USA > Missouri > Missouri the center state, 1821-1915 > Part 42
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From the battlefield of Wilson's Creek in mid-August were brought to St. Louis 721 wounded men. In the whole city there were not hospital accommoda- tions for so many. Medical Director De Camp had established an army hospital at the St. Louis House of Refuge only four days before the battle but was not ready for patients. According to an official report the hospital "had neither stoves nor bedsteads, nor beds, nor bedding, nor food, nor nurses, nor anything prepared. The first 100 arrived at night. They had been brought in wagons 120 miles over a rough road, by hurried marches, suffering for food and water, from Springfield to Rolla, and thence by rail to St. Louis, and to the station on Fourteenth street. Then, having had nothing to eat for ten hours, they were put into furniture cars and carried the remaining three miles. Bare floors, bare walls and an empty kitchen received them. The kind-hearted surgeon obtained from the neighbors cooked food for their supper, and lost no time in getting
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together the means for their comfort. The poor fellows were so shattered and travel-worn that they were thankful to get food to eat and hard boards to sleep upon, and no word of complaint was heard from them. In the course of the week 300 or 400 more arrived. Conditions were improving, but there was so great a difficulty in obtaining what was wanted that many of the badly wounded lay in the same unchanged garments in which they had been brought from the battle- field three weeks before, but in the course of a month all were made comfortable. The sick and wounded continued to arrive and other accommodations had to be secured without delay. All the wards of the Sisters of Charity Hospital and the City Hospital were filled. The sad and neglected condition of those brought from Springfield excited the sympathies of the patriotic people. The wounds of many had not been dressed since leaving the battlefield, others were suffering from unextracted bullets and pieces of shell, and the hospitals were unprovided with clothing to substitute for that which in many cases was saturated with the blood of their wounds."
The Western Sanitary Commission.
Of such conditions was brought into activity the Western Sanitary Commis- sion. Fremont launched the organization on its career of mercy by declaring in a military order : "Its general object shall be to carry out, under the properly con- stituted military authorities, and in compliance with their orders, such sanitary regulation and reforms as the well-being of the soldiers demands."
The general proceeded to indicate in specific details some of the services which might be performed. These were the selection and furnishing of buildings for hospitals, the finding of nurses, the visiting of camps, the inspection of food, the suggestion of better drainage, the obtaining from the public of means for promoting the moral and social welfare of soldiers in camp and hospital.
To avert friction and enlarge usefulness, Fremont concluded his order with the following: "This commission is not intended in any way to interfere with the medical staff or other officers of the army, but to cooperate with them and aid them in the discharge of their present arduous and extraordinary duties. It will be treated by all officers of the army, both regular and volunteer, in this depart- ment with the respect due to the humane and patriotic motives of the members and to the authoriy of the commander-in-chief."
The hour had come. Where was the man? The people recognized the emer- gency. Hearts were throbbing with sympathy. Hands were ready to contribute. St. Louis was the center of activities for an extensive military front. Here troops were mobilized. Hence armies moved southwest and south. Here sup- plies were received and forwarded. Back to St. Louis came the boatloads and trainloads of wounded. Whether Fremont's Western Sanitary Commission meant much or little depended upon the head. The man was found. He was southern born, a native of Tennessee. He had lived in St. Louis nearly twenty years. He was a banker, a little past forty years of age.
James E. Yeatman made the Western Sanitary Commission. Good men of St. Louis held up his hands. They were named with him-Carlos S. Greeley, Dr. J. B. Johnson, George Partridge and Rev. Dr. William G. Eliot. They were wise in counsel, efficient in assistance. But Mr. Yeatman was "Old Sani- tary" to the soldiers in a thousand circling camps. This banker, in the prime
DR. JOHN T. HODGEN
Surgeon of the Western Sanitary Commission
JAMES E. YEATMAN Head of the Western Sanitary Commission
ISAAC H. STURGEON
Assistant Treasurer of the United States in 1861
GEORGE PARTRIDGE Of the Western Sanitary Commission
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of manhood, had a bed put in a room connected with his office so that he might be ready to respond to any call. He was on duty while he slept. A great organ- ization was gradually built up under Mr. Yeatman's direction. Everywhere in the north were local branches of the Western Sanitary Commission. The great work of relief was systematized and made effective. The collection and for- warding of supplies contributed were directed and controlled as a banker might deal with his country correspondents. There was no waste.
