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 PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 BY THE HEIRS OF THE LATE 
 
 professor Dcnrg Carrinaton aiejanDcr, B.©., atX.B. 
 
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MEMORIAL 
 
 MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE, 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
 
 1 8 G 5. 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S65, by 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern 
 District of Pennsylvania. 
 
OBITUARY NOTICES. 
 
OBITUARY NOTICES. 
 
 From the Princeton Standard. 
 
 The intelligence received to-day of the death of Miss 
 Margaret E. Breckinridge, of this place, who died 
 on the 2tth inst. at Niagara Falls, after a somewhat 
 protracted illness, will sadden many hearts in this com- 
 munity. Her devotion to her country, since the rebel- 
 lion broke out, has cost her her life. From her expo- 
 sure to the hardships and diseases of hospital service, 
 and her unceasing labors for the relief of our sick and 
 wounded soldiers, her health became so impaired that 
 the late severe trial which befell her in the death of her 
 brother-in-law. Col. Peter A. Porter, who recently fell 
 at the head of his regiment in Virginia, reduced her 
 prostration below a rallying point. 
 
 Miss Breckinridge was a daughter of the late Rev. 
 Dr. John Breckinridge, and a granddaughter of the late 
 Rev. Dr. Samuel Miller. Like her father, she had a 
 
 1* h) 
 
b OBITUARY NOTICES. 
 
 magic power of securing warm personal friends wliere- 
 ever she went, and her death will be mourned in a wide 
 circle of kindred and friends in every part of our coun- 
 try. She was a young woman of much energy, talent, 
 and intelligence ; and if her extensive correspondence 
 during the last three years, — a portion of which was 
 conducted on behalf of sick soldiers and their friends, 
 and is filled with thrilling incidents, — could be exam- 
 ined, her patriotic and Christian labors would be more 
 highly appreciated. She made a profession of rehgion 
 when quite young, and died calmly in a full assurance 
 of faith. 
 
 From the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser. 
 
 Ten years ago, three of the most powerful nations 
 of the world were engaged — two of them against the 
 third — in deadly conflict in a territory smaller than 
 several of the States in the American Union. Such 
 was the nature of the soil and the moisture of the cli- 
 mate, and especially such were the requirements of 
 military routine and oflQcial circumlocutions, that the 
 sick and wounded soldiers of the Alhes were subject 
 to unnecessary and grievous neglect and suffering. So 
 
OBITUARY NOTICES. •? 
 
 frightfully true was this at the commencement of the 
 siege of Sebastopol, that the poor soldiers preferred the 
 hardships and discomfort of the trenches and the camp 
 to the horrors of the hospital. And when the kindly 
 heart, quick perception, and resolute will of a single 
 woman, cutting the knots of official tape, brought order 
 out of confusion, system out of chaos, and devoted her- 
 self with the zealous tenderness of her woman's heart 
 to the care and nursing of the sick and wounded sol- 
 diers, she was hailed as an angel of mercy, and her 
 name and memory were at once canonized in the Chris- 
 tian heart of the world. 
 
 The war of the Allies in the Crimea had its single 
 Florence Nightingale. The war of the United States 
 has a corps of them. One of the latter has just fallen 
 a martyr in this sacred vocation. Miss Margaret E. 
 Breckinridge, who recently died at Niagara Falls, 
 was the daughter of the late Rev. John Breckinridge, 
 D.D., of Kentucky. Her mother was a daughter of 
 the late Rev. Samuel Miller, D.D., of Princeton, N.J. 
 Miss Breckinridge inherited the vigorous intellect, the 
 quick perception, and the strong religious temperament 
 for which the family has long been distinguished. Her 
 physical organization was slight and delicate in tlie ex- 
 
8 OBITUARY NOTICES. 
 
 treme, but more than ordiuaiy power was imparted to 
 it by a strong mind, a resolute will, and a dominant and 
 devoted sense of duty. Seldom has so frail a casket 
 contained so rich a gem. 
 
