen to have pot luck and feel to ask them to take
a bite, don't be afraid to do so. There is one very good boy, Thos. Neat,
2nd N. Y. Cavalry, wounded in leg. He is now home on furlough--his folks
live, I think, in Jamaica. He is a noble boy. He may call upon you. (I
gave him here $1 toward buying his crutches, etc.) I like him very much.
Then possibly a Mr. Haskell, or some of his folks from Western New York,
may call--he had a son died here, a very fine boy. I was with him a good
deal, and the old man and his wife have written me, and asked me my
address in Brooklyn. He said he had children in N. Y. city and was
occasionally down there. Mother, when I come home I will show you some of
the letters I get from mothers, sisters, fathers, etc.--they will make you
cry. There is nothing new with my hospital doings--I was there yesterday
afternoon and evening, and shall be there again to-day. Mother, I should
like to hear how you are yourself--has your cold left you, and do you feel
better? Do you feel quite well again? I suppose you have your good stove
all fired up these days--we have had some real cool weather here. I must
rake up a little cheap second-hand stove for my room, for it was in the
bargain that I should get that myself. Mother, I like my place quite well,
better on nearly every account than my old room, but I see it will only do
for a winter room. They keep it clean, and the house smells clean, and the
room too. My old room, they just let everything lay where it was, and you
can fancy what a litter of dirt there was--still it was a splendid room
for air, for summer, as good as there is in Washington. I got a letter
from Mrs. Price this morning--does Emmy ever come to see you?
Matty, my dear sister, and Miss Mannahatta, and the little one (whose name
I don't know, and perhaps hasn't got any name yet), I hope you are all
well and having good times. I often, often think about you all. Mat, do
you go any to the Opera now? They say the new singers are so good--when I
come home we'll try to go. Mother, I am very well--have some cold in my
head and my ears stopt up yet, making me sometimes quite hard of hearing.
I am writing this in Major Hapgood's office. Last Sunday I took dinner at
my friends the O'Connors--had two roast chickens, stewed tomatoes,
potatoes, etc. I took dinner there previous Sunday also.
Well, dear mother, how the time passes away--to think it will soon be a
year I have been away! It has passed away very swiftly, somehow, to me. O
what things I have witnessed during that time--I shall never forget them.
And the war is not settled yet, and one does not see anything at all
certain about the settlement yet; but I have finally got for good, I
think, into the feeling that our triumph is assured, whether it be sooner
or whether it be later, or whatever roundabout way we are led there, and I
find I don't change that conviction from any reverses we meet, or any
delays or Government blunders. There are blunders enough, heaven knows,
but I am thankful things have gone on as well for us as they
have--thankful the ship rides safe and sound at all. Then I have finally
made up my mind that Mr. Lincoln has done as good as a human man could do.
I still think him a pretty big President. I realize here in Washington
that it has been a big thing to have just kept the United States from
being thrown down and having its throat cut; and now I have no doubt it
will throw down Secession and cut its throat--and I have not had any doubt
since Gettysburg. Well, dear, dear mother, I will draw to a close. Andrew
and Jeff and all, I send you my love. Good-bye, dear mother and dear Matty
and all hands.
WALT.
XXX
_Washington, Dec. 15, 1863._ DEAREST MOTHER--The last word I got from home
was your letter written the night before Andrew was buried--Friday night,
nearly a fortnight ago. I have not heard anything since from you or Jeff.
Mother, Major Hapgood has moved from his office, cor. 15th street, and I
am not with him any more. He has moved his office to his private room. I
am writing this in my room, 456 Sixth street, but my letters still come to
Major's care; they are to be addrest same as ever, as I can easily go and
get them out of his box (only nothing need be sent me any time to the old
office, as I am not there, nor Major either). Anything like a telegraphic
dispatch or express box or the like should be addrest 456 Sixth street,
3rd story, back room. Dear mother, I hope you are well and in good
spirits. I wish you would try to write to me everything about home and the
particulars of Andrew's funeral, and how you all are getting along. I have
not received the _Eagle_ with the little piece in. I was in hopes Jeff
would have sent it. I wish he would yet, or some of you would; I want to
see it. I think it must have been put in by a young man named Howard; he
is now editor of the _Eagle_, and is very friendly to me.
Mother, I am quite well. I have been out this morning early, went down
through the market; it is quite a curiosity--I bought some butter, tea,
etc. I have had my breakfast here in my room, good tea, bread and butter,
etc.
Mother, I think about you all more than ever--and poor Andrew, I often
think about him. Mother, write to me how Nancy and the little boys are
getting along. I got thinking last night about little California.[22] O
how I wished I had her here for an hour to take care of--dear little girl.
I don't think I ever saw a young one I took to so much--but I mustn't
slight Hattie; I like her too. Mother, I am still going among the
hospitals; there is plenty of need, just the same as ever. I go every day
or evening. I have not heard from George--I have no doubt the 51st is
still at Crab Orchard.
Mother, I hope you will try to write. I send you my love, and to Jeff and
Mat and all--so good-bye, dear mother.
WALT.
LETTERS OF 1864
I
_Washington, Friday afternoon, Jan. 29. '64._ DEAR MOTHER--Your letter of
Tuesday night came this forenoon--the one of Sunday night I received
yesterday. Mother, you don't say in either of them whether George has
re-enlisted or not--or is that not yet decided positively one way or the
other?
O mother, how I should like to be home (I don't want more than two or
three days). I want to see George (I have his photograph on the wall,
right over my table all the time), and I want to see California--you must
always write in your letters how she is. I shall write to Han this
afternoon or to-morrow morning and tell her probably George will come out
and see her, and that if he does you will send her word beforehand.
Jeff, my dear brother, if there should be the change made in the works,
and things all overturned, you mustn't mind--I dare say you will pitch
into something better. I believe a real overturn in the dead old beaten
track of a man's life, especially a young man's, is always likely to turn
out best, though it worries one at first dreadfully. Mat, I want to see
you most sincerely--they haven't put in anything in the last two or three
letters about you, but I suppose you are well, my dear sister.
Mother, the young man that I took care of, Lewis Brown, is pretty well,
but very restless--he is doing well now, but there is a long road before
him yet; it is torture for him to be tied so to his cot, this weather; he
is a very noble young man and has suffered very much. He is a Maryland boy
and (like the Southerners when they _are_ Union) I think he is as strong
and resolute a Union boy as there is in the United States. He went out in
a Maryland reg't, but transferred to a N. Y. battery. But I find so many
noble men in the ranks I have ceased to wonder at it. I think the soldiers
from the New England States and the Western States are splendid, and the
country parts of N. Y. and Pennsylvania too. I think less of the great
cities than I used to. I know there are black sheep enough even in the
ranks, but the general rule is the soldiers are noble, very.
Mother, I wonder if George thinks as I do about the best way to enjoy a
visit home, after all. When I come home again, I shall not go off
gallivanting with my companions half as much nor a quarter as much as I
used to, but shall spend the time quietly home with you while I do stay;
it is a great humbug spreeing around, and a few choice friends for a man,
the real right kind in a quiet way, are enough.
Mother, I hope you take things easy, don't you? Mother, you know I was
always advising you to let things go and sit down and take what comfort
you can while you do live. It is very warm here; this afternoon it is
warm enough for July--the sun burns where it shines on your face; it is
pretty dusty in the principal streets.
Congress is in session; I see Odell, Kalbfleisch, etc., often. I have got
acquainted with Mr. Garfield, an M. C. from Ohio, and like him very much
indeed (he has been a soldier West, and I believe a good brave one--was a
major general). I don't go much to the debates this session yet. Congress
will probably keep in session till well into the summer. As to what course
things will take, political or military, there's no telling. I think,
though, the Secesh military power is getting more and more shaky. How they
can make any headway against our new, large, and fresh armies next season
passes my wit to see.
