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Lewis Atterbury Stimson, M.D. 
 
 By 
 Edward L. Keyes, M.D. 
 
 ^ 
 
 Ube Isnicltetbochet press 
 
 New York 
 
 1918 
 
 

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Hn flDemoriam 
 
 Lewis Atterbury Stimson, M.D. 
 
 Dr. Stimson's eyes first saw the light in Pater- 
 son, New Jersey, on the twenty-fourth day of 
 August, 1844; and he closed them in his last slum- 
 ber on the Shinnecock Hills, the seventeenth day 
 of September, 191 7; — thus terminating a career 
 of something more than the allotted threescore 
 years and ten — ^years of continuous achievement 
 and service. 
 
 A heritage of character and capacity came to 
 him from ancestors on both sides, many of whom 
 had left behind them distinguished reputations 
 for good citizenship along civic and military lines. 
 
 The Stimsons were among our earliest settlers, 
 coming over as they did in the second Massa- 
 chusetts Bay Colony. Certain of them were 
 soldiers in the Indian Wars of the seventeenth 
 century, and in the French and Indian Wars of 
 the eighteenth, while others served through the 
 Revolution. Among these was George Stimson, 
 who fought with the Continentals throughout the 
 entire war from Ticonderoga and Bunker Hill 
 
 3 
 
4 IN MEMORIAM 
 
 through Valley Forge to Yorktown. Dr. Stim- 
 son's great-grandfather, having become impover- 
 ished by giving away his private fortune to help 
 finance Washington's army at Cambridge, left 
 his home in Dedham to open up and take charge 
 of the great Livingston tract in the Catskills, 
 whereto he travelled over the mountains with his 
 young son. Dr. Stimson's grandfather, who grew 
 up to become a clergyman and ministered to the 
 spiritual needs of that entire section. 
 
 Dr. Stimson's father, when a very young man, 
 went to New York and entered the office of 
 Rogers, Ketcham and Grosvenor, who sent him 
 out to their machine and locomotive works in 
 Paterson, New Jersey. Here he met and married 
 Julia Atterbury, a lady of old Huguenot stock, 
 among whose ancestors were Elisha Boudinot and 
 his brother Ehas, young lawyers Uving in New 
 Jersey at the outbreak of the Revolution, in which 
 they took a prominent part. These two held 
 the State of New Jersey from taking sides with 
 the King and, as members of the Committee of 
 Safety, had a price put upon their heads. Later, 
 Elisha Boudinot became a judge of the Supreme 
 Court of New Jersey, and Elias was President of 
 Congress and signed the treaty of peace with 
 Great Britain in 1783. 
 
 From such staunch and admirable stock sprang 
 this scion — a worthy issue. 
 
 The boy grew up as most boys, but venturesome 
 and self-reliant and with a mechanical turn of 
 
LEWIS ATTERBURY STIMSON 5 
 
 mind. This mechanical bent was exhibited when 
 he, still a young boy, made a wooden quadrant 
 and with this home-made instnmient, cooperating 
 with his older brother, determined from the roof 
 of their home the height and distance of various 
 church spires and other objects in the neighbor- 
 hood. It was, in part, the development of this 
 talent for mechanics that led to his success in 
 later years and contributed to his mastery of the 
 essentials in the treatment of fractures and dis- 
 locations, the field in which he was preeminent. 
 
 When barely fifteen, and still in roundabout 
 short clothes, he entered Yale College, the "baby" 
 in a class of about two hundred, and he graduated 
 with "Dispute" rank at eighteen. In college he 
 was popular and appreciated and was admitted 
 to the best Greek Letter Societies and to one of the 
 elect Senior Societies. He was active in athletics 
 and rowed in some of the interclass boat races. 
 
 His photograph taken at that time indicates a 
 disposition of exceeding sweetness, and bears an 
 expression in which there is no guile. It reveals 
 in his youth one of the marked characteristics of 
 his whole life. Man and boy he was clean in 
 mind, body, and soul — through and through. No 
 thoughts or words that entered his mind corroded 
 his purity and no words from out his mouth be- 
 fouled the sanctity of his soul — he had a life record 
 unsmirched by reproach. 
 
 After graduating from Yale Dr. Stimson visited 
 Europe for a few months and on returning answered 
 
6 IN MEMORIAM 
 
 his country's call, securing an appointment as 
 aide upon the staff of Major General Birney and 
 later upon that of Major General Terry. In the 
 carrying out of his duties he rendered excellent 
 service until near the end of the war, when he 
 was invalided home, stricken by a violent typhoid 
 that nearly ended his career. The details of his 
 mihtary experience, as told by himself at the 
 insistence of his children, are published with this 
 Memorial. 
 
 Dr. Stimson married in 1866 and entered the 
 banking office of his father, becoming a member 
 of the New York Stock Exchange in 1867 and 
 remaining in active business until 1871. In these 
 material channels he manifested ability and 
 accumulated a modest competence; but at the 
 same time he was acquiring a taste for a scientific 
 life through close association with an intimate 
 friend, a doctor, with whom he followed out certain 
 microscopic and pathological studies that awak- 
 ened in him a responsive interest. It is to be 
 noted, however, that Dr. Stimson did not take up 
 the study of medicine until he was twenty-seven 
 years old, a rather late period to strike off on a 
 new path. 
 
 His medical studies were carried on chiefly in 
 Paris, where he formed friendships with Pasteur, 
 Nelaton, Robin, Cornil, and other notable profes- 
 sional men. His main object in going abroad 
 was in the interest of his wife's failing health, to 
 spare her the asperities of a New York winter. 
 
LEWIS ATTERBURY STIMSON 7 
 
 He had intended to pursue his studies in Berlin 
 for two years, but found the arrogance of the 
 miHtary caste insupportable, and therefore after 
 two weeks he moved to Zurich and later to Paris. 
 This experience formed the basis for a life-long 
 distaste for German institutions, and was the 
 foundation for an equally strong appreciation of 
 all that was fine in French civiHzation. Return- 
 ing home he took his degree from the Bellevue 
 Hospital Medical College and began to practice 
 in 1875. 
 
 Despite the strain and concentration incident 
 to estabHshing himself in a new profession with 
 family responsibilities already resting on his young 
 shoulders, yet the physical and material interests 
 of his career never clouded the intellectual at- 
 mosphere that dominated his activities through 
 life. Early in his professional years when he 
 was deeply absorbed in that struggle which is so 
 essential to success in the first stages of endeavor, 
 and furthermore was oppressed by the conscious- 
 ness of the mortal illness of his wife, he found 
 respite in the grinding toil incident to the produc- 
 tion of his text-book on Operative Surgery, and 
 later in life he indicated the versatility of his 
 talent by translations from the French, which had 
 an individual charm due to his perfect knowledge 
 of the idiom, and to his admirable diction. Still 
 later his biographical essay on Pasteur and his 
 narratives of the cruises of the Fleur-de-Lys attest 
 the quality of his word painting. His professional 
 
8 IN MEMORIAM 
 
 writings bear witness to industry and originality. 
 His surgical essays are numerous, but his most 
 notable contributions to surgical literature are his 
 Operative Surgery and his masterly treatise on 
 Fractures and Dislocations. To produce the former 
 book he rehearsed every operation upon the 
 cadaver, and commented with a balanced mind 
 upon the physical steps required to reach a given 
 result. His work upon fractures and dislocations 
 has become a classic and is now counted an 
 indispensable authority. 
 
 As a practitioner Dr. Stimson's contributions 
 to the science and art of operative surgery were 
 many and valuable. The best known are briefly: 
 (i) The ligation of the ovarian and uterine arteries 
 in sequence in their course in hysterectomy, 
 1889, a step which places the modern operation 
 on a safe basis as admitted by Kelly and the other 
 leading gynecologists; (2) the introduction and 
 popularization of the molded plaster splint in the 
 treatment of fractures; (3) his methods of reducing 
 dislocations of the hip and of the shoulder; (4) 
 combined traction (Stimson-Hodgen) for fractures 
 of the femur ; (5) in the treatment of old dislocations 
 of the elbow, he was the first to call attention to 
 the importance of the newly formed bone on the 
 end of the himierus as an obstacle to the reduction 
 of the dislocation ; (6) Pf annenstiel-Stimson trans- 
 verse incision. Independently he called attention 
 to the use of the transverse incision as a means 
 of approach to the abdominal contents, especially 
 
LEWIS ATTERBURY STIMSON 9 
 
 of the pelvis. Pfannenstiel's article was published 
 in Germany before Dr. Stimson's in this country, 
 and the operative approach is called by Pfannen- 
 stiel's name although Dr. Stimson had evidently 
 used the method prior to the reported use of that 
 method by Pfannenstiel. 
 
 And finally it seems proper to record that, at 
 the time of his death, he was gathering material 
 from authoritative sources for the purpose of group- 
 ing various essays by surgeons at the war-front into 
 a book on military surgery, treating especially 
 such new conditions as Shell-Shock, Trench Dis- 
 ease, Antiseptic Irrigation of Wounds, Effect of 
 Noxious Gases, Ambulance and Hospital Status, 
 and the Hke. This work was begun on his own 
 initiative, but was continued in cooperation with 
 the Committee on National Defense, at their 
 request. 
 
 The professional positions held by Dr. Stimson 
 include membership in the French Society of 
 Surgery, an honor extended to very few surgeons 
 outside of France. In combination with Dr. Van 
 Buren he founded the New York Surgical Society 
 of which he was always an active and efficient 
 member. He was Vice-President of the New York 
 Academy of Medicine from 1893 to 1896; a member 
 of the New York Medical and Surgical Society; 
 he was successively Professor of Physiology, of 
 Anatomy and of Surgery in the New York Uni- 
 versity Medical School, and later he held the chair 
 of Surgery in the Cornell Medical College from 
 
lo IN MEMORIAM 
 
 its establishment in 1898 up to the date of his 
 death. He was also a Regent of the State of New 
 York from 1893 to 1904, and in 1900 Yale gave 
 him the degree of LL.D. 
 
 After some years' service as attending surgeon 
 in the Presbyterian and Bellevue Hospitals, he 
 was presently invited by the Governors of the 
 New York Hospital to come upon their staff. He 
 served there faithfully as attending surgeon for 
 twenty-two years, carrying also during this whole 
 period the full responsibility of the heavy service 
 at their emergency branch, the House of Relief, 
 in Hudson Street. He was a consulting surgeon 
 in the New York and Bellevue Hospitals at the 
 date of his death, as well as of Christ's Hospital 
 in Jersey City. 
 
 In every undertaking. Dr. Stimson at first 
 approach took careful measure of the difficulties 
 of the situation, his realization of them often 
 expressing itself in a manner which appeared 
 pessimistic. But he always dealt with them in a 
 spirit of splendid optimism, brightened by an 
 exceptionally acute sense of humor. 
 
 In consultation his cheering words and smile 
 were most uplifting to the patient, but he was 
 guarded in his language, weighing his words with 
 judgment — a characteristic so marked that it 
 drew from one of his admirers the opinion that 
 "Stimson was the type of a wise conservatism." 
 
 To Dr. Stimson as an organizer the Cornell 
 Medical School bears witness. This school in- 
 
LEWIS ATTERBURY STIMSON ii 
 
 deed, as is well known, owes its existence in New 
 York City to his power of organization; and 
 Stimson Hall, the gift of Dean Sage, stands among 
 the Cornell buildings at Ithaca a perpetual monu- 
 ment in his honor. 
 
 Incidentally may be mentioned here his mem- 
 bership in the Century Club, the New York Yacht 
 Club, the University Club, and the Loyal Legion 
 as indicating h is con tact with the community at 
 various point§'. 
 
 Dr, Stimson's broad reach, extending over 
 many fields, covered that of the sportsman, for 
 one of his most fundamental traits was a whole- 
 someness of nature which made the world of sport 
 a normally attractive place to him. Over and 
 above his interest in golf, which was not incon- 
 siderable, was his absorbing affection for his 
 schooner yacht the Fleur-de-Lys, a beautiful toy 
 only eighty-seven feet on the water line and one 
 hundred and eight over all. In this dainty KIH- 
 putian craft he braved the tumult of the North 
 Atlantic many times, and enjoyed with genial 
 friends the keen delights of cruising in the Medi- 
 terranean and .^gean Seas, halcyon days and 
 heavenly nights laden down with mellow memories. 
 
