The Hospital Transport
George Alfred Townsend, a war correspondent from the New York Herald, witnesses the final days of the Peninsula Campaign, hazards a trip on a hospital transport, and arrives at Fortress Monroe with a tale of the ages.
AN EXCERPT FROM THE SOON-TO-BE-RELEASED BOOK CAMPAIGNS OF A NON-COMBATANT: THE CIVIL WAR MEMOIR OF GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND, PUBLISHED BY HARDTACK BOOKS.
An earnest desire now took possession of me, to be the first of the correspondents to reach New York. The scenes just transpired had been unparalleled in the war, and if, through me, the —— should be the first to make them public, it would greatly redound to my credit. Perhaps no profession imparts an enthusiasm in any measure kindred to that of the American News gatherer. I was careless of the lost lives and imperiled interests, the suffering, the defeat: no emotions either of the patriot or the man influenced me. I only thought of the éclat of giving the story to the world and nurtured an insane desire to make it to Fortress Monroe, by some other than the common expedient. That this was a paltry ambition I know; but I write what happened, and to the completion of my sketch of a correspondent, this is necessary to be said. I found Glumley at the old mansion referred to, and stealthily suggested to him the seizing of an open boat, whereby we might row down to the Fortress. He rejected it as impracticable but was willing to hazard a horseback ride down the Peninsula. I knew that this would not do, and after a short time I continued my journey down the riverside, hopeful of finding some transport or Dispatch boat. I was now in Charles City County, and the river below me was dotted with woodland islands. I soon got upon the main road to Harrison’s Point or Bar and followed the stream of ambulances and supply teams for more than an hour. At last, we reached a diverging lane, through which we passed to a landing, close to a fine dwelling, whose style of architecture I may denominate, the “Gothic run mad.” An old cider-press was falling into rottenness on the lawn; four soldiers were guarding the well, that the mob might not exhaust its precious contents, and between some negro-huts and the brink of the bluff, stood a cluster of broad-armed trees, beneath whose shade the ambulance-drivers were depositing the wounded.
I have made these chapters sufficiently hideous, without venturing to transcribe these new horrors. Suffice it to say that the men whom I now beheld had been freshly brought from the fight of New Market and were suffering the first agonies of their wounds. One hour before, they had felt all the lustiness of life and adventure. Now, they were whining like babes, and some had expired in the ambulances. The act of lifting them to the ground so irritated their wounds that they howled dismally, and yet were so exhausted that after lying on the ground awhile, they quietly passed into sleep. Such are the hardening results of war, that some soldiers, who were unhurt, actually refused to give a trifle of river water from their canteens to their expiring comrades. At one time a brutal wrangle occurred at the well, and the guard was compelled to seek reinforcement, or the thirsty people would have massacred them.
This unflattering and exaggerated cartoon depicts General George B. McClellan as a spectator to the final days of the Seven Days Battle: “Fight on my brave soldiers and push the enemy to the wall, from this spanker boom your beloved General looks down upon you..”
I was now momentarily adding to my notes of the battles, and the wounded men very readily gave me their names; for they were anxious that the account of their misfortunes should reach their families, and I think also, that some martial vanity lingered, even among those who were shortly to crumble away. A longboat came in from the Galena, after a time, and General McClellan, who had ridden down to the pier, was taken aboard. He looked to be very hot and anxious, and while he remained aboard the vessel, his staff dispersed themselves around the banks and talked over the issues of the contest. As the General receded from the strand, every sweep of the long oars was responded to from the hoarse cannon of the battlefield, and when he climbed upon deck, the steamer moved slowly up the narrow channel, and the signalman in the fore top flourished his crossed flag sturdily. Directly, the Galena opened fire from her immense pieces of ordnance, and the roar was so great that the explosions of field-guns were fairly drowned. She fired altogether in the direction of the signals, as nothing could be seen of the battlefield from her decks. I ascertained afterward that she played havoc with our own columns as well as the enemies, but she brought hope to the one, and terror to the other. The very name of [the] gunboat affrighted the Confederates, and they were assured, in this case, that the retreating invaders had at length reached a haven. The Galena kept up a steady fire till nightfall, and the Federals, taking courage, drove their adversaries toward Richmond, at eve. Meanwhile, the Commanding General’s escort and bodyguard had encamped around us, and during the night, the teams and much of the field cannon fell back. I obtained shelter and meals from Quartermaster Le Duke of Iowa, whose canvas was pitched a mile or more below, and as I tossed through the watches I heard the splashing of water in the river beneath, where the tired soldiers were washing away the powder of the battle.
