Showing posts with label Ahnira L Fales. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ahnira L Fales. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

From Pittsburg Landing

Mr. Wm. M. Osborn returned to this city Saturday from Pittsburg Landing, where he has spent a couple of weeks among the camps, hospitals, etc. etc.  He says there is considerable sickness among our troops, who are not acclimated.  The water disagrees with them.  Mrs. Harlan and Mrs. Fales, he thinks are doing more for the sick than all the Governors who have visited Pittsburgh.  Hey are laboring indefatigably and deserve great praise.  One thousand sick Iowa soldiers are in the various camps and hospitals in the vicinity of the late battle field.  Mrs. Harlan will send a steamboat load to Burlington if they can be taken care of.  She has already sent another load to Keokuk, which is expected daily.  She says hospital stores sent from this State to Doctor Douglas are used for general purposes and not for Iowa troops – that she had great difficulty in getting articles contributed by our people to use for our soldiers where they were greatly needed.

Mr. Osborne saw only a portion of our troops – did not get to see those in Gen. Pope’s division.  He says the older regiments are in the best condition – the new ones suffer most from sickness.  The 15th and 16th have a large number of sick.  It is not true that the 2nd Cavalry has been or is to be disbanded.  It is one of the best in the service.  He met Capt. McFarland, of Mt. Pleasant, sick, also Lieutenant, now acting Captain Clune, of this city, sick.  Clune has been well since he entered the service until the present time, and has done remarkably well. – He is well spoken of in the Regiment, as a good and efficient officer, active and courageous, all of which we take pleasure in recording.

Mr. O thinks there will not be a battle there for a week or perhaps more – perhaps not at all.  But of this he is by no means certain.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, May 24, 1862, p. 1

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Mrs. Harlan . . .

. . . wife of Senator Harlan, Mrs. Fales, of Muscatine and Mrs. Annie [Wittenmeyer], agent of the Ladies’ Aid Society, arrived at Keokuk on Wednesday last.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Monday Morning, April 28, 1862, p. 1

Friday, January 15, 2010

Iowa Ladies and the Wounded

Our readers will be gratified to learn that the patriotic benevolence which is laboring so zealously through State and local organizations for the relief of the wounded braves of Iowa, is meeting a hearty co-operation from those who, while temporarily residing out of the Hawkeye State, delight to show their devotion to it by their willingness to aid its suffering sons. Mrs. Harlan, wife of Senator Harlan, and Mrs. Fales, wife of Jos. T. Fales, formerly Auditor of the State, are now at Cairo under authority from the Secretary of War to visit any and all places where sick and wounded soldiers from Iowa may be located, empowered to draw on the proper officers for transportation, when necessary, and provided with an order to all officers of the service to afford them courtesy, protection and aid. – These ladies will gladly receive any necessary or delicacy for sick or wounded soldiers from Iowa which may be consigned to their care, and the ladies of our State may be assured that articles thus intrusted will be carefully and effectively distributed. In thus leaving the fashionable enjoyments of Washington society to become the almoners of the bounty of the ladies of Iowa, and angels of mercy to the suffering, these ladies will certainly receive the thanks of the patriotic of their sex throughout the State. The fair ones of Iowa – at home and abroad – are working for those who have suffered so much for our State and the Union. Verily, we can be proud of Iowa.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Tuesday Morning, April 22, 1862, p. 1

Friday, August 21, 2009

Hon. James Harlan . . .

. . . passed through this city on Monday evening, on his way to his home in Mt. Pleasant. Mrs. Harlan and Mrs. Fales have gone to the Pittsburg battlefield to render assistance to the wounded. They will take charge of any articles which may be sent for the use to the hospitals.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, April 26, 1862, p. 1

Saturday, August 8, 2009

Washington Correspondence

WASHINGTON, April 15, 1862.

Was the battle at Pittsburgh a victory, or was it not a victory? Did the secretary of War “put his foot in it,” in making it the subject of devout thanksgiving, or did he not? These are about the commonest questions agitated here just now. I think the general judgment is very clearly – certainly it is mine – that it was a victory, but not one to brag about, very much; and that Secretary Stanton was a little more hasty and inconsiderate than the occasion justified, in the extent and character of his thanks.

