Walt Whitman

“ Every one is so unfeeling; it has got to be an old story. There is no good nursing. O I wish you were—or rather women of such qualities as you and Mat—were here in plenty, to be stationed as matrons among the poor sick and wounded men. Just to be present would be enough—O what good it would do them. Mother, I feel so sick when I see what kind of people there are among them, with charge over them—so cold and ceremonious, afraid to touch them. Well, mother, I fear I have written you a flighty kind of a letter—I write in haste.
Walt.
The papers came right, mother—love to Jeff, Mat, and all. ”

“ The harvest is large, the gleaners few. Beginning at first with casual visits to these establishments to see some of the Brooklyn men, wounded or sick, here, I became by degrees more and more drawn in, until I have now been for many weeks quite a devotee to the business—a regular self-appointed missionary to these thousands and tens of thousands of wounded and sick young men here, left upon Government hands, many of them languishing, many of them dying. I am not connected with any society, but go on my own individual account, and to the work that appears to be called for. ”

“ Mat, my dear sister, I know you will, for I know your nature is to come out a first-class girl in times of trouble and sickness, and do anything. Mother, you don’t know how pleased I was to read what you wrote about little Sis. I want to see her so bad I don’t know what to do; I know she must be just the best young one on Long Island—but I hope it will not be understood as meaning any slight or disrespect to Miss Hat, nor to put her nose out of joint, because Uncle Walt, I hope, has heart and gizzard big enough for both his little nieces and as many more as the Lord may send. ”

“ Both are pretty badly wounded—both are youngsters under 19. O mother, it seems to me as I go through these rows of cots as if it was too bad to accept these children, to subject them to such premature experiences. I devote myself much to Armory-square hospital because it contains by far the worst cases, most repulsive wounds, has the most suffering and most need of consolation. I go every day without fail, and often at night—sometimes stay very late. No one interferes with me, guards, nurses, doctors, nor anyone. ”

“ And now that I have lived for eight or nine days amid such scenes as the camps furnish, and had a practical part in it all, and realize the way that hundreds of thousands of good men are now living, and have had to live for a year or more, not only without any of the comforts, but with death and sickness and hard marching and hard fighting (and no success at that) for their continual experience—really nothing we call trouble seems worth talking about. One of the first things that met my eyes in camp was a heap of feet, arms, legs, etc., under a tree in front of a hospital, the Lacy house. ”

“ I shall spend most of my time among the sick and wounded in the camp hospitals. If I had means I should stop with them, poor boys, or go among them periodically, dispensing what I had, as long as the war lasts, down among the worst of it (although what are collected here in hospital seem to me about as severe and needy cases as any, after all) .
Mother, I want to hear about you all, and about George and how he is spending his time home. Mother, I do hope you are well and in good spirits, and Jeff and Mat and all, and dear little California and Hattie—I send them all my love. ”

“ I have just this moment heard from the front—there is nothing yet of a movement, but each side is continually on the alert, expecting something to happen. O mother, to think that we are to have here soon what I have seen so many times, the awful loads and trains and boat loads of poor bloody and pale and wounded young men again—for that is what we certainly will, and before very long. I see all the little signs, geting ready in the hospitals, etc.; it is dreadful when one thinks about it. ”

“ Mother, I have no difficulty at all in making myself at home among the soldiers, teamsters, or any—I most always find they like to have me very much; it seems to do them good. No doubt they soon feel that my heart and sympathies are truly with them, and it is both a novelty and pleases them and touches their feelings, and so doubtless does them good—and I am sure it does that to me. ”

“ A military hospital here in Washington is a little city by itself, and contains a larger population than most of the well-known country towns down in the Queens and Suffolk county portions of Long Island. I say one of the Government hospitals here is a little city in itself, and there are some fifty of these hospitals in the District of Columbia alone. In them are collected the tens of thousands of sick and wounded soldiers, the legacies of many a bloody battle and of the exposure of two years of camp life. ”

