It was no formal letter which she penned in that sad hour. Into its words and sentences went the glowing sympathy of a mother’s heart. But it is only an example of thousands of others. When the letter was finished, the face of the young man betokened the most perfect satisfaction. His work was done. He was ready to depart. I prayed with him. I left him with a smile on his face. He was so cheerful that I began to think that the surgeon had made a mistake; but when I returned a few hours afterwards, “he was not, for God took him.”
In addition to the above it is with no little pleasure that I give one incident among many that vividly reveal the patriotic devotion of the rank and file of our army. Near the beginning of the war, I was called one night to marry a volunteer cavalry soldier. Immediately after, he rode away under the command of Zagonyi, to Springfield, Missouri. In entering that city a charge was made between two lines of Confederate soldiers, and my friend was shot. For several hours he lay on the frosty ground, slowly bleeding; and then, faint and exhausted, he was put into an army wagon which went jolting over rough roads to Rolla, and from there he was sent by the cars to St. Louis. I found him in the hospital, so changed that I did not at once recognize him. But when all doubt as to his identity was brushed away, he pathetically told me the story of his suffering. He had been shot through the shoulder; the bone had been shattered; pieces of it had protruded from the wound and had been removed. He had preserved them. They were more precious to him than diamonds. He kept them neatly wrapped in a paper under his pillow. With his trembling, emaciated hand he took them out slowly and carefully unwrapped them and showed them to me. Then wrapping them up again, he put them back under his pillow, and looking up, his eye began to gleam as he said: “The doctors say that I cannot recover. I think that they are mistaken. I shall get well. You see that it is the left shoulder that is wounded. When it heals it will be stiff, but I can still hold the reins of my horse in my left hand; and then, sir,” with great emphasis for an apparently dying man, he added, “I have one more shoulder for my country.” He did live to fight many a hard battle thereafter. But I could never forget those brave, burning words, words instinct with self-sacrifice: “Then, sir, I have one more shoulder for my country.”
In closing this inadequate sketch of our hospitals, I wish gratefully to call attention to the fact that they were an immeasurable blessing to St. Louis. They marvellously developed the benevolence of the city. By them scores of men and women were lifted up out of their selfishness. In ministering to those in need they forgot themselves. In spite of all the evils of the war, it led more people in our city to live in some measure the life of Christ than any other influence had ever before done. The best exhibition of Christianity ever witnessed within our gates was that band of devoted workers seen every day and night in the camps and hospitals. Hundreds of women whose Christian activities had never before gone beyond the family or the individual church, now like their divine Lord went about doing good. Like the good Samaritan, they had compassion upon all that they found in distress, irrespective of nationality or creed.
CHAPTER XXII
THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY SANITARY FAIR
As the war went on, the demands on the Western Sanitary Commission became enormous. At the close of 1863 and the beginning of 1864 the Commission found its treasury well nigh empty. Something must be done to replenish it. After careful deliberation, the Commission decided to hold a fair, believing that thereby it could secure the funds required for its vastly important work. So on February 1st, 1864, it inaugurated this popular movement.
General William Starke Rosecrans, who, in January, had succeeded General Schofield in command of the Department of Missouri, was made president of the Fair. From the start the project was popular. In St. Louis the people took hold of it with marked enthusiasm. They were ready to work and give to make it a success. That thoroughness might characterize all that was done they carefully organized their forces. They divided among themselves the multifarious tasks to be performed. They appointed committees to look after every important detail, and to report to the central authority. So amid the multiplicity of things there was unity and order. It was exhilarating to see a great community so stirred up in the doing of a patriotic and benevolent work, that, for a time, all conventionalities of society and distinctions of race or creed were forgotten. Protestant and Catholic, Jew and Gentile, Europeans and Americans, whites and blacks met, and elbowed, and emulated each other in working for the soldiers of the Union.
But a work so great could not be done by our city alone, however willing and diligent we might be; so, the Commission appealed for help to the people of other cities and States. The response was prompt and exceedingly generous. Money and large consignments of useful articles to be sold at the Fair came from Boston, Salem, Worcester, Providence, New Bedford, New Haven, New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Nevada (then a remote mining territory), England and Germany. Other givers also in justice should be mentioned, but we name these merely to show how cosmopolitan the donations to the Fair were. Helping hands were stretched across the sea to us. Wars on behalf of the oppressed are wars of progress, and make kin the lovers of righteousness in all the nations.
But among the givers St. Louis herself ranked with the first. Her business men contributed large amounts of goods; her families, vast numbers of salable articles made in their homes; her artists and lovers of art, valuable paintings, etchings, and engravings; and some liberally gave money.
When the Fair opened on May 17th, there was in its treasury two hundred thousand dollars in cash, which had been contributed by men in St. Louis and in different parts of the Union.
The building for the Fair was on Twelfth Street. It was five hundred feet long and extended from St. Charles to Olive Street. It had wings on Locust Street, each one hundred feet by fifty-four. In the centre of the building was an octagon seventy-five feet in diameter and fifty feet high. This octagon was lavishly decorated with mottoes, national banners, battle trophies, such as flags and weapons captured from the enemy, and arbors of evergreens and flowers.