(A.) We are lying in the _Spaulding_ just below a burnt railroad-bridge,
on the Pamunkey River, and, as usual, in the middle of the fleet of
forage boats. The shores are at once wooded and wonderful to the water's
edge, the fulness of midsummer with the vivid and tender green of
Southern spring. Up the banks, where the trees will let us look between
them, lie great fields of wheat, tall and fresh, and taking the sunshine
for miles. The river winds constantly,—returning upon itself every
half-mile or so, and we seem sometimes lying in a little wooded lake
without inlet or outlet. It is startling to find, so far from the sea, a
river whose name we hardly knew two weeks ago, where our anchor drops in
three fathoms of water and our great ship turns freely either way with
the tide. Our smoke-stacks are almost swept by the hanging branches as
we move, and great schooners are drawn up under the banks, tied to the
trees; the _Spaulding_ herself lies in the shade of an elm-tree which is
a landmark for miles up and down. The army is in camp close at hand,
resting, this Sunday, and eating its six pies to a man, and so getting
ready for a move, which is planning in ——'s tent. Half a mile above us
is the White House, naming the place,—a modern cottage, if ever white,
now drabbed over, standing where the early home of Mrs. Washington
stood. We went ashore this morning with General ——, and strolled about
the grounds,—an unpretending, sweet little place, with old trees shading
the cottage, a green lawn sloping to the river, and an old-time garden
full of roses. The house has been emptied, but there are some pieces of
quaint furniture, brass fire-dogs, &c., and just inside the door this
notice is posted: "Northern soldiers who profess to reverence the name
of Washington, forbear to desecrate the home of his early married life,
the property of his wife, and now the home of his descendants"; signed,
"A Granddaughter of Mrs. Washington"; confronted by Gen. McClellan's
order of protection.
* * * * *
(M.) We were going up to head-quarters, but refrained, on consideration,
and came back to the _Spaulding_, through army-wagons and pie-pedlers,
and rewarded the three Generals who had come over to meet us with
much-needed towels, handkerchiefs, and cologne. The river above us to
the burnt railroad-bridge is crowded with steamboats and schooners. Four
gunboats are our next-door neighbors. Beyond the bridge, round the
corner, and out of sight, winds the Pamunkey, trees crowding down to the
brink and dipping their feet in the water. The Harbor-Master wanting the
room in the evening, we dropped down the stream and anchored by a
feathery elm-tree.
* * * * *
(A.) The next morning I saw the Medical Director at head-quarters. He
seems to be in a worse boggle than ever as to the disposition of his
sick. There are a great many still at Yorktown to be removed, but the
work is now fairly systematized there, and the sick begin to collect
_here_ by hundreds, with a prospect of thousands, and no thought of
system in disposing of them, as far as I can see. The Director has
ordered us to take on men at once, but our bunks are not up, and I have
promised him the _Daniel Webster_ and _Elm City_, which should be here
to-morrow, and can take six hundred. B. has gone down to bring up our
boats from Yorktown, with all the stores that can be spared from our
supply-ship. I shall try my best here to carry out the plan I have
always wished to have pursued,—namely, the establishment of a large
receiving hospital, from which those who really need to be sent away may
be deliberately selected and transferred to proper vessels, properly
equipped. During my visit this morning to the Medical Director's tent,
four persons reported their arrival with sick, and were informed that
there were no accommodations for them. Tents had been received, but
there was no detail on hand to pitch them, and if they were pitched,
there were no beds to put in them. Sickness was increasing rapidly,
every case showing the influence of malaria. The Medical Director said,
apparently with justice, that he had anticipated all this waste and
confusion, and had made ample provision against it, but that almost none
of his ordered supplies had reached him.
By night the _Daniel Webster_ and _Elm City_ had come up from Yorktown,
and I went up with the first, securing with some difficulty a berth for
her, and began taking on the sick at once, the Medical Director being
present and superintending the embarkation. He seemed to have entirely
lost sight of the plan about determined upon the day before, to
establish the shore receiving hospital, and was only anxious to get the
sick off his hands as rapidly as possible, being appalled by their
accumulation and the entire absence of provision for them. Just at this
time B. got back from Yorktown, bringing a cheering account of the
hospitals there, and at the same time the arrival of large medical
supplies and hospital furniture was reported, so that I had little
difficulty in bringing about a return to the plan of yesterday.
