WALT WHITMAN
Whitman, the most renown poet of the war, who seemingly was able to catch more of its feelings and details in his long tumbling lines than all the other war-era poets together, not only described his experiences as a nurse in various Washington, D.C. hospitals, but traveled in his imagination to the soldiers on the battlegrounds and on the march.
A line in long array, where they wind betwixt green islands;
They take a serpentine course—their arms flash in the sun—hark to the musical clank;
Behold the silvery river—in it the splashing horses, loitering, stop to drink;
Behold the brown-faced men—each group, each person, a picture—the negligent rest on the saddles;
Some emerge on the opposite bank—others are just entering the ford—while,
Scarlet, and blue, and snowy white,
The guidon flags flutter gaily in the wind.
WALT WHITMAN
With its cloud of skirmishers in advance,
With now the sound of a single shot, snapping like a whip, and now an irregular volley,
The swarming ranks press on and on, the dense brigades press on;
Glittering dimly, toiling under the sun—the dust-cover’d men,
In columns rise and fall to the undulations of the ground,
With artillery interspers’d—the wheels rumble, the horses sweat, As the army corps advances.
A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown
WALT WHITMAN
A march in the ranks hard-prest, and the road unknown;
A route through a heavy wood, with mum ed steps in the darkness;
Our army foil’d with loss severe, and the sullen remnant retreating;
Till after midnight glimmer upon us, the lights of a dim-lighted building;
We come to an open space in the woods, and halt by the dim-lighted building;
’Tis a large old church at the crossing roads—’tis now an impromptu hospital;
Entering but for a minute, I see a sight beyond all the pictures and poems ever made:
Shadows of deepest, deepest black, just lit by moving candles and lamps,
And by one great pitchy torch, stationary, with wild red flame and clouds of smoke;
By these, crowds, groups of forms, vaguely I see, on the floor, some in the pews laid down;
At my feet more distinctly, a soldier, a mere lad, in danger of bleeding to death, (he is shot in the abdomen;)
I staunch the blood temporarily, (the youngster’s face is white as a lily;)
Then before I depart I sweep my eyes o’er the scene, fain to absorb it all;
Faces, varieties, postures beyond description, most in obscurity, some of them dead; Surgeons operating, attendants holding lights, the smell of ether, the odor of blood;
The crowd, O the crowd of the bloody forms of soldiers—the yard outside also fill’d; Some on the bare ground, some on planks or stretchers, some in the death-spasm sweating;
An occasional scream or cry, the doctor’s shouted orders or calls;
The glisten of the little steel instruments catching the glint of the torches;
These I resume as I chant—I see again the forms, I smell the odor;
Then hear outside the orders given, Fall in, my men, Fall in;
But first I bend to the dying lad—his eyes open—a half-smile gives he me;
Then the eyes close, calmly close, and I speed forth to the darkness,
Resuming, marching, ever in darkness marching, on in the ranks,
The unknown road still marching.
HENRY TIMROD
Timrod (1828–1867) was sometimes referred to as the “Poet Laureate of the Confederacy.”
The rain is plashing on my sill,
But all the winds of heaven are still;
And so, it falls with that dull sound
Which thrills us in the churchyard ground,
When the first spadeful drops like lead
Upon the coffin of the dead.
Beyond my streaming window-pane,
I cannot see the neighboring vane,
Yet from its old familiar tower
The bell comes, muffled, through the shower.
What strange and unsuspected link
Of feeling touched has made me think—
While with a vacant soul and eye
I watch that gray and stony sky—
Of nameless graves on battle plains,
Washed by a single winter’s rains,
Where, some beneath Virginian hills,
And some by green Atlantic rills,
Some by the waters of the West,
A myriad unknown heroes rest.
Ah! not the chiefs who, dying, see
Their flags in front of victory,
Or, at their life-blood’s noblest cost
Pay for a battle nobly lost,
Claim from their monumental beds
The bitterest tears a nation sheds.
Beneath yon lonely mound—the spot,
By all save some fond few forgot—
Lie the true martyrs of the fight,
Which strikes for freedom and for right.
Of them, their patriot zeal and pride,
The lofty faith that with them died,
No grateful page shall further tell
Than that so many bravely fell;
And we can only dimly guess
What worlds of all this world’s distress,
What utter woe, despair, and dearth,
Their fate has brought to many a hearth.
Just such a sky as this should weep
Above them, always, where they sleep;
Yet, haply, at this very hour,
Their graves are like a lover’s bower;
And Nature’s self, with eyes unwet
Oblivious of the crimson debt
To which she owes her April grace,
Laughs gayly o’er their burial place.
A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim
WALT WHITMAN
A sight in camp in the day-break grey and dim,
As from my tent I emerge so early, sleepless,
As slow I walk in the cool fresh air, the path near by the hospital tent,
Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there, untended lying,
Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woollen blanket,
Grey and heavy blanket, folding, covering all.
Curious, I halt, and silent stand;
Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest, the first, just lift the blanket:
Who are you, elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-grey’d hair, and flesh all sunken about the eyes?
Who are you, my dear comrade?
Then to the second I step—And who are you, my child and darling?
Who are you, sweet boy, with cheeks yet blooming?
Then to the third—a face nor child, nor old, very calm, as of beautiful yellow-white ivory;
Young man, I think I know you—I think this face of yours is the face of the Christ himself;
Dead and divine, and brother of all, and here again he lies.
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
AMBROSE BIERCE
This, the most anthologized short story about the war, was not published until 1890. It may remind some present-day readers of the fantastical tales of the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges.
I.
A man stood upon a railroad bridge in Northern Alabama, looking down into the swift waters twenty feet below. The man’s hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope loosely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head, and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him, and his executioners—two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant, who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his riff e in the position known as “support,” that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across the chest—a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot plank which traversed it.
Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost further along. The other bank of the stream was open ground—a gentle acclivity crowned with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loop-holed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge. Midway of the slope between bridge and fort were the spectators—a single company of infantry in line, at “parade rest,” the butts of the riffles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieutenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of four at the center of the bridge not a man moved. The company faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent, observing the work of his subordinates but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who, when he comes announced, is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference.
The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his dress, which was that of a planter. His features were good—a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well-fitting frock coat. He wore a mustache and pointed beard but no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark gray and had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of people, and gentlemen are not excluded.
The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same plank, which spanned three of the crossties of the bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former, the latter would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man go down between two ties. The arrangement commended itself to his judgment as simple and effective. His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at his “unsteadfast footing,” then let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move! What a sluggish stream!
He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children. The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift—all had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith’s hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by—it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each stroke with impatience and—he knew not why—apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer; the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.
He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. “If I could free my hands,” he thought, “I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets, and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods, and get away home. My home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader’s farthest advance.”
As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man’s brain rather than evolved from it, the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.
II.
Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an old and highly-respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner, and, like other slave owners, a politician, he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking service with the gallant army which had fought the disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in war time. Meanwhile he did what he could. No service was too humble for him to perform in aid of the South, no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war.
One evening while Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench near the entrance to his grounds, a gray-clad soldier rode up to the gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs. Farquhar was only too happy to serve him with her own white hands. While she was gone to fetch the water, her husband approached the dusty horseman and inquired eagerly for news from the front.
“The Yanks are repairing the railroads,” said the man, “and are getting ready for another advance. They have reached the Owl Creek bridge, put it in order, and built a stockade on the other bank. The commandant has issued an order, which is posted everywhere, declaring that any civilian caught interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels, or trains, will be summarily hanged. I saw the order.”
“How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge?” Farquhar asked.
“About thirty miles?”
“Is there no force on this side the creek?”
“Only a picket post half a mile out, on the railroad, and a single sentinel at this end of the bridge.”
“Suppose a man—a civilian and student of hanging—should elude the picket post and perhaps get the better of the sentinel,” said Farquhar, smiling, “what could he accomplish?”
The soldier reflected. “I was there a month ago,” he replied. “I observed that the flood of last winter had lodged a great quantity of driftwood against the wooden pier at this end of the bridge. It is now dry and would burn like tow.”
The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank. He thanked her ceremoniously, bowed to her husband, and rode away. An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the plantation, going northward in the direction from which he had come. He was a Federal scout.
III.
As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge, he lost consciousness and was as one already dead. From this state he was awakened—ages later, it seemed to him—by the pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fiber of his body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along well-defined lines of ramification and to beat with an inconceivably rapid periodicity. They seemed like streams of pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of fullness—of congestion. These sensations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with the noise of a loud plash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew that the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was already suffocating him and kept the water from his lungs. To die of hanging at the bottom of a river!—the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the blackness and saw above him a gleam of light, but how distant, how inaccessible! He was still sinking, for the light became fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and brighten, and he knew that he was rising toward the surface—knew it with reluctance, for he was now very comfortable. “To be hanged and drowned,” he thought, “that is not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot. No; I will not be shot; that is not fair.”
He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrists apprised him that he was trying to free his hands. He gave the struggle his attention, as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler, without interest in the outcome. What splendid effort!—what magnificent, what superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo! The cord fell away; his arms parted and floated upward, the hands dimly seen on each side in the growing light. He watched them with a new interest as first one and then the other pounced upon the noose at his neck. They tore it away and thrust it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling those of a water snake. “Put it back, put it back!” He thought he shouted these words to his hands, for the undoing of the noose had been succeeded by the direst pang which he had yet experienced. His neck ached horribly; his brain was on fire; his heart, which had been fluttering faintly, gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at his mouth. His whole body was racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish! But his disobedient hands gave no heed to the command. They beat the water vigorously with quick, downward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He felt his head emerge; his eyes were blinded by the sunlight; his chest expanded convulsively, and with a supreme and crowning agony his lungs engulfed a great draught of air, which instantly he expelled in a shriek!
He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and reined them that they made record of things never before perceived. He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf—saw the very insects upon them, the locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the gray spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon flies’ wings, the strokes of the water spiders’ legs, like oars which had lifted their boat—all these made audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its body parting the water.
He had come to the surface facing down the stream; in a moment the visible world seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point, and he saw the bridge, the fort, the soldiers upon the bridge, the captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his executioners. They were in silhouette against the blue sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing at him; the captain had drawn his pistol, but did not fire; the others were unarmed. Their movements were grotesque and horrible, their forms gigantic.
Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the water smartly within a few inches of his head, spattering his face with spray. He heard a second report, and saw one of the sentinels with his riff e at his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke rising from the muzzle. The man in the water saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a gray eye, and remembered having read that gray eyes were keenest and that all famous marksmen had them. Nevertheless, this one had missed.
A counter swirl had caught Farquhar and turned him half round; he was again looking into the forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound of a clear, high voice in a monotonous singsong now rang out behind him and came across the water with a distinctness that pierced and subdued all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Although no soldier, he had frequented camps enough to know the dread significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant; the lieutenant on shore was taking a part in the morning’s work. How coldly and pitilessly—with what an even, calm intonation, presaging and enforcing tranquillity in the men—with what accurately measured intervals fell those cruel words:
“Attention, company. … Shoulder arms. … Ready. … Aim. … Fire.”
Farquhar dived—dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dulled thunder of the volley, and, rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward. Some of them touched him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged between his collar and neck; it was uncomfortably warm, and he snatched it out.
As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a long time under water; he was perceptibly farther down stream— nearer to safety. The soldiers had almost finished reloading; the metal ramrods flashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn from the barrels, turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two sentinels fired again, independently and ineffectually.
The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he was now swimming vigorously with the current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and legs; he thought with the rapidity of lightning.
“The officer,” he reasoned, “will not make that martinet’s error a second time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has probably already given the command to fire at will. God help me, I cannot dodge them all!”
An appalling plash within two yards of him, followed by a loud rushing sound, diminuendo, which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps! A rising sheet of water, which curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled him! The cannon had taken a hand in the game. As he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten water, he heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond.
“They will not do that again,” he thought; “the next time they will use a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will apprise me—the report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile. It is a good gun.”
Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round—spinning like a top. The water, the banks, the forest, the now distant bridge, fort and men—all were commingled and blurred. Objects were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color—that was all he saw. He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of advance and gyration which made him giddy and sick. In a few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left bank of the stream—the southern bank—and behind a projecting point which concealed him from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his hands on the gravel, restored him and he wept with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked like gold, like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the bank were giant garden plants; he noted a definite order in their arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms. A strange, roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks, and the wind made in their branches the music of aeolian harps. He had no wish to perfect his escape, was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.
A whizz and rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head roused him from his dream. The bam ed cannoneer had fired him a random farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and plunged into the forest.
All that day he traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a woodman’s road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation.
By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famishing. The thought of his wife and children urged him on. At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right direction. It was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The black bodies of the great trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great golden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance. The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which—once, twice, and again—he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.
His neck was in pain, and, lifting his hand to it, he found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them. His tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from between his teeth into the cool air. How softly the turf had carpeted the untraveled avenue! He could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet!
Doubtless, despite his suffering, he fell asleep while walking, for now he sees another scene—perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forward with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her, he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him, with a sound like the shock of a cannon— then all is darkness and silence!
Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.
WALT WHITMAN
Whitman’s famous poem describes the activities of a wound-dresser, a job which he himself did not have. He did, however, spend much time in the hospitals “among new faces” ministering to the wounded soldiers’ hearts and souls.
1.
An old man bending, I come, among new faces,
Years looking backward, resuming, in answer to children,
Come tell us, old man, as from young men and maidens that love me;
Years hence of these scenes, of these furious passions, these chances,
Of unsurpass’d heroes, (was one side so brave? the other was equally brave;)
Now be witness again—paint the mightiest armies of earth;
Of those armies so rapid, so wondrous, what saw you to tell us?’
What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious panics,
Of hard-fought engagements, or sieges tremendous, what deepest remains?
2.
O maidens and young men I love, and that love me,
What you ask of my days, those the strangest and sudden your talking recalls;
Soldier alert I arrive, after a long march, cover’d with sweat and dust;
In the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly shout in the rush of successful charge;
Enter the captur’d works … yet lo! like a swift-running river, they fade;
Pass and are gone, they fade—I dwell not on soldiers’ perils or soldiers’ joys;
(Both I remember well—many the hardships, few the joys, yet I was content.)
But in silence, in dreams’ projections,
While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on,
So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints of the sand,
In nature’s reverie sad, with hinged knees returning, I enter the doors—(while for you up there,
Whoever you are, follow me without noise, and be of strong heart.)
3.
Bearing the bandages, water and sponge,
Straight and swift to my wounded I go,
Where they lie on the ground, after the battle brought in;
Where their priceless blood reddens the grass, the ground;
Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof’d hospital;
To the long rows of cots, up and down, each side, I return;
To each and all, one after another, I draw near—not one do I miss;
An attendant follows, holding a tray—he carries a refuse pail,
Soon to be fill’d with clotted rags and blood, emptied and fill’d again.
I onward go, I stop,
With hinged knees and steady hand, to dress wounds; I am firm with each—the pangs are sharp, yet unavoidable;
One turns to me his appealing eyes—(poor boy! I never knew you,
Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you.)
4.
On, on I go !—(open doors of time! open hospital doors!)
The crush’d head I dress, (poor crazed hand, tear not the bandage away;)
The neck of the cavalry-man, with the bullet through and through, I examine;
Hard the breathing rattles, quite glazed already the eye, yet life struggles hard;
(Come, sweet death! be persuaded, O beautiful death!
In mercy come quickly.)
From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,
I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter and blood;
Back on his pillow the soldier bends, with curv’d neck, and side-falling head;
His eyes are closed, his face is pale, (he dares not look on the bloody stump,
And has not yet look’d on it.)
I dress a wound in the side, deep, deep;
But a day or two more—for see, the frame all wasted already, and sinking,
And the yellow-blue countenance see.
I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet wound,
Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so offensive,
While the attendant stands behind aside me, holding the tray and pail.
I am faithful, I do not give out;
The fractur’d thigh, the knee, the wound in the abdomen,
These and more I dress with impassive hand—(yet deep in my breast a fire, a burning flame.)
5.
Thus in silence, in dreams’ projections,
Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals;
The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand,
I sit by the restless all the dark night—some are so young;
Some suffer so much—I recall the experience sweet and sad;
(Many a soldier’s loving arms about this neck have cross’d and rested,
Many a soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded lips.)
GRANT P. ROBINSON
General Franz Sigel, a native German who was instrumental in bringing Germans and German-Americans into the Union Army, was the commander of the Department of West Virginia when he brought that army into the Shenandoah Valley, where it was defeated at the Battle of New Market on May 15.
I met him again, he was trudging along,
His knapsack with chickens was swelling;
He ‘d “Blenkered” these dainties, and thought it no wrong,
From some secessionist’s dwelling.
“What regiment’s yours? and under whose flag
Do you fight?” said I, touching his shoulder;
Turning slowly around, he smilingly said,
For the thought made him stronger and bolder,
“I fights mit Sigel!”
The next time I saw him his knapsack was gone,
His cap and canteen were missing,
Shell, shrapnel, and grape, and the swift rifle-ball,
Around him, and o’er him were hissing.
“How are you, my friend, and where have you been,
And for what, and for whom are you fighting?”
He said, as a shell from the enemy’s gun
Sent his arm and his musket a “kiting”:
“I fights mit Sigel!”
And once more I saw him and knelt by his side;
His life-blood was rapidly flowing;
I whispered of home, wife, children, and friends,
The bright land to which he was going;
“And have you no word for the dear ones at home,
The ‘wee one,’ the father or mother?”
“Yaw! yaw!” said he, “tell them! oh! tell them I fights”—
Poor fellow! he thought of no other—
“I fights mit Sigel!”
We scraped out a grave, and he dreamlessly sleeps
On the banks of the Shenandoah River;
His home or his kindred alike are unknown,
His reward in the hands of the Giver.
We placed a rough board at the head of his grave,
“And we left him alone in his glory,”
But on it we marked, ere we turned from the spot,
The little we knew of his story—
“I fights mit Sigel!”
ANONYMOUS
This fictional account of the real horrors that Nathan Bedford Forrest carried out on the black soldiers at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, on April 12, 1864, can be closely compared to the eyewitness testimony provided to the Joint Committee on the Conduct and Expenditures of the War by the survivors of the massacre. (See, for example, Document 1 in Frank Moore’s Rebellion Record, Volume 8.) The story was first published in Harper’s Weekly on May 7, 1864.
My name is Daniel Tyler, and my skin is dark, as my mother’s was before me. I have heard that my father had a white face, but I think his heart and life were blacker than my mother’s skin. I was born a slave, and remained a slave until last April, when I found deliverance and shelter under the flag that my master was fighting to dishonor.
I shall never forget the day when freedom came to me. I was working in the fields down in Alabama, my heart full of bitterness and unutterable longings. I had dreamed for two long years of escape from my bondage; the thought sung to me through the dark nights, and filled all the days with a weird sort of nervous expectation. But my dreams had proved nothing more than dreams; the opportunity I yearned for did not come. But that day, working in the fields, suddenly along the dusty road there flashed a long column of loyal cavalry, the old fag flying at its head. How my heart leaped at the sight; how, like revelation, came the thought: “This, Daniel Tyler, is your opportunity!” Need I tell you how I acted upon that thought; how, in one second of time, I leaped out of slavery into freedom, and from a slave became a man?
Well, joining the flashing column, I rode with them for days, coming at last into Baton Rouge, and thence, having joined a regiment of my own people, came to Memphis. Thence four hundred of us came to Fort Pillow. But there are not four hundred of us today, for three hundred and odd were murdered in cold blood only a week ago by Forrest’s rough-riders.
It was a day of horrors—that 12th of April. There were seven hundred of us in all in the fort—three hundred whites of the Thirteenth Tennessee Cavalry, and four hundred blacks, as I have said, all under command of brave Major Booth. The fort consisted simply of earthworks, on which we had mounted half a dozen guns. We knew that Forrest had been pillaging the country all about us, and imagined that perhaps he would pay us a visit; but the thought did not alarm us, though we knew, those of us who were black, that we had little to expect at the hands of the rebels. At last, about sunrise on the morning of the 12th, Forrest, with some 6,000 men, appeared and at once commenced an attack. We met the assault bravely, and for two hours the fight went on briskly. Then a flag of truce came in from Forrest, asking an unconditional surrender, but Major Bradford—Major Booth having been wounded—declined to surrender unless the enemy would treat those of us who were black as prisoners of war, which, of course, they refused to do, and the fight went on. The enemy, in the next few hours, made several desperate charges, but were each time repulsed. At last, about four o’clock in the afternoon, they sent in another flag. We ceased firing out of respect to the flag; but Forrest’s men had no such notions of honor and good faith. The moment we stopped firing they swarmed all about the fort, and while the flag was yet withdrawing, made a desperate charge from all sides. Up to that time only about thirty of our men had been hurt. But in this charge, the enemy got within the earth-works, and forthwith there ensued a scene which no pen can describe. Seeing that all resistance was useless, most of us threw down our arms, expecting, and many begging for, quarter. But it was in vain.
