George Barton

“ There the Northern horses thunder, with the cannon at their heels.
“Jesu, pity! how it thickens! Now retreat and now advance!
Right against the blazing cannon showers Pueblo’s charging lance!
Down they go, the brave young riders; horse and foot together fall;
Like a plowshare in the fallow through them ploughs the Northern ball.”
Nearer came the storm and nearer, rolling fast and frightful on;
Speak, Ximena, speak and tell us who has lost and who has won?
“Alas, alas! I know not, friend and foe together fall,
O’er the dying rush the living; pray my Sisters for them all.” ”

“ It is war that preserves and protects peace. The soldier is the guardian of our homes. Honor him; make peaceful and happy his declining years. Thank God with David for preparing our hands for the sword, before whose blinding ray, in the hand of the hero, domestic treason and foreign conspiracy slink into their dens. Bless God for making us a nation of soldiers, as well as of citizens. The war proved that the American soldier, North and South, is without a peer in bravery, in discipline, in self-control. ”

“ To see her always calm, always ready, with modesty and fidelity, faithfully performing a Christian duty as an administering angel when physicians, surgeons, friends and all human aid had failed, was a beautiful sight. No poet could describe, no artist could faithfully portray on canvas the scenes at the deathbed of a soldier, that would convey to those not having witnessed them the solemnity of the quiet kneeling, the silent prayer, a murmur faintly heard as a whisper, a Sister of Charity paying her devotion to Him on high, and consigning the spirit of the dying soldier to His care. ”

“ Right in the fiery front of dreadful war, where bullets hissed in maddening glee, and shot and shell flew madly by with demoniac shrieks, where dead and mangled forms lay with pale, blood-flecked faces, yet wear the scowl of battle, I have seen the black-robed Sisters moving over the field, their solicitous faces wet with the tears of sympathy, administering to the wants of the wounded and whispering words of comfort into the ears soon to be deafened by the cold, implacable hand of death. ”

“ When the brave men of both armies had fought out the nation’s quarrel, and when the roar of cannon died away and the smoke of battle was lifted from the land, the bright sun of peace shone upon a people more united than they had ever been before. Religious bigotry and sectarian hatred had received a deadly stroke. There was more Christianity amid the rough scenes of war than there had been in preceding years of peace. The best blood of the Roman Catholic and of the Protestant co-patriot had reddened the same stream and mingled on many a well-fought field ”

“ His command was considered the finest body of men in either the Union or the Confederate army. Just prior to the battle of Antietam General McClellan had ordered a review of his troops before the President and the members of his Cabinet. It was a magnificent sight to see 70,000 well-drilled and well-dressed soldiers keeping step to the tune of martial music. What a difference between then and now. The finest blood in the nation lay spilled upon the field of Antietam; the dread hand of death had broken up and demoralized the Army of the Potomac. ”

“ American liberty and the opportunities of American life are too precious to the human family to permit the one and the other to be wrecked or endangered. I rejoice in every indication of patriotic public spirit, whether shown in devotion and respect for the country’s flag or in reverence and admiration for the nation’s heroes. We need all these demonstrations to keep alive in this material age the ardor and purity of true patriotism. ”

“ How many a veteran of the war, who wore the Blue or the Gray, can yet recall the soothing touch of a Sister’s hand as he lay upon the pain-tossed couch of a hospital! Can we ever forget their sympathetic-eyes, their low, soft-spoken words of encouragement and cheer when the result of the struggle between life and death yet hung in the balance? ”

“ The place of interment was beside the departed lay Sister, on a rocky hill rising over the waters of the Black Sea. The funeral was a most impressive sight. The soldiers in double file, the multitudes of various nations, ranks and employments, the silence unbroken, save by the voice of tears, the groups, still as statuary that crowded the rocks above the grave, the moaning of the sullen waves beneath, all combined in a weird pageant never to be forgotten by the thousands that took part in it. The graves of these cherished Sisters were tended with loving attention. ”

