 | MRS. HARRIET W. F. HAWLEY. Women of the war : |  |
MRS. HARRIET W. F. HAWLEY.
AMONG the many thousands of patriotic women of the
North, who earnestly desired, from the first moment
of the great struggle, to take such part in it as a woman
might, whose whole soul was in the issues of the conflict,
was Mrs. Harriet W. F. Hawley, a native of Guilford,
Connecticut. When Sumter was fired on, her husband,
Joseph R. Hawley, was the editor of the Hartford Evening
Press. He at once laid down his pen, and enlisted for the
war, — the first one enrolled in the first volunteer company
that was accepted by the state, and became its captain
before it was on its way to Washington.
During the first campaign no opportunity was afforded
Mrs. Hawley to participate directly in the glorious work
going forward, other than that given to every woman at
home, who labored in the work of equipping the soldiers
for the field, and forwarding to them such comforts as were
indispensable to the sick and wounded. Indeed, it was not
supposed by Mrs. Hawley's friends that she would ever
be able to do anything more than home work in the war.
With a slight frame, a constitution not strong, health never
firm, an organization delicate and nervous, she seemed entirely
unfitted to endure hardships. But an indomitable
spirit continually urged, and in the fall of 1862 her long-hoped-for
Department of the South, and in November she obtained
permission to go to Beaufort, South Carolina, with the
intention of teaching the colored people, whose first cry in
freedom was for the primer. But circumstances, and the
necessities of the sick and wounded soldiers, directed her
into another field of labor, in which she continued, with
little intermission, until the war ended. She became a
regular visitor at the hospitals in Beaufort. Of her services
here and the like at other places, it is not necessary to
speak in detail; the pages of this volume sufficiently show
the nature of the duties of the noble women who devoted
themselves to hospital work.
In January, 1863, she went to Fernandina, Florida,
where her husband — then colonel, afterwards brevet
major-general, and since governor of Connecticut — was
placed in command. Here, and afterwards at St. Augustine,
she was a regular visitor of the post and regimental
hospitals, remaining until November, when she rejoined her
husband on St. Helena Island, South Carolina, to which he
had returned from the siege of Charleston. During the
winter, frequently, and as often as her strength would permit,
she visited the post hospital at St. Helena, and the
general hospitals at Beaufort and Hilton Head, especially
exerting herself when the ship-loads of wounded men
arrived, after the battle of Olustee, in February.
In April, 1864, when the tenth army corps went north
to join Butler's expedition up the James, greatly desirous
to be near the regiment and brigade of her husband, in the
individual welfare of the men composing which her sympathies
situation as attendant or nurse at Chesapeake Hospital,
to which the wounded of that expedition were likely to be
sent. Failing to do so, she went to Washington, and was
placed in charge of a ward in Armory Square Hospital.
This hospital was at that time one of the most arduous places
of labor in the country, besides being, from its low situation,
subject to malarious diseases. Standing near the
Potomac, it usually received the most severely wounded,
who arrived by boats from below and could not be
moved far.
Mrs. Hawley reached there the morning after the
wounded began to arrive from the battles of the Wilderness.
Her ward was in the armory itself; it was always
large, and for a time contained more patients than any
other — ninety-seven during those dreadful April days.
To add to the horrors of her ward, it had no separate operating
room, and surgical operations were necessarily performed
within it. The poor fellows who arrived there, the
mutilated wrecks of that fierce campaign, were so exhausted
by their marching before, and by the long journey
after they were wounded, that they died very rapidly. One
day forty-eight were carried out of the hospital, dying,
with singular regularity, about one in every half hour.
The entire hospital was calculated to accommodate about
nine hundred, but it was made to take in over fourteen
hundred for a time.
Surrounded by such scenes, a daily witness of the
results of the terrible Virginia campaign of 1864, Mrs.
Hawley lived in this hospital, in charge of the ward
taxing her utmost strength, and drawing upon her deepest
sympathies, and that, too, in a climate peculiarly trying
to a northerner. In September her overtaxed energies
gave way, and she was forced, by illness, to relinquish her
charge. She returned, however, to the same ward in November,
and remained in the hospital until March, 1865.
The writer visited this hospital in the May following, and
found Mrs. Hawley's name a cherished one there, many a
poor fellow, lying on his weary bed, speaking of her kindness
and devotion with beaming face and tears in his eyes.
