Let me specialize a visit I made to the collection of barrack-like
one-story edifices, Campbell hospital, out on the flats, at the end
of the then horse railway route, on Seventh street. There is a long
building appropriated to each ward. Let us go into ward 6. It contains,
to-day, I should judge, eighty or a hundred patients, half sick, half
wounded. The edifice is nothing but boards, well whitewash'd inside, and
the usual slender-framed iron bedsteads, narrow and plain. You walk down
the central passage, with a row on either side, their feet towards you,
and their heads to the wall. There are fires in large stoves, and the
prevailing white of the walls is reliev'd by some ornaments, stars,
circles, &c., made of evergreens. The view of the whole edifice and
occupants can be taken at once, for there is no partition. You may hear
groans or other sounds of unendurable suffering from two or three of
the cots, but in the main there is quiet--almost a painful absence of
demonstration; but the pallid face, the dull'd eye, and the moisture
of the lip, are demonstration enough. Most of these sick or hurt are
evidently young fellows from the country, farmers' sons, and such like.
Look at the fine large frames, the bright and broad countenances, and
the many yet lingering proofs of strong constitution and physique. Look
at the patient and mute manner of our American wounded as they lie in
such a sad collection; representatives from all New England, and from
New York, and New Jersey, and Pennsylvania--indeed from all the States
and all the cities--largely from the west. Most of them are entirely
without friends or acquaintances here--no familiar face, and hardly a
word of judicious sympathy or cheer, through their sometimes long and
tedious sickness, or the pangs of aggravated wounds.