A TRIP DOWN THE MISSISSIPPI---AMONG THE SICK AND DYING---OUR MISSION AND STORES---LOVING MESSAGES---FROM HOME---A BRIDE'S SONG FOR A DYING SOLDIER

The Army encamped at Young's Point---They cut the Levees---Great Sickness results---Special Relief Corps sent down---Mrs. Colt, of Milwaukee, and myself attached to the Corps---Our Programme---Outfit---Some of the Messages entrusted me---Our wheezy Boat---Disloyal Officers---Musical Talent on Board---Singing in the Hospitals---Touching Episode---Scene in a Memphis Hospital---"Mother, don't you know your Boy?"---Our Headquarters in Memphis, at Gayoso House---Women Secessionists---To be sent within Confederate Lines---A stormy Interview---"Allows me to be at large!"---We embark on the Tigress for the lower Mississippi---A dreary Journey.

HE grand passion of the West during the first half of the war was to re-open the Mississippi, which had been closed by the enemy. This great water highway had been wrested from the possession of the rebels as far south as Vicksburg, which frowned down from its unique eyrie, bristling with batteries, and hurling shot and shell at our brave men encamped at Young's Point, opposite. It seemed, from its position, to be thundering forth the mandate, "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no farther." General Sherman's attempt to take the fortifications and batteries which defended Vicksburg on the north had failed, and, after a triumphant and conquering expedition up the White River into Arkansas, the whole Western army had been moved down the Mississippi in transports. At that time the men were living in boats, or were vainly seeking dry land for their encampments, amid the swamps, lagoons, bayous, and sloughs of the abominable portion of that country, known as the "river-bottoms." The levees of the river had been cut in many places, as a "military necessity," or from sheer wantonness on the part of the "boys," who gloried in any mischief that brought trouble to the "secesh."

But cutting the levees in this case proved a two-edged sword, not only injuring the enemy but drowning out our own men. Those who could, took to the crowded river-boats. The rest remained in their wet encampments in the pestilential swamps and bottom lands, drenched with the protracted spring rains, almost buried in the unfathomable mud, and drinking death from the crystal waters of the Yazoo. Soon sickness and suffering stalked in among them. The death which they had escaped on Southern battle-fields sprang upon them here like a tiger from the jungle. Twelve thousand men lay sick at one time---about. thirty-three and one-third per cent of the army at that point---and the wail of agony from the sick and dying was borne to the listening ears of the tender-hearted Northwest. Quick to hear, it was swift to relieve. Surgeons and physicians who had acquired a national reputation for skill in their profession, were despatched to the scene of suffering, to battle with the miasmatic foe which was conquering the conquerors.

Immense shipments of supplies were sent down on the sanitary boats, with men and women of executive ability, who attended to their safe transmission and equitable distribution. Accompanying these were special corps of relief accustomed to the work in hospitals, and possessed of physical endurance able to encounter any horror of army life without blenching.

It was with one of these shipments of sanitary stores, and as one of the relief corps, that I went down the Mississippi in March, 1863. Quartermasters, State Surgeon-Generals, members of the Legislature, representatives of the Chicago Chamber of Commerce, a company of nurses whom I was to locate in hospitals, and some two or three women who had been active in working for our invalid soldiers from the very first, made up the delegation. Two of us only---Mrs. Colt, of Milwaukee and myself--were connected with the Sanitary Commission. Mrs. Colt was the executive woman at the head of the sanitary work in Wisconsin, whose enthusiasm infected the whole state with patriotism and generosity. The sanitary supplies, about thirty-five hundred boxes and packages in all, were sent by the Commission and Chicago Board of Trade.

The programme marked out for us was this. We were to visit every hospital from Cairo to Young's Point, opposite Vicksburg; relieve such needs as were pressing; make ourselves useful in any way among the sick and wounded, co-operating harmoniously as far as possible with medical and military authorities. From every point we were to report our movements, the result of our observations, what we had accomplished and what we found needing attention, employing the Chicago Press and the bulletins of the Sanitary Commission as our mediums of communication.

Our assortment of stores comprised almost everything necessary in hospital relief; potatoes, onions, sauer-kraut, and vegetables---chiefly for the scorbutic patients, who constituted a majority of the sick---farina, corn starch, lemons, oranges, pearl-barley, tea, sugar, condensed milk, ale, canned fruits, condensed extract of beef, codfish, jellies, a small quantity of the best of brandy, with hospital shirts, drawers, sheets, socks, slippers, bandages, lint, rubber rings, and. whatever else might be needed for wounded and sick men. We also took down about five hundred "private boxes," forwarded by private parties for particular companies, or squads, or individuals, and committed to our care for safe transmission and delivery. My own personal outfit consisted of a long pair of rubber boots, reaching to the knee, a teapot, a spirit-lamp to boil it, with a large quantity of Japan tea, condensed milk, sugar and crackers.

Through the daily papers, we volunteered to take letters, messages, or small packages, to parties on our route connected with the army, and to deliver them whenever it was possible. For a week before we started, my time was consumed by people who came to the rooms of the Sanitary Commission on these errands. I made memoranda of the verbal messages and inquiries, which were many and mostly from the poor and humble. My memorandum book lies before me. Here are samples of these messages:

"Mercantile Battery, Milliken's Bend, George W-----. . His mother called.. She is well; is not worrying about her son; has gained thirteen pounds since the cold weather. Am to make particular inquiries about her son's habits; does he drink, swear, or smoke? Tell him his mother would rather he would be sent home dead, than that he should return alive and dissipated."

"Young's Point, One Hundred and Thirteenth Illinois, Peter R------. Wife called. She and the six children are well; gets plenty of work, good pay, and the county allowance of three dollars weekly. He is not to worry about them at all---at all. Must never think of deserting. Stand it like a man! All the family pray daily to the Virgin for him."

"Lake Providence Eighteenth Wisconsin, John K------. Father and mother called. Brought four letters for him. Tell him to take care of his health, avoid liquor, never be tempted to desert. Brother William, in Second Wisconsin, has got well of his wound, and gone back to the Army of the Potomac."

"Try to learn something concerning Herbert B-----, of Fifteenth Wisconsin. Has not been heard from since battle of Stone River." (He was never heard from until the lists of the Andersonville dead were published.)