 Among yachting events, most picturesque of 
 all stands out the great Ocean Race of 1905 for 
 the Kaiser's cup, when the little vessel of less 
 than ninety tons wallowed through the cold 
 smother of the envious ocean to arrive at Fal- 
 mouth seventh on the Ust, and only seven hours 
 
12 IN MEMORIAM 
 
 behind the third boat. She had contended 
 gamely all the way across with the best sailing 
 yachts that the world had produced; and his 
 daughter Candace, true sport that she is, stood 
 by him loyally through the scant simshine and 
 boisterous storms of the roaring forties. The 
 incidents of this trip are preserved in the charm- 
 ing narration of The Cruise of the Fleur-de-Lys, 
 which remains a permanent record of sportsman- 
 like endeavor and accomphshment of no mean 
 order. Two similar logs deal with cruises to 
 Iceland and in the Mediterranean. For Dr. 
 Stimson was no 'longshore yachtsman, venturing 
 out to sea in the sunlight and running to cover at 
 night. He loved the salt sea foam and the crinkle 
 of strong gusts of wind upon the water. He 
 navigated his boat personally and plotted out 
 his position more accurately than did his sailing 
 master on more than one occasion, and well along 
 past sixty years of age he climbed to the mast- 
 head like a boy. No gale daunted him nor was 
 there in the unsympathetic wave anything for 
 him save only pure, exultant delight. 
 
 A word may well be said here regarding Dr. 
 Stimson's aesthetic sense. His love of the beauti- 
 ful, in Nature and in Art, was unusual. He 
 reveled in the glory of sea and sky and exulted 
 in the wonders of nature when cruising among 
 the blessed islands of the Grecian Archipelago. 
 In sharp contrast to this love of beauty stands 
 out the simplicity of his personal habits. His 
 
LEWIS ATTERBURY STIMSON 13 
 
 bedroom was a cell bare of ornament or any 
 luxury, and his equipment was always marked by 
 absolute simplicity. Such contrasts of the sterner 
 with the gentler virtues are perhaps contrasts to 
 the superficial observer only — ^to the student of 
 character they mark the complete and harmonious 
 personality. Tenderness and force, subtlety and 
 stength, modesty and self-reliance, love of beauty 
 and downright asceticism are not incompatible 
 qualities, and Dr. Stimson possessed them all; 
 and just as his early photographs reveal the 
 sweetness and ideality that remained with him 
 always, so in later years his erect and powerful 
 figure, his superb head and fine, vigorous features 
 expressed that rugged, militant side of his char- 
 acter through which he was able to realize his 
 ideals. 
 
 But all that has been written above is only a 
 prelude to what should be said, if the whole man 
 is to be disclosed ; what he was and what he stood 
 for. The citation of his dignities and of his multi- 
 tude of accomplishment is only, on the part of the 
 writer of this memorial, a condescension to the 
 exactions of conventionality. Thus far there has 
 been a modest delineation of Stimson the man, 
 the soldier, the scholar, the surgeon, the organizer 
 and administrator, the sportsman. There remains 
 to be shown, if haply it may be done without 
 treading upon sacred ground, the innermost 
 personality, the real man, Stimson the lover, the 
 teacher, the fighter, the friend ; and I shall endeavor 
 
14 IN MEMORIAM 
 
 to introduce to you his massiveness of structure 
 in heart, head, conscience, and character; for he 
 was cast in a larger mould than that which is 
 used in the formation of ordinary men. And I 
 have a right to speak here with authority, a right 
 granted me by an unbroken friendship of more 
 than half a century, a friendship without flaw and 
 enduring with never a moment's interruption. 
 
 In preparing this memorial to Dr. Stimson I 
 have reread his own Memorial Address on his 
 friend and colleague. Dr. Alfred L. Loomis, and 
 in so doing have been impressed anew with the 
 fact that in this careful picture of his friend Dr. 
 Stimson has left an unconscious portrayal of 
 his own character, ideals, and standards. His 
 analysis is so penetrating, and his statement so 
 clear, that I shall quote at length certain passages 
 from the Memorial to Dr. Loomis in which the 
 likeness to his own self will be readily traced. 
 
 "A definite purpose to inspire him, an alert 
 intelligence to guide, a tireless activity to execute, 
 a will that never wavered, and a kindly, generous 
 heart — such were the factors that brought success. 
 
 "His character was further marked by great 
 practicality and directness. He was not, how- 
 ever, simply a fine executive, one whose highest 
 efficiency is found in carrying out the ideas of 
 others. On the contrary, he was essentially a 
 man of ideas, a man who did his own thinking. 
 But he was not an idealogue, not a sophist, not 
 one to spend his time in idle contemplation, nor 
 
1S61 
 
LEWIS ATTERBURY STIMSON 15 
 
 one to waste efforts along lines that could lead to 
 no definite result. While he may have had but 
 little of that quality which was esteemed among 
 the highest virtues by the old moralists, the 
 passionless wisdom {2wq>poavvri) of the philosophic 
 Greek, the Temperantia of Cicero, the Moderation 
 of St. Paul, he was wholly free from that other 
 which so often masquerades in its form, which 
 hides mental and moral irresolution and weakness 
 under the cloak of deliberation, the quality which, 
 when unbalanced by strong practicality and 
 resolute will, keeps a man so alive to the force 
 of what can be said in favor of the other side that 
 a clean-cut, strongly held decision becomes an 
 impossibility for him, and which finally lands him 
 as a leader in the quagmire of impotent compro- 
 mise. Of that quality he had nothing. His 
 convictions were clear and strongly held, and 
 when the time came he never hesitated to express 
 them uncompromisingly and never flinched from 
 word or act that seemed required by them. 
 
 "To every question he gave at the outset, 
 earnest, concentrated attention; he possessed him- 
 self of all available information, promptly reached 
 a decision, and then all his thought, aU his energy 
 were given to embodying that decision in action, 
 unhampered by the persistence of any doubt or 
 misgiving. In a weaker man such a course would 
 lead to great disaster; but his preliminary con- 
 sideration was exhaustive, and he was not a man 
 to believe a thing to be because he wished it to be, 
 
i6 IN MEMORIAM 
 
 or to take a preconceived idea and twist all facts 
 to suit it. To those who saw only the firmness 
 with which he held his opinions and the energy 
 with which he sought to enforce them, he may have 
 seemed narrow and prejudiced, but those who 
 knew him more closely, those who had the oppor- 
 tunity to learn on how much careful thought and 
 observation those opinions were based, could not 
 fail to appreciate the pains he took to be right, his 
 breadth of view, and his calmness of judgment. 
 
 "To this thoroughness of study and prepara- 
 tion was added great alertness to perceive and 
 grasp opportunity, and great activity in profiting 
 by it. 
 
 "Uncompromising and persistent as he was in 
 the pursuit of an object, and while he would abate 
 no jot of a principle, he could always be reached 
 and moved in personal matters by an appeal, 
 and he was always ready to hold out his hand in 
 friendship or in help to an opponent whom he 
 respected. 
 
 "His reserve and self-restraint, although so 
 sedulously cultivated throughout his life that 
 they grew to seem an integral part of him, were 
 yet only a screen behind which were the live coals 
 of a nature glowing with interest in all about him, 
 keenly alive to all questions of public or private 
 concern, solicitous of approval, warmly affection- 
 ate, and emotional to an extent that was at times 
 childlike in its expression and ingenuousness." 
 
 To us who know and love him, is not this his 
 
LEWIS ATTERBURY STIMSON 17 
 
 very self reflected in his portrait of his friend? 
 And it is for us to bear witness, for Dr. Stimson 
 was austere in manner, not always revealing 
 himself, shielding his sensitive nature and a 
 quality that might almost be called shyness in a 
 protecting armor of reserve. Inside of this re- 
 serve his close friends were welcomed, the stranger 
 and passerby never. Yet in spite of his reserve, he 
 always met old and young on a basis of actuality, 
 giving something of himself in his graphic and 
 individual habit of speech, and leaving in the mind 
 of his listener the consciousness of having received 
 something definite to carry away. On being 
 questioned once upon a religious subject he re- 
 plied, "No man has any religion that he can tell 
 another." 
 
 I do not know how better to illustrate his gift 
 of reserved yet forceful expression than by quoting 
 here his own words written some years ago for 
 the Yale '63 Class Book, in which every member 
 of the class gives his own estimate of what life 
 has meant to him. 
 
 Dr. Stimson here says: "My professional Ufe 
 has been busy and satisfying. While giving a 
 sufficient pecuniary return to meet the material 
 wants of my family, it has also furnished an 
 opportunity for the gratification of those moral 
 and intellectual cravings in which a more durable 
 source of content is to be found. At first and for 
 many years my work was arduous and confining, 
 but of late I have been free to turn aside for as 
 
i8 IN MEMORIAM 
 
 much summer relaxation, diversion, and pleasure, 
 as was wholesome. I have been generously 
 granted the good will and confidence of my col- 
 leagues far beyond my deserts; I have had the 
 opportunity of furthering the advancement in the 
 profession of many young men, who have given 
 me their kindly interest and affection in return, 
 and I have had my share of the gratitude, confi- 
 dence and support which the community bestows 
 so liberally upon the members of my profession. 
 I have been privileged to add something to the 
 sum of knowledge, to aid some in trouble, and to 
 receive the blessings of the poor. In short, my 
 life has been one of steady and agreeable labor in 
 a chosen field, with an overflowing measure of 
 reward and recognition. The shadow which early 
 fell upon it has been lightened by my children, 
 who have never caused me a moment's pain and 
 have been all that a parent could desire." 
 
 This is indeed a temperate statement of his own 
 service. For, warm-hearted, broad-minded, and 
 of bountiful generosity, he was not satisfied simply 
 to meet the demands made upon him, but he went 
 out in search of opportunity, constantly widening 
 the scope of his beneficence, which did not stop 
 with the giving of material help, but included the 
 greater and rarer gifts of s)anpathetic interest and 
 personal labor. In estimating his character, one 
 of his close intimates among the Cornell instruc- 
 tors writes: "He always had a cheerful and 
 appropriate word for everyone. I do not recall 
 
LEWIS ATTERBURY STIMSON 19 
 
 that he ever brought his own troubles but he con- 
 stantly inquired about mine and made an effort, 
 very often successful, to relieve them. I never 
 could prevail on him to stay long as he always 
 complimented us by saying that our time was 
 valuable. In his short visits he always had 
 something of interest to me for discussion, seldom 
 anything of exclusive interest to himself. In this 
 delicate matter of personal consideration he was 
 perfect, and I used to marvel at his sldll. 
 
 "His moral and intellectual solidity set the 
 standard in Cornell and has been chiefly responsi- 
 ble for the success the school has had. Cornell 
 was founded on funds secured by Dr. Stimson; 
 but it was built on his conception of personal 
 loyalty. 
 
 "Two men whom I know well, one a very dis- 
 tinguished medical man, owe their lives and 
 position to Dr. Stimson's moral support. They 
 were once opium addictees, trying to recover. 
 Each got Dr. Stimson's O. K. and made good. 
 Most men would have failed to help them, but 
 the knowledge that Stimson was back of them was 
 a sufficient moral force to keep them straight. 
 In innumerable ways he was the power that made 
 men and things go. 
 
 "Dr. Stimson impressed me as a man of very 
 deep feeling which he kept under perfect restraint. 
 He once drove me to Woodlawn Cemetery where 
 he looked over his wife's grave. He spoke briefly 
 but feelingly. I asked him how he ever survived 
 
20 IN MEMORIAM 
 
 such a loss. He replied, 'By years of constant, 
 grinding work.' " 
 
 It was at Trenton, New Jersey, that he first 
 met Candace, daughter of Thomas M. and Can- 
 dace "Wheeler, the lady who was destined to become 
 his wife. She was a beautiful creature, endowed 
 with all the graces and accomplishments — a rare 
 musician and vocalist, and of a nature as lovely 
 as her person. His devotion to her began with 
 their first meeting, and lasted as long as his life. 
 It was the mainspring of much of the tenderness 
 and compassion that marked his relation to 
 humanity. To his children he was friend and 
 comrade as well as father; his love for his mother 
 never lost a certain boyish, tender, teazing quality 
 that was her delight; his brothers and sisters re- 
 lied always on the unf aihng strength of his loyalty 
 and love. 
 
