University of Virginia Library

MRS. MARY A. BRADY.

AN old Greek writer, in reflecting how his nation had
been roused from luxury and stimulated to actions
that made Greece heroic by the stress of the Persian invasion,
exclaimed, in his enthusiasm, "War is the father
of all things."

In like manner, we of America, looking at all the latent
heroism that was developed during those four years of
national agony and national glory, may, in no accommodated
sense, hail our great war as the father of a great
national peace, before impossible, and the nurse of magnanimous
acts, and lives of saint-like devotion to the good
of others.

While, among those who composed our armies, there were
men who fought from very different motives and incitements,
— some for love of glory, some from hatred of national
injustice, some for a splendid name, and some for an undivided
nation, — so, among the heroines, some followed
their husbands, and were ready to dare everything and
suffer everything for them and their cause; others sought
the field out of a generous rivalry not to be outdone in
sacrifices by the sterner sex; others were incited by pure
patriotism; while a few moved and acted from motives rarer
and purer, perhaps, than all these — a simple and unmixed

desire to alleviate human suffering, a philanthropic kindness
of soul, and the swelling of a large-hearted charity, that was
willing to labor anywhere, and in any manner, to relieve the
wants of those who were suffering pain and privations in a
worthy cause.

Prominent among this numerous class must be placed
the record of the lady whose name is written at the head
of this memoir.

Mrs. Brady was not an American by birth. She had no
son, or brother, or husband in the war. Born in Ireland,
in 1821, and having married, in 1846, an English lawyer,
twelve years of quiet residence in this country had, no
doubt, sufficed to impress her with American love and
pride; but she had no such stake in the issue, no such incentives
to do all and suffer all that woman can in such a
struggle, as might have impelled the exertions of thousands
who did far less than she.

What demand of mere patriotism could have made it
her duty, as an American citizen merely, to forego all the
comforts of her home in Philadelphia, leave a family of
five little children, push her way through all embarrassments
and delays, through all the army lines, and sometimes
in spite of general orders, to the very front, or to those
hospitals where the men were brought in with clothing red
with the fresh-flowing gore of battle, and spend days and
weeks at the field hospitals just in the rear of the great
battle-fields, and return home only to restore her wasted
energies, and start out again on her errands of tireless philanthropy?
Yet such is the outline of Mrs. Brady's life,
and such the summary of her charities from the summer

of 1862, when the sick and wounded from McClellan's peninsular
army were brought to the northern hospitals, till
the summer of 1864, when, by reason of her exertions,
exposures, and excitements, the silver cord of life was
strung too tightly, and in the midst of her labors, while
planning fresh sacrifices and new fields of exertion, it
snapped, and she ceased to live, except in the hearts of
survivors, and in the memory of thousands of soldiers,
who

Up to the summer of 1862 the life of Mrs. Brady was
unmarked by other than the domestic virtues and the
charities of home. Her life was that of an industrious,
kind-hearted woman, finding her chosen and happy sphere
in the duties of wife and mother. She merited the eulogy
which the Greek orator bestowed on that woman, who,
most intent upon home duties, was least talked of abroad,
whether for praise or blame.

It was on the 28th of July, 1862, that Mrs. Brady and
a few others met at her husband's law office, to take into
consideration the condition of the soldiers who had been
brought from James River, and were then languishing in
various hospitals in and around Philadelphia, but principally
at the Satterlee Hospital, in West Philadelphia, not
far from Mrs. Brady's home.

There alone was an ample field for all their labors,
and objects to absorb all the contributions of charity and
patriotism that could be made to pass through their organization
as a channel of sanitary relief. Here were three

thousand soldiers, a mutilated fragment of the grand army
with which McClellan had advanced up the peninsula, and
which had floundered in the mud and rain, and through the
battles of the Chickahominy, and been reduced by the six
hard fights of that terrible campaign. True, the worst cases
of the wounded were in hospitals nearer the front, at Washington,
or Norfolk, or on James River; but here were hundreds
and hundreds languishing with that low, dull fever
that overcame so many who shared in that campaign, and
which was called in the army the "James River fever." Here,
too, were the mutilated men, nursing the painful stumps
from which an arm or a leg had been amputated. The
absolute physical necessities of these patients were, to a
reasonable degree, met by the customary appliances of an
army hospital. The patient had a bed, narrow and hard,
indeed, but clean. His food was such as the hospital surgeon
prescribed — now a plate of boiled rice, now a slice of
beef, or a dish of soup. But moral and social restoratives
he had none. To wrestle in grim patience with unceasing
pain; to lie weak and helpless, thinking of the loved ones
on the far-off hill-side, or thirsty with unspeakable longing
for one draught of cold water from the spring by the
big rock at the old homestead; to yearn, through long, hot
nights, for one touch of the cool, soft hand of a sister or a
wife on the throbbing temples, — this was the dreary routine
of suffering and cheerlessness in the great hospital before
Mrs. Brady and her associates commenced their labors of
wise and systematic kindness.

