No tributes that have been paid to the work of the Catholic Sisterhoods during the war have been more cordial or more emphatic than those coming from non-Catholic sources. It is a significant fact that those most prejudiced against the Sisters have been persons who knew the least about them, while the warmest friends of the dark-robed messengers of charity and peace have been persons who came in contact with them and their labors for humanity.
Mary A. Livermore, whose personal services during the war were by no means inconsiderable, is one non-Catholic writer who does not hesitate to give the Catholic Sister full credit for what she did. Miss Livermore says the Mound City Hospital, in charge of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, was considered the best military hospital in the United States. She writes:[25]
“There was one general hospital in Cairo, called by the people ‘the Brick Hospital.’ Here the Sisters of the Holy Cross were employed as nurses, one or more to each ward. Here were order, cleanliness and good nursing. The food was cooked in a kitchen outside of the hospital. Surgeons were detailed to every ward and visited their patients twice a day, and oftener if necessary. The apothecaries’ room was supplied with an ample store of medicines and surgical appliances, and the store-rooms possessed an abundance of clothing and delicacies for the sick.”
The work done at Mound City is thus graphically set forth: “Except in Mound City everything was in a chaotic condition compared with the complete arrangement afterwards. The hospital at Mound City occupied a block of brick stores, built before the war to accommodate the prospective commerce of the war. They had not been occupied, and as the blockade of the Mississippi rendered it uncertain when they would be needed for their legitimate use, they were turned over to the medical department for hospital use. At the time of my visit the Mound City hospital was considered the best military hospital in the United States. This was due to the administrative talent of Dr. E. S. Franklin, of Dubuque, Ia., who, despite poverty of means and material, transformed the rough block of stores into a superb hospital, accommodating 1000 patients. Fifteen hundred had been crowded in it by dint of close packing.
“The most thorough system was maintained in every department. There was an exact time and place for everything. Every person was assigned to a particular work and held responsible for its performance. If anyone proved a shirk, incompetent or insubordinate, he was sent off in the next boat. A Shaker-like cleanliness and sweetness of atmosphere pervaded the various wards; the sheets and pillows were of immaculate whiteness and the patients who were convalescent were cheerful and contented. The Sisters of the Holy Cross were employed as nurses, and by their skill, quietness, gentleness and tenderness were invaluable in the sick wards. Every patient gave hearty testimony to the skill and kindness of the Sisters.
“Mother Angela was the Superior of the Sisters—a gifted lady of rare cultivation and executive ability with winning sweetness of manner. She was a member of the Ewing family and a cousin of Mr. and Mrs. General Sherman. The Sisters had nearly broken up their famous schools at South Bend to answer the demand for nurses. If I had ever felt prejudiced against these Sisters as nurses, my experience with them during the war would have dissipated it entirely. The world has known no nobler and more heroic women than those found in the ranks of the Catholic Sisterhoods.”
Captain “Jack” Crawford, who became famous as a scout in the Union army, in the course of a lecture delivered after the war speaks of the Sisters as follows:
“On all God’s green and beautiful earth there are no purer, no nobler, no more kind-hearted and self-sacrificing women than those who wear the sombre garb of Catholic Sisters. During the war I had many opportunities for observing their noble and heroic work, not only in the camp and hospital, but on the death-swept field of battle. Right in the fiery front of dreadful war, where bullets hissed in maddening glee, and shot and shell flew madly by with demoniac shrieks, where dead and mangled forms lay with pale, blood-flecked faces, yet wear the scowl of battle, I have seen the black-robed Sisters moving over the field, their solicitous faces wet with the tears of sympathy, administering to the wants of the wounded and whispering words of comfort into the ears soon to be deafened by the cold, implacable hand of death. Now kneeling on the blood-bespattered sod to moisten with water the bloodless lips on which the icy kiss of the death angel has left its pale imprint; now breathing words of hope of an immortality beyond the grave into the ear of some mangled hero, whose last shots in our glorious cause had been fired but a moment before; now holding the crucifix to receive the last kiss from somebody’s darling boy, from whose breast the life blood was splashing and who had offered his life as a willing sacrifice on the altar of his country; now with tender touch and tear-dimmed eye binding gaping wounds, from which most women must have shrunk in horror; now scraping together a pillow of forest leaves, upon which some pain-racked head might rest until the spirit took its flight to other realms—brave, fearless of danger, trusting implicitly in the Master whose overshadowing eye was noting their every movement; standing as shielding, prayerful angels between the dying soldiers and the horrors of death. Their only recompense the sweet, soul-soothing consciousness that they were doing their duty; their only hope of reward that peace and eternal happiness which awaited them beyond the star-emblazoned battlements above. Oh! my friends, it was a noble work.
“How many a veteran of the war, who wore the Blue or the Gray, can yet recall the soothing touch of a Sister’s hand as he lay upon the pain-tossed couch of a hospital! Can we ever forget their sympathetic-eyes, their low, soft-spoken words of encouragement and cheer when the result of the struggle between life and death yet hung in the balance? Oh! how often have I followed the form of that good Sister Valencia with my sunken eyes as she moved away from my cot to the cot of another sufferer and have breathed from the most sacred depths of my faintly-beating heart the fervent prayer: ‘God bless her! God bless her!’