Murder was in every rebel heart; flamed in every rebel eye. Indiscriminate massacre followed instantly upon our surrender. Some of us, seeking shelter, ran to the river and tried to conceal ourselves in the bushes, but for the most part in vain. The savages, pursuing, shot down the fugitives in their tracks. There was Manuel Nichols, as brave a soldier as ever carried a musket. He had been a free negro in Michigan, but volunteered a year ago to fight for the Union. He, with others, had sought a shelter under the bank of the river, but a cold-blooded monster found him, and putting a pistol close to his head, fired, failing however to kill the brave fellow. He was then hacked on the arm, and only a day after died, delirious, in the hospital. Then there was Robert Hall, another colored soldier, who was lying sick in the hospital when the massacre commenced. The devils gashed his head horribly with their sabres, and then cut off part of his right hand, which he had lifted in a mute appeal for mercy. Then there was Harrison, of the Thirteenth Tennessee, who was shot four times after surrender, and then robbed of all his effects. Before I was shot, running along the river bank, I counted fifty dead Union soldiers lying in their blood. One had crawled into a hollow log and was killed in it, another had got over the bank in the river, and on to a board that run out into the water, and when I saw him was already stark and stiff. Several had tried to hide in crevices made by the falling bank, and could not be seen without difficulty, but they were singled out and killed. One negro corporal, Jacob Wilson, who was down on the river bank, seeing that no quarter was shown, stepped into the water so that he lay partly under it. A rebel coming along asked him what was the matter: he said he was badly wounded, and the rebel, after taking from his pocket all the money he had, left him. It happened to be near by a flat-boat tied to the bank. When all was quiet Wilson crawled into it, and got three more wounded comrades also into it, and cut loose. The boat floated out into the channel and was found ashore some miles below. There were, alas, few such fortunate escapes.
I was shot near the river just about dark. Running for my life, a burly rebel struck me with his carbine, putting out one eye, and then shot me in two places. I thought he would certainly leave me with that, but I was mistaken. With half a dozen others, I was at once picked up and carried to a ditch, into which we were tossed like so many brutes, white and black together. Then they covered us with loose dirt, and left us to die. Oh, how dark and desolate it was! Under me were several dead, and right across my breast lay a white soldier, still alive! How he clutched and strained! How, hurt and weak as I was, with only one hand free, I struggled for air and life, feeling my strength waning every moment! It was a strange thing to lie there buried, and yet be able to think and pray. Maybe, friend, you have known what agony was, but you never had such pains of soul as I had down there in that living grave. I thought I could feel the worms gnawing at my flesh; I am sure I had a taste of what death is, with the added pain of knowing that I was not dead, and yet unable to live in that dark, dismal tomb. So I clutched and strained and struggled on, digging upward as I could with my one puny hand.
At last—oh joy!—a faint streak of light looked in; my hand had carved an avenue to the world of life! But would I dare to lift my head? Might not some rebel, standing by, strike me down again on the moment? But I could not die there in that grave; I must escape. Slowly, painfully, I rolled the burden from my breast—he was dead by that time—and then carefully crept out from that living death. It was dark, and no one was near. A moment I stood up on my feet; then?
The next thing I remember I was in the hospital where I am now. They had found me just where I fell, and brought me to a place of safety, where, after a while, consciousness returned. I have been here a week now; and I think I shall get well.
I lie in the cot where poor Robert Hall lay when he was butchered by the rebels. They showed me, yesterday, a letter he had written the day before the massacre to his wife. He had learned to read and write at Memphis, after his enlistment, and used to send a message to his wife and children, who still remained there, every week or so. This was his letter which a surgeon had helped him put together:
“Dear Mammy”—it ran—”I am very sick here in the hospital, but am better than I was, and hope to get well soon. They have been very kind to me; and I find it very sweet to suffer for the dear flag that gives me shelter. You must not worry on my account. Tell Katy she must not forget to say her prayers and to study her lessons carefully now while she has an opportunity. And, mammy, take good care of the baby; I dreamed of her last night, and I think how sad it would be to die and never see her little face again. But then chaplain says it will be right in heaven, and he knows better than we do. And, mammy, don’t forget we are free now; teach both the darlings to be worth of their estate.”
That was poor Hall’s letter—it had not been sent, and we have no heart to send it now. He will never see the baby’s face here; but then God may let him see it up yonder!
I hope to recover and get away from here very soon; I want to be in my place again; for I have something to avenge now, and I can not bear to wait. Poor Hall’s blood is crying to me from the ground; and I want to be able, sometime, to say to Manuel Nichols’s wife, up there in Michigan, that his fall has had its compensation. And may God speed the day when this whole slaveholders’ rebellion—what remains of it— shall be “Buried Alive!”
ANONYMOUS
“O Mammy, have you heard the news?”
Thus spake a Southern child,
As in the nurse’s aged face
She upward glanced and smiled.
“What news you mean, my little one?
It must be mighty fine,
To make my darlin’s face so red,
Her sunny blue eyes shine.”
“Why, Abr’am Lincoln, don’t you know,
The Yankee President,
Whose ugly picture once we saw,
When up to town we went?
“Well, he is goin’ to free you all,
And make you rich and grand,
And you’ll be dressed in silk and gold,
Like the proudest in the land.
“A gilded coach shall carry you
Where’er you wish to ride;
And, mammy, all your work shall be
Forever laid aside.”
The eager speaker paused for breath,
And then the old nurse said,
While closer to her swarthy cheek
She pressed the golden head:
“My little missus, stop and res’ —
You’ talkin’ mighty fas’;
Jos’ look up dere, and tell me what
You see in yonder glass?
“You sees old mammy’s wrinkly face,
As black as any coal;
And underneath her handkerchief
Whole heaps of knotty wool.
“My darlin’s face is red and white,
Her skin is soff and fine,
And on her pretty little head
De yallur ringlets shine.
“My chile, who made dis difference
’Twixt mammy and ’twixt you?
You reads de dear Lord’s blessed book,
And you can tell me true.
“De dear Lord said it must be so;
And, honey, I, for one,
Wid tankful heart will always say,
His holy will be done.
“I tanks Mas’ Linkum all de same,
But when I wants for free,
I’ll ask de Lord of glory,
Not poor buckra man like he.
“And as for gilded carriages,
Dey’s notin’ ’tall to see;
My massa’s coach, what carries him.
Is good enough for me.
“And, honey, when your mammy wants
To change her homespun dress,
She’ll pray, like dear old missus,
To be clothed with righteousness.
“My work’s been done dis many a day,
And now I takes my ease,
A waitin’ for de Master’s call,
Jes’ when de Master please.
“And when at las’ de time’s done come,
And poor old mammy dies,
Your own dear mother’s soff white hand
Shall close these tired old eyes.
“De dear Lord Jesus soon will call
Old mammy home to him,
And he can wash my guilty soul
From ebery spot of sin.
“And at his feet I shall lie down,
Who died and rose for me;
And den, and not till den, my chile,
Your mammy will be free.
“Come, little missus, say your prayers;
Let old Mas’ Linkum ‘lone;
The debil knows who b’longs to him.
And he’ll take care of his own.”
HERMINE
A Southern writer, unknown except as “Hermine,” imagines a slave, referred to in the North and South as “contraband,” returning “home” from her supposedly miserable experiences in the North and begging to rejoin her master’s family. The sincerity of the author may be doubted; the author’s delusions may not.
Don’t you know me, Massa William?
Don’t you know me, Missus dear?
Don’t you know old Aunt Rebecca,
Who went away from you last year,
With Peter, Phil, and Little Judy,
To join the wicked Yankee crew?
But I’ve come back, my dear old Missus,
To live and die with you.
I never knew the old plantation
Was half so dear a place to me.
As when among that Yankee nation
The robbers told me I was free;
And when I looked around for freedom,
(We thought it something bright and fair,)
Hunger, misery, and starvation,
Was all that met us there.
How often, when we used to shiver,
All through the long cold winter night,
I used to study ‘bout my cabin,
The hearth all red with pinewood light!
I saw they would not make us happy,
And yet they would not let us go—
Ah! ’twas hatred of our white folks,
Not love for us, I know.
“And Peter?” Ah! old Massa Peter
Has gone from this cold earth away—
He was too old to be a soldier,
They worked him hard both night and day:
He was not used to so much labor,
And soon the poor old man broke down,
He found, alas! their boasted freedom
A cross and not a crown.
They made my poor boy, Phil, a soldier,
And took him from me far away;
He stood through many a bloody battle,
Was wounded often, many a day;
He did not wish to be a soldier,
He only wanted to be free—
They only loaded him with irons,
Or lashed him to a tree.
Before him once, in line of battle,
He saw our fine young master Jim,
Then dropped poor Phil his Yankee musket,
He could not, would not, fire on him;
For they had played, been raised together,
Young master Jim had cried for Phil—
The Yankees gave the onward order,
But my poor boy stood still.
And then his more than cruel masters,
White men, with hearts and deeds all black,
Struck him down with gun and sabre,
And left him dying on their track.
O missus! my old heart is broken,
My lot all grief and pain has been;
For little Judy, too, is ruined,
In their dark camps of sin.
O Massa William! see me kneeling,
O Missus! say one word for me!
You’ll let me stay? Oh! thank you massa;
Now I’m happy! now I’m free!
I’ve seen enough of Yankee freedom,
I’ve had enough of Yankee love!
As they have treated the poor negro,
Be’t done to them above.
ANONYMOUS
This exciting story, represented as “true” but told as only fiction could, first appeared in print in 1864 in John Fitch’s Annals of the Army of Cumberland.
