A RECENT LETTER FROM DOCTOR MARY BLACKMAR BRUSON
“Jacksonville, Florida,
April, 1910.
MY DEAR ADA:
At your request I send some incidents of camp life as they come to
mind.
After one of the fearful onslaughts at Petersburg, the wounded came
pouring into my tent, which was nearest to the firing line, so that a
drummer-lad had named it ‘The Half Way House’. One lad dropped from
the wagon in which he was being transported, as they passed my tent.
I ran and cried out to the driver. He coolly replied ‘He is dead,
what does it matter!’
I knelt by the boy’s side and found a remote evidence of life, but
hemorrhage was so profuse it seemed he could not survive. I called
the attention of surgeons, but all said ‘We must go on’. So with my
knowledge that life was not extinct, and that he was so young and had
the force of youth, (moreover the hardships of the Confederates had
toughened him), I remained on the ground at his side not daring to
leave him, but compelled to use my fingers as a tampon.
I remained with him twenty-four hours before I felt safe in having
him carried to a ward. Cramped and exhausted from such a strain,
in addition to weakness induced by loss of sleep through nights and
days previous, I could hardly crawl into my tent. Being cold I heated
a brick, put it in my cot and was soon so deeply sunk in oblivion,
it seemed I would have remained so forever, but for my companions,
Misses V. and M., who came in at midnight. Soon after they retired
they discovered a dense smoke filling the tent and were aware of
burning wool. They called me again and again, but getting no reply
they jumped up and pulled me from the burning cot and finally roused
me, so that I calmly dressed.
Morning found my limbs, from ankles to knees, one solid blister, but
this I was at first too stupid to realize, or even the danger which I
had escaped through my faithful friends. No one knew of the accident
but ourselves, and I went about my work as usual. Nature alone was
the healer.
One day I asked a poor exhausted soldier--so feeble from disease
and exposure that he could only whisper--if there was anything he
wished, and said that if so I would try to get it for him. With tears
and sighs he replied, “O, Miss, if you would only get me some fried
bacon with molasses poured over it, I would get well!” It was a novel
dish to me but was easily attained, and the man’s appetite was so
quickened by the relishable food that he began to recover forthwith.
In later years I learned that very many looked upon it as a special
delicacy.
I was finally placed in charge of the Confederate wards, and there
saw that grandest of men, President Lincoln. This was after the
last assault on Petersburg, and men horribly wounded and sick, from
both armies, were rushed into our camp hospital at City Point.
I was given especial care of the private Confederates, and my
companion, that fine, grand woman, Miss Vance, took charge of the
Confederate officers. I had only an orderly to assist me--a boy about
sixteen,--and what with the cleaning and caring for each sick, torn
body, our powers were strained to the utmost limit of endurance. Our
patients’ cots were so close together that we could just squeeze
between, and our ward so long that it required from three to four
tents.
General Grant was at City Point, and President Lincoln came down at
this time, before our army marched into Richmond. One day both of
them were coming slowly down my avenue. The orderly rushed in and
cried out--‘President Lincoln’s coming!’ I was at the extreme end of
the hospital tent, but, girl-like, started forward that I might see
him. At that instant, oh, such a puny, helpless wail, as of sick and
dying infants, issued from every throat: ‘Oh, don’t leave us, Miss!
He is a beast! He will kill us!’
I replied: ‘Oh, no! He is a grand good man!’ Again and again came
forth that puny wail, ‘Don’t leave us, Miss!’ till I finally said,
‘Well, I’ll not leave you, don’t fear!’ but by that time I had got
to the front of the tent and the orderly had pulled back a flap on
my request so that I peered out. Within about fifteen or twenty feet
were both men. General Grant with the inevitable cigar, and President
Lincoln, so tall, so lank, giving evidence of much sorrow, looming
over him. I heard General Grant say distinctly, ‘These are the
Confederate quarters’. President Lincoln immediately said, ‘I wish to
go in here alone!’
I drew myself up into the corner as close as possible, and he bent
under the open flap and came in. He went at once to a bedside, and
reverently leaned over almost double so low were the cots, and
stroked the soldier’s head, and with tears streaming down his face he
said in a sort of sweet anguish, “Oh, my man, why did you do it?” The
boy in gray said, or rather stammered weakly, almost in a whisper,
‘I went because my State went’. On that ground floor, so quiet was
the whole ward, a pin could almost have been heard to fall. President
Lincoln went from one bedside to another and touched each forehead
gently, and with tears streaming asked again the question, and again
heard the same reply. When he finally passed out from those boys,
some grey and grizzled, but many of them children, there came as from
one voice, ‘Oh, we didn’t know he was such a good man! We thought he
was a beast!’
At the close of hostilities, I, with many others, went with the army
to Richmond and Washington, and there saw the final parade of 60,000
troops before the White House. I afterward returned to my college
and hospital and completed my studies, and since then have led a
strenuous life as a practising physician in Florida.
As ever,
Your old Comrade,
MARY.”