Part 3

Our hospital boat was lying alongside of other steamers. The rain was falling steadily. We could hear the heavy guns, the screaming of the shells, the thunder of the battle going on near by. As the light increased, we shivered to see the wounded lying on bags of grain and out on the guards, and the dead, who had been carried from the boats, lying mangled and bloody along the shore of the river. At first we could only cover our faces with our hands in a shiver and chill of agony, in the attempt to hide the horrid sights of war from our eyes.

But as we stood there a feeble hand was lifted, and a feeble voice called out,--

“Say, lady! Can’t you bring me a drink of water?”

Immediately a hundred hands were lifted. We could scarcely see them in the faint light of the early morning, but we could hear the voices.

“Bring me some water.”

“Bring me something to eat.”

I called out cheerily,--

“Yes, yes; _we’ll help you all we can_.”

It was a great relief to have something to do. We went with gladness to our work. I was the pioneer, and went right onto the boat lying nearest.

The surgeon in charge of our hospital boat had gone off to the field. There was no one in authority left on the boat, and we took possession.

I had several boxes of canned oysters, and three or four barrels of crackers, but we soon exhausted these; then we began on the beef in the storeroom.

Barrels of soup were made and distributed. The other two ladies made the soup, and I distributed it from boat to boat, and from one to another. Oh, the sights and scenes I witnessed that day!

As I was carrying a bucket of soup across a gang-plank, an officer met me. He came bounding forward, with his sword clanging by his side.

“Madam,” he said, “what are you doing?”

I was startled nearly out of my wits, but I managed to say,--

“I am carrying soup to the wounded.”

“Why, you ought not to do that. See here, soldier, I detail you to carry soup for this woman.”

The soldier sprang forward and took the bucket of soup from my hand, and the officer went on. I never knew who he was. If this falls under his eyes, I want to thank him for his thoughtfulness. On and on, all day, I went with my assistant, while the two lady helpers worked as fast as they possibly could, to get the food ready.

The distribution of food was very rapid. Men with broken legs and arms and gashed faces would hold out their tin cups or canteens to be filled. The tin cups were easily filled, but the canteens took longer. When they saw us coming, they would pound on the floor or on the side of the boat, calling piteously,--

“_Don’t pass me by._ I am here, lady; please give me some soup.”

“Please, lady, pour some water on my arm, it is so dry and hot and the wound hurts so.”

Without a moment’s relaxation the day passed in this kind of work.

In the afternoon the gunboats stopped firing, and the news came that the Confederates were driven back.

Oh, how much that meant to us all; for through all that morning the boats had their full head of steam on, so that if the army was driven to the river, as many as possible could escape by that means.

Now and then I would help a surgeon who was dressing some of the worst wounds. My clothing was wet and muddy to the knees, and covered with blood, but I did not see it. I had not eaten a mouthful of food since the night before, but I did not know it. I was entirely unconscious of weariness and human needs.

It was about ten o’clock at night when some one asked,--

“Did you have supper?” This little question called me to the consciousness of my condition.

“No,” I answered; “I have not had a mouthful to eat since yesterday evening.”

A surgeon operating near by looked at me earnestly, and then said, with the voice of authority,--

“Madam, stop work immediately. We will have you on our hands next.”

I was cutting a fragment of a blue blouse away from the arm of a wounded young soldier. I continued my work till the bits of the blouse were gotten out, as far as I could see, then laid on a wet compress.

“Oh! thank you,” he said, with grateful tears in his eyes.

I went back to the cabin of the hospital boat and had my supper. After changing my clothes I sat down on a divan, feeling almost too weak and exhausted to stir. A chaplain came on the boat, inquiring for me. When he met me he seized my hand and began to bellow. I have never heard anything like it. When I saw him, I knew that he was crazy. The officers of the boat ran back to see what was the matter, and somehow the surgeon in charge managed to get him into a stateroom and lock him in, and place guards at the door, and the next day he was sent up with the other patients to St. Louis on that boat.

Early the next morning I was transferred with the little baggage I had to another boat set aside for hospital workers. My fine dress, which I had worn for the first time the day before, was wet and muddy, and I pitched it into the river.

Dr. Grinstead, now living in Washington City, was placed in charge of the boat.

The Confederates had retreated toward Corinth, Miss., but there was still firing in the distance. Early in the day I went up the steep bank and out on the battle-field.

The wounded had been gathered up as far as I could see, but many of the dead were still lying where they fell.

