[151] visited in 1861, and the winter of 1862, before the movement of the army to the peninsula, more than one hundred hospitals of the army of the Potomac, in and around Washington, and had not only ministered to the physical wants of the sick and wounded men, but had imparted religious instruction and consolation to many of them. Everywhere her coming had been welcomed; in many instances, eyes dimmed by the shadow of the wings of the death-angel, saw in her the wife or mother, for whose coming they had longed and died, with the hallowed word “mother” on their lips. When in the spring of 1862, the army of the Potomac moved to the Peninsula, Mrs. Harris went thither, first distributing as far as practicable, her stores among the men. Soon after her arrival on the Peninsula, she found ample employment for her time. The Chesapeake and Hygeia hospitals at Fortress Monroe, filled at first mostly with the sick, and the few wounded in the siege of Yorktown, were, after the battles of Williamsburg and West Point crowded with such of the wounded, both Union and Confederate soldiers as could be brought so far from the battle-fields. She spent two or three weeks here, aiding the noble women who were acting as Matrons of these hospitals. From thence she went on board the Vanderbilt, then just taken as a Government Transport for the wounded from the bloody field of Fair Oaks. She thus describes the scene and her work:
There were eight hundred on board. Passage-ways, state-rooms, floors from the dark and foetid hold to the hurricane deck, were all more than filled; some on mattresses, some on blankets, others on straw; some in the death-struggle, others nearing it, some already beyond human sympathy and help; some in their blood as they had been brought from the battle-field of the Sabbath previous, and all hungry and thirsty, not having had anything to eat or drink, except hard crackers, for twenty-four hours. The gentlemen who came on with us hurried on to the White House, and would have had us go with them, but something held us back; thank God it was so. Meeting Dr. Cuyler, Medical Director, he exclaimed, “Here is work for you ” He, poor man, was completely overwhelmed with the general care of all the hospitals at Old Point, and added to these, these mammoth floating