“John Morford”—so let us call him, good reader—was born near Augusta, Georgia, of Scotch parents, in the year 1832. A blacksmith by trade, he early engaged in railroading, and at the commencement of the rebellion was master-mechanic upon a prominent Southern road. Being a strong Union man, and making no secret of it, he was discharged from his situation and not allowed employment upon any other railroad. A company of cavalry was also sent to his farm and stripped it. Aggrieved at this wholesale robbery, Morford went to John H. Morgan, then a captain, and inquired if he would not pay him for the property thus taken. Morgan replied that he should have his pay if he would only prove his loyalty to the South. Morford acknowledged this to be impossible, and was thereupon very liberally cursed and vilified by Morgan, who accused him of harboring negroes and traitors, and threatened to have him shot. Finally, however, he was content with simply arresting him and sending him, charged with disloyalty, to one Major Peyton.
The major seems to have been a somewhat talkative and argumentative man; for upon Morford’s arrival he endeavored to reason him out of his adherence to the Union, asking him, in the course of a lengthy conversation, many questions about the war, demonstrating, to his own satisfaction at least, the necessity and justice of the position assumed by the seceded States, and finishing, by way of clenching the argument, with the inquiry, “How can you, a Southern man by birth and education, be opposed to the South?” Morford replied that he saw no reason for the rebellion, that the Union was good enough for him, that he should cling to it, and, if he could obtain a pass, would abandon the Confederacy and cast his lot with the North. The Major then argued still more at length, and, as a last resort, endeavored to frighten him with a vivid description of the horrors of “negro equality”—to all of which his hearer simply replied that he was not afraid; whereupon, as unskillful advocates of a bad cause are prone to do, he became very wrathy, vented his anger in a torrent of oaths and vile epithets, and told Morford that he ought to be hung, and should be in two weeks. The candidate for hempen honors, apparently not at all alarmed, coolly replied that he was sorry for that, as he wished to live a little longer, but, if it must be so, he couldn’t help it. Peyton, meanwhile, cooled down, and told him that if he would give a bond of one thousand dollars and take the oath of allegiance to the Southern Confederacy, he would release him and protect his property. After some hesitation—no other plan of escape occurring to him—Morford assented, and took the required oath, upon the back of which Peyton wrote, “If you violate this, I will hang you.”
With this safeguard, Morford returned to his farm and lived a quiet life. Buying a span of horses, he devoted himself to the cultivation of his land, seeing as few persons as he could, and talking with none. His house had previously been the headquarters of the Union men, but was now deserted by them; and its owner endeavored to live up to the letter of the obligation he had taken. For a short time all went well enough; but one day a squad of cavalry came with a special written order from Major Peyton to take his two horses, which they did. This was too much for human nature; and Morford, perceiving that no faith could be placed in the assurances of those in command, determined to be revenged upon them and their cause. His house again became a secret rendezvous for Unionists; and by trusty agents he managed to send regular and valuable information to General Buell, then in command in Tennessee. At length, however, in May, 1862, he was betrayed by one in whom he had placed confidence, and arrested upon the charge of sending information to General Crittenden, at Battle Creek. He indignantly denied the charge, and declared that he could easily prove himself innocent if released for that purpose. After three days’ confinement, this was assented to; and Morford, knowing full well that he could not do what he had promised, made a hasty retreat and fled to the mountains, whence, some days afterwards, he emerged, and went to McMinnville, at which place General Nelson was then in command.
Here he remained until the rebel force left that vicinity, when he again went home, and lived undisturbed upon his farm until Bragg returned with his army. The presence in the neighborhood of so many officers cognizant of his former arrest and escape rendered flight a second time necessary. He now went to the camp of General Donelson, with whom he had some acquaintance, and soon became very friendly there—acting the while in the double capacity of beef-contractor for the rebel army and spy for General Crittenden. Leaving General Donelson after some months’ stay, although earnestly requested to remain longer, Morford next found his way to Nashville, where he made numerous expeditions as a spy for General Negley. Buell was at Louisville, and Nashville was then the Federal outpost. Morford travelled about very readily upon passes given him by General Donelson, making several trips to Murfreesborough and one to Cumberland Gap.
Upon his return from the latter, he was arrested near Lebanon, Tennessee, about one o’clock at night, by a party of four soldiers upon picket-duty at that point. Halting him, the following conversation occurred:—
“Where do you live?”
“Near Stewart’s Ferry, between here and Nashville.”
“Where have you been, and what for?”
“Up to see my brother, to get from him some jeans-cloth and socks for another brother in the Confederate army.”
“How does it happen you are not in the army yourself? That looks rather suspicious.”
“Oh, I live too near the Federal lines to be conscripted.”
“Well, we’ll have to send you to Murfreesborough. I reckon you’re all right; but those are our orders, and we can’t go behind them.”
To this Morford readily consented, saying he had no objection; and the party sat down by the fie and talked in a friendly manner for some time. Morford soon remembered that he had a bottle of brandy with him, and generously treated the crowd. Further conversation was followed by a second drink, and soon by a third. One of the party now proposed to exchange his Rosinantish mare for a fine horse which Morford rode. The latter was not inclined to trade; but objection was useless, and he finally yielded, receiving seventy-five dollars in Confederate money and the mare. The trade pleased the soldier, and a present of a pair of socks still further enhanced his pleasure. His companions were also similarly favored, and testified their appreciation of the gift by endeavoring to purchase the balance of Morford’s stock. He would not sell, however, as he wished to send them to his brother at Richmond, by a person who had given public notice that he was soon going there. A fourth drink made all supremely happy; at which juncture their prisoner asked permission to go to a friend’s house, only a quarter of a mile off, and stay until morning, when he would go with them to Murfreesborough. His friend of the horse trade, now very mellow, thought he need not go to Murfreesborough at all, and said he would see what the others said about it. Finally it was concluded that he was “right,” and might go; whereupon he mounted the skeleton mare and rode rejoicingly into Nashville.
On his next trip southward he was arrested by Colonel John T. Morgan, just as he came out of the Federal lines, and, as his only resort, joined Forrest’s command, and was furnished with a horse and gun. The next day Forrest made a speech to his men, and told them that they were now going to capture Nashville. The column immediately began its march, and Morford, by some means, managed to have himself placed in the advance. Two miles below Lavergne a halt for the night was made; but Morford’s horse was unruly, and could not be stopped, carrying its rider ahead and out of sight. It is needless to say that this obstinacy was not overcome until Nashville was reached, nor that when Forrest came, the next day, General Negley was amply prepared for him. At this time Nashville was invested. Buell was known to be advancing towards the city, but no scouts had been able to go to or come from him. A handsome reward was offered to any one who would carry a dispatch safely through to Bowling Green, and Morford undertook to do it. Putting the document under the lining of his boot, he started for Gallatin, where he arrived safely.
For some hours he sauntered around the place, lounged in and out of bar-rooms, made friends with the rebel soldiers, and, towards evening purchased a small bag of corn-meal, a bottle of whiskey, a pound or two of salt, and some smaller articles, which he threw across his shoulder and started up the Louisville road, with hat on one side, hair in admirable disorder, and, apparently, gloriously drunk. The pickets jested at and made sport of him, but permitted him to pass. The meal, etc. was carried six miles, when he suddenly became sober, dropped it, and hastened on to Bowling Green, and there met General Rosecrans, who had just arrived. His information was very valuable. Here he remained until the army came up and passed on, and then set out on his return on foot as he had come. He supposed that our forces had gone by way of Gallatin, but when near that place learned that it was still in possession of the rebels, and so stopped for the night in a shanty between Morgan’s pickets, on the north side, and Woolford’s (Union), on the south side. During the night the two had a fight, which finally centered around the shanty, and resulted in driving Morford to the woods. In two or three hours he came back for his clothes, and found that the contending parties had disappeared, and that the railroad-tunnels had been filled with wood, and fired. Hastily gathering his effects together, he made his way to Tyree Springs, and thence to Nashville.
For a short time he acted as a detective of the Army Police at Nashville, assuming the character of a rebel soldier, and living in the families of prominent secessionists. In this work he was very successful; but it had too little of danger and adventure, and he returned again to scouting, making several trips southward, sometimes without trouble, but once or twice being arrested, and escaping as best he could. In these expeditions he visited McMinnville, Murfreesborough, Altamont, on the Cumberland Mountains, Bridgeport, Chattanooga, and other places of smaller note. He traveled usually in the guise of a smuggler, actually obtaining orders for goods from prominent rebels, and sometimes the money in advance, filling them in Nashville, and delivering the articles upon his next trip. Just before the battle of Stone River he received a large order to be filled for the rebel hospitals, went to Nashville, procured the medicine, and returned to McMinnville, when he delivered some of it. Thence he travelled to Bradyville, and thence to Murfreesborough, arriving there just as the battle began. Presenting some of the surgeons with a supply of morphine, he assisted them in attending the wounded for a day or two, and then went to a hospital tent in the woods near the railroad, where he also remained one day and part of another. The fight was now getting hot, and, fearful that somebody would recognize him, he left Murfreesborough on Friday, and went to McMinnville. He had been there but little more than an hour, having barely time to put up his horse and step into a house near by to see some wounded men, when two soldiers arrived in search of him. Their description of him was perfect; but he escaped by being out of sight—the friend with whom he was supposed to be, declaring, though closely questioned, that he had not seen and knew nothing of him. In a few minutes pickets were thrown out around the town, and it was two days before he could get away. Obtaining a pass to Chattanooga at last, only through the influence of a lady acquaintance, with it he passed the guards, but, when once out of sight, turned of from the Chattanooga road, and made his way safely to Nashville.
General Rosecrans was now in possession of Murfreesborough, and thither Morford proceeded with some smuggler’s goods, with a view to another trip. The necessary permission was readily obtained, and he set out for Woodbury. Leaving his wagon outside the rebel lines, he proceeded on foot to McMinnville, arriving there on the 19th of January last, and finding General John H. Morgan, to whom he represented himself as a former resident in the vicinity of Woodbury; his family, however, had moved away, and he would like permission to take his wagon and bring away the household goods. This was granted, and the wagon brought to McMinnville, whence Morford went to Chattanooga, representing himself along the road as a fugitive from the Yankees. Near Chattanooga he began selling his goods to Unionists and rebels alike, at enormous prices, and soon closed them out at a profit of from four hundred to five hundred dollars. At Chattanooga he remained a few days, obtained all the information he could, and returned to Murfreesborough without trouble.
