Woman's Work in the Civil War: A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience

by L. P. Brockett; Mary C. Vaughan

e would have been a man of uncommon sagacity and penetration, who in the beginning of 1861, should have chosen Mrs. Harris as capable of the great services and the extraordinary power of endurance with which her name has since been identified. A pale, quiet, delicate woman, often an invalid for months, and almost always a sufferer; the wife of a somewhat eminent physician, in Philadelphia, and in circumstances which did not require constant activity for her livelihood, refined, educated, and shrinking from all rough or brutal sights or sounds, she seemed one of those who were least fitted to endure the hardships, and encounter the roughnesses of a life in the camp or field hospitals.

But beneath that quiet and frail exterior, there dwelt a firm and dauntless spirit. She had been known by her neighbors, and especially in the church of which she was an honored member, as a woman of remarkable piety and devotion, and as an excellent and skilful attendant upon the sick. When the war commenced, she was one of the ladies who assembled to form the Ladies' Aid Society of Philadelphia, and was chosen, we believe unanimously, Corresponding Secretary. She seems to have entered upon the work from the feeling that it was a part of her duty, a sacrifice she was called to make, a burden which she ought to bear. And through the war, mainly from her temperament, which inclined her to look on the dark side, she never seemed stimulated or strengthened in her work by that abiding conviction of the final success of our arms, which was to so many of the patient workers, the day-star of hope. Like Bunyan's Master Fearing, she was always apprehensive of defeat and disaster, of the triumph of the adversary; and when victories came, her eyes were so dim with tears for the bereaved and sorrow-stricken, and her heart so heavy with their griefs that she could not join in the songs of triumph, or smile in unison with the nation's rejoicings. We speak of this not to depreciate her work or zeal, but rather to do the more honor to both. The despondent temperament and the intense sympathy with sorrow were constitutional, or the result of years of ill-health, and that under their depressing influence, with no step of her way lighted with the sunshine of joy, she should have not only continued faithful to her work, but have undergone more hardships and accomplished more, for the soldiers than most others, reflects the highest credit upon her patience, perseverance and devotion to the cause.

We have elsewhere in this volume given an account of the origin and progress of the Ladies' Aid Society, of Philadelphia. Mrs. Harris, though continued as its Corresponding Secretary through the war, was, during the greater part of the time, its correspondent in the field, and left to the other officers, the work of raising and forwarding the money and supplies, while she attended in person to their distribution. This division of labor seems to have satisfied her associates, who forwarded to her order their hospital stores and money with the most perfect confidence in her judicious disposition of both. Other Societies, such as the Penn Relief, the Patriotic Daughters of Lancaster, and Aid Societies from the interior of Pennsylvania, as well as the Christian and Sanitary Commissions, made her their almoners, and she distributed a larger amount of stores, perhaps, than any other lady in the field.

The history of her work during the war, is given very fully, in her correspondence with the Ladies' Aid Society, published in their semi-annual reports. From these we gather that she had visited in 1861, and the winter of 1862, before the movement of the army to the peninsula, more than one hundred hospitals of the army of the Potomac, in and around Washington, and had not only ministered to the physical wants of the sick and wounded men, but had imparted religious instruction and consolation to many of them. Everywhere her coming had been welcomed; in many instances, eyes dimmed by the shadow of the wings of the death-angel, saw in her the wife or mother, for whose coming they had longed and died, with the hallowed word "mother" on their lips.

When in the spring of 1862, the army of the Potomac moved to the Peninsula, Mrs. Harris went thither, first distributing as far as practicable, her stores among the men. Soon after her arrival on the Peninsula, she found ample employment for her time. The Chesapeake and Hygeia hospitals at Fortress Monroe, filled at first mostly with the sick, and the few wounded in the siege of Yorktown, were, after the battles of Williamsburg and West Point crowded with such of the wounded, both Union and Confederate soldiers as could be brought so far from the battle-fields. She spent two or three weeks here, aiding the noble women who were acting as Matrons of these hospitals. From thence she went on board the Vanderbilt, then just taken as a Government Transport for the wounded from the bloody field of Fair Oaks.

She thus describes the scene and her work:

"There were eight hundred on board. Passage-ways, state-rooms, floors from the dark and fœtid hold to the hurricane deck, were all more than filled; some on mattresses, some on blankets, others on straw; some in the death-struggle, others nearing it, some already beyond human sympathy and help; some in their blood as they had been brought from the battle-field of the Sabbath previous, and all hungry and thirsty, not having had anything to eat or drink, except hard crackers, for twenty-four hours.

"The gentlemen who came on with us hurried on to the White House, and would have had us go with them, but something held us back; thank God it was so. Meeting Dr. Cuyler, Medical Director, he exclaimed, 'Here is work for you!' He, poor man, was completely overwhelmed with the general care of all the hospitals at Old Point, and added to these, these mammoth floating hospitals, which are coming in from day to day with their precious cargoes. Without any previous notice, they anchor, and send to him for supplies, which it would be extremely difficult to improvise, even in our large cities, and quite impossible at Old Point. 'No bakeries, no stores, except small sutlers.' The bread had all to be baked; the boat rationed for two days; eight hundred on board.

"When we went aboard, the first cry we met was for tea and bread. 'For God's sake, give us bread,' came from many of our wounded soldiers. Others shot in the face or neck, begged for liquid food. With feelings of a mixed character, shame, indignation, and sorrow blending, we turned away to see what resources we could muster to meet the demand. A box of tea, a barrel of cornmeal, sundry parcels of dried fruit, a few crackers, ginger cakes, dried rusk, sundry jars of jelly and of pickles, were seized upon, soldiers and contrabands impressed into service, all the cooking arrangements of three families appropriated, by permission, and soon three pounds of tea were boiling, and many gallons of gruel blubbering. In the meantime, all the bread we could buy, twenty-five loaves, were cut into slices and jellied, pickles were got in readiness, and in an incredibly short time, we were back to our poor sufferers.