Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 28.djvu/27

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be spared from hospital service, and to cross the river at Campbell's bridge, take the road to Chesterfield Courthouse, go as far as prac- ticable that night, and to await further orders.

For some months, we had been able to keep open within the cor- porate limits only two hospitals, the Fair Grounds hospital, and the Confederate hospital on Washington street, at the corner of Jones road; the latter the best organized and equipped military hospital I ever saw, which I had fitted up, without regard to expense, two years before, in a large tobacco factory, that could have been no better adapted for the purpose, if it had been built for a hospital.

The other hospitals in the city, one, the North Carolina hospital, at the present site of Cameron's factory; one on Washington street, the Virginia hospital, in Watson & McGilFs factory; one on Wash- ington and Jefferson streets, the South Carolina, now the factory of J. H. Maclin, and one on Bollingbrook and Second streets; the Ladies' hospital we had been compelled to abandon the first month of the siege on account of the shelling, which made them unpleas- ant and unsafe for the sick and wounded. The Confederate and Fair Grounds hospitals, therefore, were crowded with wounded, and especially during the hard fighting which preceded the evacuation of the city. Therefore, I found, on inspection, I could take but few surgeons or attaches with me, and when I mustered my little force at sunset, in front of the Confederate hospital, found I had four sur- geons, as many attaches (white), one ambulance and driver, one wagon, one buggy, and four colored servants, one of whom, a sprightly and smart young lad of sixteen, his mother, who was one of my slaves, brought up just before I left, and with many impreca- tions. and adjurations, told him to follow " master to the end of the earth," and " never to come back unless master came too."

As I stood at the gate of the hospital and watched my little cor- tege move off loth, indeed, to turn my back on home and city, for I felt that I should never see either again as I saw them then, if I ever saw them at all the wounded were being hurried in from am- bulance and upon stretcher, their moans mingling with the cries of women, the shrieking and bursting of shell, and the hoarse orders of men in authority, two scenes caught my eye, which are as ideli- bly fixed there now as on that holy Sabbath eve, which the great God had seemingly given up to the devils in pandemonium.

A stretcher was borne in the gateway by four soldiers, just from the near front, one of them crying " my poor captain; the best man that ever lived." A large, finely-made officer he was, his right arm