Comment of Mary A. Livermore upon the work of Mother Angela at Mound City: “The world has known no nobler and more heroic women than those found in the ranks of the Catholic Sisterhoods.” A famous scout gives his impressions of the Sisters. Susan D. Messinger tells of the work of the Sisters at New Berne, N. C.
No tributes that have been paid to the work of the Catholic Sisterhoods during the war have been more cordial or more emphatic than those coming from non-Catholic sources. It is a significant fact that those most prejudiced against the Sisters have been persons who knew the least about them, while the warmest friends of the dark-robed messengers of charity and peace have been persons who came in contact with them and their labors for humanity.
Mary A. Livermore, whose personal services during the war were by no means inconsiderable, is one non-Catholic writer who does not hesitate to give the Catholic Sister full credit for what she did. Miss Livermore says the Mound City Hospital, in charge of the Sisters of the Holy 298 Cross, was considered the best military hospital in the United States. She writes:25
“There was one general hospital in Cairo, called by the people ‘the Brick Hospital.’ Here the Sisters of the Holy Cross were employed as nurses, one or more to each ward. Here were order, cleanliness and good nursing. The food was cooked in a kitchen outside of the hospital. Surgeons were detailed to every ward and visited their patients twice a day, and oftener if necessary. The apothecaries’ room was supplied with an ample store of medicines and surgical appliances, and the store-rooms possessed an abundance of clothing and delicacies for the sick.”
The work done at Mound City is thus graphically set forth: “Except in Mound City everything was in a chaotic condition compared with the complete arrangement afterwards. The hospital at Mound City occupied a block of brick stores, built before the war to accommodate the prospective commerce of the war. They had not been occupied, and as the blockade of the Mississippi rendered it uncertain when they would be needed for their legitimate use, they were turned over to the medical department for hospital use. At the time of my visit the Mound City hospital was considered the best military hospital in the United States. This was due to the administrative talent of Dr. E. S. Franklin, of Dubuque, Ia., who, despite poverty of means and material, transformed the rough block of stores into a superb hospital, accommodating 1000 patients. Fifteen hundred had been crowded in it by dint of close packing.
“The most thorough system was maintained in every 299 department. There was an exact time and place for everything. Every person was assigned to a particular work and held responsible for its performance. If anyone proved a shirk, incompetent or insubordinate, he was sent off in the next boat. A Shaker-like cleanliness and sweetness of atmosphere pervaded the various wards; the sheets and pillows were of immaculate whiteness and the patients who were convalescent were cheerful and contented. The Sisters of the Holy Cross were employed as nurses, and by their skill, quietness, gentleness and tenderness were invaluable in the sick wards. Every patient gave hearty testimony to the skill and kindness of the Sisters.
“Mother Angela was the Superior of the Sisters—a gifted lady of rare cultivation and executive ability with winning sweetness of manner. She was a member of the Ewing family and a cousin of Mr. and Mrs. General Sherman. The Sisters had nearly broken up their famous schools at South Bend to answer the demand for nurses. If I had ever felt prejudiced against these Sisters as nurses, my experience with them during the war would have dissipated it entirely. The world has known no nobler and more heroic women than those found in the ranks of the Catholic Sisterhoods.”