Mother, I was talking with a pretty high officer here, who is behind the
scenes--I was mentioning that I had a great desire to be present at a
first-class battle; he told me if I would only stay around here three or
four weeks longer my wish would probably be gratified. I asked him what he
meant, what he alluded to specifically, but he would not say anything
further--so I remain as much in the dark as before--only there seemed to
be some meaning in his remark, and it was made to me only as there was no
one else in hearing at the moment (he is quite an admirer of my poetry).
The re-enlistment of the veterans is the greatest thing yet; it pleases
everybody but the Rebels--and surprises everybody too. Mother, I am well
and fat (I must weigh about 206), so Washington must agree with me. I work
three or four hours a day copying. Dear mother, I send you and Hattie my
love, as you say she is a dear little girl. Mother, try to write every
week, even if only a few lines. Love to George and Jeff and Mat.
WALT.
II
_Washington, Feb. 2, 1864._ DEAREST MOTHER--I am writing this by the side
of the young man you asked about, Lewis Brown in Armory-square hospital.
He is getting along very well indeed--the amputation is healing up good,
and he does not suffer anything like as much as he did. I see him every
day. We have had real hot weather here, and for the last three days wet
and rainy; it is more like June than February. Mother, I wrote to Han last
Saturday--she must have got it yesterday. I have not heard anything from
home since a week ago (your last letter). I suppose you got a letter from
me Saturday last. I am well as usual. There has been several hundred sick
soldiers brought in here yesterday. I have been around among them to-day
all day--it is enough to make me heart-sick, the old times over again;
they are many of them mere wrecks, though young men (sickness is worse in
some respects than wounds). One boy about 16, from Portland, Maine, only
came from home a month ago, a recruit; he is here now very sick and
down-hearted, poor child. He is a real country boy; I think has
consumption. He was only a week with his reg't. I sat with him a long
time; I saw [it] did him great good. I have been feeding some their
dinners. It makes me feel quite proud, I find so frequently I can do with
the men what no one else at all can, getting them to eat (some that will
not touch their food otherwise, nor for anybody else)--it is sometimes
quite affecting, I can tell you. I found such a case to-day, a soldier
with throat disease, very bad. I fed him quite a dinner; the men, his
comrades around, just stared in wonder, and one of them told me afterwards
that he (the sick man) had not eat so much at a meal in three months.
Mother, I shall have my hands pretty full now for a while--write all about
things home.
WALT.
Lewis Brown says I must give you his love--he says he knows he would like
you if he should see you.
III
_Washington, Friday afternoon, Feb. 5, 1864._ DEAREST MOTHER--I am going
down in front, in the midst of the army, to-morrow morning, to be gone for
about a week--so I thought I would write you a few lines now, to let you
know.
Mother, I suppose you got my letter written last Tuesday--I have not got
any from home now for a number of days. I am well and hearty. The young
man Lewis Brown is able to be up a little on crutches. There is quite a
number of sick young men I have taken in hand, from the late arrivals,
that I am sorry to leave. Sick and down-hearted and lonesome, they think
so much of a friend, and I get so attached to them too--but I want to go
down in camp once more very much; and I think I shall be back in a week. I
shall spend most of my time among the sick and wounded in the camp
hospitals. If I had means I should stop with them, poor boys, or go among
them periodically, dispensing what I had, as long as the war lasts, down
among the worst of it (although what are collected here in hospital seem
to me about as severe and needy cases as any, after all).
Mother, I want to hear about you all, and about George and how he is
spending his time home. Mother, I do hope you are well and in good
spirits, and Jeff and Mat and all, and dear little California and
Hattie--I send them all my love. Mother, I may write to you from down in
front--so good-bye, dear mother, for present.
WALT.
I hope I shall find several letters waiting for me when I get back here.
IV
_Culpepper, Virginia, Friday night, Feb. 12, 1864._ DEAREST MOTHER--I am
still stopping down in this region. I am a good deal of the time down
within half a mile of our picket lines, so that you see I can indeed call
myself in the front. I stopped yesterday with an artillery camp in the 1st
Corps at the invitation of Capt. Crawford, who said that he knew me in
Brooklyn. It is close to the lines--I asked him if he did not think it
dangerous. He said, No, he could have a large force of infantry to help
him there, in very short metre, if there was any sudden emergency. The
troops here are scattered all around, much more apart than they seemed to
me to be opposite Fredericksburg last winter. They mostly have good huts
and fireplaces, etc. I have been to a great many of the camps, and I must
say I am astonished [how] good the houses are almost everywhere. I have
not seen one regiment, nor any part of one, in the poor uncomfortable
little shelter tents that I saw so common last winter after
Fredericksburg--but all the men have built huts of logs and mud. A good
many of them would be comfortable enough to live in under any
circumstances. I have been in the division hospitals around here. There
are not many men sick here, and no wounded--they now send them on to
Washington. I shall return there in a few days, as I am very clear that
the real need of one's services is there after all--there the worst cases
concentrate, and probably will, while the war lasts. I suppose you know
that what we call hospital here in the field is nothing but a collection
of tents on the bare ground for a floor--rather hard accommodation for a
sick man. They heat them there by digging a long trough in the ground
under them, covering it over with old railroad iron and earth, and then
building a fire at one end and letting it draw through and go out at the
other, as both ends are open. This heats the ground through the middle of
the hospital quite hot. I find some poor creatures crawling about pretty
weak with diarrhoea; there is a great deal of that; they keep them until
they get very bad indeed, and then send them to Washington. This
aggravates the complaint, and they come into Washington in a terrible
condition. O mother, how often and how many I have seen come into
Washington from this awful complaint after such an experience as I have
described--with the look of death on their poor young faces; they keep
them so long in the field hospitals with poor accommodations the disease
gets too deeply seated.
To-day I have been out among some of the camps of the 2nd division of the
1st Corps. I have been wandering around all day, and have had a very good
time, over woods, hills, and gullies--indeed, a real soldier's march. The
weather is good and the travelling quite tolerable. I have been in the
camps of some Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York regiments. I have
friends in them, and went out to see them, and see soldiering generally,
as I can never cease to crave more and more knowledge of actual soldiers'
life, and to be among them as much as possible. This evening I have also
been in a large wagoners' camp. They had good fires and were very
cheerful. I went to see a friend there, too, but did not find him in. It
is curious how many I find that I know and that know me. Mother, I have no
difficulty at all in making myself at home among the soldiers, teamsters,
or any--I most always find they like to have me very much; it seems to do
them good. No doubt they soon feel that my heart and sympathies are truly
with them, and it is both a novelty and pleases them and touches their
feelings, and so doubtless does them good--and I am sure it does that to
me. There is more fun around here than you would think for. I told you
about the theatre the 14th Brooklyn has got up--they have songs and
burlesques, etc.; some of the performers real good. As I write this I have
heard in one direction or another two or three good bands playing--and
hear one tooting away some gay tunes now, though it is quite late at
night. Mother, I don't know whether I mentioned in my last letter that I
took dinner with Col. Fowler one day early part of the week. His wife is
stopping here. I was down at the 14th as I came along this evening,
too--one of the officers told me about a presentation to George of a
sword, etc.--he said he see it in the papers. The 14th invited me to come
and be their guest while I staid here, but I have not been able to
accept. Col. Fowler uses me tip-top--he is provost marshal of this
region; makes a good officer. Mother, I could get no pen and ink to-night.
Well, dear mother, I send you my love, and to George and Jeff and Mat and
little girls and all.
WALT.
Direct to care of Major Hapgood as before, and write soon. Mother, I
suppose you got a letter I wrote from down here last Monday.
