A woman's war record, 1861-1865

by Septima M. Collis

The pièce de résistance of the season, in the way of amusement, was a ball given by Colonel and Mrs. Maltby, who lived in the suburbs of the town. The Colonel, if I remember rightly, then commanded a Maryland regiment or brigade. Their very large and well appointed residence was admirably adapted to gratify the desire of our hostess to make the occasion a memorable one; the immense hall served as the ballroom; the staircases afforded ample sitting room for those who did not participate in, or desired to rest from, the merry whirl, while the ante-rooms presented the most bountiful opportunities of quenching thirst or appeasing appetite. I shall never forget one little French lieutenant who divided his time with precise irregularity between the dance and the punch-bowl, and whose dangling sabre, in its revolutions in the waltz, left as many impressions upon friends as it ever did upon foes; yet it had the happy effect of giving the gentleman and his partner full possession of the field, whenever he could prevail upon some enterprising spinster to join him in cutting a swath through the crowd. Perhaps never did grim War appear to smooth his wrinkled front and yield himself to the divertissement of the hour as he did in this charming town in that memorable winter, yet he was really marshalling his hosts for the deadly combat which was to open in the spring. Alas! how soon it came! On Washington’s birthday, by express command of President Lincoln (who was chafing under the tardiness of our generals), the army of which my husband and his hundred zouaves were a part, crossed the Potomac River at Harper’s Ferry, and we poor women, who would willingly have followed, were ordered home.

Extraordinary as it may appear, I did not fully realize that we were in the midst of a great war until I returned to Philadelphia. In camp the constant round of pleasurable excitement and the general belief that hostilities would be of short duration presented a bright picture without a sombre shadow, and as we bade our loved ones adieu we had few misgivings for their safe return. But at home all was bustle and excitement; a dozen large stores on Chestnut Street had become recruiting stations; public meetings were being held every night to encourage enlistment; politicians were shouting: “On to Richmond!”; young girls were declaring they would never engage themselves to a man who refused to fight for his country, and the fife and drum were heard morning, noon, and night. Yes, indeed, we realized what war meant then much more than we had when among the light-hearted soldiers in the field. The Girard House had, for the time being, been converted from a fashionable hotel into a vast workshop, where the jingle of the sewing-machine and the chatter of the sewing girl, daytime, nighttime, and Sundays gave evidence that the government was in earnest. Every woman who could use her needle found employment, and those who did not need compensation worked almost as assiduously. About this time some well meaning woman discovered that General Havelock had provided his troops in India with a cotton cap-cover and neck-protector to shield them from the sun of the tropics, and the manufacture of “havelocks” became the ruling mania of the hour. The sewing societies made nothing but havelocks; the shop windows were full of them, and the poor fellows in the army were so inundated with them that those who had the fewest relatives and sweethearts were much the best off.

Vague rumors reached Philadelphia in the early summer of 1862 that General Banks’ army had had several day’s severe fighting with Stonewall Jackson, and had been defeated, and the tension to which our nerves were wrought in our restless anxiety for fuller news was terrible. Upon one of those ever memorable days I had great difficulty in procuring my favorite newspaper, and was compelled to gather what meagre intelligence I could from other sources. It was not until some time afterwards that I learned that the newspaper had been purposely kept from me. It contained a message from General Banks himself to the Secretary of War, in which he said “Captain Collis and his company of Zouaves d’Afrique were taken prisoners,” while an enterprising correspondent of the same paper reported that they had been “cut to pieces.” My husband, however, turned up all right. He had covered the retreat of the army, and, being cut off by the enemy, found his way with his zouaves through the mountains of West Virginia to the Upper Potomac. My friends—and thank Heaven I had some good and tried ones (among them a judge of the Supreme Court of the State, whose portrait will always find as choice a place in my home as his memory does in my heart)—brought me the glad intelligence at midnight, and shortly afterwards Mr. Collis was ordered to Philadelphia to increase his command from a company to a regiment. Thus sooner than I expected, my camp life was resumed; but instead of Frederick, Md., with its dances and routes, I found my husband hard at work enlisting men in the city in the morning, and drilling them in Germantown in the afternoon, where he had a charming camp, which he retained until, with a thousand men, early in August of the same year, he once more returned to the field. Antietam, Fredericksburg, Burnside’s muddy march, now came on in quick succession, and my husband was kept so busy with his enlarged command, that although he gladly allowed others a leave of absence, he hesitated to leave the front himself. The suspense in these days was something dreadful—at times, letters arrived quite regularly, and then there followed the long silence and the great anxiety, for we knew when our letters failed us that “the army was moving.” Things were very expensive too, especially the necessaries of life; common muslin, I remember, which is now ten cents a yard, then cost a dollar, and the pay of an officer was very small with gold at an enormous premium, so that after he had paid for his “mess” and his servant there was little left for his family at home, though he sent them every dollar he could spare.