 And now. Dr. Stimson exacts recognition of the 
 highest type in connection with his qualities as a 
 teacher. One excellent reason why his labors in 
 this field were appreciated is set forth in a letter 
 written by an associate instructor at Cornell 
 Medical College, who says in part: "The 
 wonderful thing to me about Dr. Stimson was 
 his virility, his youthfulness, and that rare quaUty 
 of seeing the tribulations of the younger generation, 
 and his abiUty to take the same viewpoint that 
 the younger generation naturally must have." 
 And this was always the case. Dr. Stimson im- 
 parted knowledge in a colloquial, not in an oratori- 
 
LEWIS ATTERBURY STIMSON 21 
 
 cal, way. He talked-out and talked-over his facts 
 on the level of his audience and not above thdr 
 heads, and always aimed to impart instruction 
 and education, not to glorify himself as the giver 
 of such instruction. This is aU that need be said in 
 praise of any instructor, except to testify as to his 
 grasp of his subject. Nothing, it seems to me, 
 can better illustrate the quality of Dr. Stimson's 
 power than an excerpt from a letter received by his 
 daughter at the time of her father's death: 
 
 "For the past twenty-four hours I seem to have 
 done nothing but think of your wonderful father. 
 How many men there must be aU over this coun- 
 try, who stop their lives a space to think of what he 
 has been to them, not what he has done for them. 
 So many people give us material help, so few the 
 more valuable aid. To have Uved a few months 
 at his beloved feet was, I truly believe, the greatest 
 inspiration of my Hfe. He first taught me the 
 humble simplicity of the truly proud. He so 
 exemplified a fine disregard of f riU and ornament 
 and showed such insight as to essentials both as 
 to life and character. Dr. Stimson lives, imsus- 
 pected, perhaps, in the biggest and best inspira- 
 tions of many a surgeon of the younger generation, 
 and 'Stimmy' is a name to conjure many a 
 weary spirit withal." 
 
 What need is there for further comment? 
 The page is full to overflowing. 
 
 But what may be said of Stimson the fighter? 
 Like all strong, constructive men, he had enemies 
 
22 IN MEMORIAM 
 
 and antagonists, but he fought them on their own 
 ground, in medical journals, in medical societies, 
 and in the courts, without venom and without 
 malice. He was not of the aggressive type, 
 fighting for the fight's sake, nor for personal 
 advantage, but where a principle of justice or 
 right was involved, or a question of wise policy 
 in some big enterprise, it was impossible for him 
 to stand aside and let others bear the brunt. And 
 once in the arena, he put his whole force of mind 
 and will into the struggle, never resting till the 
 end was attained and the object of his solicitude 
 established in safety. 
 
 And finally of Stimson the friend. The kindly 
 feeUng which is the normal root of friendship he 
 had for all men, for all living things. Children 
 and animals loved and trusted him instinctively, 
 and he in turn, to each in their degree, gave the 
 same respect for rights and personality that was so 
 markedly a feature of his relation to all the world. 
 He would spend himself for the amusement of a 
 child, the happiness of a dog, the setting at ease 
 of a shy youngster, as generously as he gave himself 
 to his peers. The Sicilian bevy of rollicking beg- 
 gars joyfully received his smile as well as his small 
 coin, and the cabby in the street accepted the tip 
 with greater grace for the jolly word that accom- 
 panied it. For above all it was in his personal 
 relations that Dr. Stimson demonstrated his 
 fundamental qualities. He annihilated himself 
 for those he loved, and in their sickness or distress 
 
LEWIS ATTERBURY STIMSON 23 
 
 lavished upon them long hours of personal attend- 
 ance and care. He had a veritable genius for 
 friendship. His friend was the king — not, per- 
 haps, the king who could do no wrong, but one 
 whose foibles only made him more dear, whose 
 need called out the utmost reserves of tenderness 
 and service, whose trouble he made his own, for 
 whom his splendid strength of head and heart 
 and hand was freely spent. 
 
 Among the nations, from his youth up Dr. 
 Stimson loved France with a deep and abiding 
 affection and faith. His feelings were profoundly 
 stirred by her sufferings during the present war, 
 and with that quick translation of sympathy into 
 personal action so characteristic of him and so rare 
 in men of his age he twice crossed the ocean to give 
 help in surgery and in war relief. 
 
 From the outbreak of the war for every reason 
 Dr. Stimson' s whole soul was in the struggle. 
 His habit of intellectual analysis, akin in its clarity 
 and fearlessness to the best type of French mind, 
 enabled him to see from the first the principles 
 at stake and the issues to be faced. He was of 
 those who always believed that the highest patriot- 
 ism called us to take our place among the nations 
 fighting for the fundamental principles of freedom, 
 and here as always his spirit looked with confidence 
 past present suffering to the final triumph of 
 justice and right. FuUy measuring the cost, fully 
 estimating the goal, his spirit never faltered in the 
 race. 
 
24 IN MEMORIAM 
 
 Such was the soul which has passed. 
 
 The end came swiftly, while he was still in fuU 
 vigor, with powers unimpaired. He had played 
 golf all morning on the day of his taking leave of 
 life, and was out on the hiUs when death overtook 
 him. For him the last of life was the broad sweep 
 of sky that he loved above him, the radiant au- 
 tumnal hills, the companionship of his happy, 
 loving dog. Then suddenly there was for him 
 peace everlasting. 
 
 For those who had leaned upon him, the founda- 
 tions of the world were shaken. Yet there remains 
 the memory of a comradeship beyond compare, 
 unbroken communion with a spirit of unmatched 
 sweetness and loftiness, and in our sense of the 
 reality of his Hfe we have found a touchstone for 
 Life. 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 OF 
 
 LEWIS A. STIMSON 
 
 SET DOWN BY HIM DURING THE SUMMER OF J914 
 25 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES OF 
 LEWIS A. STIMSON 
 
 My children, with more affection than good 
 judgment I fancy, are somewhat insistent that I 
 should endeavor to recall the incidents of my life 
 so far as they are concerned with the Civil War. 
 The memory of most of them is, I fear, hopelessly 
 lost, and that of those that remain for the most 
 part shadowy and indistinct. How should it be 
 otherwise — ^fifty years and more agone. It is, I 
 think, a matter of common observation, that of 
 the strenuous days of Uf e, the days of great events 
 or great emotions, the things sharply held and 
 pictured by memory are only trivialities, the 
 utterly unimportant incidents, the smell of a 
 flower, the adjustment of a strap, the expression 
 on a face, perhaps at a moment when life or death 
 was hanging in the balance. Thus, one day in 
 North Carolina, when I had been sent during an 
 attempted advance of our Hne to report on the 
 condition and possibilities of the region beyond 
 our right flank, I walked along the edge of a 
 swampy thicket and started across a little road 
 which ran through it. All was quiet, but as I 
 
 27 
 
28 CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 stepped into the road I saw on my left, within a 
 hundred yards, an earthwork lined with troops, 
 and at the same moment came a volley from 
 them directed at me. As I jumped back behind 
 the bushes, out of sight at least if not out of range, 
 I saw, and memory holds very clearly the look of 
 interest and perhaps anxious expectation on the 
 face of a solitary picket, huddled in a hole he had 
 dug in the sand, whom I had passed shortly before. 
 Nothing else of that day remains in my mind. 
 And on another very similar occasion, in front of 
 Richmond, I was riding along the edge of a wood 
 on our flank and crossed a road running into it. 
 The appearance of the head of my horse apparently 
 gave the signal for the discharge of a field piece 
 stationed one hundred or two hundred yards dis- 
 tant in the woods, so that the first warning I had 
 was the roar of the discharge and the rush of the 
 shell past me; and aU I remember is the odd look 
 of my horse's ears — ^her only blemish — as they 
 waved about in her frightened plunge. They 
 looked like a mule's, and that is probably why I 
 remember it, for I thought much of her and was 
 sensitive to criticism of her. 
 
 And so it is. The weeks and months passed and 
 left no memories but those of trivial incidents. 
 It might perhaps be properly said that there was 
 nothing but trivial, purely personal incidents. 
 We subalterns knew nothing of the problems and 
 the plans of those who controlled the movements. 
 Our days and weeks and even months passed in 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 29 
 
 the comparative idleness of camp routine, and 
 even in marches and engagements we saw little 
 but the changes and incidents of our immediate 
 environment. Who sees more of a battle than hi? 
 own little part in it? And big as that part may- 
 seem to him, and big as it may be, indeed, in 
 grave possibilities to him, its record is only a single 
 little human document, one of hundreds or thou- 
 sands like it. 
 
 Well, to begin at the beginning, I was a Sopho- 
 more at Yale College and I remember reading 
 of the firing on Fort Sumter from a paper held in 
 my mother's hands when I was at home during 
 the spring vacation. Of the next three months, 
 I remember nothing. I was back at college and 
 much interested in my life there. Even of Bull 
 Run, I remember very little: a vague recollection 
 of unrest and humiliation, and only one thing 
 stands out a little through the haze, a newspaper 
 report that the "Black horse cavalry" had been 
 anmhilated in a charge, and a certain fierce joy 
 thereat. Alas, there was no "Black horse caval- 
 ry" and no annihilation. 
 
 I cannot remember that the war weighed at all 
 heavily on my mind or that I had any thought 
 of taking part in it. Doubtless I did, in a boyish, 
 indecisive way. It could hardly have been other- 
 wise. Some of my companions went, to one side 
 or the other, even in those first days, and I can 
 recall seeing a classmate riding with his troop 
 along Chapel Street. At that time— or was it 
 
30 CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 later? — we were grouped in squads and drilled, 
 but it did not long hold its interest and soon 
 lapsed. 
 
 I remember nothing of the next year, nothing to 
 throw any Hght on our feelings, our emotions, our 
 mental attitude. Of course, the war was much 
 in our thoughts; the papers were filled with it, 
 some of our companions were engaged in it, and 
 aU of us had friends or relatives in the army. But 
 it was the period of organization, of preparation, 
 and there was but Httle fighting, and we were 
 young and full of our local interest. I must have 
 felt the call to some extent, for in a letter to my 
 father in the spring of 1862, which by some 
 chance has been preserved, I mentioned that a 
 friend has promised to obtain a commission for me 
 when he next goes to Washington. I have entirely 
 forgotten the incident, and probably it was one of 
 many half-hearted attempts to go. I was only 
 seventeen years old then (although of course I 
 thought I was a man and able to take a man's 
 part in anything) and was keenly interested in my 
 college life, and the call for troops had been met 
 and volunteering was not actively pushed. Indeed 
 it must have been during this period that volun- 
 teering was stopped by orders from Washington 
 on the ground that there were soldiers enough. 
 
 And so too with the next year, 1 862-1 863, the 
 country had in a way settled down to war and life 
 went on often regardless of it. The great events 
 were rather infrequent, the gloom or the joy of one 
 
1865 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 31 
 
 day would be offset by the joy or the gloom of the 
 next. Of course, we all read the papers con- 
 stantly and talked much about the incidents, 
 but I cannot recall that it weighed on us or even 
 counted for much in our daily lives. The early 
 business depression had been followed by great 
 prosperity, prices rose but I think we all found Uf e 
 easier and spent money more freely. We had our 
 little difficulties for a time with the lack of cur- 
 rency, even for many months using postage 
 stamps and bronze tokens issued by business 
 houses for change, but that passed with the issue 
 of greenbacks, national bank notes, and fractional 
 currency. We discussed, sometimes quite bitterly, 
 with those of our democratic companions who 
 opposed the government, and it must have been 
 at this time that the term "copperhead" arose 
 and was even so far accepted by some that they 
 wore small copper tacks in their lapels. We 
 detested their sentiments but we lived on friendly 
 terms with them, and I can account for that only 
 on the supposition that other interests mainly 
 occupied us and hot political discussion was rare. 
 Yet one or two such discussions stand out in 
 memory even now quite clearly, and occasionally 
 come to mind when I meet those who took part 
 on the other side. The main fact seems to be that 
 the condition of war had been accepted as almost 
 normal, something that did not demand anything 
 from us individually at the time, that we could 
 wait until we had finished with college. Such 
 
32 CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 impulse as there was to join the army was rather 
 the desire for adventure than the compulsion of 
 the country's need. 
 