V
_Washington, March 2, 1864._ DEAR MOTHER--You or Jeff must try to write as
soon as you receive this and let me know how little Sis is. Tell me if she
got entirely over the croup and how she is--also about George's trunks. I
do hope he received them; it was such a misfortune; I want to hear the end
of it; I am in hopes I shall hear that he has got them. I have not seen in
the papers whether the 51st has left New York yet. Mother, I want to hear
all about home and all the occurrences, especially the two things I have
just mentioned, and how you are, for somehow I was thinking from your
letters lately whether you was as well as usual or not. Write how my dear
sister Mat is too, and whether you are still going to stay there in
Portland avenue the coming year. Well, dear mother, I am just the same
here--nothing new. I am well and hearty, and constantly moving around
among the wounded and sick. There are a great many of the latter coming
up--the hospitals here are quite full--lately they have [been] picking out
in the hospitals all that had pretty well recovered, and sending them back
to their regiments. They seem to be determined to strengthen the army this
spring to the utmost. They are sending down many to their reg'ts that are
not fit to go in my opinion--then there are squads and companies, and
reg'ts, too, passing through here in one steady stream, going down to the
front, returning from furlough home; but then there are quite a number
leaving the army on furlough, re-enlisting, and going North for a while.
They pass through here quite largely. Mother, Lewis Brown is getting quite
well; he will soon be able to have a wooden leg put on. He is very
restless and active, and wants to go round all the time. Sam Beatty is
here in Washington. We have had quite a snow storm, but [it] is clear and
sunny to-day here, but sloshy. I am wearing my army boots--anything but
the dust. Dear Mother, I want to see you and Sis and Mat and all very
much. If I can get a chance I think I shall come home for a while. I want
to try to bring out a book of poems, a new one, to be called "Drum-Taps,"
and I want to come to New York for that purpose, too.
Mother, I haven't given up the project of lecturing, either, but whatever
I do, I shall for the main thing devote myself for years to come to these
wounded and sick, what little I can. Well, good-bye, dear mother, for
present--write soon.
WALT.
VI
_Washington, March 15, 1861._ DEAREST MOTHER--I got a letter from Jeff
last Sunday--he says you have a very bad cold indeed. Dear Mother, I feel
very much concerned about it; I do hope it has passed over before this.
Jeff wrote me about the house. I hope it will be so you can both remain in
the same house; it would be much more satisfaction.... The poor boy very
sick of brain fever I was with, is dead; he was only 19 and a noble boy,
so good though out of his senses some eight days, though still having a
kind of idea of things. No relative or friend was with him. It was very
sad. I was with him considerable, only just sitting by him soothing him.
He was wandering all the time. His talk was so affecting it kept the tears
in my eyes much of the time. The last twenty-four hours he sank very
rapidly. He had been sick some months ago and was put in the 6th Invalid
Corps--they ought to have sent him home instead. The next morning after
his death his brother came, a very fine man, postmaster at Lyne Ridge,
Pa.--he was much affected, and well he might be.
Mother, I think it worse than ever here in the hospitals. We are getting
the dregs as it were of the sickness and awful hardships of the past three
years. There is the most horrible cases of diarrhoea you ever conceived
of and by the hundreds and thousands; I suppose from such diet as they
have in the army. Well, dear mother, I will not write any more on the
sick, and yet I know you wish to hear about them. Every one is so
unfeeling; it has got to be an old story. There is no good nursing. O I
wish you were--or rather women of such qualities as you and Mat--were here
in plenty, to be stationed as matrons among the poor sick and wounded men.
Just to be present would be enough--O what good it would do them. Mother,
I feel so sick when I see what kind of people there are among them, with
charge over them--so cold and ceremonious, afraid to touch them. Well,
mother, I fear I have written you a flighty kind of a letter--I write in
haste.
WALT.
The papers came right, mother--love to Jeff, Mat, and all.
VII
_Washington, March 22, 1861._ DEAREST MOTHER--I feel quite bad to hear
that you are not well--have a pain in your side, and a very bad cold. Dear
Mother, I hope it is better. I wish you would write to me, or Jeff would,
right away, as I shall not feel easy until I hear. I rec'd George's
letter. Jeff wrote with it, about your feeling pretty sick, and the pain.
Mother, I also rec'd your letter a few days before. You say the Browns
acted very mean, and I should say they did indeed, but as it is going to
remain the same about the house, I should let it all pass. I am very glad
Mat and Jeff are going to remain; I should not have felt satisfied if they
and you had been separated. I have written a letter to Han, with others
enclosed, a good long letter (took two postage stamps). I have written to
George too, directed it to Knoxville. Mother, everything is the same with
me; I am feeling very well indeed, the old trouble of my head stopt and my
ears affected, has not troubled me any since I came back here from
Brooklyn. I am writing this in Major Hapgood's old office, cor. 15th and F
streets, where I have my old table and window. It is dusty and chilly
to-day, anything but agreeable. Gen. Grant is expected every moment now in
the Army of the Potomac to take active command. I have just this moment
heard from the front--there is nothing yet of a movement, but each side is
continually on the alert, expecting something to happen. O mother, to
think that we are to have here soon what I have seen so many times, the
awful loads and trains and boat loads of poor bloody and pale and wounded
young men again--for that is what we certainly will, and before very long.
I see all the little signs, geting ready in the hospitals, etc.; it is
dreadful when one thinks about it. I sometimes think over the sights I
have myself seen, the arrival of the wounded after a battle, and the
scenes on the field too, and I can hardly believe my own recollections.
What an awful thing war is! Mother, it seems not men but a lot of devils
and butchers butchering each other.
Dear mother, I think twenty times a day about your sickness. O, I hope it
is not so bad as Jeff wrote. He said you was worse than you had ever been
before, and he would write me again. Well, he must, even if only a few
lines. What have you heard from Mary and her family, anything? Well, dear
mother, I hope this will find you quite well of the pain, and of the
cold--write about the little girls and Mat and all.
WALT.
VIII
_Washington, March 29, 1864._ DEAREST MOTHER--I have written to George
again to Knoxville. Things seem to be quiet down there so far. We think
here that our forces are going to be made strongest here in Virginia this
spring, and every thing bent to take Richmond. Grant is here; he is now
down at headquarters in the field, Brandy station. We expect fighting
before long; there are many indications. I believe I told you they had
sent up all the sick from front. [_The letter is here mutilated so as to
be illegible; from the few remaining words, however, it is possible to
gather that the writer is describing the arrival of a_ train of wounded,
over 600, _in Washington during_ a terribly rainy afternoon. _The letter
continues_:] I could not keep the tears out of my eyes. Many of the poor
young men had to be moved on stretchers, with blankets over them, which
soon soaked as wet as water in the rain. Most were sick cases, but some
badly wounded. I came up to the nearest hospital and helped. Mother, it
was a dreadful night (last Friday night)--pretty dark, the wind gusty, and
the rain fell in torrents. One poor boy--this is a sample of one case out
of the 600--he seemed to be quite young, he was quite small (I looked at
his body afterwards), he groaned some as the stretcher bearers were
carrying him along, and again as they carried him through the hospital
gate. They set down the stretcher and examined him, and the poor boy was
dead. They took him into the ward, and the doctor came immediately, but it
was all of no use. The worst of it is, too, that he is entirely
unknown--there was nothing on his clothes, or any one with him to identity
him, and he is altogether unknown. Mother, it is enough to rack one's
heart--such things. Very likely his folks will never know in the world
what has become of him. Poor, poor child, for he appeared as though he
could be but 18. I feel lately as though I must have some intermission. I
feel well and hearty enough, and was never better, but my feelings are
kept in a painful condition a great part of the time. Things get worse and
worse, as to the amount and sufferings of the sick, and as I have said
before, those who have to do with them are getting more and more callous
and indifferent. Mother, when I see the common soldiers, what they go
through, and how everybody seems to try to pick upon them, and what
humbug there is over them every how, even the dying soldier's money stolen
from his body by some scoundrel attendant, or from [the] sick one, even
from under his head, which is a common thing, and then the agony I see
every day, I get almost frightened at the world. Mother, I will try to
write more cheerfully next time--but I see so much. Well, good-bye for
present, dear mother.
WALT.
