Woman's Work in the Civil War Part 38

Thence soon after they removed to City Point. Here for months she labored amid such suffering and distress that the angels must have looked down in pity upon the acc.u.mulated human woe which met their sympathizing eyes. Brave, n.o.ble-hearted men fell by hundreds and thousands, and died not knowing whether their sacrifices would be sufficient to save their country. At length wearied with her intense and protracted labors, Mrs. Lee found herself compelled to visit home and rest for a time. But her heart was in the work, and again she returned to it, and was in charge of a hospital near Petersburg at the time of Lee's surrender. She remained in the hospitals of Petersburg and Richmond, until the middle of May, and then returned to her quiet home, partic.i.p.ating to the very last in the closing work of the Volunteer Refreshment Saloon, where she had commenced her labors for the soldiers.

Other ladies may have engaged in more extended enterprises, may have had charge of larger hospitals, or undertaken more comprehensive and far-reaching plans for usefulness to the soldier--but in untiring devotion to his interests, in faithfully performed, though often irksome labor, carried forward patiently and perseveringly for more than four years, Mrs. Lee has a record not surpa.s.sed in the history of the deeds of American women.

MISS CORNELIA M. TOMPKINS.

Miss Cornelia M. Tompkins, of Niagara Falls, was one of the truly heroic spirits evoked by the war. Related to a distinguished family of the same name, educated, accustomed to the refinements and social enjoyments of a Christian home she left all to become a hospital nurse, and to aid in saving the lives of the heroes and defenders of her native land.

Recommended by her friend, the late Margaret Breckinridge, of whom a biographical notice is given in this volume, she came to St. Louis in the summer of 1863, was commissioned as a nurse by Mr. Yeatman, and a.s.signed to duty at the Benton Barracks Hospital, under the superintendence of Miss Emily E. Parsons, and the general direction of Surgeon Ira Russell. In this service she was one of the faithful band of nurses, who, with Miss Parsons, brought the system of nursing to such perfection at that hospital.

In the fall of that year she was transferred to the hospital service at Memphis, by Mr. Yeatman, to meet the great demand for nurses there, where she became favorably known as a most judicious and skilful nurse.

In the spring of 1864 she returned to St. Louis, and was again a.s.signed to duty at Benton Barracks, where she remained till mid-summer, when having been from home a year, she obtained a furlough, and went home for a short period of rest, and to visit her family.

On her return to St. Louis she was a.s.signed to duty at the large hospital at Jefferson Barracks, and continued there till the end of the war, doing faithful and excellent service, and receiving the cordial approbation of the surgeons in charge, and the Western Sanitary Commission, as well as the grat.i.tude of the sick and wounded soldiers, to whom she was a devoted friend and a ministering angel in their sorrows and distress.

In her return to the quiet and enjoyment of her own home, within the sound of the great cataract, she has carried with her the consciousness of having rendered a most useful service to the patriotic and heroic defenders of her country, in their time of suffering and need, the approval of a good conscience and the smile of heaven upon her n.o.ble and heroic soul.

MRS. ANNA C. McMEENS.

Mrs. Anna C. McMeens, of Sandusky, Ohio, was born in Maryland, but removed to the northern part of Ohio, in company with her parents when quite young. She is therefore a western woman in her habits, a.s.sociations and feelings, while her patriotism and philanthropy are not bounded by sectional lines. Her husband, Dr. McMeens, was appointed surgeon to an Ohio regiment, which was one of the first raised when Mr.

Lincoln called for troops, after the firing upon Sumter. In the line of his duty he proceeded to Camp Dennison, where he had for some time princ.i.p.al charge of the medical department. Mrs. McMeens resolved to accompany her husband, and share in the hardships of the campaign, for the purpose of doing good where she could find it to do. She was therefore one of the first,--if not the first woman in Ohio, to give her exclusive, undivided time in a military hospital, in administering to the necessities of the soldiers. When the regiment left Camp Dennison, she accompanied it, until our forces occupied Nashville. Dr. McMeens then had a hospital placed under his charge, and his faithful wife a.s.sisted as nurse for several months, contributing greatly to the efficiency of the nursing department, and to the administration of consolation and comfort in many ways to our sick soldier boys, who were necessarily deprived of the comforts of home. Subsequently at the battle of Perryville, Mrs. McMeens' husband lost his life from excessive exertions while in attention to the sick and wounded. Being deprived of her natural protector, she returned to her home in Sandusky, which was made desolate by an additional sacrifice to the demon of secession.

