Following the American Civil War Sesquicentennial with day by day writings of the time, currently 1863.

Kate Cumming: A Journal of Hospital Life in the Confederate Army of Tennessee.

January 1, 1864.—A bitter cold day. The sun is shining as brilliantly as if there never had been a cloud to vail its glory. I trust it is ominous of the coming year, and that the clouds overhanging our national horizon may soon vanish forever.

 

“The cause of truth and human weal,

O God above!

Transfer it from the sword’s appeal

To peace and love.”

 

Mr. Sparks, who suffered so much from his wound after walking about, has had his leg amputated. He seems a great deal better, and does not now suffer so much.

December 31.—One of the stormiest and bleakest nights I have ever witnessed. I looked out and the darkness was fearful. The sky appeared as if God had shut out the light of his countenance from us forever. The elements are warring like our poor selves.

I never look on such a night without thinking of the soldier who may be at that moment doing sentinel duty. How dreary must be his walk as he paces along,

 

“And thinks of the two on the low trundle-bed,

Far away in the cot on the mountain;

His musket falls slack, his face, dark and grim,

Grows gentle with memories tender,

As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep,

And their mother, may Heaven defend her.”

 

Another sun has run its yearly course, and to all appearances we are no nearer the goal of liberty than we were this day last year. No gleam of light comes to tell us that reason has returned to the darkened minds of our ruthless foe. We have to listen to tales of wrong committed on our people, enough to rouse the blood in the coldest heart, and make us in despair cry aloud for vengeance.

 

“The blood of murdered legions

Summons vengeance from the skies;

Flaming towns and ravaged regions,

All in awful judgment rise.”

 

In the past year we have suffered disaster after disaster, but nothing is worth having which does not cost a struggle; and, then, as our beloved president tells us, it is only for a little while. The enemy has brought army after army against Richmond, and have as often had to retire in dismay and confusion before the invincible Lee and his veteran army.

The enemy have the Mississippi River only in name. Louisiana is almost as free from them as it has been since the fall of New Orleans. Texas is ours. Mississippi is guarded by that king of cavalrymen, Forrest. Charleston,

 

“Through coming years its name

A talisman shall be.”

 

Shell after shell has been hurled against its sacred walls. Column after column of the invader round it have found graves.

Ah I would I could say as much about Tennessee. How my heart sickens at the desecration of her sacred vales and mountains! Our dead are not permitted to lie in their resting-places; houses are fired, and their inmates cast out into the ruthless storm.

 

“The wing of war that, hovering

O’er this bright and beauteous land,

Throws a dark, foreboding shadow

Round our faithful, fearless land.

But we will ne’er grow discouraged,

Though the vandals round us crowd;

For our star is not declining,

‘T is only vailed behind a cloud.

 

Hark! the bugle note is sounding,

The fearful crisis comes at last;

By Heaven’s help we’ll scatter them

Like autumn leaves before the blast;

Then from peaceful dell and mountain

Will ring the anthems of the free,

Hand in hand we’ll meet rejoicing

Around the flag of Tennessee.”

 

On the water we have the gallant Captains Semmes and Maffitt, bringing dismay to the grasping Yankee, by destroying what to him is dearer than life.

We have many true and determined men yet, who will never yield as long as the life-blood streams through their veins. I have no fear for our cause; our martyrs have not offered up their lives in vain.

 

“For they never fail who die

In a just cause. The block may suck

Their gore; their heads may sodden

In the sun; their limbs be strung

To city-gates and castle-walls,

But still their spirits walk abroad,

And never rest till the great cause triumphs.”

December 30.—I have spent the whole day trying to get milk for the sick, and I think I have succeeded in securing a little. We have two cows, but the milk they give is but a mite, compared to what we need. Many of the convalescent soldiers go round to the citizens begging for milk, who think they can not make better use of it than giving it to them. I do not doubt but these soldiers are in want of it; still we have others to whom it is a necessity.

Lincoln has again refused to exchange prisoners. I do think this is the cruelest act of which he has been guilty, not only to us, but his own men. He is fully aware that we can scarcely get enough of the necessaries of life to feed our own men; and how can he expect us to feed his. Human lives are nothing to him; all the prisoners we have might die of starvation, and I do not expect they would cost him a thought, as all he has to do is to issue a call for so many more thousands to be offered up on his altars of sacrifice. How long will the people of the North submit to this Moloch. He knows that every one of our men is of value to us, for we have not the dregs of the earth to draw from; but our every man is a patriot, battling for all that is dear to him.