The substance of the plan was this. The _Elm City_, able to accommodate
four hundred patients, was to remain at White House as a receiving
hospital; the _Spaulding_ as a reserve transport in case of a battle; on
the occurrence of a battle, the serious cases of sickness to be
transferred to the _Spaulding_, and the _Elm City_ used as receiving
hospital for surgical cases; the _Knickerbocker_ to remain as a surgical
transport. If an engagement should occur at the close of the week, the
_Spaulding_ would take to sea three or four hundred sick, freeing the
shore hospitals to that extent, making about six hundred with what the
_Webster_ would take; the _Webster_ to return and take two hundred more
the next week; the _Knickerbocker_ to take two hundred and fifty every
twenty-four hours to Fortress Monroe; thus relieving the shore hospitals
to the extent of two thousand by the end of the next week, which would
probably be all that was necessary. The _Webster_ and _Spaulding_, being
low between decks, crowded with berths, and deficient in ventilation,
were not suited to the reception of sick and wounded for any other
purpose than that of immediate transportation.
* * * * *
(A.) To relieve myself of further responsibility in case of another
change of plan, I wrote a memorandum of what we expected to be able to
do, and got the Director to sign his approval of it. He told me
yesterday that he meant to have those who were to take ship carefully
selected, and that he did not believe there were half a dozen who ought
to go from here. I however saw being put on board the usual proportion
of sick-in-quarters men, and told him. He attributed it to disregard of
his orders by volunteer surgeons, a difficulty for which he declared
that there was no remedy short of an act of Congress. I found Dr. ——,
his chief executive officer, and got him to go to the sick camp, from
which the men were being brought, when he discovered, as he afterwards
told me, that the surgeon in charge had heard a report that the Sanitary
Commission intended to have a receiving-ship here, and on his own
responsibility (assuming that the _Webster_ was to be used for this
purpose) was sending men on board at random, and without reference to
the gravity of their cases, his object being merely to get room. He also
found that ambulances coming in from the advance had entered the train
after it left the hospital, and the men thus brought to the shore were
allowed to go on board with those brought from the hospital, as if
assigned for sea transportation by the surgeon in charge. I begged him
to go on board and send off such as he found of these interlopers, but
he thought it impracticable; and finally, instead of the half-dozen
proposed by the Medical Director yesterday, I found that he had passed
two hundred and fifty on board. Meantime the tents before spoken of had
been finally pitched on a large field near the White House. They were
bare of everything but shelter for the sick flocking in from the
different regiments. A thousand men will probably be in them before
to-morrow night. All day long to-day the surgeons and young men of the
Commission have been working over there, and we have sent over
bed-sacks, straw, blankets, and supplies for several hundred. After much
sanitary poking, pushing, and oiling, the tents are some of them
floored, and five great pig-kettles are started boiling, and kept always
full of food for the sick. The patients will, however, greatly
overbalance the provision made for them. It is hard work to galvanize
the proper authorities into action. The post hospital record certifies
now to sixteen hundred. There are five surgeons and assistants, one
steward, no apothecary, and no nurses, except those selected from among
the patients. Two wells have been dug, but the water of neither has as
yet been fit for using. Water is brought from the White House well,
nearly a quarter of a mile distant, and until yesterday the whole supply
was brought by hand. It is now wagoned in casks. We sent up three casks
of ice from the _Webster's_ stock, which was found of great value. The
greater part of the men are not very ill, and, with nice nourishment,
comfortable rest, and good nursing, would be got ready to join their
regiments in a week or two; but this is just what they are not likely to
have.
