182 "YOU-UNS GOT BETTER GRUB THAN WE-UNS."

Every sewing-machine office in the city put its rooms, machines and operators to the same service, to the entire suspension of its own business. Never was clothing manufactured more rapidly; for the machines were run into the small hours of the morning, and there was no slacking of effort while the urgent demand lasted. It was the same all over the West. The facts of the desperate battle, the severe exposure of the wounded, the incomplete preparations for their removal and care, the great destitution of surgeons, instruments, supplies, of everything that was needed, - as these became known to the people, their patriotic generosity was stimulated to fever heat.

Seven thousand of the enemy taken at Fort Donelson were sent to Chicago as prisoners of war, and were given accommodations at Camp Douglas. They were quartered in the same barracks, and were furnished with the same rations, both as to quality and quantity, as were accorded our own troops that had occupied the camp a few months before. It was

amusing, as well as pathetic, to listen to their openly expressed satisfaction. "You-uns got better grub than we-uns down South; better barracks, too." A more motley looking crowd was never seen in Chicago. They were mostly un-uniformed, and shivering with cold, wrapped in tattered bedquilts, pieces of old carpets, hearth rugs, horse blankets, ragged shawls,- anything that would serve to keep out the cold and hide their tatterdemalion condition.

They had evidently suffered severely in the terrible three days' fight at Donelson, not only from the arctic weather, but from insufficient food and clothing. If their own pitiful stories were true, they had failed

GAVE UP THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

183

to receive good care from the time they entered the Confederate service. They seemed a poorly nourished and uncared-for company of men, and their hopeless and indescribable ignorance intensified their general forlornness. Despite good medical attendance in camp and hospital, and notwithstanding the sick lacked for nothing in the matter of nursing and sick-diet so well managed was the hospital, and so constant the ministrations of the women of Chicagomore than five hundred of them died at Camp Douglas before they were exchanged. It was pitiful to see how easily they gave up all struggle for life, and how readily they adjusted themselves to the inevitable. Not less uncomplainingly than the camel, which silently succumbs to the heavy load, did these ignorant, unfed and unclad fellows turn their faces to the wall, and breathe out their lives, without a regret, or a murmur.

CHAPTER VII.

AFTER THE BATTLE-MY FIRST EXPERIENCE IN A MILITARY HOSPITAL-A DEATHLY FAINTNESS COMES OVER MENERVING MYSELF FOR THE WORK-TOUCHING SCENES. Mrs. Hoge and myself visit the Hospitals of St. Louis-Our first Experience Boisterousness of new Recruits - The grim Silence of Men who had "been under Fire"-Our remarkable Hostess - Conspicuous and unflinching Loyalty Her "Hospital Kitchen" and "Hospital Wagon"-"Eleven Hundred Soldiers' Letters!"-The Donelson Wards Their sickening Odor and ghastly Sights - Horrible Mutilation of the Men- A deathly Faintness came over me-The Wounded and Dead robbed on the Field of Battle-Plucky Fellow-"They couldn't be bothering with us" "Afraid to die!"-"Send for a Methodist Minister!" The Magic of Song- The mental Conflict of the Night that followed-St. Louis sitting in Gloom-Sad Wedding in the HospitalDeath of the Bridegroom.

HILE the demand for "battle supplies" continued, Mrs. Hoge-my my co-worker and myself, assisted in collecting, purchasing, cutting, making, and packing whatever was in demand. But it became evident that the tide of war was setting towards other large battles; and, as soon as there was a lull in the demand for sanitary stores, Mrs. Hoge and myself were sent to the hospitals and to medical headquarters at the front, with instructions to obtain any possible information, that would lead to better preparation for the wounded of another great battle.

The great proportion of the wounded of Fort

VISIT TO ST. LOUIS HOSPITALS.

185

Donelson had been taken to the excellent general hospitals established at St. Louis, and our first visit was to this city. We stopped at Springfield, Ill., en route, to obtain the endorsement of Governor Yates, and letters of recommendation from him. They were heartily given. From Chicago to Springfield, we went in company with recently formed regiments of soldiers, who, with the boisterous enthusiasm that always characterized the newly enlisted, made the night hideous with their shouts and songs. We soon learned that we could easily distinguish soldiers who had "been under fire" from the new recruits. Boatloads of the former would steam past us, going up or down the Mississippi, in a grim silence that was most oppressive; while men fresh from their first camp would deafen us with their throat-splitting yells and shouts. The former had had experience of war; and the first rollicking enthusiasm of ignorance had given place to a grimness of manner that impressed one with a sense of desperate purpose.

During our stay in St. Louis, we were the invited guests of one of the few wealthy families of the city which had remained loyal. The mistress of the household was a New England woman, whose ancestors had borne an honorable part in the war of the Revolution. Her husband, who had died just before the outbreak of the rebellion, was allied by blood and friendship with the foremost leaders of the Southern Confederacy, and was himself, during his life, a slaveholder, a stout defender of slavery, and intensely Southern in his feelings. At his death, his widow manumitted all the slaves bequeathed her, and then hired them all at fair wages. Eight of them were connected with the household in some capacity,

186

OUR KEMARKABLE HOSTESS.

and held their mistress in idolatrous estimation. The noble. woman hesitated not an instant as to her line of conduct, when the rebellion was inaugurated. She cling to the loyal party of the state of Missouri, with a Roman firmness, and an uncompromising fidelity that never wavered.

Those of her children who had grown to manhood and womanhood sided with the South, as the younger ones would have done but for her all-compelling will, that held them true to their country. She overbore the purpose of the older sons to enter the Confederate army, and persuaded them to go to the south of Europe with a delicate sister, in quest of her health. Two of her children, a son and daughter, never returned, but died before the war ended, as much from chagrin and disappointment at the failure of the South, and grief over the death of kindred lost in the war, as from disease. The younger sons, who were terribly demoralized by the disloyal and defiant atmosphere of St. Louis, were sent to New England, to school and to college. Then, with one loyal daughter, she gave herself, her wealth, her elegant home, her skilled and trained servants, her influence, her speech, all that she was or had, unreservedly to the service of the country. That household was representative of many in the border states.

Some three of the wounded officers of Fort Donelson, one of whom had lost an arm, another a leg, and the third had a broken shoulder, and had been shot through the lungs, were taken to her stately home, where they were nursed as tenderly as if they had been her sons. There we found them in her charge, a hired, trained nurse being installed over