The object of their organization was declared to be to
create committees, who, in turn, should visit the different

wards of the United States Hospital, for the purpose of
ameliorating the condition of the sick and wounded soldiers,
and to establish a depot of sanitary supplies, whose location
should be generally known; to have their organization
officially recognized by the governor and the military and
medical authorities of the United States; and eventually,
that members of the association should visit the hospitals
at Washington and the army in the field, to learn the wants
of sick soldiers, and do all in their power to relieve them.

Mrs. Brady was elected president of the association; and
from that day to the hour of her death — not quite two
years after — her labors were unceasing, her devotion unbounded,
and her discretion unerring in the great enterprise
of the sanitary well-being of the soldiers of the
republic.

For some months their labors were confined to the hospital
at West Philadelphia. A committee of these ladies
regularly, each day, went the round of the hospital wards,
distributing the delicacies and the various articles of comfort
that were now daily arriving in a steady stream at the
depot for their hospital supplies on Fifth Street.

But the ministries of Mrs. Brady and her corps were not
confined to the mere distribution of currant jelly, preserved
peaches, flannel shirts, and woollen socks. They carried
with them a moral cheer and soothing that were more salutary
and healing than any of the creature comforts. The
patient, suffering hero of Williamsburg or Malvern Hill
was assured, in tones to whose pleasant, home-like accents
his ear had long been a stranger, that his efforts in behalf
of his country were not ignored or forgotten; that they

too had a son, a brother, a father, or a husband in the field.
Then the pallid face and the bony fingers were bathed in
cool water, and sometimes a chapter in the New Testament,
or paragraph from the morning papers, read, in tones low,
but distinct, and in such grateful contrast to those hoarse
battle-shouts that had been for weeks, perhaps, ringing
through his feverish brain — "Column, forward — dress on
the colors — aim low, and make your shots tell — file right,
march!"

Then the painful and inflamed stump was lifted, and a
pad of soft, cool lint fitted under it; and the thin,
chalky lips would move slowly, and say that he "felt
easier."

Here a poor fellow, who had an armless sleeve, was enjoying
the services of a fair amanuensis, who in graceful
chirography wrote down, for loving eyes and heavy hearts,
in some distant village of Vermont or Michigan, the same
old soldier's story, told a thousand times, by a thousand
firesides, but always more charming than any story in the
Arabian Nights — how, on that great day, he stood with his
company on a hill-side, and saw the long gray line of the
enemy come rolling across the valley; how, when the
cannon opened on them, he could see the rough, ragged gaps
opening in the line; how they closed up and moved on;
how their general came along, and made a little speech, and
told them to aim low and then give them the bayonet; how
he rushed on at the command to "charge;" how this friend
fell on one side, and poor Jimmy — on the other; and
then he felt a general crash, and a burning pain, and the
musket dropped out of his hand; then the ambulance and

the amputation, and what the surgeon said about his pluck;
and then the weakness, and the pain, and the hunger; and
how much better he was now; and how kind the ladies in
Philadelphia had been to him; that he didn't care much
about the loss of his arm, so far as he was concerned, only
he couldn't do as much for his father and mother as he had
hoped; but he lost it in the line of his duty, and would
lose the other one rather than have the government broken
up.

Who would not sew, knit, make currant jelly, write
letters for a hospital full of brave, patient battle heroes
like that?

After their recovery and return, Mrs. Brady received
numerous letters from those she had visited in the hospitals,
thanking her and blessing her for her good deeds.

The following, from a Pennsylvania volunteer, is selected
from a score equally interesting: —

Late in the fall, at the time of the annual Thanksgiving,
Mrs. Brady and the other ladies determined that those who
still remained — some sixteen hundred — should not lack
the material supplies on which to celebrate the day.

Mrs. Brady and Miss Lydie C. Price were the efficient
committee on Thanksgiving Dinner. They appealed to the
cities and towns around Philadelphia in behalf of the brave
fellows, and Mrs. Brady showed her characteristic kindness
and thoughtfulness by applying to Dr. Hayes for the release
on that day of all the boys who for any indiscretion had
found their way to the guard-house. The good surgeon
granted her request, and Mrs. Brady had ready for them,
at the appointed dinner hour, seventy-five turkeys, one hundred
chickens, twenty geese, sixty ducks, eight hundred
and fifty pies, eighty-five rice puddings, and fifteen barrels
of eating apples. Two bakers' establishments were placed
at their disposal, and the food brought up warm to the
hospital in covered wagons.