"Try to get permission for James R----- to go to Helena for his brother's dead body, and take it to Chicago."

"Try to get discharge for Richard R-----, dying in Overton Hospital, Memphis, of consumption, and bring him home to his parents."

Scores of pages were filled with similar memoranda.

Our stores, with ourselves, were passed over the Illinois Central Railroad to Cairo, where we found sanitary goods,---mostly for the relief of scorbutic and fever patients,---pouring into the town from every point, all clamoring for immediate shipment. Government had impressed all the boats on the river into its service, and, as there were no troops to be hurried forward, these generous consignments were transshipped as rapidly as possible. from the cars to the boats. The boat to which we were assigned was a little, rickety, wheezy, crowded, unsafe craft, which poked along down the river at about one-half the usual rate of speed. It towed along three or four barges of hay, which kept us in constant alarm, as they easily took fire from the sparks of the chimney.

One got loose and drifted away, nobody knew where, and nobody seemed to care, since it belonged to "Uncle Sam." We had no doubt it was purposely detached in the night, at a point agreed upon beforehand, where it could easily be secured by the rebels. The officers, like those of almost all the boats at that time, were secretly in sympathy with the rebellion; though, for the sake of the "greenbacks" of the government, they made a show of loyalty to it. They bore themselves very cavalierly towards us, treating us with scant politeness when they noticed us at all, and ignoring us altogether when it was possible to do so.

Several army officers were on board, who had been home on furloughs. Some of them were accompanied by their wives, who were going as far as Memphis, beyond which point no civilian could pass without special permission. The colonel of the Twelfth Michigan was accompanied by his bride, a beautiful young woman and an exquisite vocalist, whose voice had been carefully cultivated. There were also in the company flutists and violinists, and half a dozen members of a brass band attached to one of the regiments stationed down the river. The boat was ringing with patriotic music all the time. Wherever there were military posts or hospitals, the boat stopped for hours. As we steamed to the landings, all our musical force mustered on deck, and announced our arrival by a grand chorus of voices and instruments. They rendered "The Red, White, and Blue," "The Star-Spangled Banner," "Rally round the Flag, Boys!" and other national songs, in a ringing fashion, that brought every soldier from his tent, flying down the bluffs to welcome us. The vocalists always accompanied us to the hospitals, and made the tour of the wards with us, singing charmingly while they remained. It was a great delight to them to observe how the inspiring music brightened the weary, suffering men. Without any solicitation, they filled every moment of their stay with the cheeriest songs and most patriotic airs.

One poor lad, dying of consumption, too far gone to be sent to his home in Iowa, fixed his large, luminous eyes on the fair girl bride, whose voice was like that of an angel, and asked, "Can you sing something for a dying man?"

It was her first acquaintance with hospitals, her first contact with sickness and death. But without hesitation she moved to his bedside, seated herself on a campstool beside him, and, taking one of his thin hands in hers, sang, with great feeling, "Nearer, my God, to Thee." There was sobbing in the ward when she ended; but the boy to whom she sang only gazed at her with eyes of beseeching. "Can you sing 'The Sweet By and By?" he inquired. That was given, with the chorus, in which all joined. And then, unasked, her tender, sympathetic voice floated again through the long ward, in the exquisite melody of "Sweet Home." Never have I heard it so feelingly rendered.

The scene that followed was alarming. Men buried their faces in the pillows, and wept aloud; and others, who were sitting up, in partial convalescence, threw themselves on the bed, face downward, in excess of emotion. This would not do. To change the current of feeling, I called for the stirring song, "Rally round the Flag, Boys!" which was given with a will. Then "America" rang out on the air; and, as the whistle of the boat was calling us to return, the choir took leave of the hospital, singing as they went,---

This visit to the hospital greatly affected our beautiful bride. She was to be separated from her husband at Memphis---he to go to his command, and she to return to her home in Detroit. She entreated her husband with tears to allow her to enter the hospitals as a nurse. "You are going to the front to serve your country, let me be detailed to the hospitals in the same good cause." She was so thoroughly in earnest, and swept away his remonstrances with such passionate entreaty, that I went to his help with the assurance that her youth forbade her serving in the hospitals. I might have added, her beauty also---for Miss Dix detailed only those lacking personal attractions.

We distributed our sanitary stores with a lavish hand, wherever they were needed. Where women were acting as matrons in the hospitals, we committed our benefactions to their care. Where were suspicious looking stewards, or intemperate surgeons, we were less bountiful in our bestowments, and lingered to disburse our supplies to individual cases, as far as we could. At Memphis, there were eleven hospitals, containing nearly eight thousand patients, and this number was daily re-enforced by boatloads of sick men, sent up from points below. I went on board one of these newly arrived transports, and as appalled at the condition of the men. Not one in twenty could have been recognized by his kindred or friends, so disguised were the poor fellows by mud, squalor, vermin, rags, and the wasting sickness of scurvy and swamp fever.

I went with a woman, from central Illinois, to I search for her son. We were informed that he had been taken to Jackson Hospital, and the record book of the clerk showed him to be in bed No. 15, ward C. We went to the bed indicated, but there lay an emaciated man of sixty or severity apparently, sleeping. We did not wake him, but returned to the clerk of the hospital and assured him there was a mistake. The young man for whom we were looking was not there. He was sure his entry book was correct, and we returned for another examination. The mother gazed long and searchingly at the sleeping man in ward C, and then said:

"No, that's not my boy. My son is but twenty-two."

Directly the sleeper opened his eyes, and stared vacantly at both of us.

"No," she repeated, "no, he is not my boy."

"Oh, mother!" cried the man, in sick, weak, quavering tones, quickly recognizing the dearly beloved face, and slowly uplifting his long bony arms toward her, "I am your boy! Don't you know your Willie?"

I went through every ward of every hospital in Memphis, and visited every patient, as I had promised when leaving Chicago. The most home-like and the best kept of them all was the "Gayoso," of which the well-known "Mother Bickerdyke" was matron, and which was called everywhere in Memphis, "Mother Bickerdyke's Hospital." I remember the names of many of the surgeons in charge of the other hospitals. But of "Mother Bickerdyke's" I only remember that she was matron, that "Handy Andy," a detailed soldier, was her "right-hand man," working with her, and carrying out all her plans and purposes, as if there were but one mind and soul between them. I also remember that she had scores of "contrabands" detailed to her service. Who were her surgeons and stewards I never knew. They were really overshadowed by the matron.