While at home, not content to sit idle in her mourning for her husband, she was busily occupied in aiding the Sanitary Commission in obtaining supplies, of which she so well knew the value by her familiarity with the wants of the soldiers in field, camp and hospitals. She however very soon felt it her duty to partic.i.p.ate more actively in immediate attentions upon the sick and wounded soldiers. A fine field offered itself in the hospitals at Washington, to which place she went; and remained nearly one year in attention, and rendering a.s.sistance daily among the various hospitals of the Nation's capital. It would be feeble praise to say that her duties were performed in the most energetic and judicious manner. Few women have made greater sacrifices in the war than the subject of our sketch; none have been made from a purer sense of duty, or a fuller knowledge of the magnitude of the cause in which we have been engaged.

At present the necessity for attention to soldiers has happily ceased, and we find her busily engaged in missionary work among the sailors, which she has an excellent opportunity of performing while at her beautiful summer home on the island of Gibraltar, Lake Erie.

MRS. JERUSHA R. SMALL.

This young lady was one of the martyrs of the war. She resided in Cascade, Dubuque County, Iowa, and just previous to the commencement of the war had buried her only child, a sweet little girl of four years.

When volunteers were called for from Iowa, her husband, Mr. J. E. Small, felt it his duty to take up arms for his country, and as his wife had no home ties she determined to go with him and make herself useful in caring for the sick and wounded of his regiment, or of other regiments in the same division. She proved a most excellent nurse, and for months labored with untiring energy in the regimental hospitals, and to hundreds of the wounded from Belmont, Donelson, and Shiloh, as well as to the numerous sick soldiers of General Grant's army she was an angel of mercy. Her constant care and devotion had considerably impaired her health before the battle of Shiloh.

At this battle her husband was badly wounded and taken prisoner, but was retaken by the Union troops. In the course of the battle, the tent which she occupied and where she was ministering to the wounded came within range of the enemy's sh.e.l.ls, and she with her wounded husband and a large number of other wounded soldiers, were obliged to fly for their lives, leaving all their goods behind them. Previous to her flight, however, she had torn up all her spare clothing and dresses to make bandages and compresses and pillows for the wounded soldiers. She found her way with her wounded patients to one of the hospitals extemporized by the Cincinnati ladies. Her husband and many of his comrades of the Twelfth Iowa Regiment were among this company of wounded men. She craved admission for them and remained to nurse her husband and the others for several weeks, but when her husband became convalescent, she was compelled to take to her bed; her fatigue and exposure, acting upon a somewhat frail and delicate const.i.tution had brought on galloping consumption. She soon learned from her physician that there was no hope of her recovery, and then the desire to return home and die in her mother's arms seemed to take entire possession of her soul. Permission was obtained for her to go, and for her husband to accompany her, and when she was removed from the boat to the cars, Mrs. Dr. Mendenhall of the Cincinnati Branch of the Sanitary Commission accompanied her to the cars, and having provided for her comfortable journey, gave her a parting kiss. Mrs. Small was deeply affected by this kindness of a stranger, and thanking her for her attention to herself and husband, expressed the hope that they should meet in a better world. A lady, who evidently had little sympathy with the war or with those who sought to alleviate the sufferings of the soldiers, stepped up and said to Mrs.

Small; "You did very wrong to go and expose yourself as you have done when you were so young and frail." "No!" replied the dying woman, "I feel that I have done right, I think I have been the means of saving some lives, and that of my dear husband among the rest; and these I consider of far more value than mine, for now they can go and help our country in its hour of need."

Mrs. Small lived to reach home, but died a few days after her arrival.

She requested that her dead body might be wrapped in the national flag, for next to her husband and her G.o.d, she loved the country which it represented, best. She was buried with military honors, a considerable number of the soldiers of the Twelfth Iowa who were home on furlough, taking part in the sad procession.

