 | MRS. GOVERNOR HARVEY. Women of the war : |  |
MRS. GOVERNOR HARVEY.
IT will be a long time before the people of Wisconsin
will forget the thrill of horror which pervaded the entire
state when the sad news was flashed over the wires that
their honored and beloved governor, Lewis P. Harvey,
was drowned at Savannah, Tennessee, just after having
completed his noble labors in behalf of the Wisconsin
soldiers who had been wounded at the battle of Pittsburg
Landing, on the 6th and 7th of April, 1862. Just in the
prime of a life much of which had been spent in honorable
public positions, trusted and honored as few men in the
state were, with a bright future before him, and without a
blemish on his past career, it seemed an inexplicable and
bitter providence that removed him, by a sudden casualty,
just as he was returning with the blessings, heartfelt and
feelingly expressed, of the sick and wounded soldiers, to
whom he had been a very angel of consolation.
Deep as the affliction was to the state, and universally
as it was expressed, there was one to whom it was almost
beyond endurance — his devoted wife, thus suddenly and
cruelly bereft. What her trial was no one can tell; but its
result showed that she bore it as few women would, and
proved her worthy of the husband she had lost. As he
had fallen a martyr through his devotion to the welfare of
noble cause.
Within a short time after the loss of her husband, she
asked and received the appointment of state agent, to
visit Wisconsin soldiers in the field and in the hospitals.
The state had but a few of these agents, but they were
generally very faithful laborers, and accomplished an immense
amount of good. None of them, however, were
able to do as much as Mrs. Harvey. Among all the higher
officers of the western armies her position and the story of
her terrible affliction were known, and to her favors were
granted and privileges given which no others could obtain.
Besides her ability, her experience in public life, her manners,
and her determined energy added to the influence she
otherwise possessed.
To us there is hardly a more beautiful or romantic episode
of the war than the army career of this noble woman,
thus waiving her widow's right of pious mourning, leaving
all the comforts of home, and devoting herself for years to
the care of our sick and wounded defenders. Her purpose
once made, there was no faltering till the end, and out of
the depths of her own great sorrow she gathered strength
to console thousands of afflicted ones, to whom she was
mother, guardian, and protector. Of the details of her
work we are, unfortunately, unable to speak. We can
only write from what we have heard and read, and that
without anything more distinct than a general knowledge
and recollection.
The story of her army life has, throughout, the same
general features. It was a constant succession of labors
care. During the last three years of the war, wherever
there was the greatest need for her services, — whether up
the Tennessee or the Cumberland, at Vicksburg, Memphis,
or Helena, on the White River or the Arkansas, in the
field or in the hospitals, — there Mrs. Harvey was to be
found, energetically working with her whole might for our
suffering soldiers. A friend who knew her long before the
war, and watched her labors in the army with the greatest
interest, has told us something of the manner in which
she worked.
He says that he never saw man or woman in the army
who was more entirely inwrapped in the noble work she had
undertaken. Her earnestness was something extraordinary,
and made everything yield before it. Were there difficulties
in the way of providing necessaries or comforts for
the men in hospital, she would insist on them in such a
way that every one either became imbued with her spirit or
for the time yielded as before an irresistible force. They
must be had, even if red-tape were cut a hundred times.
Was a boat needed to remove the sick from an unhealthy
place, the military authorities were asked for it, in the
name of humanity, in such a manner that a refusal was
well nigh impossible.
Officers of the better class so confided in her judgment,
and so honored her philanthropic heroism, that they cheerfully
gave her what to others would have been denied.
Those who were disposed to deny her requests soon came
to learn her persistence and determination, and, as well,
that she could and would appeal to the powers above them,
than one case where the sick and wounded soldiers were
rescued from the bad management of subordinate officers
in charge of hospitals through her strenuous efforts. The
same qualities which gave her such power for good in the
army were of the greatest service to the soldiers in another
way. Her representations to the governor — a noble and
worthy successor to her husband's office — were always
heeded, and the action of the executive was based on
them, as all the Wisconsin officers well knew.
By the bedside of hundreds of dying soldiers she was a
minister of Christian consolation, her very life a most
eloquent proof of the reality of the faith she would have
them accept. She was preacher and mother in one, and
the two sacred characters were beautifully blended. It was
her rare combination of womanly refinement and softness,
of an earnest and loving Christian spirit, and of unusual
business and administrative qualities that enabled her to
perform a work such as we believe was accomplished by no
one else in similar circumstances in the army. Others
were equally devoted, earnest, and enduring; but in none
were such a variety of qualifications so united.
The close of the war brought no change in her purpose.
Its close did not terminate the countless sufferings that grew
out of it, nor the need of philanthropic effort for the sufferers.
Of all these, the class that were most innocent,
most helpless, and most needing help, were "the orphans
of the war;" and in their behalf Mrs. Harvey began a new
work of love, as soon as the fighting had virtually ceased.
A friend, who was an officer in our army, and long an
1865, at Memphis, as she was about beginning this work,
and gives us a few interesting facts.
He writes, "I met Mrs. Harvey on board the steamer
Luminary, at Memphis, in the latter part of May, 1865.
I had not seen her since her husband's death, and was at
first sadly struck by the great change in her appearance.
I had known her as a leader of the best society at the state
capital, accomplished, full of buoyant life and spirits;
not at all gay, but always cheerful; interested in, and
thoroughly understanding, the state and national politics;
fresh, vigorous, and in the enjoyment of life's best gift.
She had, in the few years of her affliction and unceasing
labors, become almost entirely changed, as it first seemed
to me. There was much more than the mourning suit to
show how her great loss had borne upon her. Subdued,
yet with no loss of latent energy, and altogether indifferent
to aught but the work to which she had devoted herself,
she appeared at least a dozen years older than when I had
seen her last, in 1862; and well she might, for in the interval
she had compressed the work of a lifetime. She had
with her a half dozen young children — `orphans of the
war' — whom she had brought with her from Vicksburg,
not knowing how she would provide for them, but trusting
that provision would in some way be made. They had
fallen into her care, and had no one else in the wide world
to look out for them. That was sufficient to establish their
claim on her protection. They were to be the first inmates
of her Home for like helpless ones, which she had then
determined to found at the state capital. There was something
bereaved by the war, taking home with her these little sufferers
by its calamities, from the once stronghold of those
who brought it on. She went to Wisconsin, and appealed,
through the press and personally in behalf of her project,
with such effect, that the purpose and prayer of her heart
have become a visible and beneficent fact. The Home has
been established. Mrs. Harvey is its efficient superintendent,
and is to-day as assiduous in her labors as she was in
the field. She could not be more so."
| MRS. GOVERNOR HARVEY. Women of the war : | |