One of the first acts of Mr. Yeatman and his associates was to fit up and open a hospital for five hundred soldiers on Fifth and Chestnut streets. Surgeon John T. Hodgen was given charge. In this building were received the sanitary stores contributed from hundreds of cities, towns and villages. As needed, these stores were distributed. Hospital after hospital was prepared and opened as the wounded increased in numbers. Hospital boats were put in service to bring the wounded from the battlefields. A soldiers' home was opened in St. Louis to care for the furloughed and discharged sick as they came from the front. The military prisons in and around St. Louis were filled with Confederate soldiers and those who sympathized. The Western Sanitary Commission carried its work of relief into the prisons. Refugees flocked to the city and were temporarily cared for. Homes for soldiers' orphans were provided.
Nowhere else in the country was there a like center of suffering and misery from the war. Nowhere else were relief measures of such magnitude under- taken. The efficiency of Mr. Yeatman's organization came to be recognized the country wide. An appropriation of $50,000 by the state of Missouri was made for the commission. Another of $25,000 came later. The government of .St. Louis made appropriations and placed the money in Mr. Yeatman's hands. Gifts came from all parts of the country. Here was the suffering. Here came the contributions. In the midst of business depression, of war hard times, the Mississippi Valley Sanitary fair held in St. Louis produced more than $500,000. When the books of the Western Sanitary Commission closed they showed that Mr. Yeatman had handled in money and stores for mitigation of the horrors of war $4,270,098.55. The magnificent liberality had been begotten of implicit confidence in the integrity of the Western Sanitary Commission.
Year after year, almost from the very beginning of hostilities, Mr. Yeatman gave himself to this work. Repeatedly he left the headquarters of the commis- sion in St. Louis and went to the front to see for himself the needs. He sought the suffering and applied the measures of relief. It was this personal visita- tion and inspection that won for him the tender regard of the soldiers and the affectionate title of "Old .Sanitary."
Wonderful Details of Work.
Major W. R. Hodges, of the Loyal Legion, has described in graphic detail the work of the Western Sanitary Commission :
"In September came the siege and battle of Lexington, Mo., which threw 300 more wounded into the hospitals of St. Louis, and within two months five additional hospitals were provided. The commission fitted up two hospital cars on the Pacific Railroad with berths, nurses, cooking arrangements, etc., probably the first of the kind in the United States. The commission continued their voluntary labors without abatement; appeals for
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contributions were made through the newspapers and were generously responded to by New England, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and other Western States.
"In February came the battle of Fort Donelson, where 2,108 of our soldiers were wounded. . An associate member of the commission, Doctor Pollak, accompanied by nurses, members of the Ladies' Union Aid Society, proceeded at once by rail to Cairo and thence by steamer to Paducah with sanitary stores. The wounded had been brought to this point. The steamer Ben Franklin was placed under their charge, and loaded with wounded. It was brought to St. Louis. It was then that the suggestion of hospital steamers was made by Medical Director Simmons and embodied in the report of the commission with the pledge that if the suggestion were approved the commission would take the whole care and labor of carrying it into execution. The plan was approved by Gen. Halleck, and the City of Louisiana was chartered and on the 20th of March she was thoroughly fitted with beds and commissary stores, the commission completing her outfit at an expense of $3,000.
"Her first trip was to Island No. 10, under the charge of Mr. Yeatman, as a great battle was expected there. Soon after came the battle of Shiloh, and this boat conveyed 3,389 patients to Northern hospitals. She was soon after purchased by the government and renamed the R. C. Wood in honor of the assistant surgeon general of the United States Army.
"During the month of February, 1863, the Western Sanitary Commission distributed 13,250 articles of hospital clothing, food for the sick, bottles of cordials and stimulants, etc., and the members labored unceasingly night and day in making the distribution.
