ST. LOUIS MILITARY HOSPITAL.
The border State of Missouri the scene of some of the most
dramatic events of the war. Soldiers ask the nurses if they are
Free Masons. The Chaplain obtains a pardon for a prisoner of war.
Archbishop Ryan and his work among the sick and wounded. The young
Confederate who declined to express sorrow for his course in the
war. Amusing and pathetic incidents.
[Illustration]
In the meantime operations in the great civil conflict were beginning in
the Southwest. The fact that Missouri was a border State made it the
scene of some of the most dramatic events of the war. Thousands of the
sick and wounded of both armies were cared for in St. Louis. It was on
the 12th of August, 1861, that Major-General Fremont, commanding the
Department of the West, established a military hospital in the suburbs
of St. Louis.
General Fremont desired that every attention should be paid to the
wounded soldiers. He visited them frequently, and perceiving that there
was much neglect on the part of the attendants, applied to the Sisters
of St. Philomena’s School for a sufficient number of them to take charge
of the hospital. He promised the Sisters, if they would accept, to
leave everything to their management. There was no delay in acceding to
this request. Rev. James Francis Burlando, the Superior of the Sisters
of Charity, during a visit made to St. Philomena’s School a few months
previous had forseen the probability of such an occurrence and given the
Sisters directions to guide them in such a case.
The Sisters had the superintendence of everything relating to the sick
in the hospital. Some of the soldier attendants at first looked with
wonder on the strange dress and appearance of the new nurses, asking
them if they were Free Masons. The Sisters were, however, treated with
the greatest respect, so much so that not an oath or disrespectful word
was heard in the hospital during the three years that they were there.
The hospital was visited every other day by the ladies of the Union Aid
Society, who could not help admiring the almost profound silence
observed in the wards. They could not understand the influence the
Sisters exercised over the patients, both sick and convalescent, who
were as submissive as children. The Archbishop of St. Louis, the late
Most Rev. P. R. Kenrick, D. D., was pleased when he learned that the
Sisters had been asked for at the hospital. The prelate provided a
chaplain, who said Mass every morning in the oratory arranged in their
apartment. After the Mass the chaplain visited every ward instructing,
baptizing and reconciling sinners to God. There were hundreds of
baptisms during the time the Sisters were in the hospital, the greatest
number of the persons thus baptized dying in the hospital. The
institution was closed at the end of the war, and the Sisters returned
to their former homes.
Father Burke was one of the priests who did a great deal of work in the
hospital, and he bears testimony to the fact that the patients thought
there were no persons like the Sisters. They would often say: “Indeed,
it was not the doctor that cured us; it was the Sisters.” When returning
to their regiment they would say: “Sisters, we may never see you again,
but be assured you will be very gratefully remembered.” Others would
say: “Sisters, I wish we could do something for you, but you do not seem
to want anything; besides, it is not in the power of any poor soldier to
make you anything like recompense. All that we can do for you is to
fight for you, and that we will do until our last breath.”
They preferred applying to the Sisters in cases where they could do so
than to the doctors, and as a result the Sisters had a difficult task in
encouraging them to have confidence in the doctors. Every evening the
Sisters were accustomed to visit a tent a few yards distant from the
hospital, where the badly wounded cases were detained. One night a
Sister found a poor man whose hand had been amputated from the wrist,
suffering very much, the arm being terribly inflamed. He complained that
the doctor had that morning ordered a hot poultice and that he had not
received it. The Sister called the nurse and wound-dresser and inquired
why the doctor’s orders had not been attended to. They told her that
there were no hops in the hospital; that the steward had gone to town
that morning before they knew it, and they had no other opportunity of
sending to obtain any that day. The Sisters immediately sent across the
yard to a bakery and got some hops and had the poultice put on. The poor
man was gratified and surprised. “The Sisters,” he said, “find ways and
means to relieve everyone, but others who make a profession of the work
do not even know how to begin it.”
When a new doctor came to the hospital it was from the patients that he
would learn to appreciate the value of the Sisters. When the patients
returned to their regiments they would say to their sick companions: “If
you go to St. Louis try to get to the House of Refuge Hospital; the
Sisters are there and they will soon make you well.” Late one evening a
Sister went to see that nothing was wanting for the sick. She found a
man suffering from intense pain in his forehead and temples. He had
taken cold in camp and the inflammation went to his eyes, so that he
became entirely blind. The pain in his forehead was so intense that he
thought he could not live until morning. The Sister asked him to let her
bind up his forehead with a wide bandage.
