USA > Pennsylvania > Martial deeds of Pennsylvania, Vol. 2 > Part 41
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GEORGE H. STUART.
will never be parted with. Besides these there were 18,000,000 copies of our best religious newspapers issued to the army, fresh as they appeared from the press. The total receipts of the Com- mission were $6,250,000. The books were distributed by about 5000 unpaid agents. How did we get these agents? They got nothing for their labors. We would not employ agents who wanted pay for their work, except a few permanent ones to superintend. . . But these men got pay-pay far richer than was ever coined in any mint : it was the 'God bless you' of the dying soldier."
Mr. Stuart declared that in all his labors in distributing the Scriptures he never found but one man who refused to take a copy, and that was a German from Philadelphia. To the representations that it was Cromwell's Bible, the one which old Ironsides read and from which they received such inspiration, he still turned a deaf ear, as he did to his being a fellow-townsman. Mr. Stuart knows no such word as fail. He tried a flank move- ment. He told the soldier that on the following Sunday he would speak to a large audience in Philadelphia. "'Well,' he inquired, 'and what will you say ?' 'I shall tell that I have been engaged so long a time in distributing Bibles among our soldiers ; that I never met with but one refusal, and that he was a soldier from our own city.' 'Well, and what more will you say ?' 'Why, I shall tell them that I began to distribute Bibles this morning, at the White House,' a place somewhat like your Buckingham Palace, only not so fine. 'And who was the first man to whom I offered a copy ? Why, it was to President Abraham Lincoln. When I went to see the President he was writing, and when I handed him a copy of Cromwell's Bible he stood up-and you know he was a very tall man and took a long time to straighten. He received the Bible and made me a low bow, and thanked me; and now I shall have to go back and tell him that one of his soldiers, who was fighting his battles, refused to take the book which he had accepted so gladly.' The German softened at once. He said: Did the President take the book ?- well, then, I guess I may take one too.'"
An agent of the Commission in Tennessee came upon four soldiers playing cards. He proposed to buy the cards with a
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copy of the Scriptures for each, which they accepted. They desired his autograph in their books; but when he in turn asked for theirs they refused to indorse the cards, disclaiming an approval of the game, but resorting to it for lack of anything to read, by which their leisure hours could be filled. "At the bloody battle of Stone River," Mr. Stuart continued, " during a lull of the fight, the cries of a wounded soldier were heard asking for assistance ; but soon his voice was drowned in the renewed roar of the artillery. When the conflict was over, there came the ghastly work of sorting the dead from the living. When the men who were despatched for this service reached the spot from whence these cries proceeded, they found a lad of nineteen, dead, and leaning against the stump of a tree. His eyes were open, though fixed in death ; a celestial smile was on his countenance ; his well-worn Bible was open, with his finger, cold and stiff, pointing to that passage which has cheered the heart of many a dying Christian : 'Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.' Oh, mother, wife, sister ! if that had been your son, husband or brother, who had died under such circumstances, what would you not give for the possession of that blessed copy of the Word of God ?"
It has often been a matter of wonder whence came the bound- less resources placed at the disposal of the Commission. In answering this, in response to the inquiry of a friend, Mr. Stuart said: " We relied on the voluntary contributions of the people- and how nobly they responded ! After the battle of Gettysburg, when tens of thousands of wounded and dying men were thrown upon our hands, I telegraphed in all directions. To Boston I telegraphed : 'Can I draw on you for $10,000 at sight?' It was stuck up in the exchange. The merchants at once formed in line to put down their subscriptions, and the answer came: 'Draw for $60,000.' And the little children helped us too. They made tens of thousands of little housewives, comfort-bags, as the soldiers called them, with buttons, needles and thread, comb, cake of soap, and, above all, a little tract or Testament, and sent them on through the Commission to the needy soldiers, and they did them a world of good."
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MRS. JOHN HARRIS.
When delegations from the Commission visited Mr. Lincoln he always seemed gratified to have a few moments spent in prayer. After Mr. Johnson came to be inaugurated, misgivings were felt about proposing it. But Mr. Stuart never failed in resource, and on the very first visit to the President, as they were leaving, Mr. Stuart said : "Mr. Johnson, you have been called to the head of the nation at a very critical time." "Yes, yes," he said. "After a man who was the idol of the people." "Yes." "No man has been raised to a position where he stands more in need of divine help." "It is true." "Dr. - will perhaps ask the Divine blessing and guidance for you before . we go." The President made no objection and they all united in prayer.