Captain “Jack” Crawford, who became famous as a scout in the union army, in the course of a lecture delivered after the war speaks of the Sisters as follows:
“On all God’s green and beautiful earth there are no purer, no nobler, no more kind-hearted and self-sacrificing women than those who wear the sombre garb of Catholic Sisters. During the war I had many opportunities for observing their noble and heroic work, not only in the camp 300 and hospital, but on the death-swept field of battle. Right in the fiery front of dreadful war, where bullets hissed in maddening glee, and shot and shell flew madly by with demoniac shrieks, where dead and mangled forms lay with pale, blood-flecked faces, yet wear the scowl of battle, I have seen the black-robed Sisters moving over the field, their solicitous faces wet with the tears of sympathy, administering to the wants of the wounded and whispering words of comfort into the ears soon to be deafened by the cold, implacable hand of death. Now kneeling on the blood-bespattered sod to moisten with water the bloodless lips on which the icy kiss of the death angel has left its pale imprint; now breathing words of hope of an immortality beyond the grave into the ear of some mangled hero, whose last shots in our glorious cause had been fired but a moment before; now holding the crucifix to receive the last kiss from somebody’s darling boy, from whose breast the life blood was splashing and who had offered his life as a willing sacrifice on the altar of his country; now with tender touch and tear-dimmed eye binding gaping wounds, from which most women must have shrunk in horror; now scraping together a pillow of forest leaves, upon which some pain-racked head might rest until the spirit took its flight to other realms—brave, fearless of danger, trusting implicitly in the Master whose overshadowing eye was noting their every movement; standing as shielding, prayerful angels between the dying soldiers and the horrors of death. Their only recompense the sweet, soul-soothing consciousness that they were doing their duty; their only hope of reward that peace and eternal happiness which awaited them beyond the star-emblazoned battlements above. Oh! my friends, it was a noble work. 301
“How many a veteran of the war, who wore the Blue or the Gray, can yet recall the soothing touch of a Sister’s hand as he lay upon the pain-tossed couch of a hospital! Can we ever forget their sympathetic-eyes, their low, soft-spoken words of encouragement and cheer when the result of the struggle between life and death yet hung in the balance? Oh! how often have I followed the form of that good Sister Valencia with my sunken eyes as she moved away from my cot to the cot of another sufferer and have breathed from the most sacred depths of my faintly-beating heart the fervent prayer: ‘God bless her! God bless her!’
“My friends, I am not a Catholic, but I stand ready at any and all times to defend these noble women, even with my life, for I owe that life to them.”
Miss Susan D. Messinger, of Roxbury, Mass., writes the following eloquent letter to the author:
“It is with real pleasure I pay my tribute to that noble band of Sisters of Mercy, who did such a Christian work of love and helpfulness for our suffering soldier boys in New Berne, N. C. My brother, Captain (afterwards Colonel) Messinger, was on the staff of Major General John G. Foster, Eighteenth Army Corps, stationed at New Berne, N. C. After the taking of New Berne my brother was made Provost Marshal and given quarters near the general at the request of Mrs. Foster, my sister. Mrs. Messinger and I were sent for to stay a few weeks, although in no official capacity. No woman could be in the army without finding much she could do to relieve and comfort, and especially through the home our little quarters became to all, from major generals to privates. We could not go home. We stayed until summer. I write all this personal matter to 302 show how I was thrown into the companionship of these Catholic Sisters. Although my brother and myself were Unitarians we became close, congenial friends with these brave women, who had to seek constantly advice and help from my brother on account of his position as Provost Marshal.
“General Foster was a Catholic and brought to New Berne six Sisters from the Convent of Mercy, in New York, to take charge of a hospital in New Berne for special cases. He took for their convent a house which had been General Burnsides’ headquarters, and which also, during the war of the Revolution, had been occupied by Washington, his room and writing table sacredly preserved. This house communicated by a plank walk with another house, or houses, used as hospitals, and only over that plank walk did those devoted women ever take any exercise or recreation. They literally gave themselves as nurses to the poor, wounded, maimed and sick soldiers brought to them day after day. And most beautifully did they fulfill the charge. Many a soldier will never forget their tender, unselfish care and devotion. I was witness myself to much of it, as I was privileged to go from ward to ward. Many a dying man blessed them as angels of mercy, almost looking upon them as sent from the other world.
“One dear young fellow, who was almost reverenced by doctors and nurses for his patience and fortitude (young George Brooks, brother to the late Bishop Philipps Brooks), looked up into the sweet face of Mother Augustine, as she bent over to minister or to soothe the dear boy, with: ‘Mother, thank you, Mother,’ and with such an ineffable smile of peace. We could never tell if in his delirium he thought it was his own mother, but the peace on the boy’s 303 face showed what his nurse had been to him. His sickness was short and death came just before the father reached New Berne.
FARRAGUT IN THE RIGGING.
“One dear young friend of mine, Sergeant Charles Hinkling, was sick under their care many weeks; finally brought home to linger and die; but he and his family were most deeply grateful to the kind Sisters for the tender care bestowed upon him in their hospital, especially by Sister Gertrude.