The number of patients in this hospital now rapidly
diminished, and, in December, Mrs. Brady began to arrange
plans for more extended and arduous labors for the soldier.
At their depot there was a constantly increasing supply of
various articles, such as the soldiers were supposed most to
need.

Soldiers' aid societies had sprung up all over the state,
and Mrs. Brady was widely known as president of the
mother society in Philadelphia.

Numerous boxes had been sent to her care, and she
regarded herself as the authorized trustee of the charities
of large communities.

She determined not to trust the distribution of these
goods to careless or unknown agents, but after consultation
with others of the association, it was decided that Mrs.
Brady was to go to the field in person, and distribute the
contents of the boxes from tent to tent, as she found the
men in camp who most required them.

While at Alexandria she prepared and sent home to the
association in Philadelphia a charming narrative of her
journey and all its incidents, and how the contents of the
boxes were given out, and how the boys received them,
and how she could have distributed twenty times as much
without giving to any who did not require aid.

When she went to Fairfax and the camps between the
Potomac and the Rapidan our national fortunes were at
ebb tide. It was the Valley Forge of the war. The
Peninsular campaign had been magnificent, but a failure.
Then Jackson, and soon after Lee with him, had advanced
to the Potomac, driving Pope before him into Washington
city. Then at South Mountain and Antietam the invading
tide had been met and rolled back; but Lee was not pursued.
Then Burnside had taken the army across the
Rappahannock, and fought a superior force under able generals,
on the worst ground he could have chosen, with such
results as might have been expected. The army was

greatly used up and demoralized, and the sick list was
fearful.

Beyond Alexandria, in the direction of Falmouth, where
the army lay, Mrs. Brady came upon one camp of twelve
thousand six hundred convalescents; a little beyond, a sick
camp of eight thousand, and in the forty military hospitals
in and around Washington she visited thirty thousand sick
and wounded. Of course the sixty boxes she took from
Philadelphia were but a mouthful to a hungry man; but she
gave out the articles herself, with true English thoroughness
and perseverance, making numerous inquiries, and
faithfully striving to give to those who were most in need.

While travelling among this army of the sick, she was
overtaken one evening by a snow storm, and was obliged
to fare like the soldiers, shivering all night under one gray
blanket, in a tent without a fire, and listening to a dreary
chorus of coughing, which suggested all the grades and
varieties of pulmonary disease. But her thoughts were not
on her personal discomforts, rather on the twelve thousand
sick soldiers, in the midst of whom she was passing but a
single cheerless night; and she hurried home to ply her
needle, and stimulate by her pen the activities of others,
and collect as soon as possible additional supplies. She
only stopped to pay a flying visit to the sick in Washington,
and describes, in affecting language, how, in every ward
she entered, all who were not too sick or badly wounded
would rise up in their beds in astonishment at seeing a
lady visitor.

At several of the Alexandria hospitals the doctors and
nurses told her no other lady had ever before called.

In about a month Mrs. Brady, and the other ladies of the
association, had sixty large boxes full of flannel shirts,
socks, butter, dried fruit, wine, jelly, preserves, farina,
soap, towels, combs, and several packages of smoking
tobacco, apples, and onions. Her second trip was much like
the first, except that now she penetrated to the extreme
front, and heard the rebel drums tattoo in the camps on the
other side of the Rappahannock, and the church clocks
striking in Fredericksburg.

Here she took a four-mule wagon, and went through the
army, stopping wherever a little red flag indicated a sick
tent. She saved a number of boxes for the Alexandria
hospitals, and the convalescents would file by her stand,
and receive each an apple, a lemon, a handful of smoking
tobacco, or a pair of socks, and what was about as good,
and cost nothing, a cheerful word, a smile, a pleasant joke,
or a wish that she had more for each.

Returning home, the month of April was passed in active
preparations for another trip. Yet her family was not
neglected. In camp or on the cars she was knitting for
them, or making a dress, and at home divided her time
between the demands of her family and the army, working
now on a child's frock and now on a soldier's shirt.

May came, and with it Chancellorsville and its ten
thousand wounded. This time she took forty-five packages,
and they were filled with articles suited to the sick and
suffering. With a view to immediate and practical efficiency,
she took two cooking stoves, and proceeded at once
to the great field hospital of the sixth corps, where she
soon had a tent pitched, her boxes piled around for a wall,

her stoves up, and a little squad of the slightly wounded to
get wood and water, open her boxes, and take her cooked
articles to the different hospital tents.