There were nine hundred patients in the hospital. And, in addition to the work imposed on her by this immense charge, almost the entire laundry work of the hospitals in Memphis had drifted into her hands, and was being done by contrabands under her supervision. She was also virtually, though not nominally, matron of the "Small-pox Hospital" at Fort Pickering, two miles down the river, below Memphis. Once a week she went there, with her faithful "Andy," in an ambulance, ready to arouse a moral earthquake, or let loose a small tornado of wrath, if she discovered any cruelty or unkindness to the men, or found disorder and uncleanness in the hospital, or on the premises.

"I have to look after this hospital pretty sharp," she would say, "for small-pox patients are mighty apt not to be taken good care of." But I will not now expatiate on "Mother Bickerdyke," as I shall have something to say of this remarkable woman in another chapter.

Our headquarters while in Memphis were at the "Gayoso House," which had a great reputation for style, secession proclivities, and discomfort. The last two characteristics were pre-eminent. There were nightly drunken rows and fights in the house, sometimes in rooms adjoining ours, when the crash of glass, the ribald song, the fearful profanity, and the drunken mirth, drove sleep from our pillows. We were detained over two weeks in Memphis, so difficult was it to obtain transportation for ourselves and stores down the river. Strict military surveillance was kept over the boats bound for the South, and none were allowed to leave Memphis without a pass from the Commander of the Department. Our stores were piled on the levee, waiting reshipment, and a guard was placed over them to keep them from thieves. The Gayoso House was overflowing with attachés of the army, waiting a chance to go down the river, like ourselves.

A large company of women were also staying here, who made no secret of their sympathy with the South. Some half-dozen were waiting an opportunity to be passed within the enemy's lines, whither they had been ordered by our officers. They were acting as spies, and sending information to their husbands, fathers, and brothers, in the Confederate army. The officers were badgered beyond endurance by them, for they were continually clamoring to be sent to Vicksburg. Every loyal woman in the house was subjected to their insults, and that, too, while they were virtually prisoners of war. We who had just come from the North were specially obnoxious to them. In every petty way they manifested their aversion to us. They ran furiously against us in the halls and on the stairways, made a general stampede from the parlors whenever we entered them, held their handkerchiefs to their nostrils when in our neighborhood, withdrew their garments from the contamination of contact with ours as they passed us, uttering loud sneers against "Yankee soldiers," "Yankee women," and "Northern white trash."

One afternoon, while waiting for a chaplain, who was to drive me to some of the regimental hospitals outside of Memphis, two of these women came into the parlor and sat down. After we had measured each other with our eyes for a moment, one of them commenced a conversation. She was the wife of a member of the Confederate Congress, and her home was in Thibodeauxville, La.

"I am told you are going down below to look after sick Yankee soldiers," was her opening remark.

"I have been sent from Chicago with some thousands of boxes of hospital stores for the use of United States soldiers," I replied, putting a special emphasis on the words "United States," for I had heard her loudly express her disgust at the name.

"I think it is high time somebody went down to them, for they are dying like sheep, and have just no care at all."

"That is a mistake. They have the best of care, the best of nursing possible under the circumstances, good surgeons, and delegations going down and back all the while in their service."

"Well, anyhow, you're the first woman that has come down here to look after them. This city is full of Yankee women, wives of Yankee officers---cold-blooded, white-faced, lank, lean women, decked out in cotton lace, cheap silks, and bogus jewelry, women who are their own servants at home,---what do they care for Yankee soldiers, whether they live or die? We have done wearing silks and jewels in the South until the war is over. I sold my jewels and gave the money to the hospitals; and I'd come down to wearing 'nigger cloth,' and eating corn bread mixed with water, and prepared with my own hands, before the men in our hospitals should want for anything."

"Madam, I honor your devotion to your soldiers, and only regret the badness of your cause. At the North we are equally solicitous for the welfare of our men. But you make the mistake of supposing that we at the North are as poor as you at the South. The war is not impoverishing us as it is you. Our women can afford to wear silks and jewelry, and yet provide everything needful for the soldiers. Whenever it becomes necessary, we shall be ready to make as great sacrifices as you."

"Ah, we have soldiers worth the sacrifice we make!" she said, with a lofty air. " Our men are the flower of our youth; they have the best blood of the world in their veins---gentlemen, every one of them. But your Yankee soldiers---ugh! " with a shiver of disgust and a grimace of aversion; "they are the dregs of your cities---gutter-snipes, drunken, ignorant!"

"Stop!" I interrupted; "stop! I won't hear such calumny. I know just what sort of' gentlemen' your soldiers are; for we have had seven thousand of them at Camp Douglas in Chicago, taken prisoners at Fort Donelson; and if they were the 'flower of your youth,' you are worse off for men in the South than I had supposed."

"And I have seen your soldiers, too, to my sorrow and horror. They are barbarians, I tell you. They cane to my husband's villa after he had gone to Congress, and I was left alone, with my servants in charge, and they destroyed everything---everything! My plate, china, pictures, carpets, even my furniture, were imported; and the wretches! they burned up everything!"

"If your manners were as unbearable as they have been during the two weeks I have seen you in this house, I only wonder you escaped cremation with your villa and furniture. It is astonishing clemency that allows you to be at large in this city, plotting against the government and insulting loyal people."

"Allows me to be at large!" she fiercely screamed, almost purple with rage. "Who dares imprison me, I'd like to know. You would like to put me in jail, and shut me up with murderers, and niggers, and thieves, would you? The tables will be turned by and by. England is going to help us; and. we will have our feet on your accursed Yankee necks, before you are a year older or wickeder."

She was standing at her fullest height., her face aflame, her eyes on fire, her voice at its highest pitch It was useless to talk further, so I rose and left the room, saying at the door, with a low bow, "Until that time, madam, I bid you farewell."

I learned afterwards that she went to the provost-marshal, and lodged a complaint against me, declaring that she had reason to believe I was taking contraband goods down the river to smuggle within the rebel lines, like morphine, quinine, chloroform, medicines in the package, and cotton cloth in the piece.

Afterwards, at the dinner-table, she offered to lay a wager of a dozen pairs of gloves that not one of our party would go below Memphis, but that we would be sent North by the first boat. She would have lost her bet had any one taken it, we left Memphis for Vicksburg that very night, on the Tigress.

