Wedded to War (Heroines Behind the Lines)

by Jocelyn Green

  Frederick Law Olmsted could feel a headache coming on. He was a naturalist at heart, a lover of green spaces and fresh air. Sitting at a desk all day behind towers of papers, in a city that smelled and felt like the swamp it was built upon, did not naturally appeal to him. But it was necessary.

  In the last ten days, he had inspected twenty of the volunteer camps around Washington, and he needed to make a report to the rest of the Sanitary Commission. The camps varied on several points, but he could make some generalities, at least.

  At the forefront of his mind was the most disagreeable: the sinks. His nose wrinkled at the unwelcome memory of the stench of human waste. Grasping the pen firmly in his hand, he began to write:

  In most cases, the sink or latrine, is merely a straight trench, some thirty feet long, unprovided with a pole or rail. The edges are filthy and the stench exceedingly offensive; the easy expedient of daily turning fresh earth into the trench being often neglected. In one case, men with diarrhea complained that they had been made sick to vomiting by the incomplete arrangement and the filthy condition of the sink. Often the sink is too near the camp. In many regiments the discipline is so lax that men avoid the use of the sinks, and the whole region is filthy and pestilential. From the ammoniacal odor frequently perceptible in the camps, it is obvious that the men are allowed to void their urine, during the night, at least, wherever convenient.

  Mr. Olmsted paused to press his fingers against his temple. How those men could endure to live like that was beyond him. But, he realized, most of them had been plowing fields only a few months ago, and relieving themselves wherever they needed to had become a habit that until now, had hurt no one. Others were city dwellers, but didn’t have indoor plumbing or properly functioning sewage systems there, either.

  He kept writing.

  Personal Cleanliness

  In but few cases are the soldiers obliged to regard any rules of personal cleanliness. Their clothing is shamefully dirty, and they are often lousy. Although access is easily had to running water, but few instances are known where any part of the force is daily marched, as apart of camp routine, to bathe. The clothing of the men, from top to toe, is almost daily saturated with sweat and packed with dust, and to all appearance, no attempt is generally made to remove this, even superficially.

  Clothing

  The dress of the majority is inappropriate, unbecoming, uncomfortable, and not easily kept in a condition consonant with health. It is generally much inferior in every desirable respect, to the clothing of the regulars, while it has cost more than theirs. A New York soldier has been seen going on duty in his drawers and overcoat, his body coat and pantaloons being quite worn to shreds.

  The Commission Secretary laid down his pen and gazed at the cufflinks at his wrists. How would he feel, both physically and psychologically, if he wore nothing but rags, and was still expected to march and drill and prepare for battle?

  “Mr. Olmsted?”

  He jerked his head up to see Charlotte Waverly smiling in front of him. “Miss Waverly, forgive me.” He rose and remained standing until she sat on a hard wooden chair opposite him.

  “I’m sorry, did I wake you?”

  “No, no. I was just thinking about the uniforms of our volunteer regiments. Most are of fine quality, but some of our New York regiments’ uniforms are falling apart, even though they were sewn for them expressly for military use not three months ago.”

  “Homemade ventilation?” Charlotte fanned herself.

  “Shoddy workmanship. Shameful. The men I talked to had to pay $19.50 of their own money for their uniforms, and they were the worst fitting garments I’d ever seen. Poorly cut, poorly sewn. I counted several different shades of blue and grey among them. Some of them didn’t have buttons, and some didn’t have buttonholes!”

  “How is that possible? Weren’t they ever inspected before they were delivered?”

  “They were, all the more shame. It’s a filthy rotten business deal, as rank as any camp latrine I’ve seen, you’ll pardon me for saying so. A trial is going on right now in New York City—apparently Brooks Brothers is to blame.”

  Charlotte’s eyes widened. “Brooks Brothers?”

