BELLE PLAIN, VA., May 13, 1864.
On the S. C. boat, pulling up to the shore Government flatboats of
horses and cavalry recruits. There are no docks and the army supplies are being
landed from barges connected by pontoons with the shore. A constant stream of
contrabands passing with bags of grain and barrels of pork on their shoulders.
Dr. Douglas and Dr. Agnew are here. Good Dr. Cuyler is here. Senator Pomeroy is
on board going down to bring up General Bartlett of Massachusetts who went into
the fight with a Palmer leg and was wounded again. Col. —— tells me there has
been great anxiety at the War Department. Mr. Stanton said to him, “When we
have a victory the whole North shall know it.”—“And when there is silence?”
said Col. ——. “Then,” said the Secretary, “there is no communication with the
front.” We have a Feeding-Station on shore and are putting up another two miles
away, on the hill, where ambulance trains halt sometimes for hours, owing to
obstructions in the road. The mud is frightful and the rain is coming on again.
We are directed to take the return train of ambulances for Fredericksburg.
Just as I finished, the train from Fredericksburg arrived. Nothing I
have ever seen equals the condition of these men. They had been two or three
days in the ambulances; roads dreadful; no food. We have been at work with them
from morning till night without ceasing; filling one boat, feeding the men;
filling another, feeding them. There is no sort of use in trying to tell you
the story. I can scarcely bear to think of it. All the nurses and cooks from
the Invalid Corps of our Hospital, who marched off that day, Sullivan, Lewis
and the rest, armed with muskets again, are down here guarding prisoners.
Yesterday a squad of rebel officers was marched on board a boat lying by ours.
I had to pass through their ranks to get supplies from our boat, and shook
hands with our boys and saw the officers; Stewart and Bradley Johnson among
them; strong well-fed, iron looking men, all of them. There's no give in in
such looking men as these. Our soldiers from the front say the rebels stand—
stand—in solid masses, giving and taking tremendous blows and never being
shoved an inch. It is magnificent!
No words can express the horrible confusion of this place. The wounded
arrive one train a day, but the trains are miles long; blocked by all sorts of
accidents, wagon trains, bad roads, broken bridges; two, three days on the way,
plunged in quagmires, jolted over corduroy, without food, fainting, starving;
filthy; frightfully wounded, arms gone to the shoulder, horrible wounds in face
and head. I would rather a thousand times have a friend killed on the field
than suffer in this way. It is worse than White House, Harrison's, or
Gettysburg by far. Many die on the way. We found thirty-five dead in the
ambulances yesterday, and six more died on the stretchers while being put on
board the boats. The boats are anything that can be got hold of, cattle scows,
anything. Barges of horses are landed by the side of the transports and the
horses cross the deck where the helpless men lie. Mules, stretchers, army
wagons, prisoners, dead men and officials as good as dead are tumbled and
jumbled on the wretched dock which falls in every little while and keeps the
trains waiting for hours. We fed the men at once. We fed all the five boats
that got off yesterday. There is no Government provision for this, beyond
bread; no coffee, no soup, no cups or pails, or vessels of any kind for holding
food. The men eat as if starving. These had been three days without food. We
are ordered to Fredericksburg today to report to Dr. Douglas, as there is more
misery there than here.
SOURCE: Jane Stuart Woolsey, Hospital
Days, p. 150-1
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