Sunday, December 27.—Mr. Moore had service in one of the wards, and preached a very good sermon. He is a great favorite with the men.

We had one man die yesterday; another is dying to-day. It is bitter cold, and pouring down rain.

Christmas-day, December 25.—We have had quite a pleasant one. Miss W. and myself were up hours before daylight making eggnog. We wished to give some to all in the hospital, but could not procure eggs enough; so we gave it to the wounded who are convalescent, the cooks, and the nurses.

Just at peep of dawn the little gallery in front of our house was crowded with the wounded. The scene was worthy of a picture; many of them without a leg or an arm, and they were as cheerful and contented as if no harm had ever happened them. I constantly hear the unmarried ones wondering if the girls will marry them now. Dr. Hughes did his best to have a nice dinner for the convalescents and nurses. Turkeys, chickens, vegetables, and pies. I only wish the men in the army could have fared as well.

In the afternoon we had a call from all of our surgeons, and from one or two from the other hospitals. I had hard work to get Mrs. W. to spare a few hours from working for “her dear boys,” and have a kind of holiday for once, as nearly all of our wounded are doing well. Mr. Deal is still suffering very much, but his surgeon, Dr. Wellford, thinks he will save his leg.

We have only lost one or two from gangrene. I am confident that nothing but the care and watchfulness bestowed on them by the surgeons has been the means of saving the lives of many. Their recovery has taken me by surprise, as I could not see how it was possible for such bad wounds to heal.

Many of the wounded are still in tents, with chimneys which smoke badly, and the whole tent has rather an uncomfortable appearance; still I like tents for wounded, as they seem to improve much more rapidly in them than in rooms.

The nurses, on windy nights, are compelled to sit up and hold on to the tent-poles, to prevent their being blown down.

Drs. Devine, Resse, Wellford, and Burks are our assistant surgeons. Dr. D. is one of the best of his profession; he is from Mississippi. Dr. R. is an odd kind of a man; seems to be an excellent doctor, but I think is rather rough with the wounded, though he is very kind and attentive. He is from Alabama. Dr. W. is a perfect Virginia gentleman. He is one of the gentlest and most attentive surgeons that I have ever met. I think we owe the recovery of many of the wounded mainly to his great care. I have known him many a time work from daylight till dark attending to the wounds. Dr. B. of Kentucky has been here but a short time; so I can say little about him. The men all like him very much, and they are generally good judges. He has taken Dr. Glenn’s place, the latter having been transferred to some other post.

Dr. W. has a nurse from Arkansas. He came here with the wounded after the battle of Chickamauga. We called him “rough diamond,” as he is so rough-looking, and seems to have such a kind heart. He thinks nothing a trouble which he has to do for the wounded.

Another is Mr. Harper. The wounded men have told me that it annoyed them to see him work as much as he does.

We are using a great deal of charcoal on the wounds, and the nurses have it to pulverize, which gives them constant work, besides the dirt which it causes in the wards.

I see by Mobile papers that Captain Hazzard, of the Twenty-fourth Alabama Regiment, was captured at Missionary Ridge. Mr. C. Larbuzan is badly wounded, and also a prisoner. Mobile has suffered not a little in this respect.

General Bragg has resigned. For his own sake and ours, I am heartily glad.

Sunday, December 20.—A very cold day. The patients are all doing pretty well.

Yesterday we lost another of our nurses, named Crittenden. He was about the same age as Mr. Watson. He was a member of the Fifth South Carolina Regiment. He was ill but a few days, and died from the effects of a sore throat. He was a sincere Christian, and leaves no relatives to mourn for him.

On the 15th, Mr. Robertson died from the effects of a wound in the calf of one of his legs. Gangrene had set in, which destroyed the muscles and integuments extensively. He suffered severely, and nothing could be done to relieve him. Some ladies of the place took great interest in him and were very kind. He was a member of the Sixtieth North Carolina Regiment. His mother lives in Cherokee County, North Carolina, on the borders of Tennessee.

