 Chapter 25 of Angels of the Battlefield. Angels of the Battlefield by George Barton. Sisters of the Holy Cross. Mother Angela of the Holy Cross Sisters was one of the most devoted nurses in any of the orders that served her in the Civil War. She was a woman of high berth and considerable refinement. She came from a well-known Pennsylvania Irish family, the Gillespies. It was from this family that James Gillespie Blaine was so named. She was a cousin of the illustrious man, and was also related to the Ewing's and the Shermans. Her parents migrated from Pennsylvania to Illinois while she was quite young, and her education was received at the Academy of the Visitation in Washington, D.C. Mother Angela always had a high regard for Blaine. She was intimately acquainted with the details of his early life and his home at Brownsville, Pennsylvania. To those in whom she placed great confidence, she frequently gave touching incidents of the young man's early career, and on more than one occasion she repelled slanders which were no doubt implicitly believed by the public at large. She became connected with the Holy Cross Sisters many years before the war. When the first gun was fired at Fort Sumter, Mother Angela was in charge of a flourishing school at South Bend. When the need for nurses became pressing, this was given up. The scholars returned to their homes, and the sister teachers volunteered their services to those in charge of the hospitals. Mother Angela was sent out by the very Reverend Father Surin, Superior General of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, whose head-house was at Notre Dame, Indiana. The following is an extract from the circular letter issued October 21st, 1861, by Father Surin, who was the founder of the Sisters of the Holy Cross in the United States. My dear daughters and Jesus Christ, among the distressing features of the times I am glad to convey you some consoling news, for however much we deplore the distracted state of our country, we find a gratification in being able to assuage some of its sorrows. A most honorable call has been made on your community by the First Magistrate in our state, asking for twelve sisters to go and attend the sick, the wounded, and dying soldiers. The call has been unhesitatingly responded to, and this afternoon six sisters of Holy Cross started for Paducah. Six more start within a week. They are all chosen from a large number of volunteers, and if we judge of their sentiments by the joy with which they have received their selection, we have reason to believe that they duly appreciate the honor and favor bestowed upon them. It is well known that in the Crimean War the sisters of charity literally covered themselves with glory before men, and doubtless with merits before God. When the record of our present struggles will be handed down to posterity, will it not be a source of joy for the church to be able to show, in every rank of society, any a glorious name generously sacrificed for the rescue of the country? But why should we be left out of the list? If the standard of the cross, under which we have enlisted, knows no enemies among men, if our objects on the contrary is to rally them all into the precious emblem of our salvation, our little army stands arrayed against the enemy of mankind, the spirit of darkness, and all the evils and the wounds which he has inflicted on humanity. Hence, whenever there is a pain to soothe, a pain to relieve, a bleeding heart or limb to treat or dress, there is a field for us to enter, under pain of deserting our noble banner. What a joy it would bring to the apostolic heart of our venerated founder, Father Moreau, to hear of this heroic act of charity undertaken by this little vanguard of his company in the New World. It is in his name I have blessed them, and they may rest assured that while they follow the fortunes of the battlefields of the nation, he, like Moses, will be praying for them on the mountaintop. We too shall persevere with him in prayer in their behalf. In all our houses there shall be offered for them a general communion every Saturday that they may fully discharge the important trust they have received. Mother Angela met many of the great generals of the war, and they all united in declaring her a woman of marvellous executive ability. Besides this she had many other accomplishments of a high order. Although she was the mother-in-charge, she gave her personal attention to many of the patients. On several historic occasions she waited upon Confederate and Union soldiers at the same time. Johnny Reb, as he was facetiously called, and the yank, would lie in cots side by side with the peaceful face of Mother Angela between them. Often men lying helpless on their backs would get into heated disputes over the relative merits of the war, and but for their physical disability would have done each other violence. The sisters alone possessed the power to quell these quarrels, and they did it with all the tact and diplomacy becoming their gentle natures. The story of the first meeting between General Grant and Mother Angela comes from an eyewitness of that historic episode, and can be vouched for as strictly correct. Grant was just then beginning to develop the traits of a leader, which were to mark him later as the greatest captain of his time. His headquarters were in an old brick building that had formerly served as a bank in Cairo. Mother Angela came to this place to report for duty to General Grant. She was accompanied by the late Dr. Brinton, an honored physician of Philadelphia, and Reverend Louis A. Lambert, D.D., L.L.D. who was to act in the capacity of Chaplin, escorted Mother Angela into Grant's presence. The great captain was seated at a desk behind the iron bars, which had evidently been formerly used by the cashier of the bank. He was riding with the air of a man who was absorbed in his task and unconscious of his surroundings. An ordinary, cheap pipe was in his mouth, and every now and then he mechanically blew forth a cloud of smoke. The characteristics of the man, so well known in later years, were just as pronounced then. The people all around him were plainly agitated with the thought of the Great War that was about to rage in all its fury. He sat at his work, calm, silent, and with an impoturbability of countenance that was Sphinx-like. Dr. Brinton, who had been one of the first to suggest the sisters, introduced Mother Angela to Grant. The general came out from behind the iron grating with his head bare, and, taking Mother Angela's hand, gave it a hearty shake. The pipe he had been smoking was temporarily laid aside. There was a moment's silence, and then Grant, looking at his visitor with a pleasant smile, said, I am glad to have you with us, very glad. There was a pause for a second, and then he added, If there is anything at all I can do for you I will be glad to do it. I thoroughly appreciate the value of your services, and I will give orders to see that you do not want for anything. After a few more minutes of general conversation, in which Dr. Brinton and Father Lambert joined, Mother Angela and the sisters started for their mission at Mound City. In later years General Grant frequently expressed profound admiration for Mother Angela, not only as a nurse, but as a woman of unusual ability. Grant, about this period in his career, was one of the most interesting characters of the war. He is curious to note the various estimates of his character. The following extract, from a letter written from the front, during the closing months of the war, furnishes a striking pen-picture of the man. In his manners, dress, and style of living, Grant displays more Republican simplicity than any other general officer in the army. In manner he is very unassuming and approachable, and his conversation is noticeable from its unpretending, plain, and straightforward style. There is nothing didactic nor pedantic in his tone or language. His rhetoric is more remarkable for the compact structure than the elegance and finish of his sentences. He talks practically, and writes as he talks, and his language, written and oral, is distinguished by strong common sense. He seldom indulges in figurative language, but when he does his comparisons betray his habits of close observation. He dresses in a careless, but by no means slovenly manner. Though his uniform conforms to army regulations in cut and trimmings, it is often like that of Sherman, worn thread-bear. He never wears any article which attracts attention by its oddity, except indeed the three stars which indicate his rank. His wardrobe when campaigning is generally very scant, while his headquarters train is often the smallest in the army. For several months past he has been living in a log hut of unpretending dimensions on the James River, sleeping on a common camp-cott and eating at a table common to all his staff, plainly furnished with good roast-beef, pork and beans, hard-tack and coffee. It is related of the general that when the march to the rear of Vicksburg began he announced to his army the necessity of moving light, i.e., without extra baggage. He set an example by sending to the rear all his baggage except a green briar-root pipe, a toothbrush, and a horn-pocket comb. The story of his appearance in the Senate chamber in February last is still fresh in the minds of the public. He had no sooner left the hall after paying his respect to the Senators than one of the Democratic members rose and asked the consideration of the Senate upon what he termed the evident and gross mistake which had been made in a pointing grant to Lieutenant General, and declared it to be his opinion that there was not a second Lieutenant of the home guard of his state who did not cut a bigger swell than this man who had just left their presence. Mother Angela's party, after leaving General Grant, had quite an experience in reaching their destination. The wagon which had been detailed as their conveyance broke down when they were halfway thither, and there was some difficulty in patching it up sufficiently to finish the journey. But it was done, and the sisters eventually reached Mound City and began their work of mercy in the hospital located there. Sister Ferdinand was a fellow labourer with Mother Angela at this time. Father Lambert, the chaplain, attended the post-hospital at Mound City and said mass at four o'clock in the morning for the benefit of Mother Angela and her sisters. There was one incident that was kept quiet and which did not become generally known until after the war. Smallpox was raging at the time, and one of the brave sisters was stricken down. She was hastily stowed away in a garret of the hospital building and a special guard placed over her. She recovered, and after that devoted herself to nursing others with even more zeal than she had shown before she was stricken down. Ordinarily, Smallpox cases were sent to the Pest House, but in this instance the tenderness of the sisters would not permit them to part with their afflicted colleague. It was against the rules, to be sure, but who can blame the sisters for this merciful breach of discipline? It is only proper to state that the case was so isolated that not one of the twelve hundred patients was affected even in the remotest degree. One who was in the hospital at this