THE OLD THEATER.
This building was on Princess Ann street. The basement floor was level
with the sidewalk, but the ground sloped upward at the back; so that the
yard was higher than the floor. Across the front was a vestibule, with
two flights of stairs leading up to the auditorium; behind the vestibule
a large, low room, with two rows of pillars supporting the upper floor;
and behind this three small rooms, and a square hall with a side
entrance. The fence was down between the theater and Catholic church,
next door. I stopped in the church to see Georgie, who was already at
work there, came and left by the back door, and entered the theater by
the side hall.
The mud was running in from the yard. Opposite the door, in a small
room, was a pile of knapsacks and blankets; and on them lay two men
smoking. To get into the large room, I must step out of the hall mud
over one man, and be careful not to step on another. I think it was six
rows of men that lay close on the floor, with just room to pass between
the feet of each row; they so close in the rows that in most places I
must slide one foot before the other to get to their heads.
The floor was very muddy and strewn with _debris_, principally of
crackers. There was one hundred and eighty-two men in the building, all
desperately wounded. They had been there a week. There were two leather
water-buckets, two tin basins, and about every third man had saved his
tin-cup or canteen; but no other vessel of any sort, size or description
on the premises--no sink or cess-pool or drain. The nurses were not to
be found; the men were growing reckless and despairing, but seemed to
catch hope as I began to thread my way among them and talk. No other
memory of life is more sacred than that of the candor with which they
took me into their confidence, as if I had been of their own sex, yet
ever sought to avoid wounding the delicacy they ascribed to mine.
I found some of the nurses--cowards who had run away from battle, and
now ran from duty--galvanized them into activity, invented substitutes
for things that were wanting--making good use of an old knapsack and
pocket-knife--and had tears of gratitude for pay.
One man lay near the front door, in a scant flannel shirt and cotton
drawers, his left thigh cut off in the middle and the stump supported on
the only pillow in the house. It was six by ten inches, stuffed with
straw. His head was supported by two bits of board and a pair of very
muddy boots. He called me, clutched my dress, and plead:
"Mother, can't you get me a blanket, I'm so cold; I could live if I
could get any care!"
I went to the room where the men lay smoking on the blankets; but one of
them wearing a surgeon's shoulderstraps, and speaking in a German
accent, claimed them as his private property, and positively refused to
yield one. The other man was his orderly, and words were useless--they
kept their blankets.
Going into a room behind that, I found a man slightly wounded sitting on
the floor, supporting another who had been shot across the face, and was
totally blind. He called, and when I came and talked with them, said:
"Won't you stay with us?"
"Stay with you?" I replied, "Well, I rather think I will, indeed; I came
to stay, and am one of the folks it is hard to drive away!"
"Oh! thank God; everybody leaves us; they come and promise, and then go
off, but I know you will stay; you will do something for us!"
It was so pitiful, that for an instant my courage failed, and I said:
"I will certainly stay with you; but fear it is little I can do for
you."
"Oh, you can speak to us; you do not know how good your voice sounds. I
have not seen a woman in three months; what is your name?"
"My name is mother."
"Mother; oh my God! I have not seen my mother for two years. Let me feel
your hand?"
I took between both of mine his hand, covered with mud and blood and
smoke of battle, and told him I was not only going to stay with them,
but was going to send him back to his regiment, with a lot more who were
lying around here doing nothing, when there was so much fighting to be
done; I had come on purpose to make them well, and they might make up
their minds to it. My own courage had revived, and I must revive theirs;
I could surely keep them alive until help should come. By softening the
torturing bandages on his face, I made him more comfortable; and in an
adjoining room found another man with a thigh stump, who had been served
by field-surgeons, as the thieves served the man going from Jerusalem to
Jericho: i.e., "stripped him, left him naked and half dead." Those men
surely did not go into battle without clothes; and why they should have
been sent out of the surgeon's hands without enough of even
underclothing to cover them, is the question I have never yet had
answered. Common decency led to his being placed in the back room alone,
but I shall never blush for going to him and doing the little I could
for his comfort.
After I returned to the large room, I took notice about clothing, and
found that most of the men had on their ordinary uniform; some had two
blankets, more had one; but full one-third were without any. There was
no shadow or pretense of a bed or pillow, not even a handful of straw or
hay! There was no broom, no hoe, or shovel, or spade to sweep or scrape
the floor; and the horrors were falling upon me when the man of the
blankets came, and said:
"Mattam, iv you are goin' to do any ding for tese men, you petter git
dem someding to eat."
"Something to eat?"