The weather is growing excessively hot, and the army is pushing forward
in a malarious country in the face of the enemy. We have received a few
wounded men from the skirmishes of yesterday. There is obviously great
danger that we shall be altogether overwhelmed with sick and wounded in
a few days. If the recommendation of my telegram of Sunday is adopted by
the Surgeon-General, and a complete hospital for six thousand sent here
from Washington, there will be reasonable provision for what is to be
expected; otherwise it is dreadful to think of it. There is no doubt
that we might take care of a few hundred on our boats,—probably save the
lives of some of them; but considering what a week, or, for that matter,
a day, may bring forth, I think it right to throw the authorities still
on their resources as much as we can, and, if possible, force them to
enlarge their shore accommodations.... Nor, when ready, shall I be
inclined to hasten the removal of the sick. I shall do my best to avoid
taking any but serious cases. It is plain that the facilities so far
offered in this respect have been abused, and that serious evils have
come of it. Those responsible for the care of the sick here—I mean the
military administrative as well as medical officers—have made the
presence of the transports near them an excuse for neglecting all proper
local provision, and evidently have the idea that, in hurrying patients
on board vessels, they relieve themselves of responsibility.[4] I saw
this danger from the first, and have (I wish the Surgeon-General and our
friends to be sure of this) constantly done all that I could to
counteract it, not only by verbal protest, but by a habit of action
which I know that B. and other friends here, who have not had the duty
of looking at the matter as comprehensively as I have, have not been
able always to regard as justifiable....
Footnote 4:
The reader must constantly remember that the Commission did not supply
_vessels_, but merely furnished a few vessels already held by
government with proper hospital arrangements, and that these were at
the command of the medical authorities of the army, the Commission
being responsible only for their internal administration.
But this is not all. Of this hundred thousand men, I suppose not ten
thousand were ever entirely without a mother's, a sister's, or a wife's
domestic care before. They are wonderfully like school-boys. Then this
is really the first experience of nearly all our officers (who are their
schoolmasters and housekeepers) in active campaigning. They are learning
to take care of their men as a matter of self-interest. The men need to
learn to make themselves content—of contented habit—away from home, to
understand that this is in the bargain. It is obvious from the remarks
we hear, that the rumor that sick men are to be sent home has a
disturbing influence upon the education of the army in both these
respects....
The _Knickerbocker_ has arrived while I have been writing; thus I have
all the elements of my plan approved by the Medical Director on Monday.
But the question still troubles me greatly, If they should have several
hundred more patients on shore than they have tents or beds for, and
among them all several hundreds seriously ill, such as would properly be
sent North, shall I break up my reserve, and have no provision for the
avalanche of suffering which a great battle before Richmond would send
down upon us? I am afraid that I stand alone in my resistance to the
demands of the present.[5]
Footnote 5:
The wisdom of this resistance was satisfactorily established a few
days later, as will be seen.
* * * * *
As it has been publicly reported that the Commission removed forty
thousand men from the Peninsula, it should be here stated that the total
number of soldiers, sick and wounded, conveyed on the vessels in charge
of the Commission, during the summer, was eight thousand. Except under
positive orders, which it was not at liberty to disregard, the
Commission took no patient on board its vessels until the opinion of a
medical officer was had that his wound or illness was of such a
character that he could not be fit for duty within thirty days. This was
a standing order of the service, and was strictly enforced.
It is impossible to give in small compass an adequate idea of the
difficulties of the duty which the Commission had taken upon itself;
difficulties which, though seeming small in themselves, were terrible,
because the lives of men frequently hung on their being overcome, and
that instantly. To present a full picture, in true and living colors, we
must be qualified to throw over the whole the atmosphere of sympathy and
enthusiasm which animated every heart in presence of our suffering
soldiers. On a fixed and recognized basis we can do almost anything;
grooves are soon formed, in which affairs run smoothly. But to build
with infinite toil on shifting sands; to be called upon to fill leaky
cisterns and keep them full; to give our best strength to labors, the
results of which often fade while we work,—these things require a great
and good cause, and a certainty of being sustained.
* * * * *
(A.) All our vessels are, from the nature of engagement and intentions
of those on board, in a constant state of pre-organization and
disorganization. Our relations to the crews (seamen, firemen, &c.), upon
whom we are dependent, differ in every vessel. Scarcely a day passes in
which there is not a real mutiny among them, in which we have no right
to interfere, but which it is necessary we should manage to control. We
have scarcely any established rights, and are carrying on a very large
business by the favor of a multitude of agents, whose favor in each case
hangs upon a separate string. Every hour brings its own difficulty,
which must be met by itself.... Except in the results accomplished, I
need not say that the whole duty is exceedingly unpleasant, from the
amount of dependence without rights, and of command without authority.