“Oh, Sister,” he said, “it is no use. The doctor has been bathing my
forehead with spirits of ether and other liquids, and nothing will do me
any good. I cannot live until morning; my head is splitting open. But
you may do what you like.”
She took a wide bandage which, unknown to him, was saturated in
chloroform, bound up his head and left him. Early in the morning she
went to ask him how he spent the night. He said: “Oh, Sister, I have
rested well; from the moment you put your hands on my forehead I
experienced no pain.” He never thought of attributing the relief to the
chloroform, because he did not know of it, and the Sister, feeling that
in this case ignorance was bliss, did not enlighten him.
The patients had the best of feeling toward the Sisters, and when the
medical doctor visited the hospital he would stand in the middle of the
ward and tell the patients to whom they owed their comfort, the good
order, cleanliness and regularity that reigned there. He told them that
all these things came through the Sisters. It is a notable fact that the
respect with which they were treated in the beginning never diminished,
but went on increasing while the hospital lasted.
Two of the prisoners of war, as the result of a court-martial, were to
be executed, but the worthy chaplain who daily attended the prison
obtained the pardon of one, while the Sisters obtained that of the
other. On one occasion a soldier who was accused of desertion was
sentenced to be hanged, and the Sisters attended him until all was over.
There was an elderly man confined in the prison hospital who always
found great pleasure in seeing to the wants of his companions. He told
the Sisters it made him happy to see them get what they most desired.
Toward the close of the war he obtained his release, and afterwards sent
fifty dollars to the Sisters to supply the wants of the suffering sick.
His son soon after this was charged with some military offense, tried by
court-martial sentenced and executed. The young man became a Catholic,
and in his last moments received the consolations of the Church. His
remains were given up to his family, and his father requested the
clergyman who attended him before his execution to preach the funeral
sermon, which the priest did in a Baptist church, where his hearers were
all Baptists.
One of the priests who was untiring in his work among the soldiers in
St. Louis during those heart-breaking days was Father Patrick John Ryan,
now the Archbishop of the great Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Early in
the war he was appointed a chaplain by the Government, but resigned his
position, feeling that he could do better work among the Southern
prisoners of war if he appeared among them simply as a priest. The
rector of one of the Protestant Episcopal churches in St. Louis
succeeded him as chaplain. Father Ryan is authority for the statement
that there were probably more baptisms in this military hospital than on
any of the battlefields or in any other hospital of the Civil War.
He was a witness to many pathetic and humorous incidents in the daily
routine of hospital service. On one occasion he was attending a poor
drummer boy who was only too surely approaching the end of his life of
warfare. He spoke to him gently of the things necessary to do under such
circumstances, instructed him to glance over his past life and try and
feel a genuine sorrow for all of his sins and for anything he had done
against his fellow-man.
The boy listened meekly for a while, but when he was told to be sorry
for all his wrong-doing a new light flashed upon him. He half rose in
bed and defiantly declared that if this contemplated the severing of his
allegiance to the Southern Confederacy and an admission that the
“Yankees” were right he would have none of it. Half-amused at the
outburst, and not entirely unmoved at this flash of spirit in what the
lad no doubt deemed a righteous cause, the good priest soon assured him
that his mission was not of the North or the South, but of God. The
young sufferer died soon after this with most edifying sentiments upon
his lips.
Sister Juliana, a sister of Bishop Chatard, of Vincennes, who did good
service in this and other hospitals, was the witness of many affecting
death-bed scenes and many wonderful death-bed conversions. Fervent
aspirations to heaven went up from the lips of men who had never prayed
before. Soldiers from the backwoods who had known no religion and no God
were in a few hours almost transformed. It is estimated that priests and
Sisters baptized between five and six hundred persons at this one
hospital.
Archbishop Ryan tells the following incident that came under his
personal observation, and which John Francis Maguire, Member of
Parliament from Cork, has incorporated in one of his works:[5]
“A Sister was passing through the streets of Boston with downcast eyes
and noiseless steps when she was suddenly addressed in a language that
made her pale cheeks flush. The insult came from a young man standing on
a street corner. The Sister uttered no word of protest, but raising her
eyes gave one swift, penetrating look at the brutal offender.”
Time passed on; the war intervened. The scene changed to a ward in a
military hospital in Missouri. A wounded soldier, once powerful but now
as helpless as an infant, was brought in and placed under the care of
the Sisters of Charity. It was soon evident that the man’s hour had
arrived; that he was not long for this world. The Sister urged the man
to die in the friendship of God, to ask pardon for his sins, and to be
sorry for whatever evil he might have done.
