\\\ .,-' "Vic-'
 
Library  of  Medicine
Bethesda, Md.
U.S. Department of Health,
  Education, and Welfare
PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE
73 
jd~a~^-*.*A~OJ\Aji C-o-,
n
 Hospital   Transports.


         A  MEMOIR

               of the

Embarkation  of the Sick and Wounded
    from the Peninsula of Virginia
         in the Summer of
               1862.
Compiled and Published at the request of the
        Sanitary Commission.
          Boston:
TICKNOR AND FIELDS
            1863. 
UH

IS63
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by

         TICKNOR AND FIELDS,

the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massa-
chusetts.
       University Press:
Welch,  Bigelow, and Company,
           Cambridge. 
DEDICA TION.
               To  the Memories  of

             J.  M.  GRYMES, M. D.,
sometime Surgeon in charge of the  Hospital Transport
Daniel Webster, and, at the time of his death, Surgeon to
the temporary Home for disabled soldiers, of the Sanitary
Commission at Washington; —

        WILLIAM PLATT,  Junior, Esq.,
late a Relief  A^cnt of the  S  ...itary Commission,  who
died from the effect  of prolonged exposure and excessive
'<cx<*rtum in pushing  su'rcor to tte  wounded  during and
after the battles of South Moanty \, Crampton's Gap, and
Arrtietam; —

i.!,-:i'-<JoL JOSEPH BRIIKU-M  CURTIS, U.S.V.,
formerly of the Erginew ©rrpsraf the Central Park of
New York, afterwards of the central staff of the Sani-
tary Commission, who fell while leading his regiment to
the assault  of the rebel  works  at Fredericksburg, De-
cember,  1862; —

           RUDD  C. HOPKINS,  M. D.,
formerly Superintendent of the  Lunatic Asylum of Ohio,
lately a General Inspector of the Sanitary Commission, 
IV
Dedication.
and who died in its service, while on  the river passage
from Memphis to Cincinnati; —

       MRS.  FANNY  SWAN  WARRINER,
who bore heroically to the end a woman's part in war, hav-
ing died at Louisville, Kentucky,  on her way home from
the Head-quarters Relief Station of the Sanitary Com-
mission with  the Army  of the Tennessee, — of disease
there  contracted;— *

         DAVID BOSWELL REID,  M. D.,
Fellow of  the Royal Society of Edinburgh; Fellow of
the Royal College of Physicians of London; Member of
the Medico-Chirurgical Society of St.  Petersburg;  for-
merly  Director  of Ventilation at  the Houses of Parlia-
ment  of Great Britain; late Professor of Physiology and
Hygiene at the  University of Wisconsin; at  the time of
his death, Special Inspector of the Ventilation of Hospi-
tals of. the  Sanitary  Commission; — and

        Surgeon ROBERT WARE, U. S.  V.,
for several years physician in charge of the  largest  Dis-
pensary District in  Boston, afterwards a General In-
spector of  the Sanitary Commission, and Surgeon of its
Relief Stations at York town, White House, and Berkeley,
lastly  Surgeon of Volunteers.  He fell at his post in the
works  at Washington,  North Carolina,  during its bom-
bardment by the rebels,  March, 1863. 
Introduction.
    THE Sanitary Commission, grateful for
     the generous confidence reposed in it
by the public, would be glad to meet and
justify that confidence by a  circumstantial
account of its operations in field and hos-
pital, from the first day of its existence to
the present.  It  might,  perhaps, without
undue boasting, show  such  a picture  of
what  has  been  accomplished  as  would
stimulate, to the last degree, the interest
and the liberality of loyal  hearts, if this
were required.  But the immense mass  of
details which such an  account  must  in-
volve, would prove nearly as laborious in
the- reading as in the performance, over-
whelming rather than enlightening all who
have not  been personally engaged in the
work.  The intense interest which the ser- 
VI
Introduction.
vice inspires in those devoted to it, lightens
what  might,  under  other circumstances,
seem  wearisome duties;  but a minute de-
scription of  the  ceaseless  round of  con-
sultations,  examinations,  correspondence,
journeys, accounts, distributions,  required
of the Commission as trustee  of the public
bounty,  could not be expected to prove
interesting to others.
  The most that  the Commission  can at
present be called upon to offer, or the pub-
lic be likely to  accept, is such brief ac-
counts  of single  sections  in the various
departments of its labor,  as  may indicate
the general  method  and  spirit  extending
through the  whole.   In  accordance  with
this  plan,  from time to time,  the Commis-
sion has published reports covering a sin-
gle battle-field, or a term  of one round of
visits  to the hospitals,  or the  results of
its arrangements  for  the  care of disabled
and discharged soldiers for a  stated period.
There is one branch  of the  service,  how-
 ever, which has as yet had no such public
 record, — that of the Hospital Transports.
 In order to supply this omission in  some 
Introduction.           vii
measure, the Commission  has caused to be
placed in the hands of a manager of the
"Woman's Central  Army Relief Associa-
tion of New York," a quantity of  letters
and other papers, containing observations
made at the time, and on the spot, by those
in its service who assisted in the embarka-
tion and  care of the sick and  wounded
on the peninsula of Virginia in 1862.  Pas-
sages from these have been  selected  and
arranged  with a view to give within  mode-
rate compass as many particulars as may
be  necessary to show the  scope of the en-
terprise, and the position  which it held as
an  aid to the government,  together with
the difficulties and  the success, the  disap-
pointments and satisfactions, with which  it
was attended.  The plan  is limited to the
Atlantic  hospital  transports, and  to  the
period of  embarkation  of the patients upon
them,  for  the  sake of compactness  and
completeness in  the grouping of incidents.
A similar  service in the Western rivers the
same year was larger  in  its  scope,  and in
some of its arrangements more satisfactory,
but it was at the same time less homoge-
neous in character. 
viii           Introduction.
  For the style of the letters quoted, this
only need be said : they were, for the most
part,  addressed to  intimate friends, with
no thought that they could ever go beyond
them, or, as in the case of those addressed
by  the  Secretary to  the President of the
Commission, were in the  nature of familiar
and confidential reports;  nearly all were
written  hastily, in some  chance interrup-
tion to severe labor, — often with a pencil,
while passing  in a boat from one vessel to
another.   Passages  may  be found  which
are not  merely descriptive of the Hospital
Transport service, but they contain thoughts
springing from the occasion, and which will
serve to fasten pictures of scenes and cir-
cumstances with  which  that service  was
associated, and which are now historical.*
  It  should  be  understood that  the ac-

  * The letters were all written by two  officers of the
Commission and six ladies serving with them.  As the
different writers are quoted from  in succession,  and the
same occurrences are often described from  more than one
point of view, a capital letter at the head of a paragraph
will indicate the change from one writer to another. The
officers will be known by the letters A. and B.; the ladies,
by the letters M. and N. 
Introduction.            ix
count is  not intended to be  complete in
any respect, and that no attempt has been
made to  give public  credit  to individuals
for their services, whatever these may have
been.  It is known that to  do so in some
cases where  public gratitude  is  most  de-
served would give  pain;  to do  so  in  all
cases would  greatly swell the bulk of the
volume.   In  general terms  only it may be
said, that among the surgeons who  freely
gave their aid in the enterprise were num-
bered some of the leading members of the
profession, — among those who served as
administrative officers, matrons, and nurses,
the  most honored  historical  families  of
New  England,  New York, New  Jersey,
and  Pennsylvania  were represented.  The
class  termed Ward-masters  was  mainly
composed  of  medical   students  of  two
years, with  some young men of Philadel-
phia who had had  previous experience in
caring for sick soldiers  in the noble local
charities  of  that city.   It  included, also,
some students of theology.  The responsi-
bility for the detail of care  of the patients
was  chiefly with this  class,  and the  devot- 
X
Introduction.
edness, pliability, and practical talent with
which  they generally  met  this  responsi-
bility was too  remarkable  to be  passed
without at least this simple  reference to it
as one of  a class of facts of  the war.
  It is a secondary object of the  recital to
make evident, from narrations of actual ex-
perience,  what is  sometimes  required  for
supplying the unavoidable  deficiencies of
government service in emergencies.  Not to
have sprung at once into a  thorough prac-
tical knowledge of what the dread contin-
gencies of  war require, is  no just  cause
of reproach to a peaceful people like our-
selves, who, meaning peace, sought only to
" ensue it" ; but not to thoroughly learn
our  duty under such an experience as we
are  passing through, would  indeed bring
shame upon our name.
   It is no  common nation's  task  that we
have undertaken,  and  only  craven souls
will lose  heart in finding that it  cannot be
light or short in the sacrifices  which it de-
mands of us.   True and far-seeing  lovers
of their country, as they regard the suffer-
 ings of  those  uncomplaining  men  who 
Introduction.
xi
fought for us in the Peninsula, — men who,
though perhaps but  green soldiers in  the
field, proved, one and all, heroes upon  the
bed  of pain and in the hour of death, will
be led to  the  reflection,  "This is what it
costs a republic to have  nursed  rebellion
tenderly at its breast."  We know that  the
barbarous  spirit with which  the  chances
of war first were  dared  in this gambling
scheme of reckless ambition, will  prolong
it, when  resistance  to  the  law  can  no
longer avail for anything but  the  gratifica-
tion  of the personal vindictive hate of  the
disappointed conspirators.   And we know
that  if we do well  the work the pecuniary
cost  of which  we are throwing so heavily
upon our posterity, this will be the last of
such schemes.   The more we feel its  cost
ourselves, the  more  resolute  shall  we be
that, when done, this work shall have been
done once for  all.  The more ready shall
we be to meet whatever  sacrifice it may
yet require of us;  the more ready to truly
say,  " Our loyalty is  without conditions;
success at  this point or that, this year or
next, we do not ask;  we have elected our 
xii           Introduction.
leaders, and we accept what they have the
ability to give us.  It is  enough  that  in
this nation, standing firmly upon its decla-
ration  of equal rights to all, no gleam of
peace can ever be seen to fall upon a rebel
in arms."
  The deepest solicitude that all unneces-
sary suffering should be avoided in carry-
ing on the war,  is not  in the least degree
inconsistent with this  sentiment, provided
only it be  guided and constrained by a
true appreciation  of the  duties and the
necessities of war.  On the contrary, patri-
otism and humanity have  one origin, and
each strengthens the other in every heart.
Whatever, then,  leads the  public  to truly
comprehend what the rebellion costs, and
at the same time inculcates a right spirit
of humane provision against the unneces-
sary suffering of war, must foster a sound
and healthy public sentiment.
  Such, it is hoped, may be the influence
of this little volume, to the introduction of
which  only this further explanation will be
required by the reader.
  A sudden transfer of the scene of active 
Introduction.          xiii
war from the high banks of the Potomac
to a low and swampy region, intersected
with a net-work of rivers and creeks, early
in  the  summer of  1862,  required appli-
ances for the proper care of the sick and
wounded which did not appear  to have
been  contemplated in the  government ar-
rangements.   Seeing this, with the approv-
al of the Medical Bureau,  a proposal was
made  to  the  Quartermaster-General  to
allow the Sanitary Commission  to take in
hand some of the transport steamboats  of
his department, of which a large number
were at that time lying idle, to fit them  up
and furnish  them in all respects  suitably
for the  reception  and care of sick and
wounded men,  providing  surgeons  and
other necessary attendance, without  cost
to government.  After tedious delays and
disappointments of various kinds, — one
fine large boat having been assigned, par-
tially furnished  by  the  Commission, and
then withdrawn, — an  order was at length
received, authorizing the Commission  to
take possession of any of the government
transports, not in  actual use, which might
be at that time lying  at Alexandria. 
xiv          Introduction.
  The only vessel then lying at Alexan-
dria  stanch enough for the ocean  passage
from  Virginia to  New York or  Boston,
proved to be  the  Daniel Webster, an  old
Pacific Coast  steamer of small capacity.
She  had  been recently used for  transport-
ing troops, and had been "stripped of ev-
erything  movable but dirt," — so that  the
labor of  adapting her to the purpose in
view was  not  a light  one.
  This vessel was assigned to the Commis-
sion  on the 25th of April.  Provisional en-
gagements had previously been made, in
New York and Philadelphia, with the per-
sons afterwards employed as her  hospital
company.  These were telegraphed for, the
moment  the  order was received,  and  the
refitting of the ship commenced, — at which
point we  turn to  the narratives of those
engaged  in the work. 
Hospital Transports. 
 
Hospital   Transports.
            CHAPTER   I.

            / a \  Hospital Transport Daniel Webster,
            »  "'    Cheeseman's Creek, April 30, 1862.
   I received General Meigs's order under which
this ship came into our hands  on Friday.  She
was then at Alexandria, and could not be got
over the shoals to Washington.  It was not till
near night that I was able to get a lighter, and
this, after one  trip, was taken off to carry rein-
forcements  to  McDowell at Fredericksburg.  I
succeeded before daylight of Saturday in getting
a tug at work, and by  the  next morning, Sun-
day, had her hold full.   At eleven o'clock got
the hospital company on board, but the com-
missaries failed in their engagements, and at last
I had to send off a foraging-party at Alexandria
for beef.  Finally  at. four o'clock, D., who had
gone after K,  and K, who had gone after beef,
arrived  simultaneously from different directions.
With  E. came  the beef,  and we  at  once got
under way.
             2 
18        Hospital Transports.
  We  had  six  medical students,  twenty men
nurses (volunteers all), four surgeons,  four  la-
dies, a dozen contrabands  (field hands), three
carpenters, and half  a dozen miscellaneous pas-
sengers.   There were, besides, five of us mem-
bers of the  Sanitary Commission and  of the
central staff, with one of the Philadelphia asso-
ciates, eight military  officers, ninety  soldiers
(convalescents,  returning to  their  regiments),
some quartermaster's  mechanics, and  a short
ship's crew and  officers.   The  ship has a house
aft,  with  state-rooms  for  thirty,  and  an old-
fashioned packet-saloon below, with state-rooms
opening  out of it;  and all forward  of  the en-
gine-rooms, a big steerage,  or "'tween  decks,"
which had  been fitted with shelves, some  of
them fifteen feet deep, in which the   soldiers
had been carried to the Peninsula,  packed in
layers.
  I organized  all  our  Commission people at
sunset on Sunday, in two watches, sea-fashion;
appointed watch-officers, and have worked since,
night and day, refitting ship.  We broke up  all
the  transport arrangements, — they  were in a
filthy condition, — thoroughly  scraped,  washed,
and scrubbed the whole ship from stem to stern,
inside and  out; whitewashed  the steerage;
knocked  away the bulkheads  of the wings of 
Hospital Transports.        19
 the engine-room section, so as to get a thorough
 draft from stem to stern ; then set to fitting and
 furnishing new bunks; started a new house on
 deck, forward ; made  and fitted an apothecary's
 shop; and when we arrived  at  Cheeseman's
 Creek were ready for patients.

   (M.)  It was a bright day, the river peaceful
 and shining.   Just as we started, the little gun-
 boat  Yankee   passed  up, bringing,  all  on  a
 string, five rebel craft which she had just taken
 in  the Rappahannock.  Late in the afternoon
 we passed the " stone  fleet^' eight  boats,  all
 ready to sink in the channel, in case the  Merri-
 mack should try to run up the  Potomac.  The
 rebels having taken up all the buoys, at dark we
 had to  come  to anchor.
   Sunday, the first day,  was gone.  As  for us,
 we had spent it, sitting on deck, sewing upon a
 hospital flag, fifteen by eight, and singing hymns
 to take  the edge off of this secular occupation.
 Just after we had anchored, a chaplain was discov-
 ered among the soldiers; and in  half an hour we
 got together  for service, and an " unprepared "
 discourse  upon charity,  much like unprepared
discourses in general.   Quite another thing was
the singing of  the contrabands, who all came in
and stood  in  a row so black, at the dark end 
20        Hospital Transports.
of the cabin, that I could see neither eyes  nor
teeth.  But they sung  heartily, and everybody
followed them.

  (A.)   Cheesetnari s Creek. — I went ashore to
report our arrival to the Medical  Director.   On
our way up the harbor, — a shallow river-mouth,
with low, pine-covered banks, in which there are
now about four  hundred steamboats and small
transport-craft, — I hailed the steamboat Dan-
iel Webster No. 2, which carries the----Regi-
ment New York Volunteers, and let the Colonel
know that his wife was among our nurses.  This
morning I received his acknowledgments in the
form of a check for $ 1,000 for the Commission,
accompanied  by what was still better, a note of
the most hearty and appreciative  recognition of
what the Commission had done for the relief of
the soldiers.
  Picking our way among all the craft, and keep-
ing out of the way of the tugs and tenders which
were flying about, we landed on a large meadow
where were a number of wall-tents, one labelled
" Office of Quartermaster's  Department" ;  an-
other,  " Telegraph Office " ;  another,  " Post-
Office "; another, " Office of  Land Transporta-
tion ";  another, " Harbor-Master,"  &c,  &c.
One contained  a number of prisoners, brought 
Hospital Transports.        21
 in the day before, and, of course, well-guarded.
 Ordnance and forage barges lay along the shore,
 with a few big guns, and piles of shot and shell,
 just landed.   The ground was crowded ; — or-
 derlies holding-horses ;  lounging, dirty soldiers ;
 idlers and fatigue-parties at work in relays ; sen-
 tries ; Quartermaster's people, white and black ;
 and a hundred army wagons loading with forage
 and biscuit-boxes from  the barges.   I went at
 once to  Colonel  Ingalls, at the Quartermaster's
 office.   He was  kind, prompt, decisive ; horses
 were ordered for us, and we soon rode off through
 a swamp-forest, the air full of the roar of falling
 trees and the shouts of  teamsters and working-
 parties of soldiers, the former trying to navigate
 their wagons, and the latter  making  corduroy
 roads for them.   The original country roads had
 all  been used up; it was difficult even to ford
 across them, when we had occasion to do so, on
 horseback.   The  army wagons, each  drawn by
 six mules, and with very light loads, were jerked
 about frightfully.  We passed many wrecks, and
 some horses which had sunk  and been smoth-
 ered.   Some  wagons were loaded with gun-beds
 and heavy rope screens for embrasures ; and we
 saw eight or ten mortars, each on a truck by
itself, and drawn by  from sixteen to twenty-four
horses.   At the first  open ground we found cav- 
22        Hospital Transports.
airy exercising ; then a cavalry camp, then a bit
of wood, then rising dry ground, and our road
ran through more camps.   Then, coming in the
midst of these camps, to the crest of a low swell,
we opened suddenly a grand view of the valley
of York River, a  country something like  the
valley of the Raritan, at Eagleswood  and oppo-
site,  but with  less wood, more piny and more
diversified, the river much broader, a mile and a
half, perhaps, across.   On the slope before us —
nearly flat, with an inclination toward the river —
was a space of several hundred acres, clear land,
and a camp for some twenty to forty thousand
men;  shelter-tents,  and  all  alive.  It was  a
magnificent scene,  the camp  and all beyond, as
we came upon it suddenly — right into it, at full
gallop.  The  military " effect" was heightened
now and then by a crashing report of artillery.
  In the  midst of the camp we came upon a
long  rack, — a pole on  crotched  sticks, — at
which were fastened a score  or more of horses.
" We must stop here," said Dr. C.  " They don't
let you ride in."  And that was all to show that
we had reached Head-quarters.
  It  was  an  aristocratic quarter of the  town,
when you  came to  look at the clean tents  and
turf, but there were no flags or signs to distin-
guish it.   We walked to the tent of the Medical 
Hospital  Transports.        23
Director, and just then there came  another  of
those crashing reports.  " They have been keep-
ing that up  all night," said the Doctor.  " That
is n't the enemy 1"  " Yes."  " Is he so near 1"
" O yes ! we are quite within range here."
  The medical arrangements seem  to be  de-
plorably insufficient. The Commission is at this
time actually distributing  daily of hospital sup-
plies much more than the  government.*

  (B.)  May 1st.   No patients  on  board yet;
ship getting  a  final polish.  Got up early and
found  the   Elizabeth  coming  alongside  for
stores.  The Commission  has here  at present,
besides the  Daniel Webster, one or two store-
ships, and  the  Wilson  Small, a boat of light
draught, fitted up as a little hospital, to run  up
creeks and bring down sick and wounded to the
transports.   She is under the care  of Dr.  C,
and has  her little  supply  of hospital  clothing,
beds,  food,  &c,  always ready for chance ser-
vice.  There is also a well-supplied storehouse
ashore.
  In sight are the abandoned rebel  quarters at
Shipping Point, now used  as hospitals by one of
our divisions  ; a number of log-huts finely built,
but on  low  and filthy  ground,  surrounded by
               * See Appendix A. 
24        Hospital Transports.
earthworks, which  are rained on half the time
and fiercely shone on the other half, and from
which are exhaling deadly vapors all the time,
a death-place  for  scores of our men who  are
piled in there, covered with  vermin, dying with
their uniforms  on and  collars  up, — dying of
fever......
  I attended  this afternoon to the systematic
arrangement of  the  commissariat stores down
aft, sent a telegram for  more  supplies  to Bal-
timore,  arranged  for stowing  the contrabands
and putting bunks in the new deck-ward, and
then put two  ladies and a  nice supply of or-
anges,  tea, lemons, wine, &c,  &c.  on  a small
boat, and started them with  ---- to Ship Point
Hospital,  where  four poor fellows  died  last
night.   Of course  there  is that  vitally important
medical etiquette to observe, here as elsewhere,
and we must approach carefully, when we would
not frustrate  our  own  plans; — and so  it is.
"----, suppose  you go  ashore  and  ask whether
it will be agreeable to have the ladies come over
and visit the hospital, -r- just  to walk through and
talk with the men."  So the ladies have gone " to
talk with the men," with spirit-lamps, and farina,
and lemons, and brandy, and clean  clothes, and
expect to have an improving  conversation.  After
the party was off, sent  orders  to Fort Monroe 
Hospital Transports.        25
for special supplies ; received Dr. Tripler, who
dined with us; furnished wine, tea, bread, to a
surgeon who had  been told  that the Commis-
sion's flag was flying here, and had come  seven
miles across the swamps, and rowed out  to us
in a small boat to try for these things.