I learned afterwards that this woman, with her friends and companions, was passed within the Confederate lines at Vicksburg a few days later, where they remained until the surrender of the city to General Grant, on the Fourth of July. They were as heroic in their endurance of the horrors of the long siege as the Confederate men, and evinced courage as unyielding, and tenacity of purpose as unflinching, as any officer who wore the Confederate gray.

ALONG THE DREARY RIVER---SAD SIGHTS IN A REGIMENTAL HOSPITAL---JOLLY BATTERY BOYS---I AM WELCOMED TO CAMP BY OLD FRIENDS.

Perils of the lower River---The Tigress and its disloyal Officers---The Stewardess a Virago---" I could throw you overboard as if you were Cat!"---Lake Providence and its fathomless Mud---" The Sanitary Commission's got mired!"---Go down to Milliken's Bend---Distribute Supplies to Hospitals---Sorry Plight of a Wisconsin Regimental Hospital---Surgeon-General Wolcott, of Wisconsin, breaks it up---In the Camp of the Chicago Mercantile Battery--"What a Hubbub! What a Jubilee!"---Evening Prayers in Camp---The Boys get Breakfast---"The Victuals will taste better if you don't see the Cooking!"---Leave for Young's Point---General Grant's Despatch Boat Fanny Ogden gives me Passage.

HE lower Mississippi was "on the rampage" and was all over its banks. It was shoreless in some places, and stretched its dull, turbid waste of waters as far as the eye could reach. No river is as dreary as the lower Mississippi. Day after day, there was but the swollen, rushing stream before us. And when the banks could be seen, only the skeleton cottonwood trees greeted our eyes, hung with the funereal moss, that shrouded them as in mourning drapery. The swollen river was in our favor; for the enemy could not plant batteries on the banks and fire into the passing boats until it subsided, especially as the steamers kept very near the centre of the stream. The pilot-house of the Tigress was battened with thick oak plank, to protect the helmsman from the shots of the guerillas. Dozens of bullets were imbedded in it, which had been fired from the shore on the last trip up the river. And a six-pound shot had crashed through the steamer, not two months before, killing two or three passengers in the saloon, and badly shattering the boat.

The Tigress was a large, well-appointed boat, and had been handsome before it entered army service. The officers were understood to be disloyal at heart, but willing to work for the government because of its magnificent, prompt, and sure pay. The stewardess was a beautiful quadroon of thirty-five, with a catlike grace and suppleness of figure, and was wonderfully attractive in her manners to those whom she liked. I have never seen a handsomer woman. But what a virulent, vulgar, foul-mouthed rebel she was! There was not a half-hour of the day that she did not grossly insult some one of our party. There was no redress; for we saw that she bore some relationship to the clerk, that she was a great favorite with all the officers, and that they enjoyed our discomfort under her insolence, which they abetted. She hung her mocking-bird, named "Jeffy Davis," at our door, and then talked to him by the hour, but at its calling us by names with which I cannot befoul this page, and charging us with the vilest purposes in coming down to the army.

One day, while we were negotiating with the laundress of the boat concerning some work we wished done, Louisa, the stewardess, came along.

"Can I wash for these ladies to-day?" inquired the laundress of the quadroon virago.

"Ladies!" scornfully echoed the insolent creature. "Ladies! What's yer talkin' about, gal? Ter hasn't seen no ladies sence yer lef' N'Orleans. If yer means this 'white trash,'"---with a contemptuous toss of the head towards where we stood,---"yer may wash for 'em or the debil, if yer likes. But mind yer gits yer pay, gal, for Yankees are mighty mean cusses."

That day, after dinner, I went into the stern of our boat to read. We were opposite the mouth of the Yazoo, where a gunboat was standing guard, the river being miles wide, and rolling like a sea. Louisa followed, to hang up some wet linen to dry, and, as usual, commenced talking at me.

"Dere's dat Yankee gunboat agin! 'Pears like ebery Yankee dere 's done dead; for yer neber sees nobody. Bress de Lord if dey be! I'd like to see ebery boat gwine Norf, piled way up wid dead Yanks. Ki! Ebery boatload would make dis yere nigger grow one inch fat on de ribs."

She had approached very near, and was standing behind me, and we were alone. I turned sharply round, laid my hand heavily on her shoulder, and looked as terrible as possible. I spoke low, but in a very determined tone.

"You will please stop all this talk about 'dead Yankees,' and 'white trash,' and cease your insolent manners towards my friends and myself! We have had enough of it. If it is not stopped immediately, I will take the matter into my own hands. I shall not enter any complaints against you to the captain or clerk, but I will put you where we shall have no more of your impudence." I brought my other hand down heavily on her other shoulder, and spoke yet lower, and in a tone so tragically terrific that I half laughed to hear it. "I could throw you overboard as easily as if you were a cat, and I have a good mind to do it this minute! "---tightening my grasp on her arms and lifting her from her feet. "Go, take that cage down, and carry it to your room, and let me hear any more insolent talk if you dare,---that's all! You will see what one Yankee woman dares do, for I'll put you where you'll be quiet, I promise you!"

She looked at me frightened, stammered something, and, evidently thinking I meditated mischief, hurried away from me into the saloon. She was completely cowed. Whenever we met afterwards, her eyes sought mine, with a "comest-thou-peaceably?" inquiry in them. She gave me a wide berth as she passed me, and treated me with consideration that was born of vague fear. But there was a marked improvement in her behavior, so great, indeed, that it was the subject of general comment. I did not divulge my interview with her, until after we had left the boat, when I informed the party of the moral suasion I had brought to bear on her.

We stopped at Lake Providence, Louisiana, and finding everything more than ordinarily comfortable in the hospitals,---the sickest of the men having been removed North,---we left a quantity of vegetables and needed stores for the convalescents, for there were no other invalids, and then visited the encampment. A canal had been cut from the Mississippi & Lake Providence, a quarter of a mile distant, in which was a fall of fifteen feet. It was hoped that the river would be turned from its natural channel through the lake,---thence through two bayous connecting with it, and into the river Tensas, which empties into the Mississippi far below Vicksburg, making the circuit of the city. Thus it was believed a continuous waterway might be established in the rear of the defiant city, but this attempt at flanking Vicksburg by water failed, like all others before or afterwards. The swollen flood of the Mississippi rushed into the newly cut channel, broke away all confining levees, and deluged and nearly washed away eighteen or twenty of the richest counties of the state.

