Woolsey family letters during the War for the Union

Jane Stuart Woolsey to her sister, Georgeanna.

Charley’s letter to the Post was quite a success and I advise him to continue his communications. The Vanderbilt, Government Hospital Ship, got in last night at six or seven, and will be emptied to-day, I suppose. There has been a great and general muss on the whole subject (of course) between General B— and Satterlee and their underlings, parties of the first part,—and all the State agents and volunteer doctors, parties of the second part, the old fight between regulars and volunteers—conflict of authority and efforts to sustain small personal dignities at the expense of everything else. In the meantime however, the patients, contrary to the usual course, have not suffered very much, as the public have had pretty free access to them and their wants have been supplied. Now, all transports are obliged to anchor in the stream and report to the regular quartermaster. . . . The Vanderbilt is the first arrival under the new regime and we shall see how it works. As much flourish of authority as they like, if it only shows fruit in the comfort of the patients, a subject on which I have misgivings. Fort Hamilton is the new depot; that and Bedloe’s Island. We went to the Island on Friday and found things improving. A few weeks ago Dr. Agnew (I think) or one other of the Commission went down and found the doctor drunk, the stewards on leave given by themselves, and the fever patients dying of neglect. He, whoever he was, cruised about the Island, found ten pounds of beef, cut it up and made broth himself, and spent the night feeding the sick men. They have got a new surgeon now, but I think the steward steals. One reform at a time. We are determined, we “females,” to make the place much too hot for him if we can prove anything. But how many weak-minded sisters there are! I never realized before how few people in the world are really clever and how very few are capable of “taking the responsibility.” I have also discovered that there is nothing like philanthropy to bring out the quarreling propensities. Two young gentlemen called yesterday and asked for Charley, expressing great surprise that he hadn’t got back, as they saw him driving his horse a day or two ago. They might have mistaken the man, but they appeared confident on the subject of the horse. So, Charley, Mr. Coles may be guilty of some black-hearted treachery. My mind always misgave me that Wilson’s men went out o’nights with Nelly Bly. What is the news from Joe and the 16th? We search the papers in vain to find his whereabouts. Yesterday in the Herald, in a chance letter, was this, “General Franklin, in crossing a brook to-day, got mired in the soft earth banks and was thrown, but instantly emerged unhurt, dripping, puffing and laughing.” That is the only public news I have seen of the Division for ten days. Where are they?

Georgeanna Woolsey to her mother.

June 6, Wilson Small.

We have on our boats nine “contraband” women from the Lee estate, real Virginia darkeys but 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 freedom and fashion, and begged Mr. Knapp to take a little commission for her when he went to Washington. “I wants you for to get me, sah, if you please, a lawn dress, and a hoop skirt, sah.” The slave women do the hospital washing in their cabins on the Lee estate, and I have been up to-day to hurry them with the Knickerbocker’s eleven hundred pieces. The negro quarters are decent 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. In one cabin we found two absurdly small ones, taken care of by an antique bronze calling itself grandmother. Babies had the measles which would not “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 of the colored women and their husbands work for us at the tent kitchen. The other night they collected all their friends behind the tent and commenced in a monotonous recitative, a condensed story of the creation of the world, one giving out a line and the others joining in, from Genesis to the Revelation, followed with a confession of sin, and exhortation to do better ; till—suddenly—their deep humility seemed to strike them as uncalled for, and they rose at once to the assurance of the saints, and each one instructed her neighbor at the top of her voice to

“Go tell all de holy angels

I done, done all I kin.”

Just as they came to a pause, the train from the front with wounded arrived—midnight, and the work of feeding and caring for the sick began again. Dr. Ware was busy seeing that the men were properly lifted from the platform cars and put into our Sibley tents. Haight was “processing” his detail with blankets, and our Zouave and five men were going the rounds with hot tea and fresh bread, while we were getting beef tea and punch ready for the sickest through the night. By two o’clock we could cross the plank to our own staterooms on the Wilson Small.

Eliza Woolsey Howland to her husband, Colonel Joseph Howland:—

I enclose some comments about Casey’s division, and we all agree here that justice was not done to the men. It is surely hard enough to lose as terribly as they did without being reproached for cowardice. Abby says in a late letter— “Anna Jeffries came on from Boston yesterday in the train which brought many of the Daniel Webster load, scattering them all along at or near their homes. One gentleman was asking another whether Casey was of Rhode Island or Connecticut, when a wounded soldier cried out from some seat nearby, overhearing Casey’s name—a cry of anguish and anger—`They didn’t run! they didn’t run!’ He tried to stagger to his feet, being wounded in both ankles, and then added—’I can’t stand, but I tell you they only broke, they didn’t run.'”

