Part 2 (2/2)
”Headquarters, Department of the Gulf, 19th Army Corps, Simmes' Plantation, May 19, 1863.
”Guards and Patriots:
”Pa.s.s Mr. Chalfant, Mrs. Merrick, and party, with their carriages and drivers, to their homes, near the head of the Atchafalaya.
”RICHD. B. IRWIN, ”A. A. General.”
”Camp Clara, Jackson, Miss., May 31, 1863.--We have good water and our men are improving, but many are ill with typhoid fever”--thus my brother wrote. ”The sickness enlists my deepest sympathy. The number of soldiers'
graves is astonis.h.i.+ng. From morning until night negroes are constantly digging them for instant use. General Lovell inspected our battery the other day and said he wanted it down on the river; so just as soon as our horses arrive we are to go to work. The men are well drilled, but we lack horses and ammunition. I hear David's regiment is at Petersburg, Va.”
In Confederate times the people were patient under the sickness in camp, and never a complaint was sent to Richmond about poor food and bad water which caused as many fatalities as powder and ball. Increased knowledge and improved methods of camp sanitation seem almost to justify the indignant protests against embalmed beef and typhoid-breeding water that have been heaped upon Congress and officers of the War Department in the late Spanish-American war. One out of the four of my father's great-grandsons who enlisted for the Spanish-American struggle lost his life in an unhealthy Florida camp before he could be sent to Cuba. It is plain to every fair-minded investigator that many of these fatalities were due to a lack of those essentials in which every housekeeping woman, by nature and training, is especially qualified. It was a relief to the minds of the mothers of the nation to learn that near the close of the late Cuban conflict a woman had been appointed on the National Military Medical Commission. It is a woman's proper vocation to care for the sick. Men who would exclude women from the ballot-box on the plea that they only who fight ought to vote, should remember Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale who have served armies so effectually.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning said: ”The nursing movement is a revival of old virtues. Since the siege of Troy and earlier we have had princesses binding wounds with their hands. It is strictly the woman's part, and men understand it so. Every man is on his knees before ladies carrying lint; whereas if they stir an inch as thinkers or artists from the beaten line (involving more good to general humanity than is involved in lint), the very same men would condemn the audacity of the very same women.”
A young naval officer, at my dinner table, once dissented from such views which I had expressed, and of which Bishop Warren of the M. E. Church had heartily approved. ”Until women,” said this young officer, ”furnish this government for its defense with soldiers and sailors from their own ranks they should be prohibited from voting.” ”Dear sir,” I replied, ”how many soldiers and sailors does this country now possess in its active service whom the women have not already furnished from their own ranks?”
The young man yielded but was not convinced, even when an eminent physician remarked that he had heard many a young mother say that she would rather march up to the cannon's mouth than to lie down to meet her peculiar trial. He further stated that when their hour came they were always full of courage, and, in his opinion, their maternity ought to count for something to them of great value in the government.
All men in an army do not fight. No more important branch of the military service existed during the civil war than that which the women of the Confederacy controlled. They planted and gathered and s.h.i.+pped the crops which fed the children and slaves at home and the armies in the field; they raised the wool and cotton that clothed the soldiers and the hogs and cattle that made their meat; they spun and wove the crude product into cloth for the home and the army; their knitting needles clicked until the great surrender, manufacturing all the socks and ”sweaters” and comforters which the Confederate soldier-boys possessed--our nearly naked boys toward the last, so often on the march called ”Ragged Rebels.”
CHAPTER VI.
WAR-MEMORIES: HOW BECKY COLEMAN WASHED HESTER WHITEFIELD'S FACE.
Among the Federal vessels stationed at Red River Landing was the Manhattan, commanded by Captain Grafton, a high-minded officer as the following incident proves. A letter from Laura Ellen to her brother David, dated at Myrtle Grove, records: ”Stephen Brown, mother's head manager on this place, has been very sick. Dr. Archer, who was stopping with us all night, went to see him, and after an examination, reported that he could do nothing to relieve him without chloroform and surgical instruments, both of which were inaccessible and out of the question; and he candidly told mother Stephen could not live twenty-four hours without an operation.
Mother, heart-broken and in tears, begged the doctor to tell her to what means she could resort to save so faithful a servant. The doctor said they had everything needful on the Federal gunboats. Mother instantly determined to go to Red River Landing and appeal for help; but she wished Dr. Archer to go with her and explain the case. He objected, saying he had never held any communication with the enemy, and he did not wish to spoil his record with the Confederates. But mother finally induced him to accompany her.