His next and last trip is the most interesting and daring of all his adventures. Making a few days’ stay in Murfreesborough, he went to McMinnville, and remained there several days, during which time he burned Hickory Creek Bridge, and sent a report of it to General Rosecrans. This he managed with so much secrecy and skill as to escape all suspicion of complicity in the work, mingling freely with the citizens and talking the matter over in all its phases. From McMinnville, Morford proceeded to Chattanooga, and remained there nearly a week, when he learned that three of our scouts were imprisoned in the Hamilton County jail, at Harrison, Tennessee, and were to be shot on the first Friday in May. Determined to attempt their rescue, he sent a Union man to the town to ascertain who was jailer, what the number of the guards, how they were placed, and inquire into the condition of things in general about the jail. Upon receipt of his report, Morford gathered about him nine Union men, on the night of Tuesday, April 21, and started for Harrison. Before reaching the place, however, they heard rumors that the guard had been greatly strengthened; and, fearful that it would prove too powerful for them, the party retreated to the mountains on the north side of the Tennessee River, where they remained concealed until Thursday night. On Wednesday night the same man who had previously gone to the town was again sent to reconnoiter the position. Thursday morning he returned and said that the story of a strong guard was all false: there were but two in addition to the jailer.
Morford’s party was now reduced to six, including himself: but he resolved to make the attempt that night. Late in the afternoon all went down to the river and loitered around until dark, when they procured boats and crossed to the opposite bank. Taking the Chattanooga and Harrison road, they entered the town, looked around at leisure, saw no soldiers nor anything unusual, and proceeded towards the jail. Approaching quite near, they threw themselves upon the ground and surveyed the premises carefully. The jail was surrounded by a high board fence, in which were two gates. Morford’s plan of operations was quickly arranged. Making a prisoner of one of his own men, he entered the enclosure, posting a sentinel at each gate. Once inside, a light was visible in the jail, and Morford marched confidently up to the door and rapped. The jailer thrust his head out of a window and asked what was wanted. He was told, “Here is a prisoner to put in the jail.” Apparently satisfied, the jailer soon opened the door and admitted the twain into the entry. In a moment, however, he became alarmed, and, hastily exclaiming, “Hold on!” stepped out.
For ten minutes Morford waited patiently for his return, supposing, of course, that he could not escape from the yard, both gates being guarded. Not making his appearance, it was found that the pickets had allowed him to pass them. This rather alarming fact made haste necessary, and Morford, returning to the jail, said he must put his prisoner in immediately, and demanded the keys forthwith. The women declared in positive terms that they hadn’t them, and did not know where they were. One of the guards was discovered in bed and told to get the keys. Proving rather noisy and saucy, he was reminded that he might get his head taken off if he were not quiet—which intimation effectually silenced him. Morford again demanded the keys, and the women, somewhat frightened, gave him the key to the outside door. Unlocking it, and lighting up the place with candles, he found himself in a room around the sides of which was ranged a line of wrought-iron cages. In one of these were five persons, four white and one negro. Carrying out the character he had assumed of a rebel soldier in charge of a prisoner, Morford talked harshly enough to the caged men, and threatened to hang them at once, at which they were very naturally alarmed, and began to beg for mercy. For a third time the keys to the inner room, in which the scouts were, were demanded, and a third time the women denied having them. An axe was then ordered to be brought, but there was none about the place: so said they. Morford saw that they were trifling with him, and determined to stop it. Snatching one of the jailer’s boys standing near by the collar, and drawing his sabre, he told him he would cut his head off if he did not bring him an axe in two minutes. This had the desired effect, and the axe was forthcoming.
Morford now began cutting away at the lock, when he was startled by hearing the word “halt!” at the gate. Of his five men two were at the gates, two were inside as a guard, and one was holding the light. Ready for a fight, he went out to see what was the matter. The sentinel reporting that he had halted an armed man outside, Morford walked out to him and demanded—
“What are you doing here with that gun?”
“Miss Laura said you were breaking down the jail, and I want to see McAllister, the jailer. Where is he?” was the reply.
“Well, suppose I am breaking down the jail: what are you going to do about it?”
“I am going to stop it if I can.”
“What’s your name?”
“Lowry Johnson.”
By this time Morford had grasped the muzzle of the gun, and told him to let go. Instead of complying, Johnson tried to pull it away; but a blow upon the neck from Morford’s sabre soon made him drop it. Morford now began to search him for other weapons, but before he had concluded the operation Johnson broke away, leaving a part of his clothing in Morford’s hands. The latter drew his revolver and pursued, firing five shots at him, sometimes at a distance of only six or eight paces. A cry, as of pain, showed that he was struck, but he managed to reach the hotel (kept by his brother), and, bursting in the door, which was fastened, escaped into the house. Morford followed, but too late. Johnson’s brother now came out and rang the bell in front, which gathered a crowd about the door; but Morford, not at all daunted, told them that if they wanted to guard the jail they had better be about it quick, as he was going to burn it and the town in the bargain. This so frightened them that no further demonstration was made, and Morford returned to the jail unmolested. There he and his men made so much shouting and hurrahing as to frighten the people of the town beyond measure; and many lights from upper-story windows were extinguished, and the streets were deserted.
A half-hour’s work was necessary to break of the outside lock, a splendid burglar-proof one. Morford now discovered that the door was double, and that the inner one was made still more secure by being barred with three heavy log-chains. These were cut in two with the axe; but the strong lock of the door still remained. He again demanded the key, and told the women if it was not produced he would murder the whole of them. The rebel guard, Lew Luttrell by name, was still in bed. Rising up, he said that the key was not there. Morford now ordered Luttrell to get out of bed, in a tone so authoritative that that individual deemed it advisable to comply. Scarcely was he out, however, before Morford struck at him with his sabre; but he was too far off, and the blow fell upon one of the children, drawing some blood. This frightened the women, and, concluding that he was about to put his threat in execution and would murder them surely enough, they produced the key without further words. No time was lost in unlocking the door and releasing the inmates of the room. Procuring their clothes for them and arming one with Johnson’s gun, the whole party left the jail and hurried towards the river. Among the released prisoners was a rebel with a wooden leg, the original having been shot off at Manassas. He persisted in accompanying the others, and was only induced to go back by the intimation that “dead men tell no tales.”
Crossing the river in the boats, they were moved to another place at some distance, to preclude the possibility of being tracked and followed. All now hid themselves among the mountains, and the same Union man was again sent to Harrison, this time to see how severely Johnson was wounded. He returned in a day or two, and reported that he had a severe sabre-cut on the shoulder, a bullet through the muscle of his right arm, and two slight wounds in one of his hands. Morford and his men remained in the mountains until all search for the prisoners was over, then went to the Cumberland Mountains, where they remained one day and a portion of another, and then proceeded in the direction of McMinnville. Hiding themselves in the woods near this place during the day, seeing but not seen, they traveled that night to within eleven miles of Woodbury, when they struck across the road from McMinnville to Woodbury. Near Logan’s Plains they were fired on by a body of rebel cavalry, but, though some forty shots were fired, no one of the ten was harmed, Morford having one bullet-hole in his coat. The cavalry, however, pursued them across the barrens, surrounded them, and supposed themselves sure of their game; but Morford and his companions scattered and hid away, not one being captured or found. Night coming on, the cavalry gave up the chase, and went on to Woodbury, where they threw out pickets, not doubting that they would pick up the objects of their search during the night. Morford, however, was informed of this fact by a citizen, and, in consequence, lay concealed all the next day, making his way safely to Murfreesborough, with all of his company, the day after.
SILAS WEIR MITCHELL
Mitchell (1829–1914), a native of Philadelphia, was a neurologist and wrote many creative works as well as important medical books on the nervous system. This fictional story may remind readers of the true tales by Dr. Oliver Sacks in its enlivening interest in the personality of the patient: “This set me to thinking,” muses the limbless narrator, “how much a man might lose and yet live.” When “The Case of George Dedlow” was published in 1866, readers believed it to be true, to Mitchell’s surprise, and sent gifts to him and made inquires about him at the “stump” hospital in Philadelphia.
The following notes of my own case have been declined on various pretexts by every medical journal to which I have offered them. There was, perhaps, some reason in this, because many of the medical facts which they record are not altogether new, and because the psychical deductions to which they have led me are not in themselves of medical interest. I ought to add that a great deal of what is here related is not of any scientific value whatsoever; but as one or two people on whose judgment I rely have advised me to print my narrative with all the personal details, rather than in the dry shape in which, as a psychological statement, I shall publish it elsewhere, I have yielded to their views. I suspect, however, that the very character of my record will, in the eyes of some of my readers, tend to lessen the value of the metaphysical discoveries which it sets forth.
* * *
I am the son of a physician, still in large practice, in the village of Abington, Scofield County, Indiana. Expecting to act as his future partner, I studied medicine in his office, and in 1859 and 1860 attended lectures at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. My second course should have been in the following year, but the outbreak of the Rebellion so crippled my father’s means that I was forced to abandon my intention. The demand for army surgeons at this time became very great; and although not a graduate, I found no difficulty in getting the place of assistant surgeon to the Tenth Indiana Volunteers. In the subsequent Western campaigns this organization suffered so severely that before the term of its service was over it was merged in the Twenty-first Indiana Volunteers; and I, as an extra surgeon, ranked by the medical officers of the latter regiment, was transferred to the Fifteenth Indiana Cavalry. Like many physicians, I had contracted a strong taste for army life, and, disliking cavalry service, sought and obtained the position of first lieutenant in the Seventy-ninth Indiana Volunteers, an infantry regiment of excellent character.
On the day after I assumed command of my company, which had no captain, we were sent to garrison a part of a line of block-houses stretching along the Cumberland River below Nashville, then occupied by a portion of the command of General Rosecrans.
The life we led while on this duty was tedious and at the same time dangerous in the extreme. Food was scarce and bad, the water horrible, and we had no cavalry to forage for us. If, as infantry, we attempted to levy supplies upon the scattered farms around us, the population seemed suddenly to double, and in the shape of guerrillas “potted” us industriously from behind distant trees, rocks, or fences. Under these various and unpleasant influences, combined with a fair infusion of malaria, our men rapidly lost health and spirits. Unfortunately, no proper medical supplies had been forwarded with our small force (two companies), and, as the fall advanced, the want of quinine and stimulants became a serious annoyance. Moreover, our rations were running low; we had been three weeks without a new supply; and our commanding officer, Major Henry L. Terrill, began to be uneasy as to the safety of his men. About this time it was supposed that a train with rations would be due from the post twenty miles to the north of us; yet it was quite possible that it would bring us food, but no medicines, which were what we most needed. The command was too small to detach any part of it, and the major therefore resolved to send an officer alone to the post above us, where the rest of the Seventy-ninth lay, and whence they could easily forward quinine and stimulants by the train, if it had not left, or, if it had, by a small cavalry escort.