IX
_Washington, Thursday afternoon, March 31, 1864._ DEAREST MOTHER--I have
just this moment received your letter dated last Monday evening. Dear
mother, I have not seen anything in any paper where the 51st is, nor heard
anything, but I do not feel any ways uneasy about them. I presume they are
at Knoxville, Tennessee. Mother, they are now paying off many of the
regiments in this army--but about George, I suppose there will be delays
in sending money, etc. Dear mother, I wish I had some money to send you,
but I am living very close by the wind. Mother, I will try somehow to send
you something worth while, and I do hope you will not worry and feel
unhappy about money matters; I know things are very high. Mother, I
suppose you got my letter written Tuesday last, 29th March, did you not? I
have been going to write to Jeff for more than a month--I laid out to
write a good long letter, but something has prevented me, one thing and
another; but I will try to write to-morrow sure. Mother, I have been in
the midst of suffering and death for two months worse than ever--the only
comfort is that I have been the cause of some beams of sunshine upon their
suffering and gloomy souls, and bodies too. Many of the dying I have been
with, too.
Well, mother, you must not worry about the grocery bill, etc., though I
suppose you will say that it is easier said than followed (as to me, I
believe I worry about worldly things less than ever, if that is possible).
Tell Jeff and Mat I send them my love. Gen. Grant has just come in town
from front. The country here is all mad again. I am going to a
spiritualist medium this evening--I expect it will be a humbug, of course.
I will tell you next letter. Dear mother, keep a good heart.
WALT.
How is California? Tell Hat her Uncle Walt will come home one of these
days, and take her to New York to walk in Broadway. Poor little Jim, I
should like to see him. There is a rich young friend of mine wants me to
go to Idaho with him to make money.
X
_Washington, Tuesday afternoon, April 5, 1864._ DEAREST MOTHER--I got a
letter from Jeff yesterday--he says you often work too hard, exposing
yourself; I suppose, scrubbing, etc., and the worst of it is I am afraid
it is true. Mother, I would take things easy, and let up on the scrubbing
and such things; they may be needed perhaps, but they ain't half as much
needed as that you should be as well as possible, and free from rheumatism
and cold. Jeff says that ---- has had the chicken pox. Has she got all
over it? I want to hear. So Nance has had another child, poor little one;
there don't seem to be much show for it, poor little young one, these
times. We are having awful rainy weather here. It is raining to-day steady
and spiteful enough. The soldiers in camp are having the benefit of it,
and the sick, many of them. There is a great deal of rheumatism and also
throat disease, and they are affected by the weather. I have writ to
George again, directed to Knoxville. Mother, I got a letter this morning
from Lewis Brown, the young man that had his leg amputated two months or
so ago (the one that I slept in the hospital by several nights for fear of
hemorrhage from the amputation). He is home at Elkton, Maryland, on
furlough. He wants me to come out there, but I believe I shall not go--he
is doing very well. There are many very bad now in hospital, so many of
the soldiers are getting broke down after two years, or two and a half,
exposure and bad diet, pork, hard biscuit, bad water or none at all, etc.,
etc.--so we have them brought up here. Oh, it is terrible, and getting
worse, worse, worse. I thought it was bad; to see these I sometimes think
is more pitiful still.
Well, mother, I went to see the great spirit medium, Foster. There were
some little things some might call curious, perhaps, but it is a shallow
thing and a humbug. A gentleman who was with me was somewhat impressed,
but I could not see anything in it worth calling supernatural. I wouldn't
turn on my heel to go again and see such things, or twice as much. We had
table rappings and lots of nonsense. I will give you particulars when I
come home one of these days. Jeff, I believe there is a fate on your long
letter; I thought I would write it to-day, but as it happens I will hardly
get this in the mail, I fear, in time for to-day. O how I want to see you
all, and Sis and Hat. Well, I have scratched out a great letter just as
fast as I could write.
_Wednesday forenoon._ Mother, I didn't get the letter in the mail
yesterday. I have just had my breakfast, some good tea and good toast and
butter. I write this in my room, 456 Sixth st. The storm seems to be over.
Dear mother, I hope you are well and in good spirits--write to me often as
you can, and Jeff too. Any news from Han?
WALT.
XI
_Washington, April 10, 1864._ DEAREST MOTHER--I rec'd your letter and sent
the one you sent for George immediately--he must have got it the next day.
I had got one from him before yours arrived. I mean to go to Annapolis
and see him.
Mother, we expect a commencement of the fighting below very soon; there is
every indication of it. We have had about as severe rain storms here
lately as I ever see. It is middling pleasant now. There are exciting
times in Congress--the Copperheads are getting furious and want to
recognize the Southern Confederacy. This is a pretty time to talk of
recognizing such villains after what they have done, and after what has
transpired the last three years. After first Fredericksburg I felt
discouraged myself, and doubted whether our rulers could carry on the
war--but that has passed away. The war must be carried on, and I could
willingly go myself in the ranks if I thought it would profit more than at
present, and I don't know sometimes but I shall as it is. Mother, you
don't know what a feeling a man gets after being in the active sights and
influences of the camp, the army, the wounded, etc. He gets to have a deep
feeling he never experienced before--the flag, the tune of Yankee Doodle
and similar things, produce an effect on a fellow never such before. I
have seen some bring tears on the men's cheeks, and others turn pale,
under such circumstances. I have a little flag; it belonged to one of our
cavalry reg'ts; presented to me by one of the wounded. It was taken by the
Secesh in a cavalry fight, and rescued by our men in a bloody little
skirmish. It cost three men's lives, just to get one little flag, four by
three. Our men rescued it, and tore it from the breast of a dead
Rebel--all that just for the name of getting their little banner back
again. The man that got it was very badly wounded, and they let him keep
it. I was with him a good deal; he wanted to give me something, he said,
he didn't expect to live, so he gave me the little banner as a keepsake. I
mention this, mother, to show you a specimen of the feeling. There isn't a
reg't, cavalry or infantry, that wouldn't do the same on occasion.
_Tuesday morning, April 12._ Mother, I will finish my letter this morning.
It is a beautiful day to-day. I was up in Congress very late last night.
The house had a very excited night session about expelling the men that
want to recognize the Southern Confederacy. You ought to hear the soldiers
talk. They are excited to madness. We shall probably have hot times here,
not in the army alone. The soldiers are true as the North Star. I send you
a couple of envelopes, and one to George. Write how you are, dear mother,
and all the rest. I want to see you all. Jeff, my dear brother, I wish you
was here, and Mat too. Write how Sis is. I am well, as usual; indeed first
rate every way. I want to come on in a month and try to print my
"Drum-Taps." I think it may be a success pecuniarily, too. Dearest mother,
I hope this will find you entirely well, and dear sister Mat and all.
WALT.
XII
_Washington, Tuesday noon, April 19, 1864._ DEAREST MOTHER--I haven't
heard any news from home now in more than a week. I hope you are well,
dear mother, and all the rest too. There is nothing new with me. I can
only write the same old story about going to the hospitals, etc., etc. I
have not heard anything since from George--have you heard anything
further? I have written to him to Annapolis. We are having it pretty warm
here to-day, after a long spell of rain storms, but the last two or three
days very fine. Mother, I suppose you got my letter of last Tuesday, 12th.
I went down to the Capitol the nights of the debate on the expulsion of
Mr. Long last week. They had night sessions, very late. I like to go to
the House of Representatives at night; it is the most magnificent hall, so
rich and large, and lighter at night than it is days, and still not a
light visible--it comes through the glass roof--but the speaking and the
ability of the members is nearly always on a low scale. It is very curious
and melancholy to see such a rate of talent there, such tremendous times
as these--I should say about the same range of genius as our old friend
Dr. Swaim, just about. You may think I am joking, but I am not, mother--I
am speaking in perfect earnest. The Capitol grows upon one in time,
especially as they have got the great figure on top of it now, and you can
see it very well. It is a great bronze figure, the Genius of Liberty I
suppose. It looks wonderful towards sundown. I love to go and look at it.
The sun when it is nearly down shines on the headpiece and it dazzles and
glistens like a big star; it looks quite curious.