Some of the hurried notes in the small blank books we carried about with us (G’s tied to her belt) are characteristic, and somewhat mixed at the distance of 36 years.

“78 pillow-cases, and 4 mattresses. Whiskey for 10, brandy for 4. W. T., 49th Ga., Co. D. C.G., both legs; handkerchiefs, arrowroot, bay-rum. V. W., shoulder off, 17 Cedar St. E. D., lowest berth; Waters, top berth.”

And in the midst of it this note:

“To Mrs. I., 3 Milligan Place.

My dear Mother: You must not be anxious about me as I am not wounded, only sick. I was not in the battle because I was not strong enough to hold my gun. The battle began Sunday while I was in bed. We had to jump up and take our arms. I asked the lieutenant to let me fall out; he said I might, and stay there. The rebels came right up to the pits. Our men began to retreat very fast, and one came and told me to get up or I would be taken prisoner. So the doctor sent me down in the woods. Three nights I had nothing to cover me, slept just under the dew. The doctor put me on the cars and I was brought to White House. I am lying now in better condition and being better taken care of.”— Beef essence, tea, oranges” —! Etc., etc. etc.

We used to say :

“In the great history of the land

A lady with a flask shall stand.”

Captain Curtis of the 16th, who had been a patient on board our Headquarters boat the “Small,” since his wound at West Point, went up in one of the transports to an Alexandria hospital. He found there our friend Chaplain Hopkins, still hard at work among the sick and wounded. The following letter from the chaplain is inserted to show the success of our effort to have hospital chaplains appointed by the government. Mr. Hopkins received his commission and was under military orders from this time.

Alexandria, June 3d, 1862.

My dear Mrs. Howland: As you may have noticed, the bill for hospital chaplains has become a law. . . .

After several ineffectual attempts to see the President, I at last gained access to him yesterday, to ask the appointment of a hospital chaplain in my place, and found his excellency in a most genial frame of mind. He was fairly exuberant; told funny stories! volunteered the remark that he “was afraid that fellow Jackson had got away after all,” etc., etc. He told me that he had that very day appointed a man to help me — Bowman, he believed. “A very good man, isn’t he?” Mr. B. had been condoling with him on the loss of his son Willy. My application he seemed to be most favorably impressed with, endorsed what I had to say on the back of it with his own hand, rang for Mr. Nicolay, and — I say it with pain, but not without hope — had it filed away.

The moment Richmond is taken I shall apply to be removed there, and shall hope to join you and Miss Woolsey in many an excursion into the to-be historic environs. How you ladies can preserve calmness and elasticity of spirit I do not understand, but I know that you do.

Abby Howland Woolsey to her sisters, Georgy and Eliza, with the Sanitary Commission on the Peninsula Campaign.

New York, June 2d, 1862.

My dear Girls : Charley’s letter of Thursday came in this morning. He explained to us his system of numbering and sorting the men’s luggage, etc., which interested us very much, and shows us what his duties are in some of their details. We are glad the nutmegs and lemon-squeezers happened to fit in a gap. What else can we send? I hope Moritz, with the rockers and brandy, will all arrive safely. Do you want more air-beds? . . . Dorus Woolsey has been in for a final goodbye this morning. He will get a furlough as soon as possible, for his business affairs hardly allow of his being absent so soon. The 7th, 22d and 37th are doing police duty at Baltimore. I mean they are the military guard of the city. . . . Rev. J. Cotton Smith went too as chaplain. The night before, he tried to make a speech to them in the regimental armory, but was cheered so that he had to stop. “Go on, go on!” they all cried, and he managed to make himself heard, and said On the whole I won’t go on now; all I want to add is that I am going on to-morrow!” at which there was tremendous cheering again.

Night was made hideous with Herald extras, screamed through the streets between eleven and twelve. We waited till this morning, and got the news in the morning papers of that horrible battle, and what is worse—that indecisive battle. It has shattered the strength of McClellan’s army—what poor creatures were left in it, after all the sickness and fatigue of the march—and has accomplished nothing. . . . Charley says that 3,900 men of Casey’s division were lost on the march. God help them and their families, who can only know that they died like dogs on a roadside with fatigue and hunger. This makes four full regiments out of a division which only had ten to start with. No wonder it was overborne and broke line and scattered! Never accuse such men of cowardice. . . . We are much worked up this morning with this news of our disaster, and with the information that North Carolina slave-laws are re-enforced and Colyer’s black schools disbanded by government direction. What Government that commits such an act, can expect anything but reverses to its arms!