 So the time passed. McClellan's and Pope's re- 
 verses of the summer of 1862 were followed by the 
 reassurance of Antietam, and the quiet of winter 
 was broken only by the bloody repulse at Freder- 
 icksburg, but with the return of the active season 
 and the approaching end of my college course 
 came again the desire to join. In the six weeks' 
 interval of idleness and freedom from college 
 work, which in those days lay between Presenta- 
 tion Day and Commencement, I heard of a cavalry 
 regiment to be raised in New Jersey and sought its 
 prospective colonel with a request for a commis- 
 sion in it. He was a large-framed, rough-looking 
 man, a foreigner, I think, and evidently was not 
 favorably impressed by my eighteen-year-old 
 appearance. He asked roughly if I thought I 
 could handle "a lot of rough troopers," paid no 
 attention to the reply that it might be managed 
 if they would come one at a time, and dismissed 
 me with the statement that if I would go out and 
 raise a company, he would consider the question 
 of a commission. 
 
 That did not suit me, for I was young, impatient, 
 and cocky, but perhaps I might have engaged in 
 it, had not my father (probably with the intention 
 of side-tracking my martial ambition) offered me 
 a trip to Europe. On the whole, it was just as 
 well. The cavalry regiment did not materialize 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 33 
 
 until nearly a year later and was gobbled up in 
 its entirety out in Tennessee shortly thereafter. 
 It would have been for me a tedious road to an 
 undesirable end. 
 
 There was much excitement at New Haven at 
 that time over the drafts, and several incidents 
 connected with it remain in my mind. As I said, 
 we Seniors were free of all college duty, our course 
 was ended, the disaster of ChancellorsviUe was 
 only a month behind us, the need of men was 
 visualized by the draft which was actually taking 
 place before us, and I am sure that the question 
 of joining the army must have presented itself to 
 most of us. A considerable number of us went at 
 that time, some of them as commissioned officers 
 in the new colored regiments, and doubtless my 
 application to the New Jersey Colonel of cavalry 
 may be taken as an indication of a general impulse, 
 more or less strong. 
 
 The draft for New Haven was conducted in the 
 basement of the Old State House, now gone. It 
 was orderly and quiet, and I remember seeing the 
 father of one of my classmates rise and go out, 
 sasdng as he went, "Well, as I have no more fish in 
 that pot, I'll go home." He had just heard the 
 names of his two sons called. 
 
 But while the actual drafting was quiet, the 
 attitude of the city toward it was not. And in 
 connection with it I witnessed the only New Eng- 
 land "town meeting" that has ever come in my 
 way. It was called — ^I do not know by what 
 
34 CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 agency or authority ; but it was legal — to vote for an 
 issue of $500,000 of municipal bonds to supply 
 substitutes for drafted citizens. A vast crowd 
 collected on the Green in front of the State House 
 at noon, an impassioned orator addressed them 
 from the steps and closed with a demand that 
 those in favor of the motion should say "Aye." 
 A great shout went up and he declared the motion 
 carried. I was told, and I believe it, that that 
 action committed the city to the outlay. 
 
 Meanwhile, on the outskirts of the crowd a 
 little drama was enacting, under my eyes and in 
 part with my assistance. A young man, who 
 doubtless saw in the colored race the cause of all 
 our woes, was impelled by his feelings to knock 
 down and maltreat a member of that race who 
 was standing quietly in the crowd and listening to 
 the orator. A policeman chanced to be within 
 sight and made for the aggressor ; he fled, and the 
 policeman and I after him, and he was brought to 
 earth opposite the side entrance to the New Haven 
 House. I was interested to see how quickly 
 his struggles subsided when the policeman got the 
 loop of a stout cord about his wrist and twisted it. 
 
 The bloody, murderous draft riots in New York 
 at this time were followed by a feeble imitation 
 in New Haven. It did not amount to much but 
 kept us excited and alert. A company of troops 
 was brought from Newport and lodged two or 
 three blocks south-east from the College. On the 
 evening after their arrival a mob marched through 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 35 
 
 the intermediate streets and it looked as if some- 
 thing might happen. Eager to see it, I went on a 
 private scout and made my way through to the 
 troops. As I neared the latter, I saw a man 
 with a big saber dodging behind the trees. I 
 dodged behind mine and we cautiously approached 
 each other. He proved to be the owner of the 
 house where the troops were stationed, out on his 
 own scout to see what was Hkely to befall his 
 property. We exchanged information and went 
 back together to the house. There an excited 
 yovmg oflBcer, with a trembling voice — from 
 excitement, of course, not fear — ^warned me to look 
 out for myself, for "when we fire, we shall know 
 neither friend nor foe." On inquiring, he told 
 me, with some reluctance, that he had joined only 
 the day before. The mob wandered off and I 
 came home. Two or three of us sat late on the 
 steps of South College and challenged all passers; 
 but when one who was stopped by us proved to be 
 Professor Thacher and politely thanked us for the 
 care we were taking of the college property but 
 suggested that we had better go to bed, we con- 
 cluded we were overestimating our responsibilities 
 and retired. 
 
 It must have been at this time that I saw in a 
 shop window a huge pistol of unusual pattern, 
 which I at once felt was absolutely essential to my 
 equipment in those troublous times. Its price 
 was $6.00, but I did not have the money. A 
 classmate, to whom I applied for the loan, refused 
 
36 CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 it on the ground that he had only enough money 
 to take himself home, and added that even if 
 he had it, he would not lend it to me for so fool- 
 ish a purpose. The incident is trivial, but it 
 throws a little light on my state of mind and 
 development. 
 
 When I got back from Europe in the fall, the 
 winter quiet was settling on our armies and I cannot 
 remember any attempt on my part to join. But 
 when the spring came, the feeling returned. I 
 wanted to go, but to go with a commission, and 
 to go without the delay of recruiting-camps and 
 organization. So I wrote to General Hancock and 
 asked for a position as Volunteer Aide on his staff. 
 I had no acquaintance with him, no acquaintance 
 with anyone who knew him, and I presume I 
 selected him because he was about the most 
 shining mark of the time in the army of the Poto- 
 mac. It was some gall. The application was 
 evidently misinterpreted as an attempt to get his 
 autograph, for that was all it brought me. I 
 presume he was getting many requests for his 
 signature. I then turned to an acquaintance 
 who had served in the army of the Potomac and 
 he promised to forward my request to a General 
 whom he knew, Major-General Birney of Han- 
 cock's corps. After long delays, for the army was 
 fighting constantly and Birney must have had 
 many other things on his mind, came from him 
 the suggestion that I should seek a commission 
 in a regiment which a former member of his staff 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 37 
 
 was raising in Pennsylvania. I went to see the 
 officer but I remember nothing about the meeting. 
 Doubtless, there was the same uncertainty about 
 the completion of the organization, the same need 
 to engage in recruiting, in short, the same dis- 
 agreeablenesses which I wished to avoid, I do 
 not remember the details, but ultimately, August, 
 I think, Bimey's acceptance of me came and I 
 was off. 
 
 My first stop was at Wilmington, Delaware, to 
 get a horse which I had bought from General 
 Keyes and was there in the hands of a quarter- 
 master. I got her, borrowed a saddle and bridle, 
 and set off one hot afternoon for Delaware City, 
 twelve or fifteen miles distant. The horse was 
 fresh and eager after her long confinement, and 
 after a futile struggle to subdue her impatience to 
 a reasonable gait, I sat back and let her go. We 
 reached Delaware City well ahead of time, but on 
 dismounting I found that the upper part of the 
 back of my trousers where it had rested against 
 the cantle was adhering to me in an unpleasantly 
 suggestive fashion. If an infantrsmian is only as 
 good as his feet, a cavalryman is only as good as 
 his seat, and it was clearly borne in upon me that 
 I was not likely to be of much use as a cavalryman 
 for some days. We got on a boat and spent 
 the night going to Baltimore. The morning 
 brought fuU realizations of my fears, and I rode 
 up the streets of Baltimore cautiously and one- 
 sidedly and did all my errands afoot. That even- 
 
38 CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 ing we embarked on the steamer for Fortress 
 Monroe and landed there the next morning. 
 
 I do not recall the details, but the horse and I 
 were landed at Bermuda Hundred from another 
 boat after a day or two and set out across country 
 to find General Bimey. I remember viewing 
 with some anxiety the possibility of a renewal of 
 the mare's pernicious activity, when I had again 
 to mount her. My tegumentary losses had been 
 measurably repaired but they could easily be 
 repeated. So I sought and found a wagon that 
 was going to the corps, placed my vaHse, blankets, 
 and myself within it, and with the bridle in my 
 hand prepared to spare the mare the trouble of 
 carrying me and to postpone the evil day. But 
 she felt differently and refused to start when the 
 wagon did, and after the bridle had broken in the 
 effort to change her mind I was forced to mount 
 her. All went well ; she was content to walk, and 
 in due time we reached the headquarters of the 
 loth Corps, and I presented myself to the General 
 and was assigned to a tent and given a place in 
 the mess. The General invited me to lunch with 
 him and General Terry, who was calling at the 
 time, and immediately thereafter started me out to 
 visit Fort Harrison, an advanced work on the 
 line, with two others of the staff, so that I might 
 become acquainted with the region without delay. 
 
 Fort Harrison was a strong closed earthwork on 
 a hill near the left end of our corps line which had 
 been captured two or three days before when our 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 39 
 
 line had been advanced and extended to the north. 
 From it ran lines of earthworks north and south, 
 occupied by our troops, and another unoccupied 
 line straight west to the Confederate works a 
 quarter or a third of a mile distant. 
 
 We three rode up into the fort and looked over 
 the country. A few soldiers were sitting around 
 in it, well covered by the parapet, but we, on horse- 
 back, were in plain view of our friends the enemy, 
 and in a few moments some bullets came whistling 
 by. Some of the enemy were practising with us 
 for a target. I could see, in what my companions 
 did and said, no particular reason for our presence 
 there; they moved about a little and looked 
 casually at the view. An officer stroUed up and 
 remarked that a staff officer had been "winged" 
 there that morning while sitting on his horse, but 
 my companions seemed uninterested in it. I 
 thought it would not do for me to show any more 
 interest than they did, but I was heartily relieved 
 when one of them said, "Well, I guess we may as 
 weU go," and they turned away. It was my 
 "baptism of fire" and had come before the taste 
 of my first meal was stale on my tongue. I was 
 content not to have shown the anxiety I felt, and 
 later experience made me think my companions 
 were not quite so indifferent as they seemed. 
 
 My tent companion was a very nice young 
 man, one of the aides, but within a week or two 
 his three-year enlistment ended and he left the 
 army. I think it was immediately after his 
 
40 CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 departure that I became the tent-mate of the 
 Assistant Adjutant-General, Lieutenant Shreve, 
 and remained with him until shortly before our 
 departure for Fort Fisher in December. 
 
 The loth and i8th Corps constituted the bulk of 
 the Army of the James under the command of 
 General B. F. Butler, whose headquarters were at 
 Bermuda Hundred. The i8th Corps, General 
 Ord, occupied the portion of the line north of the 
 James, next to the Bermuda Hundred line, and 
 the loth. General D. B. Birney, the remainder to 
 the north, extending across the Newmarket road 
 nearly to the Darbytown road, and the cavalry 
 under General Kautz occupied the region beyond 
 to the Charles City road. Richmond was five 
 or six miles distant. To the rear of our right we 
 later constructed several strong detached forts as a 
 guard against attacks around the flank. Our 
 base was at Deep Bottom, across the James from 
 Bermuda Hundred. 
 