MRS. S. A. MARTHA CANFIELD.

This lady was the wife of Colonel Herman Canfield, of the Seventy-first Ohio Regiment. She accompanied her husband to the field, and devoted herself to the care and succor of the sick and wounded soldiers, until the battle of Shiloh, where her husband was mortally wounded, and survived but a few hours. She returned home with his body and remained for a short time, but feeling that it was in her power to do something for the cause to which her husband had given his life, she returned to the Army of the Mississippi and became attached to the Sixteenth Army Corps, and spent most of her time in the hospitals of Memphis and its vicinity. But though she accomplished great good for the soldiers, she took a deep interest also in the orphans of the freedmen in that region, and by her extensive acquaintance and influence with the military authorities, she succeeded in establishing and putting upon a satisfactory basis, the Colored Orphan Asylum in Memphis. She devoted her whole time until the close of the war to these two objects; the welfare of the soldiers in the hospitals and the perfecting of the Orphan Asylum, and not only gave her time but very largely also of her property to the furthering of these objects. The army officers of that large and efficient army corps bear ample testimony to her great usefulness and devotion.

MRS. E. THOMAS, AND MISS MORRIS.

These two ladies, sisters, volunteered as unpaid nurses for the War, from Cincinnati. They commenced their duties at the first opening of the Hospitals, and remained faithful to their calling, until the hospitals were closed, after the termination of the war. In cold or heat, under all circ.u.mstances of privation, and often when all the other nurses were stricken down with illness, they never faltered in their work, and, although not wealthy, gave freely of their own means to secure any needed comfort for the soldiers. Mrs. Mendenhall, of Cincinnati, who knew their abundant labors, speaks of them as unsurpa.s.sed in the extent and continuousness of their sacrifices.

MRS. SHEPARD WELLS.

This lady, the wife of Rev. Shepard Wells, was, with her husband, driven from East Tennessee by the rebellion, because of their loyalty to the Union. They found their way to St. Louis at an early period of the War, where he entered into the work of the Christian Commission for the Union soldiers, and she became a member of the Ladies' Union Aid Society, of St. Louis, and gave herself wholly to sanitary labors for the sick and wounded in the Hospitals of that city, acting also as one of the Secretaries of the Society, and as its agent in many of its works of benevolence, superintending at one time the Special Diet Kitchen, established by the Society at Benton Barracks, and doing an amount of work which few women could endure, animated and sustained by a genuine love of doing good, by n.o.ble and Christian purposes, and by true patriotism and philanthropy.

The incidents of the persecutions endured by Mr. and Mrs. Wells, in East Tennessee, and of her life and labors among the sick and wounded of the Union army, would add very much to the interest of this brief notice, but the particulars are not sufficiently familiar to the writer to be narrated by him, and he can only record the impressions he received of her remarkable faithfulness and efficiency, and her high Christian motives, in the labors she performed in connection with the Ladies'

Union Aid Society, of St. Louis,--that n.o.ble Society of heroic women who, during the whole war, performed an amount of sanitary, hospital and philanthropic work for the soldiers, the refugees and the freedmen, second only to the Western Sanitary Commission itself, of which it was a most faithful ally and co-worker.

United with an earnest Christian faith, Mrs. Wells possessed a kind and generous sympathy with suffering, and a patriotic ardor for the welfare of the Union soldiers, so that she was never more in her element than when laboring for the poor refugees, for the families of those brave men who left their all to fight for their country, for the sick and wounded in the hospitals, and for the freedmen and their families. The labors she performed extended to all these objects of sympathy and charity, and, from the beginning to the end of her service, she never seemed weary in well-doing; and there can be no doubt that when her work on earth is finished, and she pa.s.ses onward to the heavenly life, she will hear the approving voice of her Saviour, saying, "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

MRS. E. C. WITHERELL.

