Another, and another day passed. The wounded from those fearful battles continued to arrive, and to be cared for, as well as was possible under the circumstances. The workers were shortly afterward made as comfortable as was possible. For two weeks Mrs. Spencer remained, and labored at Belle Plain, remained till her clothing of which, not expecting to remain, she had brought no change, was nearly worn out. The need was so pressing, of care for the wounded, that she scarcely thought of herself.
In the latter part of May, she left Belle Plain, and went to Port Royal, where similar scenes were enacted, save that there a shelter was provided. She had joined forces with the Sanitary Commission, and the facilities were now good and the workers numerous, yet it was barely possible, with all these, and with Government and Commission supplies, and private contributions, to feed the applicants.
The Medical Purveyor's boat with her husband on board, having arrived, Mrs. Spencer proceeded on that boat to White House, where she was placed in Superintendence of the Government Cooking Barge, continuing at the same time her supervision of the wants of the New York soldiery.
Here they fed the first wounded who arrived from the field, and here Mrs. Spencer continued many days directing the feeding of thousands more, ever remembering the regiments from her own State, as her special charge, and assisted by many volunteers and others in her arduous task.
On the 18th of June, 1864, Mrs. Spencer arrived at City Point. The wounded were still arriving, and there was enough for all to do. A Hospital was here established, a mile from the landing. The Government kitchen was kept up, till the hospitals and their kitchens were in full operation, when it was discontinued, and Mrs. Spencer relieved from her double task.
From that time, Mrs. Spencer confined herself mostly to the duties of her agency, and continued to make City Point her headquarters and base of operations until the close of the war closed the agency, and left her free once again to seek the welcome seclusion of her home.
She occasionally visited the General Hospitals to distribute supplies to her New York soldiers and others, but these being now well organized, did not, owing to the plenty of attendants greatly need her services, and they were mostly confined to visits to soldiers in the field, at the Front, Field Hospitals, and in the Rifle Pits.[I]
Her equestrian skill now often came in use. Often a ride of from twenty to forty miles in the day would enable her to visit some outlying regiment or picket station, or even to reach the Rifle Pits that honeycombed plain and hill-side all about Petersburg and Richmond, and return the same day. On these occasions she was warmly and enthusiastically welcomed by the soldiers, not only for what she brought, but for the comfort and solace of her presence.
She was often in positions of great peril from whizzing shot and bursting shell, but was never harmed during these dangerous visits. On one occasion, she was probably by reason of her black hat and feather, mistaken for an officer, as she for a moment carelessly showed the upper part of her person, from a slight eminence near the rifle pits, and was fired at by one of the enemy's sharp-shooters. The ball lodged in a tree, close by her side, from which she deliberately dug it out with her penknife, retaining it as a memento of her escape.
Few of us whose days have been passed in the serene quietude of home, can imagine the comfort and joy her presence and cheering words brought to the "boys" undergoing the privations and discomforts of their station at the "Front," in those days of peril and siege. As she approached, her name would be heard passing from man to man, with electric swiftness, and often the shouts that accompanied it, would receive from the enemy a warlike response in the strange music of the whistling shot, or the bursting shell.