Well, mother, we have commenced on another summer, and what it will bring
forth who can tell? The campaign of this summer is expected here to be
more active and severe than any yet. As I told you in a former letter,
Grant is determined to bend everything to take Richmond and break up the
banditti of scoundrels that have stuck themselves up there as a
"government." He is in earnest about it; his whole soul and all his
thoughts night and day are upon it. He is probably the most in earnest of
any man in command or in the Government either--that's something, ain't
it, mother?--and they are bending everything to fight for their last
chance--calling in their forces from Southwest, etc. Dear mother, give my
love to dear brother Jeff and Mat and all. I write this in my room, 6th
st.
WALT.
XIII
_Washington, April 26, 1864._ DEAREST MOTHER--Burnside's army passed
through here yesterday. I saw George and walked with him in the regiment
for some distance and had quite a talk. He is very well; he is very much
tanned and looks hardy. I told him all the latest news from home. George
stands it very well, and looks and behaves the same noble and good fellow
he always was and always will be. It was on 14th st. I watched three hours
before the 51st came along. I joined him just before they came to where
the President and Gen. Burnside were standing with others on a balcony,
and the interest of seeing me, etc., made George forget to notice the
President and salute him. He was a little annoyed at forgetting it. I
called his attention to it, but we had passed a little too far on, and
George wouldn't turn round even ever so little. However, there was a great
many more than half the army passed without noticing Mr. Lincoln and the
others, for there was a great crowd all through the streets, especially
here, and the place where the President stood was not conspicuous from the
rest. The 9th Corps made a very fine show indeed. There were, I should
think, five very full regiments of new black troops, under Gen. Ferrero.
They looked and marched very well. It looked funny to see the President
standing with his hat off to them just the same as the rest as they passed
by. Then there [were the] Michigan regiments; one of them was a regiment
of sharpshooters, partly composed of Indians. Then there was a pretty
strong force of artillery and a middling force of cavalry--many New York,
Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, R. I., etc., reg'ts. All except the blacks
were veterans [that had] seen plenty of fighting. Mother, it is very
different to see a real army of fighting men, from one of those shows in
Brooklyn, or New York, or on Fort Greene. Mother, it was a curious sight
to see these ranks after rank of our own dearest blood of men, mostly
young, march by, worn and sunburnt and sweaty, with well-worn clothes and
thin bundles, and knapsacks, tin cups, and some with frying pans strapt
over their backs, all dirty and sweaty, nothing real neat about them
except their muskets; but they were all as clean and bright as silver.
They were four or five hours passing along, marching with wide ranks
pretty quickly, too. It is a great sight to see an army 25 or 30,000 on
the march. They are all so gay, too. Poor fellows, nothing dampens their
spirits. They all got soaked with rain the night before. I saw Fred
McReady and Capt. Sims, and Col. Le Gendre, etc. I don't know exactly
where Burnside's army is going. Among other rumors it is said they [are]
to go [with] the Army of the Potomac to act as a reserve force, etc.
Another is that they are to make a flank march, to go round and get Lee on
the side, etc. I haven't been out this morning and don't know what
news--we know nothing, only that there is without doubt to be a terrible
campaign here in Virginia this summer, and that all who know deepest about
it are very serious about it. Mother, it is serious times. I do not feel
to fret or whimper, but in my heart and soul about our country, the
forthcoming campaign with all its vicissitudes and the wounded and
slain--I dare say, mother, I feel the reality more than some because I am
in the midst of its saddest results so much. Others may say what they
like, I believe in Grant and in Lincoln, too. I think Grant deserves to be
trusted. He is working continually. No one knows his plans; we will only
know them when he puts them in operation. Our army is very large here in
Virginia this spring, and they are still pouring in from east and west.
You don't see about it in the papers, but we have a very large army here.
Mother, I am first rate in health, thank God; I never was better. Dear
mother, have you got over all that distress and sickness in your head? You
must write particular about it. Dear brother Jeff, how are you, and how is
Matty, and how the dear little girls? Jeff, I believe the devil is in it
about my writing you; I have laid out so many weeks to write you a good
long letter, and something has shoved it off each time. Never mind,
mother's letters keep you posted. You must write, and don't forget to tell
me all about Sis. Is she as good and interesting as she was six months
ago? Mother, have you heard anything from Han? Mother, I have just had my
breakfast. I had it in my room--some hard biscuit warmed on the stove, and
a bowl of strong tea with good milk and sugar. I have given a Michigan
soldier his breakfast with me. He relished it, too; he has just gone.
Mother, I have just heard again that Burnside's troops are to be a reserve
to protect Washington, so there may be something in it.
WALT.
It is very fine weather here yesterday and to-day. The hospitals are very
full; they are putting up hundreds of hospital tents.
XIV
_Washington, April 28, 1864._ DEAREST MOTHER--I thought I would write you
just a line, though I have nothing of importance--only the talk of the
street here seems more and more to assert that Burnside's army is to
remain near here to protect Washington and act as a reserve, so that Grant
can move the Army of the Potomac upon Richmond, without being compelled to
turn and be anxious about the Capital; also that Burnside can attend to
Lee if the latter should send any force up west of here (what they call
the valley of the Shenandoah), or invade Pennsylvania again. I thought you
would like to hear this; it looks plausible, but there are lots of rumors
of all kinds. I cannot hear where Burnside's army is, as they don't allow
the papers to print army movements, but I fancy they are very near
Washington, the other side of Arlington heights, this moment. Mother, I
wrote yesterday to Han, and sent one of George's letters from Annapolis.
Mother, I suppose you got my letter of Tuesday, 26th. I have not heard
anything from you in quite a little while. I am still well. The weather is
fine; quite hot yesterday. Mother, I am now going down to see a poor
soldier who is very low with a long diarrhoea--he cannot recover. When
I was with him last night, he asked me before I went away to ask God's
blessing on him. He says, I am no scholar and you are--poor dying man, I
told him I hoped from the bottom of my heart God would bless him, and
bring him up yet. I soothed him as well as I could; it was affecting, I
can tell you. Jeff, I wrote to Mr. Kirkwood yesterday to 44 Pierrepont st.
He sent me some money last Monday. Is Probasco still in the store in
N. Y.? Dear sister Mat, I quite want to see you and California, not
forgetting my little Hattie, too.
WALT.
_2 o'clock, 28th April._ DEAREST MOTHER--Just as I was going to mail this
I received authentic information [that] Burnside's army is now about 16 or
18 miles south of here, at a place called Fairfax Court House. They had
last night no orders to move at present, and I rather think they will
remain there, or near there. What I have written before as a rumor about
their being to be held as a reserve, to act whenever occasion may need
them, is now quite decided on. You may hear a rumor in New York that they
have been shipped in transports from Alexandria--there is no truth in it
at all. Grant's Army of the Potomac is probably to do the heavy work. His
army is strong and full of fight. Mother, I think it is to-day the noblest
army of soldiers that ever marched--nobody can know the men as well as I
do, I sometimes think.
Mother, I am writing this in Willard's hotel, on my way down to hospital
after I leave this at post office. I shall come out to dinner at 4 o'clock
and then go back to hospital again in evening.
Good bye, dear mother and all.
WALT.
XV
_Washington, May 3, 1864._ DEAREST MOTHER--I received your letter dated
last Friday afternoon, with one from Mr. Heyde. It seems by that Han is
better, but, as you say, it would be much more satisfactory if Han would
write to us herself. Mother, I believe I told you I sent a letter to Han
last week, enclosing one of George's from Annapolis. I was glad to get
Heyde's letter, though, as it was. Mother, I am sorry you still have
returns of your cold. Does it affect your head like it did? Dear mother, I
hope you will not expose yourself, nor work too much, but take things
easier. I have nothing different to write about the war, or movements
here. What I wrote last Thursday, about Burnside's Corps being probably
used as a reserve, is still talked of here, and seems to be probable. A
large force is necessary to guard the railroad between here and Culpepper,
and also to keep from any emergency that might happen, and I shouldn't
wonder if the 9th would be used for such purpose, at least for the
present. I think the 51st must be down not very far from Fairfax Court
House yet, but I haven't heard certain.
