MRS. JOHN HARRIS.

H

E would have been a man of uncommon sagacity and penetration, who in the beginning of 1861, should have chosen Mrs. Harris as capable of the great services and

the extraordinary power of endurance with which her name has since been identified. A pale, quiet, delicate woman, often an invalid for months, and almost always a sufferer; the wife of a somewhat eminent physician, in Philadelphia, and in circumstances which did not require constant activity for her livelihood, refined, educated, and shrinking from all rough or brutal sights or sounds, she seemed one of those who were least fitted to endure the hardships, and encounter the roughnesses of a life in the camp or field hospitals.

But beneath that quiet and frail exterior, there dwelt a firm and dauntless spirit. She had been known by her neighbors, and especially in the church of which she was an honored member, as a woman of remarkable piety and devotion, and as an excellent and skilful attendant upon the sick. When the war commenced, she was one of the ladies who assembled to form the Ladies' Aid Society of Philadelphia, and was chosen, we believe unanimously, Corresponding Secretary. She seems to have entered upon the work from the feeling that it was a part of her duty, a sacrifice she was called to make, a burden which she ought to bear. And through the war, mainly from her temperament, which inclined her to look on the dark side, she never seemed stimulated or strengthened in her work by that abiding

conviction of the final success of our arms, which was to so many of the patient workers, the day-star of hope. Like Bunyan's Master Fearing, she was always apprehensive of defeat and disaster, of the triumph of the adversary; and when victories came, her eyes were so dim with tears for the bereaved and sorrowstricken, and her heart so heavy with their griefs that she could not join in the songs of triumph, or smile in unison with the nation's rejoicings. We speak of this not to depreciate her work or zeal, but rather to do the more honor to both. The despondent temperament and the intense sympathy with sorrow were constitutional, or the result of years of ill-health, and that under their depressing influence, with no step of her way lighted with the sunshine of joy, she should have not only continued faithful to her work, but have undergone more hardships and accomplished more, for the soldiers than most others, reflects the highest credit upon her patience, perseverance and devotion to the cause.

We have elsewhere in this volume given an account of the origin and progress of the Ladies' Aid Society, of Philadelphia. Mrs. Harris, though continued as its Corresponding Secretary through the war, was, during the greater part of the time, its correspondent in the field, and left to the other officers, the work of raising and forwarding the money and supplies, while she attended in person to their distribution. This division of labor seems to have satisfied her associates, who forwarded to her order their hospital stores and money with the most perfect confidence in her judicious disposition of both. Other Societies, such as the Penn Relief, the Patriotic Daughters of Lancaster, and Aid Societies from the interior of Pennsylvania, as well as the Christian and Sanitary Commissions, made her their almoners, and she distributed a larger amount of stores, perhaps, than any other lady in the field.

The history of her work during the war, is given very fully, in her correspondence with the Ladies' Aid Society, published in their semi-annual reports. From these we gather that she had

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visited in 1861, and the winter of 1862, before the movement of the army to the peninsula, more than one hundred hospitals of the of the Potomac, in and around Washington, and had not only ministered to the physical wants of the sick and wounded men, but had imparted religious instruction and consolation to many of them. Everywhere her coming had been welcomed; in many instances, eyes dimmed by the shadow of the wings of the death-angel, saw in her the wife or mother, for whose coming they had longed and died, with the hallowed word "mother" on their lips.

When in the spring of 1862, the army of the Potomac moved to the Peninsula, Mrs. Harris went thither, first distributing as far as practicable, her stores among the men. Soon after her arrival on the Peninsula, she found ample employment for her time. The Chesapeake and Hygeia hospitals at Fortress Monroe, filled at first mostly with the sick, and the few wounded in the siege of Yorktown, were, after the battles of Williamsburg and West Point crowded with such of the wounded, both Union and Confederate soldiers as could be brought so far from the battle-fields. She spent two or three weeks here, aiding the noble women who were acting as Matrons of these hospitals. From thence she went on board the Vanderbilt, then just taken as a Government Transport for the wounded from the bloody field of Fair Oaks.

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She thus describes the scene and her work:

"There were eight hundred on board. Passage-ways, state-rooms, floors from the dark and fœtid hold to the hurricane deck, were all more than filled; some on mattresses, some on blankets, others on straw; some in the deathstruggle, others nearing it, some already beyond human sympathy and help; some in their blood as they had been brought from the battle-field of the Sabbath previous, and all hungry and thirsty, not having had anything to eat or drink, except hard crackers, for twenty-four hours.

