Woman's Work in the Civil War Part 31

The day previous an ammunition-wagon in their train had exploded, and Mrs. Spencer had torn up the thick comforter which usually formed her bed, that the driver of the wagon, who was fearfully burned, might be wrapped in the cotton and bandaged by the calico of which it was made.

Mr. Spencer remained to care for the man, and at night--a dark and rainy night--she found herself for the first time separated from her husband, and unprotected by any friend. But the respectful and chivalric instincts of American soldiers proved sufficient for her defense against any evil that might have menaced her. They spread their rubber blankets upon the muddy ground, and made a sort of tent with others, into which she crept and slept guarded and secure through the long dark hours. At morning they vied with each other in preparing her breakfast, and waiting upon her with every possible respect and attention, and she went on her way, rested and refreshed.

In the course of the morning Mr. Spencer rejoined her. After the firing was heard, telling the tale of the awful conflict that was progressing, she felt that she could no longer remain with the halting train, but must press on to some point where her work of mercy might commence.

This was found in an unoccupied barn, not far from the field, where, by the a.s.sistance of her husband, she got a fire and soon had her camp-kettles filled with fragrant coffee, which she distributed to every weary and wounded man who applied for the refreshing beverage.

Wounded in considerable numbers from the Eleventh Corps were placed in this barn to gain which they crossed the fields between two rows of artillery, stationed there. Mrs. Spencer had two knapsacks and two haversacks suspended from her saddle, and supplied with materials for making tea, coffee and beef-tea--with these and crackers, she contrived to provide refreshment. Meanwhile the b.a.l.l.s and sh.e.l.ls were falling fast around the barn, and orders came to move further back.

But this brave woman with her husband chose to move forward rather, in search of her own regiment, though the enemy were then gaining upon the Union troops. As they went on toward the battle, they found their regiment stationed on a hill above them, and halting they made a fire and prepared refreshments which they gave to all they could reach.

While working here the Surgeon of the First Division came hurrying past, and peremptorily called on Mrs. Spencer to go and help form a hospital.

When she and Mr. Spencer found that many men of their own regiment were in the train of ambulances which was going slowly past with the sufferers, they followed.

They crossed to the White Church, on the Baltimore turnpike, about four miles from Gettysburg, and reached there after dark. They had sixty wounded undergoing every variety of suffering and torture. The church was small, having but one aisle, and the narrow seats were fixtures. A small building adjoining provided boards which were laid on the tops of the seats, and covered with straw, and on these the wounded were laid.

The supply train had been sent back fourteen miles. A number of surgeons were there, but none had instruments, and could do very little for the wounded, and Mrs. Spencer found the stores contained in her knapsacks and haversacks most useful in refreshing these sufferers.

In the course of a few days the confusion subsided. The hospital was thoroughly organized. The Sanitary and Christian Commissions and the people came and aided them, and order came out of the chaos that followed this awful battle.

On the 5th of July, the buildings and tents which formed this hospital contained over six hundred Union troops, and more than one hundred wounded prisoners, and Mrs. Spencer found herself constantly and fully employed, nursing the wounded, and daily riding into town for supplies.

It was here that she gained, and very justly as it would seem, the credit of saving the life of a wounded soldier, a townsman of her own.

The man was shot in the mouth and throat, a huge gaping orifice on the side of his neck showing where the ball found exit. The surgeons gave him but a few days to live, as he could swallow nothing, the liquids which were all he even could attempt to take, pa.s.sing out by the wound.

Tearfully he besought Mrs. Spencer's aid. Young and strong, and full of life, he could not contemplate a death of slow starvation. Mrs. Spencer went to the surgeons and besought their aid. None of them could give hope, for none conceived the strength of will in nurse or patient.

"Do as I tell you ----, and you shall not die," said Mrs. Spencer. "Can you bear to go without food a week?"

Gratefully the man signed "yes," and with the tough unyielding patience of a hero, he bore the pains of wound and hunger. In the meantime the chief appliance was the basin of pure cold water from which he was directed to keep his wound continually wet, that horrid wound which it seemed no human skill could heal.

In a few days the inflammation began to subside, even the surgeons decided the symptoms good, and began to watch the case with interest.

The ragged edges of the wound, when the swelling subsided, could be closed up. Then, by direction of his kind nurse, he plunged his face into a basin of broth, and supped from it strength, since it did not all escape from the still unhealed wound. Every day witnessed an improvement. In a little time he took his food like a human being; each day witnessed new strength and healing, and then he was saved, and the nurse proved wiser, for once, than the doctor!