In the month of December, 1861, on a visit made by the writer to the Fourth Street Hospital, in St. Louis, he was particularly impressed with the great devotion of one of the female nurses to her sick patients. At the conclusion of a religious service held there, as he pa.s.sed through the wards to call on those who had been too ill to attend worship, he found her seated by the bed-side of a sick soldier, suffering from pneumonia, on whose pale, thin face the marks of approaching dissolution were plainly visible. She held in her hand a copy of the New Testament, from which she had been reading to him, in a cheerful and hopeful manner, and a little book of prayers, hymns and songs from which she had been singing, "There is rest for the weary," and "The Shining Sh.o.r.e."

The soldier's bed was neatly made; his special diet had been given; his head rested easily on his pillow; and his countenance beamed with a sweet and pleasant smile. It was evident the patient enjoyed the kind attentions, the conversation, the reading and singing of his faithful nurse. The lady who sat by his bed-side was of middle age, having a countenance expressive of goodness, benevolence, purity of motive, intelligence and affection. It was plain that she regarded her patient with a tender care, and that her influence calmed and soothed his spirit. Her name was Mrs. E. C. Witherell, and the sick soldier was a mere boy, who had shouldered his musket to fight for the cause of the Union, and had contracted his fatal disease in the marches and the exposure of the army in Missouri, and was now about to die away from friends and home. The interest felt by Mrs. Witherell in this soldier boy, was motherly, full of affection and sympathy, and creditable to her n.o.ble and generous heart. As I drew near and introduced myself as a chaplain, she welcomed me, introduced me to the patient, and we sat down and conversed together; the young man was in a state of peaceful resignation; was willing to die for his country; and only regretted that he could not see his mother and sisters again; but he said that Mrs.

Witherell had been as a mother to him, and if he could have hold of her hand he should not be afraid to die. He even hoped that with her kind care and nursing he might get well. Mrs. Witherell and myself then sang the "Shining Sh.o.r.e;" a brief prayer of hope and trust was offered; the other patients in the room seemed equally well cared for, and interested in all that was said and done; and I pa.s.sed on to another ward, and never saw either the nurse or patient again. But I learned that the soldier died; and that Mrs. Witherell continued in the service, until she also died, a martyr to her heroic devotion to the cause of the sick and wounded soldiers, for whom she laid down her life, that they might live to fight the battles of their country.

The only facts that I have been able to learn about this n.o.ble lady, were that at one time she resided in Louisville, and was greatly esteemed by her pastor, Rev. John H. Heywood, of the Unitarian Church; that she chose this work of the hospitals from the highest motives of religious patriotism and love of humanity; that after serving several months in the Fourth Street Hospital, at St. Louis, she was a.s.signed to the hospital steamer, "Empress," in the spring of 1862, as matron, or head nurse; that she continued on this boat during the next few months, while so many sick and wounded were brought from Pittsburg Landing, after the battle of Shiloh, and from other battle-fields along the rivers, to the hospitals at Mound City and St. Louis; that she was always constant, faithful and never weary of doing good; and that at last, from her being so much in the infected atmosphere of the sick and wounded, she became the victim of a fever, and died on the 10th of July, 1862.

On the occurrence of the sad event, the Western Sanitary Commission, who had known and appreciated her services, and from whom she held her commission, pa.s.sed a series of resolutions, as a tribute to her worth, and her blessed memory, in which she was described as one who was "gentle and un.o.btrusive, with a heart warm with sympathy, and unshrinking in the discharge of duty, energetic, untiring, ready to answer every call, and unwilling to spare herself where she could alleviate suffering, or minister to the comfort of others," as "not a whit behind the bravest hero on the battle-field;" and as worthy to be held "in everlasting remembrance."

MISS PHEBE ALLEN.

This n.o.ble woman, who laid down her life in the cause of her country, was a teacher in Washington, Iowa, and left her school to enter the service as a hospital nurse. In the summer of 1863 she was commissioned by Mr. Yeatman, at St. Louis, and a.s.signed to duty in the large hospital at Benton Barracks, where she belonged to the corps of women nurses, under the superintendence of Miss Emily E. Parsons, and under the general direction of Surgeon Ira Russell.

In the fulfilment of the duties of a hospital nurse she was very conscientious, faithful and devoted; won the respect and confidence of all who knew her, and is most pleasantly remembered by her a.s.sociates and superior officers.