Mrs. Harlan and Mrs. Fales from Iowa, left here a few days ago for Pittsburg, to assist in the nursing of our wounded soldiers. Mrs. Harlan is the wife of our estimable Senator, and has all the season manifested a practical interest in the welfare of our soldiers. Of Mrs. Fales I desire to speak especially, for she is deserving of public notice. She is the wife of Mr. Joseph T. Fales, and was formerly a resident of Burlington. Her husband is an Assistant Examiner in the Patent Office. From the first arrival of troops here, she has devoted her attention exclusively to alleviating the sufferings of the sick and wounded. Day and night she has been wherever her services were most needed, and I have been greatly surprised that she or any other woman was physically able to endure such incessant and exhausting labor. Nevertheless she goes about her business with a daily renewed vigor, not with any desire for notoriety, but under a sense of plain Christian duty. And she brings to the discharge of her duties and unusual fund of practical good sense and efficiency.

Our friend Samuel F. Miller, of Iowa, has just left here. If a new circuit is created west of the Mississippi, he will be a candidate for nomination to the Supreme Bench of the United States. I think you will agree with me that there are few men who, in all respects, are better fitted for the position, and certainly to men of our ways of thinking few would be more satisfactory. I would be very glad to swap off for him any member now sitting on that Bench.

The speech of Senator Grimes on the connection of negroes with the army, yesterday, meets with much applause from all those who have a realizing sense of the condition and tendency of things. It goes to the root of the matter, and many of those to whom his ideas are distasteful think – “fear,” they say – that “to this complexion must we come at last.” The delay in traveling towards the goal to which we are traveling and must travel, is costing us an amount of debt and blood that, in the retrospect, will cause us to shudder, and to ask why we should have been so blind, so reluctant, and so cowardly.

The next encounter with the Merrimac is awaited with the liveliest interest here, and I am persuaded is also a matter of much fear at the Navy Department, notwithstanding the bold face that is assumed. Several new kinds of shot have been provided for the Monitor, among them shells with a liquid that takes fire on explosion, similar to, or the same as, those that have been experimentally exploded there during the winter. Of their frightful nature, I have been witness. Water has no effect in quenching their flames.

The Com. Levy, of the Navy, who was buried with such honors in New York, two or three weeks ago, was a Jew, and the possessor of the homestead of Thomas Jefferson, “Monticello.” He was very rich. He has not, however, been allowed to enjoy the estate of Mr. Jefferson, as having married his own niece, the gentlemen of the region notified him, on its purchase, that he could not be allowed to live among them, on account of this marital alliance, at which they expressed an exceeding disgust. They gave him the privilege of residing on it one month in the year, merely that he might be able to look after its condition. A short time since it was “confiscated” by Virginia, though the Union army are likely soon to bring it back for the benefit of his heirs.

It would seem strange, that people, and a daily paper, right here in this city, should, as they do, vehemently maintain, even yet, that there were no wooden guns at Centerville, and try to bring those into contempt and ridicule who maintain the fact. And strange, too, that such a journal as Harper’s Weekly, that must know the facts should persistently lampoon and caricature, in the must imprudent and malignant manner people of character for asserting and insisting on the veracity of the statement. There are hundreds here who saw those guns. Mr. Julian, of the War Committee, told me he saw them himself, and should have counted them if he ever supposed their existence would have been questioned. Mr. Elbert, from Iowa, just appointed Secretary of Colorado, was there early with his brother, who is an officer in the army, and tells me the same thing; and that it was apparent that they had long been there, - in fact no other guns could stand upon their foundations without breaking through. Surely the partisanship of McClellan must be very blind and bitter to need the denial of such indisputable facts. Still, perhaps I am myself quite as unreasonable in the other extreme, for it is my deliberate and unimpassioned opinion that the war has not disclosed and cannot disclose such another stupendous humbug as Gen. McClellan. I greatly fear an unfortunate result in the limited (though immensely important) field to which his department has finally been reduced, though the extent and character of his force together with the completeness of its equipment give me a moderate degree of assurance that the campaign cannot fail.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, April 26, 1862, p. 1