Dilapidated frame buildings serve as hospitals at the National Capital. A convalescent patient who was “tired and vexed.” A whole day spent in going from store to store in a vain attempt to purchase “one of those white bonnets” for a Sister. The soldier whose life was saved by being “shot in the U. S. A.”
When the fratricidal conflict between the sections began very few persons paused to consider its extent and consequence. But as each week passed it grew in intensity and volume. In the beginning of the year 1862 at least 450,000 union troops were in the field, and half of that number were under the command of General McClellan in and around Washington. Upon the breaking out of hostilities old Virginia had at once become the principal arena of the contending armies of the East. The Confederate capital being at Richmond and the union seat of Government at Washington, D. C., only a short stretch of country south of the Potomac River separated the armies.
A disastrous defeat at Bull Run on the 21st of July, 1861, caused the union Army to retreat to Washington. There were various minor engagements both before and 63 after this date, but nothing of unusual consequence occurred until February, 1862, when General U. S. Grant, commanding the land forces, and Commodore Foote the gunboats, captured Fort Henry on the Tennessee, and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River in Kentucky. It was on this occasion, when the commander of Fort Donelson asked for terms, that Grant gave the now historic reply: “No terms except immediate and unconditional surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.”
Some time before this the Confederate and union forces realized that they were insufficiently provided with trained nurses. In the early part of 1862 the Government made a formal request upon the Sisterhoods for nurses. The Sisters of Charity were requested to send a deputation to attend the sick and wounded in the temporary hospitals at Washington. These hospitals consisted of a number of rather dilapidated frame buildings and various tents which had been improvised into structures for hospital purposes.
The Sisters were promptly assigned from the mother house at Emmittsburg, Md. When they arrived at the National Capital they found the buildings and tents crowded with patients. The majority of these had been brought in from battlefields in the vicinity of Washington. The Sisters endeavored to look after the temporal needs of the men, in many instances acting in the dual capacity of doctor and nurse. There were many incidents, some of them of a humorous, most of them of a decidedly serious character.
While the nurses were rushing from one cot to another 64 a poor man who was in a dying state cried out at the top of his voice, “I want a clergyman.”
One of the Sisters hastened to him and asked: “What clergyman do you want?”
He replied: “A white bonnet clergyman; the one you ladies have.”
“But you are not a Catholic?” said the Sister.
“I know that, but I want to see a Catholic priest.”
After a slight delay a clergyman reached his bedside. The poor patient reached his skeleton-like hand to the priest and began as follows: “In the Bible we read ‘as the Father hath sent Me, I also send you, and whose sins you shall forgive are forgiven.’ Now tell me has that order ever been countermanded in any part of the Bible?”
The priest replied with a smile: “No, my son; it is the same now as it ever was and ever shall be.”
“Well,” said the sick man, “I have never disobeyed an order when one who gave that order had authority to command. Therefore being a good soldier I wish to fulfill that order in every respect.”
As he was not in immediate danger and a man of considerable intelligence the priest told him he would come and see him again. The soldier asked for a catechism or any book that would instruct him in the white bonnet religion. Later he made a confession of his whole life and was baptized on the following Sunday morning in the chapel in the presence of the entire congregation. He said he did not wish to be baptized behind closed doors, but wished all to know that he was a Catholic. While he remained in the hospital he would go from one patient to another reading and explaining what had been explained to him. Several of the soldiers argued with 65 him upon the subject of religion, but with the Bible in one hand and the little catechism in the other he would put them all to silence.
One dreary night a score of ambulances drove up to the hospital grounds with sixty-four wounded men. Of this number fifty-six had been shot in such a manner as to necessitate amputation of either a leg or an arm. Indeed, a few of the unfortunates were deprived of both legs.
Some died in the short while it took to remove them from the ambulance to the ward. The Sisters went from bed to bed doing all they could to minimize the sufferings of the soldiers. Two of the patients were very disrespectful to one of the Sisters, showing anger and telling them to begone. The nurse in charge quietly walked away. After a little while another Sister went to them and asked if they wished her to write to anyone for them. They did, and she wrote as they dictated, then read it to them and left. By this time they began to reflect on the kindness that had been shown them and soon appreciated the fact that the Sisters were indeed their friends.
Of the sixty-four wounded men eight died the next day. There were thirty bodies in the dead house, although it was the custom to bury two a day. For a while the patients suffered from smallpox, which added very much to the labors of the Sisters, since such patients had to be separated and quarantined from the others. Several died from the disease. One of the Sisters who waited upon them took it, but recovered. Many of the patients who seemed to dislike and fear the Sisters found they had been mistaken in the opinions they had formed of them. They often showed their confidence by wanting to place their money in the custody of the Sisters. 66
One day a poor fellow obtained a pass and spent the entire day in the city and returned at twilight looking sad and fatigued. A Sister of his ward asked him if he was suffering, and he replied: “No, Sister; but I am tired and vexed. I received my pass early to-day and walked through every street in Washington trying to buy one of those white bonnets for you and did not find a single one for sale.”