From Harper’s Weekly, a depiction of the Galena as she appeared in 1862 in support of General McClellan's operations along the James River.
In the morning, I retraced to headquarters and vainly endeavored to learn something as to the means of going down the river. Commanders are always anxious to grant correspondents passes after a victory; but they wish to defer the unwelcome publication of a defeat. I was advised by Quartermaster-General Van Vleet, however, to proceed to Harrison’s Bar, and, as I passed thither, the last day’s encounters—those of “Malvern Hills”—occurred. The scenes along the way were reiterations of terrors already described — creaking ambulances, staggering foot soldiers, profane waggoners, skulking officers and privates, officious Provost guards, defiles, pools and steeps packed with teams and cannon, wayside houses beset with begging, gossiping, or malicious soldiers, and wavy fields of wheat and rye thrown open to man and beast. I was amused at one point, to see some soldiers attack a beehive that might seize the honey. But the insects fastened themselves upon some of the marauders, and after indescribable cursing and struggling, the bright nectar and comb were relinquished by the toilers, and the ravishers gorged upon sweetness.Harrison’s Bar is simply a long wharf, extending into the river, close by the famous mansion, where William Henry Harrison, a President of the United States, was born, and where, for two centuries, the scions of a fine old Virginia family have made their homestead. The house had now become a hospital, and the wounded were being conveyed to the pier, whence they were delivered over to some Sanitary steamers, for passage to Northern cities. I tied my horse to the spokes of a wagon-wheel, and asked a soldier to watch him, while I repaired to the quay. A half-drunken officer was guarding the wharf with a squad of men, and he denied me admittance, at first, but when I had said something in adulation of his regiment—a trick common to correspondents—he passed me readily. The ocean steamer Daniel Webster was about to be cast adrift when I stepped on board, and Colonel Ingalls, Quartermaster in charge, who freely gave me permission to take passage in her, advised me not to risk returning to shore. So, reluctantly, I resigned my pony, endeared to me by a hundred adventures, and directly I was floating down the James, with the white teams and the tattered groups of men, receding from me, and each moment the guns of Malvern Hills growing fainter. Away! Praised be a merciful God! away from the accursed din, and terror, and agony, of my second campaign, — away forever from the Chickahominy.
Built in 1853 for passenger transport along the Maine coast, the Daniel Webster served as a transport ship during the Civil War. After being recommissioned as a tourist vessel, it sank following a fire in 1884.
For a while I sat meditatively in the bow of the boat, full of strange perplexities and thankfulness. I had escaped the bullet, and fever, and captivity, and a great success in my profession was about to be accorded to me, but there was much work yet to be done. The rough material I had for a grand account of the closing of the campaign; but these fragmentary figures and notes must be wrought into narrative, and to avail myself of their full significance, I must lose no moment of application. I found that I was one of four correspondents on board, and we resolved to distract the boat, each correspondent taking one fourth of the names of the sick and wounded. The spacious saloons, the clean deck, the stairways, the gangways, the hold, the halls, — all were filled with victims. They lay in rows upon straw beds, they limped feverishly here and there; some were crazed from sunstroke, or gashes; and one man that I remember counted the rivets in the boilers over the whole hundred miles of the journey, while another, — a teamster, — whipped and cursed his horses as if he had mistaken the motion of the boat for that of his vehicle.The Daniel Webster was one of a series of transports supplied for the uses of the wounded by a national committee of private citizens. Her woodwork was shining and glossy, her steel shone like mirrors, and she was cool as Paradise. Out of the smoke, and turmoil, and suffocation of battle these wretched men had emerged, to enjoy the blessedness, unappreciated before, of shelter, and free air and cleanliness. There was ice in abundance on board, and savory lemonade lay glassily around in great buckets. Women flitted from group to group with jellies, bonbons, cigars, and oranges, and the grateful eyes of the prostrate people might have melted one to tears. These women were enthusiasts of all ages and degrees, who proffered themselves, at the beginning of the war, as stewardesses and nurses. From the fact that some of them were of masculine natures, or, in the vocabulary of the times, “strong-minded,” they were the recipients of many coarse jests, and imputations were made upon both their modesty and their virtue. But I would that any satirist had watched with me the good offices of these Florence Nightingales of the West, as they tripped upon merciful errands, like good angels, and left paths of sunshine behind them. The soldiers had seen none of their countrywomen for months, and they followed these ambassadors with looks half-idolatrous, half-downcast, as if consciously unworthy of so tender regard.“If I could jest die, now,” said one of the poor fellows to me, “with one prayer for my country, and one for that dear young lady!”