Not far from the landing there were some tents. In one of these tents a son of Sam Houston, of Texas, lay on the ground with others, the gray and the blue lying together. Young Houston was severely wounded in the thigh. I talked with him kindly of his grand, loyal father, and ministered to him as best I could. I saw him many times afterwards, the last time a prisoner at Camp Douglass, near Chicago. If this by any possibility passes under his notice, and he has not forgotten my treatment of him when he was a wounded prisoner, I will be glad to hear from him. I went toward a house on the right, but before I reached it I saw two men coming, carrying a wounded soldier.

They had made a seat by clasping their hands, and his arms were thrown about their necks. I went forward to meet them.

“Oh, set me down by that tree! I can go no farther,” he cried.

They carried him as tenderly as they could, and placed him between the great roots of a very large tree. His breast was bare, and the blood was slowly oozing out of a wound in his lungs.

“I am dying,” he said, “can’t somebody pray?” Both men were weeping. If he was not a brother, he was a friend; I answered promptly, “I can pray.” I knelt there on the damp ground, and taking one of his hands in my own, I asked in simple words the heavenly Father to forgive and bless. He responded to each petition. I kept on praying till he said, “The way is light now, I do not fear.” There was a little gasp, a shiver, and all was still. As I knelt there I closed his eyes and said,--

“He is dead.”

“Yes,” they answered with a sob.

“He is dead, and this is all we can do. We will report the case, and have the grave marked.” And we turned away and left him there. An hour afterwards I returned that way. It was a most impressive sight to see a dead man sitting there so calmly and peacefully, with eyes closed, dead and cold. When I passed that way again, they had taken him away.

The country can never pay those who went out and heroically defended the flag. Such scenes as these bring gray hairs before their time to those who looked on. What must it have been to those in the midst of the fight?

JOHNNIE CLEM.

THE DRUMMER BOY OF SHILOH AND THE BOY HERO OF CHICKAMAUGA, CHATTANOOGA.

Johnnie Clem, who lived at Newark, Ohio, was perhaps the youngest and smallest recruit in the Union Army. The army historian, Lossing, says that he was probably the youngest person who ever bore arms in battle.

He was born at Newark, Ohio, Aug. 13, 1851, and his full name was John Winton Clem. He was of German-French descent, and the family spell the name Klem, and not Clem. His sister Lizzie, who is now Mrs. Adams, and lives on the Granville road near Newark, gives the following statement to a visitor:--

It being Sunday, May 24, 1861, and the rebellion in progress, Johnnie said at dinner table,--

“Father, I’d like mighty well to be a drummer boy. Can’t I go into the Union army?”

“Tut! my boy, what nonsense! You are not ten years old,” was the father’s reply; and he thought no more about it. When he disappeared, he had no thought that he had gone into the service. That afternoon Johnnie took charge of his sister Lizzie, seven years old, and his little brother Lewis, five years old, and took them to the Sunday-school room, and left them there.

As Johnnie did not return, the father and step-mother were greatly distressed, fearing he had gone to the canal and gone in for a swim, for he was an expert swimmer, and had been drowned. They searched far and near to find him, and had the water drawn from the head of the canal that they might find his body, but all in vain. Several weeks past before they heard from him, and then they got word through a woman living at Mount Vernon, who had been a neighbor to them at Newark, that Johnnie had been there, and that she had sent him home in care of the conductor.

It seems that Johnnie moved on the sympathies of the conductor, who took him on to Columbus, where he joined the Twenty-fourth Ohio Regiment; but ascertaining that an uncle was in that regiment, he left it and joined the Twenty-second Michigan.

He was an expert drummer; and being a bright, cheerful little fellow, he soon won his way into the confidence and affection of officers and men.

He was in many battles; at Shiloh, Perryville, Murfreesboro, Chattanooga, Chickamauga, Nashville, and Kenesaw, and in other engagements in which the Army of the Cumberland took part.

When he entered the army, being too young to be mustered in, he went with the regiment, the Twenty-second Michigan, as a volunteer, until the battle of Shiloh.

When he was beating the long roll at the battle of Shiloh, a piece of shell struck his drum and sent it flying in fragments. He was after that called “Johnnie Shiloh.”

He was afterwards mustered in, and served also as a marker, and with his little musket so served on the battle-field of Chattanooga. At the close of that bloody day, the brigade in which he was, being partly surrounded by rebels, was retreating, when he, being unable to fall back as fast as the rest of the line, was singled out by a rebel colonel who rode up to him with the summons, “Scoundrel, halt! Surrender, you ---- little Yankee!”

Johnnie halted, and brought his gun into position as though he was about to surrender, thus throwing the colonel off his guard. In another moment the gun was cocked, fired, and the colonel fell dead from his horse.

