They lie on glory’s camping-ground,
On high their deeds recorded;
No nobler act on history’s page,
On fame’s, no prouder lauded.”
The 16th of July I was called to Washington, where I received instructions to go to Baltimore, as many of the wounded had arrived there from Gettysburg. I was greatly disappointed, for I had earnestly hoped to be sent to Gettysburg, believing that I could do vastly more good there than any where else at that particular time. However, on the morning of the 18th I took the eleven o’clock train for Baltimore. On the way I fell in company with a lady who called herself Jimmeson, though her true name, she told me, was Frank Abel. Her story was indeed a strange one. It was as follows: Her husband entered the service with the rank of captain in a Kentucky regiment of cavalry, and she as his first lieutenant. Her husband was killed at the first battle of Bull Run, after which she was employed as a scout by General Sigel. She had endured many hardships, visited several battle-fields, and assisted—as she belonged to the medical staff—in performing amputations and dressing wounds. She was once captured by the Rebels and confined in Libby Prison several weeks; but at the time of which I write she claimed to be a Government detective in the City of Washington, and was then on her way to Baltimore to arrest a woman with whom she had had a quarrel. What became of her after we parted at Baltimore, whether she found her victim or not, I never learned, for I have neither seen nor heard of her since.
Arriving in Baltimore, I proceeded directly to the Rev. Mr. Reid’s, where I obtained board. This was the same Christian family by whom sister and I were so kindly and hospitably entertained when we first arrived in Alexandria on our sad mission.
There were six hospitals in Baltimore, situated from one to four miles apart. As a general thing I found them more comfortable than any I had previously visited; and yet there was much suffering which the most tender care could not alleviate. I will give a single extract from my journal which will convey something of an idea of the sad, distressing scenes there witnessed:
July 28th.
Visited Jarvis Hospital, and distributed lemons, oranges, and blackberries. This has been one of the saddest visits I have made since coming to Baltimore. In one of the wards was a sergeant of the Ninth Massachusetts volunteers, dying. His wife and mother had just arrived. The dying man recognized them, and, taking the hand of his wife, kissed her, and then kissed his mother, bade them farewell, closed his eyes, and was soon gone. The circumstances of his death are most aggravating. His wound was dressed with bandages and lint taken to the hospital by rebel women, which, upon examination, were found sprinkled with cayenne pepper. He suffered the most excruciating pain from the time the bandages were first used, which so irritated and inflamed the wound that death was the result. After escaping the deadly effects of rebel lead, a fiend in friendship’s guise takes his life. A hundred deaths at the hands of a manly foe would not be half so trying. But this is only another example of the malignity and cruel hatred born of and nursed by Secession. At the dying man’s head was one seriously wounded, and a great sufferer, while at his feet was another, holding in his hand a letter from home, containing the sad news that two of his children lay at the point of death. His quivering lip and tear-dimmed eye were more potent than words in expressing his overwhelming sorrow. In another ward was a poor man who had lost both eyes, by his side was a young boy with a sweet, pale face, who, in addition to his wounds, was delirious with fever; a few cots from him was another young man with five wounds, whose clenched hands and convulsed frame expressed untold agony. A little farther along was an old man with a deep sabre-cut in his head, and another in the back of his neck; another was suffering greatly with a wound in the ankle. Time would fail me to mention the many with an arm off, a leg amputated, wounded in the head, in the lungs, and in every other conceivable manner. From none of those with whom I have conversed to-day have I heard one word of regret expressed for going into the army; but, on the contrary, many were anxious again to cross sabres and try their muskets with the enemy. It is an astonishing fact that, notwithstanding all the suffering experienced in our hospitals, an air of cheerfulness pervades them all. It seems unaccountable, unless we look upon it as a miraculous display of God’s all-sustaining power and grace.