Mother, I have seen a person up from front this morning. There is no
movement yet and no fighting started. The men are in their camps yet. Gen.
Grant is at Culpepper. You need not pay the slightest attention to such
things as you mention in the _Eagle_, about the 9th Corps--the writer of
it, and very many of the writers on war matters in those papers, don't
know one bit more on what they are writing about than Ed does. Mother, you
say in your letter you got my letter the previous afternoon. Why, mother,
you ought to [have] got it Wednesday forenoon, or afternoon at furthest.
This letter now will get in New York Wednesday morning, by daylight--you
ought to get it before noon. The postmaster in Brooklyn must have a pretty
set of carriers, to take twice as long to take a letter from New York to
you as it does to go from Washington to N. Y. Mother, I suppose you got a
letter from me Friday, also, as I wrote a second letter on Thursday last,
telling you the 9th Corps was camped then about sixteen miles from here.
About George's pictures, perhaps you better wait till I hear from him,
before sending them. I remain well as usual. The poor fellow I mentioned
in one of my letters last week, with diarrhoea, that wanted me to ask
God's blessing on him, was still living yesterday afternoon, but just
living. He is only partially conscious, is all wasted away to nothing, and
lies most of the time in half stupor, as they give him brandy copiously.
Yesterday I was there by him a few minutes. He is very much averse to
taking brandy, and there was some trouble in getting him to take it. He is
almost totally deaf the last five or six days. There is no chance for him
at all. Quite a particular friend of mine, Oscar Cunningham, an Ohio boy,
had his leg amputated yesterday close up by the thigh. It was a pretty
tough operation. He was badly wounded just a year ago to-day at
Chancellorsville and has suffered a great deal; lately got erysipelas in
his leg and foot. I forget whether I have mentioned him before or not. He
was a very large, noble-looking young man when I first see him. The doctor
thinks he will live and get up, but I consider [it] by no means so
certain. He is very much prostrated. Well, dear mother, you must write and
Jeff too--I do want to see you all very much. How does Mat get along, and
how little Sis and all? I send my love to you and Jeff and all. We are
having a very pleasant, coolish day here. I am going down to post office
to leave this, and then up to my old friends the O'Connors to dinner, and
then down to hospital. Well, good-bye, dear mother, for present.
WALT.
_Tuesday afternoon, 3 o'clock._ Mother, just as I was going to seal my
letter, Major Hapgood has come in from the P. O. and brings me a few lines
from George, which I enclose--you will see they were written four days
ago.
XVI
_Washington, May 6, 1864._ DEAREST MOTHER--I write you a few lines, as I
know you feel anxious these times. I suppose the New York papers must have
it in this morning that the Army of the Potomac has made a move, and has
crossed the Rapidan river. At any rate that is the case. As near as I can
learn about Burnside's army, that lies in the rear of the Army of the
Potomac (from Warrenton, Virginia and so to Rappahannock river and up
toward Manassas). It still appears to be kept as a reserve and for
emergencies, etc. I have not heard anything from the 51st. Mother, of
course you got my letter of Tuesday, 3rd, with the letter from George
dated Bristoe station. I have writ to George since, and addressed the
letter Warrenton, Va., or elsewhere, thinking he might get it.
Mother, the idea is entertained quite largely here that the Rebel army
will retreat to Richmond, as it is well known that Grant is very strong
(most folks say too strong for Lee). I suppose you know we menace them
almost as much from up Fortress Monroe as we do from the Rapidan. Butler
and W. F. Smith are down there with at least fifty or sixty thousand men,
and will move up simultaneously with Grant. The occasion is very serious,
and anxious, but somehow I am full of hope, and feel that we shall take
Richmond--(I hope to go there yet before the hot weather is past). Dear
mother, I hope you are well, and little California--love to Jeff and Mat
and all.
WALT.
Mother, you ought to get this letter Saturday forenoon, as it will be in
N. Y. by sunrise Saturday, 7th.
Mother, the poor soldier with diarrhoea is still living, but, O, what a
looking object; death would be a boon to him; he cannot last many hours.
Cunningham, the Ohio boy with leg amputated at thigh, has picked up beyond
expectation now!--looks altogether like getting well. The hospitals are
very full. I am very well indeed--pretty warm here to-day.
XVII
_Washington, Monday, 2 o'clock--May 9, '64._ DEAREST MOTHER--There is
nothing from the army more than you know in the N. Y. papers. The fighting
has been hard enough, but the papers make lots of additional items, and a
good deal that they just entirely make up. There are from 600 to 1000
wounded coming up here--not 6 to 8000 as the papers have it. I cannot hear
what part the 9th Corps took in the fight of Friday and afterwards, nor
whether they really took any at all--(they, the papers, are determined to
make up just anything). Mother, I received your letter and Han's--and was
glad indeed to get both. Mother, you must not be under such apprehension,
as I think it is not warranted.
So far as we get news here, we are gaining the day, so far _decidedly_. If
the news we hear is true that Lee has been repulsed and driven back by
Grant, and that we are masters of the field, and pursuing them--then I
think Lee will retreat south, and Richmond will be abandoned by the Rebs.
But of course time only can develope what will happen. Mother, I will
write again Wednesday, or before, if I hear anything to write. Love to
Jeff and Mat and all.
WALT.
XVIII
_Washington, May 10, '64_ (_1/2 past 2 p.m._) DEAREST MOTHER--There is
nothing perhaps more than you see in the N. Y. papers. The fighting down
in the field on the 6th I think ended in our favor, though with pretty
severe losses to some of our divisions. The fighting is about 70 miles
from here, and 50 from Richmond--on the 7th and 8th followed up by the
Rebel army hauling off, they say retreating, and Meade pursuing. It is
quite mixed yet, but I guess we have the best of it. If we really have,
Richmond is a goner, for they cannot do any better than they have done.
The 9th Corps was in the fight, and where I cannot tell yet, but from the
wounded I have seen I don't think that Corps was deeply in. I have seen
300 wounded. They came in last night. I asked for men of 9th Corps, but
could not find any at all. These 300 men were not badly wounded, mostly in
arms, hands, trunk of body, etc. They could all walk, though some had an
awful time of it. They had to fight their way with the worst in the middle
out of the region of Fredericksburg, and so on where they could get across
the Rappahannock and get where they found transportation to Washington.
The Gov't has decided, (or rather Gen. Meade has) to occupy Fredericksburg
for depot and hospital--(I think that is a first rate decision)--so the
wounded men will receive quick attention and surgery, instead of being
racked through the long journey up here. Still, many come in here. Mother,
my impression is that we have no great reason for alarm or sadness about
George so far. Of course I _know_ nothing. Well, good-bye, dearest mother.
WALT.
Mother, I wrote you yesterday, too. Tell dear brother Jeff to write me.
Love to Mat. The poor diarrhoea man died, and it was a boon. Oscar
Cunningham, 82nd Ohio, has had a relapse. I fear it is going bad with him.
Lung diseases are quite plenty--night before last I staid in hospital all
night tending a poor fellow. It has been awful hot here--milder to-day.
XIX
[_Washington_] _May 12, 1/2 past 5 p.m._ DEAREST MOTHER--George is all
right, unhurt, up to Tuesday morning, 10th inst. The 51st was in a bad
battle last Friday; lost 20 killed, between 40 and 50 wounded. I have just
seen some of the 51st wounded just arrived, one of them Fred Saunders,
Corporal Co. K, George's company. He said when he left the 51st was in
rear on guard duty. He left Tuesday morning last. The papers have it that
Burnside's Corps was in a fight Tuesday, but I think it most probable the
51st was not in it.
Fred McReady is wounded badly, but not seriously. Sims is safe. You see Le
Gendre is wounded--he was shot through the bridge of nose.
Mother, you ought to get this Friday forenoon, 13th. I will write again
soon. Wrote once before to-day.