No two individuals have the same understanding of our duty or of our
rights; no two expect the same thing of us; no two look in the same
direction for the remedy of any abuse, or the supply of any organic
deficiency to which attention is called. I must caution you again not to
form theories of what we are to do, and expect us to do it. We are
liable to occurrences every day which make a new disposition of all the
forces necessary. In fact, new and previously unexpected arrangements
are made daily, and these involve a continual modification of all plans.
All that can be done is to be as fully prepared as possible for whatever
can occur.... I must act a little blindly, sometimes,—at all events,
cannot always give you my reasons readily for what I determine upon.
Twice I have come up the river from hardly anything more than a crude
notion that it would be prudent to be feeling that way, and would cost
but little; and in each case it proved to be what —— calls "a _grand_
good providence," leading to a complete change in our tactics, and to
the saving of many lives.... The ladies are all, in every way, far
beyond anything I could have been induced to expect of them. The
dressers (two-years medical students) are generally ready for whatever
may be required, and work heroically. The male nurses are of all sorts.
The convalescent soldiers have been the most satisfactory, because there
was not among them the slightest taint of the prevailing sentiment of
the volunteer nurses, that they were going upon an indiscriminate
holiday scramble of Good-Samaritanism. There cannot be too much care in
future that whoever comes here on any business comes, not to do such
work as he thinks himself fit for, but such as he will be assigned to,
and under such authority as will be assigned him. He or she must come as
distinctly under an obligation of duty in this respect as if under pay,
and must expect to submit to the same discipline.... But, in truth, I
have had comparatively little trouble of this sort as yet, and in all
respects am surprised at the good sense and working qualities of
companies made up as ours have been.
As an illustration of the sudden changes of arrangement often found
necessary at a moment's notice, a report is found, in which it is stated
that on one occasion, after overcoming great difficulties in preparing
the _Spaulding_ for the conveyance of the sick,—having procured a party
of thirty persons, including four surgeons and four ladies from New
York, to go on board of her—on the 26th of May, while taking sick on
board, an order was received immediately to remove all the Sanitary
Commission's people and effects, and send her to Fortress Monroe to
convey troops. The process of embarkation was at once arrested; but by
permission of Colonel Ingalls, the post commander, the removal of those
on board was delayed until an answer could be received to the following
telegram, which was immediately despatched to the Assistant Secretary of
War, Mr. Tucker, then at Fortress Monroe.
(Telegram.) "The _Spaulding_ was assigned to the Sanitary Commission
after the _Ocean Queen_ had been taken from them. The _Spaulding_ was
not well adapted to the duty, but was the only vessel then on York River
which I would accept. There was no other, and there is none now here in
which I would consent that a sick man should be sent outside. The
hospitals at Washington and Alexandria are over-full, and I suppose the
sick must go outside if they are to be taken away. There is here no
hospital but a few tents pitched by the sick themselves, in which robust
men could not spend a night, crowded as they are, with impunity. There
is not the first step taken to provide for the wounded in case a battle
should occur. We have been two weeks trying, under great difficulties,
to get the _Spaulding_ tolerably fitted for the business; have a
hospital corps of thirty, sent for her from New York; one hundred very
sick men on board, one hundred more along-side; shall we go on, or
quit?"
After waiting an hour, the Harbor-master's boat came past, hailing with
"Mr. Tucker says, 'Go ahead,' sir!"—and the transshipment of the sick to
the _Spaulding_ from the _Elm City_ was recommenced. The same night, as
it appears from letters, just after dusk, the Harbor-master's boat
appeared again, and Captain Sawtelle, the Master of Transportation,
hailed with—
"I am ordered to have the _Elm City_ and every other available vessel
ready to leave here, with water and coal enough for eighteen hours'
steaming, by break of day. You will oblige me very much if you will get
the _Elm City_ ready for me. How much coal has she on board?"
"Not half enough for eighteen hours' steaming!"
"That is bad. I have to coal half a dozen others to-night; there'll not
be time for all."
"Very well, sir; then we'll manage it, by clubbing that which is on the
_Knickerbocker_ and the _Elizabeth_."
"If you can do that I shall be very glad, for the order is urgent."
