Angels of the Battlefield / A History of the Labors of the Catholic Sisterhoods in the Late Civil War

by George Barton

The Sisters were “always on duty,” and sometimes the duty was more severe than at others. After great battles, such as Shiloh, the hospitals were hardly able to accommodate the hundreds that were brought there. When the orderlies had performed the first essential service for the newcomer he would be taken in charge by the Sisters. Refreshing draughts and nourishing food were intermingled with the remedies that would be administered from time to time. The ladies of Louisville were frequent visitors at the hospitals, and they brought many delicacies for the sick and the wounded. At length near the close of the war the Sisters were recalled to their home from the Louisville hospitals. The recall came none too soon for the survivors, as they stood much in need of rest and change of air. For nearly three years they had been confined in the close wards of the three hospitals, and this not unnaturally had its effect upon their health. Many of them overestimated their strength and their powers of endurance. Some died in the hospitals, others soon after, at a premature age.

The actual number of Catholic Sisters who laid down their lives during the civil war, that their fellow-creatures might live, will probably never be known, but there is no question that hundreds did so. Their names are not cut upon any earthly monuments, but they are surely emblazoned in letters of gold in the great book of the Recording Angel. The Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, as Mother Carroll could have testified, furnished their full quota of fair martyrs. Many instances have been lost in the long number of years that have elapsed since the closing of the war, but several well-authenticated cases still linger freshly in the minds of those that were witnesses of the great struggle. One of these is particularly pathetic. Sister Mary Lucy, one of the sweetest young members of the Order, richly endowed by nature, was one of the teachers in St. Mary’s Academy, at Paducah. When the exigencies of war compelled the temporary abandonment of this institution, Sister Mary Lucy volunteered as one of the hospital nurses. She was assigned to some of the severest typhoid cases, and the manner in which she nursed these patients won for her the unqualified praise of the hospital doctors and attendants.

OBSEQUIES OF SISTER MARY LUCY.

The post of honor in this instance proved to be the post of danger. Sister Mary Lucy contracted the fever from one of her patients who was convalescent. This was in the latter part of December, during the first year of the war. Despite the best medical attention she rapidly grew worse, until December 29, when she expired as calmly and heroically as she had lived. Her death cast a gloom over the entire hospital, and the soldiers of both armies were filled with admiration and awe at the martyrdom of this gentle soul. They determined that she should be honored in death as she had been in life, and that her final obsequies should be of a character befitting her great merits.

Several files of soldiers marched with muffled drums and noiseless tread from the Central Hospital to the Ohio River, bearing in the midst of them the remains. There the coffin was placed in a gunboat in waiting, which had been especially designated for this service. Then the boat slowly steamed away, bearing its honored burden under a flag of truce to Uniontown, Ky. On landing, the remains were borne to St. Vincent’s Academy, some miles distant, where the Sisters own a considerable tract of land and where they have a last resting place for their dead. Father Powers, at that time pastor of the Catholic Church at Paducah, said the Solemn Mass of Requiem and accompanied the body to the grave and recited over it the last offices of the Church, of which the deceased had been such an exemplary member. A guard of devoted soldiers watched by the coffin day and night from the time it left the Central Hospital until the earth covered it from mortal view. At night the tender-hearted warriors kept their vigil around the coffin with blazing torches made of pine knots. Sister Mary Lucy was born in the vicinity of the spot where she was buried. She received her education at St. Vincent’s Academy, became a Daughter of Charity and died in the performance of her duty. This is the short but brilliant life history of one heroic woman.

A letter dated Louisville, February 1, 1862, written by one of the army surgeons to Mother Francis Gardner, contained the following announcement: “I regret very much to have to inform you of the death of Sister Catherine at the General Hospital in this city. She, as well as the other Sisters at the hospital, has been untiring and most efficient in nursing the sick soldiers. The military authorities are under the greatest obligations to the Sisters of your Order.”

Still another conspicuous loss was soon to be felt in the death of Sister Appollonia, the directress of “No. 1 Hospital.” She served long and faithfully in this post and won warm commendation from stern soldiers, who, whatever else their faults, were never guilty of flattery. She was a woman of great executive ability, and was instrumental in causing order to come out of chaos in the hospital over which she presided. Her zeal was great. Not content to direct affairs, she also nursed individual cases. It was while engaged in this work that she contracted typhoid fever, from which she soon after died. She had endeared herself to the soldiers by her kind and motherly treatment of them, and her death caused universal regret.

The manner in which the Sisters were treated by the soldiers had in it a blending of the humorous and the sublime. Those of the Sisters that live to tell the tale say that nothing was wanting in the courtesy with which they were invariably considered by the men of both armies. On Sundays they were given especial consideration. They were escorted to Mass by a military guard of honor, and received the military salute in passing to and fro in the neighborhood of the hospital and the camps. Some of the invalid soldiers imagined that every Sister carried a charm about her, and was thus protected from the contagious diseases that caused such sad havoc among the men. But the supposed charms were not always successful in preventing the Sisters from wearing the martyr’s crown in death. The only charms they carried, as the soldiers soon discovered, were blameless lives, absolute devotion to duty and entire self-forgetfulness.

There was one modest institution near the three large hospitals in Louisville where a great amount of good was done in an unostentatious manner. This was St. Joseph’s Infirmary, conducted by the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth. This was generally filled in war times with wounded officers and other invalids connected with both armies. The good done there, though not quite as conspicuous as elsewhere, was lasting, and bore fruit in after years.