There are amusing stories of life in the hospitals, and on the field, and the following one is vouched for by Mather M. Alphonse Butler:
“Every union soldier wore a belt with the initials ‘U. S. A.’—United States Army. When a wounded man was brought to the hospital notice was given to the Sister and she would at once prepare to dress the wound. One day a man was brought in on a litter, pale and unconscious, and the Sister rushed to give him attention. By degrees he became conscious, and the Sister asked him where he was wounded. He seemed bewildered at first, but gradually his mind returned. Again the Sister asked him where he was wounded. A smile spread over his face.
“It is all right, Sister,” he said; “don’t disturb yourself.”
“Oh, no,” she said, “they tell me you were shot.”
“Yes,” he answered, “I was shot, but shot in the U. S. A.”
The Sister understood at once the bullet had struck the initials on his belt, and they had saved his life.
The Sisters were the witnesses of some very pathetic incidents. The battlefield of Bull Run supplied its full share of these. One of the brave union men who was killed in that disastrous engagement was Lieutenant 67 Colonel Haggerty, of the Sixty-ninth New York Regiment. It appears that Haggerty had interred the remains of a child on the field and had enclosed it with an improvised railing. At the head of the little mound was a narrow bit of board, upon which was inscribed with small capitals in ink the following:
Strangers
please do not
injure this
inclosure. Here lies the remains of
Harriet Osborn,
aged 8 years.
Beneath this is written in pencil the following lines:
When the storm clouds around us gather,
And this world seems dark and drear,
Let us look beyond the darkness
Which hovers o’er our pathway here;
Look beyond this world of sorrow
To the regions of the blest,
Where the wicked cease from troubling
And the weary are at rest.
—Haggerty, Co. B, 69th Reg’t.
Haggerty must have been killed soon after performing this touching act, for beneath the inscription is appended this brief mortuary record:
Haggerty was killed at Bull Run
July 21, 1861.
A correspondent of one of the Northern newspapers, writing to his journal at the time said:
“This little memorial of one of the most conspicuous men of the union cause among the New York troops—over whose fall one of his brother officers, Thomas Francis Meagher, delivered at Jones’ Wood so heart-rending a 68 eulogy—will be read with interest by hundreds of those who remember him, proving, as it does, that the stern, fierce, devoted soldier found time in the very moment of danger to consider the fate of others.”
At a meeting of the Board of Officers of the Sixty-ninth Regiment, held at their armory on April 3, 1862, Captain Theodore Kelly, Lieutenant T. M. Canton and Lieutenant Fahy were appointed a committee to proceed to the battlefield of Bull Run and bring back to New York the remains of their lamented brother officer, who had fallen while gallantly leading a charge of the regiment in the memorable conflict of July 21. The officers indicated performed their mission and the body was re-interred near the brave Haggerty’s home, in New York City.
A letter received by the Sisters from Huntsville, Ala., dated May 26, 1862, contains the following touching passage:
“A few days ago a prisoner in the hands of General Mitchell, named Cobb, a relative of Howell Cobb, died in the hospital at this place. A Federal officer visited the prison, as was his daily wont, and, learning the facts, asked the other prisoners if they would not like to attend the funeral. The reply was yes, but they could not hope to have such a boon accorded to them in view of their peculiar situation. The officer at once repaired to the quarters of General Mitchell, stated the case and received an order for their permission to accompany the remains of their comrade to their last resting place. He returned to the prison with the order, exacted a promise that they should not seek to escape, and put the party in charge of Father Tracey, the resident Catholic pastor at Huntsville. 69
“The procession wended its way to the cemetery, when the young ladies of the town strewed the coffin and the grave of the young soldier with the rarest flowers of the garden, and evinced in the most unmistakable manner their sympathy and their ardent love for the cause of the South. The scene was at once solemn, grand and affecting. There lay the earthly remains of the devoted soldier in the narrow house of clay, and there assembled hundreds of the fairest daughters of Huntsville to shed the parting tear over the corpse of the hero of their cause and garland the grave of the young rebel with the choicest products of their sunny bowers. There stood the minister of religion, chanting the office of his church for the repose of the soul of the departed, surrounded by the witching forms of angelic traitors who made the air fragrant with the odor of their treason, and comingling their anathemas of the union with the prayers of the priest. The sermon over, the prisoners returned to their gloomy quarters, where they passed a series of resolutions thanking the officer for his kindness and General Mitchell for the courtesy he extended, and closing with the hope that the day might not be far distant when the defenders of the South and the defenders of the union could shake hands and fight by each other’s side for a common cause.
“To-day the men and officers of the Fifteenth Kentucky followed to the same spot the remains of Bernard McGinnis, who died from a wound received at Winchester, and over whose grave the same Father Tracey performed similar services to those which he had done before for young Cobb. How beautiful it seemed to the beholder 70 to look upon the same minister amid the tumult of war, contending passions and the fearful excerbations of the public mind, lift up his voice to the throne of the Most High and solicit the pledges of faith for the soul of the young Georgian, and the faithful Irishman, without a prejudice for one or a partiality for the other.”