Kate Cumming: Confederate Nurse
(A report by Dana Casey Jones to the Prattville Dragoons SCV Camp 1524 2/14/2019)
Nursing duties were very broad, and their sufferings were
personally sacrificial, and included such as:
--Writing letters for the soldiers, reading letters to the
soldiers, reading scriptures and praying over them, reading them their last
rights and comforting the dying, often simply holding their hand as they
passed.
--Cooking, feeding the sick, making home brewed medicines
and poultices, pulverizing charcoal which they used to control bleeding,
administering medicines and whiskey, cleaning, washing clothing and bedsheets
and bandages, gathering firewood and keeping the stove burning.
--Foraging and begging or bartering for food, milk, water
and any other needed supplies; knitting of socks and sewing homespun from raw
cotton, and many hours were spent making bandages, cutting them and rolling
them. They also begged for simple
necessities such as forks, spoons, knives, and cotton to make mattresses for
the soldiers.
--their hardships were:
lack of sleep, sleeping on the floors or boxes, heat exhaustion or
extreme cold, hunger, insect infestation, their own illnesses, sheer
exhaustion, constant packing and rebuilding as the hospitals migrated, mental
and emotional stress, loss of their own loved ones and friends
--costs of simple items- $50.00 for a pair of boots, $2.00
for a pair of socks and $5 for stockings.
Rare luxuries she listed was coffee, sugar, tea, milk, meat
I cannot do justice to her original creative writings, so I
thought it best to read some excerpts from the book so you can imagine what it
was like to have actually lived through those tragic years. I want to start with what she penned in her
introduction as it sheds light on her motives for wanting her journal
published:
“The southerner may learn a lesson from the superhuman
endurance of the glorious dead and mutilated living who so nobly did their duty
in their country's hour of peril. And the northerner, I trust, when he has
brought in review before him, the wrongs of every kind inflicted on us, will
cry, Enough! They have suffered enough! Let their wounds now be healed instead of
opening them afresh. I have another
motive in view. At the present moment, there are men on trial
for ill-treating northern prisoners. This is to me the grossest injustice we
have yet suffered. I would stake my life
on the truth of everything which I have related, as an eye-witness, in the
following pages. I have used the
simplest language, as truth needs no embellishment. May I not hope that what I have related in
regard to the manner in which I saw prisoners treated, will soften the hearts
of the northerners toward the men now undergoing their trial, and make them
look a little more to themselves? We begged, time and again, for an exchange,
but none was granted. WE starved THEIR prisoners!? But WHO laid waste our corn
and wheat fields? And did not we ALL starve? Have the southern men who were in northern
prisons no tales to tell?— of being frozen in their beds, and seeing their
comrades freeze to death for want of proper clothing? Is there no (Henry) Wirz for us to bring to
trial? But I must stop; the old feeling comes back; these things are hard to
bear. People of the North-- the southerners, have their faults, (but) cruelty
is not one of them. If your prisoners suffered, it was from force of
circumstances, and not with design.”
She spoke of Lincoln as an evil despot ruler throughout her
book. In 1864 she stated, “ Lincoln has
again refused to exchange prisoners. I do think this is the cruelest act of
which he is guilty, not only to us, but his own men. He is fully aware that we can scarcely get
enough of the necessaries of life to feed our own men, and how can he expect us
to feed his? Human lives are nothing to
him; all the prisoners we have may die of starvation, and I do not expect they
would cost him a thought, as all he has to do is to issue a call for so many
more thousands to be offered up on his altars of sacrifice. How long will the people of the North submit
to this Moloch? He knows that every one
of our men is of value to us, for we have no the dregs of the earth to draw
from; but our every man is a patriot, battling for all that is dear to him.”
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