Friday, August 28, 2015

23 August 1861, Richmond

"Have been with Mrs Randolph to all the hospitals.
I can never again shut out of view the sights I saw of human misery. I sit thinking, shut my eyes, and see it all. Thinking—yes, and there is enough to think about now, God knows. Gillands was the worst. Long rows of ill men on cots. Ill of typhoid fever, of every human ailment—dinner tables, eating, drinking, wounds being dressed—all horrors, to be taken in at one glance. That long tobacco house!...
Then we went to the St Charles. Horrors upon horrors again—want of organization. Long rows of them dead, dying. Awful smell, awful sights.
A boy from home had sent for me. He was lying in a cot, ill of fever. Next him a man died in convulsions while we stood there.
I was making arrangements with a nurse, hiring him to take care of this lad. I do not remember any more, for I fainted. Next that I knew of, the doctor and Mrs Randolph were having me, a limp rag, put into the carriage at the door at the hospital.
Fresh air, I dare say, brought me to. First of all we had given our provisions to our Carolinians at Miss Sally Tompkins's. There they were, nice and clean and merry as grigs.
As we drove home, we brought the doctor with us, I was so upset.
He said: 'Look at that Georgia regiment marching there. Look at their servants on the sidewalk. I have been counting them—making an estimate. There is $16,000—sixteen thousand dollars worth of negro property which can go off on its own legs to the Yankees whenever it pleases.'
We saw among the wounded at the Federal hospital a negro soldier. He was with the others, on equal terms—and a sister was nursing him."