Worst of all, as far as our petty little hopes and interests are concerned, here is the order promulgated this morning, by which General H. B. takes supreme military command of all sick and wounded arriving here on transports. They are to be unloaded at Fort Hamilton and Bedloe’s Island, and the ladies’ game at Park Barracks and at 194 is blocked. B. is a regular of the regulars as to primness and military order, and personally has no more heart than a mustard seed. . . . Jane has gone down this morning full of wrath, to kidnap Abbott, of the 16th, if possible, and send him to his friends in Maine. She wants to get a ticket transferring him to 194 Broadway, when, if necessary, he can be “lost on the way,” and whipped into a carriage and down to the Fall River boat! . . . All these volunteer efforts at comforting and clothing the men must come to an end. Fort Hamilton is too far out of the reach of ladies with oranges and clean pocket handkerchiefs, unless they hire a tug at ten dollars an hour, and go through all the formalities of military passes.

Charles William Woolsey to New York Evening Post.

Sanitary Commission, Floating Hospital, Pamunkey River,

Off White House, Va., May 31, 1862.

The work of the Sanitary Commission, as connected with the army of the Potomac, is just at this time, as you doubtless know, a most important and indispensable one. More than two thousand sick and wounded men have been shipped by the Commission to New York, Washington and Boston during the past month, and it is safe to say that the lives of hundreds have been saved who would otherwise have died in camp and on the march.

The vessels used by the Commission are chartered by the government, and are first-class ocean steamers and Sound boats. They are supplied with all the necessary hospital apparatus at the expense of the Commission, and are furnished, so far as possible under the circumstances, with every convenience for the transportation of the sick, who are too often victims of neglect in regimental sanitary regulations. If your readers care to know something about the detail of management on board a hospital ship, let me give them briefly the program of a single day’s routine—a routine in the case of the majority on board, let them remember, of inevitable and monotonous suffering or sleepless pain.

Four bells,—but the day does not begin then, it is only a continuation of yesterday and the day before. On a hospital ship night and day are alike to all hands, and “on duty” for a nurse means only his “watch,” whether it comes at noon or midnight. Dr. Some-one is medical and military chief, and every well man on board, except the ship’s officers and crew, is subject to his authority. His command consists of four or five surgeons and physicians, a commissario-quartermaster, a purser perhaps, a varying number of volunteer nurses, eight or ten contrabands, and from one hundred to four hundred or five hundred sick men, according to the capacity of his vessel. On the ocean steamers the greater number of bunks are between decks, and roughly built of secession lumber, in tiers of three ranged on either side the length of the ship, and a double row down the centre. On this deck also are a dispensary, with an apothecary to preside, and a room or space reserved for the exclusive use of the lady nurses.

The sick are divided into several wards, each with a ward-master, generally a medical student, and the watch is arranged by the medical chief—the twenty-four hours being divided into three watches, of six hours each, and two dog-watches, of three each. Let us divide all the doctors and nurses on board into two squads, or reliefs, called A and B. Squad A relieves squad B at seven in the evening; B goes to bed and quickly to sleep until one o’clock, when it relieves A; A turning in until 7 A. M., when it relieves

B again, and so on. The dog-watches in the afternoon reverse the order, so that neither squad may have the same hours of watch two successive nights. The satisfactory arrangement of these watches to all parties concerned is no small matter.

The bulletin at the main stairway displays a record of the ward arrangements for the day, the hours of the house diet, the most explicit directions in case of fire, and more than the usual number of warnings with respect to the use of lights in the cabins.

By far the most formidable part of the work is getting the sick men on board and then landing them. The steamer lies out in the stream, and the sick men are in their camp hospitals on shore, it may be several miles inland, or perhaps left exhausted on the roadside, in the advance. A day or two ago thirty-six men arrived on the shores of the Pamunkey who had fallen off from the army, in this way, unable to proceed from fatigue and exhaustion. They said they had walked fourteen miles since midnight, and had had no food for three days. When they applied at the Government tent hospital at White House for food and shelter they were told that there was no room for them, and that they had better look along the shore for a hospital ship. In this condition they fell into the hands of the Sanitary Commission, were transferred to the Spaulding, and were speedily fed, clothed, washed and convalescent. Up to the 29th instant General Casey’s division had lost in this way three thousand nine hundred men since leaving Yorktown.