“I have committed many sins in my life,” he said to the Sister, “and I
am sorry for them all and hope to be forgiven; but there is one thing
that weighs heavy on my mind at this moment. I once insulted a Sister of
Charity in the streets of Boston. Her glance of reproach has haunted me
ever since. I knew nothing of the Sisters then. But now I know how good
and disinterested you are and how mean I was. Oh! if that Sister were
only here, weak and dying as I am, I would go down upon my knees and ask
her pardon.”
The Sister turned to him with a look of tenderness and compassion,
saying: “If that is all you desire to set your mind at ease, you can
have it. I am the Sister you insulted and I grant you pardon freely and
from my heart.”
“What! Are you the Sister I met in Boston? Oh, yes! you are--I know you
now. And how could you have attended on me with greater care than on any
of the other patients?--me who insulted you so.”
“It is our Lord’s way,” replied the Sister gently. “I did it for His
sake, because He loved His enemies and blessed those who persecuted Him.
I knew you from the moment you entered the hospital. I recognized you
from the scar over your forehead, and I have prayed for you
unceasingly.”
“Send for the priest!” exclaimed the dying soldier, “the religion that
teaches such charity must be from God.”
And he died in the Sister’s faith, holding in his failing grasp the
emblem of man’s redemption, and murmuring prayers taught him by her
whose glance of mild rebuke had long filled him with remorse through
every scene of revelry or of peril.
Rev. John Bannon, S. J., was one of the priests who performed efficient
service as a chaplain during the war. Father Bannon is now spending the
autumn of his life in performing the works of mercy and charity which go
to make up the life of a good priest, at St. Patrick’s Cathedral,
Dublin, Ireland.
Writing of his wartime experience in a letter dated December 10, 1897,
he says:
“Twice only did I come into relations with the Sisters’ hospitals. The
first time was at Corinth, Miss., after my arrival with the Missouri
troops from Arkansas. There I found the Sisters of Charity (bonnet
blanc), from Mobile, Ala., in possession of an hospital, located in a
large brick building situated on a hill overlooking a railroad
crossing--for the town of Corinth was little more at that time. During
the temporary illness of Father Coyle, who was chaplain of the nuns, I
visited the hospital for him a few times. On one occasion a Sister
indicated to me a cot in a distant corner of the ward, whereon lay a
large, burly man, heavily bearded and of uncompromising aspect. He had
been questioning the Sister about her religion and desired further
explanations; so I was asked to go see him and give him satisfaction.
“After a few questions about his home and family, and wounds and
personal comfort, I asked him about the nursing and treatment of the
hospital, a question which brought him to ‘attention,’ for he sat
upright in bed, looking at me sternly, and almost fiercely said:
“‘See, now Mister, if you come here to spy after the Sisters you’re in
the wrong shop. There’s not a man wouldn’t rise agin ye if you said a
word agin them. Don’t do it. Don’t do it, or I’ll--’ and he fell back
exhausted.
“‘But, my friend,’ I said, ‘I’m a friend of theirs; I’m a priest.’
“‘A priest,’ he repeated, and then, sitting up again, he called out:
‘Sister, Sister, this man says he’s a priest; is he?’
“To which the Sister answered, ‘Yes,’ and he fell back saying, ‘All
right, Mister, now I want to know if any man ever believed such things
as the Sister told me.’
“I assured him that I believed them all and had come at the Sister’s
request to explain them to him.
“‘All right, Mister, go ahead now.’
“So I proceeded to speak of God and the Trinity and principal mysteries.
He demurred to every word I said, especially to the mystery of the
Blessed Trinity, and to each new installment of doctrine would sit up in
bed and call to the Sister (at the other end of the Ward), repeat to her
my statement, and ask her was that true, to which when she answered
‘yes’ he would fall back on his pillow and with a sigh of resignation
say: ‘All right, Mister, go ahead now, I believe it,’ and so on. He
accepted my teaching only on the word of the Sister, and on his faith in
the Sister I baptized him and left him happy. I had not reached the door
of the ward when he called me back. ‘Say, Mister, do ye reckon I’ll git
better?’
“‘Yes, I think so; at least I hope so.’
“His countenance fell visibly. But after a few seconds he looked up and
said:
“‘Whisper down nearer to me,’ and so pulling my head quite close to his
mouth, he whispered: ‘If I get well I’ll have to leave the Sisters. I’d
rather stay and die than leave them. Good-bye. God bless ye. Pray for
me,’ and so we parted.