  “Indeed. According to the testimony of a lieutenant colonel in the Twenty-Sixth, the garments were made of this.” He plucked a small scrap of material from the corner of the table, dropped it into his glass, and watched as it crumbled to pieces, turning the water a murky blue. “Shoddy. A phony fabric of glued-together sweepings, scraps of cloth, and lint. Looks like the real thing, and then it gets wet—either sweat or rain would do it—and it drops away in clumps. One fellow I met told me his uniform lasted all of a single week. Another said it ripped open upon putting it on for the first time. Scandalous!”

  Charlotte gasped and fairly leapt off her chair. “I tried to get that uniform contract for the House of Industry in Five Points, but the State Treasurer refused. Twelve thousand uniforms in three weeks, he demanded, and thought Brooks Brothers could do it! I knew it was impossible!”

  “Quite right.” Olmsted nodded.

  “Now here we are in this cramped little box of a room, trying to do good for our men and our country, without a dime of funding from the government.” Her voice grew louder. “And then there are people who are taking in money hand over fist by doing a disservice to those who are already sacrificing their lives for us?” She was fuming now.

  “Oh, people are getting rich in New York City, Miss Waverly, you can bet on it. They call themselves loyal Unionists, but all they care about is lining their pockets. Not much we can do about that, aside from calling attention to it.” He drummed his fingers on the report in front of him. “That’s all we can do about any of it. Identify the problems, make recommendations, and hope somebody in power will take it to heart and make some changes. The problems facing the army are much, much bigger than they care to realize. I fear that we ourselves are only seeing a small sliver of what needs to be reformed. But we can be sure of this much: if the army continues along like this for much longer, the Union will indeed dissolve like shoddy.”

  I HAVE SEEN SMALL white hands scrubbing floors, washing windows, and performing all menial offices. I have known women, delicately cared for at home, half fed in hospitals, hard worked day and night, and given, when sleep must be had, a wretched closet just large enough for a camp bed to stand in. I have known surgeons who purposely and ingeniously arranged these inconveniences with the avowed intention of driving away all women from the hospitals.

  These annoyances could not have been endured by the nurses but for the knowledge that they were pioneers, who were, if possible, to gain standing ground for others,—who must create the position they wished to occupy. This, and the infinite satisfaction of seeing from day to day sick and dying men comforted in their weary and dark hour, comforted as they never would have been but for these brave women, was enough to carry them through all and even more than they endured.

  —GEORGEANNA WOOLSEY, written in 1864

  Act Three

  WORKING HEARTILY

  Chapter Fifteen

  Washington City

  Sunday, July 21, 1861

  St. John’s Church was emptier than usual today, and the conspicuous gaps in the high-backed pews distracted Charlotte from the sermon. Outside, the steady sound of carriages, gigs, hacks, and wagons rolling by was like one continuous low roll of thunder, punctuated by riders’ laughter and song, and by champagne bottles clinking at their feet.

  The first great battle of the war appeared to be imminent at Manassas, Virginia, about twenty-five miles west of the capital, and Congressmen, thrill-seekers, and sightseers did not mind breaking the Sabbath to picnic on the scene.

  “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the Lord our God,” the pastor was saying, quoting from Psalm 20:7, and bobbing heads agreed. God was on their side, the Union boys would surely win the day. Alice let out a deep breath.

  Charlotte couldn’t
keep her mind from wandering to the fate of both her brother-in-law, Jacob, and dear Caleb. But they were in God’s hands, not hers, just like the outcome of the battle. And everyone expected the Union army to cinch around the Rebels and close in tight, until Richmond, the new capital of the Confederacy, was in the noose.

  After the service, stepping out into the blazing sun, General Winfield Scott, in his full dress uniform, shook hands of those faithful few who had not crossed the Potomac. “We shall have good news by morning,” he told them. “We are sure to beat the enemy.” And he left to take his afternoon nap.

  Ebbitt House, Washington City

  Monday, July 22, 1861

  The sun rose on July 22, but it did not shine. The morning dawned sullenly in a drizzle of rain, and with it came a knock on the door waking Charlotte from her slumber. A sharp rapping, incessant, urgent, demanding. Throwing her long flannel wrapper about her, she opened it just enough to see Mr. Knapp’s face, etched with news she did not want to hear.