"On the 7th and 8th of March, 1862, the battle of Pea Ridge was fought, and 980 Union soldiers were wounded. This battle field was 250 mlles distant from Rolla, the railroad terminus. The roads were of the worst description, through a half civilized country, mountainous, without bridges, and without hotels, stripped of forage for teams and food for men, subject to raids and murders by guerrilla bands. It was impossible to bring the wounded to St. Louis. The army of Gen. Curtis was deficient in trans- portation, and the Medical Department was most miserably provided with means for caring for the wounded. Surgeons were without hospitals, clothing, stimulants or bed- ding for the wounded, and the supply of medicines was exceedingly limited. The country was thinly settled, mostly log houses, with few of the necessities of life. The courthouse at Cassville and all the principal dwellings were filled with wounded, and the same was true of Keitesville. A few of the officers were taken by ambulance to Springfield. The commission at once despatched its agent with hospital supplies to the front. In his report, he says, 'At Cassville I found two large tents, six buildings, in- cluding the courthouse and tavern, used as hospitals. The patients were lying on the floors, with a little straw under them, and with knapsacks or blankets under their heads as pillows. They had no comforts of any kind, no change of clothing, but were lying in the clothes they fought in, stiff and dirty with blood and soil.'
"There were 400 Federal wounded here. The stores were turned over to the different hospitals, and never was a provision train more joyously greeted by starving men than this ample supply of hospital supplies by these sick and wounded soldiers. The Confederate wounded were treated with the same consideration as our own. There were two Confederate surgeons, and one said to the agent of the Sanitary Commission, 'We are Texans. Our army has treated us shamefully; they. stampeded and left us here with our sick and wounded men, and I will tell you, sir, that for two days we had nothing to give our poor fellows but parched corn and water. Every Federal officer and man has treated us like gentlemen, and Gen. Curtis told me that so long as he had a loaf of bread we should have half of it.' The agent said, 'I visited the hospitals at Pine- ville. No provision had been made by Price, and our scanty supplies had been shared with them. For twenty-five miles around every house was a rebel hospital. We had three there then. There was at this point a total absence of stimulants and men were dying for want of them.'
"During February and March, 1863, while the army of Gen. Grant was occupying the low region of country above Vicksburg, exaggerated reports of sickness among the troops were published by Northern newspapers.
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"Mr. Yeatman went down and made a personal inspection and on his return published an account of his visit. While he found a large amount of sickness, his report tended to allay undue apprehension. He directed the agent of the commission to immediately .establish his headquarters near Vicksburg for the distribution of supplies. After the assault by our forces on the 19th and 22d of May Mr. Yeatman made a second visit, in charge of the steamer Champion, accompanied by surgeons and nurses and dressers of wounds to the number of fifty-five, taking with him 250 tons of sanitary supplies, besides cots, mattresses and everything necessary for the care of 1,000 men. At the time of his arrival all sanitary stores were exhausted and the new supplies were received with grati- tude. In his report he said: 'Supplies were distributed most liberally wherever wanted. Blessings were invoked by both surgeons and men for this timely care in providing for them, in the great extremity which always succeeds a series of battles and which can only be fully provided for in this way. No parched and thirsty soil ever drank the dews of heaven with more avidity than did those wounded men receive the beneficent gifts and comforts sent to them through this commission.' One hundred and fourteen thou- sand, six hundred and ninety-seven articles were distributed to Gen. Grant's army prior to the fall of Vicksburg.
"In addition to its work of ministering to the sick and wounded of the Western armies and navy and of promoting the health of soldiers in the field, the Western Sani- tary Commission felt itself called upon to devote a portion of its labors to the relief of the 40,000 freedmen along the banks of the Mississippi River from Columbus to Natchez. They were in a country stripped by the ravages of war, with no demand for labor except- ing in a few localities and without means of providing for food, clothing and shelter. In December, 1863, Mr. Yeatman returned from a special trip down the river to ascertain and report the actual conditions. He stopped at Island No. 10, Memphis, Helena, Goodrich's Landing, Milliken's Bend, Young's Point, the plantations of Jeff and Joe Davis and at Natchez. A's an illustration, he found at Helena between 3,000 and 4,000 men, women and children, part of them living in a place back of the town called 'Camp Ethiopia,' in cast- off tents, caves, shelters of brush. Others were in the poorer houses of the town, six- teen to twenty persons in a room, and in huts on the outskirts. The able-bodied men were compelled to work on the fortifications, in unloading coal and freight from steam- boats, teamsters and all manner of fatigue duty, for which they received no compensa- tion, through neglect of officers to place them on the pay roll and general indifference of military commanders as to their condition. At one time an order was issued forbid- ding their payment on the ground that their former masters would have a claim against the government for their services.
