"This afternoon, July 22, 1863, I spent a long time with a young man I
have been with a good deal from time to time, named Oscar F. Wilber,
company G, 154th New York, low with chronic diarrhoea, and a bad wound
also. He asked me to read him a chapter in the New Testament. I complied,
and asked him what I should read. He said: 'Make your own choice.' I
opened at the close of one of the first books of the Evangelists, and read
the chapters describing the latter hours of Christ and the scenes at the
crucifixion. The poor, wasted young man asked me to read the following
chapter also, how Christ rose again. I read very slowly, as Oscar was
feeble. It pleased him very much, yet the tears were in his eyes. He asked
me if I enjoyed religion. I said: 'Perhaps not, my dear, in the way you
mean, and yet, maybe, it is the same thing.' He said: 'It is my chief
reliance.' He talked of death, and said he did not fear it. I said: 'Why,
Oscar, don't you think you will get well?' He said: 'I may, but it is not
probable.' He spoke calmly of his condition. The wound was very bad; it
discharged much. Then the diarrhoea had prostrated him, and I felt that
he was even then the same as dying. He behaved very manly and
affectionate. The kiss I gave him as I was about leaving he returned
fourfold. He gave me his mother's address, Mrs. Sally D. Wilber, Alleghany
post-office, Cattaraugus County, New York. I had several such interviews
with him. He died a few days after the one just described."
And here, also, a characteristic scene in another of those long
barracks:--
"It is Sunday afternoon (middle of summer, 1864), hot and oppressive, and
very silent through the ward. I am taking care of a critical case, now
lying in a half lethargy. Near where I sit is a suffering rebel, from the
8th Louisiana; his name is Irving. He has been here a long time, badly
wounded, and has lately had his leg amputated. It is not doing very well.
Right opposite me is a sick soldier boy, laid down with his clothes on,
sleeping, looking much wasted, his pallid face on his arm. I see by the
yellow trimming on his jacket that he is a cavalry boy. He looks so
handsome as he sleeps, one must needs go nearer to him. I step softly over
to him, and find by his card that he is named William Cone, of the 1st
Maine Cavalry, and his folks live in Skowhegan."
In a letter to his mother in 1863 he says, in reference to his hospital
services: "I have got in the way, after going lightly, as it were, all
through the wards of a hospital, and trying to give a word of cheer, if
nothing else, to every one, then confining my special attention to the few
where the investment seems to tell best, and who want it most.... Mother,
I have real pride in telling you that I have the consciousness of saving
quite a number of lives by keeping the men from giving up, and being a
good deal with them. The men say it is so, and the doctors say it is so;
and I will candidly confess I can see it is true, though I say it myself.
I know you will like to hear it, mother, so I tell you."
Again he says: "I go among the worst fevers and wounds with impunity; I go
among the smallpox, etc., just the same. I feel to go without
apprehension, and so I go: nobody else goes; but, as the darkey said there
at Charleston when the boat ran on a flat and the rebel sharpshooters were
peppering them, '_somebody_ must jump in de water and shove de boat off.'"
In another letter to his mother he thus accounts for his effect upon the
wounded soldiers: "I fancy the reason I am able to do some good in the
hospitals among the poor, languishing, and wounded boys, is that I am so
large and well,--indeed, like a great wild buffalo with much hair. Many of
the soldiers are from the West and far North, and they like a man that has
not the bleached, shiny, and shaved cut of the cities and the East."
As to Whitman's appearance about this time, we get an inkling from another
letter to his mother, giving an account of an interview he had with
Senator Preston King, to whom Whitman applied for assistance in procuring
a clerkship in one of the departments. King said to him, "Why, how can I
do this thing, or anything for you? How do I know but you are a
secessionist? You look for all the world like an old Southern planter,--a
regular Carolina or Virginia planter."
The great suffering of the soldiers and their heroic fortitude move him
deeply. He says to his mother: "Nothing of ordinary misfortune seems as it
used to, and death itself has lost all its terrors; I have seen so many
cases in which it was so welcome and such a relief." Again: "I go to the
hospitals every day or night. I believe no men ever loved each other as I
and some of these poor wounded, sick, and dying men love each other."
Whitman's services in the hospitals began to tell seriously upon his
health in June, 1864, when he had "spells of deathly faintness, and had
trouble in the head." The doctors told him he must keep away for a while,
but he could not. Under date of June 7, 1864, he writes to his mother:--
"There is a very horrible collection in Armory Building (in Armory Square
Hospital),--about two hundred of the worst cases you ever saw, and I have
probably been too much with them. It is enough to melt the heart of a
stone. Over one third of them are amputation cases. Well, mother, poor
Oscar Cunningham is gone at last: (he is the 82d Ohio boy, wounded May 3,
'63). I have written so much of him I suppose you feel as if you almost
knew him. I was with him Saturday forenoon, and also evening. He was more
composed than usual; could not articulate very well. He died about two
o'clock Sunday morning, very easy, they told me. I was not there. It was a
blessed relief. His life has been misery for months. I believe I told you,
last letter, I was quite blue from the deaths of several of the poor young
men I knew well, especially two of whom I had strong hopes of their
getting up. Things are going pretty badly with the wounded. They are
crowded here in Washington in immense numbers, and all those that came up
from the Wilderness and that region arrived here so neglected and in such
plight it was awful (those that were at Fredericksburg, and also from
Belle Plain). The papers are full of puffs, etc., but the truth is the
largest proportion of worst cases get little or no attention.
"We receive them here with their wounds full of worms,--some all swelled
and inflamed. Many of the amputations have to be done over again. One new
feature is, that many of the poor, afflicted young men are crazy; every
ward has some in it that are wandering. They have suffered too much, and
it is perhaps a privilege that they are out of their senses. Mother, it is
most too much for a fellow, and I sometimes wish I was out of it; but I
suppose it is because I have not felt firstrate myself."
Of the Ohio soldier above referred to, Whitman had written a few days
before: "You remember I told you of him a year ago, when he was first
brought in. I thought him the noblest specimen of a young Western man I
had seen. A real giant in size, and always with a smile on his face. Oh,
what a change! He has long been very irritable to every one but me, and
his frame is all wasted away."
To his brother Jeff he wrote: "Of the many I have seen die, or known of
the past year, I have not seen or known of one who met death with any
terror. Yesterday I spent a good part of the afternoon with a young man of
seventeen named Charles Cutter, of Lawrence City, 1st Massachusetts Heavy
Artillery, Battery M. He was brought into one of the hospitals mortally
wounded in abdomen. Well, I thought to myself as I sat looking at him, it
ought to be a relief to his folks, after all, if they could see how little
he suffered. He lay very placid, in a half lethargy, with his eyes closed;
it was very warm, and I sat a long while fanning him and wiping the sweat.
At length he opened his eyes quite wide and clear, and looked inquiringly
around. I said, "What is it, my dear? do you want anything?" He said
quietly, with a good-natured smile, "Oh, nothing; I was only looking
around to see who was with me." His mind was somewhat wandering, yet he
lay so peaceful in his dying condition. He seemed to be a real New England
country boy, so good-natured, with a pleasant, homely way, and quite
fine-looking. Without any doubt, he died in course of the night."