"Mother, you don't know what a feeling a man gets after being in the
active sights and influences of the camp, the army, the wounded, etc. He
gets to have a deep feeling he never experienced before,--the flag, the
tune of Yankee Doodle, and similar things, produce an effect on a fellow
never felt before. I have seen tears on the men's cheeks, and others turn
pale under such circumstances. I have a little flag,--it belonged to one
of our cavalry regiments,--presented to me by one of the wounded. It was
taken by the rebs in a cavalry fight, and rescued by our men in a bloody
little skirmish. It cost three men's lives just to get one little flag
four by three. Our men rescued it, and tore it from the breast of a dead
rebel. All that just for the name of getting their little banner back
again. The man that got it was very badly wounded, and they let him keep
it. I was with him a good deal. He wanted to give me something, he said;
he did not expect to live; so he gave me the little banner as a keepsake.
I mention this, mother, to show you a specimen of the feeling. There isn't
a regiment of cavalry or infantry that wouldn't do the same on occasion."
[An army surgeon, who at the time watched with curiosity Mr. Whitman's
movements among the soldiers in the hospitals, has since told me that his
principles of operation, effective as they were, seemed strangely few,
simple, and on a low key,--to act upon the appetite, to cheer by a healthy
and fitly bracing appearance and demeanor; and to fill and satisfy in
certain cases the affectional longings of the patients, was about all. He
carried among them no sentimentalism nor moralizing; spoke not to any man
of his "sins," but gave something good to eat, a buoying word, or a
trifling gift and a look. He appeared with ruddy face, clean dress, with a
flower or a green sprig in the lapel of his coat. Crossing the fields in
summer, he would gather a great bunch of dandelion blossoms, and red and
white clover, to bring and scatter on the cots, as reminders of out-door
air and sunshine.
When practicable, he came to the long and crowded wards of the maimed, the
feeble, and the dying, only after preparations as for a
festival,--strengthened by a good meal, rest, the bath, and fresh
underclothes. He entered with a huge haversack slung over his shoulder,
full of appropriate articles, with parcels under his arms, and protuberant
pockets. He would sometimes come in summer with a good-sized basket filled
with oranges, and would go round for hours paring and dividing them among
the feverish and thirsty.]
Of his devotion to the wounded soldiers there are many witnesses. A
well-known correspondent of the "New York Herald" writes thus about him in
April, 1876:--
"I first heard of him among the sufferers on the Peninsula after a battle
there. Subsequently I saw him, time and again, in the Washington
hospitals, or wending his way there, with basket or haversack on his arm,
and the strength of beneficence suffusing his face. His devotion surpassed
the devotion of woman. It would take a volume to tell of his kindness,
tenderness, and thoughtfulness.
"Never shall I forget one night when I accompanied him on his rounds
through a hospital filled with those wounded young Americans whose heroism
he has sung in deathless numbers. There were three rows of cots, and each
cot bore its man. When he appeared, in passing along, there was a smile of
affection and welcome on every face, however wan, and his presence seemed
to light up the place as it might be lighted by the presence of the God of
Love. From cot to cot they called him, often in tremulous tones or in
whispers; they embraced him; they touched his hand; they gazed at him. To
one he gave a few words of cheer; for another he wrote a letter home; to
others he gave an orange, a few comfits, a cigar, a pipe and tobacco, a
sheet of paper or a postage-stamp, all of which and many other things were
in his capacious haversack. From another he would receive a dying message
for mother, wife, or sweetheart; for another he would promise to go an
errand; to another, some special friend very low, he would give a manly
farewell kiss. He did the things for them no nurse or doctor could do, and
he seemed to leave a benediction at every cot as he passed along. The
lights had gleamed for hours in the hospital that night before he left it,
and, as he took his way towards the door, you could hear the voices of
many a stricken hero calling, 'Walt, Walt, Walt! come again! come again!'"