   (M.)   By dark the Wilson Small came along-
side with our first patients, thirty-five in number,
who were carefully lifted on  board and swung
through the hatches on their stretchers.   In half
an hour they had all been tea'd and coffeed and
refreshed by the nurses, and shortly after were all
undressed and put to bed clean and comfortable,
and in a droll state of grateful wonder; the bad
cases of fever  furnished with sponges  and co-
logne-water for bathing, and  wine and water or
brandy-toddy for drinking, and a man to watch
them, and ward-masters up and down the wards,
and a young doctor in the apothecary's  shop,
and to-day (May 3d) they are all better.  .....
   Meantime  additional supplies arrived  from
Washington,  Baltimore, and  Fortress Monroe,
and a surgeon and nurses of  our company were
busy daily on shore at  the Ship Point Hospital,
dispensing  stores, and doing what they could for
the  poor fellows there, who  seemed  to  us in
want of everything......One hundred and 
26        Hospital Transports.
ninety patients have now come on board ; eigh-
teen miles some  of  them say they have  been
brought in the ambulances (large statement of
exhausted fellows jolted over  corduroy roads).
.....We ladies arrange our days into  three
watches,  and then a promiscuous  one for any
of us, as the night work may demand, after eight
o'clock.  Take Sunday, for instance.
   It was----'s and----'s watch from seven to
twelve.   So they were up and had hot breakfast
ready in our pantry, which is amidships between
the forward and aft wards ; ward-masters on the
port and starboard sides for each ward, to watch
the distribution of the food, and no promiscuous
rushing about allowed; the number for coffee
and the number for tea marked in the ward diet-
books  under the head of Breakfast, and the
number for house-diet, or for beef-tea and toddy,
&c, marked also; so that when the Hospital com-
pany learns to count straight, — an  achievement
of some difficulty, apparently, — there will be no
opportunity for confusion.  After breakfast  we
all  assembled  in  the forward  or sickest ward,
and Dr. G. read the simple prayers for those at
sea and for the sick.  Our whole company and
all  the patients were together.   It was good to
have the service then and there.  Our poor sick
fellows lay all about us in their beds and listened 
Hospital Transports.        27
quietly.   As  the prayer for the dying was fin-
ished, a soldier close by the Doctor had  ended
his strife.
   After twelve, our watch came on, and till four
we gave out clean clothes, handkerchiefs, cologne,
clothes to the nurses, and served the dinner, con-
sulting  the diet-books again.   The  houser-diet,
which was all distributed from our pantry, was
nice thick soup and rice-pudding, and we made,
over our spirit-lamps, the beef-tea and gruels for
special  cases.  So with  little cares  came four
o'clock, and  with  it clean  hands and our own
dinner; after which  the other two ladies came
on for the last watch, which included  tea.   Then
there was beef-tea and punch to be made for
use  during the  night; and so the  day for us
ended with our sitting in the pantry and  talking
over evils to  be remedied, and should the soiled
clothes  be sewed  up in canvas-bags  and trailed
behind the ship, or hung at the stern, or headed
up in barrels and steam-washed when the ship
got  in 1  We crawled up  into our  bunks that
night amid a tremendous firing of big guns, and
woke up in the morning to the announcement
that Yorktown was evacuated.

   (M.)  While we were lying anchored off Ship
Point,  down in  the  Gulf, New  Orleans had 
28       Hospital Transports.
surrendered quietly, and round the comer from
us Fort  Macon had been  taken.   What was it
all to us, so long as the beef-tea was ready at the
right moment 1 
CHAPTER  II.
  (A.)  May $th.  On Sunday the Ocean Queen,
coming  up  from Old Point,  grounded  about
five  miles  off the  harbor,  and I  went down
and  put a  few beds  and  men  on board to
assume  a footing.  She had been  brought to
Old  Point  with  the intention of using her to
amuse the  Merrimack, and  had therefore been
stripped of everything not necessary to  the  sub-
sistence of the small crew.

  (M.)   On the way back, at eight in the even-
ing,  found  that  a great part of the army fleet,
three hundred  or more steamboats full of life,
all before scattered for miles about the harbor,
had  been  collected in  close  order and steam
up.   A number of heavy steamers swept  past
also,  each with a tow a quarter of a mile long,
making on the dark evening a long  line of  light
and  hfe.   It was  strange to see these floating
cities melt  away; the colored lights  from the
rigging  going out one by one, and the bands
and  bugle-calls growing faint and far. 
30        Hospital Transports.
  (A.)  I had sent the Webster to sea, and with
Mrs.----and sister, B., and some two or three
others, started in  the  Small to go to the tele-
graph and mail,  and to bury the body  of a
patient  who  had died in  the night.   It  was
raining  hard.   When we  reached  the shore
there was no post-office,  no telegraph, — noth-
ing  of  the  military station left, except some
wagons  and transports.   Our storehouse was a
mile back.   I left a  portion of our party to move
the goods from it on board the barge, and started
in the Small for Yorktown, to which I presumed
Head-quarters would have been moved.   On get-
ting out of the harbor, we saw that  the Queen
was under way.    It turned out that she had
been ordered to Yorktown  by the  Harbor-Mas-
ter.   As she was lying-to, to sound the channel,
we came up with her,  and I went on board, after
which — the Small going  ahead to feel the way
— we had a magnificent sail to Yorktown, the
river so full of vessels  that it was like getting up
the Thames, only the  lead was constantly going,
" By the mark, five !  A quarter  less six ! " and
so on.  Noble river ! and a noble ship !  Ahead,
above all the fleet of three hundred  transports,
there were a dozen  men-of-war.  With our hos-
pital flag at the fore, we slowly but boldly passed
through the  squadron, and came to anchor, the 
Hospital Transports.       31
biggest ship of all, in the advance, — only one
gunboat,  as a picket-guard, being above us.   I
went  ashore with the Captain  and the young
men, but could find no telegraph, and no officer
of the general staff; and as many men had been
killed and wounded by the torpedo-traps, — in-
fernal machines set by the rebels, —we were not
allowed to enter the fortified lines of Yorktown.
So, picking up a hospital cot and stretcher left
by  the enemy, I took boat again to  return to
the ship,  leaving the Captain and others ashore.
As  I pulled out through the vessels at the wharf,
I saw to my surprise two small " stem-wheel"
steamboats coming alongside the Queen, one on
each  side.   Hastening on board, I found that
these boats were loaded with sick men,  whom
an  officer in charge was about to throw off upon
the Queen.  They were  the  sick of regiments
which had been ordered suddenly forward last
night, and  which were at this very moment en-
gaged in the battle of Williamsburg;  we could
hear the roar of artillery.  They had been sent
during the  night by ambulances  to the shore  of
Wormley's  Creek, where  a  large  number  had
been  left, the officer assured me,  lying on the
ground in the rain, without food or attendance.
 His orders were to take  them upon the " stem-
wheelers,"  as  many as  both would carry,  find 
32        Hospital Transports.
the Ocean  Queen, and put them  upon her.   I
protested.  The Queen at present was a mere
hulk, without beds, bedding,  or food even for
her crew, and without a surgeon.   It was obvi-
ous that the  men were, many of them, very ill.
Some were, in fact, in a dying state.
  They were  largely typhoid-fever patients; and
having  been  for  twenty-four  hours  without
nourishment,  wet from exposure  to  the storm,
and many of them racked by the motion of the
ambulances over those frightful swamp cordu-
roy roads (which I described the other day) into
delirium, I was sure  that  many  would die if
they long failed to  receive most  careful  medi-
cal treatment, with stimulants, nourishment, and
warmth, no one of which could at that time be
got for them  on the Queen.  The officer, how-
ever, insisted.  I determined to  go  ashore to
look for a surgeon, or if possible to find Colonel
Ingalls,  the  transport quartermaster, a gentle-
man, and a most energetic and sagacious officer.
I put  the two ship's officers each  at a gangway,
with instructions to let no one come on board
till I returned, and to use force, if necessary.  I
found a surgeon — a civilian — who was willing
to help  us, and pulled back,  finding  to my dis-
gust, when  I  reached the ship, that the misera-
ble first  officer had given way, and  every man 
Hospital  Transports.        33
who could walk of the  patients had been taken
on board.   The glorious women had hunted out
a barrel containing some Indian meal from some
dark  place where it had been lost sight of, in the
depths of the ship, and were already ladling out
hot  gruel, which they had made of it;  and the
poor, pale,  emaciated,  shivering wretches  were
lying anywhere, on the  cabin floors, crying with
sobbing, trembling  voices,  " God  bless  you,
Miss  ! God bless you ! " as it was given to them
from  the ship's deck-buckets.   I never saw such
misery or  such gratitude.  My rebel stretcher
came at once in play, and, after distributing
forty  dollars among  the half-mutinous, super-
stitious, beastly Portuguese  crew  and  pantry
servants, I got them  at work  bringing on the
patients who were too feeble to be led on board.
It was a slow and tedious process.  By the bless-
ing of God,  before  it was  over,  B., with  Dr.
Ware, — the two very best men I ever  saw for
such  an  emergency, —  came with the Elizabeth
from  Cheeseman's Creek, and the Captain with
the students from the  shore.  There were straw,
bed-sacks and blankets, besides stimulants and
medicines,  on the Elizabeth, and the Captain's
authority  soon  added  all the ship's force  to
the working party on  her, filling beds and hoist-
ing out  bales of blankets.   B. went on shore,
              3 
34        Hospital Transports.
found a  rebel cow at pasture,  shot  her, and
brought off the beef, with another surgeon.  By
ten o'clock  at night, every sick  man  was in  a
warm bed, and had received medical treatment;
and  beef-tea and  milk-punch had been served
to all who  required it.   But for  three of them
even the  women  could do nothing but pray, and
close  their eyes.
  At half past ten, I went aboard the Small, in-
tending to run to Fortress Monroe for additional
supplies.   It was stormy and thick, and I could
not induce the Captain to  go out till daylight.
We reached Old  Point about nine, A. M.  I got
breakfast in the hotel, and then to Head-quarters.
While  in the telegraph-room,  a message was
received, which was whispered between the oper-
ators ; a minute  afterwards  a gun was  fired, and
the long  roll beat; the infantry fell in on the
parade, the artillery hurried to the ramparts and
manned the heavy  guns, and powder-carts were
moving up the inclines.  I asked, "What's  all
this 1"  " Telegram from Newport's News that
the Merrimack is  coming  out!"   She did not
come beyond Sewall's Point, however.
  The boat from Baltimore  brought six excellent
New York surgeons, twenty-six  nurses, and ten
surgical dressers  (medical students). I got them
all on the  Small, and having succeeded  in ob- 
Hospital  Transports.        35
taining the  more important supplies  in  limited
quantities,  at  noon left  for  Yorktown.   On
reaching  here  we found the " stern-wheelers"
again  alongside,  and over three hundred pa-
tients  on board ;  many very sick indeed, some
delirious, some comatose, some fairly in articulo.
The assistant surgeons,  left behind at the aban-
doned  camps, are  too anxious to  be  rid  of
them,  so  as to move with their  regiments, and
have surgery of war.  And as their  orders au-
thorize it, they hurry them off to us in this style,
after a day's  ride  in   army wagons,  without
springs, over such a  country without roads  as I
described last week.   They were horribly filthy,
and there was no time  to clean them, often not
to undress them, as,  sick and fainting, they  were
lifted on  board.
  About noon the next  day I  completed  a hos-
pital organization of  such forces as I had, divid-
ing the cabins and  the upper  steerage  of the
ship into five  wards, for the bad cases,  each
ward having  one surgeon,  two ward-masters,
and four nurses, — the two latter  classes  in
watches;  besides  these, some assistant  nurses
and servants, convalescent  soldiers, and  contra-
bands.   In  these  wards only the very  sick —
chiefly cases  of  typhoid fever — were  taken.
By  cutting  away  bulkheads,  and getting wind- 
36        Hospital Transports.
sails rigged, they were fairly well ventilated.   I
had  to  offer $ 200 for  the repair of damages
before this could be secured, however.  All the
rest  of the  ship was  the  sixth ward, in  which
the hernias, rheumatisms, bronchitises, lame and
worn-out men were placed,  organized  in squads
of fifty each, with a squad-master to  draw their
rations of house-diet.
  To get proper food for  all, decently cooked
and distributed, has given  me  more concern
than anything  else.   The ship servants are
brutes, and our supply of utensils was cruelly
short.  Fortunately the Captain is a good-heart-
ed  and  resolute  man,  and the ladies — God
knows what we should have done without  them !
— have contrived to make some chafing-dishes
with which the  kitchen  is  pieced out wonder-
fully.  Just think  of  it for a moment.   Here
were one  hundred miserably sick  and  dying
men, forced upon us before we  had been an
hour on board;  and  tug after tug  swarming
round the great ship, before we had a nail out
of a box, and when there were but ten pounds of
Indian meal and two spoons to feed them with.
No account could do justice to the  faithful in-
dustry of the medical students and young men :
how we  all got through with it, I hardly  know;
but one idea is distinct, — that every man had a 
Hospital Transports.        37
good  place  to  sleep in, and something hot to
eat daily, and that the  sickest had every essen-
tial that  could have been given them in their
own  homes.....
   B. was  all  this time  driving  everything to
obtain supplies,  while  the sick kept  coming
faster than  we  could  get anything  ready for
them.  The last thing  essential was more beef.
B. at length  got hold  of a  couple of  draught
cattle of Franklin's division, left behind  in their
advance  by steamboats, and while these were
being killed and dressed, we filled up  to  nine
hundred patients.
   To avoid having  more  pushed on board, I
had  the Captain  heave short; so the moment
that  B.'s  boat  came,  and the  beef  could be
hoisted  up,  the  steamer was  under  way,  and
before night, no  doubt, was well out to sea.
   I  then went  on  board the  Small to drop
down, quite ill for the  time from want of sleep
and from fatigue.  A few hours' rest and a quiet
dinner brought  me all right, however, and at
sunset I set  out with  B. to  look after the sick
ashore.
  One of the strange effects, upon all concerned
as workers  on these  hospital ships, in the heart 
38        Hospital Transports.
of all  misery and pain,  and part of it, seems
to have  been the  quieting of  all excitement
of feeling and of expression, — a sort  of appar-
ent stoicism granted for the occasion.   A slight
illustration of this  quietness, which was  char-
acteristic of most of the hospital party, is given
in the following passage from  a letter  of one
of the  ladies on the Ocean Queen : —
   " It  seems a strange thing that the sight of
such misery,  such death in life, should have
been accepted by  us  all so quietly as  it was.
We were simply eyes and hands for those three
days.   Great, strong men were dying about us;
in nearly every ward some one was going.  Yes-
terday  one of the students called me to  go with
him and  say whether I had taken the name of
a  dead man in the forward cabin the day he
came  in.   He was a strong, handsome  fellow,
raving  mad when  brought in,  and lying now,
the day  after, with  pink cheeks and peaceful
look.   I  had tried  to get his name, and once he
seemed to understand, and screeched out at the
top of  his voice, ' John H.  Miller,' but whether
it was his own name or that of some friend he
wanted, I don't know; we could not find out.
All the record I  had of him was from my diet-
list : ' Miller, — forward cabin, port side, number
119.  Beef-tea and punch.' 
Hospital Transports.       39
  " Last night Dr. Ware came  to me to know
how much floor-room we had.  The immense sa-
loon of the aft cabin was filled with mattresses
so thickly placed that there was hardly stepping-
room between them, and as I swung my lantern
along the  rows  of  pale faces,  it  showed  me
another strong man  dead.  N.  had been work-
ing hard  over  him, but  it  was useless.   He
opened his  eyes  when  she  called  ' Henry'
clearly in his ear, and gave her a chance to pour
brandy  down his throat;  but all did no good ;
he died quietly while she was helping  some one
else, and  my lantern  showed him gone.  We
are changed  by all this contact with terror, else
how could I  deliberately turn my lantern on his
face, and  say to the doctor behind me, ' Is that
man  dead?' and  then stand coolly  while  he
examined  him,  listened,  and pronounced him
' dead.'  I could not have quietly  said a year
ago, ' That will make one more bed, then, Doc-
tor.'  Sick men were waiting on deck in the cold,
though, and  every few feet of cabin floor were
precious.   So they took the dead man out, and
put him to sleep in his coffin on deck.  We had
to  climb  over  another soldier  lying  up there
quiet as he, to get at the blankets to keep the
living warm." 
40       Hospital  Transports.
  The business of feeding  men by hundreds at
short notice, in confined spaces, and with the aid
of very limited cooking facilities, is one which can
hardly be appreciated by those who  have only
heard, not seen, how it is accomplished.  It takes
good heads as well as good hearts, strong  will
as well as  strong limbs, to avoid ruinous confu-
sion.   After a battle, when men are brought in
so rapidly that they have to be piled in almost
without reference to their being human  beings,
and every one raving for drink first and  then for
nourishment, it requires strong nerves to be able
to attend to them properly.  Habit and system
are the two great aids, — or rather system first of
all, if possible; though system in such cases grows
out of experience.   Happily system has ruled in
the work of the  Sanitary Commission, and such
success as  has attended its operations is chiefly
due  to this, as every one  must have observed
who  had an opportunity to witness the difference
between  its doings and those having the same
end in view, but  carried on without well-studied
or sufficiently comprehensive plans.
  But  in these Atlantic Floating Hospitals  the
difficulties were very great.   The desideratum is
a practicable diet, simple yet nourishing, abun-
dant and not injurious ; always ready, yet varied
enough to  avoid the danger of satiety, which is 
Hospital  Transports.        41
ever threatening  the sick man, whose  chance
of recovery may hang on his  ability to eat his
food with relish.  In this arduous part of  the
Hospital Transport duty,  the ladies were able to
be  especially useful; their sympathy and good
judgment coming constantly in play,  and  the
supply of fruits, jellies, and a  variety of  delica-
cies being generally so liberal as to afford  full
scope  to their  powers.   But  in dealing  with
hundreds and thousands of men, many of whom
are not particularly in danger, but yet obliged to
lie  in beds for wounds to heal, it is necessary to
provide on a scale so large as puts mere  delica-
cies, or the ordinary resources of the sick-room,
quite out of the question.  It is utterly futile to
attempt treating each one of four or five hundred
patients as  if we had  him  alone in a  private
family;  and  patients,  as well  as  nurses  and
friends, must learn  this after very little  experi-
ence.   But  it is  practicable here, as elsewhere,
to  accomplish  much  that  is  beneficial  and
comfortable by judicious system firmly  carried
out.  To avoid collisions, and vain attempts to
perform impossibilities,  after a  short experience,
but careful study of what was really needed,
rules were established which proved in practice
nearly perfect in  the matter of preventing delay
and disappointment, while the result satisfied the 
Hospital Transports.
patients in general quite as well as we can hope
to satisfy sick  men  who  have fitful  appetites.
As the suggestion may prove applicable to other
cases, the established routine is given in full in
the Appendix (B.) 
           CHAPTER  III.

  Just  before the Ocean Queen left, a reinforce-
ment of ladies and servants arrived  from New
York.   A part of these were put on the Queen ;
temporary quarters were found for the remainder
on  the  Wilson Small.  Sick men were at this
time being carted into Yorktown from the vari-
ous  abandoned  camps in the vicinity, and  the
Sanitary party going on shore after the depart-
ure of the  Queen, these were found lying in tiers
in the  muddy  streets, while tents were  being
pitched and  houses cleared for their accommo-
dation.  Several wagon-loads of hospital supplies
were sent  to them from the store-boats of  the
Commission; twenty-five dollars were given to
the  surgeon in  charge, to be used to  stimulate
the exertions of his limited force of  attendants,
and for the purchase of odds and  ends, and  he
was informed that, if more should be  required,
it would be provided  by the Commission, and
then the company started on their little boat  for
West Point, where a battle was reported in pro-
gress. 
44       Hospital  Transports.
  (M.)  West Point, May gth. — We arrived here
early this morning.  The whole field of battle is
open like  a map  before us.  A white flag flies
from a  small  house just below  us.   We are
along-side a transport on which an officer was
yesterday  wounded by  a shell thrown from a
battery which  had been concealed behind this
house, upon which the same flag was then flying.
Another  transport  near  us  has a  shot-hole
through her smoke-stack.  There are three or
four thousand men along the shore,  and more
constantly  arriving  and disembarking  by the
pontoons, with artillery and horses.  As I write,
a blue  column  is  moving off,  the  bayonets
glistening  far into the woods.   We are sending
off  small stores, called for by the  Commission's
Inspectors ashore, who are visiting the extempo-
rized hospitals, and  are  also supplying  some of
the gunboats' sick-bays with fruits  and ice.
  Just here a steamboat, loaded with sick and
wounded,  came •along-side of us ; a  transport,
made use of as a hospital on the occasion, but
needing almost everything.
  The more dangerously wounded  upon this
transport were  transferred to  the Small, and
three ladies, with  surgical  dressers and servants,
beef-tea, lemonade, ice, and stimulants,  went to
the assistance of the others,  remaining with 
Hospital Transports.       45
them till, after a transshipment at Yorktown, they
were lodged in shore hospitals at Fortress Mon-
roe.

   (A.)  The  Small  received  the  dangerous
cases, several of amputation among  them ; the
operations had  been performed  on  the  field.
One died at midnight.  I had great difficulty, at
first,  in our now very  crowded little boat, in
restraining  individual zeal  within  the require-
ments of order  and tranquillity;  but I believe
I succeeded, and as  soon as  the women began
to experience the value of the discipline,  they
 fell into  it finely, and  all  behaved  in the best
 manner possible.   I put those  on our boat in
 watches, rigidly excluding from that part of the
 boat where the wounded  men were  placed all
 who were not absolutely required on duty.  The
 poor fellows were nearly all soon coaxed asleep,
 and  the man who died passed away, and his
 body was removed without its being known to
 his nearest neighbor.  We  had  on  board Dr.
 Ware  and two of the students,  noble  young
  fellows, zealous, orderly, and discreet.
    I  think all the men  who have any chance for
  recovery look  better this morning.  One man
  (amputation of thigh)  who seemed nearly gone
  when  he came on board,  staring wildly, and 
46       Hospital Transports.
muttering unintelligibly, lifted his hand toward
me as I came into the cabin this morning; and
smiled when I bent over him.   The  nurse  told
me that he said to her on waking from a sound
sleep, just at sunrise, " You have saved my life
for my wife, good woman."  There are several
officers among them;  one a hero, who led his
company against a regiment,  pushing it back,
but losing  one fifth of his  men, and  getting a
shot through  the lungs.   There is  Corporal
C----, too, who has lost his leg, and who says
he bears no  malice against the  man who shot
him, but he hopes some day to meet  and punish
the wretch who kicked him on his wounded leg,
after he was laid helpless.

   (M.) May nth.—Three of  our  wounded
men died during the night.   Everything was
done for them;  they could not have had more
care in their  own homes.  Our  little boat is so
crowded that the well sleep on the upper deck,
all under cover being occupied by the wounded;
and, the small outfit of china, etc. being needed
for the sick, we  take our meat and potatoes on
slices of bread for plates, and make the top of
a stove our domestic board. 
Hospital  Transports.        47
  As intelligence  had come through telegraph
from  Washington  that the  Ocean  Queen had
been taken on her arrival at New York, against
all  remonstrance,  for  other purposes,  the  S.
R. Spaulding, a large,  seaworthy  vessel, though
lamentably inferior for a hospital to the mag-
nificent Ocean Queen, was obtained in her place.
She was fitted for carrying cavalry, with stalls for
horses, and at this time filled with stable odor,
and needed coal and water as well as complete
interior reconstruction.
  The Daniel Webster, arriving at Yorktown on
her return from New York, could not  get into the
wharf-berth which had  been  secured for her near
the hospital; a tug was consequently procured,
which  being ran  alternately with  the  Small,
between sunset and twelve o'clock at night, two
hundred and forty  sick and wounded were taken
off and put comfortably to bed.   After  this her
hospital service was reorganized so as to transfer
from her  all the force that could possibly be
spared, and  to put on her any of the company
whom  it was necessary to part with.  An esti-
mate was made of the stores requisite  for her
home trip, and at daylight what she could spare
was put on  board the Small, and she steamed
off on  her second trip to New York, eighteen
hours after she arrived.  Everything  is noted  as 
48       Hospital Transports.
going on  admirably in the loading of the  Web-
ster, each  man knowing his place, and  not try-
ing to do the  duty of others.   The discipline
maintained by Dr. Grymes was most satisfactory,
and the corps of ladies and nurses  work  as if
they had been doing this  thing wisely and well
all their lives.*
  At  9 A. M., the  Webster started on  her sec-
ond trip,  and there was time to  look after the
other vessels  which were  being  fitted  for the
service.   One  company had been put  at  work
on  the  Elm City, and another  on the  Knicker-
bocker, both these river boats having been handed
over by the Quartermaster's Department to the
Commission, to be fitted  for hospital  service.
Stores had also been ordered to the  State of
Maine, a government hospital in need.   All was
found proceeding  well with the limited force  on
the Elm City; but the Knickerbocker, where was
she?