The difficulty is to get the sick men from the land to the floating hospital—from the hands of the government to the Sanitary Commission. Convalescents can walk and in some measure help themselves. The sick must be lifted, (and not always with the tenderest care,) first into an ambulance, then jolted to the shore (even ambulances jolt in Virginia, those vehicles that offer every facility for accidental death), then put on a tug to be taken out to the steamer.

On the Sound boats the process of embarkation is comparatively easy, as the decks are low. In the case of an ocean steamer a tackle is rigged from above, fastened to a fixed frame into which the stretcher and all are placed while on the deck of the tug. The tackle is then hoisted, with the sick man and his effects, to the upper deck. Before being lowered to the receiving doctor below, who assigns him to a berth, all his baggage, including his gun and blankets—new blankets being furnished him—is taken from him and firmly tied together. His rank, name, regiment, company and postoffice address are noted down, and a number assigned to him and a corresponding number pasted on his baggage. In this way his baggage is cared for, and much confusion, which without some such system would prevail, is avoided.¹

Necessarily, now and then, a blanket or pair of shoes loosely packed, or a likeness carelessly put in the haversack, is lost or unclaimed. Occasionally a soldier, much to his chagrin, may be obliged to carry home some one else’s gun, new, perhaps, from the factory, instead of his own trusty rifle that has shot, to his certain knowledge, at least half a dozen rebels. Jones, of the Third Maine Cavalry, who is stout, may be obliged to put up with a coat belonging to Jenkins, of the Tenth Indiana Infantry, who is slim, etc.; but, in the main, the men have their baggage returned to them intact at the end of the journey.

A detail of men sometimes accompanies the sick, who are employed as nurses. When every bed is filled and order begins to come out of the seeming chaos, a meal is served to those who need it, the gangway is lowered, the whistle blows, and the ship, with its strange cargo, is in motion for New York or Washington. The doctor makes his rounds, giving particular directions about the sickest, and the watch begins. Down the York river, round the cape, and so, with the flag of the Sanitary Commission waving at the mast-head, out to sea. Convalescents, who are well enough, smoke their pipes on deck, and in picturesque groups talk over the wonderful scenes they are leaving, or discuss the superior merits of their several regiments.

Up stairs, we are a lot of soldiers off duty, on a pleasure trip down a peaceful little Virginia river. Down stairs, how different! Occasionally a death occurs on the passage (though the proportion is very small), and a vacant bed in the long line marks the soldier’s last resting place while living. His knapsack and gun are taken by some friendly hand to be returned to his family, and thus the soldier ends his fight—sadly, yet in a noble cause; his heroic aspiration crowned so soon with their utmost result.

A dark side there must necessarily be, but a bright side is by no means lacking. Chloride of lime and the lady nurses contribute largely to the brighter half. Whitewash and women on a hospital ship are both excellent disinfectants. Men are nurses of the sick only by study and experience, women by intuition. A man can dress an ugly gun-shot wound or prescribe for a typhoid case better, perhaps, than a woman, but a woman’s hand must knead and smooth the bed that supports the wounded limb, or much medical science may go for nought. Masculine gruel, too, nine cases out of ten, is a briny failure; but gruel, salt-tempered by feminine fingers, is nectar to parched lips.

Creature comforts abound in the presence of lady nurses, and from their culinary retreat between decks come forth at all hours of the day a sizzling sound as of cooking arrow-root; armsful of clean white clothing for the newly washed, and delicacies for the sick without number, sometimes in the shape of milk punch, or lemonade squeezed from real lemons, sometimes a pile of snowy handkerchiefs that leave an odorous wake through the wards. Again, a cooling decoction of currants for the fever case nearest the hatchway, or a late Harper’s Weekly for the wounded man next him, (who to his surprise and delight recognises his last skirmish, though feebly reduced to the consistency of printer’s ink, with his identical self in the foreground), or oranges, cups of chocolate and many a novelty, but never a crumb of hard tack, (unless in the pulpy disguise of panada,) or ever so faint a suggestion of too familiar salt pork. . . .