 She entered the hospital service on the Mississippi, 
 in Gen. Grant's department, in the winter of 1862. 
 Possessing a fine musical talent which had been well 
 cultivated, a comprehensive and tenacious memory, 
 and being famihar from the years of her earliest in- 
 struction with the sacred truths and promises of the 
 Bible, she soon became a special favorite with the 
 hopelessly sick, the wounded and dying soldiers. Min- 
 istering both to their physical and moral wants, when 
 all hope of restoring the suffering body had perished, 
 she strove to rekindle those better hopes which have 
 their fruition beyond the grave. She repeated and ex- 
 plained the loving invitations and comforting promises 
 of her divine Master, and then, in the touching tones of 
 her bird-like voice, sang to the departing spirit those 
 sacred lyrics which had been familiar to all of them in 
 their early years, and to many of them through all the 
 years of their lives. And often did the last feeble 
 pressure of the hand whose strength had departed, and 
 the last serene and earnest look of the dying soldier's 
 
OBITUARY NOTICES. 9 
 
 closing eyes, express the gratitude which his tongue 
 was too feeble to utter, and evince the consoling assu- 
 rances which her ministrations had brought him. To 
 them she was indeed a "ministering spirit." 
 
 It was in the lowlands of the Mississippi that she 
 was first attacked with one of those obstinate camp 
 diseases which too often become chronic. Leaving 
 the department of the Mississippi in order to recruit 
 her wasted strength, she spent several months with 
 friends at the East. In May last, she entered again 
 upon hospital duty, near Philadelphia, but was soon 
 obliged to leave her post by an attack of erysipelas. 
 On partially recovering from this she came to Niagara 
 for the twofold purpose of sharing the sorrow of a 
 relative who had recently been sorely afflicted by the 
 death of an only brother upon the field of battle, and 
 of recruiting her own health and strength so that she 
 might return again to her labors of mercy. 
 
 She had even then within her system the seeds of 
 that fatal typhoid fever peculiar to camps, which was 
 soon developed in all its strength, and of which, com- 
 plicated with other difficulties, she died on Wednesday, 
 July 27th. 
 
 Her letters from camps and hospitals, and while 
 
10 OBITUARY NOTICES. 
 
 absent from them to recruit her exhausted powers, 
 concerning the soldiers, their cares, comforts, and 
 wants, were widely read, and many tearful eyes have 
 testified to the deep sympathy and interest which they 
 awakened. 
 
 She rests from her labors, and her works have fol- 
 lowed her to that better land where neither wars nor 
 wounds nor tears nor suffering are known. 
 
 H. 
 
 Niagara Falls, July 31, 1864. 
 
MEMORIAL 
 
MEMORIAL 
 
 To these brief notices, which first brought to 
 many hearts the sad tidings of the death of one 
 who was loved wherever she was known, we 
 would add a few facts and a few scattered remi- 
 niscences which have been gathered from various 
 sources ; and out of all these we w^ould weave a 
 little chaplet, bearing the impress of her charac- 
 ter, to add its tribute of affection to the marble 
 which covers the resting-place and is sacred to 
 the memory of Margaret Elizabeth Breckin- 
 ridge. 
 
 She was born in Philadelphia, March 24th, 
 1832. Through both her parents she was de- 
 scended from ancestors who, in the State as well 
 as in the Church, had labored for their genera- 
 tion and left an impress on the times in which 
 they lived. Her paternal grandfather was John 
 Breckinridge, of Kentucky, who in 1806 was 
 taken from a high position in the [t^ational 
 
 2 (13) 
 
14 ' MEMORIAL OF 
 
 Senate to fill tlie office of Attorney-General of 
 tlie United States, and died while yet a young 
 man, soon after taking liis seat in the Cabinet. 
 
 Her father, the Rev. John Breckinridge, 
 D.D., was his second son, and bore his name. 
 He was educated at the College of 'New Jersey, 
 and while a student there, and looking forward 
 to a career of worldly honor and distinction, he 
 became interested in an extensive and powerful 
 revival of religion which occurred in that Insti- 
 tution in the year 1815, and which gave to the 
 church man}^ who have since been standard- 
 bearers in her service. He was among those 
 whose aims in life were then entirely changed; 
 and he may truly be said from that time to have 
 consecrated himself to the service of God. He 
 studied for the ministry in the Theological Sem- 
 inary at Princeton, and entered the church, 
 combining with his earnest spirit a high order 
 of talent. In every situation he kept in view 
 the work of his office, and made it honorable; 
 and though he passed away in the prime of his 
 manhood, his memory is yet fresh in many hearts 
 and in many pulpits; his self-sacrificing labors 
 were of inestimable value to the church ; and 
 the i:ecord of his devoted piety, his great ability, 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 15 
 
 and rare eloquence is a priceless legac}^ to his 
 family. 
 