"Yaas! mine Cot, someding to eat! De government petter leave dem to tie
on de pattle field, nur do pring tem here to starve."
I looked at him in much surprise, and said:
"Who are you?"
"Vy, I am de surgeon. Tey send me here; put mine Cot, I cannot do
notting. Tere ish notting to do mit!"
I called out: "Men, what have you had to eat?"
"Hard tack, and something they call coffee," was the response.
"Have you had no meat?"
"Meat? We have forgotten what it tastes like!"
In one corner, near the front door, was a little counter and desk, with
a stationary bench in front. To this desk the surgeon gave me a key. I
found writing material, and sent a note of four lines to the Corps
Surgeon. Half an hour after, an irate little man stormed in and stamped
around among those prostrate men, flourishing a scrap of paper and
calling for the writer. His air was that of the champion who wanted to
see "the man who struck Billy Patterson," and his fierceness quite
alarmed me, lest he should step on some of the men. So I hurried to him,
and was no little surprised to find that the offending missive was my
note. I told him I had written it, and could have had no thought of
"reporting" him, since I knew nothing about him.
After considerable talk I learned that he had charge of the meat, and
that none had been issued to that place, because no "requisition" had
been sent. I had never written a requisition, but found blanks in that
desk, filled one, signed it and gave it to the meat man, who engaged
that the beef should be there next morning.
It grew dark, and we had two tallow candles lighted! May none of my
readers ever see such darkness made visible--such rows of haggard faces
looking at them from out such cavernous gloom! I talked hopefully,
worked and walked, while mentally exclaiming:
"Oh, God! What shall I do?"
About nine o'clock Dr. Porter, Division Surgeon, came with Georgie, to
take us to our quarters. These were but half a block away, on the same
side of the street, but on the opposite side, and corner of the next
cross-street, in a nice two-story brick house, with a small yard in
front. An old lady answered his summons, but refused to admit us: when
he insisted and I interposed, saying the lady was afraid of soldiers,
but would admit us. We would bid him good night, and soon our lodgings
would be all right.
She was relieved, took us in, cooked our rations for herself and us,
gave us a comfortable bed, and was uniformly kind all the time we
staid, and seemed sorry to have us leave.
I spoke the first night to Dr. Porter about blankets and straw, or hay
for beds, but was assured that none were to be had. Supplies could not
reach them since being cut off from their base, and the Provost Marshal,
Gen. Patrick, would not permit anything to be taken out of the houses,
though many of them were unoccupied, and well supplied with bedding and
other necessaries. I thought we ought to get two blankets for those two
naked men, if the Government should pay their weight in gold for them;
and suggested that the surgeons take what was necessary for the comfort
of the men, and give vouchers to the owners. I knew such claims would be
honored; would see that they should be; but he said the matter had been
settled by the Provost, and nothing more could be done.
It seems to me now that I must have been benumbed, or I could have done
something to provide covering for those men. I did think of giving one
of them my shawl, but I must have died without it. I remembered my
Douglas Hospital letter, and knew that Gen. Patrick could order me out
of Fredericksburg, and leave these men to rot in the old theater.
Already their wounds were infested by worms, which gnawed and tormented
them; some of those wounds were turning black, many were green; the
vitality of the men was sinking for want of food and warmth. I could not
forsake them to look after reform; would not fail to do what I could, in
an effort to do what I could not or might not accomplish.
In the morning I saw that the men had something they called coffee, and
found canned milk for it, which was nourishment; but a new difficulty
arose. The men who brought the coffee would distribute it to those who
had cups or canteens, and the others would get none. I had some trouble
to induce them to leave their cans, until, with the two tin cups I could
borrow, I could give about one-third the whole number the coffee they
could not otherwise have.
Our cooking was done in the churchyard, with that of the church
patients. A shed had been put up; but our cooking was an "uncovenanted
mercy," and when our beef came there was a question as to how it could
be cooked--how that additional work could be done.
I wrote to the Provost-Marshal, stating our trouble, and the extremity
of one hundred and eighty-two men. Asked that we might take a cook-stove
out of a vacant house near; promised to take good care of it and have it
returned; and he wrote, for answer:
"I am not a thief! If you want a stove send to the Sanitary Commission!"
He must have known that the Commission was as pressed as the Government
to conform its arrangements to the movements of an army cut off from its
base of supplies, and that it had no stoves, so the plain English of his
answer was:
"Let your wounded die of hunger, in welcome! I am here to guard the
property of the citizens of Fredericksburg!"
I had already written to the Commission for blankets and a broom, but
there were none to be had. It soon however sent a man, who cut branches
off trees, and with them swept the floors.