A FEW OF OUR ZOUAVES IN CAMP. TAKEN IN THE FIELD, 1863.

What better illustration of the abnormal condition of society in those days can be given than a statement of the fact that my daughter was born on September 25, 1862, and that her father, although within twelve hours’ reach of us, did not see her until June, 1863;—and he would not have seen her then, but that he was brought home, it was believed, to die. Careful nursing and desperate fighting by myself and one or two faithful allies restored him soon to health, and he returned to the front,—to find himself at twenty-five years of age in command of a brigade. This promotion was of course gratifying to my pride, but how much more did I value it when I learned that brigade commanders could have their wives with them in camp during the winter, while the unfortunate officers below that rank could not. Yet with all my joy at God’s mercy to me, some days came to me laden with great sorrow. My brother, David Cardoza Levy, a handsome, gallant lieutenant in the Southern army commanded by General Bragg, was about this time killed at the battle of Murfreesborough; seen by his companions to fall, his remains were never afterwards found, though General Rosecrans, to oblige my husband, made every effort to discover them. He lies to-day, God only knows where.

“Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.”

This was the horrible episode of the civil war to me, and although I had many relatives and hosts of friends serving under the Confederate flag all the time, I never fully realized the fratricidal character of the conflict until I lost my idolized brother Dave of the Southern army one day, and was nursing my Northern husband back to life the next.

I very often went to Washington while the Army of the Potomac was lying along the Rappahannock River, and my husband would manage to run up for a few hours to see me. On one of these visits I was presented to President Lincoln, and had a private audience. I shall never forget that wonderful man, and the pressure of the immense hand which grasped mine, so fervent, true, and hearty was his manner. I was very young, and was dressed in such height of fashion as my means afforded—and how strange that fashion seems to me a quarter of a century later. It was forenoon, and yet my out-of-door costume consisted of a pale-pearl silk dress, trimmed with cherry color, immense hoops, and a long train, such as is now very rarely worn even in a ballroom; a black lace shawl, and a little pearl-colored bonnet, with a white illusion veil tied in a tremendous bow under my chin. There were no bustles in those days, except the one worn under the back-hair to support the chignon, which was more commonly called the “waterfall,” and though our foreheads were innocent of bangs or crimps, yet, equally absurd, we twisted our hair around pliable little cushions, which were known as rats and mice. What would a tailor-made girl think if she ran across such an outfit on Fifth Avenue to-day? Mr. Lincoln wore a dress suit, I remember, his swallow-tailed coat being a terrible misfit, and it puzzled me very much to tell whether his shirt-collar was made to stand up or to turn down—it was doing a little of both. He was entirely at his ease, and impressed me as being pleased with the diversion which my visit gave him. He referred in complimentary terms to my husband’s services, and to the requests of his superior officers for his promotion to Brigadier-General, adding, in a quaint and earnest way, “but he is too young.” I replied promptly: “He is not too young to be killed in the service, and make me a widow.” “Well,” said he, with the bonhomie of a courtier, “you would have no trouble in finding promotion then,” which, for Mr. Lincoln, was, I presume, quite a flirtatious remark. Perhaps he thought that, under the circumstances, I might agree with Madame de Sévigné, who said (with great provocation, it is true): “Would to God we were born widows.” While we were thus chatting pleasantly, the door-keeper handed him a card with a woman’s name upon it, and whispered a few words to the President as he was putting on his eye-glasses. Mr. Lincoln uttered a long and agonizing sigh—perhaps I should call it a groan,—and then, turning to me, in a tone of voice as full of sadness as, a moment before it had been full of mirth, said: “This poor woman’s son is to be shot to-morrow.” I confess I was so overpowered by his distress that I had hardly the strength to speak, but, by way of comfort, I ventured the opinion that I presumed such things were inevitable in time of war. “Yes,” said he, slowly and pensively, as he threw his head far back and pressed his brow with his hand, “that’s so; but there’s so many on ’em, so many on ’em.” Of course this brought our interview to a close, and I gave way to the broken-hearted mother, who, I am sure, left that great presence as full of hope as I did of love and reverence for this remarkable man. I never again saw him until I met him at City Point, Va., a few days before the assassination.