It so happened, to my cost, as it turned out, that I was the only officer it to make the journey, and I was accordingly ordered to proceed to Blockhouse No. 3 and make the required arrangements. I started alone just after dusk the next night, and during the darkness succeeded in getting within three miles of my destination. At this time I found that I had lost my way, and, although aware of the danger of my act, was forced to turn aside and ask at a log cabin for directions. The house contained a dried-up old woman and four white-headed, half-naked children. The woman was either stone-deaf or pretended to be so; but, at all events, she gave me no satisfaction, and I remounted and rode away. On coming to the end of a lane, into which I had turned to seek the cabin, I found to my surprise that the bars had been put up during my brief parley. They were too high to leap, and I therefore dismounted to pull them down. As I touched the top rail, I heard a rifle, and at the same instant felt a blow on both arms, which fell helpless. I staggered to my horse and tried to mount; but, as I could use neither arm, the effort was vain, and I therefore stood still, awaiting my fate. I am only conscious that I saw about me several graybacks, for I must have fallen fainting almost immediately.
When I awoke I was lying in the cabin near by, upon a pile of rubbish. Ten or twelve guerrillas were gathered about the fire, apparently drawing lots for my watch, boots, hat, etc. I now made an effort to find out how far I was hurt. I discovered that I could use the left forearm and hand pretty well, and with this hand I felt the right limb all over until I touched the wound. The ball had passed from left to right through the left biceps, and directly through the right arm just below the shoulder, emerging behind. The right arm and forearm were cold and perfectly insensible. I pinched them as well as I could, to test the amount of sensation remaining; but the hand might as well have been that of a dead man. I began to understand that the nerves had been wounded, and that the part was utterly powerless. By this time my friends had pretty well divided the spoils, and, rising together, went out. The old woman then came to me, and said: “Reckon you’d best git up. They-’ uns is a-goin’ to take you away.” To this I only answered, “Water, water.” I had a grim sense of amusement on finding that the old woman was not deaf, for she went out, and presently came back with a gourdful, which I eagerly drank. An hour later the graybacks returned, and finding that I was too weak to walk, carried me out and laid me on the bottom of a common cart, with which they set of on a trot. The jolting was horrible, but within an hour I began to have in my dead right hand a strange burning, which was rather a relief to me. It increased as the sun rose and the day grew warm, until I felt as if the hand was caught and pinched in a red-hot vise. Then in my agony I begged my guard for water to wet it with, but for some reason they desired silence, and at every noise threatened me with a revolver. At length the pain became absolutely unendurable, and I grew what it is the fashion to call demoralized. I screamed, cried, and yelled in my torture, until, as I suppose, my captors became alarmed, and, stopping, gave me a handkerchief,—my own, I fancy,—and a canteen of water, with which I wetted the hand, to my unspeakable relief.
It is unnecessary to detail the events by which, finally, I found myself in one of the rebel hospitals near Atlanta. Here, for the first time, my wounds were properly cleansed and dressed by a Dr. Oliver T. Wilson, who treated me throughout with great kindness. I told him I had been a doctor, which, perhaps, may have been in part the cause of the unusual tenderness with which I was managed. The left arm was now quite easy, although, as will be seen, it never entirely healed. The right arm was worse than ever—the humerus broken, the nerves wounded, and the hand alive only to pain. I use this phrase because it is connected in my mind with a visit from a local visitor,—I am not sure he was a preacher,—who used to go daily through the wards, and talk to us or write our letters. One morning he stopped at my bed, when this little talk occurred:
“How are you, lieutenant?”
“Oh,” said I, “as usual. All right, but this hand, which is dead except to pain.”
“Ah,” said he, “such and thus will the wicked be—such will you be if you die in your sins: you will go where only pain can be felt. For all eternity, all of you will be just like that hand—knowing pain only.”
I suppose I was very weak, but somehow I felt a sudden and chilling horror of possible universal pain, and suddenly fainted. When I awoke the hand was worse, if that could be. It was red, shining, aching, burning, and, as it seemed to me, perpetually rasped with hot files. When the doctor came I begged for morphia. He said gravely: “We have none. You know you don’t allow it to pass the lines.” It was sadly true.
I turned to the wall, and wetted the hand again, my sole relief. In about an hour Dr. Wilson came back with two aides, and explained to me that the bone was so crushed as to make it hopeless to save it, and that, besides, amputation offered some chance of arresting the pain. I had thought of this before, but the anguish I felt—I cannot say endured—was so awful that I made no more of losing the limb than of parting with a tooth on account of toothache. Accordingly, brief preparations were made, which I watched with a sort of eagerness such as must forever be inexplicable to any one who has not passed six weeks of torture like that which I had suffered.
I had but one pang before the operation. As I arranged myself on the left side, so as to make it convenient for the operator to use the knife, I asked: “Who is to give me the ether?” “We have none,” said the person questioned. I set my teeth, and said no more.
I need not describe the operation. The pain felt was severe, but it was insignificant as compared with that of any other minute of the past six weeks. The limb was removed very near to the shoulder-joint. As the second incision was made, I felt a strange flash of pain play through the limb, as if it were in every minutest fibril of nerve. This was followed by instant, unspeakable relief, and before the flaps were brought together I was sound asleep. I dimly remember saying, as I pointed to the arm which lay on the floor: “There is the pain, and here am I. How queer!” Then I slept—slept the sleep of the just, or, better, of the painless. From this time forward I was free from neuralgia. At a subsequent period I saw a number of cases similar to mine in a hospital in Philadelphia.
It is no part of my plan to detail my weary months of monotonous prison life in the South. In the early part of April, 1863, I was exchanged, and after the usual thirty days’ furlough returned to my regiment a captain.
On the 19th of September, 1863, occurred the battle of Chickamauga, in which my regiment took a conspicuous part. The close of our own share in this contest is, as it were, burned into my memory with every least detail. It was about 6 P.M., when we found ourselves in line, under cover of a long, thin row of scrubby trees, beyond which lay a gentle slope, from which, again, rose a hill rather more abrupt, and crowned with an earthwork. We received orders to cross this space and take the fort in front, while a brigade on our right was to make a like movement on its flank.
Just before we emerged into the open ground, we noticed what, I think, was common in many fights—that the enemy had begun to bowl round shot at us, probably from failure of shell. We passed across the valley in good order, although the men fell rapidly all along the line. As we climbed the hill, our pace slackened, and the fire grew heavier. At this moment a battery opened on our left, the shots crossing our heads obliquely. It is this moment which is so printed on my recollection. I can see now, as if through a window, the gray smoke, lit with red flashes, the long, wavering line, the sky blue above, the trodden furrows, blotted with blue blouses. Then it was as if the window closed, and I knew and saw no more. No other scene in my life is thus scarred, if I may say so, into my memory. I have a fancy that the horrible shock which suddenly fell upon me must have had something to do with thus intensifying the momentary image then before my eyes.
When I awakened, I was lying under a tree somewhere at the rear. The ground was covered with wounded, and the doctors were busy at an operating-table, improvised from two barrels and a plank. At length two of them who were examining the wounded about me came up to where I lay. A hospital steward raised my head and poured down some brandy and water, while another cut loose my pantaloons. The doctors exchanged looks and walked away. I asked the steward where I was hit.
“Both thighs,” said he; “the doctors won’t do nothing.”
“No use?” said I.
“Not much,” said he.
“Not much means none at all,” I answered.
When he had gone I set myself to thinking about a good many things I had better have thought of before, but which in no way concern the history of my case. A half-hour went by. I had no pain, and did not get weaker. At last, I cannot explain why, I began to look about me. At first things appeared a little hazy. I remember one thing which thrilled me a little, even then.
A tall, blond-bearded major walked up to a doctor near me, saying, “When you’ve a little leisure, just take a look at my side.”
“Do it now,” said the doctor.
The officer exposed his wound. “Ball went in here, and out there.”
The doctor looked up at him—half pity, half amazement. “If you’ve got any message, you’d best send it by me.”
“Why, you don’t say it’s serious?” was the reply.
“Serious! Why, you’re shot through the stomach. You won’t live over the day.”
Then the man did what struck me as a very odd thing. He said, “Anybody got a pipe?” Some one gave him a pipe. He filled it deliberately, struck a light with a flint, and sat down against a tree near to me. Presently the doctor came to him again, and asked him what he could do for him.
“Send me a drink of Bourbon.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
As the doctor left him, he called him back. “It’s a little rough, doc, isn’t it?”
No more passed, and I saw this man no longer. Another set of doctors were handling my legs, for the first time causing pain. A moment after a steward put a towel over my mouth, and I smelled the familiar odor of chloroform, which I was glad enough to breathe. In a moment the trees began to move around from left to right, faster and faster; then a universal grayness came before me,—and I recall nothing further until I awoke to consciousness in a hospital-tent. I got hold of my own identity in a moment or two, and was suddenly aware of a sharp cramp in my left leg. I tried to get at it to rub it with my single arm, but, finding myself too weak, hailed an attendant. “Just rub my left calf,” said I, “if you please.”
“Calf?” said he. “You ain’t none. It’s took of.”
“I know better,” said I. “I have pain in both legs.”
“Wall, I never!” said he. “You ain’t got nary leg.”
As I did not believe him, he threw of the covers, and, to my horror, showed me that I had suffered amputation of both thighs, very high up.
“That will do,” said I, faintly.
A month later, to the amazement of every one, I was so well as to be moved from the crowded hospital at Chattanooga to Nashville, where I filled one of the ten thousand beds of that vast metropolis of hospitals. Of the sufferings which then began I shall presently speak. It will be best just now to detail the final misfortune which here fell upon me. Hospital No. 2, in which I lay, was inconveniently crowded with severely wounded officers. After my third week an epidemic of hospital gangrene broke out in my ward. In three days it attacked twenty persons. Then an inspector came, and we were transferred at once to the open air, and placed in tents. Strangely enough, the wound in my remaining arm, which still suppurated, was seized with gangrene. The usual remedy, bromine, was used locally, but the main artery opened, was tied, bled again and again, and at last, as a final resort, the remaining arm was amputated at the shoulder-joint. Against all chances I recovered, to find myself a useless torso, more like some strange larval creature than anything of human shape. Of my anguish and horror of myself I dare not speak. I have dictated these pages, not to shock my readers, but to possess them with facts in regard to the relation of the mind to the body; and I hasten, therefore, to such portions of my case as best illustrate these views.
