Complete Prose Works
county, N. Y. I had several such interviews with him. He died a few days
after the one just described.
HOME-MADE MUSIC
_August 8th_.--To-night, as I was trying to keep cool, sitting by a
wounded soldier in Armory-square, I was attracted by some pleasant
singing in an adjoining ward. As my soldier was asleep, I left him, and
entering the ward where the music was, I walk'd halfway down and took a
seat by the cot of a young Brooklyn friend, S. R., badly wounded in the
hand at Chancellorsville, and who has suffer'd much, but at that moment
in the evening was wide awake and comparatively easy. He had turn'd
over on his left side to get a better view of the singers, but the
mosquito-curtains of the adjoining cots obstructed the sight. I stept
round and loop'd them all up, so that he had a clear show, and then sat
down again by him, and look'd and listen'd. The principal singer was a
young lady-nurse of one of the wards, accompanying on a melodeon, and
join'd by the lady-nurses of other wards. They sat there, making a
charming group, with their handsome, healthy faces, and standing up
a little behind them were some ten or fifteen of the convalescent
soldiers, young men, nurses, &c., with books in their hands, singing.
Of course it was not such a performance as the great soloists at the
New York opera house take a hand in, yet I am not sure but I receiv'd as
much pleasure under the circumstances, sitting there, as I have had from
the best Italian compositions, express'd by world-famous performers.
The men lying up and down the hospital, in their cots, (some badly
wounded--some never to rise thence,) the cots themselves, with their
drapery of white curtains, and the shadows down the lower and upper
parts of the ward; then the silence of the men, and the attitudes they
took--the whole was a sight to look around upon again and again. And
there sweetly rose those voices up to the high, whitewash'd wooden roof,
and pleasantly the roof sent it all back again. They sang very well,
mostly quaint old songs and declamatory hymns, to fitting tunes. Here,
for instance:
My days are swiftly gliding by, and I a pilgrim stranger,
Would not detain them as they fly, those hours of toil and danger;
For O we stand on Jordan's strand, our friends are passing over,
And just before, the shining shore we may almost discover.
We'll gird our loins my brethren dear, our distant home discerning,
Our absent Lord has left us word, let every lamp be burning,
For O we stand on Jordan's strand, our friends are passing over,
And just before, the shining shore we may almost discover.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
_August 12th_.--I see the President almost every day, as I happen to
live where he passes to or from his lodgings out of town. He never
sleeps at the White House during the hot season, but has quarters at a
healthy location some three miles north of the city, the Soldiers' home,
a United States military establishment. I saw him this morning about 8
1/2 coming in to business, riding on Vermont avenue, near L street. He
always has a company of twenty-five or thirty cavalry, with sabres drawn
and held upright over their shoulders. They say this guard was against
his personal wish, but he let his counselors have their way. The party
makes no great show in uniform or horses. Mr. Lincoln on the saddle
generally rides a good-sized, easy-going gray horse, is dress'd in plain
black, somewhat rusty and dusty, wears a black stiff hat, and looks
about as ordinary in attire, &c., as the commonest man. A lieutenant,
with yellow straps, rides at his left, and following behind, two by
two, come the cavalry men, in their yellow-striped jackets. They are
generally going at a slow trot, as that is the pace set them by the one
they wait upon. The sabres and accoutrements clank, and the entirely
unornamental _cortège_ as it trots towards Lafayette square arouses
no sensation, only some curious stranger stops and gazes. I see very
plainly ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S dark brown face, with the deep-cut lines, the
eyes, always to me with a deep latent sadness in the expression. We
have got so that we exchange bows, and very cordial ones. Sometimes
the President goes and comes in an open barouche. The cavalry always
accompany him, with drawn sabres. Often I notice as he goes out
evenings--and sometimes in the morning, when he returns early--he turns
off and halts at the large and handsome residence of the Secretary of
War, on K street, and holds conference there. If in his barouche, I can
see from my window he does not alight, but sits in his vehicle, and Mr.
Stanton comes out to attend him. Sometimes one of his sons, a boy of ten
or twelve, accompanies him, riding at his right on a pony. Earlier in
the summer I occasionally saw the President and his wife, toward the
latter part of the afternoon, out in a barouche, on a pleasure ride
through the city. Mrs. Lincoln was dress'd in complete black, with a
long crape veil. The equipage is of the plainest kind, only two horses,
and they nothing extra. They pass'd me once very close, and I saw the
President in the face fully, as they were moving slowly, and his look,
though abstracted, happen'd to be directed steadily in my eye. He bow'd
and smiled, but far beneath his smile I noticed well the expression I
have alluded to. None of the artists or pictures has caught the deep,
though subtle and indirect expression of this man's face. There is
something else there. One of the great portrait painters of two or three
centuries ago is needed.
