The subject of assistance to regular hospitals may be despatched in a few words,—not because the gifts are insignificant, but because the method of giving is so regular and easy to explain. Whenever the surgeon of any hospital needs articles which are extras, and so not supplied by the Government, or which, if allowed, the Government is deficient in at the time, he makes a requisition upon the Commission; and if his requisition is deemed to be a reasonable one, it is approved, and the goods delivered on his receipt for the same. As to the amount given, I can only say that something is sent almost every day even to the hospitals near Washington and the great cities, and that the amount bestowed increases just in proportion to the distance of the hospital from the great Government centres of supply. This is a noiseless and unostentatious charity,—sometimes, I am tempted to think, too noiseless and unostentatious. A few weeks ago, a lady friend visited one of the hospitals near Washington, carrying with her for distribution some Sanitary goods. She gave a handkerchief to one of the sick men. He took it, looked at it, read the mark in the corner, paused as if he had received a new idea, and then spoke out his mind thus:—"I have been in this hospital six months, and this is the first thing I ever received from the Sanitary Commission."—"But," she replied, "have you not had this and that?" mentioning several luxuries supplied to this very hospital for extra diet.—"Oh, yes, often!"—"Well, every one of these articles came from the Sanitary Commission."
Just now the Sanitary is seeking to enter into closer relations with the hospitals through the agency of regular visitors. The advantages of such a policy are manifest. The reports of the visitors will enable the directors to see more clearly the real wants of the sick; and the frequent presence and inquiries of such visitors will tend to repress the undue appropriation of hospital stores by attendants. But the highest benefit will be the change and cheer it will introduce into the monotony of hospital life. If you are sick at home, you are glad to have your neighbor step in and bring the healthy bracing air of out-door life into the dimness and languor of your invalid existence. Much more does the sick soldier like it,—for ennui, far more than pain, is his great burden. When I was at Washington, I accepted with great satisfaction an invitation to go with a Sanitary visitor on her round of duty. When we came to the hospital, I asked the ward-master if he would like to have me distribute among his patients the articles I had brought. He said that he should, for he thought it would do the poor fellows good to see me and receive the gifts from my own hands. The moment I entered there was a stir. Those who could hobble about stumped up to me to see what was going on; some others sat up in bed, full of alertness; while the sickest greeted me with a languid smile. As I went from cot to cot, the politeness of la belle France, with which a little Frenchman in the corner touched the tassel of his variegated nightcap at me, and the untranslatable gutturals, full of honest satisfaction, with which his German neighbors saluted me, and the "God bless your honor," which a cheery son of Old Erin showered down upon me, and the simple "Thank you, Sir," which came up on all sides from our true-hearted New England boys, were alike refreshing to my soul. No doubt the single peach or two which with hearty good-will were given to them were as good as a feast; and it may be that the little comforts which I left behind me, and which had been borne thither on the wings of this divine charity, perhaps from some village nestling among the rocky hills of New England, or from some hamlet basking in the sunlight on the broad prairies of the West, had magic power to bring to that place of suffering some breath of the atmosphere of home to cheer the sinking heart, or some fragrant memory of far-off home-affection to make it better. I came away with the feeling that visits from sunny-hearted people, and gifts from friendly hands, must be a positive blessing to these sick and wounded people.
Of course the deepest throb of interest is given to the work at the front of battle. That is natural. It is work done on the very spots where the fortunes of our nation are being decided,—on the spots whither all eyes are turned, and towards which all our hopes and prayers go forth. It is work surrounded by every element of pathos and tragic interest. The wavering fortunes of the fight, the heroic courage which sustains a doubtful conflict, the masterly skill that turns disaster into triumph, the awful carnage, the terrible suffering, the manly patience of the wounded, all combine to fix the attention there and upon everything, which is transacted there. The question is constantly asked,—What is the Sanitary doing at the front? what at City Point? what at Winchester? are natural questions. Let me state first the general plan and method of what I may call a Sanitary campaign, and afterwards add what I saw with my own eyes at City Point and before Petersburg, and what I heard from those who had themselves been actors in the scenes which they described.