 General Birney came from Pennsylvania and 
 was the son of a man very well known during the 
 preceding decade or two as a pronounced and able 
 abolitionist. He had a striking presence, intel- 
 lectual, forceful, and rather austere. He had 
 been brought shortly before from the command of a 
 division in the 2nd (Hancock's) Corps and put in 
 command of the loth. He had been a successful 
 commander and was known as a hard and per- 
 sistent fighter, and if he is to be judged by what 
 I saw of his behavior in the first heavy engagement 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 41 
 
 after I joined, he was actually indifferent to ex- 
 posure of himself or others. It was on the 7th of 
 October. Longstreet came out with two divisions, 
 fell upon our cavalry and, in the language of 
 Grant's report "drove it back with heavy loss in 
 killed, wounded, and prisoners and the loss of all 
 the artillery, nine pieces. This he followed up 
 by an attack upon our intrenched infantry line 
 but was repelled with severe slaughter." Grant 
 is wrong about the "intrenched infantry line." 
 The attack was made squarely against the flank 
 and to its rear, and the men in the earthworks 
 were not engaged. Birney had formed his line, 
 infantry and artillery, straight back parallel to 
 the Newmarket road from the end of our in- 
 trenchment, and met and repulsed the attack in 
 the open. 
 
 The event came shortly after breakfast ; there was 
 much hurrying and scurrying, as it seemed to me; 
 we, the General and staff, rode to the line, watched 
 the firing, and I remember dimly the wounded 
 men lying about, and in particular one handsome 
 horse that had lost a foreleg and stood looking, 
 as it seemed to me, wistfully about as if wondering 
 what had happened and why no one came to care 
 for him. Then we moved back a Uttle and the 
 General with us in his train rode slowly back and 
 forth across a broad open plain. Once or twice, at 
 the turn near the earthworks he dismounted and 
 lay down under a brush shelter, for he was just 
 coming down with the fever that ended his life a 
 
42 CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 few weeks afterwards. The enemy's artillery was 
 in plain sight on rising ground to the north and 
 we were in plain sight to them. And we were 
 rather a large body: the full staff and the cavalry- 
 escort of fifty or one hundred men. Some of their 
 shot seemed to be aimed at us; some passed over 
 us, directly or after a ricochet, and I remember 
 laughing to see how the men seated in the works 
 with their backs against them and looking toward 
 the guns, would simultaneously duck their heads 
 over a length of perhaps a hundred yards when a 
 shot would pass over them or sometimes even 
 strike the mound close above them. 
 
 Why Birney should lead us up and down in this 
 way no one seemed to know, and several mutter- 
 ingly wondered why. But he paid not the slightest 
 attention to the shots and continued the prome- 
 nade for upward of an hour. And we lost several 
 men during it. As the riding up and down con- 
 tinued, I noticed that I was almost all the time 
 on the windward side, so to speak, of the proces- 
 sion. Thinking that was odd, for in turning I 
 ought to come to leeward, I began to look for the 
 reason. It was very plain. We were riding 
 three or four abreast, and I found the man on the 
 exposed flank would check his horse a little and 
 then come up in line again but to leeward. And 
 this was going on quite steadily. I inferred that 
 there was still some anxiety in the breasts of the 
 veterans that matched my own. 
 
 Soon after this General Birney was taken home 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 43 
 
 ill and General Terry, commanding the first 
 division, took command of the corps. My recol- 
 lections of the events of the next three months 
 are vague. There were one or two renewals, 
 less vigorous, of the assault on our flank, and 
 several times we moved out to the right and 
 attacked the enemy, but my recollection is that 
 none of the attacks was a serious attempt to carry 
 the works. We were sent out to "make a de- 
 monstration," while the real attack was on the 
 left flank of the line, thirty miles distant. Never- 
 theless, the assault was pushed close up to the 
 enemy's works and was accompanied by severe 
 losses. In one of them Major Camp, of a Con- 
 necticut regiment, whom I had known as a Senior 
 at Yale when I was a Freshman, was killed. I well 
 remember that the chaplain of his regiment, 
 Trumbvdl, I think, came to headquarters in the 
 evening and told us, with much emotion, of his 
 death, and how Camp had told him as the line was 
 preparing to move forward that he was sure he 
 would be killed, and how he, Trumbull, moved 
 forward with him for a few minutes talking ear- 
 nestly on the subject. Camp's body was sent 
 back to us, stripped naked, and without the heavy 
 gold ring he wore, made from the coin he had won 
 as a member of the Yale Varsity crew in the second 
 day's racing against Harvard at Worcester in 1859 
 or i860. It is interesting, as an indication of the 
 almost fratricidal character of the war, that 
 another member of the '59 crew, Robert Stiles, 
 
44 CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 was at this time a major in Longstreet's corps, 
 which held the lines in front of us. And I re- 
 member that once while taking a flag of truce out 
 on the Newmarket road I met a young officer who 
 knew two of my classmates who had left us in '6i 
 to join the South and was ablfe to give me news of 
 them. It was on this occasion that an elderly 
 lady, whom I was delivering across the line, burst 
 into tears while I was talking to this young officer 
 and cried out, "Oh, boys, boys, throw down your 
 swords and go back to your books!" 
 
 These flags of truce were always friendly and at 
 times even cordial and frank. In one of them I sat 
 for half an hour by the roadside while waiting for the 
 answer to the communication I bore, talking with 
 the Confederate officer who had met me. He was 
 much older than I, and talked all the time, quietly 
 and with no sign of any diminution of his deter- 
 mination to see the thing through, of his family 
 and their privation, and of his regret that the 
 war had ever begun. The meetings were not 
 infrequent and were generally due to the desire 
 of some woman to be passed through to the 
 South. They always took place on the New- 
 market road. The opposing earthworks were not 
 far apart, and the pickets were quite close to- 
 gether, but never fired at each other. We would 
 display a large white flag at the road and advance 
 slowly down it until the Confederate picket or 
 officer was met, and then sit down and await 
 their pleasure. And, as I said, our interviews 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 45 
 
 were always friendly and sometimes even jocose. 
 Thus, one day, the Confederate officer suggested 
 we should send over to them the field and staff 
 of a certain regiment of ours, adding with a smile 
 that they had already acquired by desertion 
 almost all the rest of the regiment. It was a 
 shrewd thrust, for the subject was a sore one with 
 us for reasons which I may mention later. 
 
 These assaults and attacks were of course most 
 interesting to me, for everything was new and I 
 was constantly gathering novel experiences and 
 sensations. As I sit back and search my memory, 
 long-forgotten little incidents come back to me 
 and even some little recollection of thoughts and 
 sensations. But they are all slight and trivial, 
 not worth jotting down except as idle conversation 
 and perhaps as giving some faint idea of the life. 
 Some of the engagements were quite sharp and 
 all were practically upon the same ground, that 
 lying on both sides of the Darbytown road. It 
 was largely open ground, with scattered woods, 
 and bordered on the west by thick continuous 
 woods, a short distance within which were the 
 Confederate intrenchments. We would move 
 out to the north, deploy in the open ground, drive 
 in the pickets, and advance into the woods until 
 stopped by the intrenchments. Only once or 
 twice, so far as I recollect, was an effort made to 
 carry the intrenched lines; ordinarily we would 
 simply "demonstrate" before them, that is, 
 stand up to be shot at, and come back home in the 
 
46 CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 late afternoon. There was enough firing — shot, 
 shell, and bullets — to keep us thoughtful and I 
 noted with much relief that my companions were 
 as thoughtful as I was. It was quite noticeable, 
 the hush that would come as we rode up into the 
 zone of firing. I don't mean that anyone flinched, 
 but they all grew quiet. And they had all been 
 at it for three years, and many had been wounded. 
 I remember one of them wore a jacket with six 
 holes in it, where a bullet had passed through both 
 his arms and his body; another. Captain Graves, 
 the senior aide, had fallen at the end of the 
 second day at Gettysburg in Sickles's corps with a 
 bullet through the thigh; a third, our signal 
 officer, had been shot in the foot; he had been in 
 the first battle of Bull Run and told me a curious 
 incident. He was a private in the N. Y. High- 
 lander Regiment and the regiment, which was 
 supporting a battery, fled when the rout came. 
 He said: "I was angry and ashamed to run, and 
 I made up my mind to stay and be shot. One 
 other man stayed with me. All was quiet for 
 five or ten minutes. I could see the rebels creep- 
 ing up across the field, and when they got up to a 
 rail fence just in front of me, one of them, he was 
 old enough to be my father, peered at me and 
 then slowly took aim at me. I just stood up 
 straight and faced him. His gun missed fire. Then 
 something seemed to snap in me. I instantly fired 
 at him, threw down my gun, and ran like a deer, 
 and I don't know when or where I stopped." 
 
1866 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 47 
 
 I remember too that on one of the first days 
 when we were pressing up against the enemy's 
 works beyond our fiank and were close up by the 
 Hne of battle, a buUet struck a horse near me and 
 then my foot as I sat in the saddle. It did me no 
 harm, but the sound it made or my movement to 
 examine the foot led to a question by someone and 
 to my explanation. To my surprise the item was 
 passed along, and two or three of the staff whom 
 I knew very slightly and who could have had no 
 personal interest in me, came over to me and 
 inquired about it. I think it was simply the fact 
 that one of the party had been hit that interested 
 them, that instead of me, the bullet might have 
 found one of them. It is to be borne in mind that 
 during much of these periods of exposure we were 
 unoccupied, simply standing and waiting, and it is 
 not strange that the mind under such circumstances 
 should be occupied with the possibilities of the 
 body's environment. On one of these days, I 
 think it must have been the first and most severe 
 one, October 13th, we had ridden close up to 
 the line at General Hawley's brigade and were 
 talking with him when violent musketry firing 
 came from the enemy directly opposite. We were 
 dismounted at the time, the horses a little in the 
 rear, and the word was passed to lie down. As it 
 happened, General Terry lay down between my 
 legs and I remember feeling keenly that in that 
 arrangement rank was not properly regarded. He 
 should have been in front. The bullets buzzed 
 
48 CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 over us, and the twigs fell on us, and when the fire 
 slackened we rose and went back to the horses. I 
 had in mind a remark made by a major-general, a 
 regular army officer, who had seen much fighting 
 on the Plains as well as in the war, "The man who 
 won't take the shelter of a blade of grass when it is 
 offered him is a — fool, " and I was looking for the 
 blade of grass. I had decided that a horse was as 
 good as the grass and skipping to get behind one 
 when I caught sight of the face of a stolid, old 
 orderly, who was holding three horses. His face 
 was expressionless, but his eyes were following me, 
 and I realized that, while the advice might be 
 sound as to shelter offered, it was not to be extended 
 to a search therefor, at least by one whose rank 
 required him to set an example. And then, too, one 
 gets to think it is not worth while, or has a super- 
 stitious feeling that the effort to avoid increases 
 the chance of harm. At that very time, when a 
 moment later I stepped toward my horse to mount, 
 a shell passed directly under her belly. If I had 
 taken position behind her I should have been right 
 in its track. 
 
 One of my friends, who served through the war 
 and was severely wounded and thrown from his 
 horse while in command of his regiment at Chicka- 
 mauga told me, in reply to my question why he 
 was on horseback at such a time, that he always 
 went mounted in action, for he was convinced that 
 if he went on foot and once got behind a tree he 
 would never leave the shelter. And yet he told me 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 49 
 
 at another time, and others have said the same 
 thing, that once engaged and actively busied 
 with the handling of his men, all thought of per- 
 sonal danger passed from his mind. General 
 Schofield in his memoirs says the same thing of 
 himself in his first battle. I believe that almost 
 every man when moving up into danger is more or 
 less preoccupied by it. And indeed, I have not 
 much confidence in the so-called constitutionally 
 brave man, the man who does not think of danger. 
 Let him once get scared and the chances are he will 
 be scared through and through and without control 
 of himself. The man who appreciates the danger 
 and faces it is the one who can be trusted to keep 
 going. There are of course the constitutionally 
 cowardly, the men who are actually beside them- 
 selves in the presence of danger, but they are 
 few. I saw one of them on one of those Darby- 
 town road days. He was a recruit, just down from 
 the North, one of the men the Government was 
 paying a bounty of $1000 or $1500 for, and who 
 are drawing pensions still. We had spent the 
 night in the field, and the next morning something 
 was said at headquarters about a man who had 
 behaved strangely the day before: he had fallen 
 out of the ranks and had since been in the hands of 
 the provost guard. He was sent for and came up 
 pale and trembling. He said he had just come 
 down from New York ; he had marched out in the 
 morning and was all right until the order was given 
 to load, and after that he remembered nothing. 
 