  (M.)   Steamboat  Knickerbocker, May  13th. —
If my letter smells of Yellow B, it  has a  right
  * Since the above was written, we have heard with deep
regret of the death of Dr. Grymes. Wherever he served,
his labors were singularly wise and efficient; with exceed-
ing gentleness and quietness of manner he combined much
energy of will, and to thorough skill was added a  loving
heart, and a rare devotedness of purpose. 
Hospital Transports.       49
to, as my paper  is the cover of the sugar-box.
Since I last wrote, we have been jerking about
from boat to boat, fitting  up one, and starting
her off, then  doing the same by another.  We
came on board  this  boat  Saturday night.  She
had then about two hundred wounded men on
board, taken  from the Williamsburg fight, and
bound for Fort Monroe, two of the ladies and
assistants to look  after the sick during the few
hours' run, and others to  get  things on hand,
and fit up the wards.   We  had fifty-six Commis-
sion  beds made  on the upper ward floor  that
night, and were  ready to go on shore at Fort
Monroe after the three and a half hours from
Yorktown.   Dr.  C.  came  on  board  and had
all the men  carefully removed to  the Hygeia
Hospital,  and we improved  the opportunity to
get some roses from the garden for our wounded
men  left  on the Small, and to  see Mr. Lincoln
driving past to take possession of Norfolk.  We
lay at the fort all night, and were blown awake
the next morning by  the explosion of the Mer-
rimack, when I  found to  my amazement that
along-side of us  lay  the Daniel Webster, No. 2,
Government hospital, with four or five  of our
Commission  company on board, whom we had
left at Yorktown.  She ran, in passing, along-side
our supply ships,  (all our boats of the Sanitary
               4 
50       Hospital Transports.

Commission are known by their flags,) just after
we came  away,  and begged for  help.  Mr.  A.
tossed on board  everything necessary, including
two  ladies,  two  surgeons, and  blankets, and
started them off  after us  to the Fortress, with
two hundred badly wounded men.   They had
been wholly uncared for till our people got  on
board.   They did all they could  for them in so
short a time, washed them, gave them good sup-
pers and breakfasts, and Drs. W. and W. dressed
the worst wounds, watching them all  night as
tenderly as women could.  This boat was all the
next day unloading her sick;  they were miser-
ably wounded, and had to be lifted with great
care.   We on the Knickerbocker started up the
river again,  and  anchored  off Yorktown......
We wanted a stove for our hospital kitchen  on
board, which has to be kept  distinct from the
kitchen of the ship's crew; so we went  ashore
with----to seize upon anything we could find;
poked about in all the rebel barracks, asked all
the soldiers we  met about it, and finally came
upon the  sutler's hut, — sutler  of the Enfans
Perdus, who was cooking something nice  for
the officers' mess over a stove with four places
for pots !   This was  too much to  stand, so  un-
der a written authority given to " Dr. Olmsted"
by the Quartermaster of this department, we pro- 
Hospital  Transports.       51
ceeded to rake out the sutler's fire and lift his
pots off; — and he offered us his cart and mule
to drag the stove to the boat, and would take no
pay!  So, through the wretched town, filled with
the debris of huts and camp furniture, old blan-
kets,  dirty cast-off clothing, smashed  gun-car-
riages, exploded  guns,  vermin and filth every-
where, — and  along  the sandy  shore  covered
with  cannon-balls, tossed  into  the river,  and
rolled back, — we followed the mule, a trium-
phant procession, waving  our broken bits of
stove-pipe  and iron  pot-covers.   I left a  polite
message for the " Colonel perdu," — which  had
to stand him in place of his lost dinner, — and I
shall never understand what was the matter with
that sutler, whose  self-sacrifice secured  our three
hundred  men their meals promptly.
   The next morning the Knickerbocker, to the
surprise of the Commission, was not to be found.
They searched the  fleet twice through for us,
but in vain, and finally heard at the Quartermas-
ter's office, that a requisition  had been  received
at midnight for a boat to  go at once to the
advance  of the army, on the Pamunkey River,
and  the Knickerbocker had  been taken for it,
the  fact  of her having been assigned to the
Commission being entirely forgotten.   The only
mitigation of  the anxieties  of those  who re- 
52        Hospital  Transports.
mained, for the ladies on  board, was the assur-
ance that the boat would soon return.   Mean-
time,  we, on  board, sailed  up the Pamunkey,
getting  a fine chance to perfect the hospital
arrangements.  We unpacked tins and clothing,
filled  a linen closet in each ward, had beds put
in order for three hundred, got up our stove, set
kitchen in order, filled store closets, and arranged
a  black-hole with a lock to it, where oranges
grow, and brandy and wine are stored box upon
box;  and on  reaching Franklin's  head-quarters,
the messenger transacted his business, we landed
a  file of soldiers and a surgeon of the division,
who had shown us great kindness on the voyage,
and were allowed to push off again unmolested.
The army lay all along  the  shore, and Gen-
eral  Franklin's  head-quarters  were in a large
store-house back from  the river.   We found on
our return to Yorktown every one at work fit-
ting up the Sj>aulding.
  An order had been obtained from the Quar-
termaster  for the planks and boards  of some
rebel  platforms, with which  to  put up  bunks,
etc., and a gang of contrabands were set at the
business.  While this was going on, a visit was 
Hospital Transports.       53
made to the surgeon in charge of the shore hos-
pitals, with whom,  after  debate, it  was agreed
that the Elm City should  be made ready by two
o'clock to take on  the sick who were  waiting
transport near the shore.   The State of Maine
was at the same time to be supplied and made
ready to follow without delay.  Going on board
the Small again to carry out these arrangements,
A. was met by a note from the Quartermaster
enclosing a  telegram from the  Medical Direc-
tor of the army at  Williamsburg, demanding a
boat provided with " straw and water to be ready
to take on two hundred sick and wounded within
two hours at Queerts Creek." The despatch con-
cluded,  " This is of the  utmost urgency.   See
the Sanitary  Commission."  The only boat in
the fleet that had  a  fair  supply of  water  on
board was  the Elm City,  already assigned  for
other duty, and  she   had no  stores of food.
There was  about one day's supply of provis-
ions for two hundred  men on  the Small,  and
A.  wrote at once to the  surgeon in charge of
the shore hospitals, that, to meet  an order of
the Medical Director, it had become necessary
to change the arrangements just before made
with  him.   He  would have to withdraw  the
Elm City, but as supplies could be  sent immedi-
ately to the  State of Maine, she could be  got 
54       Hospital  Transports.
ready before night  to  take her  place.   The
Small was then put in motion, and first the Elm
City was hailed in passing, with orders to " fire
up and heave short, and be all ready to move in
half an  hour,"  thence to  the Alida, which was
sent with the supplies to the State of Maine, and
then back  past the  Elm  City, ordering  her to
follow, and so  in  good time up to the  mouth
of  Queen's Creek, by the  side of the  Kenne-
bec, loading with wounded Secession prisoners,
brought out  of the  creek by light-draft stem-
wheelers.  The process of embarkation, witnessed
at a point some distance up the creek, was rude,
careless, and quite unnecessarily painful; the mis-
erable wretches of rebels being made to climb a
plank,  set  up at an  angle of forty-five degrees,
which they could only do  by the aid of  a rope
thrown to them from the deck.   Strange  to say,
they themselves made  no  complaint, but ap-
peared to think that they were well treated.   So
much for habit.  The only assistance the Com-
mission could render was  to  make  the pathway
less slippery by nailing cleats closely together
across the  steep planks.   To do this, nails were
bought  of  an  old man near by,  who at first
asserted  decidedly that  not  a  nail  could  be
found on his premises, until he was offered one
dollar for twenty-five, when an abundant supply
was discovered. 
Hospital  Transports.        55
  Notwithstanding  the  Medical Director's tele-
gram, that the  case was one of the  " utmost
urgency,"  no  sick  men were  found  at  the
place of embarkation on the  creek, nor  could
any be  heard of nearer than at Williamsburg.
Proceeding thither,  with great  difficulty, — pass-
ing on the way directly through the field of the
late  battle,—A. inquired of  the  first  man he
met after entering the town, " Where is the hos-
pital %"   " The  hospital, sir 1  Every house in
the town  is a  hospital; you  cannot go  amiss
for one."   And this seemed to  be  literally
true.  Finding the Medical  Director, he learned
that he  thought it important to relieve  the hos-
pitals by transportation as  fast as  he, in  any
way, could; but not supposing it possible that
the telegraphic order could be literally complied
with, he had taken  no measures as yet to send
the two hundred patients  in  question to the
place appointed for embarkation.  It was agreed,
however,  that a convoy of ambulances should
be  started at daylight,  and A. returned to the
mouth  of Queen's Creek,  and despatched B.
with  the  Small to Yorktown  to  bring up ad-
ditional stores from the Elm City, upon which
the half-completed work  of filling bed-sacks and
other preparations  also  continued through the
night.   With the first boat-load of the wounded 
56        Hospital Transports.
brought off in the morning, arose  one of those
conflicts of authority which so often embarrassed
the Commission at this time in its work.

   (A.)  At the first step I was met by a Brigade
Surgeon coming on board from the Kennebec, who
went  about giving orders  over my head,  chan-
ging  my arrangements.  As he persisted, and
refused to compromise after I showed my writ-
ten authority from the Medical Director, I told
him that I  should allow no sick to come on
board until I was  satisfied with  the arrange-
ments.  He then declared that he should go to
the Medical Director.  " The very thing I want,
and I will go with you.  Meantime the sick, if
any arrive, shall come on  board, and  Dr. Ware,
here,  will see to their  disposition, if you please."
He assented, and we  then went to the landing
and saw the  lighter again loaded with sick, in
the same manner as yesterday.   When she was
full, the surgeon said he should return upon  her
to the Elm City.  " But I  thought we were to
go together to the  Medical  Director, sir !"  "I
have concluded  not to do so, but have written
to inform him that my authority is questioned."
I deemed it best, after this, to  go again to  the
Medical Director myself,  and, after  a tedious
delay,  got passage  on a  forage-wagon loaded 
Hospital  Transports.
 with  oats.  What  with  the  continuous atmos-
 phere of thick yellow dust,  and the jar of the
 heavy wagon over execrable roads, this was a
 hard  ride.
   I found the Medical Director, got a copy of
 an order which the  Brigade Surgeon should have
 received yesterday,  but which had failed of trans-
 mission to him, which failure justified  officially
 his assertion  of authority  over any  transport
 coming at that  time  to  that anchorage.
   Returned  to  the landing, and,  the lighters
 having grounded,  waited  there, on the bank
 of the creek, with  a hundred  sick  men,  being
 devoured by  mosquitoes  and  sand-flies.   On
 reaching  the  Elm  City, found that,  owing to
 the conflict of  authority,  and  consequent  im-
 perfect system,  as  well as  to  the  insufficient
 number of attendants, the  sick were but slowly
 and with difficulty taken  care of.  Including the
 hundred coming off with  me, the  number on
 board was already  over  four hundred, or twice
 as many as the Medical Director had estimated,
 or I had had reason to calculate on  in  the sup-
 ply of water, medicine, and stores.
   After sunset I went again up the creek, and
 found eight men  on the beach, left  there sick,
without a single attendant or friend within four
miles, while, only the night before,  two of our 
58        Hospital Transports.
teamsters had been waylaid and murdered, as
was  supposed, by the farmers of the  vicinity,
(guerilla fighting as they call it,) in the  edge of
the neighboring woods.  After taking them on
board the  small boat,  I asked who had charge
of the  party, wishing to make  sure  that  no
stragglers were left.   A man was pointed  out,
who, because he was  stronger  or more helpful
than the rest, seemed to have been regarded by
them as their leader, though he had no  appoint-
ment.  He  was  able  to  answer  my  inquiries
satisfactorily, and then as he  sat by my side,
while I steered the boat, he told me about him-
self.   His name was Corcoran.  After the battle
of Williamsburg he felt sick. There was an or-
der to march, but his Captain said, " Good God!
Corcoran, you are  not fit to  march.   Go  into
the town and get into a hospital."  He walked
three miles  carrying  his knapsack,  and when
he came to  a hospital the surgeon told him he
must bring a note from his Captain, and refused
to receive him.   He  went out, and, as he  was
now very ill, he crawled into something  like a
milk-wagon  and fell asleep.  He was awakened
by a man who pulled him out by his feet, so
that  he fell heavily on  the ground and was hurt.
He begged  the man — a  Secessionist,  he  sup-
posed — for some water,  and he  gave  him 
Hospital Transports.       59
some;  and when he saw how sick he was, he
said he would not have pulled him out only
that he wanted to use  his wagon.   Corcoran
then tried to walk  away, but had not gone far
when he fell, and probably fainted.  By and by
a negro man woke him up,  and asked if he
should not help him to a hospital.  The negro
man was  very  kind, but when  they came to a
hospital the doctor said he could not take  him
in, because he " had  n't a bit of a note."  Cor-
coran said, "For God's sake,  Doctor,  do  give
me room to lie down here somewhere ;  it's not
much room I '11 take  anyhow, and  I  can't go
about  any longer !"  It was  then three days
since he had tasted food.  The doctor told  him
he could  lie  down,  and he had not been up
since  till  to-day.
   I have  repeated the whole  of this story  as I
heard it, while we were floating slowly down the
river,  because  the poor man  who told it me
died soon after we  got on board, kindly attended
in his last moments by our  Sisters of Mercy.
A letter to his mother  was found in his pocket,
and one of the ladies is writing to her.
   This morning we returned to Yorktown, and
took  on the  Elm  City thirty more sick from
a  steamboat  which  had  brought  them from
Cumberland on the Pamunkey. 
60       Hospital  Transports.
  At ten o'clock the Elm  City  left  for Wash-
ington with 440 patients.....After noon I
went ashore, called on the surgeon in  charge of
the hospitals and the Military Governor, made
our  arrangements for a  trip  up the  river to
collect scattered sick, and  to tow our Wilson
Small up to West  Point  for  repairs.   She has
been knocked into and  run against  by all the
big boats till  she is  completely  disabled.   Re-
turning on board for  this  purpose,  was met by
an officer with a telegram, begging that a boat
might  be immediately despatched to Bigelow's
Landing, where an ambulance-train master had
reported that " a hundred sick had been left on
the ground  in the rain,  without attendance or
food, to die."   Bigelow's Landing being  up a
narrow, shoal, crooked creek, we ran  about the
harbor looking in vain for a boat of sufficiently
light draught  to send there.  At length we de-
termined to take our  whole Sanitary fleet to the
mouth of the  creek, and,  leaving the  Alida and
Knickerbocker  outside, try to get up with the
Elizabeth, for we had no single vessel,  large or
small, in itself, suitably provided.
  We  ran to  the Knickerbocker,  but  before we
could get her under way a steamboat, in charge
of a military  surgeon, came along-side, and a
letter was handed me, begging that I would take 
Hospital Transports.       61
care of one hundred and fifty sick men who had
been taken on at West Point early in the  morn-
ing, and who had  had no  nourishment during
the day.   It was sunset, stormy and cold.  I at
first hesitated, on  account  of the greater need
of those at Bigelow's  Landing, but the surgeon
in charge having  induced me  to take a look
into the cabin, I changed my mind.  The little
room was as full as it  could be crammed of sick
soldiers,  sitting on the floor;  there was not
room to lie down.   Only two or  three were at
full length ; one of these was dying, — was dead
the next time I looked in.  It was frightfully
dirty, and the air suffocating.
   We immediately began taking them on board
the Knickerbocker......It is now midnight.
B.  and Dr. Ware  started  with  a part of our
company and  the  two supply-boats,  five hours
ago, for Queen's Creek, with the intention of
getting them to the sick at Bigelow's Landing,
if possible; if not, to go  up in the yawl and
canoe with supplies and firewood, and do what-
ever should be found possible  for their relief.
Two of the  ladies went with them.   The rest
are giving beef-tea  and brandy and water to the
sick on the Knickerbocker, now numbering three
hundred. 
62        Hospital  Transports.
   (M.)   The  floors  of lower and upper  decks
are covered  with beds.   The  men  all  have
tremendous appetites, lazily sleeping  and eat-
ing, — never miss a meal three times a day.   If
it were possible to have great eating-houses and
wayside  places,  where volunteers could  break
down and sleep  and  doze  for  ten days  or
so, the  men  forced  upon us by the medical
authorities here and  sent North would be  doing
good  work in their  regiments, — a  good bath,
seven days' rest, and twenty-one good meals are
all they need.  ---- is  housekeeper  on this
boat,  and great  pails of tea  and  trays of  bread
and butter, and rice and sugar, go all around the
decks for breakfast.  Good thick soup and  bread
for dinner, and  breakfast repeated,  at tea-time.
"Peter,"  with six long-shore Maryland oyster-
men (darkeys) runs the hospital kitchen, and has
a  daily  struggle for the daily bread  with  the
incorrigible fellows who shirk work, and for each
meal  protest against everything, and have three
times a day to be  brought  round by highly col-
ored blandishments.  The sickest men, especially
the one  hundred and  fifty last taken  on, have
plenty of beef-tea and cool drinks, made in the
ladies' pantry, and all of them are  now un-
dressed  and in clean,  comfortable beds. 
Hospital  Transports.        63
  (A.)  I am quite at a loss to know what I
shall  do to-morrow.   Unless  additional  force
arrives we  certainly cannot meet another emer-
gency.  It will not  be surprising if this letter is
found  somewhat incoherent, for I have fallen
asleep several times while writing  it, hoping
all the time  that B. might arrive.  We have a
cold northeast storm and  thick weather, and I
conclude that his  expedition  is  unable  to get
down, and I may go to sleep for the night.  I
have  just been   through the  vessel, and  find
nearly all the patients sleeping quietly, and with
every indication of  comfort.
  May 16th.   I fell so  soundly asleep,  that,
fifteen minutes after I finished writing the above
last night, it had to be several times repeated to
me before I could understand where  I was and
what it all meant when the officer of the watch
came to tell  me that the supply boats  were
making fast  to  us, with over a hundred  more
sick.   Anchoring the Alida at the mouth, B. had
attempted to get up the creek with the Elizabeth,
but, as I had feared, she went aground.  Going
on with the yawl, he  found one of the  steam-
lighters at anchor with over a hundred sick and
wounded men  lying  on the deck,  who  were
soaked, not  merely with rain, but from having
been obliged to wade out to her in water knee- 
64       Hospital Transports.
deep.  He learned that, further up the creek, a
few men,  too badly wounded to  stand, or too
weak to wade off to  the boat, had been left be-
hind.  No persuasion could induce the captain
to return for them, but a threat to report him at
head-quarters, at length made him fire up and go
back.  Eight were found  just where I found
eight on my night  trip up the same creek a few
nights before, some in a nearly dying condition.
Having brought them off to the lighter, and
served stimulants to them, she was run down the
creek to the supply-boats, the freight-rooms  of
which  had,  in the mean time, been as well as
possible arranged to accommodate the patients.

   One of the ladies engaged in this night expe-
dition  of  the Elizabeth gives  the following ac-
count of it in a letter to a friend.
   (N.) Not a moment is lost, — Mr. B. would
not even let  me go for a shawl, — and the tug is
off.  The Elizabeth is our store-tender or supply-
boat ; her main deck is piled from deck to deck
with boxes.  The first thing done is to pick out
six cases of pillows, six of quilts, one of brandy,
and  one cask  of bread.   Then all  the rest is
lowered into the hold.   Meantime  I make  for
the  kitchen, where  I find a remarkable old
aunty and a  fire.   I dive into her pots and pans, 
Hospital Transports.       65
I wheedle her out of her green tea (the black
having given out), and soon I have eight buckets
full of tea, and  pyramids of bread  and butter.
The cleared main-deck is spread with two layers
of quilts, and rows of  pillows a man's length
apart......The poor fellows are led or car-
ried on board, and stowed side by side as close
as can be.   We  feed them with spoonfuls  of
brandy  and  water ; they are utterly  broken
down, wet  through, some of them raving with
fever.  All are without food for one day, some for
two days.   After all are laid down, Miss G. and
I give them their supper, and they sink down
again.  Any one who looks over such a deck as
that, and sees the suffering, despondent attitudes
of the men, and their worn  frames and faces,
knows what war is  better than  the  sight  of
wounds  can  teach  it.    We  could  only take
ninety;  more  had to go in a  small tug-boat
which accompanied  us.   Mr.  B. and the doctor
went on board of her, to give sustenance to the
men, and in the mean time the Elizabeth started
on the homeward trip.   So the care  of her men
came  to me.  Fortunately only a dozen  or two
were very ill, and none  died.  Still  I  felt anx-
ious ;  six of them were out  of their mind, one
had tried  to destroy himself  three times that
day, and was  drenched  through, having been
             5 
66       Hospital  Transports.
dragged out of  the  water, into which  he had
thrown  himself  just before  we  reached him.
When we reached the Knickerbocker,  Dr.  Ware
came on  board, and gave  me  some  general
directions,  after  which I  got  along very well;
my only disaster had been  that  I gave mor-
phine  to a man who  actually screamed with
rheumatism and  cramp.  I supposed  morphine
would  not hurt  him,  and it was  a mercy  to
others  to stop  the  noise, instead  of which I
made him perfectly crazy, and  had the  greatest
trouble  in soothing  him.  We did not  move
them that night, and the next morning, after
getting  them all washed,  I went off guard, and
Mrs. M. and Mrs. N. came on board with their
breakfast from the Knickerbocker, where the one
hundred and eighty men were stowed and cared
for.  Soon afterwards my men were transferred
to her.   She still  lies along-side,  and  we take
care of  her.  She is  beautifully in order; every-
thing right and orderly.   It is a real pleasure  to
give the men  their  meals.   The  ward-masters
are all appointed, and the orderlies know their
duty.  She will probably leave  to-morrow......
As for the ladies, they are just what they should
be, efficient, wise, active  as  cats,  merry, light-
hearted, thoroughbred,  and without the fearful
tone of  self-devotedness  about them that sad 
Hospital Transports.       67
experience makes  one expect  in  benevolent
women.  We all  know in our hearts  that it  is
thorough enjoyment to be down here ;  it is life,
in short,  and we would n't be  anywhere  else
(in view of our enjoyment) for anything in the
world.  I hope people will continue to sustain
this  great work.   Hundreds of lives are being
saved by  it.  I have seen  with  my own  eyes,
in one week, fifty  men who must  have  died any-
where but here, and many more who  probably
would have done so.  I speak of lives saved only;
the amount  of suffering  saved  is  incalculable.
The Commission  keep up  the  work  at great
expense.  It  has  six large vessels  now running
from  here.  Government  furnishes these,  and
the bare rations of the men, (or is supposed to
do so,) but the real expenses of supply fall on
the Commission; in fact, everything that makes
the power and excellence of the work is supplied
by the  Commission.  If people  ask what they
shall send, say, " Money, money, stimulants,  and
articles of sick-food."