In all of the above Mr. Stuart has spoken for himself, and from the spirit with which his words are filled, it is not difficult to infer what manner of man he is. To him congenial work is rest. Hle has been a great sufferer from asthma, by which he has been prevented from reclining in bed for weeks together. Aside from this he is strong and well preserved, having ever practised strict temperance. He was married on the 11th of May, 1837, to Miss Martha K. Dennison. The issue has been nine children, only five of whom survive. He is nearly six feet in height, broad- shouldered, and is possessed of an exceedingly kind and benignant countenance. He has been offered a place in President Grant's cabinet, but has steadily declined. When the Commission was formed for securing the amelioration of the Indians, he was named as a member and has labored earnestly in carrying out its beneficent designs.
RS. JOHN HARRIS, of Philadelphia, who was with the wounded at the front during nearly the whole war, and moved by her pen in a remarkable degree the people of the North to deeds of charity, has won by her devotion and zeal the love and affection of the mutilated and perishing of both armies, and the lasting gratitude of the whole American people. "If," says Frank Moore, in his Women of the War, " there were any such vain decorations of human approbation as a crown, or a wreath, or a star, for her who in the late war has done the 64
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MARTIAL DEEDS OF PENNSYLVANIA.
most and labored the longest, who visited the greatest number of hospitals, prayed with the greatest number of suffering and dying soldiers, penetrated nearest to the front, and underwent the greatest amount of fatigue and exposure-that crown, or that star, would be rightfully given to Mrs. John Harris, of Philadelphia."
On Sunday, the 21st of April, 1861, a notice was read in the several churches of Philadelphia calling a general meeting to per- fect plans for establishing a hospital for the reception of the sick and wounded soldiers, and prepare bedding, bandages, and lint. That notice was drawn by the hand of Mrs. Harris. It called out an immediate and hearty response. Dr. Taylor, of the Third Reforined Dutch Church, says: "I shall never forget the impres- sion made upon the audience by the simple reading of this notice. Pastor and people burst into tears together. It was absolutely overpowering. No blood had yet been shed. After the service some even doubted whether there would be any fighting. I was told by two or three persons that it was a premature notice, and calculated to produce needless alarm and anxiety among the people. But it was the first foreshadowing in our church of the actual preparation at home for the awful carnage that attended the great Rebellion. Out of this and other movements among the churches of Philadelphia grew the Ladies' Aid Societies of the city-noble heralds and aids of the Christian and Sanitary Commissions."
The smoke had scarcely cleared away from the first battle-ground of the war when Mrs. Harris started for Washington, where during the weeks which followed she was unceasingly employed in ministering at the bedside of the suffering, whispering words of consolation to the dying, and receiving their last messages of affection. From the first she adopted the habit of writing regu- larly and fully to the officers of the society which she represented. and their reports abound in extracts from her correspondence. " Visiting the military hospitals of Washington, Georgetown, and Alexandria, two days after the Battle of Bull Run (Tuesday. July 23d), the value of our holy religion and its power to soothe were felt as never before. In the different hospitals about 500 wounded youth, with every variety and degree of injury, were
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MRS. JOHN HARRIS.
found. Passing from cot to cot with almost bursting heart, ' Words of Jesus' were whispered into the ears of many of the sufferers. As the poor fellows caught the sound they looked up with cheerful countenances, and even glad surprise. . .. I was about to pass on when the position of his arm arrested me. 'You are wounded in the arm ?' 'Yes.' 'I hope not seriously.' 'Yes; it was amputated at the elbow before I left the field.' Wholly unprepared for such an announcement my feelings overpowered me. IIe soothingly said: 'It is only my left arm. That is not much to give to my country. It might have been my life.' Another, a lovely youth, whose bright, restless eye and flushed cheek told of suffering, grasped my hand and gently pulled me towards him, as I knelt beside him, and said: 'My dear boy, what can I do for you? Shall I talk to you of Jesus?' 'Oh, yes,' he said, 'I am used to that. I have loved Him, but not near enough, for two years; and now He is going to take me home.' 'You are very young. Have you a mother ?' 'Oh, yes!' Tears filled his eyes. 'It must have been a great trial to give you to your country.' 'Yes, it was. When I first mentioned it she would not hear me, but we both prayed over it, and at last she consented, saying, "My country deserves this sacrifice. I gave you to God, at your birth, and this is his cause."' As I fanned the dear boy, brushing back the hair from his beautiful forehead, he fell into a sleep. When I withdrew my hand he started and exclaimed : 'Oh! I dreamed that that was Annie's hand. Won't you put it on my head again ?' ' Who is Annie ?' 'My twin-sister. We were seven- teen since I left home.' This dear youth is now with the Saviour. He died from his wounds the next day."
