 | MRS. E. E. GEORGE. Women of the war : |  |
MRS. E. E. GEORGE.
WHILE there were none of the loyal states that did
not furnish nurses and heroines who displayed an
enthusiasm as genuine as any of the volunteers, and a
devotion as deep as any who fell in battle, some were conspicuous,
and deserve honorable mention in history, for the
thoroughness and energy with which all their sanitary
enterprises were conducted.
In the East, Maine seems to have done more for her
soldiers than any other state. There was in Portland a
regular and well-conducted organization of army nurses, to
which those ladies made application who desired to make
themselves useful in the hospitals. In the West, Indiana
seems to have been the most active, the most systematic
and profuse, in her labors for the comfort and health of the
volunteers. The Military Agency at Indianapolis, among
its various duties, assumed the general direction of the
volunteer lady nurses who went out from that state. By
an active correspondence with various medical directors,
and with the general agents of the Sanitary and Christian
Commissions, the Agency was constantly informed in regard
to the positions of great destitution, where the largest
number of suffering soldiers were assembled, where the
wounded of a bloody battle were principally concentrated,
women could be of the most effective service. During the
last three years of the war this Military Agency sent out
from Indianapolis two hundred and fifty ladies as nurses.
They were in all parts of the field, and ministered to the
sufferers in every great battle from Fort Donelson to the
Five Forks. They were at Memphis, at Helena, at Young's
Point, at Vicksburg, and at New Orleans. They went with
Rosecrans through Tennessee, and with Sherman through
Georgia. They dressed wounds that were received in the
charge over the rugged heights of Lookout Mountain, they
nursed patients that were languishing with malarious fever
caught in the Yazoo Swamp, they bound bleeding limbs at
Gettysburg, and after all the battles of the war were fought,
they received the skeleton wrecks of the armies that came
out alive from Salisbury and Andersonville, and endeavored
to restore life and cheerfulness to eyes that had so long
been familiar with famine and death in their most hideous
aspects.
Some account of one of the most earnest and laborious
of these Sisters of Charity, one who engaged in the service
from the purest motives, and sealed her loyal zeal by death
at the post of duty, may serve as a type of the heroism and
sacrifices of all.
Some time in January, 1863, Mr. Hannaman, the general
military agent for the State of Indiana, received a note
from correspondents at Fort Wayne, recommending Mrs.
E. E. George, of their city, as a lady well qualified to serve
as hospital nurse. A few days after, Mrs. George addressed
him in person, and tendered her services. He could not at
to Chicago, hoping to find her services required by the
Sanitary Commission. While there, Mr. Hannaman received
advices from Memphis, stating that a great demand
had suddenly arisen there for attentions to the wounded at
the first assault on the northern defences of Vicksburg.
They had been brought to Memphis on hospital transports,
and a large number of nurses could find immediate employment
among them. He telegraphed at once to Mrs. George,
and she presented herself at the sanitary rooms. Her age
seemed against her, for she had reached that period of life
which suggests the quiet of the fireside and the comforts of
home, rather than a rude, changeful, and wearing succession
of exhausting toils and midnight vigils. This objection
was suggested to her. "True," she replied, "I am old;
but my health is good, and I am very desirous to do something
for those who are every day exposing their lives for
our country. If unable to go through as much as some, I
will engage never to be at all troublesome or in the way."
The mainspring of her zeal was as much Christian devotion
as patriotic sacrifice. To do good was the law of her life.
To assuage suffering was her greatest pleasure.
With other ladies she arrived in Memphis early in the
spring of 1863, and commenced her work. The physicians,
who know how much depends upon nursing, and how useless
are all drugs without skill and judgment at the bedside,
soon saw the value of Mrs. George, and she had full permission
to visit every ward of all the hospitals in Memphis.
Governor Morton, of Indiana, also sent her a special
commission to inquire for and dispense to all the sick and
her means of sanitary usefulness were greatly increased.
Her excellent practical sense, and the Christian meekness
of her character, made her a suitable person to be invested
with unusual authority, while her age and the elevation of
her motives won involuntary respect and admiration from
all with whom she was connected. During the spring and
summer of 1863 her labors in the Memphis hospitals were
unceasing. Early in the fall of that year she gave herself
a short respite, visiting her friends in Fort Wayne, and in
October she returned to Memphis, soon after proceeding to
Corinth. She made frequent trips between those places,
with various hospital supplies and sanitary comforts for
the men; and although the cars were often fired into by
guerrillas and squads of Confederate cavalry, she acted as
though fear of death, while in the line of duty, was a
passion that had no place in her calm and well-regulated
mind.
When General Sherman's army left Corinth, and moved
up the Tennessee to reënforce Grant at Chattanooga, Mrs.
George returned to Memphis, and went around to Nashville.
