Mar 01, 2012 - Sale 2271

Sale 2271 - Lot 382

Unsold
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
(MILITARY--CIVIL WAR.) HALEY, S.G. Autograph Letter from a male nurse, writing from a hospital in Alexandria Virginia. Seven small 8vo pages, on U.S. Christian Commission stationary. Written in a neat cursive hand. Alexandria, VA, July 20, 1865

Additional Details

The Christian Commission was formed in the fall of 1861 by the Young Men's Christian Association to "take active measure to promote the spiritual and temporal welfare of the soldiers in the army, and the sailors and marines in the navy, in co-operation with chaplains and others." During the course of the war, 4000 volunteered and distributed over six million dollars (in today's money) worth of medicine, food, clothing, etc.
Haley discusses in detail recovering soldiers, those about to die and those "skedaddlers and stragglers who are kept in the slave pens of "Price, Birch and Co, dealers in Slaves." He writes of the sick and the dead from the colored regiments: "Today I visited the military cemetery in Alexandria... There are wooden headboards [grave markers] marked colored, with the name, Co. Regt, and state of each soldier. The boards are numbered, 3500 is the highest... a good many colored soldiers lie here. He continues, how it was for these soldiers years earlier; their joy of life, their love of country; "then they were strong, vigorous, full of life and hope. They left their states to return no more. They were encamped in the open field, endured the summer's offensive heat & the winter's being cold; they suffered hardship, privation, and want." He cites the neglect of the colored soldiers: "They were called into battle and fought for the old flag. Others fell there[?] wounded, mangled and bleeding, yet full of hope, were taken to the hospital. Some of them perhance were not wounded but, because of the excitement, the long weary marches, had not the strength to endure it, but broke down [post traumatic stress syndrome?]. They too, were taken to the hospital. And here they lingered, away from friends, with few or none of the comforts wh[ite] sick people like; with nurses indifferent or worse, with surgeons careless or inattentive, with no good ministers or chaplains to speak a comforting word. Here they lay in hospitals for weeks or months till at last they died, having suffered much in the body and mind. Then they were buried, but with no one to shed a tear, except at the distant home. A squad of men with fife and drum escorted the remains to the grave. They were buried and then it was over with them."