Another man died the same day, named Wm. Kirwin, a member of the Eighth Arkansas Regiment, who has a sister living in Issart County, Arkansas. He suffered a long time from consumption.

In a Mobile paper of the 14th inst. is a letter from Richmond, signed “Gamma.” The writer says he knows of four commissaries and quartermasters there who have made fortunes since the war. One, when he entered the service, was not worth a dollar, but after being in office a year and a half bought a farm for fifty thousand dollars, and has now retired with as much more on which to live. The other three are, if any thing, worse. Is the president powerless to remove this moral leprosy which is eating the very vitals of the Confederacy? I really think that honest men who wink at those things are nearly as bad as the culprits. I am acquainted with one instance where we all knew there was as plain a case of robbery as any could be, but nothing was done to the miscreant .

It was reported that one of General Bragg’s quartermasters was making thousands off the government.

General Bragg, on making inquiry, had proof enough against him to have him tried. He sent word to the president some two or three times before he could get him to have any thing done in the matter. At last this quartermaster underwent a trial. Fraud after fraud was proved on him; but as some of our most influential men had become his security to a largo amount, they managed to get him off with the penalty of his losing his commission. I consider the bitterest foe we are fighting openly better than such a man.

December 17.—Miss W., Mrs. M., and myself went to Mr. Watson’s grave. We got there in time to see the coffin lowered, and the sod cover his remains. I trust his spirit has gone “where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.” He was laid with the true and the brave. No one could wish “couch more magnificent.”

December 16.—A very disagreeable day; it is cold, windy, and rainy. I have managed to get round the wards once; nearly all are doing well.

I have spent a good portion of the day with one of our patients, who died to-night at 9 o’clock. Miss W. and myself were with him when he breathed his last.

He was a young Texan, by the name of Thomas Watson, a member of the Fourth Texas Regiment—one of General Hood’s men—and came here with some members of his company, who were wounded, to nurse them. A few days ago he was taken with double pneumonia and sore throat. Dr. Wellford attended him, and did all that mortal could do, but in vain. It was God’s will he should go.

He was a handsome lad, in his eighteenth year, and was a general favorite. He often told Miss W. and myself about his mother, and how she had buckled on his armor, and told him to go and battle for his country.

When he was informed that all hope was over, he sent for me, and told me what he wished done. He wanted the money due him collected and sent to his mother. This I tried to have done, but there was no paymaster here, and we have been told that it will be impossible. He then asked me to write, and tell her he was dying happy, and hoped to meet her in heaven.

Toward night he became delirious, and raved about the battles in which he had participated. He spoke a good deal about some ladies in the place who had been very kind to him; and, more than any thing else, he raved about his mother— spoke to her as he had no doubt done when a child. Toward the last he grew calm, and recognized Miss W. and myself, who were standing by, and thanked us for past kindness. I wiped the clammy sweat from his forehead, and brushed back the brown curls clustering on it. He muttered a prayer, and while it was on his lips his spirit took its flight to God, who gave it. Mr. Moore has attended him closely since he was first taken. He and another chaplain, Mr. Daniel, were with him this evening.

After our return, Miss W. told me that she had experienced more real pleasure to-night than she had at all the places of amusement which she had ever attended. I observed the night as we came back, and I never saw such a sky in my life; it was dark in the extreme. Just such a one as Young must have gazed on when he said:

 

Darkness has divinity for me;

It strikes thought inward; it draws back the soul

To settle on herself.

Sunday, December 13.—A gloomy, rainy day. We had service in the carriage ward. Rev. Mr. Ransom, a chaplain from Tennessee, preached an excellent sermon. He told us that the Lord was dealing with us as a surgeon would with sick and wounded men; that we were morally sick, and the Lord was giving us bitter medicines.

I looked about the ward, which is very large, and there were the halt, the lame, and the blind, all eagerly drinking in the words of comfort. Miss J. Lowe, a lady of the place, Miss W., Mrs. W., and myself were there. We always made a rule of attending service when it is held in the wards, as we think it gives encouragement to the men.

The reason we have service there is because there are always numbers of wounded men anxious to hear the word of God, and are not able to leave their beds.