   (A.)  I went through the Elizabeth soon after
she came  along-side, and  all who  were awake
were very ready to say they wanted  for  nothing.
We concluded to let them remain  where they
were for the rest of the night.  They had been on 
68       Hospital  Transports.

the creek shore from ten to fourteen hours, with-
out a physician or a single attendant, a particle
of food or a drop of drink, and this on  a cold,
foggy day, with rain and  mist after  nightfall.
With half a dozen exceptions, they are marvel-
lously well this morning,  and profoundly grate-
ful for the kindness which, I need not say, the
ladies  are extending  to  them.   I  am  as  yet
unable to make up my mind what  to do with
them.  The cold northeasterly storm continues.
   May I'jth.   Our poor  little   Wilson  Small
since her first patching has  been run into again
and again, and for some days has been so broken
up, that  the poor little thing can't raise steam
even.  We have been  towed about by our sup-
ply-boats, and to-day  shall quit her while she
goes to Baltimore for repairs.   We can't leave
her without real regret, even  to go  temporarily
on board the  Spaulding, one  of the  finest ves-
sels of her size  that  I ever  saw.  We go  on
slowly with our fittings, having but poor  lumber
and only four carpenters.  We have had, however,
a detail, ordered by the military governor, of the
" Infant  Purdys," as the  boys call the  Enfans
Perdus, to fetch  and carry, and  shall have the
Spaulding after next filling the Daniel Webster and
the Elm  City,  both which should be here before
to-morrow night.   We sent off the Knickerbocker 
Hospital Transports.        69
this  morning  at daylight  to Washington, with
two  hundred  and seventy sick and wounded.
There  are two ladies for each  watch, and the
value of their  service in the minor superintend-
ence is incalculable.
  The twenty  ladies who came  from New  York
were really a  great godsend, although at first,
with no  boat  to  assign them  to, we did not
know what to do with them.  They have  all
worked like heroes night  and day, and though
the duty required  of them  is frequently of the
most disagreeable and trying character, I  have
never seen one of them flinch for a moment.
Yesterday, I chanced to observe, apropos to an
excessively hard night's work, that all  our  hard-
ships would  be  very  satisfactory to  recall by
and  by, when Miss M. said earnestly, " Recall!
why, I never had half the present satisfaction in
any week of my life before ! " and there was a
general murmur of concurrence.  If you could
see  the  difference between the men on our
transports,  and  those on the  vessels managed
directly by government, — mde as the means at
our  command are, and  although we do all we
can to aid the latter, — you would better under-
stand the incentive and the reward of exertion.
....  The  conduct  of the patients is always
fine; — patient, brave, patriotic.  I am surprised 
70        Hospital Transports.
and delighted by it.   We have sent details of
the ladies with every  vessel, and  have now re-
maining with  us  only four, besides the hired
Crimean nurse, Mrs.----.
  Captain----, whom I spoke of  as mortally
wounded, and whom we had kept in  the cabin
of the  Wilson Small since our  visit to West
Point, we sent off this morning on the Knick-
erbocker feeling quite jolly  and with a fair pros-
pect of  speedy recovery.   I  don't doubt  he
would  have  died  but  for  good  nursing  and
surgery, as he  had exhausting  internal  hemor-
rhages.
  We had two deaths on  board  last  night,—
one a fine fellow of sixteen, of pneumonia, in
the lower deck ward, and a convalescent in the
upper after ward.  The latter came out of his
room, saying he was  faint, and wanted water,
and, while the attendant  turned  for it,  sprang
over the guards into the water below.   A boat
was lowered, and efforts made to  find him, but
he  must  have stmck  his  head,  and,  being
stunned,  did  not rise. 
CHAPTER  IV.
  (A.)  We  are  lying  in  the Spaulding  just
below a burnt railroad-bridge, on the Pamunkey
River, and, as usual, in the middle of the fleet of
forage boats.   The  shores are at once wooded
and  wonderful  to the water's edge, the fulness
of midsummer with the  vivid and tender green
of Southern  spring.   Up  the banks, where  the
trees will let us  look between them,  lie great
fields of wheat, tall and fresh, and taking  the
sunshine for miles.  The river winds constantly,
— returning  upon itself every half-mile  or  so,
and  we  seem sometimes lying in a little wooded
lake without inlet or outlet.  It is startling to
find, so  far from the sea, a river whose name we
hardly knew  two  weeks ago, where our anchor
drops in three fathoms  of water and  our great
ship turns freely either way with  the tide.   Our
smoke-stacks are  almost swept by  the hanging
branches as we move, and great schooners  are
drawn up  under  the banks, tied to the trees;
the Spaulding herself lies in the shade of an elm-
tree  which is a landmark for miles up and down. 
72        Hospital Transports.
The army is in camp close at hand, resting, this
Sunday, and eating its six pies to a man, and so
getting ready for a move,  which is planning
in ----'s tent.   Half  a mile above  us is the
White  House, naming  the  place, — a modem
cottage,  if  ever  white,  now   drabbed  over,
standing where  the early home of Mrs. Wash-
ington stood. We went ashore this morning with
General----, and  strolled  about  the grounds,
— an unpretending, sweet little place, with old
trees shading the cottage, a green lawn  sloping
to the river, and an old-time garden full of roses.
The house  has been emptied, but  there are
some pieces of quaint  furniture, brass fire-dogs,
&c, and just inside the door this notice  is post-
ed : " Northern soldiers who profess to rever-
ence the name  of Washington,  forbear to  dese-
crate  the home of his early married life, the
property of his wife, and now the home of his
descendants " ;  signed,  " A Granddaughter of
Mrs. Washington";  confronted by Gen. McClel-
lan's order of protection.

  (M.)   We were  going up to  head-quarters,
but refrained, on consideration,  and came back
to the  Spaulding, through army-wagons and pie-
pedlers, and rewarded the  three  Generals who
had come over to  meet us with much-needed 
Hospital Transports.       "J2>
towels, handkerchiefs, and cologne.  The river
above us to the burnt railroad-bridge is crowded
with steamboats and schooners.   Four gunboats
are our next-door neighbors.  Beyond the bridge,
round the corner,  and out of sight, winds the
Pamunkey, trees crowding down to  the brink
and dipping their feet in the water.  The Har-
bor-Master wanting the room in the evening, we
dropped  down  the stream and anchored  by a
feathery elm-tree.

   (A.)   The next  morning I saw the Medical
Director  at head-quarters.  He seems to be in
a worse boggle  than  ever as  to  the disposition
of his  sick.   There  are  a great  many  still at
Yorktown to be removed, but the work  is now
fairly systematized  there,  and the sick begin to
collect here  by hundreds, with  a prospect  of
thousands, and  no  thought of system in dispos-
ing of them, as far as I can see.   The Director
has ordered us to take on men at once, but our
bunks are not up, and I have promised  him the
Daniel Webster and Elm  City, which should  be
here to-morrow, and can take  six hundred.
B.  has  gone down   to  bring  up our boats
from Yorktown, with  all the stores that  can  be
spared from  our supply-ship.   I shall try my best
here to carry out the  plan I have always wished 
74        Hospital  Transports.
to have pursued, — namely, the establishment of
a large receiving hospital, from which those who
really need to be sent away may be deliberately
selected and transferred to proper vessels, prop-
erly  equipped.   During my visit  this  morning
to the  Medical  Director's  tent,  four  persons
reported their  arrival with  sick, and  were in-
formed that there were no accommodations for
them.   Tents had been received,  but there was
no detail  on hand to  pitch  them, and if they
were pitched, there were no beds to put in them.
Sickness was increasing rapidly, every case show-
ing the influence of malaria.  "The Medical Di-
rector said, apparently with justice, that he had
anticipated all this waste and confusion, and had
made ample provision against it, but that almost
none of his ordered supplies had reached him.
  By night the Daniel Webster and Elm City
had  come up from  Yorktown, and  I  went up
with  the  first,  securing with  some  difficulty  a
berth for her, and  began taking on the sick at
once, the Medical Director being present and
superintending  the embarkation.  He  seemed
to have  entirely lost sight  of the plan  about
determined  upon  the  day before, to  establish
the shore receiving hospital,  and was only anx-
ious  to get the  sick off his hands as rapidly as
possible, being appalled  by their  accumulation 
Hospital  Transports.       75
and the  entire absence of provision  for  them.
Just at this time B. got back from Yorktown,
bringing a cheering  account of the  hospitals
there, and at the same time  the  arrival  of large
medical  supplies  and hospital furniture was re-
ported, so that I had  little difficulty in bringing
about a return to the plan of yesterday.
  The substance  of  the  plan was this.   The
Elm  City, able to accommodate four hundred
patients, was  to  remain at White  House as  a
receiving hospital; the Spaulding  as a reserve
transport in case of a battle; on the occurrence
of a battle, the serious cases of sickness  to be
transferred to the  Spaulding, and the Elm City
used  as receiving hospital  for surgical  cases;
the Knickerbocker to remain as a surgical trans-
port.   If an  engagement should occur  at the
close of the week, the Spaulding would take to
sea three or four hundred sick, freeing the shore
hospitals to that  extent, making about  six hun-
dred  with what  the  Webster would  take; the
 Webster to return and take two hundred more
the next week;  the  Knickerbocker to take two
hundred and  fifty every twenty-four  hours to
Fortress Monroe ; thus relieving the  shore hos-
pitals to the extent of two thousand by the end
of the next week, which would probably be all
that was necessary. The  Webster and Spaulding, 
76        Hospital  Transports.
being low between decks, crowded with berths,
and  deficient in ventilation, were not suited  to
the reception of sick and wounded for any other
purpose than that of immediate transportation.

  (A.)  To relieve  myself of further responsi-
bility in case of another change of plan, I wrote
a memorandum of what we expected to be able
to do, and got the Director to sign his approval
of it.  He told me  yesterday that he meant to
have those who were  to  take ship  carefully
selected, and that he did not believe there were
half a dozen who ought to go from here.   I how-
ever saw being put on board the usual propor-
tion of sick-in-quarters men, and told him.  He
attributed it to disregard of his orders by volun-
teer surgeons, a difficulty for which he declared
that there was no  remedy short  of an act  of
Congress.  I found  Dr.----, his chief execu-
tive  officer, and got him to  go to the sick camp,
from which the men were  being  brought, when
he discovered, as he  afterwards told me, that the
surgeon in charge had heard a report that the
Sanitary Commission intended to have a receiv-
ing-ship  here,  and  on  his  own  responsibility
(assuming that the Webster was to be used  for
this  purpose) was sending men on board at ran-
dom, and  without reference  to  the  gravity of 
          Hospital Transports.        77

their cases, his object being merely to get room.
He also found that  ambulances coming in from
the advance had entered the train after it left
the hospital, and the men thus brought to the
shore were allowed to  go on board with those
brought from the hospital, as if assigned for sea
transportation  by the  surgeon in  charge.  I
begged him to go on board  and send off such
as he found of these interlopers, but he thought
it impracticable ;  and finally, instead of the half-
dozen proposed  by the Medical Director yester-
day, I found that he had passed  two hundred
and fifty on board.   Meantime the tents before
spoken of had been finally pitched on a large
field  near the White House.  They were  bare
of everything but shelter for the sick flocking in
from  the  different regiments.  A thousand  men
will probably be in them before to-morrow night.
All day  long to-day the surgeons  and young
men  of the Commission  have  been  working
over  there, and  we have  sent over bed-sacks,
straw, blankets, and supplies for several hundred.
After much sanitary poking, pushing, and oiling,
the tents  are some of them  floored, and  five
great  pig-kettles are started boiling, and  kept
always full of food  for the sick.   The  patients
will, however, greatly overbalance  the provision
made for them.   It is hard work to galvanize the 
78        Hospital  Transports.
proper authorities into action.  The post hospital
record certifies  now to sixteen hundred.  There
are five  surgeons and assistants, one steward, no
apothecary, and no nurses, except those selected
from among the patients.  Two wells have been
dug, but the water of neither has as yet been
fit for using.  Water is brought from the White
House well,  nearly a quarter of a mile distant,
and until  yesterday  the  whole supply  was
brought by hand.  It is now wagoned in casks.
We sent up three casks of ice from the  Webster's
stock, which was found of  great value.   The
greater  part  of the men are  not very ill,  and,
with nice  nourishment,  comfortable  rest,  and
good nursing, would be got ready to join their
regiments in a week  or two ; but this  is just
what they are not likely to have.
   The weather is growing excessively hot, and
the  army is pushing  forward in a  malarious
country in the face of the enemy.  We have re-
ceived a few wounded  men  from the skirmishes
of yesterday.  There  is  obviously great danger
that we shall be altogether  overwhelmed  with
sick and wounded in a few days.  If the recom-
mendation of my telegram of Sunday is adopted
by the Surgeon-General, and a complete hospital
for six  thousand sent here  from Washington,
there will be reasonable provision for what is to 
Hospital Transports.        79
be  expected;  otherwise it is dreadful to think
of it.  There is no  doubt  that we might take
care of a few hundred on our boats, — probably
save the  lives of some  of them ;  but consider-
ing what a week, or, for that matter, a day, may
bring forth, I think it right to throw the authori-
ties  still on their resources as much as we can,
and, if possible,  force  them to  enlarge their
shore accommodations.....Nor, when ready,
shall I be inclined to hasten the removal of  the
sick.   I shall  do my best  to avoid taking any
but serious cases.  It is plain  that the facilities
so far offered in  this respect have been abused,
and that serious  evils have come of  it.   Those
responsible for the  care of the sick here — I
mean  the  military  administrative  as well  as
medical officers — have made the presence of  the
transports near them an excuse  for neglecting
all  proper local provision,  and evidently have
the idea that, in hurrying patients  on board ves-
sels, they relieve themselves of responsibility.*
I saw this  danger from the first,  and have (I

  * The reader must constantly remember that the Com-
mission did not supply vessels, but  merely furnished a few
vessels already held by government with proper hospital
arrangements, and that these were at the  command of the
medical authorities of the army, the Commission being
responsible only for their internal administration. 
80       Hospital  Transports.

wish the Surgeon-General and our friends to be
sure of this) constantly done  all that I could to
counteract it, not only by verbal protest, but by
a habit of action which  I know that B. and
other friends  here, who  have not had  the duty
of looking at the matter as comprehensively as
I have, have not  been  able always to regard as
justifiable......
  But this is not all. Of this hundred thousand
men, I suppose not ten thousand were ever en-
tirely without a mother's, a sister's, or a wife's do-
mestic care before.  They  are wonderfully like
school-boys.  Then this is really the  first experi-
ence of  nearly all our officers (who  are their
schoolmasters and housekeepers)  in  active cam-
paigning.  They  are learning to take care of
their men  as a  matter of self-interest.   The
men need to learn to make themselves content
— of contented  habit — away from home, to
understand that  this  is in the bargain.  It is
obvious from the  remarks  we hear,  that the ru-
mor that sick men are to be sent home has a
disturbing influence upon the education of the
army in both these respects......
  The Knickerbocker has arrived while I have
been writing; thus I have all the elements of my
plan approved by the Medical Director on Mon-
day.  But the question still troubles me greatly, 
Hospital  Transports.        81
    If they should have several hundred more  pa-
e   tients on shore than they have tents or beds  for,
    and among them all several hundreds  seriously
    ill, such  as would properly be  sent North, shall
    I break  up my reserve, and have  no provision
    for the   avalanche  of  suffering  which  a great
    battle before  Richmond would send down upon
    us 1  I am afraid  that  I stand alone in  my re-
    sistance  to the demands of the present.*
   As  it has been publicly  reported  that the
Commission removed forty thousand men from
the Peninsula, it should be here stated that the
total number of soldiers, sick and wounded, con-
veyed  on the  vessels in charge  of the Commis-
sion,  during the  summer, was  eight thousand.
Except under positive orders, which it was not at
liberty to disregard, the Commission took no pa-
tient on board its vessels until the  opinion of a
medical officer was had that his wound or illness
was of such a character that he could not be fit
for duty within thirty days. This was a standing
order of the service, and  was strictly enforced.
   It is impossible  to give in  small  compass an
adequate idea of  the  difficulties  of the  duty
which  the  Commission had taken  upon itself;
  * The wisdom of this resistance was satisfactorily estab-
lished a few days later, as will be seen.
              6 
82        Hospital  Transports.
difficulties  which,  though  seeming  small in
themselves, were  terrible,  because the lives of
men frequently hung on their being overcome,
and that instantly.  To present a full picture, in
true and living colors, we must  be qualified to
throw over the whole the atmosphere of sympa-
thy and enthusiasm which animated every heart
in presence  of our  suffering soldiers.  On a
fixed  and recognized basis  we  can  do  almost
anything; grooves  are soon formed, in which
affairs ran smoothly.  But to build with infinite
toil on shifting sands ; to be called upon to fill
leaky cisterns and keep them full; to give our
best strength to labors,  the  results of which
often fade while we  work, — these things re-
quire a great and good cause, and a certainty of
being sustained.

   (A.)  All our vessels are,  from the nature of
engagement and intentions of those on board, in
a  constant state  of pre-organization and disor-
ganization.   Our relations to the crews (seamen,
firemen,  &c),  upon whom  we  are  dependent,
differ in every vessel.  Scarcely a  day passes
in which there is not a real mutiny among them,
in which we have no right  to interfere,  but
which it is necessary we should manage to con-
trol.  We have scarcely any established rights, 
Hospital Transports.       83
and are carrying on a very large business by the
favor  of a multitude of agents, whose favor in
each case hangs upon a separate string.  Every
hour  brings its  own difficulty, which  must be
met by itself......Except in the results ac-
complished, I  need not say that the whole duty
is  exceedingly unpleasant, from the amount of
dependence without rights,  and of command
without authority.
   No  two individuals have   the  same  under-
standing of our  duty or of our rights ; no  two
expect the same thing of us; no two look in
the same direction for the remedy of any abuse,
or the supply of any organic deficiency to which
attention  is called.  I must  caution you again
not to form theories of what we  are to do, and
expect us to do it.   We are liable to occurrences
every day which make  a new disposition of all
the forces necessary.  In fact, new and previously
unexpected  arrangements are made daily,  and
these  involve  a continual modification  of all
plans.   All  that can be done is to be as fully
prepared  as possible for whatever can  occur.
.....I must act a  little blindly, sometimes,
— at  all events, cannot always give you my rea-
sons readily for what I  determine upon.   Twice
I have come up  the river from hardly anything
more  than a crude  notion  that it  would be  pru- 
84       Hospital  Transports.
dent to be feeling that way, and would cost but
little ; and in each  case  it proved  to be what
---- calls " a grand good providence," leading
to a complete  change in  our  tactics, and to the
saving of many  lives......The  ladies are
all, in every way, far beyond  anything I could
have  been induced to  expect of them.   The
dressers  (two-years  medical students) are  gen-
erally ready for  whatever may be required, and
work heroically.  The male  nurses are of all
sorts.  The   convalescent  soldiers  have  been
the  most satisfactory, because there  was not
among them the slightest taint of the prevailing
sentiment of the volunteer nurses,  that they were
going upon  an  indiscriminate holiday scramble
of Good-Samaritanism.   There cannot be too
much care in  future that whoever  comes  here
on any business  comes, not to do such work as
he thinks himself fit for, but such as he will be
assigned  to, and under such authority as will be
assigned  him.   He  or she must come as dis-
tinctly under  an  obligation  of duty  in  this
respect as if under pay, and  must  expect to
submit to the  same discipline......But, in
truth, I have had comparatively little trouble of
this sort as yet, and in all respects am surprised
at the good sense and working qualities of com-
panies made up as ours have been. 
Hospital Transports.        85
   As an illustration of the  sudden changes of
arrangement  often found necessary at  a  mo-
ment's notice, a report is found, in which it is
stated that  on one occasion, after overcoming
great difficulties in preparing  the Spaulding for
the conveyance of the sick,—having procured a
party of  thirty persons,  including four  surgeons
and four ladies from New York,  to go on board
of her—on the  26th of May,  while taking sick
on board, an order was  received immediately to
remove all  the  Sanitary Commission's  people
and effects, and send her to  Fortress Monroe to
convey troops.  The  process  of  embarkation
was at once arrested ;  but by permission of
Colonel  Ingalls, the post commander, the re-
moval of those on board was  delayed  until an
answer could be received to the following tele-
gram, which was immediately despatched to the
Assistant Secretary of War, Mr. Tucker, then at
Fortress Monroe.
   (Telegram.)  "The  Spaulding was  assigned
to  the Sanitary Commission  after the  Ocean
Queen had been taken from them.  The Spauld-
ing was not well adapted to the duty, but was the
only vessel then  on York River which  I  would
accept.   There was no other, and there is none
now here in which I would  consent that a sick
man should be sent  outside.   The hospitals at 
86        Hospital Transports.
Washington and Alexandria are over-full, and I
suppose the sick must go outside if they are to
be taken  away.   There is here no hospital but
a few tents pitched by the  sick  themselves, in
which robust  men could  not spend  a night,
crowded as they are,  with  impunity.   There is
not the first step taken to provide for the wound-
ed in case a battle should occur.  We have been
two weeks trying, under great difficulties, to get
the Spaulding tolerably fitted for the  business ;
have  a hospital  corps of  thirty, sent for  her
from  New York ; one hundred  very sick  men
on board, one hundred more along-side ;  shall
we go on, or quit 1"
  After waiting  an hour,  the Harbor-master's
boat  came past, hailing  with  " Mr.  Tucker
says,  ' Go ahead,' sir!" — and the transshipment
of the sick to the Spaulding from the Elm City
was  recommenced.  The same night,  as it ap-
pears  from letters, just after dusk, the Harbor-
master's boat appeared again, and Captain  Saw-
telle, the Master of Transportation, hailed with —
  "I am  ordered to have the  Elm  City and
every other available vessel ready to leave  here,
with water and coal enough for eighteen hours'
steaming, by break of day.  You will oblige me
very much if you will get the Elm City ready
for me.  How much coal has she on board 1" 
Hospital Transports.        87
  " Not half enough for  eighteen hours'  steam-
ing ! "
  " That is bad.  I have to coal half a dozen
others to-night ; there '11 not be time for all."
  " Very well,  sir;  then we '11  manage it, by
clubbing that which is on the Knickerbocker and
the Elizabeth."
  " If you can do that I shall be very glad, for
the order is urgent."

  (B.)  We had just got through  with  a very
long and hard day's work loading the Spaulding,
and  were  sitting  at  supper  when this order
came; but there  was no  help  for  it, so "All
hands !" it was again for a hard night's work.
  All  the  hospital fittings and furnishings  of
the Elm  City,  including the bedding, commis-
sary and small  stores, medical stores, and what
not, required for the hospital treatment of four
hundred and  fifty sick  men  and  the  mainte-
nance  of their  attendants, had to be unshipped,
packed, and conveyed to  the  store-boats, and
ninety sick men, some of them very sick indeed,
— two  died during the night,—to be trans-
ferred  and put to bed again on the Spaulding
and Knickerbocker.   It was a very  dark night,
and most  of those  who were  engaged  in this
work were men of sedentary  occupations, — 
88       Hospital  Transports.
students  and clerks, — and women accustomed
to a quiet and refined domestic life, and, as I
said, all had just gone through with an extraor-
dinarily fatiguing day's work.   Some few  broke
down before morning.  At the same time twenty
tons of coal were to be got on board the Elm
City from the Elizabeth and the Ktiickerbocker,
and wheeled to her deck-bunkers.   Then quar-
ters had to be found for her whole hospital com-
pany, as well  as provisions, on the other boats
of the fleet, and to accommodate this necessity
a general reorganization was found to be  neces-
sary.   This was our Sunday's night-work after
our Sunday's day-work.  It was all done,  every-
body in place, and, except those required to
watch the sick, asleep by four o'clock, and the
Spaulding (with 350  sick in bed) and the Elm
City  (stripped for  battle)  both reported  ready
to  sail with  the morning tide.

   One day  later, B.  writes : —
   " Here we  are at work again upon the Elm
City.   Sunday, we  spent all night in stripping
her, and now we have a day and night's work at
least before us in handling over again the very
same articles, refitting her for  hospital service.
It is an exercise of patience, but  it must be
done without  delay.  After we had got her all 
Hospital Transports.        89
ready for transporting  troops, a change in the
plans of government occurred, and on  applica-
tion she was again assigned to the Commission."