Reporting to the division surgeons, and working under
them, she received "requisitions" that looked almost
appalling, as she saw the rapidly diminishing pile of boxes,
and the two cooking stoves.

She writes to the association at Philadelphia that "fifty
dozen cans of condensed milk, a hundred dozen fresh eggs,
thirty boxes of lemons, ten boxes of oranges, one hundred
and fifty pounds of white sugar, two hundred jars of jelly, and
twelve dozen of sherry are needed. "Everything is wanted,"
she adds, earnestly. "Send us linen rags, towels, and
some cologne; some red and gray flannel shirts, and limb
pillows for the amputated."

But her labors were not confined to her little extemporized
kitchen. At night she could hardly sleep for the
groans from the tents where the worst cases lay, and she
often passed several hours, moving softly through those
tents of pain, going to those who seemed to suffer most,
and soothing them by words, and by little acts of kindness;
fitting a fresher or softer pad under some throbbing stump,
talking with some poor fellow whose brain was full of
fever, and who thought the battle was not yet over; moistening
lips, stroking clammy foreheads, and helping another
soldier to find his plug of tobacco.

Then, at five o'clock, she had the fires started, and honored
as many requisitions for rice pudding, blanc mange,
custard, and milk punch, as the draught upon her boxes
could supply. This life lasted till some time in June, when

the rapid invasion of Lee required corresponding movements
on the part of Hooker, and the hospitals on Potomac
Creek were broken up. Mrs. Brady had barely reached
her home, and resumed for a little time the old and sacred
round of domestic life, when she felt herself summoned to
sanitary and hospital labors by a voice louder and nearer
than any before — by the thunder of those five hundred
cannon at Gettysburg, that for three fearful days piled the
ground with bleeding wrecks of manhood.

Operating in her usual homely but effective and most
practical manner, she at once sought a camping ground
near a great field hospital, reported for duty to the division
surgeon, and had a squad of convalescents assigned to
assist her. Her tents were erected, the empty boxes piled
so as to wall her in on three sides, and the stoves set up
and fuel prepared; so that in two or three hours after
reaching Gettysburg, the brigade and division surgeons
were pouring in their "requisitions," and the nurses were
soon passing from her tent with tubs of lemonade, milk
punch, green tea by the bucketful, chocolate, milk toast,
arrowroot, rice puddings, and beef tea, — all of which
were systematically dispensed in strict obedience to the
instructions of the medical men. Whenever during the day
she could, for a short time only, be relieved from these self-imposed
kitchen duties, and for many hours after nightfall,
she was sure to be among the cots, beside the weakest and
those who suffered most. Her frequent visits to the army
had made her face familiar to a great number of the
soldiers, so that she was often addressed by name, and
warmly greeted by the brave fellows. "To see the face of

a lady does us good, madam." "We are very glad you are
come." "You cheer us up, Mrs. Brady."

When she remarked how grateful the stay-at-homes
ought to feel to the brave hearts that fought so gallantly
for them, and drove back the rebel hordes from the great
cities along the border, simultaneously a chorus of voices
exclaimed, "Why, Mrs. Brady, we would all have died, to
the very last man, right here on the battle-field, before we
would have let the Confederates win, or move on Philadelphia."

There we find the true reason of the national success at
Gettysburg. It was not that Lee's abilities were clouded;
not that Stonewall Jackson was dead. The Confederate
force was never greater, never more resolute, or wielded
with more masterly vigor; but they had never before met
an army that was raised to the heroism of martyrs by the
determination to "die to the very last man right there,"
rather than let the rebels win.

Speaking of her first day at these hospitals, Mrs. Brady
says, "We shortly found ourselves rubbing away the pain
from mutilated limbs, and bathing the feet of others, speaking
cheerful words to them all, which latter we believed
to do good like a medicine. In the daytime we cook and
fill requisitions for all sorts of things, and personally distribute
our miscellaneous stores to the men with our own
hands, conversing cheerfully with the patients. Thus we
spend our days as well as our nights."