For three weeks Mrs. Spencer remained in the White Church Hospital. She then accompanied some wounded to New York City, and took a brief respite from her duties, and the awful scenes she had witnessed.

On her return to Gettysburg, she received as a mark of the esteem felt for her by those who had witnessed her labors and devotion to the work, and the confidence reposed in her, the appointment of Agent of the State of New York, in the care of its sick and wounded soldiers in the field.

Large discretionary powers, both as to the purchase and the distribution of supplies, were granted her; and every effort was made to have this appointment distinguished as a mark of the high appreciation and esteem which she had won in the discharge of her duties.

As her husband was detailed as clerk in the Medical Purveyor's Office, at Gettysburg, she remained there in the active performance of her duties for a considerable time.

Beside the supplies furnished by the State of New York, a large amount were entrusted to her, by various Ladies' Aid Societies, and kindred a.s.sociations.

After leaving Gettysburg, Mrs. Spencer was variously but usefully employed at various places, and in various ways, but always making her duties as State agent for the New York troops prominent, and of the first importance. She was for some time at Brandy Station. While there her husband received his discharge from the Volunteer Service, but immediately entered the regular service, as Hospital Steward, and was attached to the Medical Purveyor's Department.

From Brandy Station, Mrs. Spencer went to Alexandria, and remained there until after the battle of the Wilderness, when she was ordered by the Surgeon-General to repair to Rappahannock Station, with needful supplies for the wounded. On arriving there, no wounded were found, and it was rumored that the ambulances containing them had been intercepted by the enemy, and turned another way.

The party therefore returned to Alexandria, and there received orders to repair with stores to Belle Plain. The Steamer on which Mrs. Spencer was, arrived at day-break at its destination, but she could not for some time get on sh.o.r.e. As soon as possible she landed, anxious to let her services be of some avail to the many wounded who stood in immediate need of a.s.sistance, and thinking she might at least make coffee or tea for some of them.

After distributing what supplies she had, she found in another part of the field several Theological Students, delegates of the Sanitary Commission, who were making coffee in camp kettles for the wounded. Her services were thankfully accepted by them. All the day, and far into the night they worked, standing inches deep in the tenacious Virginia mud, till thousands had been served.

All the afternoon the wounded were arriving. Thousands were laid upon the ground, upon the hill-side, perhaps under the shelter of a bush, perhaps with only the sky above them, from which the rain poured in torrents.

All with scarcely an exception were patient, cheerful, and thoughtful--when asked as to their own condition, seeming more troubled by the risk she ran in taking cold, than of their own sufferings.

Late in the night, she remembered that she was alone, and must rest somewhere. A wagon driver willingly gave her his place in the wagon, and thoroughly drenched with rain, and covered with mud, she there rested for the first time in many hours. Her sad and anxious thoughts with her physical discomforts prevented sleep, but with the dawn she had rested so much, as to be able to resume her labors.

Another, and another day pa.s.sed. The wounded from those fearful battles continued to arrive, and to be cared for, as well as was possible under the circ.u.mstances. The workers were shortly afterward made as comfortable as was possible. For two weeks Mrs. Spencer remained, and labored at Belle Plain, remained till her clothing of which, not expecting to remain, she had brought no change, was nearly worn out. The need was so pressing, of care for the wounded, that she scarcely thought of herself.

In the latter part of May, she left Belle Plain, and went to Port Royal, where similar scenes were enacted, save that there a shelter was provided. She had joined forces with the Sanitary Commission, and the facilities were now good and the workers numerous, yet it was barely possible, with all these, and with Government and Commission supplies, and private contributions, to feed the applicants.

The Medical Purveyor's boat with her husband on board, having arrived, Mrs. Spencer proceeded on that boat to White House, where she was placed in Superintendence of the Government Cooking Barge, continuing at the same time her supervision of the wants of the New York soldiery.

Here they fed the first wounded who arrived from the field, and here Mrs. Spencer continued many days directing the feeding of thousands more, ever remembering the regiments from her own State, as her special charge, and a.s.sisted by many volunteers and others in her arduous task.

On the 18th of June, 1864, Mrs. Spencer arrived at City Point. The wounded were still arriving, and there was enough for all to do. A Hospital was here established, a mile from the landing. The Government kitchen was kept up, till the hospitals and their kitchens were in full operation, when it was discontinued, and Mrs. Spencer relieved from her double task.