time says that he is not certain but that the Surgeon General knew of the hidden case. There were between twelve hundred and fourteen hundred patients in the hospital, and all received the kindest care and attention. Mother Angela served through all the war, winning extraordinary distinction for her tact, diplomacy, and faithfulness. The official communication written by Commander Davis after a battle on White River, June 17th, 1862, indicates that Mother Angela was not unknown to the authorities. U.S. flag steamer Benton, Memphis, June 20th, 1862. Honorable Gideon Wells, Secretary of the Navy. The number of men on board the hospital boat Red Rover is forty-one. The account given me yesterday was incorrect. I shall still wait for further knowledge before presenting a final report of the casualties, attending the capture of the St. Charles Fortes. The department will be gratified to learn that the patients are most of them doing well. Sister Angela, the superior of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, some of whom were performing their offices of mercy at the Mound City Hospital, has kindly offered the services of the Sisters for the hospital boat of this squadron when needed. I have written to Commander Renwick to make arrangements for their coming. I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant Charles H. Davis, flag officer commanding Western Flotilla. The Catholic Mirror, under date of November 8th, 1862, records the following. A fourth colony of these devoted sisterhoods has set forth on its mission of mercy to serve in the hospitals of Washington as they already serve so faithfully at Memphis, Cairo, and Mound City. The hospital of St. Aloysius, erected in a week by Catholic Charity, fired by the zeal of the dead Jesuit fathers, call them to its succor, and they, fully responding to the holy fervor which built these hospitals from the very overflowing of love to God and of reverence for the tabernacle in which dwells the holy of holies, will fill up the measure of these by ministering to the wants of the sick and sorrowing and forlorn, the objects of his love who died on Calvary, and renders daily his sacrifice for their success, and the holy temple thus saved by piety from desecration. Who has not heard of the Jesuit fathers? Their fame has spread throughout the earth, and yet so silently they work, so sublimely conceal their burning zeal, that but for an occasion like the present, when the influence they possess over the human soul manifested itself by a simultaneous impulse that cannot be repressed, they for the most part live a hidden, unobtrusive life. A life which makes sure the good they invariably affect. For near four hundred years the devoted sons of St. Ignatius toiled like their founder in striving to hide from the world the individuals who achieved a good that will not be hidden, and it seems a sort of sacrilege to withdraw the veil that hides this good, even partially, from the world. When we think of what the Jesuits have done through long ages, our heart burns, our spirit fires, and in our heart of hearts perceive that men who do good in every age without being tainted with the spirit of any age demand from us reverence and not praise. When then we heard of the last demonstration of zeal, of Catholic zeal, stirred up by the Jesuit fathers, we felt no extraordinary surprise. We manifested no extraordinary exultation, a tranquil happiness stole over us. We thanked God that St. Ignatius still lived in his sons, and that greatest was the work of building St. Aloysius Hospital in six days. A far greater work, though a more hidden one, is being daily, hourly, performed by these devoted soldiers of the Church. But meantime, the Hospital of St. Aloysius is a fact. In Washington, hospitals to form a refuge for the sick, measuring six hundred feet by twenty-six, are in actual existence, erected spontaneously by Catholic charity, and proposing to be watched over also by Catholic charity. For the sisters of the Holy Cross are already on the way to take charge of such inmates as this unhappy war shall bring within its precincts. May they prosper in their mission at Washington, as at Memphis, Mound City, and at Cairo. May they bring balm to the wounded heart as they bandage the wounded limb, and may the blessings they bring to others react upon themselves to enable them to lead more and more fully the life of recollection every true religious covets, even while pursuing the apparently distracting occupations of attending the sick and wounded. In bringing to the bedside the comforts of a soul in constant and habitual communication with God, by the faithfulness in which are performed the religious exercises prescribed by the rule, a sister of Holy Cross can scarcely fail to dispense treasures far more valuable than the gold and silver of the world. How many are the souls aided in their passage to eternity? How many reclaimed from a life of sin? How many taught to bless the temporary suffering which brought them acquainted with the peace that passeth all understanding? The annals of these deeds are hidden now, but on the day of judgment they will stand forth and praise the religious, who, by her spirit of prayer, was enabled to perform these miracles of the soul. The following communication, signed P., and addressed to the editor of the New York Tablet, on April 12, 1862, is interesting not only in particularizing the ordering question, but in affording another glimpse of Mother Angela. In your issue of the twenty-second I find notice of the military hospital at Mount City. There is a mistake in that article which I am sure you will willingly rectify. The sisters who are in charge there are not the sisters of charity. They are the sisters of the Holy Cross, from their convent of St. Mary's, St. Joseph's County, Indiana. Under the direction of their superior S., Mother St. Angela, these pious sisters have had for some time the charge of the hospitals at Cairo, Mount City, and Paduca. Upon their arrival about the beginning of October, all the other female nurses were dispensed with, and the sisters assumed the entire control of the wards, each sister having the care of one ward. When it became known throughout the West that Mother Angela and her sisters had assumed this arduous position, hundreds of her friends hastened to forward to her care, large supplies of clothing and linen suitable for hospital purposes. She even made a journey to Chicago for the purpose of obtaining supplies, and right nobly did the citizens respond to her call. There are now over thirty sisters there who are almost exhausted by their incessant labors. They know no rest night or day. Fourteen hundred wounded men are hourly receiving at their hands. Such carers can only be bestowed by pious souls who look for their reward not on earth, but in heaven. It must be a great consolation to the relatives and friends of our gallant soldiers to know that they are attended on their beds of pain and suffering by such nurses. Wherever a sister moves she has the prayers and blessings of the poor soldier and the thanks and gratitude of the officers. Beside whatever bed death has laid his hand there is seen a sister seeking to alleviate the suffering of the patient and to prepare the parting soul for the judgment so soon to be pronounced upon it. The following reference to the Holy Cross sisters, from the pen of Father Corby, is apropos. Sixty sisters of the Holy Cross went out under Mother Angela. These sisters volunteered their services to nurse the sick and wounded soldiers, hundreds of whom moved to sentiments of purest piety by the words and examples of these angel nurses, like to be baptized in articular mortis at the point of death. The labors and self-sacrifice of the sisters during the war need no praise here. The praise is on the lips of every surviving soldier who experienced their kind and careful ministration. Many a soldier now looks down from high with complacency on the worthy sisters who were instrumental in saving the soul when life could not be saved. Nor was it alone from the order of the sisters of the Holy Cross that sister nurses engaged in the care of the sick and wounded soldiers. Many other orders made costly sacrifices to save life and to save souls, notably the noble order of the sisters of charity. To members of this order I am personally indebted. When prostrate with camp fever, insensible for nearly three days, my life was entrusted to their care. Like guardian angels these daughters of St. Vincent watched every symptom of the fever, and by their skill and care I was soon able to return to my post of duty. One of the interesting features of the charitable work of the war came to the notice of Mother Angela in the early part of 1864. It was a donation of $1,000 from Pope Pius IX for the relief of the sick and wounded soldiers. Through Cardinal Barnabó, the pope expressed to Bishop Timmon, of Buffalo, his tender sympathy for the sufferings of the many wounded, and requested the bishop to give, in the pope's name, $500 to aid in alleviating the suffering of the wounded soldiers in the northern army, and the same amount, for the same object, for the southern soldiers. Bishop Timmon gave $500 to Mrs. Horatio Seymour, president of the Sanitary Commission, to aid our wounded soldiers, and $500 to Mrs. D. L. Dix, to be applied in procuring for wounded southern prisoners in the hospitals any additional comforts which might be deemed useful. The following incident concerning Mother Angela's war experiences is from the pen of Eliza Alan Starr. During the early days of the war and the hospital service we all know how inadequate were the supplies for the sick and wounded, how meager the equipments for the hospital nurses. A poor little circular stovepipe served the indefatigable Mother Angela on which to prepare with her own skillful hands the early cup of gruel for her patients, rising at four, or if need were, at three in the morning, to answer the first call of the sufferers, and the character of the stores provided was such as few could realize one year later. At this time the commissary boards had to visit her to the camp and hospital where Mother Angela and her sisters were stationed. During all these months nothing could exceed the courtesy of the officers, who always shared any choice provisions which came to them with the sisters, as they supposed, while the sisters as scrupulously passed on to their patients everything which could tempt the sick appetite, sharing in fact only the rations served regularly to the hospital wards. When the commissary visitor arrived he was duly escorted to the hospital, which excited his warmest approbation for its order, neatness, comfort of every sort, but as he was bowing himself out in the most complimentary manner from the presence of Mother Angela and her band of sisters she said to him, But you must allow us to show you some hospitality. Pardon our lack of silver and porcelain, but take a cup of hospital tea. Thank you, thank you, Mother Angela, but I have taken dinner already with the officers and need nothing. Allow me to insist. And before another excuse could be urged a sister appeared with a snow-white napkin and the tin cup and spoon of the hospital and the anything than fragrant beverage of hospital tea. Sugar sister said the sweetly