HEATED TERM
There has lately been much suffering here from heat; we have had it upon
us now eleven days. I go around with an umbrella and a fan. I saw two
cases of sun-stroke yesterday, one in Pennsylvania avenue, and another
in Seventh street. The City railroad company loses some horses every
day. Yet Washington is having a livelier August, and is probably putting
in a more energetic and satisfactory summer, than ever before during its
existence. There is probably more human electricity, more population to
make it, more business, more light-heartedness, than ever before.
The armies that swiftly circumambiated from Fredericksburgh--march'd,
struggled, fought, had out their mighty clinch and hurl at
Gettysburg--wheel'd, circumambiated again, return'd to their ways,
touching us not, either at their going or coming. And Washington feels
that she has pass'd the worst; perhaps feels that she is henceforth
mistress. So here she sits with her surrounding hills spotted with guns,
and is conscious of a character and identity different from what it
was five or six short weeks ago, and very considerably pleasanter and
prouder.
SOLDIERS AND TALKS
Soldiers, soldiers, soldiers, you meet everywhere about the city,
often superb-looking men, though invalids dress'd in worn uniforms, and
carrying canes or crutches. I often have talks with them, occasionally
quite long and interesting. One, for instance, will have been all
through the peninsula under McClellan--narrates to me the fights, the
marches, the strange, quick changes of that eventful campaign, and
gives glimpses of many things untold in any official reports or books or
journals. These, indeed, are the things that are genuine and precious.
The man was there, has been out two years, has been through a dozen
fights, the superfluous flesh of talking is long work'd off him, and he
gives me little but the hard meat and sinew. I find it refreshing, these
hardy, bright, intuitive, American young men, (experienc'd soldiers with
all their youth.) The vocal play and significance moves one more than
books. Then there hangs something majestic about a man who has borne his
part in battles, especially if he is very quiet regarding it when you
desire him to unbosom. I am continually lost at the absence of blowing
and blowers among these old-young American militaires. I have found some
man or other who has been in every battle since the war began, and have
talk'd with them about each one in every part of the United States, and
many of the engagements on the rivers and harbors too. I find men
here from every State in the Union, without exception. (There are more
Southerners, especially border State men, in the Union army than is
generally supposed. [A]) I now doubt whether one can get a fair idea
of what this war practically is, or what genuine America is, and her
character, without some such experience as this I am having.
DEATH OF A WISCONSIN OFFICER
Another characteristic scene of that dark and bloody 1863, from notes of
my visit to Armory-square hospital, one hot but pleasant summer day. In
ward H we approach the cot of a young lieutenant of one of the Wisconsin
regiments. Tread the bare board floor lightly here, for the pain and
panting of death are in this cot. I saw the lieutenant when he was first
brought here from Chancellorsville, and have been with him occasionally
from day to day and night to night. He had been getting along pretty
well till night before last, when a sudden hemorrhage that could not be
stopt came upon him, and to-day it still continues at intervals. Notice
that water-pail by the side of the bed, with a quantity of blood and
bloody pieces of muslin, nearly full; that tells the story. The poor
young man is struggling painfully for breath, his great dark eyes with
a glaze already upon them, and the choking faint but audible in his
throat. An attendant sits by him, and will not leave him till the last;
yet little or nothing can be done. He will die here in an hour or two,
without the presence of kith or kin. Meantime the ordinary chat and
business of[6] the ward a little way off goes on indifferently. Some
of the inmates are laughing and joking, others are playing checkers or
cards, others are reading, &c.
I have noticed through most of the hospitals that as long as there
is any chance for a man, no matter how bad he may be, the surgeon and
nurses work hard, sometimes with curious tenacity, for his life, doing
everything, and keeping somebody by him to execute the doctor's orders,
and minister to him every minute night and day. See that screen there.
As you advance through the dusk of early candle-light, a nurse will step
forth on tip-toe, and silently but imperiously forbid you to make any
noise, or perhaps to come near at all. Some soldier's life is flickering
there, suspended between recovery and death. Perhaps at this moment the
exhausted frame has just fallen into a light sleep that a step might
shake. You must retire. The neighboring patients must move in their
stocking feet. I have been several times struck with such mark'd
efforts--everything bent to save a life from the very grip of the
destroyer. But when that grip is once firmly fix'd, leaving no hope or
chance at all, the surgeon abandons the patient. If it is a case
where stimulus is any relief, the nurse gives milk-punch or brandy, or
whatever is wanted, _ad libitum_. There is no fuss made. Not a bit
of sentimentalism or whining have I seen about a single death-bed in
hospital or on the field, but generally impassive indifference. All is
over, as far as any efforts can avail; it is useless to expend emotions
or labors. While there is a prospect they strive hard--at least most
surgeons do; but death certain and evident, they yield the field.
Note:
[6]MR. GARFIELD (_In the House of Representatives, April 15,'79_.) "Do
gentlemen know that (leaving out all the border States) there were fifty
regiments and seven companies of white men in our army fighting for the
Union from the States that went into rebellion? Do they know that from
the single State of Kentucky more Union soldiers fought under our flag
than Napoleon took into the battle of Waterloo? more than Wellington