From that time, Mrs. Spencer confined herself mostly to the duties of her agency, and continued to make City Point her headquarters and base of operations until the close of the war closed the agency, and left her free once again to seek the welcome seclusion of her home.

She occasionally visited the General Hospitals to distribute supplies to her New York soldiers and others, but these being now well organized, did not, owing to the plenty of attendants greatly need her services, and they were mostly confined to visits to soldiers in the field, at the Front, Field Hospitals, and in the Rifle Pits.[I]

[Footnote I: Every facility was furnished her by the various officers in command, and a special and permanent pa.s.s by General Grant.]

Her equestrian skill now often came in use. Often a ride of from twenty to forty miles in the day would enable her to visit some outlying regiment or picket station, or even to reach the Rifle Pits that honeycombed plain and hill-side all about Petersburg and Richmond, and return the same day. On these occasions she was warmly and enthusiastically welcomed by the soldiers, not only for what she brought, but for the comfort and solace of her presence.

She was often in positions of great peril from whizzing shot and bursting sh.e.l.l, but was never harmed during these dangerous visits. On one occasion, she was probably by reason of her black hat and feather, mistaken for an officer, as she for a moment carelessly showed the upper part of her person, from a slight eminence near the rifle pits, and was fired at by one of the enemy's sharp-shooters. The ball lodged in a tree, close by her side, from which she deliberately dug it out with her penknife, retaining it as a memento of her escape.

Few of us whose days have been pa.s.sed in the serene quietude of home, can imagine the comfort and joy her presence and cheering words brought to the "boys" undergoing the privations and discomforts of their station at the "Front," in those days of peril and siege. As she approached, her name would be heard pa.s.sing from man to man, with electric swiftness, and often the shouts that accompanied it, would receive from the enemy a warlike response in the strange music of the whistling shot, or the bursting sh.e.l.l.

Through all this she seemed to bear a charmed life. "I never believed I should be harmed by shot or sh.e.l.l," she says, and her simple faith was justified.

She even escaped nearly unharmed the fearful peril of the great explosion at City Point, when, as it is now supposed, by rebel treachery, the ammunition barge was fired, and hundreds of human beings without an instant's warning, were hurried into eternity.

When this event occurred, she was on horseback near the landing, and in turning to flee was struck, probably by a piece of sh.e.l.l, in the side.

Almost as by a miracle she escaped with only a terrible and extensive bruise, and a temporary paralysis of the lower limbs. The elastic steel wires of her crinoline, had resisted the deadly force of the blow, which otherwise would undoubtedly have killed her. A smaller missile, nearly cut away the string of her hat, which was found next day covered by the ghastly smear of human blood and flesh, which also sprinkled all her garments.

After the surrender of Richmond, Mrs. Spencer, with a party of friends, visited that city, and she records that she experienced a very human sense of satisfaction, as she saw some rebel prisoners marching into that terrible Libby Prison, to take the place of the Union prisoners who had there endured such fearful and nameless sufferings.

On the 8th of April the President came to visit the hospitals at City Point, shaking hands with the convalescents, who were drawn up to receive him, and speaking cheering words to all. A week later he had fallen the victim of that atrocious plot which led to his a.s.sa.s.sination.

Mrs. Spencer remained at City Point, engaged in her duties, till all the wounded had been removed, and the hospitals broken up. On the 31st of May, she went on the medical supply boat to Washington. She there offered her services to aid in any way in care of the wounded, while she remained, which she did for several days. About the middle of June she once more found herself an inmate of her own home, and, after the long season of busy and perilous days, gladly retired to the freedom and quiet of private life. She remained in the service about three years, and the entire time, with only the briefest intervals of rest, was well and profitably occupied in her duties, a strong will and an excellent const.i.tution having enabled her to endure fatigues which would soon have broken down a person less fitted, in these respects, for the work.

Mrs. Spencer has received from soldiers, (who are all her grateful friends) from loyal people in various parts of the country, and from personal friends and neighbors, many tokens of appreciation, which she enumerates with just pride and grat.i.tude. Not the least of these is her house and its furniture, a horse, a sewing machine, silver ware, and expensive books; beside smaller articles whose chief value arises from the feeling that caused the gifts. Her health has suffered in consequence of her labors but she now hopes for permanent recovery.

MRS. HARRIET FOOTE HAWLEY.