ringing voice of the gentle woman, Mother Angela, and before our commissary visitor could wave off this fresh specimen of hospital luxury, Mother Angela had dumped into the tin cup what resembled the scrapings of the molasses barrel more than sugar. Our commissary visitor was a gentleman from the toe of his boot to the crown of his head, and he drank the cup of tea, well stirred, to its dregs, without a grimace, bowing as he handed the empty tin cup to the sister, while Mother Angela rubbed her little hands with unmistakable glee and the full merriment of laughing eyes as she said, I knew you would wish to taste of our hospital tea. And the commissary visitor vowed in his heart, as he turned from the hospital door, that the next train on his arrival home should take, as he said in his letter to Mother Angela, such stores to her own and to every hospital under his charge as a Christian man could accept without shame from the hand of any hospital nurse in the land. There was another sister Angela, who was prominent during the Civil War, but who was not so conspicuous as her illustrious namesake. She is thus referred to in a recent work. Sister Angela became a member of the community, visitation sisters, about 1819. She was one of those characters who conveyed to the mind the image of a soul of spotless innocence. She celebrated her golden jubilee and lived for several years afterwards, retained to the last her full mental faculties and childlike simplicity. She was made superioress of the foundation in Philadelphia. On the breaking up of the house there she was recalled to Georgetown. Then for twelve years at different times she served as superioress of Georgetown Convent and governed with a gentle firmness and a lovely spirit of forbearance, enduring the many trials incidental to authority with the utmost patience. During the Civil War her energy and wisdom shone forth especially. She was at that time most generous in trying to aid poor chaplains and she showed a true zeal for souls in the advice she gave to soldiers who applied to her for help. Her charity was remembered as the nuns of Georgetown had reason to realize not long ago, during the encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic, when one of the veterans called to see Sister Angela, not knowing she had been dead several years. The veteran gave us his reason for desiring to see her that the angelic superioress had converted him. Before worn out with marching and laden with dust, regiments halted in front of the convent during the war, a liberal lunch was served to the weary soldiers, and objects of piety sent out to those who wanted them by Sister Angela. End of Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Mother Angela Angels of the Battlefield by George Barton. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rita Butros. Mother Angela. Mother Angela, who performed such valiant service as the head of the Holy Cross Sisters, departed this life on March 4th, 1887. Her death was so common peaceful that it seemed as though she were gliding into slumber rather than passing from life into eternity. Mother Mary of St. Angela was the name of this devoted woman, who was previously known to the world as Eliza Maria Gillespie. As stated in the preceding chapter, Mother Angela was of distinguished lineage. Her godfather, the elder Thomas Ewing, was one of the great wigs and Secretary of State under President William Henry Harrison. James Gillespie Blaine, her first cousin, was the idol of his party, member of Congress, United States Senator, Secretary of State, and the Republican candidate for the presidency. General William T. Sherman, another relative, ranked second only to grant among the Union generals in the Civil War. Phil B. Ewing, her brother-in-law, won the reputation of an eminent jurist in Ohio. Young Tom Ewing distinguished himself in the Union Army. Her only brother, Reverend N. H. Gillespie, was the first graduate of Notre Dame University and afterwards became its vice president and editor of the Ave Maria. Mother Angela was born in West Brownsville, Pennsylvania, February 21st, 1824. Her parents lived in a large stone house. It was a double structure and in the other half of it lived her uncle and aunt, the parents of James G. Blaine, who was born there six years later. Mr. Blaine's mother and Mother Angela's father were brother and sister, and the two children were reared together until the one was 12 and the other was six years of age. This childish association caused a sincere attachment, which lasted through life. While receiving her education in the Academy of the Visitation at Washington, the future sister had many opportunities for mingling in fashionable Washington society. One of her chroniclers of that time says that she had the same personal magnetism that distinguished her relative, Mr. Blaine. At the age of 27, however, she abandoned the world and after the usual preparation became a sister of the Holy Cross. Her work during the war has already been outlined. The death of Mother Angela came as a shock to those with whom she had been associated. She had been ill for a month, but all looked forward with confidence to her ultimate recovery. The father-general coincided with the physician in assigning the said event to heart disease, probably brought on, as he says, by the death of Sister M. Loba, whom she loved tenderly and whose funeral procession passed under her window four hours before. The funeral of Mother Angela took place at Notre Dame on Sunday morning, March 6, 1887. The mortal remains being born from the halls where she had been superior for 34 years. Telegrams and letters of regret came from all sections of the country and even from parts of Europe. Among the telegrams was the following from one of the kinsmen of the dead sister, Augusta Mayne, March 4, 1887, John G. Ewing. Your message is a sad one to me. Communicate my deepest sympathy to Aunt Mary and to your mother, signed James G. Blaine. The relatives of the deceased religious who were present were her aged mother, Mrs. M. M. Fallon, her sister, Mrs. P. B. Ewing, Honorable P. B. Ewing, Lancaster, Ohio, Sister Mary Agnes, Ms. Mary R. Ewing, Ms. Philamine Ewing, Mr. John G. Ewing, Mrs. N. H. Ewing, Edward S. Ewing, Mrs. Colonel Steele, Ms. Marie Steele, Ms. Florence Steele, Charles Steele, Master Sherman Steele, Mrs. John Blaine, Ms. Louise Blaine, Ms. Ella Blaine, Messers Walker and Emmons Blaine. Among the numerous friends in attendance at the funeral were Justice Daniel Scully, Colonel W. P. Rend, Mr. and Mrs. P. Kavanaugh, Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Sullivan, Ms. Angela Dillon, Ms. Eddie, Chicago, Mr. Jacob Weil, Mr. F. Weil, Mr. George Beale, La Porte, Indiana, Mr. and Mrs. P. O'Brien, Mr. and Mrs. L. G. Tong, Mr. and Mrs. Stanfield, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Baker, Dr. Cassidy, Dr. Calvert, Mrs. Lintner, Mr. Birdsell, South Bend, Indiana, Ms. C. Gavin, Lafayette, Indiana, Mrs. Shepherd, Omaha, Nebraska, Mrs. Atkinson, Baltimore, Maryland, Mrs. Coughlin, Toledo, Ohio, Mrs. L. Grigori, Ms. F. Grigori, Professor James J. Edwards, Professor W. Hoyns, Notre Dame, Indiana, Mrs. Claffey, Notre Dame. Salome Requiem Mass was sung by Reverend Father Laeterno, assisted by the Reverend Father's Spillard and Zahm, as Deacon and Subdeacon, Reverend Father Regan, acting as Master of Ceremonies. There was present in the sanctuary, Wright Reverend Bishop Gilmore, D.D., very Reverend Father General Soren, very Reverend Father Granger, very Reverend Father Kilroy, D.D., very Reverend Father Corby, Reverend Father's Walsh, O'Connell, Hudson, Shortus, and Sonye. The late Wright Reverend Bishop Gilmore preached the funeral sermon in which he outlined the life of a model religious. He said, among other things, it is too much to say that she around whose beer we are gathered today is a fair and generous example of what I have outlined so very imperfectly and so succinctly. Fair in her talents and her ambitions, with what the world values most, she buries herself. Where, in the silence of a religious life, in a corner, in an unseen position, when she came here some 37 years ago, there was to be found little of that which today might perhaps attract one seeking the religious life. She came here to labor, to struggle, to wrestle with hardships, to concentrate her exceptional talents and energies upon the one grand object of her life. She came in all fervor, animated solely with zeal for religion, devotion to her cause, and 37 years of unfailing generosity tell the tale of her life. It is difficult to comprehend what has been done in those 37 years. It is not easy to realize what a devotion and ambition for God such as hers might do. Unseen, unnoticed, unobtrusive, the generosity, unfailing, unflagging the devotion with which God has been served and man has been blessed. Such is the life of her who lies before us. We see the results of her labors, not merely in the material building she has erected for that in itself is little, but in the moral seed that she has deeply planted here that has been the salvation of many who have already gone to their reward. And amongst those who are living, how many there are whom she has molded, attracted, inspired with high and religious ambitions, whom she has directed in the paths of life. How many through her influence have been brought back to God and made generous once more. She has lifted up the weak and made stronger those who were strong, soothed, the wounded, directed all to nobler and higher aims. It would be difficult to find a heart so entirely throbbing for God as hers, a foot so restless and untiring and doing good as hers, a brain so busy and devising works for the welfare of religion and her fellow men. It is difficult for those who have not known her to realize the extent of her labors. It is not every person who can comprehend the death of Mother Angela's devotion to the cause of God. Many have seen it, but few have understood it. For many a long, long day, this community will feel the gap that is made today by the loss of one who lies in that narrow little coffin. The kind father general in the days that are coming will find how much he has lost in the generous assisting hand, now cold in death. And you, young friends, will feel the loss of a tender and directing parent. It is for us all to pray that God may bless her as I am convinced he has. After the Bishop's sermon, the final absolution of the body was given and then the procession marched to the modest little cemetery and Mother Angela was laid to rest within a stone's throw of where the greater part of her life work had been performed. Mother Angela is the original of the sister of the Holy Cross portrayed in the following poem. The din of the battle has died away. The twilight has grown to a deeper gray. The moon rises pale through the mislead cloud while the bloodstained, rivulet moans aloud. And the beams are faint in the kindly stars for hope shines no more from their golden bars. The leaves of the tremulous aspen sigh as the night winds wailing sweep mournfully by. The ambulance glides through the gloomy path to heed the wreck of the war demon's wrath. And the angel of peace from his home sublime weeps or mans wretchedness folly and crime. Tis the hour of midnight, how lightly tread