Suffice it to say that the services of the ladies who are here as nurses of the sick are invaluable to the Commission and duly appreciated by the battle-tried and camp-worn soldiers. A simple word of sympathy or encouragement from a genuine woman is sometimes more potent to cure, than brandy or quinine from the hands of the most skilful physician. The kind looks and deeds of our nurses, and their kindlier words go straight to the hearts of the sick men and bring them nearer home by many a weary mile. We have other bright features, too.

Of articles contraband of war there are several specimens on board. They are always jolly and grinning, and ready for the hardest kind of labor, and breathing a “mudsill” atmosphere has not made “sour niggers” of them. Strange as it may seem, too, at uncertain intervals, they even make use of an ejaculation peculiar to that genus of article in a sportive and jocular yelp: “Yah! yah!” says Aaron to Jim (not Moses) “dis yer’s a heap better than Massa Coleman’s”; whereupon James performs an affirmative comedy of “Yah, yahs,” and looks all teeth. Moreover, these men seem to take kindly to the wages (!) that are paid them from time to time, and especially on these festive occasions are they exceeding lavish in their display of ivory, and blithesome to a degree passing strange.

A little while ago I witnessed the novel spectacle of an “article” earning his living. Six weeks ago he was an “indefinite” article—a chattel—a non-entity; now sole proprietor of his own muscle and able to convert the sweat of his brow into legitimately-gotten shining metal. He was rolling a barrel of northern pork aft, and I saw him halt three several times on his march to the kitchen, in order to execute a pas seul from his favorite plantation jig. It was a march of triumph to him, for he knew that every revolution of his barrel rolled out for him at least the fraction of an expected dollar, the just recompense of his free labor, and his ungainly “juba” was only the natural overflow of his exuberant glee upon attaining at length his long-denied manhood. There is a “down East” smack and flavor in this their first taste of freedom that seems to be peculiarly grateful to the contrabands, and which I doubt if prolonged years of tasting will expunge. C. W. W.

¹This was Charley’s work.

Eliza Woolsey Howland to her husband, Joe.

Floating Hospital,

Off White House, May 27.

Still not a word from you for a fortnight now. I am beginning to be very hungry, — not anxious, only hungry, for letters. I only hear in indirect ways that our division was near the Chickahominy a day or two ago and was ordered to march into Richmond the next morning; and again yesterday that the whole army was to move in light marching order, leaving wagons and tents behind the Chickahominy. I dream about it all, and wonder, but know nothing. . . . We moved to the Knickerbocker from the Small and found a great state of confusion consequent upon having the Elm City emptied into it. . . . The event of this evening is the return of the old Daniel Webster, which we all look upon as a sort of home. … Dr. Grymes always invites us over “home” when he arrives in it, and we had a very nice dinner with him to-day. He rose as we came in and said, “I give you welcome where you have a right.” Mrs. Trotter returned in the Webster and Mrs. Baylies, Mrs. Bradford and Miss Mary Hamilton came down from New York this time. The two latter are to stay, and be replaced on the return trip by some of our force who want to go home. The Webster brought us more bundles and stores from home and lots of letters and papers.

Abby Howland Woolsey’s Journal

New York, Monday.

Georgy’s letter of the 23d, written on the Spaulding from White House, came in this morning at breakfast, which is more prompt than usual. It tells of the proposed opening of hospital tents ashore, and two thousand sick ready to put into them at once. Why the Commission should have had to work long and perseveringly to accomplish this, I don’t know. . . . The accumulating number of sick is frightful, especially when we remember that hundreds probably die unknown on the roads, literally from starvation and exhaustion. . . . God’s curse, and not his blessing, is evidently on the whole country now, and will be while such pro-slavery policy as we have had is persisted in, and such burning sins as the Fugitive Slave Law gives rise to are perpetrated on the very Capitol steps at Washington.

Here is Banks, the embodiment of “success,” which is his motto, his command pursued and scattering; the Baltimore & Ohio road and the termini of those other important communications, all abandoned. Mobs in Baltimore, panic everywhere, and we just where we were more than a year ago; the 7th Regiment ordered off this afternoon for the defense of Washington. . . . Why, the war proper hasn’t so much as begun yet. . . .

Later :

Carry took Jane’s turn at Park Barracks yesterday afternoon. They have gone lately on alternate days, and as Carry is very chatty with the men and very communicative when she comes home, we hear a great deal of funny talk and pleasant incident. She helped get tea for them last night at 194. Smoked beef and boiled eggs, tea and toast and butter, all on little white plates, and each man served on a separate little tray at his bedside, if he was weak and in bed.