Colonel Rufus Ingalls allowed passage to Townsend aboard a hospital transport. Later in the war, Grant would place him in charge of operations at City Point, Virginia.
There was one of these daughters of the good Samaritan whose face was so full of coolness, and her robes so airy, flowing, and graceful, that it would have been no miracle had she transmuted herself to something divine. She was very handsome, and her features bore the imprint of that high enthusiasm which may have animated the maid of Arc. One of the more forward of the correspondents said to her, as she bore soothing delicacies to the invalids, that he missed the satisfaction of being wounded, at which she presented an orange and a cigar to each of us in turn. Among the females on board, I remarked one, very large, angular, and sanguine, who sat at a small table, dispensing luxuries with the manners of a despot and the charity of a child. She had a large vessel of boiling coffee, from which she drew spicy quantities at intervals; and when the troops thronged around eagerly, she rebuked the more forward, and called up some emaciated, bashful fellows, giving them the preference. Every soldier who accepted coffee was obliged to take a religious tract, and she gave them away with a grim satisfaction that was infinitely amusing and interesting. I ventured to ask this imperative person for a bottle of ink, and after some difficulty, — arising out of a mistaken notion on her part that I was dangerously wounded, —she vaulted over a chair, and disappeared into a stateroom. When she returned, her arms were filled with a perfect wilderness of stationery, and having supplied each of us in turn, she addressed herself to me in the following sententious manner: —“See here! You reporter! (There’s ink!) I want to be put in the newspapers! Look at me! Now! Right straight! (Pens?) Here I am; thirteen months at work; been everywhere; done good; country; church; never noticed. Never!—Now! I want to be put in newspapers.”At this point, the Imperatress was called off by some soldiers, who presumed to draw coffee without her consent. She slapped one of them soundly, and at once overpowered him with kindnesses, and tracts; then she returned and gave me a photograph, representing herself with a basket of fruit, and a quantity of good books. I took note of her name, but unfortunately lost the memorandum, and unless some more careful scribe has honored her, I fear that her labors are still unrecognized.During much of the trip, I wrote material parts of my report, copied portions of my lists, and managed before dusk, to get fairly underway with my narrative. From the deck of the steamer, I beheld at five o’clock, what I had long wished to see, — the famous island of Jamestown, celebrated in the early annals of the New World, as the home of John Smith, and of Nathaniel Bacon, and as the resort of the Indian Princess, Pocahontas. A single fragment of a tower, the remnant of the colonial church, was the only ruin that I could see.At seven o’clock we dropped anchor in Hampton Roads, and a boat let down from the davits. Some of my wily compeers endeavored to fill all the stern seats, that I might not be pulled to shore; but I swung down by a rope, and made havoc with their shins, so that they gained nothing; the surf beat so vehemently against the pier at Old Point, that we were compelled to beach the boat, and I ran rapidly through the ordnance yard to the “Hygeia House,” where our agent boarded; he had gone into the Fortress to pass the night, and when I attempted to follow him thither, a knot of anxious idlers, who knew that I had just returned from the battle-fields, attempted to detain me by sheer force. I dashed rapidly up the plank walk, reached the portal, and had just vaulted into the area, when the great gates swung to, and the tattoo beat; at the same instant the sergeant of guard challenged me: —“Who comes there? Stand fast! Guard prime!”A dozen bright musket-barrels were levelled upon me, and I heard the click of the cocks as the fingers were laid upon the triggers. When I had explained, I was shown the Commandant’s room, and hastening in that direction, encountered Major Larrabee, my old patron of the 5th Wisconsin regiment. He took me to the barracks, where a German officer, commanding a battery, lodged, and the latter accommodated me with a camp bedstead. Here I related the incidents of the engagements, and before I concluded, the room was crowded with people. I think that I gave a somber narration, and the hearts of those who heard me were cast down. Still, they lingered; for the bloody story possessed a hideous fascination, and I was cross-examined so pertinaciously that my host finally arose, protesting that I needed rest, and turned the party out of the place. The old fever-dreams returned to me that night, and my brain spun round for hours before I could close my eyes.Credit: Campaigns of a Non-Combatant by George A. TownsendAll images are from the Library of Congress unless otherwise noted.