the feet of the watcher mid-dying and dead. Low the sable veil and the saintly air and the lofty calm of a beauty rare proclaim that watcher, the chosen bride, of the world's redeemer, the crucified. The stifled groan, the sharp cry of distress with their burden of woe through the hot air press. And the sister of Holy Cross, low, doth bend, her prayer with the pestilence breath to blend. Oh, sister of Holy Cross, why art thou? Thus won by the pallid and death-cold brow. He is not thy brother, yon prostrate form, who moans there all bathed in his lifeblood warm. And the veteran wounded, his locks so gray, he is not thy father, then wherefore stay. All these are but strangers, thou too, art frail. Contagion is born on the midnight gale. Ah, a veteran heart and a nerve more strong, on two scenes and two sights like these belong. Oh, I see her bend with a gentler grace and a holier light in her tranquil face. And sweet tears me thanks from her mild eyes flow as she bends or her crucifix fondly low. How reverent her kiss on those sacred feet and almost I hear now her heart's quick beat and her low voice sways with a loving might like the keynote by heaven entoned tonight. Oh, ask me not wherefore my heart is bound to scenes where but agony clusters around. Oh, bid me not go from a place like this for my labor is rest and my tears are bliss. One hand she laid on her throbbing breast while the holy cross to her lips she pressed. Nor a stronger nerve nor a heart more stern could incendle the fire that hear doth burn. Ah, these are not strangers for God hath died and for each in his love shed his hearts full tide. Tis for his dear sake that with joy I bear this breath of contagion, this noisome air. Ah, when I behold here the shattered limb, the crimson blood oozing, the eyesight dim, see the gore and the gashes, the death sweat cold, it is my redeemer that I behold. His wounds that I stanch, his brow that I leave, his form that I straighten and shroud for the grave. I faint not, I fear not, for faith is strong since my love and my hope to the cross belong. Then, then, did my heart with her meaning thrill, my eyes from the fount of my soul did fill. For the sake of our loving and crucified Lord, the cordial she mingled, the wine she poured, compassion she drinks at the fountain head, the mother of sorrows her soul hath led. How sacred the treasures she stores at her feet, her lesson makes mourning than joy more sweet. It is the queen of mercy bends down to bless the wealth of her heavenly tenderness, and the angel of peace from his home of light has baffled the fiends in her mission tonight. End of chapter 26, section 33, Mother Angela, Angels of the Battlefield by George Barton. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Rita Butros. Mother Angela rarely spoke of her services in the war, and with characteristic modesty and humility, frequently endeavored to give others the credit that belonged to herself. She was a writer with an unusual grace and charm of style. One of those who served with her during the war was Sister Mary Josephine. This devoted sister died in 1886, and her death evoked the following dramatic story from the pen of Mother Angela. It was a true story and one of her last contributions to the Abba Maria. Sister Josephine was one among the first of the 70 sisters of the Holy Cross, who during the late Civil War, served the sick and wounded soldiers in the military hospitals of Louisville, Paducah, Cairo, Mound City, Memphis, and Washington City. Those who knew this quiet, gentle religious only during the last 20 years of her life could scarcely realize what courage, even heroism, animated her during those years of the war spent in the hospitals. We give below one instance among many others. In the summer of 1862, the Confederate Fort Charles on White River was attacked on land by a force under the command of Colonel Fitch of Indiana and from the water by gunboats commanded by Commodore Davis. In the midst of the battle, the boilers of one of the gunboats exploded, frightfully scalding Captain Kelty and some 50 others, the sufferers and their agony leaped into the river and as they did so, a broadside from Fort Charles poured bullets and grape shot into their parboiled flesh. The battle ended with the capture of the fort and the wounded of both sides were taken to Mound City Hospital, a block of some 24 unfinished warehouses and storerooms that had been converted into a vast hospital in which, after some of the great battles in the Mississippi Valley, as many as 2,000 patients were treated by a staff of medical officers and nursed by 28 sisters, Sister Josephine being one of them. Colonel Fry, commander of the fort, supposed to be dangerously wounded and Captain Kelty were of the number brought to Mound City after the surrender of Fort Charles. The latter was a universal favorite of all the men and officers of the Western flotilla. His sad state, the scalded flesh falling from the bones and pierced with bullets, excited them almost to frenzy. He was tenderly placed in a little cottage away from the main building and Colonel Fry with a few other sufferers was put in a front room in the second story of the hospital under the immediate care of Sister Josephine. The next day the reports spread like wildfire through the hospital and among the 100 soldiers detailed to guard it that Captain Kelty was dying. The wildest excitement prevailed and in the frenzy of the moment, Colonel Fry was denounced as his murderer. It was declared that he had given the inhuman order to fire on the scalded men. Everyone firmly believed this, but it was not true. Colonel Fry was ignorant of the explosion when the order was given. Sister Josephine, very pale yet wonderfully composed, went to the sister in charge of the hospital to say that all the wounded had just been removed from the room under her care except Colonel Fry. The soldiers detailed to guard the hospital and the gunboat men had built a rough scaffold in front of the two windows of the room, mounted it with loaded guns and loudly declared that they would stay there and the moment they heard of Captain Kelty's death, they would shoot Colonel Fry. And, continued Sister Josephine, the doctor made me leave the room saying that my life was in danger. He took the key from the door and gave it to Dutch Johnny, telling him that he had entire charge of the man within. Now, Dutch Johnny was one of six brothers, five had been killed at Belmont. Johnny was so badly wounded and crippled in the same battle that he was useless for active service and so left to help in the hospital. But one idea possessed him. In revenge for his brother's death, he intended to kill five Confederates before he died. In this fearful state of affairs, the sister in charge went to the surgeon general of the staff, begging him to see that no murder be committed. Dr. Franklin answered that he was powerless to control events and that the captain of the company guarding the hospital was absent. Then said the sister, I must call my 27 sisters from the sick. We will leave the hospital and walk to Cairo, a distance of three miles. In vain did the doctor represent to her the sad state of all the patients she was leaving. She would not consent to remain in a house where murder would soon be committed, except on one condition, that the hospital would give her the key of Colonel Fry's room and that the sisters have the care and entire control of the patient. But ex postulated the doctor, it will be at the risk of your lives. For if Captain Kelty dies and I see no hopes of his recovery, no power on earth can restrain those men from shooting Colonel Fry. Oh, doctor, she answered, I have too much faith in the natural chivalry of every soldier, be he from North or South of Mason and Dixon's line to fear he would shoot a poor wounded man while a sister stood near him. Seeing the sisters would leave if this request was not granted, the doctor sent for Dutch Johnny, took the key from him and gave it to the sister. The latter called for Sister Josephine and both went in haste to the room of the wounded man. As they turned the key and opened the door, a fearful scene was before them. Colonel Fry lay in a cot, his arms both broken were strapped up with cords fastened to the ceiling. One broken leg was strapped to the bed, only his head seemed free. As he turned it and glared fiercely as he thought upon another foe, he seemed like some wild animal at bay and goaded to madness. Before Sister Josephine had been forced to leave the room, she had closed the windows and lowered the blinds, but her successor, Dutch Johnny had changed all this. He had rolled up the blinds and thrown up the lower sashes and there on the raised platform, not 50 feet from him, Colonel Fry could see the faces and hear the voices of the soldiers and gunboat men shouting every few minutes for him to be ready to die, for they would shoot him as soon as they heard of Captain Kelty's death. Very quickly and gently did Sister Josephine speak to the wounded man, moistening his parched lips with a cooling drink, giving what relief she could to the poor tortured body and assuring him that she and the other sister would not leave him. So he need not fear that the soldiers would fire while they remained. When these men saw the sisters in the room, they begged them to leave, even threatened, but to no purpose, brave noble Sister Josephine and her companion stood at their post all through that long afternoon and far into the night and they prayed perhaps more earnestly than they ever prayed before that Captain Kelty would not die. For in spite of all their assuring words to Colonel Fry, they did not feel so very certain that their lives would be safe among frenzied men bent on their taking revenge into their own hands. In the meantime, it became known that Captain Kelty was a Catholic, a convert, though for many years he had neglected his religious duties. A messenger was sent to Cairo to bring Father Welsh to the dying man. When he came, Captain Kelty was in delirium and the father could only give him extreme unction. Soon after about nine o'clock, he sank into a quiet sleep. He awoke perfectly conscious near midnight, made his confession, received Holy Communion and took some nourishment. The doctor said all danger was over and a messenger ran in breathless haste to spread the glad tidings. The excited soldiers fired a few blank cartridges as a parting salvo, jumped from the scaffold and were seen no more. The rest of the night, good Sister Josephine took care of her patient, undisturbed by any serious fear that both might be sent into eternity before morning. When the naval officers, who the night before had looked as they feared, their last look on the living face of Captain Kelty went up the next day from Cairo and found him out of danger. They laughed and cried with joy. In a whisper, Captain Kelty asked them to be silent for a moment and listen to him. In a voice trembling with weakness, he said, while I thank these good doctors for all they have done, I must testify and they will bear me out in what I say. It was not their skill nor any earthly power that brought me back from the brink of the grave, but the saving and life-giving sacraments of the Catholic Church. Colonel Fry and Captain Kelty had long known each other. Both were naval officers until at the beginning of the war Captain Fry left the service and was made Colonel Fry in the Confederate Army. As soon as Captain Kelty was well enough to learn what had passed, he declared Colonel Fry was guiltless of the barbarity of which he had been accused and Sister Josephine was made the bearer to her patient of all the delicacies sent to Captain Kelty and which he insisted on sharing with Colonel Fry. As soon as Captain Kelty could travel, he was taken to his home in Baltimore. For his bravery, he was made Commodore and placed in command at Norfolk, but he was maimed for life. His right hand and arm, all shriveled and wasted, hung lifeless by his side. When able to take such a journey alone, he went all the way back to Cairo to see again and thank those sisters who he said under God had saved his life in a double sense. He remained until his death a most fervent Catholic. Colonel Fry, after many months of suffering, also recovered. He was paroled and returned to his home in New Orleans. There he became a Catholic, often declaring that good Sister Josephine's bravery and devotedness during that day and night of torture and agony, followed by months of long suffering, were eloquent sermons that he could not resist. A few years after the close of the war, he was one of the leaders of that rash band of adventurers who invaded Cuba. His fate is well known. With those under his command, he was captured and executed, but it is not so well known that he profited by the days spent in prison and instructing those with him and many were converted to the holy faith that first came to him through Sister Josephine. 