50 CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 In the silence that followed his statement an 
 officer spoke, "Oh, send him out to Colonel Curtis 
 and have him shot. " The man gasped, threw up 
 his hands, and fell straight back in a dead faint. 
 He was kept thereafter in the provost marshal's 
 gang of men under punishment and employed in 
 chores about the camp, and I saw him occasionally 
 during the next two or three months; once he 
 passed by my tent when Colonel Curtis was sitting 
 there Avith me, and Curtis spoke to him, not 
 unkindly, cautioning him to do his work well; he 
 replied tremblingly and turned so pale that I 
 thought he would faint again. 
 
 Theoretically one's anxiety ought to be lessened 
 by an appreciation of the rarity of the hits com- 
 pared with the number of projectiles discharged. 
 It is an old saying, somewhat fanciful, that it 
 takes a man's weight in lead to kill him, but, alas, 
 the first bullet may do the trick and the tally of 
 wasted lead be made up afterwards. But still one 
 does see from time to time very striking evidence 
 of the relative immunity. I once watched a skirm- 
 ish line cross a great field. The men ran across at 
 a trot without firing a shot, perhaps a third of a 
 mile, toward a line of rifle-pits on the opposite 
 side occupied by a thin line of the enemy, who were 
 firing at them continuously until they were nearly 
 up and then retired to another line a short distance 
 beyond. Only one man fell. And while our men 
 were settling themselves under cover of the pits, 
 their commanding officer rode rapidly up and 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 51 
 
 down the line, back and forth, zig-zagging about, 
 and presumably giving his orders, while puffs of 
 smoke all converging toward him were constantly 
 coming from the enemy's rifle-pits along a length 
 of, I should think, two hundred yards. Finally, 
 he turned and galloped back unhurt. 
 
 I think it was that same day that I had a very 
 singular experience, unique so far as my inquiries 
 have gone. I had gone, or had been sent, off to a 
 Httle eminence and was standing on a bank border- 
 ing a road, looking across a wide field toward woods 
 occupied by the enemy. After I had been there a 
 few moments, a battery of artillery galloped up 
 behind me and stopped, preparing to unlimber. I 
 glanced back at them and as I turned again toward 
 the wood I heard the buzz of a bullet and saw what 
 looked like a great bee coming straight at me. I 
 instantly dropped in my tracks, and as I did so I 
 heard the slap of the bullet and a man called out, 
 "Come here, I am hit." It was an artilleryman, 
 standing at the head of his horse about ten feet 
 behind me. The bullet had struck a button on his 
 coat and flattened on it. Shells are often easily 
 visible, but I have yet to meet anyone who has 
 seen a minie ball in flight. Of course its speed 
 was largely lost. 
 
 As the season advanced, hostilities on both sides 
 diminished and ceased. There were few duties: 
 an occasional ride along the picket line on the 
 flank, examinations of the roads and approaches in 
 the same quarter with selection of a site for an 
 
52 CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 intrenchment to cover the crossing of a swamp, and 
 the carrying of orders to the different commanders, 
 when some explanation had to go with them. We 
 were free to visit and gossip and exercise our horses. 
 I had early acquired a second horse, a tough Httle 
 strawberry roan that nothing could tire, and which 
 was in some ways a far more satisfactory mount 
 than my handsome ebullient mare. The latter, 
 a dark brown Morgan, had much individuality 
 and was conspicuously handsome, but better suited 
 for the ballroom than the home circle. She was 
 perfectly kind and gentle, and we became great 
 friends, but she had only two gaits, a swift walk 
 and a run, to which after much persuasion she 
 ultimately added a niost hygienic trot. She would 
 never stand with her head to the wind, she always 
 wanted to lead the procession, and she had a pas- 
 sion for bathing. All of these traits were embarrass- 
 ing for a subaltern. If the staff gathered on some 
 eminence while the General examined the prospect 
 to windward or perhaps explained it to some visit- 
 ing general, Fanny would quietly turn her back 
 and mine upon them and face to the rear. If we 
 were moving briskly across the country she kept 
 me most of the time alongside of or a little ahead 
 of the General. If we crossed a stream, I had to 
 do it at full speed or she would lie down in it, 
 and that led to many objurgations, for my com- 
 panions did not like to be splashed. Once at 
 Fort Fisher, when, riding across the sands, I started 
 across what seemed to be a broad shallow pool of 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 53 
 
 salt water, without the slightest warning she 
 went straight down under me. Thinking we had 
 got into a deep hole, I sUpped the reins over my 
 arm and started to swim ashore. The water was 
 not knee-deep, and a new pair of mouse-colored 
 corduroys, the pride of my heart, were irretrievably 
 ruined. Another time, at the end of a day's 
 march, my darky reported with much alarm that 
 he had "taken the mare down to water and she 
 broke away and is swimming around in the 
 branch. " And she continued to do so for a quar- 
 ter of an hour, and then came quietly out ready for 
 supper. She was heartbreaking at times, but she 
 was a dear. 
 
 One day I was sent to bring up a cavalry brigade. 
 As I rode up to its commander and began to deliver 
 my message, he fixed his eyes on Fanny and 
 interrupted me with "Where did you get that mare? 
 I didn't suppose General Keyes would ever part 
 with her. " She had no great speed, but she would 
 jtunp anything that came in her way and generally 
 with success. She also had a very sensitive 
 mouth, and if any weight was put on the bridle, 
 she would throw her head in the air and make 
 quite an exhibition of herself. But she was so 
 kind and bidable that I could almost always con- 
 trol her by my voice. She would follow me about 
 and come to my call, and we spent a good deal of 
 time together. 
 
 The other horse was small, with beautiful head 
 and legs but a most unmanageable mane. He had 
 
54 CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 a swift easy trot and great endurance. I once 
 rode him to an outpost ten miles distant and 
 made the return trip without once breaking his 
 trot. The orderly who accompanied me because 
 guerillas occasionally appeared on the road was 
 quite unable to keep up and at the last was left 
 far behind. 
 
 The use of our horses for business or pleasure 
 was a chief occupation of the aides, and when not 
 on horseback we were idling about headquarters. 
 I hardly remember how the days were spent 
 except that in the evenings we all gathered about 
 the large campfire in the open, with sometimes a 
 band to furnish entertainment. The smell of that 
 fire is still in my nostrils, and even now I never 
 smell burning wood in the open that it does not 
 instantly turn my thoughts back to those days. 
 Just as when in 1898 I went to the camp at Mon- 
 tauk and the sight of the army wagons and the 
 mule teams and the orderlies rushing about on 
 horseback made me feel for a moment as though I 
 must mount and be part and parcel of it again. 
 
 The duties were few and simple. Occasionally 
 a ride to Deep Bottom to bring over a regiment or 
 a brigade of new troops, a ride along the outposts 
 to remind the men that they were under obser- 
 vation, another to meet and ceremoniously con- 
 duct some visiting general or a congressional 
 committee, but most of the time it was a ride for 
 the ride's sake or to visit some point of interest, 
 like the canal that was digging at Dutch Gap. 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 55 
 
 I recall an amusing incident connected with 
 the visit of a committee headed by Senator Wil- 
 son, Chairman of the Committee on the Conduct 
 of the War. The committee lunched with General 
 Terry and issued from his little house to mount 
 horses that had been collected for them for a ride 
 along the lines. One of the horses was a mare 
 belonging to Major Terry, our adjutant-general, 
 a remarkably fine-gaited horse but with a very 
 tender mouth. Wilson, a stout little man, ap- 
 peared with his trousers tied about his ankles 
 with red tape and was hoisted up on the horse. 
 He gathered up the reins and pulled sharply 
 on them. The mare rose straight up on her hind 
 legs and the Senator slid down over her tail to the 
 ground. Much excitement, of course, and many 
 apologies; the offending mare was led away and 
 the much-ruifled Senator mounted on another 
 horse. 
 
 Dutch Gap was a perennial interest, for it lasted 
 long in the making and much of the time there was 
 firing from the enemy's large guns and mortars. 
 The canal was so placed that the guns on the other 
 side of the James could fire across its mouth and 
 much of the time they would fire at the men as 
 they brought out the clay in wheel-barrows and 
 carts. The canal itself was completely sheltered 
 from fire. It was cut through a neck of land about 
 five hundred feet wide and forty feet high; it was 
 of gray clay so stiff that the sides of the cut were 
 almost vertical. The digging was begun at the 
 
56 CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 south end, and the very precipitous bank at the 
 north end was left untouched until the excavation 
 had been entirely completed behind it, so as to 
 escape direct shelling from the opposite bank. A 
 visit to it had to be made with some circtunspection 
 so as not to draw special fire. We would leave our 
 horses out of sight and sUp in around the exposed 
 points when things were relatively quiet. The 
 clay was very firm and tough. I remember bring- 
 ing away a piece and carving it into a model of the 
 canal as it then was. Indeed, I think it is still 
 somewhere about the house, together with a pipe 
 I also made of the clay. 
 
 As the season advanced, and it seemed probable 
 we should remain where we were for the winter, we 
 arranged more permanent quarters. Details of 
 men from Maine regiments were set to build log 
 huts, and they did it quickly and well. We 
 scoured the country for bricks for the chimneys 
 and occasionally found a serviceable window- 
 sash, a great find, one to make its owner envied. 
 I well remember the indignant murmurs with 
 which the order was received to leave the sashes in 
 place when, on the reconstruction of the corps, we 
 had to leave our quarters and return to the ist 
 Division. There was much rivalry over the chim- 
 neys. And as mine did its work well, I was some- 
 what in demand when others were to be built or 
 remade. 
 
 Some of the huts had floors, the planks coming 
 from the abandoned houses that furnished the 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 57 
 
 bricks; I do not remember how we made the roofs, 
 but I think we used the tent flies. 
 
 There were plenty of men to chop and bring 
 wood for the fires, and we thought we were excep- 
 tionally well provided for. But for me the nights 
 were a torment, for I have always slept cold. My 
 companion slept in a buffalo-skin bag in a box and 
 slept well. I lay on a canvas hospital stretcher 
 and could never get blankets enough below and 
 above to keep my hips and knees from aching 
 Uke a tooth. 
 
 Of furniture we had Httle or nothing; some- 
 times an improvised table or bench or perhaps 
 even a chair picked up somewhere. A post driven 
 firmly in the ground outside held a tin washbasin, 
 and we each must have possessed one or two towels. 
 My washing was done, I presvmie, by my orderly ; 
 at least I cannot remember doing it myself. We 
 took our meals in a large mess-tent, the food being 
 supplied by a sutler at a fixed price per week. 
 We had no books, and there was but little card 
 plashing. Some of the staff were well educated and 
 well bred, and all were friendly and easy to live 
 with. Late in the season a former classmate, 
 Horace Fowler, came with his regiment, a N. Y. 
 Heavy Artillery one, which had been brought up 
 from Yorktown and equipped as infantry, much to 
 their disgust, and I was able to have him detailed 
 to the staff as Judge Advocate on the strength of 
 his having studied law for one season. His com- 
 pany was of course a great pleasure. 
 
58 CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 Fresh troops, raised by the large bounties, came 
 to us in considerable numbers, but the material was 
 poor. Desertions were constant and there were 
 a few executions of those who were caught. I 
 attended one, and only one. The victim was a 
 flagrant offender. He had enlisted eight times 
 and pocketed eight bounties. He was a stout 
 young fellow and looked hke an ordinary city 
 tough. He pretended to a good deal of unconcern 
 and bravado during the two or three days of 
 confinement, rode to the field with apparent 
 indifference, seated according to the cruel fashion 
 on his unpainted coffin, and stood at "attention" 
 unblindfolded beside the ready grave, facing the 
 firing squad. The latter did their work well, 
 thanks to an energetic provost marshal, who stood 
 behind them with a drawn pistol and the promise 
 to shoot any man whose rifle deviated from the 
 mark, and every bullet struck the man's chest. 
 His body flew backward without a joint bending, 
 and his cap striking the edge of the coffin flew 
 high in the air. 
 
 A brigade notorious for its numerous desertions 
 had been ordered out to witness the execution in the 
 hope it might teach the men a lesson. It did, but 
 not the expected one. That night it went on 
 picket and ninety of the men deserted. 
 