In January, 1864, I was forwarded to Philadelphia, in order to enter what was known as the Stump Hospital, South Street, then in charge of Dr. Hopkinson. This favor was obtained through the influence of my father’s friend, the late Governor Anderson, who has always manifested an interest in my case, for which I am deeply grateful. It was thought, at the time, that Mr. Palmer, the leg-maker, might be able to adapt some form of arm to my left shoulder, as on that side there remained five inches of the arm-bone, which I could move to a moderate extent. The hope proved illusory, as the stump was always too tender to bear any pressure. The hospital referred to was in charge of several surgeons while I was an inmate, and was at all times a clean and pleasant home. It was filled with men who had lost one arm or leg, or one of each, as happened now and then. I saw one man who had lost both legs, and one who had parted with both arms; but none, like myself, stripped of every limb. There were collected in this place hundreds of these cases, which gave to it, with reason enough, the not very pleasing title of Stump Hospital.
I spent here three and a half months, before my transfer to the United States Army Hospital for Injuries and Diseases of the Nervous System. Every morning I was carried out in an arm-chair and placed in the library, where some one was always ready to write or read for me, or to fill my pipe. The doctors lent me medical books; the ladies brought me luxuries and fed me; and, save that I was helpless to a degree which was humiliating, I was as comfortable as kindness could make me.
I amused myself at this time by noting in my mind all that I could learn from other limbless folk, and from myself, as to the peculiar feelings which were noticed in regard to lost members. I found that the great mass of men who had undergone amputations for many months felt the usual consciousness that they still had the lost limb. It itched or pained, or was cramped, but never felt hot or cold. If they had painful sensations referred to it, the conviction of its existence continued unaltered for long periods; but where no pain was felt in it, then by degrees the sense of having that limb faded away entirely. I think we may to some extent explain this. The knowledge we possess of any part is made up of the numberless impressions from without which affect its sensitive surfaces, and which are transmitted through its nerves to the spinal nerve-cells, and through them, again, to the brain. We are thus kept endlessly informed as to the existence of parts, because the impressions which reach the brain are, by a law of our being, referred by us to the part from which they come. Now, when the part is cut off, the nerve-trunks which led to it and from it, remaining capable of being impressed by irritations, are made to convey to the brain from the stump impressions which are, as usual, referred by the brain to the lost parts to which these nerve-threads belonged. In other words, the nerve is like a bell-wire. You may pull it at any part of its course, and thus ring the bell as well as if you pulled at the end of the wire; but, in any case, the intelligent servant will refer the pull to the front door, and obey it accordingly. The impressions made on the severed ends of the nerve are due often to changes in the stump during healing, and consequently cease when it has healed, so that finally, in a very healthy stump, no such impressions arise; the brain ceases to correspond with the lost leg, and, as les absents ont toujours tort, it is no longer remembered or recognized. But in some cases, such as mine proved at last to my sorrow, the ends of the nerves undergo a curious alteration, and get to be enlarged and altered. This change, as I have seen in my practice of medicine, sometimes passes up the nerves toward the centers, and occasions a more or less constant irritation of the nerve-fibers, producing neuralgia, which is usually referred by the brain to that part of the lost limb to which the affected nerve belonged. This pain keeps the brain ever mindful of the missing part, and, imperfectly at least, preserves to the man a consciousness of possessing that which he has not.
Where the pains come and go, as they do in certain cases, the subjective sensations thus occasioned are very curious, since in such cases the man loses and gains, and loses and regains, the consciousness of the presence of the lost parts, so that he will tell you, “Now I feel my thumb, now I feel my little finger.” I should also add that nearly every person who has lost an arm above the elbow feels as though the lost member were bent at the elbow, and at times is vividly impressed with the notion that his fingers are strongly flexed.
Other persons present a peculiarity which I am at a loss to account for. Where the leg, for instance, has been lost, they feel as if the foot were present, but as though the leg were shortened. Thus, if the thigh has been taken off, there seems to them to be a foot at the knee; if the arm, a hand seems to be at the elbow, or attached to the stump itself.
Before leaving Nashville I had begun to suffer the most acute pain in my left hand, especially the little finger; and so perfect was the idea which was thus kept up of the real presence of these missing parts that I found it hard at times to believe them absent. Often at night I would try with one lost hand to grope for the other. As, however, I had no pain in the right arm, the sense of the existence of that limb gradually disappeared, as did that of my legs also.
Everything was done for my neuralgia which the doctors could think of; and at length, at my suggestion, I was removed, as I have said, from the Stump Hospital to the United States Army Hospital for Injuries and Diseases of the Nervous System. It was a pleasant, suburban, old-fashioned country-seat, its gardens surrounded by a circle of wooden, one-story wards, shaded by fine trees. There were some three hundred cases of epilepsy, paralysis, St. Vitus’s dance, and wounds of nerves. On one side of me lay a poor fellow, a Dane, who had the same burning neuralgia with which I once suffered, and which I now learned was only too common. This man had become hysterical from pain. He carried a sponge in his pocket, and a bottle of water in one hand, with which he constantly wetted the burning hand. Every sound increased his torture, and he even poured water into his boots to keep himself from feeling too sensibly the rough friction of his soles when walking. Like him, I was greatly eased by having small doses of morphia injected under the skin of my shoulder with a hollow needle fitted to a syringe.
As I improved under the morphia treatment, I began to be disturbed by the horrible variety of suffering about me. One man walked sideways; there was one who could not smell; another was dumb from an explosion. In fact, every one had his own abnormal peculiarity. Near me was a strange case of palsy of the muscles called rhomboids, whose office it is to hold down the shoulder-blades flat on the back during the motions of the arms, which, in themselves, were strong enough. When, however, he lifted these members, the shoulder-blades stood out from the back like wings, and got him the sobriquet of the “Angel.” In my ward were also the cases of its, which very much annoyed me, as upon any great change in the weather it was common to have a dozen convulsions in view at once. Dr. Neek, one of our physicians, told me that on one occasion a hundred and fifty its took place within thirty-six hours. On my complaining of these sights, whence I alone could not fly, I was placed in the paralytic and wound ward, which I found much more pleasant.
A month of skilful treatment eased me entirely of my aches, and I then began to experience certain curious feelings, upon which, having nothing to do and nothing to do anything with, I reflected a good deal. It was a good while before I could correctly explain to my own satisfaction the phenomena which at this time I was called upon to observe. By the various operations already described I had lost about four fifths of my weight. As a consequence of this I ate much less than usual, and could scarcely have consumed the ration of a soldier. I slept also but little; for, as sleep is the repose of the brain, made necessary by the waste of its tissues during thought and voluntary movement, and as this latter did not exist in my case, I needed only that rest which was necessary to repair such exhaustion of the nerve-centers as was induced by thinking and the automatic movements of the viscera.
I observed at this time also that my heart, in place of beating, as it once did, seventy-eight in the minute, pulsated only forty-five times in this interval—a fact to be easily explained by the perfect quiescence to which I was reduced, and the consequent absence of that healthy and constant stimulus to the muscles of the heart which exercise occasions.
Notwithstanding these drawbacks, my physical health was good, which, I confess, surprised me, for this among other reasons: It is said that a burn of two thirds of the surface destroys life, because then all the excretory matters which this portion of the glands of the skin evolved are thrown upon the blood, and poison the man, just as happens in an animal whose skin the physiologist has varnished, so as in this way to destroy its function. Yet here was I, having lost at least a third of my skin, and apparently none the worse for it.
Still more remarkable, however, were the psychical changes which I now began to perceive. I found to my horror that at times I was less conscious of myself, of my own existence, than used to be the case. This sensation was so novel that at first it quite bewildered me. I felt like asking someone constantly if I were really George Dedlow or not; but, well aware how absurd I should seem after such a question, I refrained from speaking of my case, and strove more keenly to analyze my feelings. At times the conviction of my want of being myself was overwhelming and most painful. It was, as well as I can describe it, a deficiency in the egoistic sentiment of individuality. About one half of the sensitive surface of my skin was gone, and thus much of relation to the outer world destroyed. As a consequence, a large part of the receptive central organs must be out of employ, and, like other idle things, degenerating rapidly. Moreover, all the great central ganglia, which give rise to movements in the limbs, were also eternally at rest. Thus one half of me was absent or functionally dead. This set me to thinking how much a man might lose and yet live. If I were unhappy enough to survive, I might part with my spleen at least, as many a dog has done, and grown fat afterwards. The other organs with which we breathe and circulate the blood would be essential; so also would the liver; but at least half of the intestines might be dispensed with, and of course all of the limbs. And as to the nervous system, the only parts really necessary to life are a few small ganglia. Were the rest absent or inactive, we should have a man reduced, as it were, to the lowest terms, and leading an almost vegetative existence. Would such a being, I asked myself, possess the sense of individuality in its usual completeness, even if his organs of sensation remained, and he were capable of consciousness? Of course, without them, he could not have it any more than a dahlia or a tulip. But with them—how then? I concluded that it would be at a minimum, and that, if utter loss of relation to the outer world were capable of destroying a man’s consciousness of himself, the destruction of half of his sensitive surfaces might well occasion, in a less degree, a like result, and so diminish his sense of individual existence.
I thus reached the conclusion that a man is not his brain, or any one part of it, but all of his economy, and that to lose any part must lessen this sense of his own existence. I found but one person who properly appreciated this great truth. She was a New England lady, from Hartford—an agent, I think, for some commission, perhaps the Sanitary. After I had told her my views and feelings she said: “Yes, I comprehend. The fractional entities of vitality are embraced in the oneness of the unitary Ego. Life,” she added, “is the garnered condensation of objective impressions; and as the objective is the remote father of the subjective, so must individuality, which is but focused subjectivity, suffer and fade when the sensation lenses, by which the rays of impression are condensed, become destroyed.” I am not quite clear that I fully understood her, but I think she appreciated my ideas, and I felt grateful for her kindly interest.