In the autumn of 1863 I received a telegram that my husband was very ill with pneumonia, in camp near Culpeper, Va. Major-General Meade happened to be in Philadelphia at the time, and I took the telegram to him and begged him to give me a pass to visit the army at once. There existed at that time a positive order against ladies going to the front, but General Meade, whom I had known intimately for many years, made an exception in my case, and with his autograph passport I started at once, leaving my baby to the tender care of devoted friends (the Misses C——), whose kindness in this emergency I shall never forget. But my troubles only commenced when I reached Alexandria. Such a place as it was there—a perfect Bedlam; all confusion; no hotel (the one where Col. Ellsworth had been shot being then used as a hospital or storehouse); the muddy streets thronged with lazy negroes and affrighted cattle; wounded soldiers staring with amazement at the young woman in civilized attire who seemed to have dropped among them from the clouds, I suppose; and drunken recruits and conscripts singing ribald songs. But for the ever-present call of duty which impelled me to go to the bedside of my suffering husband, I would have turned back, as Gen. Meade told me I would; but my eyes and my heart were looking southerly, and to the south I was determined to go at any risk. My life has not been without adventure: I have crossed the Atlantic a dozen times; have been in a collision in mid-ocean, and will carry to my grave the recollection of the agonizing cries of the drowning victims; have stood upon the crater of Vesuvius during an eruption; have lived in a railroad construction camp on the Rocky Mountains, with its ruffians, its gamblers, and its Chinamen; have made an ascent in a balloon; have seen a Cinnamon bear shot within fifty yards of me; have for nights slept upon the bare floor of an isolated log-hut amidst the geysers of the Yellowstone; have had a volley of rifle-balls whistle around my ears; yet never in my experience did my heart throb as nervously as when I stood alone in the streets of Alexandria waiting to be lifted into a cattle-train which was soon to start for the army at Brandy Station, near Culpeper. The officers who had charge of the train remonstrated with me, and endeavored to detain me with the promise that, if I waited an hour or so, I should have a special car. Little did they know the woman they were dealing with. I was even then very decisive and quite skeptical, traits which were not so well developed as they are to-day. In the first place, I knew the necessity for my immediate presence in camp, and, in the second, I didn’t believe a word in their promise that I would be any better off by waiting. So, armed with Gen. Meade’s pass and a determined and perhaps petulant will, I was lifted into a dirty cattle-car, and sat, not on a lounge, but on the head of a barrel amidst the soldiers, who were drinking, smoking, and singing. They were not in any way rude, but their guns were all loaded and while they slept and snored at my feet, I feared a sudden movement would set off a gun, and that of course I would be the victim. I didn’t sleep a wink; the night was very cold but I was warmly wrapped up and cared less for my discomfort than I did for the snail’s pace at which we were travelling. It was the gray of the dawn when we reached Brandy Station, where a staff-officer with an ambulance met me and took me a long ride to the house of Mr. Yancey, where I found my husband in a comfortable room, being well cared for. For the second time in twelve months I became an army nurse, but it took all my skill and watching to counteract the blunders of the so-called army surgeons. The day after my arrival one of these incompetents blistered his patient’s chest until it was raw, and then made a plaster of cold cream, which he carried in the open air from his tent to the sick chamber, a distance of several hundred yards, on a freezing cold night, and clapped it on the patient’s burning and lacerated flesh. It must have been like the shock of an electric battery, for the air was instantly blue with language which never before or since have I heard pass my husband’s lips, and he himself was in the middle of the floor, sick as he was, hurling the plaster into the doctor’s face. What part I took in the scene it becomes me better to leave to the imagination of those who know me, than to set down in print. Let it suffice that his services were dispensed with, and General French sent us the medical director of the corps, who soon had his patient fit for duty, and I returned to Philadelphia. Yancey, by the by, was an awful rebel. He prided himself that he had never been to Washington or Richmond and had barely heard of New York and Philadelphia. “I’ve allas lived right ’round Culpeppa Sah” was his daily boast, and his only religion seemed to be a hatred for the Yankees. It was therefore very unfortunate that, upon the execution of the order that all persons within the lines of the army should be vaccinated, some impure vaccine matter, by an unforeseen accident, found its way into Yancey’s blood, or else that he caught cold, for he had a terrible arm and was laid up for weeks, thoroughly convinced that he had been purposely poisoned; and if he is living to-day I don’t doubt that he often tells the story of the Yankee effort to take his life.