“ They literally gave themselves as nurses to the poor, wounded, maimed and sick soldiers brought to them day after day. And most beautifully did they fulfill the charge. Many a soldier will never forget their tender, unselfish care and devotion. I was witness myself to much of it, as I was privileged to go from ward to ward. Many a dying man blessed them as angels of mercy, almost looking upon them as sent from the other world. ”

“ Among the war Sisters none was regarded with more affection and reverence than this same Sister Anthony, who spent her last years near Cincinnati, surrounded with all the loving attentions and comforts that should go with honorable old age. Her work for humanity was spread over a long series of years, and the heroic labors she performed during the war form but an episode in a busy and useful career. But it was a brilliant episode, one that deserves to be handed down to history and that brought fadeless laurels to a modest and unpretending woman. ”

“ Before turning to the question of the ‘rights and duties’ let me first define what I understand by the term ‘Catholic Citizen.’ An American citizen, whether by birth or adoption, who, having had the grace of Christian baptism, believes and practices the teachings of the Catholic Church—in other words a practical Catholic. Now we come to the question of ‘rights and duties.’ What are our rights as citizens? No more, no less, precisely, than those possessed by any other American citizen. What are the rights we in common have with others? ”

“ Protestant or Catholic, I do not ask. They are not soldiers when they come to us; they are simply suffering fellow-creatures. Rich or poor, of gentle or lowly blood, it is not our province to inquire. Ununiformed, unarmed, sick and helpless, we ask not on which side they fought. Our work begins after yours is done. Yours the carnage, ours the binding up of wounds. Yours the battle, ours the duty of caring for the mangled left behind on the field. Ice I want for the sick, the wounded, the dying. ”

“ What is more foolish, more base, more spiritless, more contemptible than to find women, ladies, willingly binding themselves, not by impulse, but by vocation, not as a mere whim, but perpetually to live by rule, doing that to which no man ever yet got accustomed, to purify their acts to make them meritorious in the sight of God? And obedience! The world hates and loathes obedience, yet our Divine Lord was obedient even unto death, the death of the cross. ”

“ Think what American citizenship confers; see what it assures! Equal part and membership in this mighty empire—the equal advantage in its unsurpassed opportunities—the unqualified privileges of its unequaled freedom. No standing armies here to be moved at a monarch’s caprice, weighing down and oppressing the nation’s energies, draining it of its life blood, sapping its vitality, and, worst evil of all, menacing the peace of the world. No armed ‘constabulary’ to terrorize over a peasant population and enforce the heartless edict of brutal landlords. ”

“ During your stay in the hospital you have been indeed sisters to all the patients, and your uniform kindness to all has endeared you to all our hearts.
Should you leave us we can only say that wherever you may go you will bear with you the soldier’s gratitude and our earnest hope and prayer is that in whatever field you may labor in future you may be as happy as you have been kind and charitable to us, and may heaven’s choicest blessings be showered upon you for your kindnesses to the poor sick and wounded soldier. ”

“ The groans of the soldiers on the battlefield of Shiloh still linger in the memories of many of the Sisters. Sister Anthony and her colleagues frequently picked their way through the files of the dead and wounded, and on many occasions assisted in carrying the sufferers to the boats. These floating hospitals were unique in many ways, but they will ever remain memorable as the scenes of the Sisters’ greatest triumphs, where they did so much for the cause of humanity and where so many unwarranted prejudices were removed from the minds of brave men. ”

“ Here was frequently illustrated the poet’s contention that truth is stranger than fiction. One instance containing all of the elements that go to make up a romance comes to mind. The two principal figures in it were a sweet Sister of Charity, burning with love for her fellow creatures, and willing to lay down life itself in the cause of suffering humanity, and a brave soldier, filled with patriotism for his country, brought to the point of death by a malignant fever; nursed back to life and finally, twenty-five years after the war, giving an exhibition of gratitude as rare as it is beautiful. ”

