Sarah Hopper Gibbons Emerson to Sydney Howard Gay from Washington, 1864

Sarah Hopper Gibbons Emerson to Sydney Howard Gay from Washington, 1864

Emerson, Sarah Hopper Gibbons, ed. Life of Abby Hopper Gibbons: Told Chiefly Through Her Correspondence. New York, G.P. Putnam and Sons, 1896, pp. 88-93. Transcribed by John Hennessy.

We have had a wonderful experience of the horrors of war at Fredericksburg, and every variety of painful scene. How often I thought of poor Sarah Shaw! If she had been with us she would have been ready to exclaim every hour of the day, 'Thank God that my dear son was struck down suddenly!' No newspaper has exaggerated a single fact. Cut up and then wriggled over the most fearful roads to be changed from ambulance to filthy floor, with scarcity of everything. Then taken again to cars, then to Transport and again to Hospital. All this we see, and the dead and dying lifted from each conveyance.

In all this terrible life and death, one little incident occurred worthy of record. As Mrs. General Barlow was bending over a young and perhaps reckless boy, who was about to die, she heard him singing the song "Possum up a gum tree," etc. His voice became every moment more feeble, when a member of the Christian Commission rushed up to her saying, 'Madam, did you catch his last words?' Imagine the horror-stricken missionary when she repeated them. Oh, what a set of pious loafers these men are! in the main! A few are to be respected and honored. I saw five of their number, with their silver, or perhaps plated shields, at the grave of Washington's mother, cracking away at the marble Tomb, to secure pieces to carry away. They regard neither law nor order, and give their liquor indiscriminately. Dr. Harris told me they went into one of his hospitals, and gave his men brandy just after the stimulants had been administered by his ward-master, and when he stepped in, he 'found them all fuddled' to use his own words.

The Sanitary Commission is a blessing beyond calculation. I never before knew what it was after a battle. But for it, thousands would die, and then the comfort and confidence they give the poor fellows!

When we arrived at Belle Plain, we found a train of ambulances filled with wounded, two and a half miles long. These we saw placed on Transports, we fed them, wetted their wounds and remained with them until twelve at night, when they left to go a distance of three miles and be again transferred to the Connecticut. The water was too shallow to allow her to approach the wharf.