“ Mother, it was a curious sight to see these ranks after rank of our own dearest blood of men, mostly young, march by, worn and sunburnt and sweaty, with well-worn clothes and thin bundles, and knapsacks, tin cups, and some with frying pans strapt over their backs, all dirty and sweaty, nothing real neat about them except their muskets ”

“ I know you and Jeff and Mat will do all you can—and will have patience with all (it is not only the sick who are poorly off, but their friends; but it is best to have the greatest forbearance, and do and give, etc., whatever one can—but you know that, and practice it too, dear mother) . Mother, if I had the means, O how cheerfully I would give them, whether they availed anything for Andrew or not—yet I have long made up my mind that money does not amount to so much, at least not so very much, in serious cases of sickness ”

“ I have written to George, day before yesterday. Did you send my last letter to Han? If not, send it yet. Mother, I see such awful things. I expect one of these days, if I live, I shall have awful thoughts and dreams—but it is such a great thing to be able to do some real good; assuage these horrible [Pg 183] pains and wounds, and save life even—that’s the only thing that keeps a fellow up.
Well, dear mother, I make such reckoning of yet coming on and seeing you. How I want to see Jeff, too—O, it is too bad I have not written to him so long—and Mat, too, and little California and all. ”

“ Our own New York, in the form of hundreds and thousands of her young men, may consider herself here—Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and all the West and Northwest the same—and all the New England States the same.
Upon a few of these hospitals I have been almost daily calling as a missionary, on my own account, for the sustenance and consolation of some of the most needy cases of sick and dying men, for the last two months. One has much to learn to do good in these places. ”

“ I do not believe that it is in the power of any man now living to make an important addition to the vivid picture of those days and nights in the hospitals drawn by Whitman himself and to be found in his published prose and verse, and, above all, in the living words of the present letters to his mother. ”

“ Mother, I had a letter in the N. Y. Times of last Sunday—did you see it? I wonder if George can’t get a furlough and come home for a while; that furlough he had was only a flea-bite. If he could it would be no more than right, for no man in the country has done his duty more faithful, and without complaining of anything or asking for anything, than George. I suppose they will fill up the 51st with conscripts, as that seems the order of the day—a good many are arriving here, from the North, and passing through to join Meade’s army. ”

“ For nurses, middle-aged women and mothers of families are best. I am compelled to say young ladies, however refined, educated, and benevolent, do not succeed as army nurses, though their motives are noble; neither do the Catholic nuns, among these home-born American young men. Mothers full of motherly feeling, and however illiterate, but bringing reminiscences of home, and with the magnetic touch of hands, are the true women nurses. ”

“ How do you and the Browns get along?—that hell hole over the way, what a nuisance it must be nights, and I generally have a very good sleep. Mother, I suppose you sleep in the back room yet—I suppose the new houses next door are occupied. How I should like to take a walk on old Fort Greene—tell Mannahatta her Uncle Walt will be home yet, from the sick soldiers, and have a good walk all around, if she behaves to her grandmother and don’t cut up. Mother, I am scribbling this hastily in Major Hapgood’s office; it is not so hot to-day, quite endurable. ”

“ LIFE AMONG FIFTY THOUSAND SOLDIERS Our Brooklyn people, not only from having so many hundreds of their own kith and kin, and almost everybody some friend or acquaintance, here in the clustering military hospitals of Washington, would doubtless be glad to get some account of these establishments, but also to satisfy that compound of benevolence and generosity which marks Brooklyn, I have sometimes thought, more than any other city in the world. ”

“ Dear mother, I hope you are well, and little California—love to Jeff and Mat and all.
Walt.
Mother, you ought to get this letter Saturday forenoon, as it will be in N. Y. by sunrise Saturday, 7th.
Mother, the poor soldier with diarrhœa is still living, but, O, what a looking object; death would be a boon to him; he cannot last many hours. Cunningham, the Ohio boy with leg amputated at thigh, has picked up beyond expectation now!—looks altogether like getting well. The hospitals are very full. I am very well indeed—pretty warm here to-day. ”

