In the fall of 1863, during the bombardment of Charleston by the federal batteries, this young woman, being tenderly attached to her husband, who was in one of the forts, begged the military authorities to allow her to join her husband and share the fearful dangers and hardships to which he was daily and nightly exposed. All representations of the difficulties, privations, and perils she would encounter failed to daunt her in her purpose. The importunities of the loving wife prevailed over military rules and even over the expostulations of her husband, and she was allowed to take her post beside the one whom she regarded with an affection amounting to idolatry. Sending her two children to the care of a maiden aunt some miles from the city, she was conveyed to her husband's battery, a large earth-work outside of the city.
Here she remained for sixty days, during which the battery where she was, made one of the principal targets for the federal cannon. For weeks together she lay down in her clothes in the midst of the soldiers. The bursting of the shells and the sound of the federal hundred-pounders, with answering volleys from the fort, scarcely intermitted night or day. Sleep was for several days after her arrival out of the question. But at length she became used to the cannonade and enjoyed intermittent slumbers, from which she was sometimes awakened by the explosion of a shell which had penetrated the roof of the fort and strewed the earth with dead and wounded.
Her only food was the wormy bread and half-cured pork which was served out to the soldiers, and her drink was brackish water from the ditch that surrounded the earth-work. The cannonading during the day was so furious that the fort was often almost reduced to ruins, but in the night the destruction was repaired. A fleet of gunboats joined the land batteries in bombarding the fort, and at last succeeded in making it no longer tenable. Guns had been dismounted, the bomb-proof had been destroyed, and the sides of the earth-work were full of breaches where the huge ten-inch balls had ploughed their way.
During all these terrifying and dreadful scenes, our heroine stayed at her post of love and duty beside her husband. When the little garrison evacuated the fort at night and retired to the city, she was carried in an ambulance drawn by four of the soldiers in honor of her courage and devotion.
One of the most singular and romantic stories of the late war, is that of two young women who enlisted at the same time, and were engaged in active service for nearly a year without any discovery being made or even a suspicion excited as to their true sex.
Sarah Stover and Maria Seelye, for these were the names of these heroines of real life, being homeless orphans, and finding it difficult to earn a subsistence on a small farm in Western Missouri, where they lived, determined to enlist as volunteers in the Federal Army. Accordingly, having donned male attire and proceeded to St. Louis early in 1863, they joined a company which was soon after ordered to proceed to the regiment, which was a part of the army of the Potomac.
Within two weeks after their arrival at the scene of conflict in the East, the battle of Chancellorsville was fought, the two girls participating in it and seeing something of the horrors of the war in which they were engaged as soldiers. In one of the minor battles which occurred the following summer they were separated in the confusion of the fight, and upon calling the muster, Miss Stover, known in the regiment as Edward Malison, was found among the missing. Her comrade, after searching for her among the killed and wounded in vain, at last ascertained that she had been taken prisoner and conveyed to Richmond.
Miss Seelye, although she was well aware of the serious consequences which might follow, decided to adopt a bold plan in order to reach her friend whom she loved so devotedly, and who was now suffering captivity and perhaps wounds or disease. Through an old negress she obtained a woman's dress and bonnet, and disguising herself in these garments, deserted at the first favorable opportunity. She reached Washington in safety and was successful in an application for a pass to Fortress Monroe, from which place she made her way after many difficulties to the lines of the Southern Army. By artful representations she overcame the scruples of the officers and passed on her way to Richmond, where she soon arrived, and overcoming by her address and perseverance all obstacles, obtained admission to Libby Prison, representing that she was near of kin to one of the prisoners.
Her singular success in accomplishing her object was due doubtless to her intelligence, fine manners, and good looks, with great tact in using the opportunities within her reach.
She found her friend just recovering from a wound in her arm. The secret of her sex was still undiscovered; and after her wound was entirely healed they prepared to attempt an escape which they had already planned. Miss Seelye contrived to smuggle into the prison a complete suit of female attire, in which, one night just as they were relieving the guard, she managed to slip past the cordon of sentries, and joining her friend at the place agreed upon, the two immediately set out for Raleigh, to which city Miss Seelye had obtained two passes, one for herself, the other for a lady friend. They traveled on foot, and after passing the lines struck boldly across the country in the direction of Norfolk. When morning dawned they concealed themselves in a wood and at night resumed their march.