These labors continued till August, when the field
hospitals at Gettysburg were mostly broken up. For the
remaining portion of the year 1863, as there were no

battles in Virginia, Mrs. Brady remained at home, and
continued her hospital labors in Philadelphia, and in receiving
and preparing supplies for the approaching winter.
She was now well known in Philadelphia, and became the
almoner of numerous but private charities, funds being
placed in her hands to be used according to her discretion
in aiding soldiers or their families. The most of this
money she gave in a private manner, but regularly, to the
widows of those who had fallen in the great battles. On
one occasion, as she entered a street car, crowded with
passengers, she noticed that a soldier was looking very
steadily in her face. His sleeve was empty. Presently the
maimed warrior called out, with some emotion, "Don't you
know me, Mrs. Brady?" "Really," she replied, "I can't
quite recollect you, I see so many of Uncle Sam's brave
boys." "Not recollect me, Mrs. Brady?" said the soldier,
his eyes now filling with tears: "don't you remember the
day you held my hand while the doctors cut my arm off?
You told me to put my trust in God, and that I should get
well over it. You said I was sure to recover; and here I
am, dear madam, thank God!"

It seems that he had felt a natural revulsion when
the amputation was suggested, but asked the surgeons to
send for Mrs. Brady, and he would do just as Mrs. Brady
said. She came, took the poor fellow's hand, and spoke a
few low, kind words. "Now put up the sponge," said he
to the surgeon; and the chloroform reduced him to insensibility
as his pallid, bloodless hand still lay in hers.
But, with the sensibility of her sex, she was obliged to turn
away just as the operator took up the long, glittering knife.

Early in the year 1864, when Meade, in command, was
manœuvring unsuccessfully against Lee for the occupation
of the south bank of the Rapidan, in what is known as the
Mine Run campaign, Mrs. Brady made her fifth and last
visit to the front. She was now so well and so favorably
known, that every facility was afforded her in the transportation
of her boxes, and she penetrated to the front, and
made herself useful in the primary field hospital that was
established in consequence of the action at Morton's Ford,
on the 6th of February. Her ministrations were of the same
nature with those described above, except that here she saw
the wounded just as they were brought from the field, and
shared in the deep excitements and agitations of battle.
She was just in the rear of an engagement that threatened
at one time to become general and bloody. Most of the
time she could secure no better bed than a bundle of wet
straw. As a natural consequence of such hardships and
exposures, we find her reaching home on the 15th of February,
"completely worn out." An examination of her
condition by physicians revealed the grave fact that rest
and quiet alone could never restore her. An affection of
the heart, which had existed for some time, but which, on
account of her strong health and fine powers of constitution,
had never before caused any uneasiness, had been rapidly
developed by the last few weeks of uncommon excitement
and fatigue.

Yet in March and April her health rallied somewhat,
and she continued to collect and prepare the stores for
another mission to the camp.

May now came on, and with it the grand advance of

the army of the Potomac, now strongly reënforced, and
wielded by a fresh champion, just come from his great
victories in the west; and the nation was tiptoe with expectation.
Then followed the battles of the Wilderness and
Spottsylvania, with their necessary and ghastly sequel, the
long rows of hospital tents, acres of wounded, and suffering,
and sick, with the demand for everything that can assuage
pain, and reinvigorate the languid or exhausted currents
of life. But Mrs. Brady could not respond to this call, as
she had done when other battles were fought. Disease had
seated itself at the fountains of her life. The abnormal
action of the heart grew worse and worse, causing now the
most acute suffering. Skilful physicians were summoned;
but science was baffled, and the appalling announcement
fell with unexpected and crushing weight upon the inmates
of that home of which she was the centre and the sun, that
no human skill could prolong that life, but within a few
weeks those five little children must be motherless.

On the very day that sealed the fate of Virginia, — the
27th of May, 1864, — when Lee gave up the open contest
with his too powerful antagonist, and fell sullenly back to
his intrenchments at Petersburg and Richmond, she, whose
mind even then was turned from the solemn surroundings
of the death-bed, and the tearful faces of her children, to
the suffering heroes of those great fights, — she was summoned
away from all stormy scenes and arduous labors,
into the kingdom of perpetual peace.

The burial of her remains took place on the 1st day of
June. Hundreds of soldiers and officers of the army of the
Potomac sent to the surviving members of the family their

fervent tributes to the worth, beauty, and strength of her
character, and expressions of gratitude for the kindness
they had experienced at her hands.

A very large number of sorrowing friends, and poor
people, and widows of soldiers, and five ministers of that
religion of love and charity which she had so eminently
practised, were in attendance at her funeral, and paid
abundant, yet not undue, honor to the memory of the dead;
for, during the forty-two years of her earthly existence, as
long as life and strength remained to enable her to labor
for the good of others, had she not followed closely in
the steps of Him who always went about doing good, and
reproduced the virtues of that Scripture heroine, the
woman that was "full of good works and alms-deeds, which
she did continually"?