University of Virginia Library

MISS GEORGIANA WILLETS.

THIS accomplished and lovely young woman was one
of that large number who for many months were kept
back from serving their country in the military hospitals
and on the battle-field by a misconception of the duties that
nurses had to perform.

As soon, however, as it was apparent to her and her
friends that very effective and important services could be
rendered without the compromise of either delicacy or
dignity, she entered heart and soul into the work.

Leaving her home at Jersey City in the spring of 1864,
she repaired to Washington, holding herself in readiness to
respond to any call that might be made for hospital labor.
Early in May, Grant moved his powerful army across the
Rapidan, and struck the first of those giant blows under
which the Confederacy at length reeled to its downfall.

With this campaign was inaugurated in Virginia his
peculiar mode of warfare, which consists in following up
one battle with another, and this by a forced march, giving
the exhausted enemy no time to collect, reorganize, or
recuperate. Such fighting naturally created great suffering,
and imposed heavy losses upon the forces of the North.

Into the midst of these unequalled and appalling scenes
of bloodshed and hardship Miss Willets found herself suddenly

plunged, when, on the 13th of May, she went to the
scene of active operations, and entered the old war-battered
city of Fredericksburg.

It was one enormous hospital; or rather it was a city of
wounded and exhausted men, who had been rapidly collected
from the rear of battles that had lasted with little or
no intermission for seven days. But at no time throughout
the war was there such a lack of adequate hospital appliances
as at Fredericksburg after the battles of the
Wilderness.

Immediately on her arrival, Miss Willets reported to
Dr. Dalton, the Medical Director, and was assigned to
duty in the Catholic Church, known as a ward of the First
Division, Second Corps Hospital. Here she found a
hundred and fifty wounded men, with literally nothing to
make their condition comfortable, or even tolerable. Supplies
could be had only by way of Belle Plain, a distance
of twenty miles, over a road that, by a constant passage
of army trains and frequent storms, had become one long
quagmire, through which a horse could hardly drag a
hundred pounds. All the available force, and most of the
trains, had moved on towards Richmond, leaving this city
of sufferers to be relieved as best they might. There were
no beds in the ward where Miss Willets was engaged except
such as were made by stitching two blankets together, and
stuffing the sack thus made with straw that had been used
for packing; no pillows for the dying, except such as were
rudely formed by cutting off the sleeve of some poor
soldier's shirt, and filling it with hay. Canteens, boots,
and even bricks, were the uncouth bolsters for patients

whose condition required the most careful attention. The
only dishes were a rough and blackened tin cup for not one
man in three; the only place for cooking, an open camp fire.

Thus rude was her introduction to army life. But the
noble girl was neither repulsed nor discouraged. Why
should a well person repine at anything, when men by the
thousand lay suffering and dying around her, their battle
uniform yet stiff with gore, bolstering their weary and aching
heads on brickbats, yet never breathing a word of complaint?
Here for two weeks she worked assiduously, using
all a woman's wit and ingenuity to extemporize something
having a semblance of comfort for her hundred and fifty
patients. The transportation from Belle Plain had greatly
improved, supplies were arriving every hour, and the prospect
of seeing the wounded in a condition less pitiable was
quite inspiring, when all their ameliorating plans were cut
short by the progress of events and a military order.

Grant had advanced so far as to make his land communication
with Washington too long a line to be held. He had
established a new base on the York and James Rivers; the
theatre of operations was now the close vicinity of Petersburg
and Richmond, and Fredericksburg must be evacuated.

Here was a fresh breadth of canvas in the ever-shifting
panoramas of a great war. Eight hundred patients were to
be transferred immediately from their rude resting-places,
and from cots, to the transports that lay by the river bank.
Slowly and painfully the poor fellows were lifted upon
stretchers, almost every movement giving exquisite torture,
carried by two soldiers down the steep bank, and laid side

by side along the decks of the vessels. Night fell moonless
and stormy while the work was in progress; but the
demands of war recognized no distinction between storm
and sunshine; they made no allowance for darkness and
midnight; the embarkation must go on. If the ladies had
not the strength to lift wounded men and carry stretchers,
they could at least hold the lights. Accordingly Miss Willets
and her two associates, Miss Hancock and Mrs. Lee,
took their positions along the path that led from the gangway
to the hospitals, and stood hour after hour in the rain
and deep gloom of midnight, as the grim procession of the
wounded filed slowly past them.

All through the long, wet night, these true-hearted ladies
continued at their self-assigned posts of duty, until, as
morning dawned, they found themselves, with their ship-loads
of suffering men, moving slowly down the Rappahannock.
When opposite Port Royal, an officer came aboard
with the information that a thousand of the wounded in the
last battle were lying on the ground, and in wagons, just as
they had been brought from the field. He asked who
would volunteer to go and do something for them. Miss
Willets had come out from Washington in company with
Mrs. Swisshelm; but in the darkness and confusion at the
embarkation they were separated, and she was now quite
alone. She not only had no acquaintance at Port Royal,
but the town had very recently been evacuated by the
rebels, and there was no certainty that she might not be
subject to insult by going so wholly unprotected into a
place full of southern sympathizers. But considerations of
this kind could not deter our heroine from the line of usefulness.

Here were a thousand suffering soldiers, to whom
a little attention might be of inestimable importance, and
she went to work among them without hesitation. She
found one of her own sex engaged in similar labors, Mrs.
Spencer, state agent for New York, who hailed her with a
genuine welcome. For four days she remained here, doing
whatever she could as best she could. They were days of
toil and discomfort so great as almost to reach suffering,
when another shift in the grand kaleidoscope changed all
plan and arrangements. White House was now the base,
and thither Miss Willets went on the supply steamer
Planter. Working here for two weeks, the next advance
was to City Point, where she was permanently connected
with the Hospital of the Second Division of the Second
Corps. The wounded in the engagements of the 16th, 17th,
and 18th June were brought in just as she commenced her
labors; and for some time she had charge of eleven wards,
and also of a low-diet kitchen, where food for the most
dangerous cases was prepared. The arduous labors in which
she was engaged through the summer were varied, not
relieved, by a trip to Washington, on a hospital transport,
in July. Two hundred and fifty men, wounded in the
assault of the rebel lines before Petersburg, were on board,
just as they were removed from that disastrous field.

One lady, Mrs. Price, was with Miss Willets to assist;
but for all that number of patients they had but two basins
with which to wash and dress wounds, almost no supplies,
one small stove in charge of a testy and slatternly old
negress down in the hold. With such desires as she had to
do something for the poor men, and such inadequate means

to operate with, well may she describe that trip from James
River to Washington as "thirty-six hours of torture."

Excepting a short interval in September, when overexertion
had produced sickness, Miss Willets remained at
the hospital of the Second Division, Second Corps, till late
in the fall of 1864, when, the number of patients having
greatly diminished, she went home for a short interval of
rest, intending to return at the opening of the spring campaign.
How soon that campaign closed, and with it the
whole war, all the world knows.

Though some labored for a longer period than Miss Willets,
few, from any part of the country, brought to the
service more pleasing manners, more graceful accomplishments,
or a kinder heart. She was one of those whose
presence by their cots the soldiers gratefully recognized by
calling them "sunbeams." The wounded who were so
fortunate as to be under her care, as well as Mrs. Husband,
and others who coöperated with her, conspire in their
praises of her winning gentleness, the loveliness of her
person, and the sweetness of her character.