His regiment was pursued, and a volley was fired at that moment, and Johnnie fell as though he had been killed, and lay there on the field until it was dark enough for him to slip away unnoticed. At Chickamauga he was struck with a fragment of a shell in the hip. He was taken prisoner with others while detailed to bring up a supply train from Bridgeport, Ala.

He fared hard as a prisoner. His sister, Mrs. Adams, says, “The rebels stripped him of everything--his clothes, his shoes, his little gun--an ordinary musket, I suppose, cut short--and his little cap. He said he did not care about anything but his cap; he did want to save that, and it hurt him sorely to part with it, for it had three bullet holes through it.” When exchanged he was given a furlough and sent home for a week. He was weak and emaciated from starvation, and his clothes were a bundle of rags. He had been absent about two years in the army, and was at that time in his twelfth year.

I did not meet him at Shiloh, but became acquainted with him at Chattanooga, when he was in the hospital there, and saw him frequently when he was on General Thomas’s staff.

He was a fair and beautiful child then, about twelve years old, but very small of his age. He was at that time only about thirty inches high and weighed about sixty pounds.

At Atlanta, while in the act of delivering a despatch from General Thomas to General Logan, a ball struck the head of his pony obliquely, killing him, and wounding his little rider in the right ear.

For his heroic conduct, he was made a sergeant, and his name placed on the Roll of Honor, and he was attached to Headquarters of the Army of the Cumberland.

Shortly afterwards he received from Nettie M. Chase, the daughter of Chief Justice Chase, a silver medal inscribed:--

SERGEANT JOHNNIE CLEM, TWENTY-SECOND MICHIGAN VOLUNTEER INFANTRY, FROM N. M. C.

which he worthily wears as a badge of honor on his left breast with other medals.

When the war was over, General Thomas advised him to study and make a man of himself. He studied at West Point, but on account of his size he could not enter as a cadet. In 1890 he weighed one hundred and five pounds and was only five feet high. His wife, Annita, the daughter of General Wm. H. French, U.S.A., is also small and delicate, weighing about seventy pounds. General Grant commissioned him as a lieutenant. He is now captain of the twenty-fourth U.S. Infantry, and is stationed at Columbus, Ohio, and holds the important office of depot quartermaster and commissary.

He has one son living, who is very like him, only he will be larger.

From recent correspondence he seems to be the same kindly, great-hearted Johnnie as when I first met him at Chattanooga, Tenn.

ARMY TRICKS.

There were many tricks played on the officers, just for the fun of the thing, during the war, especially if the troops remained long at any one camping-place.

In one of the many camps of the Union soldiers, an odd trick was played off on the surgeon and chaplain of a regiment noted for its merry-making.

The troops were camped by a small stream, over which was a narrow, rickety bridge.

Just across from the camp was a log cabin, in which lived an old woman alone.

The woman paid no attention to the soldiers, but went about her daily duties as though unconscious of their presence.

One day some of the boys passed the cabin, and hurrying over the rickety bridge, came running into the camp with the message, “The old woman in the cabin is dying!” The chaplain and surgeon were notified.

“Chaplain, hurry over quick! The old woman is dying!”

The chaplain hurried over the rickety bridge as rapidly as possible; the surgeon soon followed. As the chaplain came round to the open door he saw at a glance that it was a trick, and he passed on around the house, so as to allow the surgeon to come on and bear a full share of the joke.

The woman _was dyeing_. She _was over a kettle of butternut juice dyeing a lot of yarn_.

When the two came back over the bridge the whole camp was in a roar of laughter over the joke.

But what could be done? The men had reported a truth--the woman _was_ dyeing; so there was no redress.

GENERAL GRANT’S KINDNESS.

One morning during the war, coming down on the packet boat that plied between Cairo, Ill., and Columbus, Ky., I noticed a woman weeping as though her heart would break. Her calico dress and coarse blanket-shawl betokened abject poverty, and her face was hidden; and she sobbed out her anguish in a coarse bandanna handkerchief.

Laying my hand gently on her shoulder, I said,--

“My dear woman, what is the matter?”

“It’s my boy I’m crying about; he’s awful sick down in Tennessee, and he has writ for me to come down an’ nus him up, but the men as keeps the passes at Cairo says I can’t go.

“They say there’s plenty to take care uv my boy, and maybe there is; but I reckon that his muther what took care uv him when he was a baby could do it better nor any of them.

