“And it’s nuthin’ but one big hospital, Billy,” he said after a while. “You wouldn’t think, would you, lookin’ down on it so peaceful and quiet, that there’s 50,000 sick and wounded soldiers there? Only Almighty God knows how many of ’em are dyin’ this minute; only Almighty God knows how many are sufferin’ so they’re prayin’ to die. They are comin’ to us every day now—have been ever since the Wilderness, 50,000 here and 150,000 scattered over the country. There’s a crawlin’ line of sick and wounded all the way from here to Petersburg to-night. There’s a line, from Georgia to Chattanooga—Sherman’s men. You can’t put your finger on a spot in the whole North that ain’t got a crippled or fever-struck soldier in it. There were days in May, just after the Wilderness, when Mary and I used to drive the carriage along lines of ambulances which stretched from the docks to the hospitals, one, two miles. It was a thing to tear your heart out to see them. They brought them from the field just as they picked them up, with horrible, gaping, undressed wounds, blood and dust and powder caked over them—eaten by flies and mosquitoes. They’d been piled like cord wood on flat cars and transports. Sometimes they didn’t get a drink until they were distributed here. Often when it was cold they had no blanket, when it was hot they had no shade. That was nearly four months ago, and still they come. Night after night as I drive up here from the White House I pass twenty, thirty, forty ambulances in a row distributin’ the wounded and sick from Grant’s army.
“Think what it means! It means that boys like you and me were, not so long ago, have stood up and shot each other down—have trampled over each other and have left each other wounded and bleeding on the ground, in the rain or the heat, nobody to give ’em a drink or to say a kind word. Nothing but darkness and blood and groans and torture. Sometimes I can’t believe it’s true. Boys from Illinois where I live, shootin’ boys from Kentucky where I was born! It’s only when I see them comin’ in I realize it—boat load after boat load, wagon load after wagon load. It seemed sometimes after Bull Run and Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville if they didn’t stop unloadin’ ’em I’d go plumb crazy. But still they come, and only God knows when they’ll stop. They say hell’s like war, Billy. If ’tis,—I’m glad I ain’t Satan.”
Of course I tried to cheer him up. I’d been around visitin’ the Illinois boys in the hospitals that day and I just lit in and told him how comfortable I’d found ’em and how chipper most of them seemed. “You’d think ’twas fun to be in the hospital to see some of ’em, Mr. Lincoln,” I said. “What do you suppose old Tom Blodgett was doin’? Settin’ up darnin’ his socks. Yes, sir, insisted on doin’ it himself. Said them socks had fit all the way from Washington to Richmond. They’d stood by him and he was goin’ to stand by them. Goin’ to dress their wounds as good as the doctor had his. Never saw anything so funny as that big feller propped up there tryin’ to darn like he’d seen his mother do and all the time makin’ fun. All the boys around were laffin’ at him—called him the sock doctor.
“And things were so clean and white and pretty and the women were runnin’ around just like home.”
“God bless ’em,” he said. “I don’t know what we’d ’a’ done if it hadn’t been for the way the women have taken hold. Come down here willin’ to do anything; women that never saw a cut finger before, will stand over a wound so terrible men will faint at the sight of it. I’ve known of women spendin’ whole nights on a battlefield huntin’ for somebody they’d lost and stoppin’ as they went to give water and take messages. I’ve known ’em to work steady for three days and nights without a wink of sleep down at the front after a battle, takin’ care of the wounded. Here in Washington you can’t stop ’em as long as they can see a thing to be done. At home they’re supportin’ the families and workin’ day and night to help us. They give their husbands and their boys and then themselves. God bless the women, Billy. We can’t save the Union without ’em.
“It makes a difference to the boys in a hospital havin’ ’em. People don’t realize how young this army is. Half the wounded here in Washington to-day are children—not twenty yet—lots of ’em under eighteen. Children who never went to sleep in their lives before they went into the army without kissin’ their mothers good-night. You take such a boy as that and let him lie in camp a few months gettin’ more and more tired of it and he gets homesick—plain homesick—he wants his mother. Perhaps he don’t know what’s the matter and he wouldn’t admit it if he did. First thing you know he’s in the hospital with camp fever, or he gets wounded. I tell you a woman looks good to him.
“It’s a queer thing to say, Billy, but I get real comfort out of the hospitals. When you know what the wounded have been through—how they have laid on the battlefields for hours and hours uncared for, how they’ve suffered bein’ hauled up here, there ain’t nuthin’ consoles you like knowin’ that their wounds have been dressed and that they are clean and fed, and looked after. Then they are so thankful to be here—to have some one to see to ’em. I remember one day a boy who had been all shot up but was gettin’ better sayin’ to me: ‘Mr. Lincoln, I can’t sleep nights thinkin’ how comfortable I am.’ It’s so good to find ’em realizin’ that everybody cares—the whole country. People come and read to ’em and write letters for ’em and bring ’em things. Why, they have real good times at some of the places. Down to Armory Square Bliss has got a melodeon and they have concerts sometimes, and there are flags up and flowers in the windows. I got some flower seeds last summer for Bliss to plant outside, but they turned out to be lettuce and onions. The boys ate ’em and you ought to heard ’em laugh about my flowers. I tell you it makes me happy when I go around and find the poor fellows smilin’ up at me and sayin’: ‘You’re takin’ good care of us, Mr. Lincoln,’ and maybe crack a joke.
“They take it all so natural, trampin’ and fightin’ and dyin’. It’s a wonderful army—wonderful! You couldn’t believe that boys that back home didn’t ever have a serious thought in their heads could ever be so dead set as they be about an idee. Think of it! A million men are lookin’ up at these stars to-night, a million men ready to die for the Union to-morrow if it’s got to be done to save it! I tell you, it shows what’s in ’em. They’re all the same, young or old—the Union’s got to be saved! Of course you’d expect it more of the old ones, and we’ve got some old ones, older than the law allows, too. ’Tain’t only the youngsters who have lied themselves into the service. Only to-day a Congressman was in tellin’ me about one of his constituents, said he was over sixty-five and white-haired when he first enlisted. They refused him of course, and I’ll be blamed if the old fellow didn’t dye his hair black and change his name, and when they asked him his age, said: ‘Rising thirty-five,’ and he’s been fightin’ good for two years and now they’d found him out. The Congressman asked me what he ought to do. I told him if ’twas me I’d keep him in hair dye.”
We was still a while and then Mr. Lincoln began talkin’, more to himself than to me.