After the capture of Wilmington, Brigadier-General Hawley
was assigned to the command of the south-west portion
of North Carolina, headquarters at that city. Thither Mrs.
Hawley followed him shortly, and there encountered new
horrors of the war of which she had already so much sad
experience. When Wilmington surrendered, it was in a
shockingly filthy condition, destitute of supplies, of medicines,
of comforts for the sick. The conquering army
which entered it was stripped for marching and fighting,
and poorly supplied with what the city so shortly needed —
hospital stores and clothing for the destitute. When Mrs.
Hawley arrived, nine thousand Union prisoners had just
been delivered there, recently released from Andersonville
and Florence. The North remembers in what sorry plight
they were, all of them in immediate need of food and
clothing, and three thousand of them subjects of hospital
treatment. As if this were not enough, there came also a
motley crowd of refugees, which had hung upon the skirts
of Sherman's march — old men, women, and children, white
crowded into the little city — never a healthy
place — soon bred a pestilence, a sort of jail or typhus
fever.
The medical officers exerted themselves to the utmost;
the Union citizens and all good people contributed liberally
such clothing as they could spare, and what delicacies they
had for the sick. But what could they do to alleviate the
suffering of so many thousands? The fever increased in
virulence, and those attacked died rapidly. At one time
there were four thousand sick soldiers, including a few
wounded from Sherman's army, in the extemporized hospitals
of the city, the large dwellings and the churches. Supplies
could not be obtained, and it was some time before
even one clean garment could be given to each released
prisoner; and meantime disease increased, and deaths multiplied.
The chief of the medical staff died, and others
were seriously sick: of five professional lady nurses from
the North, three sickened, and two died. One of the chaplains
died, and another was severely ill; and among the
detailed soldier nurses the pestilence was decidedly worse
than any battle — they died by scores. It is needless to say
that Mrs. Hawley exerted herself to the utmost to mitigate
the sufferings by which she was surrounded. She organized
the efforts of the women who would lend their aid, superintended
the making of garments, went among the refugees and
sought out the most distressed, visited the hospitals, shunning
no danger, not even the small pox. Some idea of the
condition of the town, and of the labors thrown upon the
few there who were competent to improve it, may be gained
about this time by Mrs. Hawley, in the freedom of friendly
correspondence, with no thought of its publication. She
wrote: —
"You know that over nine thousand of our prisoners
were delivered to us here; and no human tongue or pen
can describe the horrible condition which they were in.
Starving to death, covered with vermin, with no clothing
but the filthy rags they had worn during their whole imprisonment
— a period of from five to twenty months; cramped
by long sitting in one position, so that they could not
straighten their limbs; their feet rotted off! O God! I
cannot even now endure to speak of it.
"Of course they brought the jail fever with them — it
could not be otherwise; yet they must be fed, and cleansed,
and clothed, and cared for. There were no hospital accommodations
here worth mentioning. There were not doctors
enough, and those here overworked themselves, and caught
the fever and died. Buildings of all sorts were converted
into temporary hospitals, and the nurses (enlisted men)
fell sick at the rate of fifty a day. The chaplains worked
as only Christian men can work; and they sickened too.
Chaplain Eaton (seventh Connecticut volunteers) died, a
real martyr. Mr. Tiffany (sixth Connecticut) has barely
struggled through a most terrible attack of the fever, and
is slowly recovering. Another, whose name I cannot recall,
is still very low, and can hardly be expected to live. Three
out of the five lady nurses sent by Mrs. Dix have been
very ill, and one, Miss Kimball, died this morning, resigned
and happy, as such a woman could not fail to be, yet leaving
one can fill.
"Dr. Buzzell, the general medical officer, and one who
cannot be too highly spoken of, both as a man and a physician,
died of the fever last week. Dr. Palmer has since
followed him; but the terrible list of those dead and still
sick of the fever is too long for me to try to write it. It is
only within the last five days that they have received any
hospital supplies: previous to that time many of the sick
men were lying on straw spread on the floor, although the
Union citizens have given and done all in their power.
What could a few families do, from their private supplies,
towards furnishing three thousand nine hundred men with
beds and bedding? Besides these, there were the convalescent
ones to be clothed. Thank God! the vessel that
the Sanitary Commission sent came soon, with nine thousand
shirts and drawers, so that when I first saw them, they had
at least so much in the way of clothing.