WALT.
XX
_Washington, May 13, 1864, 2 o'clock p. m._ DEAREST MOTHER--I wrote you a
hurried letter late yesterday afternoon but left it myself at the P. O. in
time for the mail. You ought to have got it this forenoon, or afternoon at
furthest. I sent you two letters yesterday. I hope the carrier brings you
your letters the same day. I wrote to the Brooklyn postmaster about it. I
have heard from George up to Tuesday morning last, 10th, till which time
he was safe. The battle of Friday, 6th, was very severe. George's Co. K
lost one acting sergeant, Sturgis, killed, 2 men killed, 4 wounded. As I
wrote yesterday, I have seen here Corp. Fred Saunders of Co. K, who was
wounded in side, nothing serious, in Friday's fight, and came up here. I
also talked with Serg. Brown, Co. F, 51st, rather badly wounded in right
shoulder. Saunders said, when he left Tuesday morning he heard (or saw
them there, I forget which) the 51st and its whole division were on guard
duty toward the rear. The 9th Corps, however, has had hard fighting since,
but whether the division or brigade the 51st is in was in the fights of
Tuesday, 10th, (a pretty severe one) or Wednesday, I cannot tell, and it
is useless to make calculations--and the only way is to wait and hope for
the best. As I wrote yesterday, there were some 30 of 51st reg't killed
and 50 wounded in Friday's battle, 6th inst. I have seen Col. Le Gendre.
He is here in Washington not far from where I am, 485 12th st. is his
address. Poor man, I felt sorry indeed for him. He is badly wounded and
disfigured. He is shot through the bridge of the nose, and left eye
probably lost. I spent a little time with him this forenoon. He is
suffering very much, spoke of George very kindly; said "Your brother is
well." His orderly told me he saw him, George, Sunday night last, well.
Fred McReady is wounded in hip, I believe bone fractured--bad enough, but
not deeply serious. I cannot hear of his arrival here. If he comes I shall
find him immediately and take care of him myself. He is probably yet at
Fredericksburg, but will come up, I think. Yesterday and to-day the badly
wounded are coming in. The long lists of _previous arrivals_, (I suppose
they are all reprinted at great length in N. Y. papers) are of men
three-fourths of them quite slightly wounded, and the rest hurt pretty
bad. I was thinking, mother, if one could see the men who arrived in the
first squads, of two or three hundred at a time, one wouldn't be alarmed
at those terrible long lists. Still there is a sufficient sprinkling of
deeply distressing cases. I find my hands full all the time, with new and
old cases--poor suffering young men, I think of them, and do try, mother,
to do what I can for them, (and not think of the vexatious skedaddlers and
merely scratched ones, of whom there are too many lately come here).
Dearest mother, hope you and all are well--you must keep a good heart.
Still, the fighting is very mixed, but it _seems steadily turning into
real successes_ for Grant. The news to-day here is very good--you will see
it [in the] N. Y. papers. I steadily believe Grant is going to succeed,
and that we shall have Richmond--but O what a price to pay for it. We have
had a good rain here and it is pleasanter and cooler. I shall write very
soon again.
WALT.
XXI
_Washington, May 18, 1864._ DEAREST MOTHER--I will only write you a hasty
note this time, as I am pretty tired, and my head feels disagreeable from
being in too much. I was up yesterday to Carver hospital and again saw the
man of the 51st, Thos. McCowell, who told me of George, up to latter part
of Thursday, 12th inst. I questioned him, and his story was very clear, so
I felt perfectly satisfied. He is wounded in hand; will be transferred
soon to New York and may call on you. He is a young Irishman, and seems to
be a very good fellow indeed. I have written to George, day before
yesterday. Did you send my last letter to Han? If not, send it yet.
Mother, I see such awful things. I expect one of these days, if I live, I
shall have awful thoughts and dreams--but it is such a great thing to be
able to do some real good; assuage these horrible pains and wounds, and
save life even--that's the only thing that keeps a fellow up.
Well, dear mother, I make such reckoning of yet coming on and seeing you.
How I want to see Jeff, too--O, it is too bad I have not written to him so
long--and Mat, too, and little California and all. I am going out now a
little while. I remain first rate, as well as ever.
WALT.
XXII
_Washington, Monday forenoon, May 23, '64._ DEAR BROTHER JEFF--I received
your letter yesterday. I too had got a few lines from George, dated on the
field, 16th. He said he had also just written to mother. I cannot make out
there has been any fighting since in which the 9th Corps has been engaged.
I do hope mother will not get despondent and so unhappy. I suppose it is
idle to say I think George's chances are very good for coming out of this
campaign safe, yet at present it seems to me so--but it is indeed idle to
say so, for no one can tell what a day may bring forth. Sometimes I think
that should it come, when it _must_ be, to fall in battle, one's anguish
over a son or brother killed would be tempered with much to take the edge
off. I can honestly say it has no terrors for me, if I had to be hit in
battle, as far as I myself am concerned. It would be a noble and manly
death and in the best cause. Then one finds, as I have the past year, that
our feelings and imaginations make a thousand times too much of the whole
matter. Of the many I have seen die, or known of, the past year, I have
not seen or heard of _one_ who met death with any terror. Yesterday
afternoon I spent a good part of the afternoon with a young man of 17,
named Charles Cutter, of Lawrence city, Mass., 1st Mass. heavy artillery,
battery M. He was brought in to one of the hospitals mortally wounded in
abdomen. Well, I thought to myself as I sat looking at him, it ought to be
a relief to his folks after all, if they could see how little he suffered.
He lay very placid in a half lethargy with his eyes closed. It was very
warm, and I sat a long while fanning him and wiping the sweat. At length
he opened his eyes quite wide and clear and looked inquiringly around. I
said, "What is it, my dear? do you want anything?" He said quietly, with a
good natured smile, "O nothing; I was only looking around to see who was
with me." His mind was somewhat wandering, yet he lay so peaceful, in his
dying condition. He seemed to be a real New England country boy, so good
natured, with a pleasant homely way, and quite a fine looking boy. Without
any doubt he died in course of night.
There don't seem to be any war news of importance very late. We have been
fearfully disappointed with Sigel not making his junction from the lower
part of the valley, and perhaps harassing Lee's left or left rear, which
the junction or equivalent to it was an indispensable part of Grant's
plan, we think. This is one great reason why things have lagged so with
the Army. Some here are furious with Sigel. You will see he has been
superseded. His losses [in] his repulse are not so important, though
annoying enough, but it was of the greatest consequence that he should
have hastened through the gaps ten or twelve days ago at all hazards and
come in from the west, keeping near enough to our right to have assistance
if he needed it. Jeff, I suppose you know that there has been quite a
large army lying idle, mostly of artillery reg'ts, manning the numerous
forts around here. They have been the fattest and heartiest reg'ts
anywhere to be seen, and full in numbers, some of them numbering 2000 men.
Well, they have all, every one, been shoved down to the front. Lately we
have had the militia reg'ts pouring in here, mostly from Ohio. They look
first rate. I saw two or three come in yesterday, splendid American young
men, from farms mostly. We are to have them for a hundred days and
probably they will not refuse to stay another hundred. Jeff, tell mother I
shall write Wednesday certain (or if I hear anything I will write
to-morrow). I still think we shall get Richmond.
WALT.
Jeff, you must take this up to mother as soon as you go home. Jeff, I have
changed my quarters. I moved Saturday last. I am now at 502 Pennsylvania
av., near 3rd st. I still go a little almost daily to Major Hapgood's,
cor. 15th and F sts., 5th floor. Am apt to be there about 12 or 1. See
Fred McReady and others of 51st. George's letter to me of 16th I sent to
Han. Should like to see Mr. Worther if he comes here--give my best
remembrance to Mr. Lane.
I may very likely go down for a few days to Ball Plain and Fredericksburg,
but one is wanted here permanently more than any other place. I have
written to George several times in hopes one at least may reach him.