 Such was some of our material, and I wish that 
 those who pass our pension laws and to whom a 
 deserter is only "a poor homesick lad" could 
 appreciate it and could vote with an eye to their 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 59 
 
 duty to the country rather than to the vote at the 
 next election. 
 
 About the first of December, the loth and i8th 
 Corps were broken up and recombined as the 24th 
 and 25th, the latter being composed largely, per- 
 haps exclusively, of colored troops and under the 
 command of General Weitzel. General Ord took 
 command of the 24th, in which General Terry had 
 the 1st Division, and General Ames the 2nd. 
 General Terry very kindly offered to get me a place 
 on General Ord's staff, but I preferred to go with 
 him to the ist Division. If I had accepted I 
 should probably have taken part in the breaking 
 of the Unes about Petersburg the next April, and 
 the pursuit to Appomattox. 
 
 Shortly after this reorganization, our 2nd Di- 
 vision with, I think, the 3rd Division, General C. 
 J. Paine, of the 25th (colored), was sent under 
 Generals Butler and Weitzel to attack Fort Fisher 
 at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, North 
 Carolina. They made the landing, thought the 
 fort impregnable, and returned. General Grant 
 at once ordered the same troops, with General 
 Hawley's brigade of our division, to renew the 
 attempt, this time under the command of General 
 Terry. We started, I think, December 31st. 
 Unfortunately I had been a little ailing and the 
 doctor said I should not go. I pleaded hard with 
 the general but he was firm and told me to go home 
 for a fortnight and rejoin him when I got well. 
 It was a bitter disappointment. The troops 
 
6o CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 maxched to City Point, we followed in the evening, 
 and I took the boat to Fortress Monroe and home. 
 
 After some delay due to a storm, the force cap- 
 tured the fort, January 15th. Secretary Stanton 
 came down to inspect (or to rejoice) immediately 
 after the capture. He made our force into a corps 
 and gave us the old number, loth, with General 
 Terry of course in command, and gave him a 
 brigadier-generalcy in the regular army and 
 distributed various other promotions. I was 
 promised a commission from the general govern- 
 ment of captain and A.D.C. It came to me at the 
 close of the war while I was ill, and I declined it. 
 
 At the expiration of the fortnight I started back. 
 At Fortress Monroe I found a transport carrying 
 reinforcements and got passage on it. 
 
 The staff was occupying a small frame house 
 outside the fort and were enjoying a mess sup- 
 plemented by supplies obtained from two block- 
 ade runners which had just come in not knowing 
 that the fort had been taken. The usual lights 
 had been set and they ran in at night, anchored, 
 and went to bed. 
 
 Our horses had not yet come, and the staff duty 
 for a little while was irksome, for the sand was 
 heavy and the roads poor. But the weather was 
 balmy and the horses soon came. We had an 
 intrenched line three miles to the north, extending 
 from the river to the sea, or rather to an inlet 
 which paralleled the shore, and the enemy held a 
 line just beyond us. Three or four monitors lay 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 6i 
 
 in the river and would occasionally throw a few 
 shells at a fort farther up on the opposite side of 
 the river. The land immediately in front of us 
 was very swampy, practically impassable except 
 along one or two small roads. We moved out once 
 or twice and felt the enemy, and once sent quite a 
 force by night up the coast, hoping to make a 
 lodgment in their rear, but it could not get across 
 the inlet. General Schofield's corps was brought 
 from Nashville and about the middle of February 
 it advanced on Wilmington along the west bank of 
 the river, while we worked up on our side. There 
 was but little opposition, nothing but heavy skirm- 
 ish lines on our part and only occasional checks. 
 Still, we had to move along so few roads and with 
 so narrow a front that we had quite a number of 
 casualties. At one check I was standing beside 
 the road while a company was passing by to sup- 
 port the skirmish line ; suddenly there came a roar 
 and a bang and the head of the little column 
 dissolved. An unexploded three-inch shell had 
 come through the thicket and struck it squarely, 
 knee-high, and knocked out five men. And I 
 recall another incident : an unexpected volley had 
 brought down a number of men, the doctors were 
 hurried up, improvised operating tables, and set 
 about their work. It was, though I did not know 
 it, the beginning of my surgical career, for I asked 
 a doctor why he was going to amputate an arm 
 from which the back of the elbow had been shot 
 away. "Why do you not leave it as it is?" I 
 
62 CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 asked, "The arm is still good and I should think 
 he could get well of his smash as well as he could 
 of an amputation. " He snorted with scorn, and off 
 came the limb. Nowadays, we should certainly 
 save it, and I stUl think it might have been done 
 then. 
 
 Surgery was rather elementary in those days 
 and the difficulties of transport doubtless forced 
 the surgeon's hand. But still there was much 
 haste and scant study of the cases. One of our 
 aides. Captain Graves, was shot at Gettysburg in 
 the thigh at nightfall on the second day. He 
 was taken to the field hospital, a surgeon came by, 
 glanced at his wound, and said, "Amputate." 
 While awaiting his turn, he saw a medical acquaint- 
 ance passing and called to him, asking for at least 
 an examination before condemnation. It proved 
 to be simply a flesh wound and in a month he 
 was back on duty. 
 
 On February 22d we entered Wilmington, still 
 skirmishing, and pushed on to a river about ten 
 miles beyond. Once or twice in this part we had 
 to deploy, but there was no serious resistance. 
 The enemy was encumbered by large numbers of 
 our prisoners who had been brought to Wilming- 
 ton as Sherman advanced throug i Georgia and 
 South Carolina, and a few of them who had man- 
 aged to escape on the way came out to us from 
 the bushes as we passed along. They looked 
 very miserable but it was nothing to what we 
 saw a little later. 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 63 
 
 We established a strong outpost at the river 
 and brought the main force back to Wilmington. 
 
 Our entry into Wilmington had some amusing 
 incidents. An old man, carrying a white flag, 
 apparently a tablecloth, came out to meet us and 
 formally surrendered the city, but the dignity and 
 the impressiveness of his behavior was sadly 
 marred by the excitement of the swarms of negroes 
 who filled the road about him and welcomed us 
 with shouts of joy and thanksgiving. I remember 
 one stout young woman with her back against the 
 fence jimiping up and down, waving her arms and 
 emitting shrill cries. 
 
 With headquarters in the city, we were soon on 
 poHte terms with the population, female as well as 
 male. Technically we were enemies, but youth 
 will not be denied. On the first or second evening 
 an appeal came in to save a family from their 
 colored servants. I was sent on the mission. 
 I found a circle of seven or eight ladies of various 
 ages seated solemnly in the parlor. I inquired 
 about the trouble and found it existed only in their 
 imaginations; they feared it was coming, although 
 there had been no indication of it. I asked that 
 the potential disturbers of the peace should be 
 svunmoned ; a very mild looking man and woman 
 came rather tremulously into my august presence, 
 received some solemn advice, and departed with 
 relief. We then sat about and talked for a while, 
 and I went home. A few days afterwards I met 
 one of the younger ladies and she took me to task 
 
64 CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 for having spoken to a still younger one in the 
 street a day or two before. They had reproached 
 the girl for having allowed me, an enemy, to do so, 
 and she had defended herself on the score of proper 
 courtesy. I had to explain that she had been 
 imposed upon, that some other officer had imper- 
 sonated me, or rather, had been mistaken by her 
 for me. I fear she got another scolding. 
 
 Our headquarters were in a public building and 
 we slept on the floor. One morning early I was 
 waked by the entrance into my room of two men in 
 Confederate uniform and conspicuous revolvers. 
 I sat up in some bewilderment and asked their 
 errand. They were two of Sherman's scouts who 
 had just got through to us and wished to deliver 
 their message. After that had been attended to, 
 one of them said he would like to consult a doctor 
 as he had a buckshot in his thigh. He said that a 
 day or two before starting to come to us he and 
 two companions were out looking about and came 
 upon a party of home guards. ' ' Jim took the left 
 flank, and Joe the center, and I the right flank and 
 we went at them with a yell. They ran like rab- 
 bits, all but one old man near me. I called on 
 him to surrender and he lowered his gun. I looked 
 around to see if there were any others and as I 
 turned back he was drawing on me. I threw my- 
 self down on the horse and fired my revolver at 
 him just as he fired, and one of his shot went right 
 through my leg. And," reproachfully, ' 'he was old 
 enough to be my father. " 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 65 
 
 He told many other stories of reckless adventure 
 and of daredeviltry of a similar kind. Of one I 
 remember Uttle more than a phrase. Clad in the 
 uniform of a Confederate Major he met a body 
 of Confederates, told them the enemy was near and 
 approaching, took command of them, and hurriedly 
 began preparations for defense. But he had not 
 time enough. "Oh," he said, "if our men had 
 only been a little later I'd have put up the prettiest 
 Uttle fight." 
 
 The most impressive thing that happened during 
 our three weeks' stay in Wilmington was the recep- 
 tion of ten thousand of our prisoners turned over 
 to us by General Hoke because he could no longer 
 care for them. They had been gathered from 
 various Southern prisons that lay within the line 
 of Sherman's marches and had been herded along 
 with the troops that were more or less closely 
 opposing Sherman and us. They were brought 
 by rail to the opposite bank of the river upon which 
 we had our outpost, ten miles out from Wilmington, 
 and we laid there a pontoon bridge for their cross- 
 ing. We went out to meet them and it was one 
 of the most trying scenes I ever witnessed. Many 
 of them were so weak that we had to detail soldiers 
 to help them up a little incline from the bank, and 
 we had to camp them on the spot until conveyances 
 could be gathered to take them to the town. As 
 I was sitting on my horse watching them, a very 
 ill-looking man came slowly toward me and said, 
 "Can you teU me where I can find a doctor? I've 
 
66 CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 got a friend over there and he isn't very well." 
 Poor fellow, he looked desperately in need of a 
 doctor himself. We shipped north all who could 
 bear the journey and placed the others — ^hundreds 
 of them — in improvised hospitals in the town. 
 They were in such condition, many with gan- 
 grenous limbs, that it was unpleasant to pass by 
 the houses in which they lay. I remember seeing 
 afterwards pictures va. Harper's Weekly, I think, of 
 some of their limbs, pictiures hardly to be believed, 
 feet fallen off and the bare bones of the leg sticking 
 out beyond the flesh. And then too, of course, 
 there was the inevitable typhoid. Our medical in- 
 spector, a man of whom I was very fond, but whose 
 name I have forgotten, — he came from New Hamp- 
 shire, — ^was placed in charge of these hospitals and 
 on the morning that we marched away I hurriedly 
 rode to his house to bid him good-by. He quietly 
 said, "I am coming down with the fever, I feel it 
 here, " drawing his hand across his forehead. When 
 I came to myself after my own fever a few weeks 
 later, one of the first letters I read was from the 
 lady at whose house he had been Hving, telling of 
 his death. 
 
 We were anxiously awaiting news of Sherman, 
 who was marching through the country west of us, 
 and one Sunday morning I was called out of church 
 and told that the General wanted me. He told me 
 to go aboard a certain boat and proceed up the 
 river and see if I could pick up any of Sherman's 
 scouts who might be trying to work in to us. 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 67 
 
 "How fax shall I go?" "As far as you think fit. " 
 I went aboard and started on my independent 
 command. The boat was a small paddle-wheel 
 river craft with a captain, an old negro pilot, two 
 deck-hands, and two or three in the engine room. 
 All went well at first in the broad reaches, but when 
 we reached the narrow and crooked part we had a 
 hard time. The river was bank full and nmning 
 fast; the turns were sharp and often double, so 
 that before we could get the craft straightened 
 out after one turn she would plunge her bow into 
 the bank or the trees opposite. I worked at the 
 wheel with the darky, but the problem was not to 
 be solved by strength. We soon lost a good part 
 of our paddle boxes and all the standing poles and 
 railings about the bows, and the captain aU the 
 time was in a twitter lest a rifle shot should come 
 from the banks. By nightfall we had advanced 
 about forty miles, and having reached a place 
 where the river had broadly overflowed a low 
 wooded district, I told the captain to tie up to 
 the trees for the night. After supper I posted 
 the two deck-hands, each with a rifle, and told 
 them where to look for a coming onslaught, and 
 then went to bed. Doubtless they did likewise 
 soon after. 
 
