As usual, I went to the hospital, and found Miss T. in much
trouble. A peremptory order has been given by the Surgeon-General to remove all
patients. In the opinion of our surgeon, to five of them it would be
certain death. The ambulances were at the door. Miss T. and myself decided to
go at once to the Medical Director and ask him to recall the order. We were
conducted to his office, and, for the first time since the entrance of the
Federal army, were impolitely treated. On two occasions we had been obliged to
make application to officials, and had been received with great respect and consideration,
and we believe it has been uniformly the case; and we were, therefore, very
much surprised when a request which seemed to us so reasonable was at first
refused most decidedly. We could not give up our application, as it seemed to
be a matter of life and death; so we told him what our surgeon had said, and
that we hoped he would reconsider his order. He replied, that he should send a
surgeon with the ambulances, and if in his judgment they could be
removed, it should be done without hesitation, as he was determined to break up
the small hospitals which you have all about town, (ours is the only
small hospital in town,) and that he had ordered neither rations nor medicines
to be issued to them. Miss T. told him that nothing of the sort was necessary;
she had never asked nor received rations from the Federal Government; that she
had now but five men under her care, and they were desperately wounded, and she
would greatly prefer that the hospital should be considered in the light of a
private establishment, which we could take care of without asking help. A
change came over his countenance, but not his manner; he brusquely told us that
he would “see about it.” In an hour afterwards the surgeon and the ambulance
came, but after what seemed to me rather a pompous display of surgical
examination and learned medical terms, addressed to the lady-nurses, he
determined to leave our dear mangled soldiers to our care. One of them is in a
dying condition; he cannot survive many hours.
We had no service in our churches to-day. An order came out
in this morning's papers that the prayers for the President of the United
States must be used. How could we do it? Mr. ——— went to the hospital by the
request of Colonel Richardson, and had prayers in his room. Ambulances are
constantly passing with horses in the finest possible condition — even finer
than ours were in the beginning of the war. It seems to me passing strange
that, with all their advantages, we kept them at bay so long, and conquered
them so often. Had one port been left open to us — only one, by which we might
have received food and clothing — Richmond would not now be in their hands; our
men were starved into submission.
SOURCE: Judith W. McGuire, Diary of a Southern
Refugee, During the War, p. 354-5