   (M.)   The  Spaulding  is  bunked in  every
hole  and comer,  and  is a  most  inconvenient
ship  for carrying sick men,  everything above
decks running to first-classing,  and everything
below to steerage.   The last hundred  patients
were put on board, to  relieve the  over-crowded
shore hospital, late last night.  Though these
night scenes on the hospital ships are part of our
daily living, a fresh eye would  find  them dra-
matic.   We are awakened in the dead  of night
by a sharp steam-whistle, and  soon after feel
ourselves clawed by the little tugs on either side
our  big ship, — and  at once  the  process  of
taking  on hundreds  of  men,  many of them
crazed with fever, begins.  There's the  bringing
of the stretchers up the side  ladder between the
two boats, the stopping at the head of it, where
the names and  home  addresses of all who can
speak are written  down,  and their  knapsacks
and  little  treasures numbered and  stacked; —
then the placing  of the  stretchers on the plat-
form, the  row of anxious faces above and be-
low  decks, the lantern held  over  the hold, the
word given to " Lower ! " the slow-moving ropes 
90       Hospital  Transports.
and pulleys, the arrival at the bottom, the turn-
ing down of the  anxious faces, the lifting out
of the  sick man, and the lifting him into his
bed ; — and then the sudden change from cold,
hunger, and friendlessness, to positive comfort
and satisfaction, winding up with his  invariable
verdict, — if he can speak, — " This is just like
home !"
   " Jimmy," eleven  years old, one of the strange
little city boys who are always drifting  about,
ran away from home last summer, after a dram,
finally  turning up on our  stem-wheeler as char-
boy, where  he recognized a friend among the
sick men,  and devoted himself to  him  in the
prettiest way.   His  runaway  fever  over,  he
longed for  his  mother; so we tucked him into
the Spaulding and sent him  home.   The aston-
ishing lack  of common sense among men strikes
us  very  forcibly......Those  who  came
down here have hearts, plenty of them, but not
more  than  a  head  to four, and  so they ran
round the wards, wondering  where the best tea
is, and the  ice-water,  which they are probably
looking at, at the time, and ask questions about
everything under  the  sun.

   (B.)   The Spaulding, being all in order, with
her sick men, corps  of nine surgeons, ladies, and 
Hospital Transports.        91
nurses,  was started  off, and the reserve force
went on board the Knickerbocker.

  (A.)  I  have  just  bought what  is left  of a
small cargo of ice, probably sixty tons, at twelve
dollars, sent here on speculation for sale to sut-
lers.  We  are now  fairly well supplied at  all
points, I think.

  (A.)  We began taking sick on the Elm City
this  afternoon.  I  telegraphed  you about the
crowded state of the  post  hospital.  We  had
fed this morning sixty men who had been turned
away from it on  the  ground that there  was  no
room.   I wrote to the surgeon  in charge about
this, and B. called on him with my note.  He
merely  said that he thought there could not
have been as many as sixty turned away !  These
sixty men we heard  of as  lying upon  the  rail-
road,  without  food,  and with no  one to  look
after them.  So  some of the ladies got at once
into the  stern-wheeler  Wissahickon, which  is
the Commission's carriage, and with provisions,
basins,  towels, soap, blankets,  etc.,  went up  to
the railroad-bridge, cooking  tea and spreading
bread  as  they  went.  After  twenty  minutes'
steaming,  the men were  found, put  on  freight-
cars,  and  pushed down to the landing,  fed, 
92        Hospital Transports.
washed, and  taken  on the tug to the Elm City.
Dr. Ware,  in  his hard-working  on  shore,  had
found fifteen  other  sick men, without food, and
miserable ; there being " no room "  for them in
the tent hospital.  He had  studied the neigh-
borhood extensively  for  shanties, found one,
and put his men into it.  The floor of the one
room up-stairs was six inches  deep in  beans,
and made a good bed for them, and in the morn-
ing the same  party  ran  up on the tug, cooking
breakfast for  them  as they ran, scrambling eggs
in a wash-basin over a spirit-lamp.

   (A.)   The army stmck its tents one night last
week, and  silently stole away up  the river. Bot-
tom Bridge is ours,  and no enemy met; the rail-
road is repaired  at White House, and trains will
be running to-morrow ;  barges, loaded with roll-
ing stock and cannon, have been passing us on
the river all day.
   The sick brought on board the Elm City this
afternoon had been  lying in a puddle, which
nearly covered them.  The water stood several
inches  deep in some of the tents.   These men
were selected by Dr. Ware, as the worst cases
out of sixteen hundred in the  shore  hospital.
(Several died  before they reached the mouth of
the river.)  Dr. Ware himself laid hold to put 
Hospital  Transports.        93
up tents to protect  men  before the storm, and
said that,he saw half a dozen tents yet  remain-
ing, not put up at nightfall, though men were
constantly  arriving,  and were  left out  in  the
ambulances.
  If an engagement  occurs  this side of Rich-
mond, my opinion is that we  shall have all  the
horrors of Pittsburg  Landing in an  aggravated
form.   I have tried in vain to awaken some of
the Head-quarters officers  to  a  sense  of the
danger; but while they admit all I say,  they re-
gard it as  a part of war,  and say,  " After all,
there  never was a war in which the sick were as
well taken care of.  England does no better by
her wounded ;  true, they will suffer a good deal
for a time, but that is inevitable in  war," &c.
  What ought to be done 1  The  Surgeon-Gen-
eral cannot at once do our sea-transport business
as well as we.   By recruiting deficiencies at  each
trip, we can for the  present continue to employ
the Webster and the Spaulding  for this  purpose
advantageously.   We can  maintain the distribu-
tion of supplies.   We want also a depot at this
end  for  our sea-transports.   For the rest, the
Surgeon-General  can at  once  have it done  a"
great  deal  better than we, if he can place  two
steamboats under the Medical Director's orders,
in addition to  the  Commodore  and Vanderbilt, 
94       Hospital  Transports.
equip them,  or take them  equipped from us;
put one good authoritative surgeon on  board
each, with  two to four assistant surgeons, and
six to ten dressers and stewards, and twenty to
thirty privates  for nurses, and  require  certain
mles, to secure decent provision for the sick, to
be maintained on them.
   It is ludicrous to see the  enthusiasm of some
of the surgeons at the outset about details ; the
cleansing of  patients, numbering,  records  of
disease, pure water, &c, and  their entire for-
getfulness and inaptness to provide for  more
essential matters, — food, buckets, cups, vessels
of any  sort,  and  water  of any sort.   Doctors,
nurses,  and philosophers are much  easier to be
had, it  seems, than  men who would be able to
keep an oyster-cellar or a barber-shop with credit.
   Dr. T. says  that he is pestered by volunteer
surgeons, who leave their business at home to
have a short holiday professional excursion, and
who always expect to be put in the " imminent
deadly  breach"  at  once.  He has  not  tents,
horses,  forage, nor table-room for them.   Don't
let any more  surgeons  come  here, if you can
help it.  We try to treat them civilly, but all,
ashore and afloat, feel anything but civilly to a
man when he graciously proposes  to be enter-
tained and sent to the front as an honored guest, 
Hospital  Transports.        95
because, you understand, he is  not  one of your
" physicians," but a " surgeon,"  and not  at all
unwilling to take  an interesting gunshot case in
hand, though everybody else declines  it!  If
there is anything the regimental surgeons hate, it
is to let these magnanimous surgical pretenders
(it is of the pretenders I speak) get hold of their
pet cases.   For this reason  I  hope ----, who
has  a  name, will  assume  the  responsibility of
our surgical hospital. 
CHAPTER  V.
   (A.)  May 2,1st. — Sick men arriving Friday
night by the railroad could not be provided for
in the crowded field-hospital ashore, which still
remained of but one fifth the  capacity in tent-
room which I urged  it should be  made  three
weeks ago.  To make  more room,  on Saturday
morning, 31st, we were ordered to take off four
hundred upon  the  Elm City.   They were sent
to her by smaller steamboats,  and the last load,
which brought  the number up to four hundred
and fifty, arrived so late Saturday night that she
could not  leave till daylight  Sunday morning.
The orders were to deliver the  men at Yorktown
and return immediately.  I urged Dr.----, who
was the surgeon in charge, and the captain and
engineer to do their best,  and telegraphed to
have every preparation made at Yorktown.
  June  1st.—We had sent  out two parties to
look for straggling sick, and visit the hospitals in
the rear of the left wing.  One  of these returned
at noon, having been  by Cumberland to New
Kent  Court-House.  From Dr.----, who was 
Hospital  Transports.        97
in charge of the other,  I  received  a despatch
about sunset, stating that  his party were assisting
the surgeons in a field-hospital, to which wound-
ed were crowding from a  battle then in progress.
Soon after midnight this  party arrived on board,
having  come  from the  front  with  a train of
wounded, and we then had our  first authentic
information  of the  fierce battle  in  which our
whole  left wing had been engaged.
  On that  Sabbath day, after the  departure of
the Elm City, the wounded of the battle of Fair
Oaks began to arrive in large numbers by rail-
road.  After energetic  remonstrances, with the
responsible  medical officer, on the part of the
Commission, and a vain straggle to secure an ad-
herence to  some plan by which care and method
in their shipment could be expected,  a frightful
scene of confusion  and misery ensued  at  the
landing, in  the midst of which three government
boats and two of those  assigned to the Commis-
sion were loaded with wounded.   We omit the
painful  particulars, because  they  could not be
given without casting the  gravest censure where
censure would now be useless.*  To understand
  *  Some idea of the causes of the confusion at White
House at this time may be formed from a communication
              7 
98       Hospital Transports.
 the extracts which follow, it is only necessary to
 know, that so well were things managed on  the
 Elm  City (which, it will be remembered, left,
 loaded with sick,  in the morning), that she had
 proceeded  to Yorktown, discharged  her  sick,
 and returned with beds made,  reporting ready
 to receive wounded at White House  before sun-
 set the same day.

   (M.)  The Commission boats were all  here,
 and ready to remove the wounded  of the bat-
 tle of the 1 st  and  2d  of  June.   They  filled
 and left with their accustomed order  and promp-
 titude.   After  that,  other  boats,  detailed  by
 government  for hospital service, were brought
 up.   These boats were not in the control of the
 Commission.  There was no one specially ap-
 pointed  to take  charge  of them,  no one  to
 receive the wounded  at the station, no one to
 ship them properly, no  one to see that the boats
 were  supplied with proper  stores.  Of course
 the Commission came forward to do  all it could
 addressed by the representative of the  Commission to the
 Medical Director, of  which a copy is given in the Appen-
 dix  (C), together with a memorandum of  arrangements
 suggested subsequently, to provide against its recurrence.
 The officer who seems to have been most palpably at fault
at White House has  since been publicly disgraced for a
similar offence. 
Hospital Transports.        99
at a moment's notice,  but it had no  power;
only the right of charity.  It could neither  con-
trol nor check the fearful confusion that  ensued,
as train after train came in, and  the wounded
were brought and thrust upon the various boats.
But it did nobly what it could.   Night and day
its members worked, not, you must  remember,
in its  own  well-organized service,  but in the
hard duty of making the  best  of a  bad case.
Not  the smallest preparation was found, in  at
least three  of the boats, for  the common  food
of the men.  As  for  sick-food,  stimulants,
drinks,  &c, such  things  scarcely  exist in the
medical mind of the army, and there was not
even a pail or a  cup  to distribute  food, had
there been  any.

  (N.)  June $th.....We had  been helping
the ladies  on the Elm City all night, had returned
to our  quarters, and just washed  and dressed,
when Captain----came  on board, to say that
several hundred wounded men were lying at the
landing, — that the Daniel Webster  No. 2 had
been filled,  and the  surplus was being sent on
board the  Vanderbilt, — that the confusion was
terrible; there were  no stores on  board either
vessel.   Of course the best in our power had  to
be done.   Our supply-boat Elizabeth came up. 
ioo      Hospital Transports.
We  begged Mr.----not to refrain from send-
ing  us because we had been up all  night; he
said that he would n't send us, but if, in view of
so much misery, we chose to offer our services to
the United States surgeon in charge, he thought
it would be merciful.   We went on board, and
such a scene as we entered and lived in for two
days I trust never to see again.  Men in  every
condition of  horror, shattered  and  shrieking,
were being brought in  on stretchers,  borne by
contrabands,  who  dumped  them anywhere,
banged the stretchers against pillars and posts,
and walked over  the men without  compassion.
There was no  one  to direct what ward or what
beds they were  to  go  into.   The  men  had
mostly been without food since Saturday, but
there was nothing on board  for them, and the
cook was only engaged to  cook for the ship,
and  not  for the hospital.
  The first  thing wounded men want is lemon-
ade  and  ice (with the  sick, stimulants are the
first  thing); after  that,  we give them tea and
bread.  Imagine a boat like the Bay State, filled
on every  deck, every berth, — and every square
inch of  room covered  with wounded men, —
even the  stairs and gangways and guards  filled
with those who are less  badly wounded, — and
then imagine fifty  well men, on  every kind of 
Hospital Transports.      101
errand,  hurried and impatient, rushing to  and
fro over them, every touch bringing agony to the
poor  fellows, — while  stretcher  after  stretcher
still  comes  along,  hoping  to find  an  empty
place ; and  then  imagine what it  was to keep
calm  ourselves, and make sure that  each man
on our  own boat, the Elm City, and  then on
this,  was properly refreshed and fed.   We got
through  about one o'clock at  night,  Mrs. ----
and Miss----having come off other duty, and
reinforced us.  We were  sitting for  a few mo-
ments resting and talking it over, and bitterly
asking why a government, so lavish and so per-
fect  in  its  other  departments, should  leave its
wounded almost literally  to take care of them-
selves, when a message came that one hundred
and fifty men were just arriving by the cars.  It
was raining in torrents, and both boats were full.
We went on shore again ; the same scene re-
peated.   The Kennebec was brought up, and the
one  hundred and  fifty men carried  across the
Daniel Webster No.  2 to her, with the exception
of some fearfully  wounded ones who could not
be touched  in the darkness and rain, and were,
therefore,  left in  the cars.   We gave refresh-
ments to all; a detail of young men from the
Spaulding coming  up in time  to assist, and the
officers  of  the  Sebago (gunboat), who had seen 
102       Hospital Transports.
how hard pressed we were in the  afternoon,
volunteering for the  night-watch.   Add  to this
sundry members of  Congress,  who,  if  they
talked much, at least worked  well.  We went
to bed at daylight with breakfast on our minds.
At half past six we were all on board the  Web-
ster No.  2,  and the breakfast of  six hundred
men was got through with before our own.

   (A lady on the Knickerbocker?)   Sunday. —
" Three hundred wounded to come on board !"
I wish you  could see the three hundred white
beds, with a clean shut and drawers  laid ready
for each man......They began to bring them
in about  noon.   Many of them were shockingly
hurt; but the men were proud of their wounds,
and  one of them, an artist, private of a  New
York regiment,  was  thankful that  he had only
lost a leg, — " so glad it was n't his arm !" We
went directly at work washing them, doing what
we could, too,  at dressing wounds which had
been hastily  bandaged on  the battle-field thirty-
six hours before.  Men very patient and grateful
always.

   (A.) Sunday Night. — The Knickerbocker'had,
by estimate,  three hundred and fifty on board.
The night being fine, many were disposed of  on 
         Hospital  Transports.       103

the outer decks, and before  I  left, at eleven
o'clock, nearly all had  been washed, dressed, and
put to bed decently, and were as  comfortable as
circumstances would admit of our making them.
All had received needed nourishment, and such
surgical and  medical  attention as  was  immedi-
ately demanded.  Leaving the Knickerbocker in
this satisfactory condition, I  came back in  a
small boat, at midnight, to the landing, where I
found  that the Elm City already had five hun-
dred wounded on board.  I ordered her to ran
down and anchor near the Knickerbocker.  There
had been a special order in her case from the
Medical  Director to go to Washington.  (I judge
that this  was given under the misapprehension
that she  had failed to go to Yorktown, and had
her sick  still on board.)   She was unable to go
at  once  for  want of  coal, which could not be
furnished her till the evening of  the next day
(Monday).   This  finished  the  Commission's
boats  for  the present.   The State of  Maine
had been ordered to the landing by the Har-
bor-master,   and the  wounded  remaining  on
shore, excluded from the Elm City, were flock-
ing on board  of her.  Our  ladies on the Elm
 City sent them some  food, and we put on board
from our supply-boat  bedding and various stores,
of which there was evident need, without wait- 
104      Hospital Transports.
ing to  be asked, and without finding any one to
receive them, the surgeons being fully engrossed
in performing operations of pressing necessity.
   The battle had been renewed in the morning
of this day (Sunday), and we had sent a relief
party,  composed of medical students  and male
nurses, with supplies  of stimulants, lint, etc., to
the  battle-field  hospitals.   A  portion  of  this
party  returned about  midnight, with  another
large train  of wounded.  All  our force  that
could  possibly be withdrawn from duty on  the
boats was immediately employed in distributing
drink,  and in carrying  the  wounded from  the
railroad  to the boat.   Some men died on  the
cars.   I  made another visit to the Knickerbocker
in the morning,  and  on my return (Monday),
found  that  a train had just arrived, and  the
wounded men were walking in a throng across
the scow to the Webster No. 2, Government Hos-
pital, the only boat remaining at the landing.  I
knew that she was not  prepared for  them, and
sent for Dr. S., the representative of the Medical
Director.  Dr. S.  could not  be found.   I asked
for the medical officer in charge of the  Webster
No. 2.   The Captain  said there was  none, and
that he had no orders except to bring his boat
to the  landing.  I inquired  for  the surgeon  in
charge of the railroad train, but could  find none. 
Hospital Transports.      105
There was no one  in  charge  of the  wounded.
Meantime they were taken  out of the cars, and
assisted towards  the landing  by volunteer by-
standers,  until the  gang-planks of the  boat,
the landing-scow, and the adjoining river-banks
were crowded.  I finally concluded that Dr. S.
must  have intended them  to  go on board the
 Webster No. 2.   I  could find no  one in the
crowd who  professed to have received his or-
ders,  but, as many were nearly  fainting in the
sun, I advised the Captain  to let them come on
board.  He did so, and they hobbled on, till the
boat was crowded in all parts.   The Small was
outside  the  Webster  No. 2, and  our ladies ad-
ministered as far as possible to their relief.
Going on shore,  I  found still a great  number,
including the worst cases, lying on litters,  gasp-
ing in the fervid sun.  I do not describe such a
scene.  The worst  cases  I had brought  upon
the Small.  Two died  on  the  forward deck,
under the shade of the  awning,  within  half an
hour.   One  was  senseless when brought  on;
the other revived for a moment, while Mrs. G.
bathed his head with ice-water, just long enough
to whisper  the address of his  father,  and to
smile  gratefully, then passed away, holding her
hand.
  .....At the time of which  I am now writ- 
106      Hospital Transports.
ing (Monday  afternoon), wounded  men were
arriving by  every train, entirely unattended,  or
with at most a detail of two soldiers, two hun-
dred or more  of them  in a train.   They were
packed as closely as they  could be stowed  in
the common freight-cars, without beds, without
straw, at most with  a wisp  of  hay under their
heads.   Many of the lighter cases came on the
roof of the cars.  They arrived, dead and living
together, in the same close box, many with awful
wounds festering and  swarming with  maggots.
Recollect it was midsummer in Virginia, clear
and calm.   The stench was such as  to produce
vomiting with  some  of  our  strong men,  habitu-
ated to the duty of attending  the sick.  How
close they were packed, you may infer  from a
fact reported by my messenger to Dr. Tripler,
who, on his return from  Head-quarters, was pres-
ent at the loading of a car.  A  surgeon was told
that it  was not possible to get another man upon
the floor of  the  car.   " Then,"  said  he,  " these
three men must be  laid in across the others, for
they have got to be cleared out from here by this
train!"  This outrage was avoided, however.
   Need  I tell you that the women were always
ready to press into these places of horror, going
to them in  torrents  of  rain, groping their way
by dim lantern-light,  at all hours of night, carry- 
Hospital  Transports.       107
ing spirits and  ice-water; calling back  to  life
those in despair from utter exhaustion, or again
and again catching for mother or wife the  last
faint whispers of the dying 1
   One Dr.----was at  this time the only man
on the ground who claimed  to act as a medical
officer of the United States.  He was without
instructions and without authority, and, though
miraculously active,  could  do nothing toward
bringing  about  the  one thing wanted, orderly
responsibility, and while he was there,----, who
might otherwise have done something, would  not
interfere.  Dr. Ware, of our party, was at one time
the only other medical man on the ground. The
Spaulding, Dr.----in charge,  arrived Monday
night, but not in a condition to be made directly
useful, being laden with government stores, which
could not  at once be removed by  the quarter-
master.   Her physicians and students, however,
could never  have been more welcome.   I  put
one half her eager company at once at work on
the Webster No.  2.   Captain Sawtelle, at my re-
quest, pitched a hospital tent for the  ladies at
the river-bank by the railroad, behind which a
common camp-kitchen was established.  To  this
tent quantities of stores have now been con-
veyed, and soup and tea in camp-kettles  are
kept constantly  hot there.   Before this arrange- 
108      Hospital Transports.
ment was complete, and  until other stores ar-
rived, we were for a time very hard  put  to  it to
find food of any kind to meet the extraordinary
demand upon us.   Just as everything was about
giving out,  B. found a sutler, who told him that
he  had five hundred loaves of bread on board
of a boat which had just arrived at Cumberland,
but he had no way of getting it immediately up.
A conditional bargain was immediately struck,
and the  Elizabeth hastened off to  Cumberland
to bring up the bread.   When it arrived, to our
horror, it proved to be  so mouldy it could not
be used.   B., almost crying with disappointment,
started again to make a search through the ex-
hausted sutlers' stores of the post.   While doing
so, he came upon a heap of boxes and barrels
unopened and " unaccounted for."   " What's all
this ?"  " Sutlers' goods."  " Who owns them \"
" I do.   I am the sutler of the----New York,
up to the front.   I want to get  them up there,
but  I  can't get  transportation."   "What's in
here 1" said B. in great excitement.   " Mack'rel
in them  barrels."   "What's in the  boxes?"
" That's wine biscuit.   There's two barrels of
molasses and  a  barrel  of vinegar.   I 've  got
forty  barrels  of  soft  tack,  too."   "Where's
that 1"  " That's one of 'em " ; and B., hardly
waiting for leave,  seized a musket, and  jammed 
Hospital Transports.       109
a head  off.   It  was aerated bread,  and not a
speck of mould  upon it!   He bought the sut-
ler's whole  stock  on the spot, and in half an
hour the ladies  were dealing  out bread  spread
with molasses, and iced vinegar and water.....
  The  trains with wounded and sick arrive at
all hours of the  night; the  last one before day-
light, generally getting in between twelve and
one.  As soon as the whistle is heard, Dr. Ware
is  on hand,  (he has all the hard work  of this
kind to do,) and the ladies are ready in their
tent; blazing trench-fires, and kettles all of a row,
bright  lights and savory supplies, piles of fresh
bread and pots of coffee, — the tent door opened
wide, — the road  leading to  it from the cars
dotted  all  along the  side  with  little fires or
lighted  candles.   Then, the first procession of
slightly wounded, who stop  at the tent-door on
their way to the boat, and get cups of hot coffee
with as much milk  (condensed) as they want,
followed by the slow-moving line of bearers and
stretchers, halted by  our Zouave, while the poor
fellows  on  them have brandy, or wine, or iced
lemonade given them.  It makes but a minute's
delay to pour something down their throats, and
put oranges in their hands, and saves them from
exhaustion  and  thirst before, in  the confusion
which  reigns on most of the crowded govern- 
no      Hospital Transports.
ment transports, food  can  be  served  them.
When the worst cases have been sent on board,
those which are  to go to the shore hospital the
next day are put into the twenty Sibley tents,
pitched for the Commission, along the railroad,
and  our detail of five men start, each with his
own pail of hot coffee or hot milk, and crackers
and  soft bread, with lemonade and ice-water,
and  feed them from tent to tent, a hundred  men
every night; sometimes one hundred  and  fifty
are thus taken care  of, for whom  no provision
has  been  made by government.   Dr. Ware sees
them all,  and  knows  that  they have blankets
attendants, stimulants, &c. for the night.  When
the  morning comes, ambulances are  generally
sent  for  them from  the shore  hospital, but
occasionally they are left on the Commission's
hands for  three days at  a time.   They would
fare  badly but for the sleepless devotion of Dr.
Ware, who, night after night, works among them,
often not  leaving them till two or three o'clock
in the morning.  The ladies from the Webster,
and  other Commission boats, visit the shore hos-
pital between  their  voyages,  and  carry  to the
sick properly prepared soups and  gruels.
  June 2,d.  I cannot disentangle now the events
of the  last few days, nor have  I  a very exact
idea of the numbers we  have taken care  of. 
Hospital Transports.       111
We put two hundred and fifty on  Webster No. i
on  Monday, among  them General Devens and
Colonel Briggs of  Massachusetts, and, fearing
that all intermediate  hospitals would be full, and
the weather continuing very hot, sent her, in the
absence of orders, to  Boston.  The same day
the Vanderbilt and Knickerbocker were filled, and
to-day the  Spaulding.  Between  two and  three
thousand wounded  have  been  sent  here this
week,  and at least  nine  tenths  of them have
been  fed  and  cared for, as  long  as  they re-
mained, exclusively by the Commission.