Everywhere we found our brown, busy, rollicking fellows seeking a dry place for their encampments. There was no limit to their ingenuity. For hours and hours we rode through sloughs, finally breaking down in one. Then a score of brawny fellows dropped their work of "shebang" building, as they called it, and rushed to our relief with rails, and planks, and whoops, and yells sufficient for a whole tribe of Indians. The two mules, that had bunk to their bellies, were extricated first. The men were devising ways to lift the ambulance to terra firma, when General Logan rode up, who was in command at this horrible place.

"What's the matter, boys?" asked the General, seeing the great commotion.

"Oh, the Sanitary Commission's got mired, that's all!"

The General peeped into the ambulance, where I was sitting on the floor, "holding on," as I had been directed. The forward wheels had broken through the rotten logs that formed a corduroy bridge over the slough. The ambulance had pitched forward, and I was "holding on" as well as I could, considering I had laughed at the comical performances and speeches around me until I was exhausted. The whole thing was so ridiculous that the General laughed too, but set himself to effect my release from the imprisoning mud, and succeeded at the expense of a soiled uniform. We left regiments and hospitals, fighting mud and water everywhere. We informed them of the vegetables sent them by the Chicago Board of Trade, notified them of the private boxes intended for different parties among them, deposited at certain points, distributed the letters we had brought, and then went to Milliken's Bend, farther down the river.

When we arrived at the Bend, where some thirty thousand men were encamped, we notified the Medical Director of our arrival with hospital stores. He immediately despatched an "orderly" to every, hospital, sending to every surgeon in charge an order on the sanitary boat for whatever he lacked or needed, accompanying it with an order on the quartermaster for teams to remove the packages. In. many instances we followed the loads to the hospitals, and witnessed the joy of the poor fellows at this tangible proof that they were not forgotten at home. Here, as in Memphis, most of the patients were sick with miasmatic diseases. There were comparatively few, among the thousands and thousands whom we saw, suffering from wounds. The dejection of sick soldiers we always found greater than that of those wounded. They needed more encouragement and more cheerful talk. They were homesick, many of them longing for mother, wife, sister, and friend. Often as I bent over a sick man with a sympathetic word, he would burst into a passion of weeping, the more violent for long repression. If I found I had not time to go from bed to bed with a few words to each, I would take a central position, and endeavor to cheer the pale, sad, emaciated men, lying with white faces pressed against white pillows, their hearts travelling back to the homes they had left. I would tell them how they were remembered in loving pride by the loyal North; how all the women of the land were planning, and toiling, and sacrificing for them; of the loaded boats at the levee, sent them in care of a special delegation; of the certainty felt by all that our cause would triumph; of the glad welcome that awaited them when they returned conquerors; and of the dear God who was ever near, in sickness, in camp, on the battle-field, protecting and guiding, and from whose love they could never be separated by any depth of misery, suffering, degradation, or sin.

If any had messages to send home, or letters to write, or friends whom they wished me to visit, I took memoranda of what was desired, in my inseparable notebook. Many a dying message these books contained, from lips hushed a few hours after in death. Many an injunction was written in them to comfort friends at home, who still sit in the shadow of death, feeling that they cannot be comforted until they too pass over the river, to rejoin their lost ones.

From one of the hospitals at the Bend there came no surgeon and no requisition. I ordered the inevitable ambulance, with its pair of mules and colored. driver, and rode two and a half miles to visit its surgeon. A sadder sight I never witnessed during the war. It was a regimental hospital---always a comfortless place. It contained about two hundred men, all of them very sick, all lying in their uniforms on the bare board floor, with their knapsacks for pillows, with no food but army rations, no nurses but convalescent soldiers, themselves too sick to move except on compulsion, the sick men covered with vermin, tormented by flies during the day, and devoured by mosquitoes at night,---and their surgeon dead-drunk in bed.

I went through the four large wards of the hospital, each one as horrible as the other. In all the wards men were dying, and in all they seemed hopeless and despairing. There was no complaint, no lamentation---only now and then some delirious fever patient would clamor for "ice water," or "cold water right from the well." I stooped down and took one man by the hand, who was regarding me with most beseeching looks. "My poor boy," I said, "I am very sad to see you in this dreadful condition." He pressed my hand on his eyes with both his own, and wept aloud.

Weeping is contagious, and in a few moments one half the men in the hospital were sobbing convulsively. I was afraid it would kill them, they were so excessively weak, but it was some time before they could be calmed. I had taken along in the ambulance, tea, sugar, condensed milk, and crackers. After I had made tea and distributed it with the crackers, I went back to medical headquarters to report the disgraceful condition of the hospital. I was fortunate, for I ran across Surgeon-General Wolcott, of Wisconsin, a very noble man. It was a Wisconsin regiment whose sick were left uncared for, to die like dogs---and he rested not until the hospital was broken up, the surgeon sent home in disgrace, and the men removed to the receiving-boat Nashville.

This was a hospital boat, built on a barge, three stories high, fitted up with cooking apparatus, bathrooms, laundry, cots, and whatever else was necessary. It was towed from landing to landing, receiving the sick temporarily, until they could be taken off by the hospital steamers, and carried farther North. Three weeks later, in passing through the wards of the Nashville, I was hailed from one of the beds in the following jolly fashion: "I say! We are going to live after all, spite of old G"---the surgeon,---"maggots, flies, mosquitoes, and everything else. We are getting to be pretty sassy again." Here they were, sure enough, getting well and already full of fun, and jolly over their discomforts.