  “Come quickly, you and your sister.” He was nearly breathless. “We have been defeated at Bull Run and the soldiers are coming back to us—twenty miles of marching, through the night, after two days of battle, and nothing to eat, nowhere to go.” His words spilled out all at once with no breath in between. “You must come immediately; the Commision is setting up tables on Pennsylvania Avenue and Fourteenth Street, for they are coming over the Long Bridge and the Chain Bridge and Aqueduct. They must have food; they are falling down in the streets. We are only seeing the first of them now, but who knows how many more are yet to come.”

  Shock numbed all physical sensation in Charlotte, but she managed to nod at Mr. Knapp’s retreating back as he hurried away. She did not feel the door under her hand as she closed it, or the cold brass knob of the kerosene lamp as she lit it, or the soft round shoulder of her sister as she shook it.

  “Alice, come,” she heard herself say. “Get dressed. The men are flying back to us. Hurry.”

  Picking up Maurice on their way out the door, they fled the hotel as if death itself was on their heels, when in reality death—or the possibility of it—was what they were running toward. This was not happening. They were supposed to defeat the Rebels at Bull Run and crush the Confederacy altogether. It was supposed to end the war. How could they have been defeated? The hope of a short war disintegrated just as the uniforms fell apart in the downpour.

  At a hastily assembled station on Pennsylvania Avenue, Olmsted and two white-haired women were already handing out chunks of soft bread. In the rain they stood, tears and rain mingling together on their faces, and Charlotte and Alice joined them. Nearby residents, hardly believing what their eyes were telling them, told their hands to work, and so provided a steady supply of food to the tables.

  “Water!” was all one soldier said as he lunged at the table. Charlotte brought a cup to his lips and he drank it as if his mouth were on fire. “We’ve walked forty-five miles in thirty-six hours,” he said weakly. “There was no water after the battle in Centreville, for the army drained its wells dry on the way to Bull Run. You’re going to have some very thirsty soldiers here, ma’am!”

  By six o’clock, the slow stomp and splash of soldiers’ retreating feet rose above the drumming of the rain. First at a trickle, then in a swelling stream, by noon the tide of returning soldiers was flooding the dark avenues of the Federal City. Smoldering fires glowed in the streets, made from boards the men wrenched from citizens fences to warm them.

  “Look at them,” Mr. Olmsted said to Charlotte. “Would you think them soldiers by looking at them now?” Muddy, smoke-stained, and unshaven, no two of them dressed exactly alike, some without caps, some without shoes, some without coats. Charlotte scanned the faces—some of them with black grins of cartridge powder sketched on them—for a glimpse of Jacob or Caleb. She wasn’t sure she would recognize either of them anymore.

  Occasionally an army ambulance would clatter by, either driven by a terrified hired civilian, or commandeered by a terrified fleeing soldier, but not one of them carried a single wounded man.

  Rumors rushed at anyone who would listen, crushing around them like an overpowering current.

  Seventeen thousand Union killed!

  They killed our wounded for sport!

  Entire regiments were cut to pieces!

  The Rebels will take the city by tomorrow morning!

  “Stay calm,” Mr. Olmsted said to Charlotte and Alice. They did not look up from their tasks, their vision blurred with tears and rain. They handed out bread and water as if their bodies were separate from their minds. Here is bread, here is water, said Charlotte’s mouth, but her heart was screaming, Where is Jacob? Where is Caleb? Where are the officers, where are the wounded, and where is the Grand Army of the Republic?

  “There must be some wounded finding their way into the hospitals.” Mr. Olmsted scanned the street up and down. “Go, take whatever you need from our stores. Take my carriage.”

  Slowly, the wheels turned through the crowded, muddy streets, until Charlotte, Alice, and Maurice could pick up boxes of hospital gowns, splints, bandages, and lint and carry them to the village of Georgetown, clinging to the outskirts of Washington like a smudge of axle grease on a hem.