The strange want I have spoken of now haunted and perplexed me so constantly that I became moody and wretched. While in this state, a man from a neighboring ward fell one morning into conversation with the chaplain, within ear-shot of my chair. Some of their words arrested my attention, and I turned my head to see and listen. The speaker, who wore a sergeant’s chevron and carried one arm in a sling was a tall, loosely made person, with a pale face, light eyes of a washed-out blue tint, and very sparse yellow whiskers. His mouth was weak, both lips being almost alike, so that the organ might have been turned upside down without affecting its expression. His forehead, however, was high and thinly covered with sandy hair. I should have said, as a phrenologist, will feeble; emotional, but not passionate; likely to be an enthusiast or a weakly bigot.
I caught enough of what passed to make me call to the sergeant when the chaplain left him.
“Good morning,” said he. “How do you get on?”
“Not at all,” I replied. “Where were you hit?”
“Oh, at Chancellorsville. I was shot in the shoulder. I have what the doctors call paralysis of the median nerve, but I guess Dr. Neek and the lightnin’ battery will fix it. When my time’s out I’ll go back to Kearsarge and try on the school-teaching again. I’ve done my share.”
“Well,” said I, “you’re better of than I.”
“Yes,” he answered, “in more ways than one. I belong to the New Church. It’s a great comfort for a plain man like me, when he’s weary and sick, to be able to turn away from earthly things and hold converse daily with the great and good who have left this here world. We have a circle in Coates Street. If it wa’n’t for the consoling I get there, I’d of wished myself dead many a time. I ain’t got kith or kin on earth; but this matters little, when one can just talk to them daily and know that they are in the spheres above us.”
“It must be a great comfort,” I replied, “if only one could believe it.”
“Believe!” he repeated. “How can you help it? Do you suppose anything dies?”
“No,” I said. “The soul does not, I am sure; and as to matter, it merely changes form.”
“But why, then,” said he, “should not the dead soul talk to the living? In space, no doubt, exist all forms of matter, merely in finer, more ethereal being. You can’t suppose a naked soul moving about without a bodily garment—no creed teaches that; and if its new clothing be of like substance to ours, only of ethereal fineness,—a more delicate recrystallization about the eternal spiritual nucleus,—must it not then possess powers as much more delicate and refined as is the new material in which it is reclad?”
“Not very clear,” I answered; “but, after all, the thing should be susceptible of some form of proof to our present senses.”
“And so it is,” said he. “Come tomorrow with me, and you shall see and hear for yourself.”
“I will,” said I, “if the doctor will lend me the ambulance.”
It was so arranged, as the surgeon in charge was kind enough, as usual, to oblige me with the loan of his wagon, and two orderlies to lift my useless trunk.
On the day following I found myself, with my new comrade, in a house in Coates Street, where a “circle” was in the daily habit of meeting. So soon as I had been comfortably deposited in an arm-chair, beside a large pine table, the rest of those assembled seated themselves, and for some time preserved an unbroken silence. During this pause I scrutinized the persons present. Next to me, on my right, sat a flabby man, with fill-marked, baggy features and injected eyes. He was, as I learned afterwards, an eclectic doctor, who had tried his hand at medicine and several of its quackish variations, finally settling down on eclecticism, which I believe professes to be to scientific medicine what vegetarianism is to common-sense, every-day dietetics. Next to him sat a female-authoress, I think, of two somewhat feeble novels, and much pleasanter to look at than her books. She was, I thought, a good deal excited at the prospect of spiritual revelations. Her neighbor was a pallid, care-worn young woman, with very red lips, and large brown eyes of great beauty. She was, as I learned afterwards, a magnetic patient of the doctor, and had deserted her husband, a master mechanic, to follow this new light. The others were, like myself, strangers brought hither by mere curiosity. One of them was a lady in deep black, closely veiled. Beyond her, and opposite to me, sat the sergeant, and next to him the medium, a man named Brink. He wore a good deal of jewelry, and had large black side-whiskers—a shrewd-visaged, large-nosed, full-lipped man, formed by nature to appreciate the pleasant things of sensual existence.
Before I had ended my survey, he turned to the lady in black, and asked if she wished to see any one in the spirit-world.
She said, “Yes,” rather feebly.
“Is the spirit present?” he asked. Upon which two knocks were heard in affirmation. “Ah!” said the medium, “the name is—it is the name of a child. It is a male child. It is—”
“Alfred!” she cried. “Great Heaven! My child! My boy!”
On this the medium arose, and became strangely convulsed. “I see,” he said—”I see—a fair-haired boy. I see blue eyes—I see above you, beyond you—” at the same time pointing fixedly over her head.
She turned with a wild start. “Where—whereabouts?”
“A blue-eyed boy,” he continued, “over your head. He cries—he says, ‘Mama, mama!’ “
The effect of this on the woman was unpleasant. She stared about her for a moment, and exclaiming, “I come—I am coming, Alfy!” fell in hysterics on the floor.
Two or three persons raised her, and aided her into an adjoining room; but the rest remained at the table, as though well accustomed to like scenes.
After this several of the strangers were called upon to write the names of the dead with whom they wished to communicate. The names were spelled out by the agency of affirmative knocks when the correct letters were touched by the applicant, who was furnished with an alphabet-card upon which he tapped the letters in turn, the medium, meanwhile, scanning his face very keenly. With some, the names were readily made out. With one, a stolid personage of disbelieving type, every attempt failed, until at last the spirits signified by knocks that he was a disturbing agency, and that while he remained all our efforts would fail. Upon this some of the company proposed that he should leave; of which invitation he took advantage, with a skeptical sneer at the whole performance.
As he left us, the sergeant leaned over and whispered to the medium, who next addressed himself to me. “Sister Euphemia,” he said, indicating the lady with large eyes, “will act as your medium. I am unable to do more. These things exhaust my nervous system.”
“Sister Euphemia,” said the doctor, “will aid us. Think, if you please, sir, of a spirit, and she will endeavor to summon it to our circle.”
Upon this a wild idea came into my head. I answered: “I am thinking as you directed me to do.”
The medium sat with her arms folded, looking steadily at the center of the table. For a few moments there was silence. Then a series of irregular knocks began. “Are you present?” said the medium.
The affirmative raps were twice given.
“I should think,” said the doctor, “that there were two spirits present.”
His words sent a thrill through my heart.
“Are there two?” he questioned.
A double rap.
“Yes, two,” said the medium. “Will it please the spirits to make us conscious of their names in this world?”
A single knock. “No.”
“Will it please them to say how they are called in the world of spirits?”
Again came the irregular raps—3, 4, 8, 6; then a pause, and 3, 4, 8, 7.
“I think,” said the authoress, “they must be numbers. Will the spirits,” she said, “be good enough to aid us? Shall we use the alphabet?”
“Yes,” was rapped very quickly.
“Are these numbers?”
“Yes,” again.
“I will write them,” she added, and, doing so, took up the card and tapped the letters. The spelling was pretty rapid, and ran thus as she tapped, in turn, first the letters, and last the numbers she had already set down:
“UNITED STATES ARMY MEDICAL MUSEUM, Nos. 3486, 3487.”
The medium looked up with a puzzled expression.
“Good gracious!” said I, “they are my legs—my legs!”
What followed, I ask no one to believe except those who, like myself, have communed with the things of another sphere. Suddenly I felt a strange return of my self-consciousness. I was reindividualized, so to speak. A strange wonder filled me, and, to the amazement of every one, I arose, and, staggering a little, walked across the room on limbs invisible to them or me. It was no wonder I staggered, for, as I briefly reflected, my legs had been nine months in the strongest alcohol. At this instant all my new friends crowded around me in astonishment. Presently, however, I felt myself sinking slowly. My legs were going, and in a moment I was resting feebly on my two stumps upon the floor. It was too much. All that was left of me fainted and rolled over senseless.
I have little to add. I am now at home in the West, surrounded by every form of kindness and every possible comfort; but alas! I have so little surety of being myself that I doubt my own honesty in drawing my pension, and feel absolved from gratitude to those who are kind to a being who is uncertain of being enough himself to be conscientiously responsible. It is needless to add that I am not a happy fraction of a man, and that I am eager for the day when I shall rejoin the lost members of my corporeal family in another and a happier world.
ANONYMOUS
A private in Battery F, Fourth U. S. artillery, wrote about a thieving fellow soldier.
Floyd has died and few have sobbed,
Since, had he lived, all had been robbed:
He’s paid Dame Nature’s debt, ’tis said,
The only one he ever paid.
Some doubt that he resigned his breath.
But vow he has cheated even death.
If he is buried, oh! then, ye dead, beware,
Look to your swaddlings, of your shrouds take care,
Lest Floyd should to your coffins make his way,
And steal the linen from your mouldering clay.
ANONYMOUS
“On one occasion during the war in Virginia, General Lee was lying asleep by the wayside, when an army of fifteen thousand men passed by with hushed voices and footsteps, lest they should disturb his slumbers,” writes William Gilmore Simms, editor of War Poetry of the South (1866).
O’ercome with weariness and care,
The war-worn veteran lay
On the green turf of his native land,
And slumbered by the way;
The breeze that sighed across his brow,
And smoothed its deepened lines,
Fresh from his own loved mountain bore
The murmur of their pines;
And the glad sound of waters,
The blue rejoicing streams,
Whose sweet familiar tones were blent
With the music of his dreams:
They brought no sound of battle’s din,
Shrill fife or clarion,
But only tenderest memories
Of his own fair Arlington.
While thus the chieftain slumbered,
Forgetful of his care,
The hollow tramp of thousands
Came sounding through the air.
With ringing spur and sabre,
And trampling feet they come,
Gay plume and rustling banner,
And fife, and trump, and drum;
But soon the foremost column
Sees where, beneath the shade,
In slumber, calm as childhood,
Their wearied chief is laid;
And down the line a murmur
From lip to lip there ran,
Until the stilly whisper
Had spread to rear from van;
And o’er the host a silence
As deep and sudden fell,
As though some mighty wizard
Had hushed them with a spell;
And every sound was mum ed,
And every soldier’s tread
Fell lightly as a mother’s
‘Round her baby’s cradle-bed;
And rank, and file, and column,
So softly by they swept,
It seemed a ghostly army
Had passed him as he slept;
But mightier than enchantment
Was that with magic move—
The spell that hushed their voices—
Deep reverence and love.