”It seemed to us a forlorn hope. When she started off with Dr. Archer, mother enjoined it upon us to have the best dinner that we could prepare for the officers who were to come back with her, which suggestion we took the liberty of overlooking, as we did not dream she could succeed in such an unheard-of undertaking. When she reached the Mississippi and waved her handkerchief, a tug came from the gunboat to the sh.o.r.e and she asked to see the commanding officer. The tug offered to take mother to the gunboat, but at first objected to the doctor going with her. Finally both went, and were received on the deck of the big wars.h.i.+p. Captain Grafton said he feared that any surgeon or officer might be captured, and that he must have a written guarantee against that possibility before he could run such a risk. Mother told him that Captain Collins and his scouts were thirty miles distant; she could only a.s.sure him that none who came to her aid would be molested. Dr. Archer supported her opinion; but the captain declined the adventure; whereupon mother burst into tears. 'Captain Grafton,' she said, 'I did not come here to teach you your duty; but I came to perform mine. Now if the negro's life is not saved, his death will lie at your door, not mine.' Capt. Grafton replied: 'Madam, I don't like you to put it that way!' Moved by that view or her tears--he sent the tug for the captains of two other gunboats, and the three held a council of war, finally consenting that a surgeon with his a.s.sistants and the necessary equipments should have leave to go provided he would himself a.s.sume the responsibility for his absence from the boat, for the military authorities would make no order about it. Thus Dr. Mitch.e.l.l first came to Myrtle Grove on an errand of mercy.
”None was more surprised than mother herself when Dr. H. W. Mitch.e.l.l, surgeon of the Manhattan, offered to go with her. It had been eight months since these Federal naval attaches had set foot on land, and apparently they greatly enjoyed the long drive with only a handkerchief for a flag of truce floating from the carriage window. The doctor went to the 'Quarters'
to see Stephen, and mother flew to the kitchen and dining-room to put forth her rare culinary skill in compensation for our negligence. After dinner we had music, and Dr. Mitch.e.l.l sang us many new songs, and proved to be very intelligent, entertaining and agreeable. I treated him well, too, as I was bound to do after his kindness. At dinner I had on a homespun dress trimmed with black velvet and Pelican b.u.t.tons: when they went away I even gave the doctor my hand, 'though always before I had refused to shake hands with a single one of them. Not for anything on earth 'would I have done as much previously.'”
During the many months that the U. S. gunboat Manhattan remained at Red River Landing, I saw the officers from time to time, and once a creva.s.se detained Dr. Mitch.e.l.l for three days in our home. The friends.h.i.+p thus established has outlived the war and proved a source of great pleasure to me; while the sympathy the doctor so kindly extended later, during the bitter reconstruction days, was a solid satisfaction and comfort, for his cultured and experienced mind comprehended both sides of the situation.
Devoted to the Union, he yet expressed no inordinate desire to exterminate the South, and never said he would be glad to hang Jefferson Davis. He writes July 30, 1865: ”We are all Americans. We speak one language; our flag is the same; we are citizens of the United States. It is the right spirit to recognize no section. If all should uphold the Government faithfully under which we enjoy so many blessings, internal strife in the future will be impossible.”
”Mother says,” the diary continues, ”let an army be friend or foe, it takes everything it needs for its subsistence on the march, and starvation is in its track. Brig.-Gen. Grover's Division camped for two weeks on this plantation, and the General's own tent was pitched next to our side gate.
When some of his staff were here visiting, one of them took baby Edwin in his arms and kissed him. After they had gone I scolded him for kissing a Yankee, and said I was going to tell his 'Ma.r.s.e Dadles!' He began to cry and sobbed out, 'O Sissy, he was a good Yankee!' They rob the corn-cribs, so it is well they carry off the negroes too. Ours, however, will not go; they have made no preparation to depart, and mother interviews them daily on the subject, but leaves them to decide whether they will 'silently steal away,' which is their method of disappearing. Mr. Barbre's negroes have all gone except two, and Mr. Chalfant's and Mrs. French's are preparing to go, so our neighbors are generally upset.”
In a letter of an earlier date Laura Ellen gives an account of Mr.
Chalfant coming to me and asking advice as to how the slaves could be prevented from following the army. I had wanted to know of my neighbor if his negroes would take his word on the subject. If so, he might state to them that they might be free just where they were--that it was not necessary they should leave their homes, their little children, their household effects, tools and other ”belongings” which could not be carried on the march (to say nothing of the hogs-head of sugar nearly all of them had in their cabins), their poultry, dogs, cows and horses. If it were candidly explained to them that their freedom was to be a certainty, and that they might be hired to work by their old owners, doubtless many would be convinced of the wisdom of remaining at home and taking their chances--all would depend on the confidence the negro had in the master--but they should, in all cases, be left to make their own decision--whether to go or stay. Some of the people who could read should be shown the newspapers, _left by the Yankees_, wherein it is urged upon the government to put the black men into the army. This should be read to them by one of their own color.
After hearing these views Mr. Chalfant was reported having said: ”Mrs.
Merrick has more sense about managing the negroes than any man on the river.”
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