   (M.) Generally the government hospital boats
are ready  and glad to  accept  our assistance,
but now and then  one  will stand  off in the
stream " all ready," needing  no help, till finally,
and when the  sick are coming on board, at the
last moment, not a pound of bread  or ounce of
meat will be found  ready for them.   The  men
are expected to bring rations for a day or so, in
their  haversacks, haversacks  meanwhile being
lost at the front,  and  men  being too badly
hurt to think of any such provision......
This is where the Commission  comes in, and
kettles of  soup  and tea, with fresh  soft bread,
gruel,  and  stimulants, are sent to  all these boats
from the tent kitchen, and  with  them go  cups 
112      Hospital Transports.
and spoons, and attendants to distribute the food.
Many hundreds of men have been helped in this
way, who, without such  a  provision,  would, to
say the least, have greatly suffered.   Two days
ago there was a hospital transport near us, " all
ready," according to their own account, and after
the wounded men came on board, before the first
surgical case could be attended to, they had to
rush over to our boat for  lint, bandages, rags,
pins, towels, and stimulants.  One man had been
without the slightest nourishment all day until an
hour  before his shoulder was taken off;  then,
when it was too  late, the surgeon hurried over
to ask us to take him beef-tea and egg-nog, and
we crossed the coal-barges  and administered it;
all this after the Doctor had himself told me
that morning that they needed no help.  It is
just the  same with  lint  and bandages, sponges
and splints, all which the Commission supplies
freely.  There was another boat near us with
a good staff and plenty of assistants, and every-
thing looking  so  fair that we  supposed it all
right, particularly  as we were assured that she
had been "preparing"  for  some  weeks, and
had "all that was necessary." All day last Sun-
day they were putting men  on board, selecting
four hundred from  the  five hundred sick and
wounded who  came  down on  Friday  to  the 
Hospital  Transports.       113
post hospital, and who were all received on ar-
rival and taken  care of by  Dr. Ware  and his
assistants.  When they had been put on board,
and wanted food at the moment,  it was  not
ready, — plenty of it in the rough, but  nothing
cooked in  anticipation ;  and at six  o'clock  in
the evening, as we were crossing  the boat from
the Small, which lay outside, we found the boat
full of very sick men, feverish  and  thirsty, and
calling  for water, and no help at  hand.   We
asked  for basins ; there were none  on board;
and to add to the rest, the forty " Sisters," who
had come  down unexpectedly, by  some one's
order,  had all  struck for  keys to  their  state-
rooms,  and sat  about on  their  large trunks,
forbidden to stir by the  Padre, who was in a
high state of ecclesiastical disgust on the deck
of  the  Knickerbocker, at not finding provision
made  for them, including a  chapel.   ---- la-
bored with the indignant old gentleman upon
the unreasonableness of expecting to find con-
fessionals,  &c. erected  on the battle-field,  but
to no  purpose.   There  sat the forty "  Sisters,"
clean and  peaceful,  with  their forty umbrellas
and their forty  baskets, fastened to their places
by  the  Padre's eye,  and not one  of them was
allowed  to  come over  and  help us.   So  our
boat's  company went to work, Dr. Ware getting
           8 
ii4      Hospital Transports.
for us all we needed from the Commission's sup-
plies, and before the boat left, the sickest men
were  washed and  fed;  large pails of beef-tea,
milk-punch, and arrow-root were made,  enough
to last  for the worst cases until they reached
Fortress Monroe,  and  at  half past  seven  we
climbed over the  guards  to the  deck of the
Small, and the boat cast off.  We wrote all the
names  and home-addresses of the sickest men,
who  might be speechless  on their arrival, and
fastened the papers into their pockets.   It was
hard to have the " Sisters,"  who would have been
 so faithful, and who were so much needed, shut
 away from the sick men by the etiquette of their
 confessor.   It is  unpleasant  to abuse  people
 for  inefficiency.   Possibly they have all that is
 necessary  on these government boats,  stowed
 away in boxes  somewhere, but at the  precise
 moment when it is needed no one knows any-
 thing about it.  Such boats either have no one
 at their head, or where there  is  one there are
 many, which is worse than none.
   We have, up  to this time, sent  away on the
 Commission's  boats, since Sunday, 1,770 pa-
 tients.   These, after having once been got upon
 beds, have been  all methodically and  tenderly
 cared  for.   The  difficulties to  be overcome  in
 accomplishing it were  enormous, and the great- 
Hospital  Transports.       115
est  of them of a nature which it would now be
ungrateful to describe.  We have  also distributed
to government boats and hospitals an immense
quantity  of clothing and hospital  stores.

  (A.)  Rustic Sidneys are so common we have
ceased to think of it.   " I guess  that next fel-
low wants it more 'n I do," — " Won't you jus'
go to that man over there first, if you please,
marm; I hearn him kind o' groan  jus' now;
must be  pretty bad  hurt, I guess : I ha'n't got
anythin' only a flesh-wound ! " You may always
hear such phrases  as these repeated  by one
after another, as the ladies are moving on their
first rounds.
  There is not the slightest appearance of a
conscious purpose to play the hero or the Spar-
tan. Groans, and even yells and shrieks, are not
always restrained, but complaint is  never uttered,
though the Irish, especially when not very severe-
ly wounded, are sometimes pathetically despond-
ent and  lachrymose, and the Frenchmen  look
unutterable things.  But gratitude and a spirit
of  patience never fails, a  cheerful  disposition
seldom......In this  republic of suffering,
individuals  do not  often become  very strongly
marked in one's  mind, but now and then one
does so  unaccountably.   I am haunted by the 
116      Hospital  Transports.
laughing eye of a brave  New Hampshire  man,
— laughing I am sure in agony, — whom I saw
on the----.   [This was  one of the worst of the
government transports, badly managed, hastily
loaded, and densely crowded.]  He was  lying
closely  packed among   some  badly  wounded
rebels, and in  giving them some little attention
I had passed  him by, because he looked as if
he wanted nothing, — so differently from the
others.   Afterwards returning that  way,  they
seemed to have all fallen  asleep ; but this man's
strange, cheerful eye met  mine as I was  careful-
ly stepping over his feet.  " Do you want any-
thing, my man 1"  " Well, now you  are there, I
don't care if you h'ist that blanket off my leg  a
piece; the heft on 't kind  o' irks my wound."
" Certainly," I said ; drawing it down, and know-
ing at once that he must  be  painfully wounded;
" is  there  nothing else  I  can  do for  you ]
would n't  you like  a cup  of water 1"   "If
you 've got some cool water handy, I should
be obliged to you.   I 've got some in  my can-
teen they give me  this  morning, but  it's got
warm."   I brought him some, as  soon  as  I
could.   "That tastes good,"  says he.  " Do you
know where  this boat's goin' 1"   " She  goes
first  to Fortress  Monroe;  whether they  will
send her on from there  to New York,  or take 
Hospital Transports.       117
you  ashore  there, I don't know.   It will be
decided when you get there."   " They must n't
keep me there.   I must go home."   " Where is
your home 1"   " It's a  place called Keene, up
in New Hampshire."  " What's the matter with
you 1"  " Got a ball through my thigh."  " Did
it touch the bone 1"  " Yes, broke  it snap off."
" Rather high up the thigh, is n't it ?"  " Just
about as high as it can be ; the doctors,  they
tell me, — well, first they told  me that't would
kill  me if  they  did n't  take  it off,  and  then
they told  me 't would kill me if they did take
it off, it's so high  up, they say they can't do it.
So, accordin'  to  their account,  I 've  got  to  go
anyhow.  That's what the doctors make out;
but  I '11 tell you what  I  think :  I think God
Almighty 's  got  something to say about  that.
If he  says   so,  well and good,  I  ha'n't  got
nothin'  to  say.   But I'd like to get back  to
Keene.   They must send me.   I know I '11
die  if they  don't.  They must."  " I 'm  afraid
it would hardly do to  send you out  to sea,  —
the  motion of  the  vessel—"  " O, I  a'n't a
bit  afraid of that, I don't mind the  hurt on 't.
The  old  doctor,  he was  n't  a goin' to  send
me; he said 't wan't no use, and  there was  n't
no  room.   But  after  they 'd  got  about load-
ed  up,  the young  doctor came along,  and I 
118      Hospital Transports.
 got  hold o'  him, and I told him they  must
 send me,  and finally he told  'em they  must
 get me in  somehow.   That  did  hurt, that 'are.
 Fact is, I fainted away when they put me  in, it
 hurt so.   I never felt anything like that.   But I
 tell  you, when I come to, and found I was rat-
 tlin' along down here, I did n't mind how much it
 hurt."   " Is it painful now 1"  " Well, when they
 step round here, and  when the engine goes, it's
 kinder  like a  jumping toothache,  down  there.
 Well, yes,  it does hurt pretty bad, but I  don't
 mind,  if they '11 only  let  me  go home.  I guess
 if they '11 let me go home, I can pull  through  it
 somehow ;  and if I don't, — that's  God Al-
 mighty's business, too; I a'n't consarned  about
 that."   And  he smiled again, that brave, man to
 man, knowing New  England smile.  I found
 that his wound had not been dressed in three
 days;  fortunately there was  time for me to get
 Ware to dress it before the boat left.

   (N.).....We lie here just outside  some
 other vessels at the  railroad wharf.  The one
 nearest the wharf  is  the Knickerbocker (one of
 our  own boats, a refreshing sight  to  sick and
 well).  On it we are placing the wounded as they
 now come in, somewhat slowly.*  Since last
  * This refers to the second loading of the Knicker-
bocker after the battle. 
Hospital Transports.      119
night  at  ten o'clock  there have been  one hun-
dred  and sixty-five  brought  on board.   This
nearly completes the  list of the wounded by the
Saturday and Sunday engagements,  excepting
some  two or three hundred who are  in a hos-
pital on  the extreme right, some  ten miles from
the railroad.  There have now been brought
in to the hospital boats about three  thousand
seven hundred  men, of whom six or eight hun-
dred were rebels.  It has been touching to hear
the expressions of surprise and  gratitude from
some of these young, fresh-looking Southerners,
as  they received  tender care from the hands
of those who were  ministering to them in their
sad  suffering.   Of  course  our own wounded
were  carried off the  field first, and this  left  the
others with wounds for some time not  dressed.

   (M.)  Among the  sick and  wounded  who
came on board last night were several Seces-
 sionists.  One whom  I  was  attending took my
 hand, with  tears in  his eyes  : " God  bless you,
 Miss."  Another, who was near death, — he  had
 the most  terrible  wound I  ever  saw,— said,
 gently: " God forgive  me,  honey,  if  it  was
 wrong.  I thought it was right, but I  don't  like
 it,  that's the truth.   I would rather  have died
 for the old flag, but —I thought  it  was right. 
120     Hospital  Transports.
There, let them bury that with me" (showing
me a bracelet of hair on his  arm).  " It's my
wife's, honey ; it is.  My watch  you may keep,
and if  ever the time should come when you can
send it to her, please do  so."

   (A.)   Naturally enough, the prisoners do not
" bear up "  as well  as  our own men.  There
is not only more  whimpering, but more fretful-
ness and bitterness of spirit, evinced chiefly in
want of regard one for another.

   (N.)   On board the Commission's boats we see
the unavoidable miseries of war, and none other.
So soon as the men come on board, all suffering
except that of illness ceases,  and we know and
see that every comfort  and  every  chance  for
recovery is freely supplied.    I have a long his-
tory to tell, one of these days, of the gratefulness
of the men......I often wish, — as I give a
comfort to some poor fellow, and see the sense
of rest it gives him, and hear the favorite speech,
" O, that's  good! it's  just  as  if mother  was
here," — that the man or woman who supplied
the means for the  comfort were  present to see
how blessed it is.   Believe me, you may all give
and work in the earnest  hope that you alleviate
suffering, but none of you realize what you do, 
Hospital  Transports.      121
— perhaps you can't even conceive of it unless
you could see  your gifts in use.   I often think
of the money and supplies which, by the good-
ness of others, passed  through my hands  be-
fore I left home.   How little I then knew their
value  !  How little I then imagined that each
article was to be a life-giving  comfort to some
one sufferer!
  The object of the Commission is not clearly
understood.   Those who admire its noble, wise
work  naturally feel the  wish  that  larger power
should be given  to it.   But  the object of  the
Commission itself is not this.   It seeks to bring
the government  to do  what the  government
should do for its sick and wounded.   Until that
object is accomplished,  the Commission stands
ready to throw itself into the breach, as it  did
during that dreadful battle-week, and  as it does,
more  or less, all  the time.  The thing it asks
for is  not  the gift of power, but that the govern-
ment  should come forward and take the work
away  from it......There are rumors that this
much-desired change will be effected.  I am  not
afraid to  say that no enterprise  ever deserved
better of the country than this  undertaken by
the Sanitary Commission.  Alive to the  true
state of things, ever aiming at the best thing to
be done, and striving to bring everything to bear 
122     Hospital  Transports.
upon that, it has already fulfilled a great work, —
let those who  have reaped its benefits say how
great and how indispensable.
  Since yesterday morning we have been lead-
ing a life which Mr.----feels to be one of such
utter discomfort that we all try to make the best
of it for his sake, though I will admit to you that
it is very wearing  to have no proper place to
eat, sit, or sleep.  No matter! our Wilson Small
will be back  soon,  and we  shall resume our
happy  home life on  the top  of the old stove.
We had luxury which did not please us on board
the----, and piggishness which pleased us still
less on board the----,  and yet we are the most
cheerful  set of people to be  found anywhere.
This morning, just as Mr.----was sitting with
his  head on his hand,  sighing over  the horrid
breakfast to which we ladies had been subject-
ed, some one  looked up  and spied the Daniel
Webster coming up.  Such vitality as seized us !
The good Webster! always perfect, prompt, and
true.   In a moment, Dr. Grymes and Captain
Bletham  were on board, and  did n't  we shake
hands  all  round!   I suppose you  know the
Webster had to  put into New York  in conse-
quence of a storm, which would  have perilled
the lives of many of the  sick if they had pursued
the voyage  to Boston. 
Hospital  Transports.      123
  I  often  feel  the  pleasantness  of  our (the
ladies') footing amongst all these people, official,
military,  naval, and medical.  They clearly re-
spect our work,  and rightly appreciate it;  they
strengthen our hands when they can, they make
no foolish  speeches,  but  are  direct  and sen-
sible  in their acts and words,  and when work
is over,  they do not feel  toward us as " women
with a mission,"  but  as ladies, to be with whom
is a grateful relaxation.  I must say our position
here is particularly proper and pleasant......
I suppose  from  eight  to ten thousand troops
have  arrived here  within a week.  At first,  I
scarcely  noticed their  coming.  I heard  their
gay bands, and the loud cheering of the men as
the transports rounded the last bend in the river,
and  came  in sight of the  landing,  but  such
sounds of the dreadful other side of war filled
my ears,  that, if I heard, I heeded not.  For the
last night or two, the arrivals by moonlight, with
the cheers and the gay music, have  been really
enlivening.   We see the dark side of  all.  You
must not,  however, gather  only gloomy ideas
from me.   I see the worst — short of the  actual
battle-field — that can be seen.  You must not
allow yourself to  think there  is no brightness
because I do not speak of it. 
124      Hospital Transports.
  (M.)  We have on two of our boats nine con-
traband women, from the Lee estate, — real Vir-
ginia  " darkies," and excellent  workers, — who
all " wish  on their souls and  bodies " that the
Rebels  could be " put  in a house together and
burned  up."   " Mary  Susan,"  the  blackest of
them, yielded at once to the allurements of free-
dom and  fashion, and  begged Mr. K. to  take a
little commission for her the next time he went
to Washington.   " I wants you  for to get me,
sar, if you please, a lawn dress and hoop-skirt,
sar."  The  women not working on our  boats
do the hospital washing for us in their cabins on
the Lee estate, and I  have been up to-day to
hurry them with the Knickerbocker's eleven hun-
dred  pieces.  The negro  quarters are  decent
and  comfortable little houses, with  a wide road
between them and the  bank which slopes to the
river.  Any number of little darkey babies are
rushing about, and tipping into  the wash-tubs,
and  in one cottage we  found two absurdly small
babies  taken care of  by  an antique bronze,
calling itself grandmother.  Babies had the mea-
sles, which  would n't  " come  out" on one  of
them.   So  she had laid him tenderly  in the
open  clay oven, and, with hot sage-tea and  an
unusually large brick put to his morsels of feet,
was  proceeding to develop  the  disease.   Two 
Hospital  Transports.      125
of the colored women and their husbands work
for us at the tent kitchen, close  by the shore,
and  entertain us by  their singing.   The  other
night Molly and Nellie collected all their friends
behind their tent  and commenced, in a sort of
monotonous  recitativo,  a condensed narrative
of the creation of the world ; one giving  out  a
line  and all the others joining in.  They went
straight  through  from Genesis to  Revelation,
following with a  confession  of sin and exhorta-
tion to do better, — till  suddenly  their  deep hu-
mility seemed to strike them as uncalled  for,
and they rose at once into the " assurance of the
saints," and each one instructed her neighbor at
the top  of her voice to
            " Go tell all the holy angels,
             I done, done all I ever can."
   Just as they came to a pause the train arrived;
midnight, as usual, and the work of feeding  and
caring for the sick began again.   Dr. Ware  was
busy  with his nightly work of seeing  that the
men were properly lifted from the platform cars
 and put into the Sibley tents ;  H. was " process-
 ing "  his  detail  with additional blankets  and
 quilts;  and Wagner, our Zouave, and his  five
 men,  were  going the rounds with  hot tea  and
 fresh  bread, while we were getting ready beef-
 tea and punch for the use of the  sickest through 
126       Hospital Transports.
the night.  By two o'clock we could  cross  the
gang-plank to the  Small again, feeling that all
the men were quiet and comfortable.
   We women constantly receive noble and  pa-
triotic letters from  the parents and friends of the
soldiers who have  died  here among us, one of
our duties being to write to the families of those
we have  had care of.   Mrs.----had sent  her
the other day, from  one of the----Regiment,
a little poem in such  delicate  acknowledgment
of kindness received that I must copy it: —

    " From old St. Paul till now,
     Of honorable women not a few
     Have left their golden ease in love to do
     The saintly work that Christlike hearts pursue.

    "And such an one art thou, — God's fair apostle,
     Bearing his love in war's horrific train;
     Thy blessed feet follow its ghastly pain,
     And misery, and death, without disdain.

    " To one borne from the sullen battle's roar,
     Dearer the greeting of thy gentle eyes,
     When he aweary, torn, and bleeding lies,
     Than all the glory that the victors prize.

    " When peace shall come, and homes shall smile again,
     A thousand soldier-hearts in Northern  climes
     Shall tell their little children, with their rhymes,
     Of the sweet saint who blessed the old war-times." 
CHAPTER  VI.
  (A.)  We were " stampeded" last night.  A
train arrived, and the  ladies were at the kitchen
ashore getting tea ready.   Dr. Ware went to the
cars, as  usual, and two  or three wounded men
were brought down on  litters, to be put on the
Elm City.  The doctor coming along with them
said, " These men were shot on the train,  just
before arriving here."  After they had been taken
on board,  M. said to  me,  " Do you  know they
are getting ready to take in  the  gang-plank,
and are firing  up on the Elm City ?"  I went
on board ;  could not  see  the captain ; the engi-
neer was having the  fires pushed,  and said the
orders  had come from  Colonel Ingalls, com-
mander of the post, to fire up and get away as
quickly as  possible.   All our boats had received
the same.  I went  out,  and with  difficulty got
the ladies  to go on board.   M., who had gone
up to  head-quarters  to  see  if there was  no
mistake, came  back with the message, " Drop
down below the gunboats, at once, and look out
to keep clear of vessels floating down on fire." 
128      Hospital Transports.
We of course  obeyed orders,  knowing  nothing
of the reasons for  them,  and  in half an hour
all  our boats  were  anchored a mile below, with
steam up.  As soon as this was accomplished, I
took a yawl,  and pulled  back to the  railroad
landing, where I found everything quiet,  Ware
and H. taking care of the sick who had been
left in  the tents.  Walking on to the post head-
quarters, I found all  the  camp-followers,  team-
sters, sutlers,  railroad and  barge  men,  organ-
izing in companies, and  arms and ammunition
serving to  them.  M., who had volunteered for
this duty, had  a company.   I found the Provost-
Marshal, who  told me that the enemy had sud-
denly appeared, apparently in considerable force,
about  three miles from here, simultaneously on
the river and  the railroad.  A wagon train had
been captured, two  or three schooners  burned,
the telegraph cut.   It was presumed that it was
an expedition  designed to play havoc with this
post,  where there  is  an  immense  amount  of
army supplies  of all kinds, with a force absurdly
inadequate to  its protection,—in fact, but a weak
regiment of infantry, and a weaker one of horse;
but some artillery was landing,  and  before day-
light they would have two capital batteries of
Napoleons  ready, and were gathering supports.
I got permission to send for the Small, which is 
          Hospital Transports.      129

short enough to be quickly handled at the land-
ing, and  to  put on her  the sickest of the men
who had been brought down during the day to
be sent to the post hospital, and who were still
in tents  near the landing,  as it  seemed to me
they would  suffer less disturbance afloat than
ashore in case the attack  was  made.  It  was
daybreak before  I  got  them at anchor  below
again.  At sunrise I was allowed  to bring all the
boats up ; but  as there was a  standing order
against the shipment of sick at this time, (in or-
der to reserve the transports for the wounded,)
we kept our patients on the Small for some days,
the post surgeon not being able to receive them.
The women  were  greatly annoyed and indignant
at being sent, with the boats, out  of harm's way.