“ The work of the army hospital visitor is indeed a trade, an art, requiring both experience and natural gifts, and the greatest judgment. A large number of the visitors to the hospitals do no good at all, while many do harm. The surgeons have great trouble from them. Some visitors go from curiosity—as to a show of animals. Others give the men improper things. Then there are always some poor fellows, in the crises of sickness or wounds, that imperatively need perfect quiet—not to be talked to by strangers. Few realize that it is not the mere giving of gifts that does good ”

“ Aunt Fanny, Ansel’s mother—she sent it by a young man, a wounded soldier who has been home to Farmingdale on furlough, and lately returned. She writes a first-rate letter, Quaker all over—I shall answer it. She says Mary and Ansel and all are well. I have received another letter from Mrs. Price—she has not good health. I am sorry for her from my heart; she is a good, noble woman, no better kind. Mother, I am in the hospitals as usual—I stand it better the last three weeks than ever before—I go among the worst fevers and wounds with impunity. ”

“ Frequently there are tents, more comfortable here than one might think, whatever they may be down in the army.
Each ward has a ward-master, and generally a nurse for every ten or twelve men. A ward surgeon has, generally, two wards—although this varies. Some of the wards have a woman nurse; the Armory-square wards have some very good ones. The one in Ward E is one of the best.
A few weeks ago the vast area of the second story of that noblest of Washington buildings, the Patent office, was crowded close with rows of sick, badly wounded, and dying soldiers. ”

“ The Government, as I said, is anxious and liberal in its practice toward its sick; but the work has to be left, in its personal application to the men, to hundreds of officials of one grade or another about the hospitals, who are sometimes entirely lacking in the right qualities. There are tyrants and shysters in all positions, and especially those dressed in subordinate authority. Some of the ward doctors are careless, rude, capricious, needlessly strict. ”

“ I have seen so much horrors that befall men (so bad and such suffering and mutilations, etc., that the poor men can defy their fate to do anything more or any harder misfortune or worse a-going) that I sometimes think I have grown callous—but no, I don’t think it is that, but nothing of ordinary misfortune seems as it used to, and death itself has lost all its terrors—I have seen so many cases in which it was so welcome and such a relief. ”

“ I believe a real overturn in the dead old beaten track of a man’s life, especially a young man’s, is always likely to turn out best, though it worries one at first dreadfully. Mat, I want to see you most sincerely—they haven’t put in anything in the last two or three letters about you, but I suppose you are well, my dear sister. ”

“ I have been wandering around all day, and have had a very good time, over woods, hills, and gullies—indeed, a real soldier’s march. The weather is good and the travelling quite tolerable. I have been in the camps of some Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York regiments. I have friends in them, and went out to see them, and see [Pg 151] soldiering generally, as I can never cease to crave more and more knowledge of actual soldiers’ life, and to be among them as much as possible. This evening I have also been in a large wagoners’ camp. ”

“ I believe there is not much but trouble in this world, and if one hasn’t any for himself he has it made up by having it brought close to him through others, and that is sometimes worse than to have it touch one’s self. Mother, you must not let Andrew’s case and the poor condition of his household comforts, etc., work upon you, for I fear you will—but, mother, it’s no use to worry about such things. ”

“ Washington is a pleasant place in some respects—it has the finest trees, and plenty of them everywhere, on the streets and grounds. The Capitol grounds, though small, have the finest cultivated trees I ever see—there is a great variety, and not one but is in perfect condition. After I finish this letter I am going out there for an hour’s recreation. The great sights of Washington are the public buildings, the wide streets, the public grounds, the trees, the Smithsonian institute and grounds. ”

“ It was one of those things that repay a soldiers’ hospital missionary a thousandfold—one of the hours he never forgets.
A benevolent person, with the right qualities and tact, cannot, perhaps, make a better investment of himself, at present, anywhere upon the [Pg 9] varied surface of the whole of this big world, than in these military hospitals, among such thousands of most interesting young men. The army is very young—and so much more American than I supposed. ”