 He had heen a pastor hotli in Lexington, Ky., 
 and in Baltimore; and, in the latter city, espe- 
 cially, his influence can hardly be estimated as 
 an instrument in God's hand for revivinc: the 
 churches there, and calling them up to the full 
 measure of their responsibility. 
 
 In the year 1832, above mentioned, Dr. Breck- 
 inridge was one of the Secretaries of the Board 
 of Education of the Presbyterian Church, and 
 was residing in Philadelphia, whither he had re- 
 moved from Baltimore the year before, in obedi- 
 ence to the summons of the General Assembly. 
 
 In 1836, he was elected a Professor in the 
 Theological Seminary at Princeton, and removed 
 with his. family to that place. 
 
 Mrs. Breckinridge was the daughter of the Rev. 
 Dr. Samuel Miller, of Princeton, who, "being 
 dead, yetspeaketh" to the church through those 
 productions of his pen which must ever be his 
 most extensive and enduring memorial. 
 
 Through her mother, Mrs. Breckinridge was 
 descended from men who had adorned the pulpit 
 and the bar of i^ew Jersey, who had established 
 her seats of learning, represented hcrjn the 
 
16 MEMORIAL or 
 
 National councils, and liad been employed in 
 agencies of trust during the eventful times of 
 the Revolution. These all rest from their la- 
 bors, but their works follow them, and still 
 benefit the State in which they lived. 
 
 Margaret E. Breckinridge was deprived of her 
 mother at the age of six years, and left an entire 
 orphan only three years afterward ; but she in- 
 herited and retained through life much that was 
 characteristic of both her parents. Those who 
 had been intimate with them, could recognize in 
 her many of those graces of mind and heart 
 which, wherever Dr. and Mrs. Breckinridge re- 
 sided, drew around them a circle of warm and 
 lasting friends. Perhaps, as conducing to this, 
 there was no trait of their character more strong- 
 ly marked than that feeling of common brother- 
 hood and sympathy which, even as a natural in- 
 stinct, is so much stronger in some than in 
 others, and which, when sanctified and regulated 
 by religion, can make its possessor a blessing to 
 the world. 
 
 The subject of this memoir inherited this 
 quality in large measure, and used it as a practi- 
 cal power. Wherever she could bring comfort 
 to the afflicted, relief to the wearisome hours of 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. H 
 
 sickness, sympathy to the home sick stranger, or 
 pleasure to the social circle, she hesitated not to 
 sacrifice her time and convenience to the willinp" 
 performance of these duties. She had, indeed, 
 
 '*A heart at leisure from itself, 
 To soothe and sympathize." 
 
 Some, to whom she thus ministered, have gone 
 before her to another world; but many still re- 
 main whose hearts will respond to the mention 
 of these kind services and to the memories which 
 they recall. 
 
 From the time of her mother's death, Marga- 
 ret was committed to the care of her grand- 
 parents at Princeton, and in their family she 
 grew up to womanhood, though with frequent 
 and long absences ; first at school, and afterward 
 in visiting her relatives at a distance, where her 
 stay was necessarily protracted. 
 
 The ties of kindred are often felt the most 
 strongly where homes have been desolated and 
 families scattered. The heart clings to the bro- 
 ken fragments with the full measure of its aftec- 
 tions. It Avas so in the case of this orphan. Of 
 her immediate family only a brother and two 
 sisters remained, — one being the issue of a sec- 
 2* 
 
18 MEMORIAL OP 
 
 ond marriage ; and, tliougli much separated from 
 them, they were almost her idols. Between her- 
 self and her sister, Mary Cabell, the warmest 
 attachment always existed. Until the death of 
 their father, they both resided with their grand- 
 parents ; but, after that event, their homes were 
 not the same, and a frequent interchange of 
 visits was made doubly pleasant, and seemed to 
 awaken between them an emulation of improye- 
 ment, which could not but be salutary. 
 