The Chicago Mercantile Battery was encamped two miles from the landing, and, as it enrolled over thirty young men from the Sunday-school and society of my own church in Chicago, besides a great many others whom I knew, I determined to visit them, when the hospital work at Milliken's Bend was done. I had already sent them their private packages and letters, and notified them of my intended visit. The ambulance left me a mile from their camp, and in the fragrant twilight of a lovely spring day I walked inside the levee, towards its location. Soon I saw the dear fellows striding along the top of the levee to meet me, their figures standing out clearly against the evening sky. I called to them, and down they rushed. Such a welcome! such a chorus of manly, familiar voices! such a shaking of hands! such hearty embraces from the younger members, sixteen of whom had been members of my own Sunday-school class. As I walked with them into camp, the boys swarmed from tents and "shebangs," bronzed to the color of the Atlantic Monthly covers, all shouting a hearty welcome, noisy, jolly, and excited. What a hubbub! What a jubilee! Here was a guest from home, who had talked a few days before with their fathers and mothers, sisters and wives. The best "shebang" of the encampment was placed at my disposal, for I was to spend the night with them. I was too far from the boat to return, had I desired it, and I had planned to be with them two or three days. There were unvisited hospitals in that neighborhood.

Everything in the way of shelter, in camp parlance, that was not a tent, was a shebang. Mine was a rough but made of boards, with a plank floor, roofed with canvas, with a bona fide glass window at one end, and a panelled door at the other. The furniture consisted of two bunks, one built over the other, bedded with fresh hay. A pair of blankets had been shaken free from dust, and for my special use, the officers' overcoats folded smoothly for pillows. There was a rough pantry with shelves, holding rations, odd crockery and cutlery "jerked from the secesh," a home-made rickety table, a bit of looking-glass, sundry pails and camp-kettles, a three-legged iron skillet, and a drop-light, extemporized from the handle of a broken bayonet, and a candle, the whole suspended from the ridge-pole by a wire.

We had a lively time in the "shebang" that evening. It was packed with the boys, all eager to hear from home, who put me through a course of catechism concerning matters and persons in whom they were interested, that soon exhausted my stock of information, and left me no resource but to draw on imagination. The tide of talk flowed over the night into the morning. The "tattoo" had been beaten for retiring, and still the boys were loath to go. At last I broke up the conférence. But before withdrawing, George Throop, one of the young men, drew from his breast pocket a copy of the New Testament.

"You know," he said, "when Mr. T-----took public leave of us in church,"---Mr. T------was our pastor---" he gave each a Testament, and made us promise to read it, if possible, daily, while we were away. We haven't failed but once or twice, and then we were on a forced march. One reads aloud and the others listen; and if you are willing, we will read here to-night."

All heads were instantly uncovered, all hum of voices ceased, and a portion of the fifteenth chapter of Luke's Gospel was read, when Sergeant Dyer, a very noble man belonging to a Baptist church of Chicago, voluntarily offered a brief and appropriate prayer. Alas! I never saw again the young lieutenant who officiated as Bible reader, nor the sergeant who offered prayer. Both are sleeping under the sod on the banks of the Red River, where they fell in battle. One, the young, brave, and handsome lieutenant, was shot from his horse as he was urging his men on to the fight; and the other, the fatherly sergeant, was shot through the heart as he was spiking his gun, before joining in the retreat which was sounded.

I had a wakeful night. It was my first attempt to sleep in camp, and I did better afterwards, when I became used to it. I was in the enemy's country---heard the steady footfall of the guard past my tent, and the incessant booming of the great guns at Vicksburg, fifteen miles away. I had lived in an atmosphere of suffering ever since I left home; and all the visions of horror I had witnessed now danced about my sleepless pillow. Long before the drums beat the réveillé, or the myriad birds had finished their matins, I had made my ablutions in the three-legged iron skillet, given me for that purpose, and completed my toilet before the little six-by-ten inch looking-glass. I hurried out at roll-call, and offered to assist in getting the breakfast.

But I was not allowed this gratification of my feminine desire, for the boys confessed that "they didn't do things woman fashion," and that I had better remain ignorant of their modus operandi.

"The victuals would taste better if I didn't see the cooking!" I thought so too, after I got a glimpse of them making bread in the iron skillet in which I had bathed my face and hands. For breakfast, we had hot biscuit baked in ovens made of Louisiana mud; fried ham; good coffee, to which I added condensed milk and white sugar; potatoes, and pickles. Camp life gave me a good appetite, and I honored the cuisine of the boys by eating heartily. They challenged admiration of their ingenious housekeeping, and I gratified them by praising them ad libitum.

For two days and nights I remained with them. There was enough to do, as the Thirteenth Army Corps was stationed here. Then General Grant's despatch boat Fanny Ogden, the fastest boat on the river, steamed to the landing, and with the promise of repeating the visit before I returned home, I left for Young's Point. The Tigress had preceded me, and had transferred her remaining stores to the sanitary boat Omaha. Here I found them, the boat anchored beyond the range of the batteries, directly in front of beleaguered Vicksburg. Silent and dark as a dead city, it lay stealthily behind its defences, watching with Argus eyes the movements of the foe in front, belching defiance and protest from its monster guns, which bristled tier above tier, from the river brink to the top of the highest bluff. Not a sign of life was visible during the day, nor yet during the night, except when the heavy guns blazed out in fiery menace, accentuating their threat with a growl of thunder. Here too were moored the Black Hawk, the headquarters of Commodore Porter, and the Magnolia, headquarters of General Grant. My experiences here must form the subject of another chapter.

OPPOSITE VICKSBURG---ARRIVAL AT GENERAL GRANT'S HEADQUARTERS MY INTERVIEW WITH HIM---MY PETITION---A TOUCHING STORY.

We call on General Grant---Reticent, patient, and persistent---We put ourselves on "short Rations" of Talk with him---Stories of his Intemperance foul Calumnies---His chivalric Defence of General Sherman---Am entrusted with a Variety of Errands to him---My Decision concerning them---Second call alone on General Grant---" The Gibraltar of America "---The General is very accessible---Not hedged about by Formalities---The most bashful Man I had ever encountered---" I Will let you know Tomorrow "---Discharges twenty-one invalid Soldiers, and gives me Transportation for them---One dies in Memphis---Another dies in Chicago, almost Home.

AVING reached Young's Point, our first movement was to call on General Grant, to present our letters of introduction and endorsement. Our letters of endorsement were from the Secretary of War, the Governors of Illinois and Wisconsin, and our letters of introduction from Dr. Bellows, the President of the United States Sanitary Commission. Two or three of us, who had wished to be prepared for any special emergency that might arise, had obtained letters of recommendation from personal friends of General Grant. His headquarters were on the Magnolia, where we found him domiciled, unsurrounded by any circumstance of pomp or state. All of us who called upon him were as well bestowed in our sanitary boat Omaha, as he, and had in our quarters as much style and luxury.