23 years to the very month passed away when quietly and calmly, as in the discharge of hospital duties, this good Sister, strengthened by the sacraments of the Church, literally fell asleep in our Lord a few days after the close of the annual retreat at which she had assisted. Owing to the intense heat of the weather, it was deemed necessary to advance the hour of burial from six o'clock in the morning to eight o'clock on the previous evening. Scarce ever was a procession so affecting the sisters more than 300 in number, all bearing lighted tapers, the Reverend Chaplains and the venerable Father Sorin, superior general, CSC, followed the remains of Sister Josephine through the beautiful grounds of St. Mary's to the cemetery. The moon shone as brightly on her lifeless body as it had shone years ago through the open window on her brave gentle form when she saved from death or insanity the wounded prisoner. Of the four persons most interested in that night of agony and torture in the vast military hospital on the banks of the Ohio, but one now remains, Sister Josephine's companion, may the three gone to eternity remember her before God. The sole survivor of that dreadful episode and the historian of the event has also gone to her reward. The prayers of innumerable persons that have benefited by her charity and goodness ascend to the skies coupled with the hope that Mother Angela will not forget those she has left behind. End of section 33. Section 34, chapter 27, non-Catholic tributes Angels of the Battlefield by George Barton. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rita Butros. No tributes that have been paid to the work of the Catholic sisterhoods during the war have been more cordial or more emphatic than those coming from non-Catholic sources. It is a significant fact that those most prejudiced against the sisters have been persons who knew the least about them, while the warmest friends of the darkrobed messengers of charity and peace have been persons who came in contact with them and their labors for humanity. Mary A. Livermore, whose personal services during the war were by no means inconsiderable, is one non-Catholic writer who does not hesitate to give the Catholic sister full credit for what she did. Miss Livermore says, the Mount City Hospital, in charge of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, was considered the best military hospital in the United States. She writes, there was one general hospital in Cairo called by the people the Brick Hospital. Here, the Sisters of the Holy Cross were employed as nurses one or more to each ward. Here were order, cleanliness, and good nursing. The food was cooked in a kitchen outside of the hospital. Surgeons were detailed to every ward and visited their patients twice a day and often if necessary. The apothecaries room was supplied with an ample store of medicines and surgical appliances and the storerooms possessed an abundance of clothing and delicacies for the sick. The work done at Mount City is thus graphically set forth. Except in Mount City, everything was in a chaotic condition compared with the complete arrangement afterwards. The hospital at Mount City occupied a block of brick stores built before the war to accommodate the prospective commerce of the war. They had not been occupied and as the blockade of the Mississippi rendered it uncertain when they would be needed for their legitimate use, they were turned over to the medical department for hospital use. At the time of my visit, the Mount City Hospital was considered the best military hospital in the United States. This was due to the administrative talent of Dr. E. S. Franklin of Dubuque, Iowa, who despite poverty of means and material transformed the rough block of stores into a superb hospital, accommodating 1,000 patients. 1,500 had been crowded in it by dint of close packing. The most thorough system was maintained in every department. There was an exact time and place for everything. Every person was assigned to a particular work and held responsible for its performance. If anyone proved a shirk incompetent or insubordinate, he was sent off in the next boat. A shaker like cleanliness and sweetness of atmosphere pervaded the various wards. The sheets and pillows were of immaculate whiteness and the patients who were convalescent were cheerful and contented. The sisters of the Holy Cross were employed as nurses and by their skill, quietness, gentleness and tenderness were invaluable in the sick wards. Every patient gave hearty testimony to the skill and kindness of the sisters. Mother Angela was the superior of the sisters, a gifted lady of rare cultivation and executive ability with winning sweetness of manner. She was a member of the Ewing family and a cousin of Mr. and Mrs. General Sherman. The sisters had nearly broken up their famous schools at South Bend to answer the demand for nurses. If I had ever felt prejudice against these sisters as nurses, my experience with them during the war would have dissipated it entirely. The world has known no nobler and more heroic women than those found in the ranks of the Catholic sisterhoods. Captain Jack Crawford who became famous as a scout in the Union Army in the course of a lecture delivered after the war speaks of the sisters as follows. On all God's green and beautiful earth there are no purer, no nobler, no more kind-hearted and self-sacrificing women than those who wear the somber garb of Catholic sisters. During the war I had many opportunities for observing their noble and heroic work, not only in the camp and hospital but on the death-swept field of battle. Right in the fiery front of dreadful war where bullets hissed in maddening glee and shot in shell flew madly by with demoniac shrieks where dead and mangled forms lay with pale blood-flecked faces yet wear the scowl of battle. I have seen the black-robed sisters moving over the field their solicitous faces wet with the tears of sympathy administering to the wants of the wounded and whispering words of comfort into the ears soon to be deafened by the cold, implacable hand of death. Now kneeling on the blood-be-spattered sod to moisten with water the bloodless lips on which the icy kiss of the death angel has left its pale imprint, now breathing words of hope of an immortality beyond the grave into the ear of some mangled hero whose last shots in our glorious cause had been fired but a moment before. Now holding the crucifix to receive the last kiss from somebody's darling boy from whose breast the lifeblood was splashing and who had offered his life as a willing sacrifice on the altar of his country. Now with tender touch and tear-dimmed eye binding, gaping wounds from which most women must have shrunken horror. Now scraping together a pillow of forest leaves upon which some pain-wracked head might rest until the spirit took its flight to other realms, brave, fearless of danger, trusting implicitly in the master whose overshadowing eye was noting their every movement, standing as shielding prayerful angels between the dying soldiers and the horrors of death. Their only recompense, the sweet, soul-soothing consciousness that they were doing their duty, their only hope of reward, that peace and eternal happiness which awaited them beyond the star and blazing battlements above. Oh, my friends, it was a noble work. How many a veteran of the war who wore the blue or the gray can yet recall the soothing touch of a sister's hand as he lay upon the pain-tossed couch of a hospital? Can we ever forget their sympathetic eyes, their low, soft-spoken words of encouragement and cheer when the result of the struggle between life and death yet hung in the balance? Oh, how often have I followed the form of that good sister Valencia with my sunken eyes as she moved away from my cot to the cot of another sufferer and have breathed from the most sacred depths of my faintly beating heart the fervent prayer? God bless her, God bless her. My friends, I am not a Catholic, but I stand ready at any and all times to defend these noble women, even with my life, for I owe that life to them. Miss Susan D. Messenger of Roxbury, Massachusetts writes the following eloquent letter to the author. It is with real pleasure I pay my tribute to that noble band of sisters of mercy who did such a Christian work of love and helpfulness for our suffering soldier boys in Newburn, North Carolina. My brother, captain, afterwards Colonel Messenger was on the staff of Major General John G. Foster, 18th Army Corps stationed at Newburn, North Carolina. After the taking of Newburn, my brother was made Provost Marshall and given quarters near the general at the request of Mrs. Foster, my sister. Mrs. Messenger and I were sent for to stay a few weeks, although in no official capacity. No woman could be in the Army without finding much she could do to relieve and comfort. And especially through the home, our little quarters became to all from major generals to privates. We could not go home. We stayed until summer. I write all this personal matter to show how I was thrown into the companionship of these Catholic sisters. Although my brother and myself were Unitarians, we became close congenial friends with these brave women who had to see constantly advice and help from my brother on account of his position as Provost Marshall. General Foster was a Catholic and brought to Newburn six sisters from the Convent of Mercy in New York to take charge of a hospital in Newburn for special cases. He took for their convent a house which had been General Burnside's headquarters and which also during the War of the Revolution had been occupied by Washington. His room and writing