Thence she went southward to Pulaski, where she
assisted in opening a hospital. There was no mode of
reaching this place by railroad, as the cars were not running
south of Columbia. The intervening distance of forty
miles she travelled in a rough army wagon. At Pulaski
she remained several months, and during the time made
several trips to Indiana, where she collected hospital
supplies, and took them forward to Pulaski. The stores
intrusted to her hands were always carefully guarded, and
campaign of 1864 opened by the advance of Sherman from
Chattanooga into the heart of Georgia, Mrs. George, with
several other ladies, accompanied the army. She and they
shared in the dangers, the hardships, and the glory of that
ever-memorable campaign. There were few, if any, general
hospitals south of Chattanooga, and at Kingston, Resaca,
Kenesaw Mountain, and the other battles of that summer,
she labored in the field — sometimes at the front, often all
night as well as all day, after the battles, binding up
wounds, and giving water to cool inflammations and allay
thirst. Labors of this sort were sometimes continued till
the powers of endurance were quite exhausted, and she
wrapped an army blanket around her, and fell asleep under
a tree or a wagon, to be awakened in a few hours by the
moans of the wounded, and to resume her labors till nature
was again overcome. Upon the investment of Atlanta,
Mrs. George became connected with the Fifteenth Army
Corps Hospital. When this corps marched to Jonesboro
she had an ambulance assigned her, and, at the earnest
request of the men, went with them. During the battle of
Jonesboro, she was dressing the wounded in a tent so near
the front as to be in range of the enemy's guns. A shell
from one of their batteries pierced the tent, and, exploding
within a few feet of where she was standing, killed two
wounded men. When asked if the circumstance did not
somewhat alarm her, she replied, "No, I was not alarmed,
for I looked upon it as simply the intention of Providence
to test my courage."
In the fall of 1864, when General Sherman's army returned
home for a brief period of rest. Returning shortly after
to Nashville, she found that Sherman's army had taken up
their march directly for Savannah, and as all communications
with his rear were impossible, she was unable to
rejoin the fifteenth corps. The winter of 1864 and 1865
was therefore passed at Nashville. During the siege of
that city by Hood, and the subsequent battle, by which the
enemy was driven across the Tennessee River, Mrs. George
and two other ladies opened a hospital, and were very useful
and unwearied in their attentions to the wounded. As
soon as she ascertained that Sherman's army had reached
Savannah, she reported to the state agent of Indiana at
Indianapolis, and prepared to rejoin the corps to which she
had attached herself. While passing a few days at Fort
Wayne, she learned that some of the agents of the Indiana
Sanitary Commission were about to leave New York for
Savannah, and went immediately to that city, with a view
of joining them. By some oversight, transportation and
a pass were not provided, and the agents sailed without
her. She was then compelled to go to Washington, to
procure the necessary pass; and while waiting for her
papers to be made out at the war department, she called on
Miss Dix, who urged her to go to Wilmington, North Carolina,
which had just passed into possession of the Union
force, and where there was a large amount of suffering.
Fearing that with Miss Dix her character as a representative
of Indiana would be lost, she hesitated, and would not
go except upon the condition that she should devote herself
especially to such Indiana volunteers as she might
noble woman arrived at Wilmington before there reached
that point eleven thousand Union prisoners, who had just
been released from the stockade at Salisbury. Their condition
was in the last degree pitiable and wretched. Two
thousand of them had not a whole garment upon their
bodies; two hundred had lost their feet by frost. To these
sufferers; and with very inadequate hospital supplies, Mrs.
George devoted herself, day and night, in labors to relieve,
as far as possible, the most acute and pressing of their
wants.
Here it was that this excellent lady finished her toils, and
crowned her long and active career of beneficence by
deliberate self-martyrdom. She literally worked herself
to death. By day she was constantly occupied in superintending
the manufacture of clothing for the naked; at
night she went into the hospitals, and, depriving herself
of sleep, passed many of the hours of darkness in nursing
the greatest sufferers. Exertions such as these could
not, from the nature of things, last long. For more than
two years, she had taken only brief periods of rest: she
was advanced in years, and the peculiar form of typhoid
fever which attacked the released prisoners for whom she
so heroically labored, was in a high degree contagious.
Suddenly her system gave way, and she was pronounced
severely ill with typhoid fever. As soon as this was known
to the Indiana Sanitary Commission, who had always
regarded her as one of the most faithful and efficient of
their representatives in the field, they sent Dr. William H.
Wishard to her relief. When he arrived she appeared
she might be permitted to reach home, and see the faces
of her daughters once more. All the preparations were
made for her removal. As she felt a little faint, Dr.
Wishard ordered a stimulating drink, and went out into
the city, to attend to some final business before starting.
Upon his return, what was his astonishment to find his
patient a corpse! The grasp of the disease had been deeper
than he supposed, and after the fatigue and excitement of
preparing to return home, she sank into a relapse which
nothing could arrest, and passed directly from the scene
of her last and greatest labors to the immediate fruition
of her abundant and heavenly reward.
| MRS. E. E. GEORGE. Women of the war : | |