Our interview was a brief one, and, on the part of the General, laconic. We talked; he listened, an appeared to approve our errand. For, as we rose to go, he inquired if he could aid us in our work. Calling one of his staff officers, and presenting him to us, he requested him to see that any help we might require in the way of escort, passes, ambulances, transportation, etc., was promptly furnished. He regretted, at the same time, that he had not a tug to put at our service, to take us from point to point on the river. The Fanny Ogden, he continued, was his despatch boat, and the swiftest boat in the Western service. It would be running back and forth continually, and whenever it went in a direction that corresponded with our movements---we were heartily welcome to its transportation.

This interview decided two points which had been discussed among ourselves and others. One was, that General Grant was not a garrulous man; and the other, that he was not intemperate. All the way down from Chicago, we had heard continually of General Grant's sayings, as well as his doings. We were told that he had said "he would take Vicksburg in so many days, if it cost him three fourths of his army"; that "he would turn the waters of the Mississippi, and leave Vicksburg high and dry, a mile and a half inland," with other like nonsense, which, at that time, did not seem nonsense to the anxious people at home, who neither understood Grant nor the colossal work on his hands.

Our faith in all this twaddle had been somewhat feeble, to be sure; but, as we went out from our first audience with the General, we utterly renounced all credence in its verity. In the first five minutes of our interview, we learned, by some sort of spiritual telegraphy, that reticence, patience, and persistence were the dominant traits of General Grant. We had had familiar and unconventional interviews with other officers we had met, had asked questions and given opinions, had gossiped and joked and "played the agreeable" with them. But we would as soon have undertaken a tête-à-tête with the Sphinx itself as with this quiet, repressed, reluctant, undemonstrative man; and we should have succeeded as well with one as with the other. We instinctively put ourselves on "short rations" of talk with him, and so compressed the porosities of language that no one of us will ever have to give account of "idle words" used on that occasion.

Neither was General Grant a drunkard,---that was immediately apparent to us. This conviction gave us such joy, that, had we been younger, we should all, men and women alike, have tossed our hats in air and hurrahed. As it was, we looked each other in the face, and said heartily, "Thank God!" and breathed more freely. We had seen enough, in our progress down the river, at the different headquarters where we had called, to render us anxious beyond measure lest our brave army should be jeopardized, if not our holy cause itself, by the intemperance of its commanders. But the clear eye, clean skin, firm flesh, and steady nerves of General Grant gave the lie to the universal calumnies, then current, concerning his intemperate habits and those of the officers of his staff. Our eyes had become practised in reading the diagnosis of drunkenness.

There were ladies in our party who both played the piano, and sang, very charmingly. One evening, we accepted an invitation from General Grant's Chief-of-Staff to pass an hour or two on board the Magnolia. Our host informed us that "there was a very good piano at General Grant's headquarters, and that he was very fond of music." After an hour of music, we drifted into a conversation upon various topics, until finally General Sherman became the subject of discussion. I observed now that General Grant listened intently.

General Sherman, at that time, was under a cloud. With the right wing of the Army of the Tennessee, thirty thousand strong, he had passed down the Mississippi and up the Yazoo to Johnston's Landing, where he made an assault on the well-manned fortifications and batteries which defended Vicksburg on the north. Abundant and efficient co-operation was promised him, and he hoped to develop some weak point in the enemy's defences, which extended fifteen miles, from Haines' Bluff to Vicksburg. Then it was believed he could fight his way along the heights into the city.

But for various reasons he failed to receive the support which was promised, while the difficulties growing out of the topography of the abominable country were almost insurmountable. He was repulsed with great slaughter, losing over two thousand men, while the enemy reported a loss of only sixty-three killed. Burying his dead under a flag of truce, General Sherman re-embarked his men for Young's Point---and Secretary Halleck ordered General John A. McClernand of Illinois to supersede him.

Immediately General Sherman fell in public estimation. The Northern press was very decided in condemnation of his generalship; and as we went down the river, we had heard this condemnation reiterated and emphasized by men in all positions, many of whom declared the General insane. Some of this gossip was repeated in the conversation that took place on the Magnolia, one of the company remarking that "it was very evident that General Sherman had been much overrated in the pest."

This brought out General Grant. "You are mistaken, sir!" he said, very quietly. "General Sherman cannot be overrated. He is the greatest soldier of the world; and if the Duke of Wellington were alive, I would not rank him second even to him."

"The country will place you before General Sherman in soldierly ability," replied some one present. "It will never assent to the statement that General Sherman is entitled to the first place, not even when you make it."

"The country does General Sherman great injustice, at present," was General Grant's reply. "I am not his superior as a soldier. If I surpass him anywhere, it may be in the planning of a campaign. But of what value are the best planned campaigns, if there are not great soldiers like General Sherman to execute them?" And he spoke with the warmth of friendship, and as one jealous of the honor of a brother soldier. Subsequent events have justified this estimate of General Sherman, and demonstrated the impossibility of creating jealousy or antagonism between these two great men.

I had been entrusted with a great variety of errands to General Grant, every military post and hospital at which we stopped adding to my budget. I received these commands, and took copious memoranda of facts, events and dates connected with them, not quite sure what I should do when the time came to act. Some presented requests to have wrongs righted. Others asked favors not easily obtained, or made a statement of grievances, or besought pardon for offences which were being punished with loss of position,---and so on. I was frequently told that my only hope of success, in some of these cases, lay in the fact that I was a woman, and that "women could do anything they desired with army officers."

I came to a very swift decision concerning these errands after I had been to General Grant's headquarters. Only one class of them was sufficiently important to challenge the attention of a commander whose whole soul was absorbed in the attempt to solve the problem how best and most speedily to conquer Vicksburg, the "Gibraltar of America," as Jefferson Davis had confidently declared it. There rose the impregnable city, strong in its natural position, bristling with batteries to its very highest pinnacle, and for fifteen miles along the river bank. And here sat the determined officer, defeated in his every attempt to flank the Mississippi, but still unfaltering in his resolve to subjugate this defiant citadel of the Confederacy, and revolving more daring schemes for the accomplishment of this never-to-be-yielded purpose. The only petition I could bring myself to present to such a man, at such a time, was one that involved the life of a score of his soldiers---my brothers.