Matty, my dear sister, how are you getting along? O how I should like to
see you this very day.
XXIII
_Washington, May 25, 1864._ DEAREST MOTHER--I have not heard anything of
George or the reg't or Corps more than I have already written. I got
Jeff's letter on Sunday and wrote to him next day, which you have seen,
mother, of course. I have written to Han and sent her George's letter to
me dated 16th. I have heard that the 9th Corps has been moved to the
extreme left of the army. I should think by accounts this morning that the
army must be nearly half way from Fredericksburg to Richmond. The advance
can't be more than 30 to 35 miles from there. I see Fred McReady about
every other day. I have to go down to Alexandria, about 6 miles from
here. He is doing quite well, but very tired of the confinement. I still
go around daily and nightly among wounded. Mother, it is just the same old
story; poor suffering young men, great swarms of them, come up here now
every day all battered and bloody--there have 4000 arrived here this
morning, and 1500 yesterday. They appear to be bringing them all up here
from Fredericksburg. The journey from the field till they get aboard the
boats at Ball plain is horrible. I believe I wrote several times about
Oscar Cunningham, 82nd Ohio, amputation of right leg, wounded over a year
ago, a friend of mine here. He is rapidly sinking; said to me yesterday,
O, if he could only die. The young lad Cutter, of 1st Massachusetts heavy
artillery, I was with Sunday afternoon, (I wrote about in Jeff's letter)
still holds out. Poor boy, there is no chance for him at all.
But mother, I shall make you gloomy enough if I go on with these kind of
particulars--only I know you like to hear about the poor young men, after
I have once begun to mention them. Mother, I have changed my quarters--am
at 502 Pennsylvania av., near 3d street, only a little way from the
Capitol. Where I was, the house was sold and the old lady I hired the room
from had to move out and give the owner possession. I like my new quarters
pretty well--I have a room to myself, 3d story hall bedroom. I have my
meals in the house. Mother, it must be sad enough about Nance and the
young ones. Is the little baby still hearty? I believe you wrote a few
weeks after it was born that it was quite a fine child. I see you had a
draft in the 3d Congressional district. I was glad enough to see Jeff's
name was not drawn. We have had it awful hot here, but there was a sharp
storm of thunder and lightning last night, and to-day it is fine. Mother,
do any of the soldiers I see here from Brooklyn or New York ever call upon
you? They sometimes say they will here. Tell Jeff I got a letter yesterday
from W. E. Worthen, in which he sent me some money for the men. I have
acknowledged it to Mr. W. by letter. Well, dear mother, I must close. O,
how I want to see you all--I will surely have to come home as soon as this
Richmond campaign is decided--then I want to print my new book. Love to
Mat--write to a fellow often as you can.
WALT.
XXIV
_Washington, May 30, 1864._ DEAREST MOTHER--I have no news at all to write
this time. I have not heard anything of the 51st since I last wrote you,
and about the general war news only what you see in the papers. Grant is
gradually getting nearer and nearer to Richmond. Many here anticipate that
should Grant go into Richmond, Lee will make a side movement and march up
west into the North, either to attempt to strike Washington, or to go
again into Pennsylvania. I only say if that should happen, I for one shall
not be dissatisfied so very much. Well, mother, how are you getting along
home?--how do you feel in health these days, dear mother? I hope you are
well and in good heart yet. I remain pretty well: my head begins to
trouble me a little with a sort of fullness, as it often does in the hot
weather. Singular to relate, the 1st Mass. artillery boy, Charles Cutter,
is still living, and may get well. I saw him this morning. I am still
around among wounded same, but will not make you feel blue by filling my
letter with sad particulars.
I am writing this in Willard's hotel, hurrying to catch this afternoon's
mail. Mother, do you get your letters now next morning, as you ought? I
got a letter from the postmaster of Brooklyn about it--said if the letters
were neglected again, to send him word. I have not heard from home now in
some days. I am going to put up a lot of my old things in a box and send
them home by express. I will write when I send them. Have you heard
anything from Mary or Han lately? I should like to hear. Tell Jeff he must
write, and you must, too, mother. I have been in one of the worst
hospitals all the forenoon, it containing about 1600. I have given the men
pipes and tobacco. (I am the only one that gives them tobacco.) O how much
good it does some of them--the chaplains and most of the doctors are down
upon it--but I give them and let them smoke. To others I have given
oranges, fed them, etc. Well, dear mother, good-bye--love to Matty and
Sis.
WALT.
Fred McReady is coming home very soon on furlough--have any of the
soldiers called on you?
XXV
_Washington, June 3, 1864._ DEAREST MOTHER--Your letter came yesterday. I
have not heard the least thing from the 51st since--no doubt they are down
there with the army near Richmond. I have not written to George lately. I
think the news from the Army is very good. Mother, you know of course that
it is now very near Richmond indeed, from five to ten miles. Mother, if
this campaign was not in progress I should not stop here, as it is now
beginning to tell a little upon me, so many bad wounds, many putrefied,
and all kinds of dreadful ones, I have been rather too much with--but as
it is, I certainly remain here while the thing remains undecided. It is
impossible for me to abstain from going to see and minister to certain
cases, and that draws me into others, and so on. I have just left Oscar
Cunningham, the Ohio boy--he is in a dying condition--there is no hope for
him--it would draw tears from the hardest heart to look at him--he is all
wasted away to a skeleton, and looks like some one fifty years old. You
remember I told you a year ago, when he was first brought in, I thought
him the noblest specimen of a young Western man I had seen, a real giant
in size, and always with a smile on his face. O what a change. He has long
been very irritable to every one but me, and his frame is all wasted away.
The young Massachusetts 1st artillery boy, Cutter, I wrote about is dead.
He is the one that was brought in a week ago last Sunday badly wounded in
breast. The deaths in the principal hospital I visit, Armory-square,
average one an hour.
I saw Capt. Baldwin of the 14th this morning; he has lost his left arm--is
going home soon. Mr. Kalbfleisch and Anson Herrick, (M. C. from New York),
came in one of the wards where I was sitting writing a letter this
morning, in the midst of the wounded. Kalbfleisch was so much affected by
the sight that he burst into tears. O, I must tell you, I [gave] in Carver
hospital a great treat of ice cream, a couple of days ago--went round
myself through about 15 large wards--(I bought some ten gallons, very
nice). You would have cried and been amused too. Many of the men had to be
fed; several of them I saw cannot probably live, yet they quite enjoyed
it. I gave everybody some--quite a number [of] Western country boys had
never tasted ice cream before. They relish such things [as] oranges,
lemons, etc. Mother, I feel a little blue this morning, as two young men I
knew very well have just died. One died last night, and the other about
half an hour before I went to the hospital. I did not anticipate the death
of either of them. Each was a very, very sad case, so young. Well mother,
I see I have written you another gloomy sort of letter. I do not feel as
first rate as usual.
WALT.
You don't know how I want to come home and see you all; you, dear mother,
and Jeff and Mat and all. I believe I am homesick--something new for
me--then I have seen all the horrors of soldiers' life and not been kept
up by its excitement. It is awful to see so much, and not be able to
relieve it.
XXVI
_Washington, 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. Saturday 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 passed 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 Saturday 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 Washington 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 basement 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 anticipate 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
_Washington, 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
_Washington, 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 pass
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
_Washington, 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
Washington 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 Washington about 1861, first as clerk in the
Light House Bureau, and later became Assistant Superintendent of the
United States Life-Saving Service; died in Washington, 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 Grass," 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 surreptitiously 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.
[17] Mrs. Whitman's maiden name was Louisa Van Velsor.
[18] Mrs. Abby Price, an intimate friend of Whitman, and a friend and
neighbor of his mother.
[19] Mrs. Price's son, a naval officer.
[20] Mrs. Price's daughter, and sister of the Helen mentioned later.
[21] Formerly of Thayer & Eldridge, the first Boston publishers of "Leaves
of Grass" (1860 Edition).
[22] Jeff's daughter Jessie was originally called California.
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