 Margaret's school years were principally de- 
 voted to the more solid branches of education, 
 which rapidly developed a mind fond of almost 
 every branch of study and quick to seize upon its 
 fruits, instead of resting, like too many young 
 people, in the mere letter of mechanical instruc- 
 tion. . E'either did her education, like that of 
 many others, end with her school. Until the 
 time — more than three years before her death — 
 when her heart and hands became absorbed in 
 work for her country, she never gave up her 
 prescribed plans of study, but continued them, 
 with more or less regularity, through all the 
 temporary changes of her residence. It is true, 
 that these frequent and long absences from home 
 were not favorable to her advance in the severer 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 10 
 
 studies which she at first undertook, and which, 
 while not an essential part of female education, 
 are ornaments often of great practical value. 
 But for her improvement in the lighter hranches 
 of literature, these changes were not unfavora- 
 ble. Her retentive memory safely guarded the 
 fruit plucked from many a stem in her wander- 
 ings; and her mind became a store-house where 
 were treasured up and ready to be used or to be 
 imparted, facts of history, individual annals of 
 those renowned in its narrative, as well as much 
 that was delightful from the poetic page and 
 from the painter's historic art. 
 
 For such acquisitions, and for forming the 
 tastes which lead to them, she had unusual ad- 
 vantages among the friends whom she visited; 
 and not the least of these at the house of her 
 brother-in-law, — Peter A. Porter, of Niagara 
 Falls, — who, long endeared to the sisters as a 
 relative, in 1852 became the husband of the 
 older one. 
 
 !N"ow, that this noble patriot has poured out his 
 life upon the field of bloody strife, and the grave 
 has closed over him, we may be allowed to say 
 what he was, and how much his family, his 
 friends, and his country have lost. Descended 
 
20 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 from those who had been honored in the council- 
 chamber and on the battle-field, and, having en- 
 joyed and well improved the best advantages for 
 a liberal education, both in his own country and 
 in the Universities of Germany, he returned en- 
 dowed with varied and elegant accomplishments 
 to his home at IS'iagara, — that spot of America 
 whose wonders demand a visit from every trav- 
 eler. There his house was the resort of literary 
 and scientific, men from every quarter, at the 
 same time retaining its life-long and well-earned 
 character of welcoming the poor and friendless 
 to its charities and sympathies. 
 
 It was in such a home, and surrounded by 
 everything that could make this life happy, and 
 afford pleasure and profit to the friends who 
 surrounded him, that the call of his country 
 came to him, and he hesitated not to respond to 
 it. Actuated, not by a wild enthusiasm, but by 
 a conscientious view of the duty which men of 
 his rank owed to their country and to the armies 
 which had been gathered mainly from its sturdy 
 yeomanry, and were pouring out their blood like 
 water, he gathered from his own neighborhood 
 a regiment of young men who were willing to 
 go under the leadership of one so much trusted, 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 21 
 
 and led tliem forth to the dangerous service. Xo 
 after-temptatious of office or emolument could 
 induce him to change these convictions of duty, 
 or forsake those who, from many a fireside, had 
 been committed to his care. 
 
 "With steady pulse and deepening eye, 
 Where bugles call," he said, " and rifles gleam, 
 I follow though I die ! " 
 
 He followed and died. How many such sacri- 
 fices have been laid upon this bloody altar ! 
 
 To her sister, Mrs. Porter, Margaret felt that 
 she was also indebted for much of the stimulus 
 which had quickened her to mental life and 
 action. Many circumstances had combined to 
 lead them both out of the common track of 
 aimless existence, and to give them a high value 
 for intellectual attainment. And they were not 
 without the talents necessary for such attain- 
 ments. Especially were the sisters gifted with 
 more than ordinary musical abilities, both of 
 voice and ear ; and Margaret often regretted that 
 this valuable accomplishment had not been more 
 fully recognized in her education. Probably, 
 however, no one regretted this except herself, at 
 least with regard to her vocal acquirements. She 
 
22 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 had received sufficient instruction to give an 
 impetus to her natural talents, and to refine 
 and polish the exuberance of nature, and not 
 enough, as it is too often conducted, to warp and 
 fetter the deep music of the heart. She, as well 
 as her sister, was remarkable for the simplicity 
 and feeling of her execution; and they were 
 often eagerly listened to by those who turned 
 carelessly from more artistic performances. And, 
 especially in later years, when her voice was so 
 often employed in singing to the sick and dying 
 soldier the hymns of his childhood, or those 
 "songs of faith and hope" which soothe and 
 comfort the heart, and sometimes carry the sound 
 of the Gospel to ears that would be shut against 
 a more formal approach, — it was then that the 
 simplicity and deep feeling of her voice met their 
 full reward. 
 