"We got possession of twelve hundred yards of cotton
cloth and a bale of cotton. I called a meeting of the
benevolent ladies of the place. The Sanitary Commission
gave us thread, and in a week's time the materials were
made up: one hundred and thirty-eight pillow-cases, one
hundred and fifty-three pillows, eighty-four bed sacks, and
as many sheets. And now the hospitals are all tolerably
well supplied.
"Of course many have been sent north, — all who were
able to go, — and many have died on the road; yet there
are still many here. And, as if this were not misery
enough for one poor little city, Sherman sent here six
children, and babies, with nothing but what they could
carry on their backs, or, as in a few cases, drag in a little
old mule cart.
"And these poor wretches must be housed and fed, with
the city already crowded, and the fever spreading among
the citizens. It is impossible for you to imagine the misery
which has stared me in the face at every step since I have
been here. I can find no words to describe it. Why, this
very afternoon I carried food and wine to a woman who
had been lying sick, for three days, on a little straw in an
old wagon, in an open shed, discovered accidentally by one
of our officers. Of course this is not an every-day case,
but it is a wonder that it is not. Many of these refugees
have been sent North, and many more will be; but the
mere fact of their being thus transported involves a vast
amount of labor, which must mostly fall upon the soldiers;
and the garrison here is small, as small as it can be kept,
and do the necessary work and guard duty. And, besides
all this, the city has been shamefully neglected for many
months, and it is fearfully dirty, and there is but a small
number of teams and wagons to do so great an amount of
scavenger work.
"It did, and still does, sometimes, look very hopeless
here, on all sides. You at the North will never be able to
conceive or believe the true condition of our prisoners.
You may see all the pictures, and read all the accounts,
and believe, or think you believe, every word of them, and
then you will have but a faint idea. Men have lain on the
ground here dying, with the vermin literally swarming, in
about their ant-hills. One poor fellow, a sergeant, died in
the house of a kind lady here, whose limbs were so cramped
by long sitting, through weakness, that they could not be
straightened, even when he died, so that his coffin had to
be made with the cover shaped like a tent, or house roof,
to accommodate his knees. Women were afraid to walk
over the plank sidewalks where some of the prisoners had
been congregated for a little time, through fear of vermin.
Men who had once been educated and cultivated, with fine
minds, were reduced to idiocy — to utter and hopeless
imbecility.
"More than forty men, whose feet, or portions of them,
had rotted off, left on the steamer yesterday. I do not
know how many more such cases there had been among
them; but these men I saw. Think of it! feet so rotted
away that the surgeons cut them off with the scissors above
the ankle! Has God any retribution for those who inflicted
such suffering? Has their country any rewards for the men
who suffered thus, month after month, rather than turn
traitor — rather than deny the old flag?
"To-day we have been firing salutes and ringing the
bells for the capture of Richmond. You should have heard
the hoarse voices of the boys in the hospitals, as they tried
to cheer when they heard the bells this noon. I stood still
in the street, and cried like a child when I heard them; and
it all rushed over my mind at once how much it meant to
them!"
By the arrival of supplies and aid from the North, the
exertions of the military authorities in cleaning the city,
sick and wounded, the disease was at length subdued, and
by the latter part of June, though the town was unhealthy,
the worst was over.
In July Mrs. Hawley accompanied her husband to Richmond,
the latter being appointed chief of staff to Major-General
Terry, and, quartered in the spacious and comfortably
furnished mansion of the fugitive chief of the
rebellion, she enjoyed a most needed rest from the
labors and turmoil of the camp and the hospital. Thus
the summer passed, and she looked forward to a speedy
return home. But the full price of her presence among the
exciting scenes of the war was not yet paid. In October,
while returning from the battle-ground at Five Forks,
whither she had gone, with an uncle, to find the grave of
his son (Captain Parmelee, of the first Connecticut cavalry),
the ambulance in which she rode was overturned, and she
received an injury on her head, which for a long time made
her life doubtful. Her whole nervous system sustained
an almost irreparable shock, and she continues an invalid.
Such is a brief sketch of one of the many noble women
of the country who have fought the good fight, sustained
by a pure patriotism, the story of whose sacrifices will
always be sweet and sacred in our annals.
| MRS. HARRIET W. F. HAWLEY. Women of the war : | |