After the first battle of Bull Run there was little fighting in the Army of the Potomac until it reached the Peninsula in the spring of 1862. But the change from civil life to the camp brought many to the sick couch, and before the army moved Mrs. Harris had visited over a hundred hospitals and distributed the contributions of the Aid Societies, speaking words of comfort and Christian consolation and directing the minds of the dying. The malarial airs about Yorktown brought down men faster than the bullets of the enemy, and the hospitals were crowded. Soon after the battle of Williamsburg she wrote: "No language can give
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the faintest idea of the scenes of suffering and deadly anguish through which we are passing. . . . Could you have visited with me, on Saturday, the largest ward of the Hygeia Hospital, your whole being would have thrilled with anguish. Friend and foe are crowded together without distinction-all suffering. The first one approached had been wounded in the thigh and arm. The leg had been amputated, and an extraction made of the broken bones in the arm. Surgeons had been probing the diseased portions, not heeding the shrieks of the sufferer, whom I found covered with cold sweat, and nearing the dark valley; indeed, the mists of the valley were settling over him. When the gracious words, 'Come unto me, all ye that are weary and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,' were spoken, the suffering one looked up, and exclaimed: 'Rest, rest! Oh, where, where ?' 'In the bosom of Jesus, if you will but lay your sins on him, and your suffering, throbbing heart close to his, you will be filled with rest in all the fulness of its meaning.' He tried to stay his faith on 'the Rock,' but very soon the unseen closed him in, and left us vainly endeavoring to follow the departing soul." In the same ward was a boy only nineteen, mortally wounded. "Ile begged me," she says, "to write to his mother 'a very long letter, sending a lock of my hair; but you needn't take the hair now ; say everything to comfort her; but,' he added, 'I want her to know how her poor boy suffers ; yes, I do that ; she would feel so for me.' He lingered till Monday ; and, after a painful operation, sank away most unexpectedly, and when I got there was in the dead-house. So I went into that dismal place, full of corpses, and cut a lock from the dead boy's head, and enclosed it to the mother, adding some words of comfort for the sorrow-stricken. IIe had received a religious training and told me to tell his mother he would meet her in heaven."
After the battle of Fair Oaks the wounded were sent in ships to the hospitals below. From the Louisiana she writes : "The whole day had been spent in operating. In one pile lay seven- . teen arms, hands, feet and legs. A large proportion of the wounded had undergone mutilation in some important member. Many must die. Four lay with their faces covered, dying or dead. Many had not had their wounds dressed since the
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MRS. JOHN HARRIS.
battle, and were in a sad state already. One brave fellow from Maine had lost both legs, but bore up with wonderful firmness. Upon my saying to him, 'You have suffered much for your country ; we cannot thank you enough,' he replied : 'Oh, well, you hadn't ought to thank me. I went of my own accord, in a glorious cause.' . . . When I left the boat, at eleven o'clock at night, I was obliged to wash all my skirts, they having been draggled in the mingled blood of Federal and Confederate soldiers, which covered many portions of the floor. I was obliged to kneel between them to wash their faces. This is war."