table sacredly preserved. This house communicated by a plank walk with another house or houses used as hospitals and only over that plank walk did those devoted women ever take any exercise or recreation. They literally gave themselves as nurses to the poor, wounded, maimed and six soldiers brought to them day after day and most beautifully did they fulfill the charge. Many a soldier will never forget their tender, unselfish care and devotion. I was witness myself to much of it as I was privileged to go from ward to ward. Many a dying man blessed them as angels of mercy, almost looking upon them as sent from the other world. One dear young fellow who was almost reverenced by doctors and nurses for his patience and fortitude, young George Brooks, brother to the late Bishop Phillips Brooks looked up into the sweet face of Mother Augustine as she bent over to minister or to soothe the dear boy with mother, thank you mother and with such ineffable smile of peace. We could never tell if in his delirium he thought it was his own mother but the peace on the boy's face showed what his nurse had been to him. His sickness was short and death came just before the father reached Newburn. One dear young friend of mine, Sergeant Charles Hinckling was sick under their care many weeks, finally brought home to linger and die but he and his family were most deeply grateful to the kind sisters for the tender care bestowed upon him in their hospital, especially by Sister Gertrude. Sister Mary Gertrude is now the mother superior of an institution in California. After a life of hard work among the poor and suffering, I think she is perhaps the only one living of those dear women I knew in Newburn. It was through the winter of 1862 to 1863 that the sisters were in Newburn. The next year, the headquarters were removed to Fortress Monroe and the sisters returned to New York. Through these 30 years or more, my brother and many, many more who could have born evidence to the faithful work of the sisters of Mercy and Newburn have answered the roll call to the home above. But those days stand out in my memory as clearly as if yesterday with all the pain, anxiety, hope, fear and faith and no scenes are more real to me than those hours with those devoted women who are helping God's children so wisely, so gently with no thought of reward or glory, God bless their memories to us all. General David McMurtry Gregg ranks as one of the most distinguished cavalry officers that served in the Union Army. No man on either side had a more brilliant record for discretion in camp and bravery in battle. He graduated at West Point and after meritorious service in the regular army in New Mexico, California, Oregon and Washington Territory, he became colonel of the 8th Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry. He served with his regiment during the entire peninsula campaign of 1862. And in November of that year, he became Brigadier General of Volunteers. He was placed in command of a division of cavalry on the battlefield of Fredericksburg and served as its commander in the Stoneman's Raid in the campaigns of Gettysburg, Mine Run, the wilderness and in front of Petersburg. He commanded the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac from August 1864 until his resignation from the Army in February 1865. He was breveted Major General, United States Volunteers, August 1st, 1864. General Gregg has occupied many positions of distinction in civil life. The writer of this volume recently communicated with General Gregg regarding his experiences with the Catholic sisterhoods in the war and received the following very interesting reply. My dear sir, I am in receipt of your letter of the 8th instant in closing an article taken from a newspaper published in 1866 and in which the name General Gregg is mentioned. The person referred to was my cousin, General John I. Gregg, who commanded one of my brigades. I do not recall that at any time in the field I was brought in contact with representatives of any of the Catholic sisterhoods, yet the mere mention of the matter makes me reminiscent and whilst my experience with a representative of a sisterhood was purely personal, it was so pleasant and profitable to me that I cannot refrain from mentioning it. In the summer of 1861, I was made a captain in the 6th regular cavalry and was ordered east from Oregon, where for several years I had been serving as a lieutenant in the 1st Dragoons. In crossing the Itthmus of Panama, I contracted the low fever of that region. In September, I joined the 6th at Bledensburg near Washington and after a short time I was prostrated by this fever. Just at this time, the regiment was ordered away and I was left in the camp seriously ill. Stretched on the bottom of an ambulance, I was hauled over a rough road to Washington and placed in a bed in the old Kirkwood house in a state of delirium. A few hours after major Ingalls, who subsequently became quarter master general, a warm personal friend heard of my condition and with another friend came to the hotel with a carriage and I was taken to the E Street infirmary which was in charge of a surgeon of the regular army. At the entrance of the infirmary stood the doctor and at his side an elderly sister of charity. I was carried in and placed in a large room next to the surgeons and was at once put into a clean comfortable bed. The good sister who had some superior rank saw that I was made comfortable and it is needless to say that after what I had gone through I felt as though I were in heaven. Then followed weeks of severe illness with typhoid fever. I had the attendance of my own man and had many visits each day from doctors, stewards and their assistants but the real nursing was done by another sister of charity, sister Margaret. I have never forgotten her gentleness and cheerfulness. She was simply the highest type of a Christian woman. Her good nursing continued for weeks and I was kept alive only to go through another trying experience. For on a cold and rainy night early in November and nearly midnight this infirmary took fire and was entirely destroyed. How I escaped has nothing to do with this narrative but to my exceeding regret I never again saw sister Margaret. But I have never forgotten her and when in the street I meet one of the sisterhood to which she belonged there is in my heart a feeling of respect and gratitude to those self-denying and devoted women who are spending their lives and doing good to their fellow beings. I have written more than I intended but I love to talk about the good sister Margaret and it is not surprising that if as now I am inclined to write about her I allow my pen to run away a little. Signed sincerely yours, D. Gregg Redding, Pennsylvania January 11th, 1898. The South Bend Tribune shortly after the return of the Sisters of the Holy Cross to their convent homes printed the following. When in September, 1861, General Lou Wallace commanding the federal forces in Southern Kentucky applied to St. Mary's for nurses. Mother Angela with five other sisters hastened to the relief of the suffering soldiers at the camp in Paduca. And before the opening of the year, 1862, 75 sisters were sent from St. Mary's and her branch houses to the military hospitals at Louisville, Paduca, Cairo, Mount City, Memphis and Washington. Of this number, two died in fever caught in the discharge of their duties. When the Western flotilla of gunboats opened the Mississippi River, Commodore Davis asked and obtained the services of seven Sisters of the Holy Cross to take charge of the floating hospital in which hundreds of lives were saved. These deeds were not done for the world's praise. They were the duties to which the lives of the Sisters of the Holy Cross are devoted. Whenever suffering humanity requires their help. A memorial of those days now rests in St. Mary's grounds in the shape of two immense shattered cannon captured at island number 10 and presented to Mother Angela by the commander of the flotilla. These cannon are destined to be molded into a statue of Our Lady of Peace and will remain in St. Mary's grounds as a historical monument of the dark days of our civil war. A correspondent of the Protestant Church Journal writing from New Orleans in 1862 highly compliments the Sisters of Charity in that city for the amount of good they are un ostentatiously doing saying among other things, one misses here, a church hospital. Many of our federal officers and men are cared for when sick in the Roman Catholic institutions, the Hotel D'Euth and the Charity Hospital. The Sisters attend most winningly on their patients and force them to confess on recovering that their own mothers and sisters at home could not have done better for them. On leaving, the patient carries away in his hand some Roman Catholic book of prayer or controversy or instruction and in his heart, a grateful remembrance of the fair donor, a resolution to peruse the book and a profound conviction that the Roman Catholic Church with all its faults certainly has a soul of true Christian love. Surely the time will come when all churchmen will acknowledge the angelic influence of Christian sisterhoods in the natural connections between curing the body and renovating the soul, the imperative necessity of organizing Christian and accomplished nurses and placing them in institutions where their love and skill can do the highest possible service. The Charleston Mercury during the siege of that city said, there is probably no one in this city whose eyes have not followed with interest the quiet and modest figure of some sister of mercy as she passed upon her rounds. It is in this gentle impersonation of Christian benevolence and to her associates that our sick and wounded soldiers owe the tenderest of those ministrations which are better than medicine in their effect upon the languishing invalid. Nor is the large kindness of these ladies solely displayed in the personal cares which they bestow upon the sufferer. They give generously from their stores at the same time and many a want is thus supplied which might otherwise have been left ungratified. Since the beginning of the siege of our city their presence has diffused its blessings in every hospital and their unwary detentions to the soldiers have done in calculable good. In the closing year of the war, Reverend George W. Pepper, a Methodist clergyman in a sermon preached by him in the Methodist Episcopal Church, White Eyes, Cochopton County, Ohio eulogized these heroic ladies as follows. The war has brought out one result. It has shown that numbers of the weaker sex, though born to wealth and luxury, are ready to renounce every comfort and brave every hardship that they may minister to the suffering, tend the wounded in their agony and soothe the last struggles of the dying. God bless the sisters of charity in their heroic mission. I had almost said their heroic martyrdom and I might have said it for I do think that in walking those long lines of sick beds and giving themselves to all the ghastly duties of the hospital, they are doing a harder thing than was allotted to many who mounted the scaffold or dared the stake. Mack, a correspondent of the Ohio State Journal writing from Murfreesboro under date of January 4, 1863 about hospital scenes which he describes as heart-rending thus