[Illustration: “PEACE FOR HER.”]
“Subsequently I heard Dr. Lynch, late Bishop of Charleston, narrate a
very like experience.
“The only other occasion that I remember visiting a Sisters’ hospital
was before the siege of Vicksburg, at Jacksonville, Miss. The hospital
was located in a large hotel, downtown. As I entered the door I found
the hallway occupied for its length by two rows of sick soldiers
stretched on the floor, each wrapped in his old worn blanket with his
small bundle for a pillow. A tall, gaunt, poor fellow had just come in
and was spreading his blanket, preparing to lie down. A Sister
approached and asked him for his ticket. He made no answer, but having
finished his preparations lay down and then proceeded to search for the
paper. When found, after a long search, he handed it to the Sister, who,
glancing at it, said:
“‘My good man, this is not for us. It is for the hospital in the
Capital.’
“‘That mought be,’ he answered, ‘and I reckon it is. But that don’t
matter anyhow. This is my hospital, and I’ll stay here, wherever the
ticket’s for. Think I’m gwine t’anywhar but the Sisters’?’
“And so he was tolerated and adopted by the Sisters, for though
inconvenient to the nuns it was consoling and encouraging to them when
they found their services so appreciated by their patients.
From Jacksonville I went to Port Gibson, and then to Vicksburg. There
were not any Sisters at either place. After the fall of Vicksburg I went
to Mobile, where I visited the Sisters’ hospital, but was not on duty
there or elsewhere up to my departure for Europe by the Steamer R. E.
Lee, via Wilmington, N. C., and Halifax.”
Many of the episodes of the war with which the Sisters were associated
would in their intensity and uniqueness furnish the basis for stories
and dramas more wonderful than anything yet written by the novelists or
constructed by the playwrights. Here was frequently illustrated the
poet’s contention that truth is stranger than fiction. One instance
containing all of the elements that go to make up a romance comes to
mind. The two principal figures in it were a sweet Sister of Charity,
burning with love for her fellow creatures, and willing to lay down life
itself in the cause of suffering humanity, and a brave soldier, filled
with patriotism for his country, brought to the point of death by a
malignant fever; nursed back to life and finally, twenty-five years
after the war, giving an exhibition of gratitude as rare as it is
beautiful.
Thomas Trahey was born in Detroit, Mich., in 1844, and was the only son
of devoted parents. When the war began he was about 17 years of age.
Flushed with the vigor and energy of youth he desired to enlist at once.
He did not succeed in carrying out his wish, however, until August,
1862, when he enlisted in Company H, Sixteenth Michigan Volunteer
Infantry. When he was mustered out at the close of the war it was as
sergeant of his command. He was commended many times by his superiors
for gallantry in action. In the battle of Fredericksburg, December 13,
1862, he was struck by the fragment of a shell and severely wounded in
the left breast. He was left on the battlefield all night, but finally
received attention at the hands of Dr. R. F. Weir, who was in charge of
the hospital at Frederick City.
Trahey recovered from this and went to the front again with his
regiment. After the battle of Gettysburg he was taken with typhoid
fever, which soon assumed a malignant form. Dr. Gray, of Philadelphia,
who was in charge of Barracks H, in the United States General Hospital,
at Frederick City, made a careful diagnosis of the case and said that
Trahey, who was weakened from the effects of his previous wounds and
suffering, could not possibly recover.
It was at this juncture that Sister Louise appeared upon the scene. She
inquired if careful nursing would not save the man’s life. The physician
said that it was one chance in a thousand, but that if anything could
prolong the soldier’s existence it was the patient and persistent care
and watchfulness of a Sister of Charity.
“Then,” she exclaimed, “I will undertake the case.”
Sister Louise had been detailed from the Mother House at Emmitsburg,
and, though young in years, had acquired considerable experience, which
added to her marvelous devotedness to duty and self-forgetfulness had
made her phenomenally successful in the hospitals and camps. She was
born of French-Canadian parents in Toronto. She was a devout child, and
early gave evidence of a desire to embrace the religious state.
Consequently the whole of her early childhood was a preparation for the
life she was to enter. At an early age she came to the United States and
took the vows of Chastity, Poverty and Obedience, and became a daughter
of St. Vincent.