"The gentlemen who came on with us hurried on to the White House, and would have had us go with them, but something held us back; thank God it was so. Meeting Dr. Cuyler, Medical Director, he exclaimed, 'Here is work for you!' He, poor man, was completely overwhelmed with the general care of all the hospitals at Old Point, and added to these, these mammoth floating

hospitals, which are coming in from day to day with their precious cargoes. Without any previous notice, they anchor, and send to him for supplies, which it would be extremely difficult to improvise, even in our large cities, and quite impossible at Old Point. 'No bakeries, no stores, except small sutlers.' The bread had all to be baked; the boat rationed for two days; eight hundred on board.

"When we went aboard, the first cry we met was for tea and bread. 'For God's sake, give us bread,' came from many of our wounded soldiers. Others shot in the face or neck, begged for liquid food. With feelings of a mixed character, shame, indignation, and sorrow blending, we turned away to see what resources we could muster to meet the demand. A box of tea, a barrel of cornmeal, sundry parcels of dried fruit, a few crackers, ginger cakes, dried rusk, sundry jars of jelly and of pickles, were seized upon, soldiers and contrabands impressed into service, all the cooking arrangements of three families appropriated, by permission, and soon three pounds of tea were boiling, and many gallons of gruel blubbering. In the meantime, all the bread we could buy, twenty-five loaves, were cut into slices and jellied, pickles were got in readiness, and in an incredibly short time, we were back to our poor sufferers.

"When we carried in bread, hands from every quarter were outstretched, and the cry, 'Give me a piece, O please! I have had nothing since Monday;' another, 'Nothing but hard crackers since the fight,' etc. When we had dealt out nearly all the bread, a surgeon came in, and cried, 'Do please keep some for the poor fellows in the hold; they are so badly off for everything.' So with the remnant we threaded our way through the suffering crowd, amid such exclamations as 'Oh! please don't touch my foot,' or, ‘For mercy's sake, don't touch my arm;' another, 'Please don't move the blanket; I am so terribly cut up,' down to the hold, in which were not less than one hundred and fifty, nearly all sick, some very sick. It was like plunging into a vapor bath, so hot, close, and full of moisture, and then in this dismal place, we distributed our bread, oranges, and pickles, which were seized upon with avidity. And here let me say, at least twenty of them told us next day that the pickles had done them more good than all the medicine they had taken. around in buckets, sweetened, but no milk in it. some concentrated milk. The gruel, into which we of wine, was relished, you cannot know how much. exhausted with the loss of blood and long fasting, looked up after taking the first nourishment he could swallow since the battle of Saturday, then four days, and exclaimed, with face radiant with gratitude and pleasure, 'Oh! that is life to me; I feel as if twenty years were given me to live.' He was shockingly wounded about the neck and face, and could only take liquid food from a feeding-cup, of which they had none on board. We left them four, together with a

The tea was carried all How much we wished for had put a goodly quantity One poor wounded boy,

number of tin dishes, spoons, etc. After hours spent in this wa, we returned to the Hygeia Hospital, stopping on our way to stew a quantity of dried fruit, which served for supper, reaching the Hygeia wet through and through, every garment saturated. Disrobed, and bathing with bay rum, was glad to lie down, every bone aching, and head and heart throbbing, unwilling to cease work where so much was to be done, and yet wholly unable to do more. There I lay, with the sick, wounded, and dying all around, and slept from sheer exhaustion, the last sounds falling upon my ear being groans from the operating room."

Her ministrations to the wounded on the Vanderbilt were unexpectedly prolonged by the inability of the officers to get the necessary supplies on board, but two days after she was on the Knickerbocker, a Sanitary Commission Transport, and on her way to White House Landing where in company with Miss Charlotte Bradford, she spent the whole night on the Transport Louisiana, dressing and caring for the wounded. When she left the boat at eleven o'clock the next night she was obliged to wash all her skirts which were saturated with the mingled blood of the Union and Confederate soldiers which covered the floor, as she kneeled between them to wash their faces. She had torn up all her spare clothing which could be of use to them for bandages and compresses. From White House she proceeded to the battleground of Fair Oaks, and presently pitched her tent on the Dudley Farm, near Savage Station, to be near the group of field hospitals, to which the wounded in the almost daily skirmishes and the sick smitten with that terrible Chickahominy fever

were sent.

The provision made by the Medical Bureau of the Government at this time for the care and comfort of the wounded and fever-stricken was small and often inappropriate. Where tents were provided, they were either of the wedge pattern or the bivouacking tent of black cloth, and in the hot sun of a Virginia summer absorbed the sun's rays till they were like ovens ; many of the sick were put into the cabins and miserable shanties of the vicinity, and not unfrequently in the attics of these, where amid