“There is probably no one in this city whose eyes have not followed with interest the quiet and modest figure of some Sister of Mercy as she passed upon her rounds. It is in this gentle impersonation of Christian benevolence and to her associates that our sick and wounded soldiers owe the tenderest of those ministrations which are better than medicine in their effect upon the languishing invalid. Nor is the large kindness of these ladies solely displayed in the personal cares which they bestow upon the sufferer. They give generously from their stores at the same time, and many a want is thus supplied which might otherwise have been left ungratified. Since the beginning of the siege of our city their presence has diffused its blessings in every hospital, and their unwearied attentions to the soldiers have done incalculable good.”
In the closing year of the war Rev. George W. Pepper, a Methodist clergyman, in a sermon preached by him in the Methodist Episcopal Church, White Eyes, Coshocton County, Ohio, eulogized these heroic ladies as follows:
“The war has brought out one result—it has shown that numbers of the weaker sex, though born to wealth and luxury, are ready to renounce every comfort and brave every hardship, that they may minister to the suffering, tend the wounded in their agony, and soothe the last struggles of the dying. God bless the Sisters of Charity in their heroic mission! I had almost said their heroic martyrdom! And I might have said it, for I do think that in walking those long lines of sick beds, in giving themselves to all the ghastly duties of the hospital, they are doing a harder thing than was allotted to many who mounted the scaffold or dared the stake.”
“Mack,” a correspondent of the Ohio State Journal, writing from Murfreesboro, under date of January 4, 1863, about hospital scenes, which he describes as heartrending, thus speaks of the kind offices and invaluable services of the Sisters of Charity:
“It is now a pleasure to turn from this dark and dismal description of the majority of our hospitals to an oasis—a something that is in reality bright and cheering. There is a sect called Roman Catholics—a sect that, in my younger days, I was taught to look upon as monsters, capable of any crime in the calendar of human frailties—who have hospitals in their own charge attended by Sisters of Charity. They should be called ‘angels,’ who know what true, disinterested humanity is. I have visited them, therefore I speak of what I know. Everything in and about them is clean and comfortable; scarcely a death takes place within their portals. If a soldier is dangerously sick you will see by the side of his clean and tidy cot one of these heaven-born ‘angels’ (we call them nothing else), ministering to his every want with the tender care of a mother or sister. They glide noiselessly from cot to cot cheering the despondent and speaking words of kindness to all. No one who has the heart of a man can help loving them with a holy sisterly love. There is not a soldier in Richmond but would beg, if it was possible, that when wounded or sick he should to be taken to such an hospital, and for myself, sooner than be taken to any other, I would rather die by the wayside with God’s canopy my only covering. Would to God there were more of them!”
The following account of a presentation to a Sister of Charity is from the Cleveland Herald of November 13, 1865:
“One of the most pleasant presentation affairs we remember to have attended took place at Charity Hospital yesterday, at 11 o’clock. After Professor Weber, Dr. Scott and the students had been seated the Lady Superior was invited into the room and presented with a beautiful engraving, one of the proof-sheets copied from the painting of Constant Mayor, entitled ‘Consolation,’ by Captain Samuel Whiting. Mr. Whiting, in presenting the engraving, said:
“‘Sister Superior, some years ago, while in command of one of the New Orleans steamships, I was prostrated at that port with a severe attack of yellow fever, and though I had many friends there, had it not been for the tender care and skillful nursing of the Sisters of Charity, I have no idea that I should have survived the attack.
“‘During our late fearful and bloody war the devotion of your noble order to the cause of humanity has won the admiration of the world, and entirely obliterated the illiberal prejudices of the most bigoted opponents of your sect. Certainly, no soldier of the Crimean army will ever ignore the kind care and gentle nursing of the Sisters of Charity.’”
Each hospital throughout our land could count them by the score
Whose deeds have doubly sanctified our long and bloody war,
And many a home-returning brave will long delight to tell
Of her, the gentle minister, who tended him so well.