"The terrible destitution and sufferings of these helpless people and the injustice to which they were subjected so moved the sympathetic heart of Mr. Yeatman that he went to Washington and presented the subject to the government and made 'sugges- tions of a plan of organization for freed labor, and the leasing of plantations along the Mississippi River.' The high character of Mr. Yeatman was so well known that his suggestions were received with favor, and he was authorized to accompany an agent of the Treasury Department to Vicksburg to mature and carry them into effect. This trust he accepted, declining an official position which was offered him. About 500 plan- tations were leased, wise and humane regulations for the compensation of labor were enforced, schools established, and incalculable benefits were derived by the colored people, who were encouraged in habits of self-reliance and saving. Large quantities of sanitary stores were distributed among those in dire extremity. From the efforts of Mr. Yeat- man in this direction National Freedmen Relief associations were organized all over the Northern States.
"Assistance was also rendered to white refugees from the South, who came by thousands, many of them women with small children, often barefooted and wholly destitute, brought by steamers and landed. Their husbands had been killed in the war by guerrillas, or conscripted into the rebel army. One poor blind woman with six children walked all the way from Arkansas to Rolla, her little children leading her by the hand all the way over those hundreds of weary miles. From Rolla she was brought here by rail as a charity. Her youngest children she had never seen as they had been
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born since she became blind. Her children were adopted by Dr. Eliot and placed in a mission school on Eighth street, and the mother was sent to a hospital, where Dr. Pope performed an operation; the cataracts were removed from her eyes and her sight restored. Her children were then returned to her. In consequence of the invasion of Missouri by Price in the fall of 1864 thousands of Union refugees, wholly destitute, came to St. Louis.
"The military authorities authorized a charity ration and shelter, but all other ex- penses, clothing, hospital treatment, teachers for the children, were borne by the Sani- tary Commission. Its area of beneficence extended over the vast territory from St. Louis to the Gulf of Mexico, and westward to the Rocky Mountains. Wherever troops were the commission forwarded supplies. Every call for help from friend or foe was instantly responded to."
Mr. Yeatman and the Freedmen's Bureau.
Catholic in his conception of the commission's purposes, this southern born man, once a slave-holder, recognized the necessities of the freedmen. Great numbers of these ex-slaves had drifted away from the plantations and into communities. The commission sent physicians and nurses and then teachers. Mr. Yeatman suggested the plan of the Freedmen's Bureau. He recommended the leasing of abandoned plantations to negroes, to encourage them to become self-supporting. These views were indorsed as offering an "absolute solution of the cotton and negro questions." They appealed so to President Lincoln that he sent for Mr. Yeatman and offered him the commissionership of the Freed- man's Bureau. Four years previously Mr. Yeatman, accompanying Hamilton R. Gamble, had called upon Mr. Lincoln. He was a Union man. His step- father, John Bell, had headed the Union ticket as the Presidential nominee the year before. Mr. Yeatman and Mr. Gamble believed that a pacificatory policy, such as General Harney was pursuing in St. Louis, was wiser than the more radical course advocated by Francis P. Blair, who wanted Harney superseded. Mr. Lincoln rejected the advice of his visitors. Mr. Gamble and Mr. Yeat- man came back to St. Louis, Mr. Gamble to become the provisional governor of Missouri and to hold it in the Union at the cost of his life, Mr. Yeatman to devote himself unsparingly to the mitigation of the horrors of war.
The Great Sanitary Fair.