* * * * *
(B.) We had just got through with a very long and hard day's work
loading the _Spaulding_, and were sitting at supper when this order
came; but there was no help for it, so "All hands!" it was again for a
hard night's work.
All the hospital fittings and furnishings of the _Elm City_, including
the bedding, commissary and small stores, medical stores, and what not,
required for the hospital treatment of four hundred and fifty sick men
and the maintenance of their attendants, had to be unshipped, packed,
and conveyed to the store-boats, and ninety sick men, some of them very
sick indeed,—two died during the night,—to be transferred and put to bed
again on the _Spaulding_ and _Knickerbocker_. It was a very dark night,
and most of those who were engaged in this work were men of sedentary
occupations,—students and clerks,—and women accustomed to a quiet and
refined domestic life, and, as I said, all had just gone through with an
extraordinarily fatiguing day's work. Some few broke down before
morning. At the same time twenty tons of coal were to be got on board
the _Elm City_ from the _Elizabeth_ and the _Knickerbocker_, and wheeled
to her deck-bunkers. Then quarters had to be found for her whole
hospital company, as well as provisions, on the other boats of the
fleet, and to accommodate this necessity a general reorganization was
found to be necessary. This was our Sunday's night-work after our
Sunday's day-work. It was all done, everybody in place, and, except
those required to watch the sick, asleep by four o'clock, and the
_Spaulding_ (with 350 sick in bed) and the _Elm City_ (stripped for
battle) both reported ready to sail with the morning tide.
* * * * *
One day later, B. writes:—
"Here we are at work again upon the _Elm City_. Sunday, we spent all
night in stripping her, and now we have a day and night's work at least
before us in handling over again the very same articles, refitting her
for hospital service. It is an exercise of patience, but it must be done
without delay. After we had got her all ready for transporting troops, a
change in the plans of government occurred, and on application she was
again assigned to the Commission."
* * * * *
(M.) The _Spaulding_ is bunked in every hole and corner, and is a most
inconvenient ship for carrying sick men, everything above decks running
to first-classing, and everything below to steerage. The last hundred
patients were put on board, to relieve the over-crowded shore hospital,
late last night. Though these night scenes on the hospital ships are
part of our daily living, a fresh eye would find them dramatic. We are
awakened in the dead of night by a sharp steam-whistle, and soon after
feel ourselves clawed by the little tugs on either side our big
ship,—and at once the process of taking on hundreds of men, many of them
crazed with fever, begins. There's the bringing of the stretchers up the
side ladder between the two boats, the stopping at the head of it, where
the names and home addresses of all who can speak are written down, and
their knapsacks and little treasures numbered and stacked;—then the
placing of the stretchers on the platform, the row of anxious faces
above and below decks, the lantern held over the hold, the word given to
"Lower!" the slow-moving ropes and pulleys, the arrival at the bottom,
the turning down of the anxious faces, the lifting out of the sick man,
and the lifting him into his bed;—and then the sudden change from cold,
hunger, and friendlessness, to positive comfort and satisfaction,
winding up with his invariable verdict,—if he can speak,—"This is just
like home!"
"Jimmy," eleven years old, one of the strange little city boys who are
always drifting about, ran away from home last summer, after a drum,
finally turning up on our stern-wheeler as char-boy, where he recognized
a friend among the sick men, and devoted himself to him in the prettiest
way. His runaway fever over, he longed for his mother; so we tucked him
into the _Spaulding_ and sent him home. The astonishing lack of common
sense among men strikes us very forcibly.... Those who came down here
have hearts, plenty of them, but not more than a head to four, and so
they run round the wards, wondering where the best tea is, and the
ice-water, which they are probably looking at, at the time, and ask
questions about everything under the sun.
* * * * *
(B.) The _Spaulding_, being all in order, with her sick men, corps of
nine surgeons, ladies, and nurses, was started off, and the reserve
force went on board the _Knickerbocker_.
* * * * *
(A.) I have just bought what is left of a small cargo of ice, probably
sixty tons, at twelve dollars, sent here on speculation for sale to
sutlers. We are now fairly well supplied at all points, I think.