“ These Sisters volunteered their services to nurse the sick and the wounded soldiers, hundreds of whom, moved to sentiments of purest piety by the words and example of these angel nurses, begged to be baptized in articulo mortis—at the point of death. The labors and self-sacrifice of the Sisters during the war need no praise here. The praise is on the lips of every surviving soldier who experienced their kind and careful ministration. Many a soldier now looks down from on high with complacency on the worthy Sisters who were instrumental in saving the soul when life could not be saved. ”

“ To be a Catholic was to be a traitor. In vain did we appeal to history, which crowns with laurels the brows of unnumbered Catholic patriots and heroes in every land of the universal Church. The Thundering Legion fought for the Roman Emperor, who decreed its martyrdom. The fleet of Protestant England was led against the Armada of Catholic Spain by a Catholic in the service of a Queen who sent his fellow-religionists to the stake on account of their faith. The patriotism of the Catholic is motived by his religion. It rises superior to the form in which civil government may be embodied. ”

“ Mother Augustine, who was the Superior of the Sisters at the Newberne Hospital, writing to a devoted friend—Miss Susan Messinger—said on January 4, 1868:
“So our brave soldier boy is gone, his long and trying march has brought him to the goal, and in his young enthusiasm he has gone to join the numerous band of those who were his companions on the field and in the fight, in danger and in privations, exposure and fatigue, but not in the long years of patient and heroic endurance which requires more of a martyr’s fortitude than a soldier’s courage. ”

“ It is well known that in the Crimean War the Sisters of Charity literally covered themselves with glory before men, and, doubtless, with merits before God. When the record of our present struggles will be handed down to posterity will it not be a source of joy for the Church to be able to show, in every rank of society, many a glorious name generously sacrificed for the rescue of the country? ”

“ If we reckon our soldiers by their religion, the majority would be Catholic and we should find that we had given our children in far greater number than any one denomination. On the second day of Gettysburg a Catholic priest, ascending an eminence, lifted his hand to give absolution, and far as the eye could reach rank upon rank of soldiers bent their heads like cornfields swept by the summer breeze. ”

“ It would be difficult to find a heart so entirely throbbing for God as hers; a foot so restless and untiring in doing good as hers; a brain so busy in devising works for the welfare of religion and her fellow-men. It is difficult for those who have not known her to realize the extent of her labors. It is not every person who can comprehend the depth of Mother Angela’s devotion to the cause of God. Many have seen it but few have understood it.... For many a long, long day this community will feel the gap that is made to-day by the loss of one who lies in that narrow, little coffin.... ”

“ They glide noiselessly from cot to cot cheering the despondent and speaking words of kindness to all. No one who has the heart of a man can help loving them with a holy sisterly love. There is not a soldier in Richmond but would beg, if it was possible, that when wounded or sick he should to be taken to such an hospital, and for myself, sooner than be taken to any other, I would rather die by the wayside with God’s canopy my only covering. ”

“ It is the duty of the Catholic citizen to love liberty for its own sake, order for the general good and to illustrate the highest type and model of civic virtue. It is a duty to foster and nourish the purity of home life and the domestic virtues, eagerly to promote education and to make every necessary sacrifice for it, and to see to it that Catholic children shall have the benefit of a sound Christian education. ”

“ They were escorted to Mass by a military guard of honor, and received the military salute in passing to and fro in the neighborhood of the hospital and the camps. Some of the invalid soldiers imagined that every Sister carried a charm about her, and was thus protected from the contagious diseases that caused such sad havoc among the men. But the supposed charms were not always successful in preventing the Sisters from wearing the martyr’s crown in death. The only charms they carried, as the soldiers soon discovered, were blameless lives, absolute devotion to duty and entire self-forgetfulness. ”

“ The following is what an eye-witness says of Sister Anthony: “Amid this sea of blood she performed the most revolting duties for those poor soldiers. Let us follow her as she gropes her way among the wounded, dead and dying. She seemed to me like a ministering angel, and many a young soldier owes his life to her care and charity. Let us gaze at her again as she stands attentive kindness and 75 assists Dr. Blackman while the surgeon is amputating limbs and consigning them to a watery grave, or as she picks her steps in the blood of these brave boys, administering cordial or dressing wounds.” ”