When a conflict was imminent she was with the moving column, and was brought, not unfrequently, under fire. From the Antietam field she wrote : "Night was closing in upon us- the rain falling fast; the sharpshooters were threatening all who ventured near our wounded and dying on the battle-ground; a line of battle in view, artillery in motion, litters and ambulances going in all directions; wounded picking their way, now lying down to rest, some before they were out of the range of the enemy's guns, not a few of whom received their severest wounds in these places of imagined safety; add to this, marching and counter-marching of troops; bearers of despatches hurrying to and fro; eager, anxious inquirers after the killed and wounded; and the groans of the poor sufferers under the surgeons' hands, --- and you may form some faint idea of our position on that eventful evening. Reaching a hospital hut but a few removes from the corn-field in which the deadliest of the strife was waged, I found the ground literally covered with the dead and wounded-barns, hayricks, cuthouses of every description, all full. Here and there a knot of men, with a dim light near, told of amputations; whilst the shrieks and groans of the poor fellows, lying all around, made our hearts almost to stand still. . .. We were called to pray with a dying Christian; and I feel the grasp of his hand yet, as we knelt, in the rain, in the dark night, with only the glim- mering lights around the operating tables, and looked up to the Father of our Lord and Saviour for his mercy and grace to fall upon the dying man, and all his comrades clustering round us needing dying grace. Then we sang, 'There is rest for the weary,' Miss G.'s loud clear voice leading. The sounds stopped
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MARTIAL DEEDS OF PENNSYLVANIA.
the shrieks and groans of the brave men. They listened. They all seemed comforted. It was then midnight, or near it. Before the next sun threw its rays in upon these twelve hundred wounded soldiers, the darkness of death had settled upon eleven -- sons, husbands and fathers-whose hearts had throbbed health- fully with loving thoughts of home and country but a few hours before. We had slept a few hours on the straw upon which our soldiers had lain and upon which their life-blood had been poured out. We prepared tea, bread and butter, milk-punch and egg-nog ; furnished rags, lint and bandages as needed, and then came on to French's division hospital, where were one thousand of our wounded, and a number of Confederates. The first night we slept in our ambulance; no room in the small house, the only dwelling near, could be procured. The next day was the Sabbath. The sun shone brightly ; the bees and the birds were joyous and busy ; a beautiful landscape spread out before us, and we knew the Lord of the Sabbath looked down upon us. But with all thesc above and around, we could see only our suffering, uncomplaining soldiers, mutilated, bleeding, dying. Almost every hour I witnessed the going out of some young life."
Her picture of the field as it presented itself to her after the battle was over is vivid, and has the merit of truthfulness. the narrative being written from amid the scenes described: "Stretched out in every direction, as far as the eye could reach, were the dead and dying. Much the larger proportion must have died instantly-their positions, some with ramrod in hand to load, others with gun in hand as if about to aim, others still having just discharged their murderous fire. Some were struck in the act of eating. One poor fellow still held a potato in his grasp. Another clutched a piece of tobacco; others held their canteens as if to drink; one grasped a letter. Two were strangely poised upon a fence, having been killed in the act of leaping it. How my heart sickens at the recollection of the appearance of these men who had left their homes in all the pride of manly beauty."
A kind of nourishment which she compounded of corn-meal, ground ginger, wine, and crackers, for the pickets as they came in from their vigils where they had buffeted the storm in wintry
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MRS. JOHN HARRIS.
nights, was remarkably popular. She called it hot ginger panada, and without doubt it saved many a soldier from painful sickness and even death. After Chancellorsville, in May, 1863, she says, writing on the 18th : "We filled two ambulances with bread and butter, prepared stewed fruit, egg-nog, lemons, oranges, cheese, shirts, drawers, stockings, and handkerchiefs, and went out to meet a train of ambulances bearing the wounded from United States Ford." The wounded had been left in the enemy's hands and were now being brought in. Their wounds had reached that stage when the slightest motion is agony. The ways were rough, and the jars and jolts brought excruciating torment. "No 'pen," she says, " can describe the scene. Amputations and dress- ings had been hurriedly gone over, and then much neglected; for the rebel surgeons had more than enough to occupy them in the care of their own wounded. By day and by night I see their poor mutilated limbs red with inflammation, bones protruding, worms rioting, as they were held over the sides of the ambulance to catch the cooling breeze. . . . For six mornings we have pre- pared five gallons of custard, using six dozen eggs, and about eight gallons of puddings."
With a supply of chloroform and stimulants she left Baltimore on the 4th of July for Gettysburg, ministering to the wounded as they came in car-loads from the front. From the field she wrote: "Am full of work and sorrow. The appearance of things here beggars all description. Our dead lie unburied, and our wounded neglected. Numbers have been drowned by the sudden rise in the waters of the creek bottoms, and thousands of them are still naked and starving. God pity us !- pity us !" Seeing sufficient aid hourly arriving to care for the wounded here, she pushed on with supplies after the army, which was in expectation of fight- ing another great battle, continuing with the moving columns.