“My boy wus a very smart boy. You never seen a smarter boy nor a better boy than mine wuz. Well, if they won’t let me go down on the railroad I reckon I can walk. My boy’s sick an’ I’m bound to go. They tried to skeer me by tellin’ me the guards would arrest me if I tried to get through the lines. But I can dodge the guards, an’ creep under the lines. Anyway, I s’pose them guards ar’ human cre’turs, an’ if I tell ’em my boy is a solger, an’ awful sick, an’ wants his mother to come down an’ nus him, they’ll let me go through.”

“Have you his letter with you?”

“Yes, I have.”

And out of the depth of a capacious pocket she drew forth a package, and carefully unrolling it, she handed me a letter. It was short, but full of tender pathos. The boy was sick and homesick, and wanted his mother. Among other things, he said:--

“You could nus me better than the boys. I hain’t got no apertite and can’t eat nothin’; the boys hain’t much on cookin’, but you could cook something that I could eat, and maybe I’d get well.”

Satisfied that she was a true woman, and not a spy, I said:--

“General Grant, the highest officer in the army, is on this boat. He can give you a pass; he was sitting here by this table a few minutes ago; as he has left his paper and writing material there, he will no doubt return in a few minutes. Go to him and show him your boy’s letter, and ask him for a pass. He will give it to you.”

She was almost dismayed at the thought of speaking to such a great man. When the General came in and took a seat at the table, I whispered to her,--

“Now go,--don’t be afraid.”

The meeting of the two was a picture for an artist.

With sun-bonnet pushed back, and her coarse shawl drawn closely about her, she timidly approached him, holding out the letter.

General Grant looked up kindly.

“Are you Gineral Grant?” she questioned.

“Yes.”

“Well, my boy’s awful sick down in Tennessee, an’ he’s writ me this letter to cum an’ nus him up; but them men at Cairo what gives passes said I might be a spy, and they wouldn’t give me a pass.

“But, Gineral, I hain’t no spy; I’m a good Union woman as ever lived; and there’s a lady here as allowed that if I’d ask you maybe you’d give me a pass.”

In the meantime, General Grant had looked over the letter and scrutinized the woman, and handing the letter back to her, he said, “Yes, I’ll give you a pass; what is your name?”

The woman gave her name; but she was so delighted that she talked all the while he was writing the pass:--

“It’s awful unhandy for me to leave home now, cos I hain’t nobody to take care of nothing. Bill Spence’s wife, she agreed to milk the cow, but I had a beautiful pig, and I had to turn that out to root for itself, and I’m awful feared that it will get lost while I’m gone. But I told Mis’ Spence that I’d ruther risk the pig than to risk my boy, for he’s an awful good boy, Gineral.”

“This pass will take you down and bring you back,” said General Grant, handing her the precious document.

“How much do you s’pose it’ll cost me to go down?”

“It will cost you nothing, madam; the pass will take you free.”

“Don’t they charge nuthen on them roads?”

“They will not charge you. A mother who has given her son to the government, the government can afford to carry free.”

Just then I got her attention and beckoned her away.

“I’m very much obliged to you, Gineral,” she said, and made an old-fashioned courtesy.

Years afterward, while he was an occupant of the White House, and I was there on a friendly visit, I reminded him of the circumstance, which he had almost forgotten, and expressed the hope that the boy had recovered, and that she had found her pig on her return. He smiled, and said,--

“I always let the mothers pass if their boys were sick, and they seemed to be good loyal women.”

I had noticed that General Grant did not judge by appearance or dress. Often the lady in her silks was turned back, while a woman arrayed in calico would go through the lines.

ARMY LIFE AT HELENA, ARKANSAS.

Helena, Arkansas, was an important military station in 1862-63. In December, 1862, General Sherman, with his great fleet of boats and an army of twenty or thirty thousand men, moved from that point down the Mississippi River upon Vicksburg. There was nothing in the place of itself that made it a desirable camping-ground for troops, other than that it was an advance station far down into the enemy’s country, and commanded considerable important territory. The soldiers called it a “God-forsaken place.”

It was named after the daughter of the founder of the town, Helena; but the soldiers suggested that the name ought to be spelled with one syllable and two l’s.

Along the river front the land was very low and subject to overflows, but was protected by a high embankment, which effectually shut out the flood tides of the Mississippi River. Just back of the town was a great green cypress swamp, that was crossed by a corduroy road--a road made of large round logs fastened together at each end. Back of the swamp rose high bluffs of yellow clay. They were unsightly and very precipitous; in most places perpendicular. Their uneven sides were seamed and wrinkled by the floods and storms of ages, and looked like a line of forts.

It is easy to imagine the discomfort of such a camping place. During the winter and spring the streets of the town were miry and almost impassable.