“Sister Mary Gertrude is now the Mother Superior of an institution in California, after a life of hard work among the poor and suffering. I think she is perhaps the only one living of those dear women I knew in New Berne.
“It was through the winter of 1862-63 that the Sisters were in New Berne. The next year the headquarters were removed to Fortress Monroe and the Sisters returned to New York.
“Through these thirty years or more—my brother and many, many more who could have borne evidence to the faithful work of the Sisters of Mercy in New Berne—have answered the roll call to the Home above. But those days stand out in my memory as clearly as if yesterday, with all the pain, anxiety, hope, fear and faith, and no scenes are more real to me than those hours with those devoted women who were helping God’s children so wisely, so gently, with no thought of reward or glory! God bless their memories to us all.”
General David McMurtrie Gregg ranks as one of the most distinguished cavalry officers that served in the union Army. No man on either side had a more brilliant record for discretion in camp and bravery in battle. He 304 graduated at West Point, and after meritorious service in the regular army in New Mexico, California, Oregon and Washington Territory he became colonel of the Eighth Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry. He served with his regiment during the entire Peninsular campaign of 1862, and in November of that year he became brigadier general of volunteers. He was placed in command of a division of cavalry on the battlefield of Fredericksburg and served as its commander in the Stoneman’s raid, in the campaigns of Gettysburg, Mine Run, the Wilderness and in front of Petersburg. He commanded the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac from August, 1864, until his resignation from the army, in February, 1865. He was breveted major general United States volunteers, August 1, 1864. General Gregg has occupied many positions of distinction in civil life.
The writer of this volume recently communicated with General Gregg regarding his experiences with the Catholic Sisterhoods in the war, and received the following very interesting reply:
“My Dear Sir: I am in receipt of your letter of the 8th instant, inclosing an article taking from a newspaper published in 1866, and in which the name ‘General Gregg’ is mentioned. The person referred to was my cousin, General John I. Gregg, who commanded one of my brigades.
“I do not recall that at any time in the field I was brought in contact with representatives of any of the Catholic Sisterhoods, yet the mere mention of the matter makes me reminiscent, and whilst my experience with a representative of a Sisterhood was purely personal, it was so pleasant and profitable to me that I cannot refrain from mentioning it. In the summer of 1861 I was made a captain in the Sixth Regular Cavalry, and was ordered East 305 from Oregon, where for several years I had been serving as a lieutenant in the First Dragoons. In crossing the Isthmus of Panama I contracted the low fever of that region.
“In September I joined the Sixth at Bladensburg, near Washington, and after a short time I was prostrated by this fever. Just at this time the regiment was ordered away, and I was left in the camp seriously ill. Stretched on the bottom of an ambulance I was hauled over a rough road to Washington and placed in a bed in the old Kirkwood House in a state of delirium. A few hours after Major Ingalls, who subsequently became Quarter Master General, a warm personal friend, heard of my condition, and with another friend came to the hotel with a carriage, and I was taken to the E Street Infirmary, which was in charge of a surgeon of the regular army. At the entrance of the infirmary stood the doctor, and at his side an elderly Sister of Charity.
“I was carried in and placed in a large room next to the surgeon’s, and was at once put into a clean, comfortable bed. The good Sister, who had some superior rank, saw that I was made comfortable, and, it is needless to say, that after what I had gone through, I felt as though I were in heaven. Then followed weeks of severe illness with typhoid fever. I had the attendance of my own man, and had many visits each day from doctors, stewards and their assistants, but the real nursing was done by another Sister of Charity, Sister Margaret.
“I have never forgotten her gentleness and cheerfulness. She was simply the highest type of a Christian woman. Her good nursing continued for weeks, and I was kept alive only to go through another trying experience, for an a cold and rainy night early in November, and nearly midnight, this infirmary took fire and was entirely destroyed. How I escaped has nothing to do with this narrative, but to my exceeding regret I never again saw Sister Margaret. 306
“But I have never forgotten her, and when in the street I meet one of the Sisterhood to which she belonged there is in my heart ............