  (N.)  We sat on deck.....watching the
fleet  of transports,  hospital-ships,  and supply-
boats hurrying after and  past us,  and the signal-
ing from gunboat to gunboat,   which seemed
done by a lantern  at the  end of  a long pole,
dashed up and down through the darkness.   It
was  midnight when  a messenger  came in the
yawl, with orders to bring the Small back  to the
railroad.  All  the way up  we worked, getting
ready for as many sick as could be taken on her.
Forty-five beds filled  every corner  of the boat,
              9 
130      Hospital  Transports.
and beef-tea, punch, and gruel were ready by the
time we reached the railroad-bridge.  Dr. Ware
and H, who had not ran away, had selected the
sickest  of the men in the tents, and had them all
ready to put on board, and with the help of the
Spaulding's nurses, whom we called for on the
way up, we took them on board that night, and
the  next day and the next we had them in our
little boat, — some  of  the sickest  men  I  ever
saw, — crazy and noisy, soaked, body and mind,
with swamp-poison, and  in  a sort  of  delirious
remembrance  of the  days  before the  fever
came, — days  of mortal  chill  and  hunger, —
screaming  for food, for  something "hot," for
"lucifer matches"  even.   Two  of  these  men
died on board, not able to give their names.
   The  fright about the raid having somewhat
subsided,   we  settled down  again, as we  sup-
posed, into our  daily routine of fitting up trans-
ports, and  of receiving and feeding the sick who
arrive on the trains.   All  sorts of  messages and
people  are constantly coming  to our tent; —
surgeons from the front,  to  have  requisitions
filled for lemons and onions,* beef-stock, and
  * As scorbutic symptoms had been reported in certain
regiments, the  Commission was sending small quantities
of fruit and vegetables by every returning hospital trans-
port. It afterwards sent whole cargoes, as will be seen
by reference  to Appendix D. 
Hospital  Transports.       131
 brandy; orderlies, for officers sick, and just  ar-
 rived  to  take the mail-boat,  needing refresh-
 ment ;  and  miscellaneous  crowds, who  have
 constantly to  be instructed  that we are not
 free  sutlers.    Captain ---- had kindly pro-
 vided a wall  tent for our use,  and Dr.  Ware,
 in thought for our comfort, has it  pitched close
 by our kitchen, and the sickest men arriving by
 train are put  into it, and we are able to care for
 them without hurrying across the  railroad track
 with  our  hot gruel.   Here  I found myself the
 other day, spoon-feeding, with a  napkin  under
 his chin, the  pleasant chaplain who came down
 on the Daniel Webster to join  his regiment on
 the first day  we started as a hospital company.
 His turn  had arrived, poor fellow, and he came
 back to us with a blister on each temple, and
 symptoms  of typhoid.  We had in the tent  at
 the same time five or  six officers, all sick.   Our
 little  comforts, fans, slippers, mosquito-netting,
 napkins, cologne, are  great comforts to the sick
 men, though  to be sure one  man did say to me
 to-day, when  I put a few drops  from my bottle,
 "Gegeniiber dem Julichs Platz,"  on his  handker-
 chief, " O my ! how bad that smells !  I don't
 mind it much, but  perhaps you  have spilt some
of that medicine you have in your bottle !" My
cologne of cologne! 
132      Hospital  Transports.
  The  St. Mark arrived  about this time,  a
splendid clipper East-Indiaman, and, after  her,
the Euterpe, both first-class new sailing vessels,
entirely reconstructed interiorly by the Commis-
sion, as model hospital-ships,  and  having their
own corps  of surgeons, dressers, &c.  Drawing
too much water to come up the Pamunkey, they
anchored at Yorktown, and the sick were taken
down on steamboats to  them, and they made
the  voyage round to  New  York  in tow  of
steamers.
  (A.)  June 2ph, 1862.  I  was  intending to
go down to the  St. Mark last night.  We  had
had some rumors the day before that  Stonewall
Jackson was making a  dash to get in our rear,
and take this post.  I did not mind them, but
about three o'clock," P. M., yesterday, Captain
S., the active executive here,  came to me, and
said,  privately :  " Get  away from  this as soon
as  you   can ; the  enemy  is here  again ;  our
pickets  are driven in,  and  I  think we shall be
obliged, within three hours, to burn everything
that can't be run down  the  river.   Give what
help you conveniently can to  the vessels on the
river as  you  go down, but don't stop this  side
of  Cumberland."   I  called  in our  men  and
women,  found that our  machinery, which  had
been repairing for two  days, was in such disor- 
Hospital Transports.      133
der  that it could only be  used at all by the
exertions of three men supplying the place of
certain fractured iron, with their arms; and then
but very slowly, and  with  great care, of course.
We were in no condition to help anybody  else.
I  pushed  off,  however, in quarter of an  hour,
taking the  Wissahickon and  Elizabeth in  com-
pany.  One or two boats started before  us, and
several immediately after.  As we passed down,
we found  the  gunboats with  their boarding-net-
tings up, and  all  ready for action, and the  skirt
of wood along the  shore  of the White House
grounds cut. away  to allow  a sweep  to  their
guns.  We left our consorts  at Cumberland to
take forage vessels in tow down, and went on
slowly to West Point, where we anchored.  Soon
after  noon  to-day  the Captain reported  his
machinery repaired, and we started to return to
White  House.   The river was  full  of  vessels
coming  down.  We  could  learn  nothing  from
them except that  everything  had been ordered
to " clear out." We  got here about sunset, and
found almost  everything gone, — a remarkably
orderly  and  successsful ^removal  of  a   vast
amount of stores.  Among what remained, whis-
key and hay were distributed, and everything
was ready for  firing.
  Stonewall Jackson had not come down upon 
134     Hospital Transports.
us as we had supposed, but our right wing had
been turned, and the enemy was hourly expect-
ed to be  pushing into White House.  The au-
thorities  at "Head-quarters"  were by no means
as much  surprised as we were  at it all.  Every
preparation had been quietly making for several
days for the arrival of the enemy, and the evac-
uation and repossession were effected in as  neat
and complete a manner as if the affair had been
arranged between the parties by the penny-post.
   The Knickerbocker, and other  of our boats,
just as they were, were used as retreats for rail-
road-men and straggling Northerners,  exclusive
of sutlers.  The government  boats,  with the
Commodore, Daniel  Webster,  &c,  were ordered
up, and the fifteen  hundred sick men from the
shore  hospital  put  on  board.   The  Sisters of
Charity,  who had been for a few days occupy-
ing the White  House, were distributed through
the different government craft, glad now to do
what they could ; and so, all in good order, the
hospital  ships, one  after another,  departed, the
 Wilson Small lingering as long as possible, till
the telegraph wires had been cut, and the enemy
announced  by  mounted  messenger  to be  at
"Tunstall's," worried constantly in his  advance
by Stoneman  with  his  cavalry,  till all should
have got safely off, when he  would  fall  back 
Hospital Transports.      135
towards Williamsburg, and the rebels would walk
into  our  deserted places.
  So we came away, — watching the moving
off of the last  transports and barges, and  of
the Canonicus, head-quarters' boat, with Colonel
Ingalls and Captain Sawtelle and General Casey
and  staff......But by  far the most inter-
esting incident  was the  spontaneous  movement
of the slaves, who, when it was known that the
Yankees  were running away, came flocking from
all the country about, bringing their  little mov-
ables, frying-pans and old hats and bundles, to
the river-side.  There was no more appearance
of  anxiety  or  excitement  among them than
among  the   soldiers  themselves.   Fortunately
there was plenty of deck-room for them on the
forage boats, one of which,  as we  passed it,
seemed filled with women only,  in their gayest
dresses and  brightest turbans, like  a whole load
of tulips for a horticultural show.    The black
smoke began  to  rise from  the burning stores
left  on shore, and now and then the  roar of the
battle came to  us, but they were quietly nursing
their children and singing hymns.  The day of
their deliverance had come,  and they accepted
this most wonderful change in absolute placidity. 
136      Hospital  Transports.
  All night we sat on the deck  of the Small,
slowly  moving  away,  watching the constantly
increasing cloud,  and the fire-flashes over  the
trees toward White House ; watching the fading
out of what had been  to  us, through  these
strange weeks, a sort of home where we had all
worked  together  and been happy, —  a place
which is sacred to some of us now, from its
intense,  living remembrances,  and for the hal-
lowing  of them all by the memory of one who
through months of death  and darkness  lived
and worked in self-abnegation, — lived in, and
for, the  sufferings  of others,  and finally gave
himself a  sacrifice for them. 
Appendix. 
 
APPENDIX   A.
                     See page 23.

   "The Commission is at this time actually distributing
daily,  of hospital supplies,  much more than the govern-
ment. "
   This refers to a temporary emergency alone, for, not-
withstanding the recognized necessity for volunteer aid,
it is believed that the  aggregate of all hospital supplies
voluntarily furnished by the people through  the Sanitary
Commission  and otherwise,  great and unparalleled as this
gratuitous supply is, is but about one tenth as much as is
furnished by government.   This fact ought to be kept in
mind,  as there  is a natural tendency on the part of those
who are rendering volunteer aid to exaggerate the relative
magnitude of their own labors, while the  permanent and
vastly  larger provisions of government are  underrated,
and a  habit of unjust censure indulged in, in speaking of
deficiencies which have to  be supplied.   The character
of this  censure generally indicates complete ignorance  of
the failures  of other governments when engaged in war,
and a  careless estimate of the immense labors involved,
and difficulties which invariably have to be overcome, in
providing for the constant necessities and  exigencies of a
great army.   It  is the opinion of those whose sympathies
with the suffering of the soldiers on the  one  hand, and
whose  careful study of facts on the  other, ought to give 
140
Appendix.
 weight to their judgments,  that never  before, in  the
 world's history, was an army so well cared for in all its
 departments, Quartermaster's, Commissary, and Medical,
 and that never before, when deficiencies were discovered,
 were  they, on an  average,  as speedily  remedied.  In
 every  great trial,  by war, of a nation, it has been found
 necessary to employ a very large number of men in posi-
 tions of the gravest responsibility,  for which they were not
 adapted by  nature or by training.  This  involves, of
 course, not only  incompetency for duties assumed, but
 necessarily opens  a door to continued neglect  of trusts,
 frauds, and peculations, which, under ordinary circumstan-
 ces, would seem to be of stupendous magnitude.  This is
 always a part of the cost of war, and, so far from being the
 peculiarity of a republican form of government, or of the
 present occasion,  in no modern war have  frauds  and in-
 efficiency of administrative service been anything like as
 slightly manifested  in the condition and efficiency, under
 all circumstances,  of  the troops in the field;  and this,
 whether we have  regard  to their food, clothing, equip-
 ments, transportation, or, finally, to the provision which has
 existed for the sick and wounded.   The sustained  average
 health, vigor, and good spirits of our several grand armies,
 in the great variety of circumstances in which they have been
 placed, tells of a virtue and a vital force in our people and
 in our institutions, which, rightly understood, should put to
 shame much customary cavilling of flippant critics.
   The writer of this note has recently travelled through a
 region larger than  the whole of England, which a year
 before  his  visit  was held  by one hundred and fifty thou-
 sand rebels in  arms, and with advantages for  defensive
warfare such as no  country of equal extent in Europe
possesses.  In  every mile of this  road he saw  traces of 
Appendix.               141
the desperate fanaticism of personal ambition and pride,
reckless of the  life  and property of others, with which
its defence had been conducted.   And beyond it he found
those who were re-establishing the supremacy of republi-
can law in this land.  He spent more than a week  with
them, and in that time he heard no complaint so frequent
or so bitter as  that against the whimperers and mischief-
makers they had left behind.   The health and  patience
of the men was a  matter of profound astonishment to
him.  That the officers were many of them exceedingly
unfit for  their responsibility cannot be denied.   In what
army are not many of the officers found to be so ?   But
even this was chiefly to be attributed to the very influence
which, in its worst form, was made the cloak of the con-
spiracy which brought  about the rebellion, and was com-
monly felt and said  to be so.  And thus the army, fighting
the  open,  fights also with the  insidious  enemies of the
country,  and when it returns both will  have been  con-
quered.  But if incompetency is  common among State-
appointed  officers, what evidence  does the  condition of
the army give of the action of  great talent,  integrity, in-
dustry,  and patriotic zeal, in the  manner in which it is
provided for!  Nowhere  did the  writer  fail to  find the
men clothed and fed as  never  were soldiers clothed  and
fed in the pettiest frontier war before.   He reached a
division in the extreme advance; bivouacked in a swamp,
its wounded picket-guardsmen were being brought in and
cared for,  methodically,  and well; not with  the refine-
ment of  a  civilized  home,  but  as  wounded soldiers sel-
dom have been in the history  of wars, under  the  most
favorable circumstances, before  in the world.   There was
nothing which,  thus situated, the surgeon could wish to
have with him,  which he  had not.  This division, since it 
142              Appendix.

came to the war, had marched over four thousand miles,
and fought six great battles, and now here in the swamp,
wading from hammock to hammock, the enemy in force
in the  next  really dry land, the men looked as well in
health, and  as  cheerful in spirits, as a company of har-
vesters at their nooning.   They were carefully examined.
Were they in want of clothing?  No.   Were they well
shod?  Yes.  Were  they  well fed?  They had full ra-
tions,  and could ask for nothing better.   What did they
want?   "To finish up the business they came  here for,
and go home."  Nothing else.  It was  actually so there
at the advanced post  in the swamp, and it was so — it is
so at  this  moment — wherever, on sea or ashore, the
seven hundred thousand men now employed by our gov-
ernment are scattered at  their work.  By what despotic
power  was a machine ever made that could have accom-
plished this, in two  years?
                                         F.  L. O. 
APPENDIX  B.
                   See page 42.

              REGULATIONS  FOR

FLOATING   HOSPITAL  SERVICE

     OF  THE  SANITARY COMMISSION,
         for  the  campaign in virginia.

                Terms of Service.
  The  Sanitary Commission, being itself under  military
authority, in order to meet its responsibilities, must require
of all persons who  engage in the hospital service of the
army under its direction, that they place themselves, for
the time being, entirely at its disposal.
  Those  who volunteer their services gratuitously being
supposed to do so fully and in good faith, no distinction
can be  known between  them and those who may be paid
for their services, it being understood that  these  services,
in both cases, once engaged or accepted, are to be claimed
equally of right by the Commission.

                  Administration.
   An agent of administration for the Commission will be
appointed for each  hospital vessel, who will  be  regarded
by those  on board as responsible for her fittings and sup-
plies.
                      Wards.
   Each vessel  will be divided into hospital wards, de- 
144               Appendix.
signed each for the accommodation of from fifty to one
hundred  and fifty patients.   In case of convalescents, a
larger number will be properly included in a ward.

                      Surgeons.
  A surgeon in charge will  be appointed to each vessel,
who will be responsible for the  reception, classification,
and  distribution of patients in the wards.   He will sign
any necessary official medical reports of the vessel.   Each
ward will be placed under the especial  charge of one sur-
geon, and,  if practicable, there will be a surgeon for each
ward.
              Assistants to  Surgeons.
  An  assistant to the surgeon (with the title  of Ward-
master) is to be constantly on duty in each ward.   Under
instructions from the surgeon of the ward, he will superin-
tend and be responsible for the  entire treatment of  the
patients of the ward, during the  hours in which he is ap-
pointed to  be on duty.

                       Nurses.
  Two or  more  nurses are to be constantly on duty in
each ward.   They will  perform any and all duties neces-
sary in the care of the  patients,  under instructions from
the surgeons received through the ward-masters.

                     Dispensary.
  A dispensary will be established  on each vessel, and
one  or more apothecaries will be placed in charge of it.
They will be responsible for the  medical stores,  and for
their  proper compounding  and  issue  upon requisitions
of the surgeons through the ward-masters. 
Appendix.              145
       HosprrAL Pantry and Linen Closet.

  These  will be in charge of ladies, who  will issue to
ward-masters or nurses, or themselves administer and dis-
pense, under proper control of the surgeons, special diet
and drink, and  articles of bed  and personal clothing for
the patients.
                     Watches.

  Ward-masters  and  nurses,  and all who have part in
duty of a constant  character, will be divided  into  two
watches, which will be on duty alternately, as follows : —

                                    A
                                    B  (dog watch.)
                                    A    "
                                    B
From 7 A. M. to i P. M.
      1 P. M. to 4 P. M.
      4 P. M. to 7 P. M.
      7 P. M. to 1 A. M.
1 A. M. to 7 A.
7 A. M. to 1 P.
M.
M.
(second day.)
Time of Meals.
One watch at  6.40 A. M.  (being then off duty.)
The other at  7    A. M.
One watch at 12.30 P. M.
The other at 1.15 P. M.
One watch at  6.40 P. M.
The other at  7    P. M.
       House Diet.

         BREAKFAST.

   To be ready afjA.M.

Bread (or Toast) with Butter.
       Coffee or Tea.
   10 
146               Appendix.
                       DINNER.
               To be ready ati.i$P.M.
      Beef  Soup  and Boiled Beef or Beef Stew.
               Boiled Rice or Hominy.
                  Bread or Crackers.
                         TEA.
                To be ready at 7 P. M.
        Bread or Toast or Crackers, with Butter.
                    Coffee or Tea.
  When practicable,  the  house diet will  be served  at
tables to such patients  as are able to come to them.  When
not practicable to arrange tables, such patients as may be
designated by the  surgeons will be divided into squads of
forty, and a  squad-master appointed to each, who will re-
ceive and distribute  to  the rest the prepared diet,  as
may be found most  convenient.   Patients not  able  to
leave their beds will not be included in these squads, but
house diet will be served to them by the nurses of  their
wards, if ordered by the surgeon.
                   Special  Diet.
  The  surgeons will  ascertain  from the  administrative
agent, or from the ladies, what articles of diet are availa-
ble on the vessel, and in their morning rounds direct  what
choice shall  be made from  these for the  diet of each pa-
tient, for whom the house diet would  not be suitable,
during  the  succeeding twenty-four hours.   The ward-
master on duty at the  hour for surgeons' morning  rounds
will, in regular order, be on duty at each meal-time during
the following twenty-four hours, and will consequently be
able to direct the entire diet of  each patient from verbal
instructions.    He  should, as soon as possible, notify the
proper person (no rule in  this respect being practicable for 
Appendix.               147
all vessels)  of the quantity of each article of special diet
which will  be required at each meal in his ward, and at
the proper time should (if necessary) send the  nurses for
it, and see it properly distributed.

                 Surgeons' Rounds.
  Surgeons' rounds  should commence at 9 A. M-, and
at 6 P. M.   The ward-master on  duty will closely attend
the surgeon,  and receive  his instructions as  he passes
through his ward.  The ward-master off  duty may also
attend the  surgeon at this time, for  the benefit of receiv-
ing instructions directly.  The surgeon may ifake this a
duty,  otherwise it will be optional.

                    All  Hands.
  In  receiving and discharging patients, or in any emer-
gency which makes it necessary, ward-masters and nurses
may be required to do duty in  their watches  off.  In
cleaning, fitting, or repairing the  vessel for hospital pur-
poses, they will  act under orders  of the administrative
agent
      Receiving and  Distributing Patients.
  Before patients are taken on board, the vessel should
be properly moored  or  placed, gangways or other means
of entrance arranged, and, if possible,  all duties  com-
pleted, for  the  time  being, in the performance of which
the crew of the vessel  are  required.  The surgeon, who
should have previously informed himself of the character
of the accommodations  for patients in all parts of each
ward,  should  detail a  sufficient  number  of guides  and
bearers to convey the patients, and of all necessary attend-
ants at the  gangway,  and within the  wards.  These should 
148
Appendix.
remove their boots, and each squad of bearers should be
instructed that all orders will be given them by their guide
alone,  and that no one else is to speak aloud while carry-
ing a patient, or passing through the wards.   All persons
not having  a specified  duty to perform  in receiving pa-
tients,  should be put where they will not be in the way or
disturb the patients, but where they can be readily called
on if the force engaged  is found insufficient
  As each patient is brought on board, he will be exam-
ined by the  surgeon in charge,  who will direct where he
shall be taken ;  at  the  same time notes will be taken, as
follows: —b
Number, Name, Company, Regiment, Residence, Remarks.
  The administrative agent  will, at the same time, cause
a corresponding number to be placed on  the effects of the
patient, which he  will take  care of, to be returned to the
patient on  his  leaving the vessel.  If practicable,  the
patients may, before being  taken  to their berths or cots,
be washed and supplied with clean clothing.
  It will not  usually be in the power of the surgeon in
charge to select patients for  his vessel.   It may, however,
be proper for him to protest against taking patients whose
illness is not of a sufficiently serious character to warrant
their withdrawal from the seat of war, or those for whose
cases there is less suitable provision on the vessel than in
the hospitals they are leaving, or those already in a dying
condition, whose end will have been accelerated or whose
suffering aggravated by their removal; also,  when going
to sea, against taking cases  of compound fracture of the
lower extremities.
            FRED.  LAW OLMSTED, GenH Secy.
  White House, Virginia, May 20, 1862. 
Appendix.              149
            SANITARY COMMISSION.

    Atlantic  Hospital  Transport Service.

     THE REGULATION OF DIET FOR PATIENTS.
   The simplest possible arrangements should be made for
the diet of  patients which will  be consistent with their
proper  treatment.
   At the outset, the cook may be ordered to prepare daily
for breakfast,  to be ready  at 7 A. M.,  ten  gallons of
tea and fifteen  loaves of bread in slices, with  butter, for
every hundred patients on board; for dinner, ten gallons
of beef-stew  made with vegetables, and fifteen loaves of
bread,  for every hundred patients on board; for tea, the
same as for breakfast.
   Orders for special diet should, as far as possible, be
confined to beef-tea, arrow-root or farina gruel, milk-por-
ridge, and milk-punch.
   Quantities of each of these articles, except the punch,
may be prepared by the cook once a day, and delivered
to the matron,  under whose care they should be warmed
in portions over spirit-lamps, as required at any time  dur-
ing the day or night.
   As a general rule, for each hundred patients on board,
there should be prepared, for twenty-four hours, —
               z\ gallons of beef-tea,
               4  gallons of gruel,
                \ gallon of milk-porridge.
   Where  the patients  are chiefly suffering from illness,
especially if from fevers, the above quantities will be
found larger than is necessaiy.  Where a large  proportion 
150               Appendix.
of them are severely  wounded,  they  may  need to be
slightly increased.
  By estimating the quantity of each article which will be
required for the twenty-four hours, as thus instructed, the
surgeon in charge will find it best to give his orders to the
cook for everything at once, one day in advance.
  If the quantities ordered prove too small, the deficiency
can  be made good by the  matron with crackers, tea,
canned meats, or  meat essence, &c., in the pantry;  it be-
ing best, if possible, to avoid any call upon the cook or
the ship's kitchen for this purpose.
  If the quantities prove too large for one day, the saving
can be used the next   Whether too large or too small, a
proper modification can be readily made in the  order to
the cook for the remainder of the trip.   The surgeon in
charge will in this way be relieved of the necessity of giv-
ing further consideration to this department of administra-
tion, which,  if not thus simplified, will be found to be a
source of much trouble and anxiety, greatly withdrawing
his attention  from surgical  and medical duties proper.
Associated surgeons should be careful to make no de-
mands for  diet, inconsistent with this arrangement
  Milk-punch is best made with cold water in the pantry.
This and all  other cold drinks can be made under the
superintendence of the  matron,  without any call upon
the  cook.   The  cook should, however,  be required to
keep a supply, as large as  convenient, of hot  water,
constantly ready to meet any  demand from a surgeon or
the matron. 
APPENDIX  C.
                    See page 97.