December 8.—A very gloomy, wet, cold day. I have not been able to go to see any of the patients on account of the weather.

We get along very nicely now. Mrs. W. has taken charge of the linen department, and keeps two girls busy sewing all the time. We have numbers of pads to make for the wounded. The fact is, there is always plenty to do in the way of sewing.

We have all the whisky now in charge. Miss W. makes eggnog and toddies, and gives out the whisky as the surgeons prescribe it. Besides that, we have all of the delicacies, such as coffee, tea, sugar, butter, eggs, etc. Miss W. has not much idle time.

A very nice woman has charge of the distributing-room, and attends to preparing little extras for the sick. She has a kitchen in which is a stove, and all I have to do is to send her word what I want prepared for the patients.

We have a large kitchen in which are three stoves, where the diet is prepared for those who are on the diet-list. Many a time there are two hundred patients fed from it.

The kitchen itself does very well in good weather, but when it rains the cooks, stoves, and every thing else in it get a shower-bath.

It has no chimneys, and the stove pipes are put through the roof, without an elbow or any covering. Many a time the cooks are up all night, trying to keep the water out of the stoves. But no matter what happens, the breakfast is always ready at the right time.

There is a kitchen for the convalescents, which has a brick furnace with boilers and an oven in it. We have also a very fine bakery. All has been put up since we have been here, at government expense.

Our hospital, with the exception of the tents, which are by themselves, occupies a square of store buildings, and the courthouse. Many of the buildings are in a dilapidated condition, but they are all nicely whitewashed, and kept in perfect order.

Miss W. received a letter from a cousin, a surgeon in the army, entreating her to leave the hospital, saying that it is no place for a refined, modest young lady. I have perhaps made a mistake as regards the meaning of the word modesty. As far as my judgment goes, a lady who feels that her modesty would be compromised by going into a hospital, and ministering to the wants of her suffering countrymen, who have braved all in her defense, could not rightly lay claim to a very large share of that excellent virtue—modesty—which the wise tell us is ever the companion of sense.

 

“Good sense, which is the gift of heaven,

And, though no science, fairly worth the seven.”

 

I am thoroughly disgusted with this kind of talk. When will our people cease to look on the surface of things? At this rate, never! If the scenes we are daily witnessing will not serve to cure this miserable weakness, nothing will.

There is scarcely a day passes that I do not hear some derogatory remarks about the ladies who are in the hospitals, until I think, if there is any credit due them at all, it is for the moral courage they have in braving public opinion.

A very nice lady, a member of the Methodist Church, told me that she would go into the hospital if she had in it a brother, a surgeon. I wonder if the Sisters of Charity have brothers, surgeons, in the hospitals where they go? It seems strange that they can do with honor what is wrong for other Christian women to do.

Well, I can not but pity those people who have such false notions of propriety.

After getting tired of hearing what is said, I told a lady friend that she would oblige me by telling the good people of Newnan, that when I first went into the hospitals I was not aware of there being such a place in the world as Newnan, and they must excuse me for not asking their advice on the subject; and since without it I had taken the step I had, I could not say I had any thing to regret in the matter; far from that, I can truly say, that there is no position in the world that a woman can occupy, no matter how high or exalted it may be, for which I would exchange the one I have. And no happiness which any thing earthly could give, could compare with the pleasure I have experienced in receiving the blessings of the suffering and dying.

As for no “refined or modest” lady staying in them, from my own experience, and that of every surgeon whom I have heard speak on the subject, I have come to the conclusion that, in truth, none but the “refined and modest” have any business in hospitals. Our post surgeon called on me the other day, and told me he had determined to permit none but such to enter any of his hospitals; and he earnestly warned me to be careful whom I took to stay with me.

But I feel confident we shall always have the approval of the truly good. I have not asked Miss W. to remain; her own sense of right has determined her to do so.

Mrs. B. and I took a walk to the graveyard last Sunday. We saw two of our men buried; one was named S. Brazelton, a member of the Fiftieth Alabama Regiment; the name of the other I did not learn; he came from some of the other hospitals. All the men of our hospital are now buried by the chaplain, Mr. Moore.

The graves have head-boards, on which is the occupant’s name and regiment.

We had a man by the name of Vaughn die very suddenly on the 3d.