  “This is a hospital?” Maurice asked as they lumbered up in front of the Union Hotel. “C’est une blague!”

  “Only in a manner of speaking,” said Charlotte. “Not every building should be made into a hospital.”

  If their arms weren’t full of boxes as they entered the ramshackle building, all three of them would have instinctively shielded their noses against the foul odors assaulting them.

  A small man in wire-rimmed glasses approached them. “More women?” he growled.

  A woman with her grey hair in a bun swept into the room. “Never mind Dr. Wiggins. I’m Anna Moore, matron of this hospital. What have you got for us?”

  “Hospital clothes,” said Charlotte over the top of her box. “Bandages, lint, and splints.”

  “Wonderful, we could certainly use those.” Anna clasped her hands.

  “Put them there,” said Dr. Wiggins, still scowling. “What else?”

  “What do you need?”

  “Delphinium, for killing vermin. These men are crawling with lice, and we have nothing for it. And solution of persulphate of iron, to restrain bleeding.”

  “Did the Medical Department not provide you with medicines?” Charlotte frowned.

  “Some. Not these. Can you help us or not?”

  “Maurice, would you please find Mr. Olmsted again and ask him for these?” Alice fished out a scrap of paper and pencil from her apron pocket and wrote the names down, then sent him on his way in the carriage.

  “How can we help?” asked Charlotte.

  “Go to the kitchen for hot water and rags, wash the men—one of you upstairs, one of you here—and pass out whatever clean hospital clothes you brought, for we have none here. We have one hundred eight patients at present, and I fully expect more to come in.”

  Many of the battered soldiers looked as if they hadn’t had a change of clothing in days or weeks, which would have been bad enough from camp life, but evidence of battle now crusted their uniforms—or what was left of them—to their bodies in places. Charlotte, whose white, slender hands had never touched a man’s naked body before, hesitated for the slightest moment before following her orders. She had been assured during her training that there would be male stewards for this task. If her mother found out, if the gossip circles learned of this …

  A snatch of Caleb’s letter came back to her, then. And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men …

  Armed with washbowl, soap and rag in hand, she came to her first dirty specimen and dabbed delicately his withered old face, careful of the dirty bandage that encompassed his head.

  “Aaaaaah,” he sighed with a checkered grin. “The honor of a lady to be washin’ me! Bless ye, darlin’!” The old Irishman’s pleasure took her by
such surprise that they laughed together. Trousers, socks, shoes, and legs were one big mass of mud, and if he hadn’t already taken off his shoes in front of her, she would have thought he was still wearing tall muddy boots.

  “Where are you from, soldier?” she asked, scrubbing away at the layers of filth.

  “New York City, lass, the Sixty-Ninth Regiment. A fine lot of lads we have, too, but our Colonel Corcoran didn’t make it back with us. Captured, more’s the pity. I’ll bet he’s givin’ the Rebels a heap o’ trouble now!”

  Finding they shared a hometown in common, they found much to talk about. When she finished washing him, his wrinkled face beamed.

  “Here now,” she said, handing him fresh white hospital clothes. “Do you think you can manage to get your uniform off and put these clean clothes on yourself? Do you need any help?”

  “Well, bedad! Look at that! I can manage, darlin’.”

  Charlotte went on to the next patient, and the next, going back to the kitchen every two or three patients for fresh water. Some took the washing like sleepy children, leaning their heads on her shoulder as she worked, while others looked silently scandalized. Several of the roughest colored like bashful girls when she tenderly touched their neglected bodies.

  “May I try to make you more comfortable?” Charlotte asked the next patient. He turned to face her then, revealing a gunshot wound in his swollen cheek; only one eye remained.

  “Might I have a looking glass?” he asked her.

  It wasn’t the wound itself that caused Charlotte’s stomach to revolt. It was the juxtaposition of the disfigured half of his face next to the other half, still perfect, with its clear brown eye and bristly black lashes, high cheekbone and strong jawline. He had been handsome, indeed, and if one only looked at his left profile, he would have the appearance of all the bright strength of a wholesome youth.