speaks of the kind offices and invaluable services of the sisters of charity. It is now a pleasure to turn from this dark and dismal description of the majority of our hospitals to an oasis, a something that is in reality bright and cheering. There is a sect called Roman Catholics, a sect that in my younger days, I was taught to look upon as monsters capable of any crime in the calendar of human frailties who have hospitals and their own charge attended by sisters of charity. They should be called angels who know what true disinterested humanity is. I have visited them, therefore I speak of what I know. Everything in and about them is clean and comfortable, scarcely a death takes place within their portals. If a soldier is dangerously sick, you will see by the side of his clean and tidy cot one of these heaven-born angels, we call them nothing else, ministering to his every want with the tender care of a mother or sister. They glide noiselessly from cot to cot, cheering the despondent and speaking words of kindness to all. No one who has the heart of a man can help loving them with a holy sisterly love. There is not a soldier in Richmond but would beg if it was possible that when wounded or sick, he should be taken to such a hospital. And for myself, sooner than be taken to any other, I would rather die by the wayside with God's canopy my only covering. Would to God, there were more of them. The following account of a presentation to a sister of charity is from the Cleveland Herald of November 13th, 1865. One of the most pleasant presentation affairs we remember to have attended took place at Charity Hospital yesterday at 11 o'clock. After Professor Weber, Dr. Scott and the students had been seated. The lady superior was invited into the room and presented with a beautiful engraving. One of the proof sheets copied from the painting of constant mayor entitled, Consolation by Captain Samuel Whiting. Mr. Whiting in presenting the engraving said, sister superior, some years ago, while in command of one of the New Orleans steamships, I was prostrated at that port with a severe attack of yellow fever. And though I had many friends there, had it not been for the tender care and skillful nursing of the sisters of charity, I have no idea that I should have survived the attack. During our late fearful and bloody war, the devotion of your noble order to the cause of humanity has won the admiration of the world and entirely obliterated the illiberal prejudices of the most bigoted opponents of your sect. Certainly no soldier of the Crimean army will ever ignore the kind care and gentle nursing of the sisters of charity. Each hospital throughout our land could count them by the score whose deeds have doubly sanctified our long and bloody war. And many a home returning brave will long delight to tell of her the gentle minister who tended him so well. The mother calls a blessing down on her who nursed her son and thanks of wounded heroes brave how well her work was done. True womanhood has ever proved self-sacrificing, brave. Last at the dear Redeemer's Cross and earliest at his grave. The citizens of Cleveland may well be congratulated on the possession of this noble institution, the rare skill of its eminent and accomplished surgeons the sound teaching of its learned pathologist combined with the tender nursing of your good and benevolent sisterhood will relieve many of the ills that flesh is heir to and restore to many a grateful sufferer the God-given priceless boon of health. As a small token of grateful recollections to my nurses at New Orleans I beg to present to the sisters of charity hospital this engraving one of the proof sheets copied from the beautiful painting of Constant Meyer entitled Consolation and with it the following poem which I take pleasure in writing for them descriptive of the scene so admirably portrayed by the accomplished artist. A union soldier in his tent weak wounded and despairing lay the hectic flushes came and went as rose the din of battle fray. The army of the Cumberland saw him with eager flashing eye in its front rank undaunted stand resolved to conquer or to die. Firm and unflinching thus he stood while cannon belched through blood red flames his chiefest thought his country's good and next perchance a deathless name. Sudden as lightnings vivid glare shrilly shell burst above his head a fragment lay his bosom bear and stretched him wounded with the dead. Back to the rear the soldier's bore the wounded comrade faint and weak his army blue was stained with gore and death's pale seal was on his cheek. A surgeon dressed the ghastly wound and counseled quiet and repose then sought again the battlefield now thickly strewn with friends and foes. Left to himself the wounded man besought him of his early life each wayward act and vicious plan each worldly and unholy strife and as he weaker grew he thought of his dear home far far away what would he give could it be bought for power to be there but a day. To close his dying eyes where first his infant lips had learned to pray to kiss the mother who had nursed the sister who had shared his play. He murmured oh for one sweet tone of voices loved in days gone by dear mother sister oh for one to gently close my dying eye. He seized a face of radiant light was in his tent and by his side each feature of beautified and bright free from all trace of human pride. She points him to a heavenly home a house of joy not made with hands to the redeemer calling come who at the portal beckoning stands then she unclasp the book of prayer its off-turn leaves were soiled and worn for she had made her constant care our wounded soldiers night and mourn. From those dim pages she essayed to whisper to the wounded peace her gentle tones his fears allayed and bade his soul despairing cease. Sisters of charity he cried sister and mother both thou art for here by my poor pallet side thou art one with them in hand and heart. Oh hear me and though poor and weak if I survive I'll hold her dear who gently bathed my fevered cheek and brought me consolation here. It now remains for me only to tender you this humble testimonial of my regard and my hearty wishes for the fullest prosperity of the charity hospital and college for the temporal and eternal welfare of the sisterhood of the first and the continued health and usefulness of the eminent faculty of the last. The remarks of Captain Whiting met with a hearty response from Dr. Scott in behalf of the Lady Superior in acceptance of the picture. The Memphis appeal in its issue of February 17th, 1866 thus bears testimony to the zeal and valor of the sisters of charity in this city. Vincent DePaul who has since received so justly deserved the title of benefactor of mankind was the originator of that divine and charitable society, the sisters of charity in a small town of France in the early part of the 17th century. The signal service rendered by them during the past civil war to our sick wounded and dying soldiers in camp in hospital and on the battlefield and their unwirried and constant administrations to the suffering and poor of all classes throughout the land is the theme of praise and commendation on the lips of all no matter of what religious creed or faith. Their godlike and noble works have one respect, the most profound from everyone in our own city the result of their exertions are to be seen on every hand. In the cause of education their stand is preeminent with them modesty, knowledge and refinement are most carefully blended. The young girl after a tutelage of years under their careful supervision walks forth into the world with a mind as pure and free and demeanor as gentle and kind as when first these precious charges were tended to their keeping. And how carefully are the poor little ones without parents and bereft of homes provided for by these angels of earth? The asylum under their charging guidance situated near the Catholic cemetery on the outskirts of the city is the most complete institution of its kind in the state. A large number of orphans are educated, clothed and fed here the year in and out finding compensation only in the good they have done and the anticipation of a bright reward hereafter from him who tempereth the wind to the shorn lamb and under whose all seeing eye every act of charity and faith is always recorded. Their labors in behalf of the sick are ever attended with the most cheering results. Take a look at our city hospitals and you will find everything well arranged, clean and neat and bearing the impress most unmistakably of the goodness of their hearts and the greatness of their works. The patients one and all express the most sincere satisfaction at their treatment and pray as all good people do that the society which has rendered so much good to us and all mankind may be like the foundation stone of all blessings, truth and with it ever bear the stamp of immortality. End of chapter 27. CHAPTER 35. PART 2. PART 2. The South Bend Tribune, shortly after the return of the Sisters of the Holy Cross to their convent homes, printed the following. When in September 1861, General Lou Wallace, commanding the federal forces in southern Kentucky, applied to St. Mary's for nurses. Mother Angela, with five other sisters, hastened to the relief of the suffering soldiers at the camp in Paduca. And before the opening of the year 1862, seventy-five sisters were sent from St. Mary's and her branch houses to the military hospitals at Louisville, Paduca, Cairo, Mound City, Memphis and Washington. Of this number, two died from fever, caught in the discharge of their duties. When the western flotilla of gunboats opened the Mississippi River, Commodore Davis asked and obtained the services of seven Sisters of the Holy Cross to take charge of the floating hospital in which hundreds of lives were saved. These deeds were not done for the world's praise. They were the duties to which the lives of the Sisters of the Holy Cross are devoted. Whenever suffering humanity requires their help. A memorial of those days now rests in St. Mary's grounds, in the shape of two immense, shattered cannon, captured at island number ten and presented to Mother Angela by the commander of the flotilla. These cannon are destined to be molded into a statue of Our Lady of Peace and will remain in St. Mary's grounds as a historical monument of the dark days of our civil war. A correspondent of the Protestant Church Journal, writing from New Orleans in 1862, highly compliments the Sisters of Charity in that city for the amount of good they are unosentatiously doing, saying, among other things, one misses here a church hospital. Many of our federal officers and men are cared for when sick in the Roman Catholic institutions, the hotel du and the charity hospital. The Sisters attend most winningly on their patients and force them to confess on recovering that their own mothers and Sisters at home could not have done better for them. On leaving, the patient carries away in his hand some Roman Catholic book of prayer or controversy or instruction, and in his heart a grateful remembrance of the fair donor, a resolution to peruse the book and a profound conviction that the Roman Catholic Church, with all its faults, certainly has a soul of true Christian love. Surely the time will come when all churchmen will acknowledge