 The night passed without alarms and we were 
 soon on our way again. The river was straighter 
 and the navigation was easier; and as we passed 
 from time to time charred pieces of wood looking 
 like the stringers of a bridge, I inferred that Sher- 
 
68 CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 man's men had reached the river above us and 
 detennined to keep going until I found them. 
 Twice a man on horseback rode to the river bank 
 where it rose in a bluff above us, and scrutinized 
 us with interest, but no shots followed and we 
 kept on. The captain sought to impress upon 
 me the ease with which a rifle ball would put our 
 boilers out of commission or empty the pilot house, 
 but I was eager to see the thing through. In the 
 afternoon he found compensation in hauUng 
 aboard a floating bale of cotton. I daresay it 
 yielded him two or three hundred dollars. When 
 ten or fifteen miles short of Fayetteville, we passed 
 a group of our cavalrymen on the river bank, and 
 then I swung out a big flag at the stem, which 
 I had prudently abstained from displaying before, 
 and pushed on confidently. 
 
 About four o'clock we reached Fayetteville and 
 found a pontoon bridge over which our troops were 
 passing. We tied up to the bank and I set out 
 to find Sherman. The road was filled with march- 
 ing troops who showed interest, some of it articu- 
 late and personal, in my appearance and my corps 
 badge which was new to them, and after walking 
 about a mile I found the General in a dwelling 
 house on the Arsenal grounds. He seemed con- 
 tented and free from care and questioned me about 
 our force at Wilmington, and apparently heard 
 with pleasure that Schofield's corps had left us 
 and had marched by the coast toward Newberne. 
 He complained of the swarms of negroes, about 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 69 
 
 thirty thousand he said, that were accompanying 
 him, and told many stories of them, and finally 
 directed one of his officers to take me to General 
 Howard and tell him to send back with me as 
 many as my boat would carry. We crossed the 
 pontoon bridge and found Howard in a tent. 
 After a few words with him I went back to the boat, 
 got a gangplank out and took on board about two 
 hundred men, women, and children, and shortly 
 before midnight started down the river. Our 
 progress, with the stream, was far more rapid and 
 we reached Wilmington by noon. Early in the 
 morning we had an accident which just missed 
 being very serious. As we swung around a sharp 
 turn, our starboard quarter struck a rebel gunboat 
 (the Chickamauga, I think) which had been nm up 
 the river and sunk when we occupied Wilmington. 
 It made a hole in us nearly a foot in diameter just 
 above the water-line. 
 
 Many other negroes were subsequently brought 
 down and established in camp; under the care I 
 suppose of the Freedmen's Bureau. 
 
 About the second week of March our corps left 
 Wilmington and marched north beside the railway, 
 our destination being a junction with Sherman at 
 Cox's bridge, just out of Goldsboro, about seventy- 
 five or one hundred miles, I think. The weather 
 was pleasant, the road good, and no enemy in our 
 front. They had withdrawn to combine with 
 others under Johnston in opposing Sherman. The 
 country was sparsely settled and we found only 
 
70 CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 women, children, and old or disabled men, men who 
 had lost an arm or a leg in the war, and had 
 returned to their homes. Extreme poverty was 
 evident, and General Terry was very strict in 
 preventing any looting. One day we were sit^ting 
 on the porch of a little house during a halt; some 
 shouts were heard and we saw some soldiers 
 chasing a pig in a field across the road. The 
 General drew his sword, bounded down the steps 
 and across the road, and went for the men. They 
 ran one way, and the pig another. 
 
 I think it was at the same place that a Httle 
 girl who was standing near us suddenly threw up 
 her arms and in a voice of the utmost despair 
 cried, "Oh, they're in the smokehouse. ' ' A couple 
 of soldiers were looking in at the door of a little 
 shack that stood a few yards away from the house. 
 It was a piteous cry ; probably all the little food 
 they had was in that shack. 
 
 One afternoon we found an engine and two cars 
 at a way-station and thought to vary the march 
 by taking a ride in them. An engineer and fire- 
 men were found, some soldiers loaded into one of 
 the cars and we took places in the other, and away 
 we went, sending our horses by the road. As we 
 approached the next station we saw some armed 
 men on horseback in front of it awaiting us. Our 
 conductor could give no information. The last 
 time he had been over the road, he said, the 
 Confederates were there. We moved up slowly 
 and stopped by them. They were an odd looking 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 71 
 
 bunch. One of them had a quilt under his saddle 
 which covered his horse from neck to tail, and all 
 were htmg about with pots and pans and other 
 domestic utensils. The men sat with their 
 rifles in their hands quietly watching us. They 
 were a small body of Sherman's "bummers," far 
 away from their force. They said they were just 
 waiting to see who we were, and apparently were 
 quite indifferent whether we should materialize as 
 Federals or Confederates. Then they turned and 
 went off and we proceeded. 
 
 Sherman marched as a rule in four parallel 
 columns five to fifteen miles apart, and stripped 
 the intermediate and bordering country systemati- 
 cally. The men who did the work were regularly 
 detailed and under the command of officers, but 
 evidently there was some, perhaps much, irregular 
 foraging and looting. Theoretically all plunder 
 was turned over for equitable distribution, but I 
 fancy there was little or no effort to prevent in- 
 dividual robbing or wanton destruction. When 
 Schofield's corps came into Wilmington after their 
 march up the west bank of the river I saw men 
 in the ranks carrying the weirdest loads : one with 
 an arm-chair, another with a mirror, etc. Of 
 course, these things were dropped at the road- 
 side in an hour or two. "War is hell," but the 
 hellishness is not simply the slaughter and the 
 physical destruction, it is also the corruption of 
 character, the loosening of moral bonds, the utter 
 disregard of right and wrong. I know it, for I felt 
 
72 CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 it in myself. It is the ready resort to violence, the 
 arbitrament of force. 
 
 One evening we stopped at Faison's station for 
 the night. An elderly gentleman came to head- 
 quarters and asked the General and his staff to take 
 supper at his house, a little distance down the road, 
 and to spend the night there, giving as his reason 
 his desire to have our protection against the 
 soldiers. We assured him he had nothing to fear, 
 but he was urgent and we went. Two ladies were 
 there, one, about thirty years old, whose husband 
 was in the Confederate army, the other a girl of 
 perhaps eighteen. They were quiet and courteous 
 and the evening passed off pleasantly. The 
 General and I stayed for the night, but the others 
 were shy and went back to their blankets. The 
 young girl and I spent the evening on the piazza 
 like any other young couple. Of our conversation 
 I recall only her story of a visit made to them 
 the previous day by some of Sherman's men. They 
 demanded her jewels, she said, and cursed her. "I 
 don't mind swearing, but I don't like to be cursed. " 
 
 In October, 191 3, I lunched in the same house 
 at the same table, with descendants of the same 
 family and with one of the ladies mentioned on a 
 following page. 
 
 A day or two later we reached Cox's bridge and 
 united with Sherman. We heard the firing at 
 Bentonville, Sherman's last battle, but took no 
 part in it. There was much going and coming 
 and some of Sherman's generals visited us, but I 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 73 
 
 was ailing and took little part in it. Indeed, on 
 the last marches I was so sick that whenever we 
 stopped I got off my horse and lay on the ground 
 until we started again. I had some quinine in 
 powder which I used to try to bury in a bit of 
 chewed bread so that I could swallow it without 
 getting too much of the taste. That was my sole 
 medical help. Then we were ordered back to Fai- 
 sons to refit for the next campaign. I made the 
 trip in the headquarters wagon with my darky 
 leading my horses close behind, and when we 
 reached the house selected for headquarters, I 
 went directly upstairs and to bed, and stayed there 
 until the corps started out again, a fortnight or 
 so afterward. 
 
 It was sickness under difficulty. We were four 
 in the room, with one double bed. The next day 
 I was delirious, and I think the others moved out 
 and left me in quiet for a while. But as I grew 
 better, the room came partly into use again as an 
 office and I had a pretty hard time trying to 
 get sleep. One evening after I had vainly sought 
 sleep for an hour or more, I asked one of the staff 
 who was reading at the table if he would not kindly 
 take his book elsewhere. He refused and added 
 that it was the most selfish request that had ever 
 been made of him. We teach that the main treat- 
 ment of typhoid is nursing and careful feeding. I 
 got neither (my nurse was a private soldier and 
 my food came from the staff table) and though I 
 recovered my convalescence was prolonged for 
 
74 CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 months by a persistent enteritis. The doctors 
 had said at first that I could not recover, and one of 
 the staff had gone through my effects, found the 
 family address, and written to them to send for my 
 body. I well remember the pride with which one 
 of the doctors, Doctor Craven, afterwards sat on 
 the side of my bed, and told me that he alone had 
 said that I would get well. Forty-eight and a half 
 years afterwards I revisited the house and met 
 there two elderly ladies, who had been young 
 women there at the time and had pleasant recollec- 
 tions of General Terry and the staff. I went up to 
 the room and saw there the same four-post bed- 
 stead. 
 
 When the time came for the corps to move, I was 
 driven in a buggy to the railway and put in a box 
 car with the other sick and some ladies and slowly 
 journeyed back to Wilmington. They told me I 
 was the second sickest on the train. The sickest, 
 Doctor Washburn, from a New England State, 
 died before we had been more than an hour on the 
 way. His wife and brother, seeking him, learned 
 at Portress Monroe of his death (which I had told 
 of when I stopped there on my way home) and 
 came to Paterson a day or two after I got home to 
 ask the details. I stayed at Wilmington a few 
 days, boarding in a private house, and then got on 
 a little steamer bound for New York. That same 
 afternoon my brother Henry reached Wilmington 
 via Newberne and Goldsboro in search of me. 
 
 My boat stopped at Fortress Monroe and I went 
 
CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 75 
 
 ashore and met my optimistic Doctor Craven, 
 who had just been stationed there and afterwards 
 had charge of Jefferson Davis when he was con- 
 fined there, and wrote a book about it. He 
 introduced me to Captain Gadsden of the Arago, 
 who had stopped there on his way back to New 
 York with a party sent down to raise the flag 
 again on Fort Sumter, and he kindly offered me 
 passage on his boat, far more comfortable than 
 the little freighter on which I had come from 
 Wilmington. We sailed away in the afternoon 
 and reached New York the next evening. I 
 landed down on the west side at about Franklin 
 or Worth Street, and for many years I used to 
 recognize as I went up and down in the Sixth 
 Avenue car the steps of a corner saloon on which I 
 rested while waiting for a car to take me up to 
 Fourteenth Street to the room where Keyes, then 
 a medical student, was living. I passed the night 
 on his sofa, and the next morning started for 
 Paterson. It was a day of fasting and prayer. 
 Lincoln's body had lain in state at the City Hall 
 the day before, and aU Broadway was draped in 
 black. As I sat wearily in the ferryboat, my 
 father came in. He had come to the city early 
 to see if some boat might not have arrived from 
 Wilmington (I must of course have written that I 
 was on my way home) and noting in the paper the 
 arrival of my freighter, had gone to it and learned 
 that I had shifted to the Arago. 
 
 I had to go to bed again and was pretty sick for 
 
76 CIVIL WAR MEMORIES 
 
 some weeks. But by June or July I was about 
 again and went to New Haven to visit General 
 Terry, home on leave. After Johnston's surrender, 
 he had been put in command of the district of 
 Virginia with headquarters at Richmond, where I 
 afterwards visited him again in October. 
 
 While I was lying ill at home, my commission as 
 captain and A.D.C., came from Washington, and 
 General Terry had offered to recommend me for a 
 brevet as major, and for a commission in the regular 
 army. But the war was over, and I had no desire 
 to remain in the army. I was not well enough to 
 go back to duty with any comfort and so, rather 
 heedlessly, I declined the commission instead of 
 accepting it and then resigning. I regret it now, 
 because acceptance would have put my name on 
 the army list. A small matter perhaps. As it 
 stands my name appears on the record as having 
 declined a commission, and is mentioned twice in 
 the Ofificial Record of the Rebellion, once in a 
 letter written by Sherman from FayetteviUe, in 
 which he tells of my call on him, and once in a 
 general order issued by General Terry at Raleigh, 
 or just as we started for it, in the list of his staff. 
 And the record was accepted by the Loyal Legion.