Copy of Letter to the Medical Director of the Army of the
                      Potomac.

                          White House, Va., June 3, 1862.
  My dear  Sir : —There must be  some frightful  mis-
understanding at the bottom of what  is occurring here, in
your department   It is  obvious  from the tenor of your
telegraphic communications to me, that you are altogether
wrongly informed about it  The Sanitary Commission,
let me say at once,  has not only  obeyed every order, no
matter  how  irregular or  disrespectful  the mode  of its
transmission, but has in good faith  endeavored to  carry
out, at every point it could reach,  what was judged to be
your intention, supplying the absence or neglect of other
agents on whom you appeared to depend, as it best could.
Till night before last it  made  itself subordinate to the
Surgeon-General of Pennsylvania, who assumed to act as
your aid, and, under positive orders given by him in your
name,  it  refrained  from  pursuing a plan previously ap-
proved by you, and by following which it is now obvious
that a much greater and safer transport of the wounded
would have occurred.  From Sunday night to the present
time, the Surgeon-General of Pennsylvania has not been
seen here; a thousand wounded men have, in the  mean 
15 2               Appendix.
time, arrived, and, as far as I am informed, not the slight-
est provision of any kind has been made for them under
order from you, or by any one whom you have regarded
as under your orders,  except the  Sanitary  Commission.
After waiting some hours yesterday morning for the Sur-
geon-General of Pennsylvania (who till then had been in
charge of the railroad  wharf) to act, finding men fainting
in the sun ashore, I assumed the responsibility of  taking
eighty of them upon our little  boat, and of having the
remainder  brought on the Daniel Webster No.  2.  After
doing so, I found one Dr. ----, very hard at work dress-
ing wounded, &c.  By advice of  Captain  Sawtelle  and
myself, he took  provisional medical charge, and  I then
telegraphed you,  advising  that Dr. ----  or  Dr. ----
should be  placed in  general charge, with  discretionary
powers.
   We were doing what we  could  with men and women
who could be spared from our boats, which were all full
of wounded, to provide for those on' the  Webster  and
ashore.  Before night,  the  Spaulding having arrived,  I
brought up fourteen fresh men and  the  ladies, with two
physicians, and  they have been  steadily  at work, and up
to this time (noon of Tuesday) operating, dressing, feed-
ing,  and, with the assistance of other volunteers, bringing
the wounded from the cars to the boat
  The Vanderbilt came more than a week ago, empty,  and
assigned to hospital service.   She came to the wharf that
had been built, at my request, for the use of the Sanitary
Commission, refused to leave at my request, and has occu-
pied it to our exclusion ever  since.  She has  had surgeons
and a large detail of soldiers on board, and I had been
informed that she was reserved for the transportation of
wounded, by your orders.  Neither those  on  board  of her 
Appendix.               153
nor thoK at the camp hospital appeared at the railroad,
or lent  any assistance, to my knowledge, to the care of
the wounded, until, under advice from Captain Sawtelle
and myself, Dr. ----, who had  received your telegram
disacknowledging him  as having any official position,  re-
quested the  surgeon in charge to  bring the Vanderbilt to
the railroad wharf.  Having our boats and the removal of
the wounded in ambulance trains to attend to, I did not
think it necessary to inquire if she were prepared for hos-
pital duty,  knowing that she had been a week idle, and
previously in hospital service ; but late this morning I was
informed that she had not any commissary, or even neces-
sary medical stores on board, and nothing whatever was
being prepared for the sustenance of the patients.
   We have provided bread and molasses, for the want of
anything else ready.   We have been also called upon for,
and are providing, lint and bandages, &c, &c.
   The  Elm City and Knickerbocker are  both off,  the
Spaulding is yet to discharge the commissary stores with
which she  came loaded, and there is not a boat here now
which can  carry wounded, nor is there a tent pitched for
them.
   I have no time to be more full and exact.   I have called
on Colonel Ingalls to establish a cooking arrangement on
shore, and  shall try to get beef for soup.
   I hear that more wounded are arriving.  God knows
what will be done with them.
   As the telegraph refuses to send  any  messages to you
to-day,  being fully occupied  with the General's business,
I  shall, if  possible, send  this to you this  evening by a
special messenger.
                 I am very faithfully, &c. 
154               Appendix.
         Copy of a Letter to the Surgeon-General.

                           Steamboat Wilson Small,
                      Off White House, Va., June 17, 1862.
  (A.)  My  dear General : —Your prompt action, of
which  I  am  notified  by your telegram of this  date, in
securing the shipment of large supplies of anti-scorbutics
to the Army of the  Potomac,  without waiting for the
Medical Director to assume the responsibility Of ordering
them, leads me  to hope that you  may think it right in
like manner  to interpose for the protection of  the army
from other evils, for which the remedies are equally obvi-
ous, and more readily attainable.
  I  therefore urge that  tarpaulings, old sails,  felt, or can-
vas in bolts, with means of putting it together, be sent
here immediately,  in quantities sufficient to form a shelter
for ten thousand wounded men.   The materials for extend-
ing and supporting it in the form of sheds can be found
in the woods immediately in the  rear of the line of opera-
tions, where the shelters should be placed.   I should pro-
pose that at  least one depot for wounded should in this
way be prepared for  each army corps.   Water should be
secured in its vicinity,  and means for providing large
quantities of  beef-tea or soup.
  I know that such an arrangement would  have saved
many hundred lives after the battle of Fair Oaks.  Nearly
all  of those  with  whom I  conversed, of the first three
thousand wounded men who received aid at this point
from  the Sanitary Commission, assured me that they
had  been without shelter from  sun or rain, and with-
out nourishment, from the time  they fell until they came
into  our hands.  This would be a period of  from one to 
Appendix.               155
four  days.  The men seemed sincere,  and their appear-
ance was such as to lead me to the conclusion that, in
many cases,  at least, they asserted no  more  than the
truth.
  If, without waiting for a demand from the Medical Di-
rector, or the convenience of the Quartermaster's staff of
this army, it would be in your power to order it, it seems
to me that a provision of the kind  I  have  indicated
should be made within a single week.   Everything neces-
sary should be sent here; canvas, nails,  tools, laborers,
kettles, beef, pans, spoons, cooks.   The  smallest service
for hospital purposes cannot be procured here now by the
most  energetic and  persistent surgeons  in less  than a
fortnight from the time  they  undertake  to secure it   I
have called three times a day, for ten days, for a detail of
ten men to police the landing-place of the hospital boats;
and though constantly promised me, and  though the need
for the work is acknowledged to be very great, I do not
yet succeed in getting them.


Memorandum of Arrangements proposed by the Secretary
  of the Commission, to prevent a recurrence of the confu-
  sion in the Transport Service which  occurred after the
  Battle of Fair Oaks.

  The following is a list of Transports understood to he
at present available for hospital service for the Army of
the Potomac: —

      Sea Steamers, fitted for long passages outside.

    S. R. Spaulding.        Daniel Webster No. I. 
156               Appendix.
Coast-Steamers,  which  must  make a  harbor on the ap-
  proach of bad weather, and which should not be sent be-
  yond Philadelphia, unless the necessity is urgent.
     Elm City,              Commodore,
     State of Maine,         Kennebeck,
     John Brooks,           Daniel Webster No. 2.

      Coast-Steamers which should not be run outside.
     Vanderbilt,             Louisiana,
     Whilldin,              Knickerbocker.

Sailing vessels adapted to be used as Stationary Hospitals,
                  or to be towed outside.
     St. Mark.              Euterpe.
   The aggregate capacity of these vessels is equal  to the
accommodation of four thousand (4,000) patients, and may
be increased to five thousand (5,000) if the necessity is
urgent.
   From the time a boat  leaves, until she can be prepared
to leave again,—
       will be, if she runs to  New York,   7 days,
          "    "    "   to  Philadelphia,  6 days,
          "    "    "   to  Washington,  4 days,
          "    "    "   to  Annapolis,    4 days,
          "    "    "   to  Baltimore,    4 days,
          "    "    "   to  Old Point,    2 days.
  If, in  the  event of   a  general  engagement, all  the
wounded sent from White House are  taken to the near-
est hospitals, until these are full, there  will be occupation
for but few  of  the boats; four of them,  for  instance,
would take seven hundred (700) a day to Fortress Monroe
continuously.  Having filled the nearer hospitals, how- 
Appendix.               157
ever, all the vessels would be insufficient to sustain a con-
tinuous  movement to  those  more  distant   Moreover,
most of the transports  are unfit to convey patients to the
most distant hospitals.  It is, therefore, necessary that the
business should be so arranged that transports may, from
the beginning, run both to the nearer and the more distant
hospitals,  and that the limited number of sea-going ves-
sels should be run only to the distant seaports.
  To accomplish this,  I suggest that  the different trans-
ports be formed into lines, as follows : —
  I. For  Virginia hospitals.
  (Fortress Monroe, Newport's News, Portsmouth, and
Point Lookout.)
  2. For  Maryland hospitals.
  (Washington, Alexandria, Annapolis, and Baltimore.)
  3. For  Pennsylvania hospitals.
  4. For  New York hospitals.
  As two of the sea-going vessels  cannot  come  up to
White House, and these,  to be used effectively,  must be
towed  by the other two,  the New York line would be
best employed in preventing too great an accumulation at
Fortress Monroe,—running only from Fortress Monroe
to New York.
  If it be assumed that seven hundred (700) will arrive
daily at White House,  they may be disposed of according
to the accompanying schedule with regularity, and with no
necessity for  crowding. 
158               Appendix.
Plan for the Disposition of Patients to be sent in Hospital
             Transports from White House.
Days.	Host pital	Men.	Md.	Va.	Penn.	N. Y.	
1st day	Va.	300		300			
<< a	Md.	400	400				1st day, 700
2d "	Penn.	400					
" "	Va.	300		600		600	2d " 1,400
3d ;;	Md.	400	800				
	Va.	300		300			3d " 2,100
4th "	Md.	400	1,200				
" "	Va.	300		J35		v	4th " 2,800
sa ;;	Md.	400	1,600				
	Va.	300		435			5th " 3,500
6th "	Md.	400	2,000				
" "	Va.	300		735		i,66S	6th " 4,200
7th "	Va. Penn.	300 400		1.035			7th " 4,900
8th "	Va.	300		735			
" "	Md.	400	2,400		800		8th " 5,600
9th "	Va.	300		i,°35			
" "	Md.	400	2,800				gth " 6,300
10th "	Va.	300		j^s			
" "	Md.	400	3,200				10th " 7,000
nth "	Va.	300		1,170		2,130	
" "	Md.	400	3,600				nth " 7,700
12th "	Va.	300		1,470			
" "	Md.	400	4,000				12th " 8,400
13th "	Va.	300		1,770			
" "	Md.	400	4,400				13th " 9,100
14th "	Penn.	400			1,200		
	Va.	300		2,070			14th " 9,800
15th "	Md.	400	4,800				
" "	Va.	300		2i37°			15th " 10,500
16th "	Md.	400	5,200			2>730	
T	Va. otal,	300		2,070			16th " 11,200
		11,200	5,300	2,070	1,200	2.730	11,200
  To carry out the foregoing plan,  the  Kennebeck and
Daniel Webster No.  2 should be  run exclusively to the
Virginia  hospitals, — one daily, each carrying three hun-
dred (300) patients at a trip.
  The Commodore,  Vanderbilt, State of Maine,  and Lou-
isiana should be run exclusively to the Maryland  hospitals, 
Appendix.               159
each carrying four hundred (400) patients at a trip, one
daily, the round trip being four days.
  The Elm City, being the best of the coast boats for out-
side work,  would  run to the nearest outside post, Phila-
delphia, once every six  days,  conveying four hundred
(400) at each trip.
  The John Brooks, the Whilldin, and  the Knickerbocker
would be surgical receiving hospitals, or reserve boats, to
take the place  of any detained by  grounding or other
accident
  The vessels of the New York line can  be diverted to
Philadelphia as often as it is thought desirable.
  After the  wounded  have  ceased coming  to  White
House,  the vessels of the New York line  can  be ran to
other more Northern and Eastern ports, until the nearer
hospitals are emptied.
  The above presumes that cases of light wounds and of
extremely severe wounds will not be allowed to come to
White House at all.
               Respectfully,
     (Signed,)            Fred. Law  Olmsted,
                                 Gen'I Sec'y San. Com. 
APPENDIX   D.
                     See page 130.

   Shortly  after the  battle of Fair Oaks,  the new and
vastly more provident,  liberal,  and  wisely  economical
policy introduced into the medical  service, with the ap-
pointment  of Dr.  Hammond as Surgeon-General, and  of
the new corps of Medical Inspectors,  began to be felt in
the army of the Potomac, — and although many of the
agents necessary to the perfect success of that policy were
unable at  once to accommodate their habits to the re-
quired change, the Commission, scrupulously  adhering to
its purpose to do nothing which the properly responsible
officials in any department evinced any readiness  to  do
without its assistance, had the satisfaction of seeing the
necessity for its special  service, in connection with the
hospital transports, grow gradually  smaller and smaller.
Under the  dry, taciturn,  and impenetrable manner, prom-
ising nothing, of the new Medical Director of the Army of
the Potomac, who, just after the battle of the Seven Days,
relieved a predecessor of precisely the opposite qualities,
was found to be concealed some influence by means  of
which whatever had  before been impossible began to be
thought possible, and to be tried for, after a few judicious
dismissals had been made ; and, after a few visits of influ-
ential friends to Governors and Senators in behalf of the
dismissed had resulted in nothing but an incomprehensible 
Appendix.               161
failure of their purpose, the Commission's occupation was
more than half gone with that army.  But where so many
agents are to be depended on, and such sudden new dispo-
sitions  and reorganizations  must be made, as after those
terrible seven days, it is impossible  that any demand of a
large army should always  be promptly and fully  met.
Anxiety for the well,  that they might be  saved  from
disease, soon  outweighed anxiety lest the sick should not
be tenderly cared for, and in more  than  one direction  an
opportunity was found  to supply temporary deficiencies,
which otherwise would have told severely upon the health
of many  thousand men.  During  the month after the
army reached and  intrenched itself on the James River,
the vessels managed by the Commission probably did a
better service in what they  brought to the army, than in
the comfort they secured to  the sick who were sent away
upon them.   The following extracts will  serve to give the
reader a more complete understanding of its  ruling spirit
and purpose, and show its continued action to the time of
the withdrawal of the  army of the  Potomac from the
Peninsula.

   (A.)  Norfolk, June 30,  1862.—We  were  driven
from White House Friday P. M.;  arrived at Old Point
yesterday.  Being unable to get coal there,  came  here
this evening.  Shall coal to-night and leave  at daybreak
for Harrison's Bar, on James River, where the gunboats
are said to be.  We hope to get further up, but are ad-
vised by General Dix that we cannot  safely attempt it at
present.

  (A.)   Off Berkeley, James River,  July  1,  1862.—
We felt our way up the  river slowly,  and  with some
                11 
162               Appendix.
difficulty,  having no pilot, and seeing no vessel  under
way after passing out of sight of Newport's  News until
we reached this point   Here there was a gunboat and
three small steam-transports,  each of which  afterwards
left, so that for a short time we were alone.  Transports
soon began to come up,  however, and to-night there are a
dozen or more about us.
   We  have Colonel----,  Colonel----, and a few other
wounded  officers on board.  They  were sent  to  us  by
General McClellan's own ambulance, half an hour after
we arrived.   The General had been here, and left only as
we were coming to  the wharf.   The  officers he saw here
converse with us freely,  and we have had officers on board
from most of the army corps, who have also talked, appar-
ently without  reserve, with us.  Yet reports and opinions
are so contradictory, that we are in singular uncertainty as
to what has happened and as to what we have to expect
   The officers and soldiers all show the influence of  in-
tense excitement; they acknowledge the gravest anxiety ;
they are  terribly fatigued, yet generally seem in  good
spirits.   They speak much of the bravery of the men.

   (A.)   Chesapeake Bay, July 4,  1862.—I  left our  an-
chorage  off Head-quarters of the Army of the Potomac,
where I wrote  you last,  about  four  o'clock  yesterday
afternoon, and  am running  to  Washington, by request
of the Medical Director, to  advise  the Surgeon-General
of the  sanitary condition of the  army, and to secure the
immediate supply,  as far  as possible, of its  most  urgent
surgical and medical wants.  As the rebels have put  out
the lights, and  we could get no pilot,  we were all night
feeling our way down  the river,  and shall not be able,
with all we can do, to get to Washington till late to-night 
Appendix.               163
I hope to get what is most  necessary, and leave on our
return before night to-morrow.  I telegraphed from Old
Point to have everything  advanced.
  I have  seen and conversed freely with many staff offi-
cers, and  been among the men, wounded and well — if
any can be called well, where all are feverish with seven
days and nights of fatigue and exhaustion and  starvation
and excitement.  One, a Major-General,  said, " I have
not been asleep, nor have I tasted food, in five days.  I
have only sustained myself with coffee and cigars."  As to
the men, the following is a fair sample of statements com-
monly made:  "My regiment has had,  for the last five
days before arriving here,  two days' rations;  what has
been eaten of this  has been uncooked ;  during that time
it has  made five hard marches,  and fought five battles ;
one third  of it has fallen in killed or wounded, and not
one man has been shot in the back.  One third of what
remains is now on picket duty in the woods, which the
enemy is  shelling;  the other lies yonder, in  the mud,
sleeping on its arms."  This  was during  the rain,  which
fell in such torrents day before yesterday.   Yesterday the
enemy was attacking again, and the whole army in the line
of battle up to the time we left
  The exultant confidence of the army in itself  is beyond
all verbal expression.  It has grown out of the experience
of its ability to resist and foil  and terribly punish des-
perate  assaults made upon it, as is  supposed with  forces
greatly superior in number.   It  says, proudly, "All that
men can do, we can do."   But there is also the conscious-
ness of a terrible strain upon its energies, of an unnatural
strength, and the reflection is frequent that there must be
a limit to every man's endurance.
  Rest and recuperation, — how are they to be had ?  The 
164              Appendix.
 first only by the relief of reinforcements ; the second only
 by good diet and favorable hygienic circumstances.  East-
 ern Virginia is all malarious, — the banks of James River
 notoriously so ; the  army is chiefly upon a  moderately
 elevated, slightly undulating table-land ; the river on the
 south side  ; swampy  ground at no great distance on the
 other sides.  It is open, airy, dry, — a healthful point,
 upon  the  whole,  as  any that could be  selected east of
 Richmond.   But the sun will lie exceedingly fierce upon
 it, and it is supposed the army has lost  two thirds  of its
 tents.  Probably  a majority  of  the men have  lost also
 their knapsacks and blankets.   Many were without caps
 or shoes.  The area  held is small, and  will be crowded.
 If the enemy  is active, as it would appear his policy to be,
 the officers will be too much occupied with the immediate
 military necessities of the position  to give much attention
 to police duties.  Even if they should be well disposed,
 the excessively fatigued and  exhausted  condition of the
 men, and  the necessity of reserving their strength from
 day to day for the struggle  with the  enemy, will forbid
 the constant labor which would be necessary to prevent a
 terrible accumulation of nuisances, until  at least reinforce-
 ments shall arrive  so large that no more  than the ordinary
 quotas will be required for guard and picket duty.  After
 such tension and trial, a rapid reduction of force must also
 occur from sickness,  and those not on  the  sick-list will
 suffer  from the lassitude of reaction  from  excitement
 Under these circumstances, all our experience shows that
 it  will be hardly possible to enforce requirements, the ob-
 servance of which  must be essential to a  healthy camp.
   Unless large reinforcements speedily  arrive, then, not
only must the  army feel that its heroism is unappreciated,
and the object for which it struggled is  to be lost by the 
Appendix.               165
neglect  of others, and thus become dejected, dispirited,
and morally resistless to the dangers of disease ; but it will
be physically impossible to establish such guards against
these dangers as are most obviously and directly called for.
  There is, in general, a large degree of confidence  that,
with the aid of the gunboats, which are  throwing shell on
the flanks at frequent intervals, we can  hold the position
till sufficient reinforcements come to place it beyond ques-
tion ;  but  no one speaks with entire  confidence, and the
nearer to the head the graver seems the apprehension, —
though with all there is that strange exultation — ready to
break out in  laughter,  like  a  crazy  man's.  There are
some  few who are utterly despondent  and fault-finding.
But there is less of this than ever before, and fewer strag-
glers and obvious cowards, — nothing like what was seen
after Pittsburg Landing.   Of what we saw after Bull Run
there  is not the slightest symptom.  In  short, we  have
then a real grand army, tried, enduring, heroic, — worth
all we can give to save it.

  (C.)  On Saturday we commenced the distribution ol
the cargo, and it has been going  steadily on since in  a
very gratifying manner, every one concerned throwing off
his coat, and working with a  will, these  intensely hot
days,  — surgeons,   quartermasters,  and  other officers,
always giving us every possible assistance in their eager-
ness to  get  this  agreeable  addition to their fare into the
camp-kettles as soon as possible.  The salted fish was  a
grand hit   It seems to have  a peculiar  attraction for
languid  appetites this hot weather.   We have met,  thus
far, with but one man inclined to throw any obstruction
in the  way of  the distribution, — a  brigade  commis-
sary, who seemed to think any unusual indulgence  of  a 
166               Appendix.
 soldier's whims of appetite must be demoralizing.  Word
 of our intention had gone through the brigade, however,
 before he interfered, and the eagerness of the  surgeons
 and of the soldiers took him very quickly out of the way
 without any efforts on our part.   Regimental  transporta-
 tion was quickly at the wharf, with the thanks and com-
 pliments  of the  colonels,  and each received its  quota.
   .....The promptness with which the  cargo —
 nearly a thousand barrels — would have been discharged,
 will be somewhat affected by the  inability of some of the
 regiments of Heintzelman's corps to send transportation,
 on account of  a movement  for which they are  ordered to
 stand  in  readiness  to-day......The sudden  orders
 given   yesterday  for  the  immediate  transportation of
 several thousand sick, have caused an influx  of sick to
 the landing, overrunning all  that  the exertions of the
 Medical Director could  do  to provide for them.....;
 This morning  we found five hundred and sixty convales-
 cents on board the transport Cahawba, with,  to use the
 language of the ----, "not a bit  of a thing aboard for
 'em to chaw upon."  As  the poor fellows, many of them
 just getting up from fever, had been, in most cases, finding
 their way from the camps to the landing on foot, during
 the night,  their want was urgent.  Fortunately,  we had
 a  good supply of the concentrated beef of  Martinez's
 preparation, and were not long in getting ready an  excel-
 lent breakfast for them.   It is in just such cases as this,
 where misery is massed, and where what is done tells not
 only for the relief  of misery, but  for the  strength of the
 army and the putting down of the rebellion, that we find
 the greatest satisfaction in stepping in with the gifts of the
 people.   Many of these men were in just the condition in
which a set-back would be likely  to lead to a relapse and 
                    Appendix.               167

lingering illness, and in which again, if they were well
cared for, they might be  built up rapidly, and soon be
sent back to their muskets.
  On account of the movements to-day, I shall ride out
to the camps this  afternoon, and make some change of
arrangements for the further distribution of the anti-scor-
butics.  The gunboats were playing very lively at sunrise,
a little way down the river.  This is as much as I should
say to-day, but you will hear of something that you hardly
expect by the next mail-boat
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