The Western Sanitary Commission faced a depleted treasury at the beginning of 1864. The sources of revenue seemed exhausted. A great fair was planned. On the Ist of February the organization was formed. On the 17th of May the fair opened. The magnitude and success of that fair are worthy of place in history. That a city so stricken as St. Louis had been could plan and carry through such a movement is the wonderful fact. The building constructed for the fair was 500 feet long. It extended along Twelfth street from St. Charles to Olive, with wings 100 feet long on Locust street. In the center was a great rotunda seventy-five feet across and fifty feet high. In this central space were decorative features-flags and evergreens and flowers and battle trophies. Gifts of articles to be sold for the benefit of the commission came from as far east as Maine and as far west as Nevada. But Missourians gave in numberless ways and in marvelous generosity. Every element in the population was represented among the givers. The contributions were classified and put on sale in depart- ments. There were agricultural implements and works of art. Such entertain-
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ment features as the curiosity shop, the skating park and the gallery of fine arts were provided. The Holland kitchen and the New England kitchen catered to the crowds. A theater presented dramas. Military bands gave concerts. Guard duty was performed by colored soldiers.
The fair put into the treasury of the Western Sanitary Commission $554,591. That was at the rate of $3.50 for every man, woman and child in St. Louis. The fair enabled the commission to go on with its work to the end of the war, and to give the Ladies' Union Aid Society $50,000 for hospital service and for the assistance of soldiers' families. The sum of $1,000 a month was devoted to making the freed slaves self-sustaining and $40,000 was expended in the maintenance of a home for soldiers' orphans at Webster Groves. One who was especially active in the planning and conduct of the fair has commented upon it: "But the fair was a blessing not only to refugees and freedmen, to the sick and wounded in hospitals, to the widows and orphans of our slain heroes, but was also a measureless boon to St. Louis. It was one more mighty agency for curing us of our selfishness. For a time at least it broke upon our commercialism, and led us to think of others and to do something for their welfare."
The Assessment of Southern Sympathizers.
In the summer of 1862 there issued from the general commanding at St. Louis an order "to assess and collect without unnecessary delay the sum of five hundred thousand dollars from the secessionists and southern sympathizers" of the city and county of St. Louis. The order stated that the money was to be "used in subsisting, clothing and arming the enrolled militia while in active service, and in providing for the support of the families of such militiamen and United States volunteers as may be destitute." It was extended to other parts of the State.
The unpleasant duty of making and collecting the assessment was imposed upon half a dozen of the best known citizens of St. Louis. The assessment was begun. Collections were enforced by the military. Suddenly the board having the matter in charge suspended the work. The order countermanding the assessment came from Washington. It was terse: "As there seems to be no present military necessity for the enforcement of this assessment, all pro- ceedings under the order will be suspended."
Two weeks before General Halleck directed discontinuance, a letter was sent to Washington saying "that the 'assessment' now in progress, to be levied upon southern sympathizers and secessionists, is working evil in this community and doing great harm to the Union cause. Among our citizens are all shades of opinion, from that kind of neutrality which is hatred in disguise, through all the grades of lukewarmness, 'sympathy' and hesitating zeal up to the full loyalty which your memorialists claim to possess. To assort and classify them, so as to indicate the dividing line of loyalty and disloyalty, and to establish the rates of payment by those falling below it is a task of great difficulty."
Reviewing the work as far as it had progressed, the writer continued: "The natural consequence has been that many feel themselves deeply aggrieved, not having supposed themselves liable to the suspicion of disloyalty ; many escape assessment who, if any, deserve it ; and a general feeling of inequality in the rule and ratio of assessments prevails. This was unavoidable, for no two tribunals
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could agree upon the details of such an assessment either as to the persons or the amounts to be assessed without more complete knowledge of facts than are to be attained from ex parte testimony and current reports."
The writer appealed for a stay of the assessment proceedings. When the letter was written the intention was to have it signed by a number of loyal citi- zens of St. Louis. But the leading Union men declined to sign. Their feeling against the southern sympathizers was bitter. The war sentiment gripped. Business had been paralyzed. Sentiment rather sustained a policy which pro- posed to make sympathizers pay heavily toward the war expense. One man, with a deep sense of justice, stood out alone. He had been among the foremost the year previous in counseling the aggressive measures which made St. Louis a Union city. But now, when the Union elements were all powerful, his appeal for fairness toward the minority got no hearing. He signed his letter and sent it to Governor Gamble who forwarded it at once to Washington. Years after the war this letter was printed in a St. Louis newspaper but without the signature and without mention of the name of Rev. Dr. William G. Eliot.
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