At the time she was performing her labors at Frederick City she was only
19 years of age, and was, moreover, possessed of unusual beauty. Day and
night she remained at the bedside of her patient, frequently depriving
herself of food and rest in order to minister to his slightest wish.
Finally he recovered, only to have a relapse, which resulted in a severe
case of smallpox. This did not dismay the devoted nurse. She renewed her
energies. For three weeks after he became convalescent the Sister fed
him with a spoon.
Just as the patient was pronounced out of danger the Sister was ordered
away to another station, where her pious attentions were given to other
cases as serious and as dangerous as the ordeal she had just gone
through. Sergeant Trahey returned to the front from his hospital cot,
and was wounded once again at White Oak Road, Va., on March 29, 1865. He
recovered and soon after, at the termination of the war, returned to his
home. For several years he was unable by reason of his weakened physical
condition to perform any of the ordinary duties of life.
After he had recovered he determined to seek the whereabouts of the
Sister in order to thank her for the self-sacrificing care she had taken
of him during the most critical period of his life. As he expressed it
at the time, he was “willing to travel from Maine to California merely
to get a glimpse of her holy face.”
Sergeant Trahey first wrote to the Mother House of the order, at
Emmitsburg, Md., and received a reply that Sister Louise had been
ordered to St. Louis soon after the war and had died there in 1867 of
malignant typhoid fever, the same disease that had so nearly ended the
life of the soldier. She expired at the Ninth and Madison Streets
Hospital, St. Louis, and was buried in Calvary Cemetery, in that city.
The grateful soldier had the grave cared for, and decorated it with
religious regularity on each recurring Memorial Day. Frequently he would
visit the grave in company with his wife and family, performing a pious
pilgrimage at once picturesque and edifying. The desire to render the
memory of Sister Louise some service took a strong hold on him at this
time. He determined that the good Sister should have a better tombstone
than the modest little headpiece that occupied a place over her grave.
That there could possibly be any objection to such an act of devotion
and gratitude never once occurred to the old soldier. He had the stone
cut at a nearby marble yard, but when the matter was brought to the
attention of the superintendent of the cemetery the latter sent a
communication to the church authorities recommending that the request be
refused, as the grave was already provided with such a headstone as
marked the resting places of other members of the order. At last the
veteran called on Sister Magdalena, the local Superior, and gave her a
full account of the case. He recited in detail the unusual service that
had been rendered him by the deceased Sister. The Superior questioned
him very closely regarding the character of the stone that he desired to
erect, and was particularly anxious to know its exact dimensions. She
was very much impressed with his story, and expressed a desire to accede
to his wishes if it could be done without ostentation or the appearance
of any unnecessary show in the Sisters’ section of the cemetery. She
took his request under advisement, and early in 1895 he was given
permission to erect the stone.
The simple monument of a Sister’s devotion to duty and an old soldier’s
gratitude is in the shape of a rustic cross beautifully engraved. On it
is inscribed the following:
To Sister Regenia La Croix,
Died March, 1867, in this city.
Erected as a Tribute of Gratitude
From an Old Soldier.
T. T.
The grave is regularly decorated with choice plants and flowers, and on
Memorial Day especially it attracts hundreds of visitors. The old
soldier, with a show of pardonable pride, says there is nothing like it
that has been erected over the grave of a Sister of Charity by any old
soldier during or since the war in this country.
The name upon the cross over the grave was the name of the Sister in the
world. She was known in religion by the title of Sister Louise.
Speaking of the services rendered him by Sister Louise Sergeant Trahey
says:
“She was my only attendant, and no mother could have been more tender or
faithful. She brought me dainties which I knew were almost priceless at
the time, and books that were as rare as gold, and in a thousand ways
did she add to my obligations. Naturally I became greatly attached to
her, and there is nothing in reason that I could do to perpetuate her
memory that I would not do. Her beautiful face and kind attentions have
ever remained to me as one of the most precious memories of my
existence. I have not the slightest doubt but that she saved my life. A
glass of water given me from her hand seemed to infuse new life and
strength into me. Whenever she approached my humble cot she brought
sunshine and holiness with her. Every time I meet a Sister of Charity
upon the street I am reminded of my ever-faithful nurse. I say, and I
repeat with all reverence and fervency, God bless her. I believe she is
now praying for me in heaven.”
This is one of the romances of the war, illustrating in a high degree
the heroism of self-sacrifice and the beauty of gratitude. There are no
doubt many other similar incidents on record, differing somewhat in
detail, but all tending to show the love and reverence that invariably
followed the noble self-sacrifices of the Sisters.