In my visits to the hospitals there had been brought to my notice the cases of several sick soldiers---twenty-one in all---who were pronounced incurable by the surgeons The poor fellows would speedily die, or their illnesses would become chronic, and they would drag on a few miserable years in confirmed invalidism. In any ease they were worthless to the government, and should be discharged from its service. There were many such cases, but these were of peculiar hardship, because in every instance there was an absolute hindrance to their discharge, through irregularity, for which they were not responsible, and that could not be easily righted. They had lost their "descriptive lists"; or their regiments were on some remote expedition, beyond the reach of mails; or they were too ill to go home unaccompanied, and furloughs were just then a forbidden favor. All the details of these twenty-one cases were committed to me, with the endorsement of the surgeons in whose hospitals they were, and who certified that these men could render the government no further aid, and should be released from military service.

The request that these twenty-one dying soldiers should be discharged, and sent home, was the only one I felt willing to present to General Grant, for, as matters were, he alone could discharge them. Having "got the hang" of the General on the first interview, I resolved to see him again, alone, and urge my suit in behalf of the poor fellows. It was a somewhat irregular proceeding, and I knew it; but I also knew that he had the power to discharge them in the teeth of any informality, and I believed he would, when he knew all the facts. At any rate, I would not go back without making an effort for the I helpless boys who had besought my aid, and had sent after me their prayers and anxious thoughts.

So a few mornings after, when breakfast was over, without informing any one on the sanitary boat of my purpose, I started alone for the Magnolia. How to get there was a question, for terra firma was nowhere. Where it was not mud, it was water; and where it was not water, it was mud; and the mud was so liquefied that you sank into it as though walking through porridge. There was substantial footing on the levees, but those did not run in the direction whither I was going. One of the boys of Colonel Bissell's Engineer Corps spied me standing ankle-deep in mud, and offered his help. I needed it, for the Magnolia had moved upstream nearly half a mile, and I had lost my reckoning. He piloted me over sloughs bridged by his corps, in which lay rotting carcasses of horses and mules, which had got "mired," and been left to die. I went up the gangway of the Magnolia, and there confronted the guard.

"I wish to see General Grant," I said to him. "I have letters of introduction--one from the Secretary of War---and I wish to put these papers in his hands."

"Pass up stairs into the saloon," was his reply.

At the head of the stairway I was halted by another guard, to whom I told the same story.

"Pass round behind the screen," was the reply.

The saloon of the Magnolia was partitioned into three apartments by movable green baize screens. I passed round in front of the first of these, as directed, and came upon the officers of General Grant's staff, lounging and chatting. To them I repeated my story, and was directed to pass round behind the next screen. There sat a body of medical men, with reports and documents, and any quantity budgets tied with red tape. One of them chanced to be a Chicago physician, and we recognized each other. To him I told my desire, and presented my papers, and was again directed to pass around behind the screen---the third one where I should find the General alone. I obeyed, and, through the blue haze of cigar smoke circling through the apartment, I saw General Grant, sitting at the table, wearing his hat, a cigar in his mouth, one foot on a chair, and buried to his chin in maps, letters, reports, and orders. Whatever mauvaise honte I may have felt in thus obtruding myself upon the modest General, was speedily banished by his discomposure. For a moment he seemed the most bashful man I had ever encountered. Rising, and placing a half-dozen chairs at my service, he begged me to be seated, removing his hat, and taking his cigar from his mouth, and then quickly and unconsciously replacing both. I remained standing, and, without any circumlocution whatever, announced my errand, and implored his aid. He heard me without interruption.

"But these are matters that should be laid before my Medical Director. I have put all these things out of my hands," were his first words.

Yes, I knew that, and told him so; and I also told him that it was necessary for some one to "cut red tape" boldly and promptly in behalf of these men; that no subordinate dared do it, but all said he could, and encouraged me to believe that he would.

And I besought him, with the earnestness that women felt in these sad cases during the war, to give me the pleasure of returning these boys to the mothers, sisters, and wives, who would lighten with love the dark valley of death into which they were fast descending. I promised, if he gave them discharge and transportation, to take every man to his friends, leaving no one of them until I saw him well cared for. The General briefly examined the documents I gave him, and then said "he would let me know to-morrow what could be done."

The next evening, an officer of his staff came to our boat, enlivening an hour with most charming and intelligent conversation. He made me supremely happy with the discharge of these twenty-one soldiers from the service of the country, who had been rewarded with loss of health, and, as it afterwards proved to some of them, with loss of life.

But if I was happy, what shall I say of the poor emaciated fellows, who looked for my return to them as one looks for a reprieve from sentence of death? Most of these men were brought North on our sanitary boat. One of them died on the way, and was buried at Memphis, and another died in Chicago. His home was in Wisconsin; and a ride of four hours more would have taken him to the arms of his mother, who was expecting him. But when we reached Chicago, Saturday evening, the train for his town had left, and he was compelled to remain in the city over Sunday. I took him to a hotel near the station from which he was to start on Monday; and,. when I had seen him comfortable in bed, wished to leave him, to telegraph his mother of his nearness to her, and then to go to my own family. I promised to send him a nurse in less than an hour, and to accompany him home to Wisconsin myself on Monday.

But he begged so wildly that I would return myself and stay with him, that I consented, after I had informed my family of my return to the city. He followed me to the door with his beseeching eyes, saying, " hate to have you go, for it seems as if I should not see you again." I assured him that I would not be absent above two hours at the furthest, and, as he wished no one to remain in the room with him, I left the door ajar, getting the promise of the chambermaid to look in upon him occasionally.

In less than two hours I was back at his bedside. "He has been sleeping quietly ever since you left," said the servant. There he lay as I had left him, with one hand under his head, his face turned towards the door, that he might see any one who entered the room. Sleeping? Yes the sleep of death.

Mothers will not think me weak when I confess that I closed the door and locked it, and then wept long and bitterly over the dead boy---not for him, but for the mother whose youngest child he was. He had so longed for his mother, this boyish, twenty-year-old soldier! Again and again had he said to me: "I don't expect to get well---I know I must die; but if I can only see my mother once more I shall be willing to die."

On Monday she came for his coffined body. As she bent over him and wrestled with her mighty grief, she seemed to find comfort in the oft-uttered thought, that "he had given his life for his country."