the angelic influence of Christian sisterhoods in the natural connections between curing the body and renovating the soul. The imperative necessity of organizing Christian and accomplished nurses and placing them in institutions where their love and skill can do the highest possible service. The Charleston Mercury, during the siege of that city, said, there is probably no one in this city whose eyes have not followed with interest the quiet and modest figure of some sister of mercy as she passed upon her rounds. It is in this gentle impersonation of Christian benevolence and to her associates that our sick and wounded soldiers owe the tendress of those ministrations which are better than medicine in their effect upon the languishing invalid, nor is the large kindness of these ladies solely displayed in the personal cares which they bestow upon the sufferer. They give generously from their stores at the same time and many a want is thus supplied which might otherwise have been left ungratified. Since the beginning of the siege of our city, their presence has diffused its blessing in every hospital and their unwirried attention to the soldiers have done incalculable good. In the closing year of the war, Reverend George W. Pepper, a Methodist clergyman, in a sermon preached by him in the Methodist Episcopal Church, White Eyes, Cachokton County, Ohio, eulogized these historic ladies as follows. The war has brought out one result. It has shown that numbers of the weaker sex, though born to wealth and luxury, are ready to renounce every comfort and brave every hardship that they may minister to the suffering, attend the wounded in their agony, and soothe the last struggles of the dying. God blessed the Sisters of Charity in their heroic mission. I had almost said their heroic martyrdom, and I might have said it, for I do think that in walking those long lines of sick beds, in giving themselves to all the ghastly duties of the hospital, they are doing a harder thing than was allotted to many who mounted the scaffold or dared the stake. Mac, a correspondent of the Ohio State Journal, writing from Murfreesboro, under date of January 4, 1863, about hospital scenes, which he describes as heart-trending, thus speaks of the kind offices and invaluable services of the Sisters of Charity. It is now a pleasure to turn from this dark and dismal description of the majority of our hospitals to an oasis, a something that is in reality bright and cheering. There's a sect called Roman Catholics, a sect that, in my younger days, I was taught to look upon as monsters, capable of any crime in the calendar of human frailties, who have hospitals in their own charge, attended by Sisters of Charity. They should be called angels, who know what true, disinterested humanity is. I have visited them, therefore I speak of what I know. Everything in and about them is clean and comfortable. Scarcely a death takes place within their portals. If a soldier is dangerously sick, you will see by the side of his clean and tidy cot, one of these heaven-born angels, we call them nothing else, ministering to his every want with the tender care of a mother or sister. They glide noiselessly from cot to cot, cheering the despondent and speaking words of kindness to all. No one who has the heart of a man can help loving them with the holy sisterly love. There is not a soldier in Richmond, but would beg, if it was possible, that when wounded or sick, he should be taken to such a hospital. And for myself, sooner than be taken to any other, I would rather die by the wayside with God's canopy my only covering. Would to God there were more of them. The following account of a presentation to a sister of charity is from the Cleveland Herald of November 13th, 1865. One of the most pleasant presentation affairs we remember to have attended took place at Charity Hospital yesterday at 11 o'clock. After Professor Weber, Dr. Scott, and the students had been seated, the Lady Superior was invited into the room and presented with a beautiful engraving. One of the proof sheets copied from the painting of Constant Mayor, entitled Consolation by Captain Samuel Whitting. Mr. Whitting, in presenting the engraving, said, Sister Superior, some years ago, while in command of one of the New Orleans steamships, I was prostrated at that port with a severe attack of yellow fever. And though I had many friends there, had it not been for the tender care and skillful nursing of the Sisters of Charity, I have no idea that I should have survived the attack. During our late and fearful and bloody war, the devotion of your noble order to the cause of humanity has won the admiration of the world and entirely obliterated the illiberal prejudices of the most bigoted opponents of your sect. Certainly no soldier of the Crimean army will ever ignore the kind care and gentle nursing of the Sisters of Charity. Each hospital throughout our land could count them by the score, whose deeds have doubly sacrificed our long and bloody war, and many a home returning brave will long delight to tell, of her, the gentle minister, who tended him so well. The mother calls a blessing down on her who nursed her son and thanks of wounded heroes brave how well her work was done. True womanhood has ever proved self-sacrificing, brave, last at the dear Redeemer's Cross and earliest at his grave. The citizens of Cleveland may well be congratulated on the possession of this noble institution, the rare skill of its eminent and accomplished surgeons, the sound teaching of its learned pathologist, combined with the tender nursing of your good and benevolent sisterhood, will relieve many of the ills that flesh is heir to and restore to many a grateful sufferer, the God-given priceless boon of health. As a small token of grateful recollections to my nurses at New Orleans, I beg to present to the Sisters of Charity Hospital this engraving, one of the proof sheets, copied from the beautiful painting of constant mayor entitled Consolation, and with it the following poem, which I take pleasure in writing for them, descriptive of the scene so admirably portrayed by the accomplished artist. A Union soldier in his tent, weak, wounded, and despairing lay, the hectic flushes came and went as rose the din of battle fray. The Army of the Cumberland saw him with eager flashing eye, in its front rank undaunted stand, resolved to conquer or to die. Firm and unflinching thus he stood, while cannon belched through blood-red flames. His chiefest thought, his country's good, and next perchance a deathless name. Sudden as lightnings vivid glare, shrilly shell burst above his head, a fragment laid his bosom bare and stretched him wounded with the dead. Back to the rear the soldiers bore, the wounded comrade, faint and weak, his army blue was stained with gore, and death's pale seal was on his cheek. A surgeon dressed the ghastly wound, and counseled quiet and repose, then sought again the battle-ground, now thickly strewn with friends and foes. Left to himself the wounded man, be thought him of his early life, each wayward act and vicious plan, each worldly and unholy strife. And as he weaker grew, he thought, of his dear home far, far away, what would he give, could it be bought, for power to be there but a day? To close his dying eyes where first his infant lips had learned to pray, to kiss the mother who had nursed, the sister who had shared his play. He murmured, oh, for one sweet tone, of voices loved in days gone by, dear mother, sister, oh, for one, to gently close my dying eye. He ceased, a face of radiant light, was in his tent and by his side. Each feature beautified and bright, free from all trace of human pride. She points him to a heavenly home, a house of joy not made with hands. To the Redeemer calling, come, who at the portal beckoning stands. Then she unclasped the Book of Prayer. Its off-turned leaves were soiled and worn, for she had made her constant care, our wounded soldiers night and morn. For those dim pages she essayed, to whisper to the wounded, peace. Her gentle tones, his fears allayed, and bade his soul, despairing, cease. Sister of charity, he cried, sister and mother, both thou art, for here, by my poor pallet side, thou'dt one with them in hand and heart. Oh, hear me, and, though poor and weak, if I survive I'll hold her dear, who gently bathed my fevered cheek, and brought me consolation here. It now remains for me only to tender you this humble testimonial of my regard and my hearty wishes for the fullest prosperity of the charity hospital and college, for the temporal and eternal welfare of the sisterhood of the first, and the continued health and usefulness of the eminent faculty of the last. The last remarks of Captain Whitting met with a hearty response from Dr. Scott in behalf of the Lady Superior in acceptance of the picture. The Memphis Appeal, in its issue of February 17th, 1866, thus bears testimony to the zeal and value of the Sisters of Charity in this city. Vincent de Paul, who has since received, so justly deserved, the title of Benefactor of Mankind, was the originator of that divine and charitable society, the Sisters of Charity, in a small town in France, in the early part of the 17th century. The signal service rendered by them during the past civil war to our sick, wounded, and dying soldiers in camp, in hospital, and on the battlefield, and their unwirried and constant administrations to the suffering and poor of all classes throughout the land, is the theme of praise and commendation on the lips of all, no matter of what religious creed or faith. Their godlike and noble works have one respect, the most profound from everyone. In our own city the result of their exertions are to be seen on every hand. In the cause of education their stand is preeminent. With them modesty, knowledge, and refinement are most carefully blended. The young girl, after a tutelage of years under their careful supervision, walks forth into the world with a mind as pure and free, and demeanor as gentle and kind as when first these precious charges were tendered to their keeping. And how carefully are the poor little ones, without parents and bereft of homes, provided for by these angels of earth? The asylum under their charge and guidance situated near the Catholic cemetery, on the outskirts of the city, is the most complete institution of its kind in the state. A large number of orphans are educated, clothed and fed here the year in and out, finding compensation only in the good they have done and the anticipation of a bright reward hereafter, from him who tempereth the wind to the shorn lamb, and under whose all-seeing eye every act of charity and faith is always recorded. Their labors, on behalf of the sick, are ever attended with the most cheering results. Take a look at our hospitals, and you will find everything well arranged, clean, and neat, and bearing the impress most unmistakably of the goodness of their hearts and the greatness of their works. The patients, one in all, express the most sincere satisfaction at their treatment, and pray, as all good people do, that the society which has rendered so much good to us and all mankind may be like the foundation stone of all blessings, truth, and with it ever bear the stamp of immortality. End of Chapter 35, Part 2 of Angels of the Battlefield.