Early in October the Aid Society in Philadelphia decided to send her to the armies in Tennessee. At Nashville she met numbers of the Union refugees, who had come in from the moun- tains to escape the iron grasp of rebel rule, whose unfortunate condition challenged pity. " It is a very dark picture," she says, " made up of miserable-looking women and old men, with naked children of all ages. Many came here to die, no provision being
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made for them, other than the food and shelter afforded by Government. After herding together indiscriminately in some dirty wareroom, or unfinished, unfurnished tenement, in ill-venti- lated apartments, they become an easy prey to that foe of all ill-clad and ill-fed-typhus fever. It comes in the form of a chill followed by fever, and this is succeeded by jabbering idiocy, with no great suffering, except to sympathizers. The mind is filled with old home-scenes; ghastly smiles, more saddening by far than tears, play over wan and haggard faces; the patient sinks, in a few days fills a Government coffin, and is carried to a nameless grave."
The labors of Mrs. Harris were directed to collecting supplies and money from the States to the northward, returning to Louis- ville for this purpose, and then going forward to Chattanooga, where the Union armies were assembled. Referring to the BATTLE ABOVE THE CLOUDS, at Lookout Mountain. she says : "As I write, an ambulance passes, bearing the remains of four heroes of the late battles; all of them full of hope when I came here, and though wounded, talking only of victory; one telling how vexed he felt when the bullet struck him, half way up the hill ; another rejoicing that he got to the top; another that he grasped the flag, and held it aloft nearly at the top-is sure the old 'Stars and Stripes' saw the top if he didn't. And so they talked for days, only of their country's triumph. But a change passed over them. Gangrene was commencing its ravages, and they were carried from their comrades and put in tents lest the poison might be communicated to their wounded fellow-sufferers. There, in the 'gangrene ward,' the glory of battle and victory faded away, as the fatal disease bore them nearer and nearer to the great eternity that shuts out all sounds of war. Then the fearful misgivings that took the place of the hopes of earthly glory were deeply engraven on their poor wan faces, and began to be whispered in the ears of Christian sympathy."
But she who was abounding in sympathy and love for suffer- ing humanity, whether friend or foe, the mutilated from the field or the wanderer from his home, and who was willing to wear her own life out that she might raise others to health, herself at length fell a victim to disease. For many days life hung trem-
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MRS. HANNAH MOORE.
bling in the balance ; but she was mercifully restored, and char- acteristically wrote : "I feel almost ashamed to consume your time with any account of it, the suffering all around me is of such an intense character." She resumed her labors, when recovered, in the great hospitals about Chattanooga, and during the early part of 1864 was never more active, and writes : "My experiences since I reached Chattanooga have been the most painful of the three past eventful years. In looking back, amazement seizes me, and the attempt to rehearse them seems futile. War, famine, and pestilence have made up the warp and woof of our soldier life."
Thus to the end of the war was she devoted to the care of the suffering and disconsolate, reviving their drooping spirits not only by relieving their physical wants, but in breaking to them the bread of life, and preparing them for entrance to the spirit world. By the blessing of God hundreds of lives were saved by her tender and assiduous care, and many more were comforted and consoled in their dying hour. For her angelic ministrations she has won the lasting gratitude of the whole American people. After the close of hostilities Mrs. Harris returned to that quiet, unobtrusive way of life which she had quitted on going to the field, and shrinking from notoriety appears only solicitous for the plaudit of the Master, "Well done, good and faithful servant."
RS. HANNAH MOORE, a martyr to her zeal and industry in behalf of sick and wounded soldiers, was born in the State of New York, on the 16th of April, 1816. She first visited Meadville, Pennsylvania, in 1848, and a few years afterwards took up her abode there permanently. Of a delicate and sen- sitive organization, her feelings were always easily touched by scenes of suffering, and she was quick to respond to calls of charity and mercy. When war, with its train of wretchedness and misery came, in 1861, Mrs. Moore was not slow to discern the need of systematic effort in laboring to stimulate benevolence, in collecting stores, and in providing measures for their dis- tribution. Without the incitement of the spectacle of pain and sorrow to move her, she devoted herself unceasingly, as President
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