* * * * *
(A.) We began taking sick on the _Elm City_ this afternoon. I
telegraphed you about the crowded state of the post hospital. We had fed
this morning sixty men who had been turned away from it on the ground
that there was no room. I wrote to the surgeon in charge about this, and
B. called on him with my note. He merely said that he thought there
could not have been _as many_ as sixty turned away! These sixty men we
heard of as lying upon the railroad, without food, and with no one to
look after them. So some of the ladies got at once into the
stern-wheeler _Wissahickon_, which is the Commission's carriage, and
with provisions, basins, towels, soap, blankets, etc., went up to the
railroad-bridge, cooking tea and spreading bread as they went. After
twenty minutes' steaming, the men were found, put on freight-cars, and
pushed down to the landing, fed, washed, and taken on the tug to the
_Elm City_. Dr. Ware, in his hard-working on shore, had found fifteen
other sick men, without food, and miserable; there being "no room" for
them in the tent hospital. He had studied the neighborhood extensively
for shanties, found one, and put his men into it. The floor of the one
room up-stairs was six inches deep in beans, and made a good bed for
them, and in the morning the same party ran up on the tug, cooking
breakfast for them as they ran, scrambling eggs in a wash-basin over a
spirit-lamp.
* * * * *
(A.) The army struck its tents one night last week, and silently stole
away up the river. Bottom Bridge is ours, and no enemy met; the railroad
is repaired at White House, and trains will be running to-morrow;
barges, loaded with rolling stock and cannon, have been passing us on
the river all day.
The sick brought on board the _Elm City_ this afternoon had been lying
in a puddle, which nearly covered them. The water stood several inches
deep in some of the tents. These men were selected by Dr. Ware, as the
worst cases out of sixteen hundred in the shore hospital. (Several died
before they reached the mouth of the river.) Dr. Ware himself laid hold
to put up tents to protect men before the storm, and said that he saw
half a dozen tents yet remaining, not put up at nightfall, though men
were constantly arriving, and were left out in the ambulances.
If an engagement occurs this side of Richmond, my opinion is that we
shall have all the horrors of Pittsburg Landing in an aggravated form. I
have tried in vain to awaken some of the Head-quarters officers to a
sense of the danger; but while they admit all I say, they regard it as a
part of war, and say, "After all, there never was a war in which the
sick were as well taken care of. England does no better by her wounded;
true, they will suffer a good deal for a time, but that is inevitable in
war," &c.
What ought to be done? The Surgeon-General cannot at once do our
sea-transport business as well as we. By recruiting deficiencies at each
trip, we can for the present continue to employ the _Webster_ and the
_Spaulding_ for this purpose advantageously. We can maintain the
distribution of supplies. We want also a depot at this end for our
sea-transports. For the rest, the Surgeon-General can at once have it
done a great deal better than we, if he can place two steamboats under
the Medical Director's orders, in addition to the _Commodore_ and
_Vanderbilt_, equip them, or take them equipped from us; put one good
authoritative surgeon on board each, with two to four assistant
surgeons, and six to ten dressers and stewards, and twenty to thirty
privates for nurses, and require certain rules, to secure decent
provision for the sick, to be maintained on them.
It is ludicrous to see the enthusiasm of some of the surgeons at the
outset about details; the cleansing of patients, numbering, records of
disease, _pure_ water, &c., and their entire forgetfulness and inaptness
to provide for more essential matters,—food, buckets, cups, vessels of
any sort, and water of any sort. Doctors, nurses, and philosophers are
much easier to be had, it seems, than men who would be able to keep an
oyster-cellar or a barber-shop with credit.
Dr. T. says that he is pestered by volunteer surgeons, who leave their
business at home to have a short holiday professional excursion, and who
always expect to be put in the "imminent deadly breach" at once. He has
not tents, horses, forage, nor table-room for them. Don't let any more
surgeons come here, if you can help it. We try to treat them civilly,
but all, ashore and afloat, feel anything but civilly to a man when he
graciously proposes to be entertained and sent to the front as an
honored guest, because, you understand, he is not one of your
"physicians," but a "surgeon," and not at all unwilling to take an
interesting gunshot case in hand, though everybody else declines it! If
there is anything the regimental surgeons hate, it is to let these
magnanimous surgical pretenders (it is of the pretenders I speak) get
hold of their pet cases. For this reason I hope ——, who has a name, will
assume the responsibility of our surgical hospital.