When the army moves out from its encampment to the field of active warfare, two or three Sanitary wagons, loaded with hospital stores of all sorts, and accompanied by a sufficient number of relief agents, move with each army corps. These are for the supply of present need, and for use during the march, or after such skirmishes and fights as may occur before the Commission can establish a new base. In this way some of the Commission agents have followed General Grant's army all the way from the Rapidan, through the Wilderness, across the Mattapony, over the James, on to the very last advance towards the Southside Railroad,—refilling their wagons with stores as opportunity has occurred. As soon now as the march commences and the campaign opens, preparations upon an extensive scale are made at Washington for the great probable demand. Steamers are chartered, loaded, and sent with a large force of relief agents to the vicinity of the probable battle-fields; or if the campaign is away from water communication, loaded wagons are held in readiness. The moment the locality of the struggle is determined, then, under the orders of the Provost Marshal, an empty house is seized and made the Sanitary head-quarters or general storehouse; or else some canal-barge is moored at the crazy Virginia wharf, and used for the same purpose. This storehouse is kept constantly full from Washington, or else from Baltimore and New York; and the branch depots which are now established in each army corps are fed from it, while the hospitals in their turn make requisitions for all needful supplies on these branch depots. That is to say, the arrangements, though rougher and less permanent in their character, approximate very nearly to the arrangements at Washington.
A few details need to be added. Where the distance from the battle-field to the base of supplies is great, what are called feeding-stations are established every few miles, and here the wounded on foot or in ambulances can stop and take the refreshments or stimulants necessary to sustain them on their painful journey. At the steamboat-landing the Commission has a lodge and agents, with crackers and beef-tea, coffee and tea, ice-water and stimulants, ready to be administered to such as need. Relief agents go up on the boats to help care for the wounded; and at Washington the same scene of active kindness is often enacted on their arrival as at their departure. This is the general plan of action everywhere, modified to suit circumstances, but always essentially the same. It will apply just as well West as East,—only for the names Baltimore, Washington, and City Point, you must put Louisville, Nashville, and Chattanooga.
When I was at City Point, the base of operations had been established there more than two months; and though there was much sickness, and the wounded were being brought in daily by hundreds from the prolonged struggle for the Weldon Road, everything moved on with the regularity of clock-work. As you neared the landing, coming up the James, you saw, a little farther up the river, the red flag of the Sanitary Commission floating over the three barges which were its office, its storehouse, and its distributing store for the whole Army of the Potomac. Climbing up the steep road to the top of the bluff, and advancing over the undulating plain a mile, you come to a city,—the city of hospitals. The white tents are arranged in lines of almost mathematical accuracy. The camp is intersected by roads broad and clean. Every corps, and every division of every corps, has its allotted square. Somewhere in these larger squares your eye will be sure to catch sight of the Sanitary flag, and beneath it a tent, where is the corps station. You enter, and you find within, if not as great an amount, at least as varied a supply, of hospital stores as you would find anywhere, waiting for surgeons' orders. To a very great extent, the extra diet for all the sick and wounded is furnished from these stores; and very largely the cooking of it is overseen by ladies connected with the Commission. In every corps there are from five to fifteen relief agents, whose duty it is to go through the wards once, twice, three times in each day, to see what the sick need for their comfort, to ascertain that they really get what is ordered, and in every way to alleviate suffering and to promote cheerfulness and health.
I shall never forget a tour which I made with a relief agent through the wards for the blacks, both because it showed me what a watchful supervision a really faithful person can exercise, and because it gave such an opportunity to observe closely the conduct of these people. The demeanor of the colored patients is really beautiful,—so gentle, so polite, so grateful for the least kindness. And then the evidences of a desire for mental improvement and religious life which meet you everywhere are very touching. Go from bed to bed, and you see in their hands primers, spelling-books, and Bibles, and the poor, worn, sick creatures, the moment they feel one throb of returning health, striving to master their alphabet or spell out their Bible. In the evening, or rather in the fading twilight, some two hundred of them crept from the wards, and seated themselves in a circle around a black exhorter. Religion to them was a real thing; and so their worship had the beauty of sincerity, while I ought to add that it was not marked by that grotesque extravagance sometimes attributed to it. One cannot but think better of the whole race after the experience of such a Sabbath. The only drawback to your satisfaction is, that they die quicker and from less cause than the whites. They have not the same stubborn hopefulness and hilarity. Why, indeed, should they have?
Speaking of the white soldiers, everybody who goes into their hospitals is happily disappointed,—you see so much order and cheerfulness, and so little evidence of pain and misery. The soldier is quite as much a hero in the hospital as on the battle-field. Give him anything to be cheerful about, and he will improve the opportunity. You see men who have lost an arm or a leg, or whose heads have been bruised almost out of likeness to humanity, as jolly as they can be over little comforts and pleasures which ordinary eyes can hardly see with a magnifying-glass. So it happens that a camp of six thousand sick and wounded, which seems at a distance a concentration of human misery that you cannot bear to behold, when near does not look half so lugubrious as you expected; and you are tempted to accuse the sick men of having entered into a conspiracy to look unnaturally happy.