 Miss Breckinridge was early accustomed to the 
 free use of her pen, both in letter-writing and 
 in miscellaneous composition; most of which, 
 however, was strictly private. Her -frequent 
 separations from her sister and brother had led 
 to a regular correspondence with them ; and with 
 many of her school-companions she maintained 
 an intercourse of this kind for a number of years, 
 
MARGARET E BRECKINRIDGE. 23 
 
 until it was superseded by more immediate 
 claims upon her time. This constant practice 
 gave her an easy style; and, though she never 
 claimed the merit of authorship, her pen was 
 ready for any occasion when it could incite to 
 useful action or gratify the wishes of friends. 
 Of late years it was employed almost entirely in 
 the same service which absorbed her whole 
 mind. She wrote many letters and newspaper 
 paragraphs with regard to the pressing wants of 
 the soldiers, and the duties and capabilities of 
 American women in those critical times, — then 
 more critical than ever afterwards. These were 
 circulated more or less widely, and are known to 
 have excited in many neighborhoods a practical 
 and enlightened interest for the country and its 
 brave defenders, which resulted in a liberal and 
 continued effort for the su.pply of their wants. 
 
 It was not until the year 1850 that Miss 
 Breckinridge made a public profession of reli- 
 gion. From her earliest years she had been 
 faithfully trained in the word and doctrine, by 
 parents and grandparents, who lived as well as 
 died in the faith, and all the blessings of the 
 covenant were hers, by what may truly be called 
 a divine risiht. It is not known, however, that 
 
24 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 before this time she experienced anything more 
 than the usual serious but often transitory im- 
 pressions which can hardly fail to accompany 
 such a training. 
 
 At the beginning of the year 1850, a few 
 months before she united herself with the church, 
 her grandfather, the Rev. Dr. Miller, was taken 
 from his family, and from the church which he 
 had so long served. His strength had failed 
 gradually through many weeks of tedious con- 
 finement, and this granddaughter had shared 
 with other members of the family the duty and 
 the privilege of reading to him during many of 
 the wearisome hours of sickness. She ascribed 
 to this reading, which always began with the 
 Bible and was mingled with many remarks and 
 words of exhortation from him, much of her 
 more permanent religious impression, and she 
 ever remembered these seasons with gratitude 
 and tender interest. 
 
 She also acquired, under the tuition of her 
 faithful and excellent grandmother-, from ex- 
 ample as well as from precept, a habit which 
 remained with her through life, and which is as 
 essential to the Christian's growth as is a regular 
 supply of food to the body. She had a stated 
 
MARGxVRET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 25 
 
 time set apart every day for the devotional and 
 prayerful reading of the Scriptures. More than 
 an hour was thus spent ; and every year she felt 
 more and more how essential was this daily in- 
 tercourse with things unseen, this fixing of the 
 ■anchor within the veil ; how essential to the com- 
 fort as well as to the growth of the Christian. 
 And she may truly he said to have enjoyed her 
 religion, and to have realized her Saviour as her 
 friend and companion. 
 
 It was during a revival of religion which oc- 
 curred in the spring of 1850, when more than 
 seventy persons united themselves, for the first 
 time, with the church, and under the ministry 
 of the Eev. W. E. Schenck, that Miss Breckin- 
 ridge enrolled her name among the members of 
 the First Presbyterian Church of Princeton, and 
 she never regretted the decisive step. 
 
 The religion of Jesus Christ, when it begins 
 its perfect work in the heart of man, falls upon 
 the peculiarities and inequalities of human char- 
 acter like snow upon the surface of the earth, 
 which covers and modifies everything with its 
 pure mantle ; but still, hill and valley, rock and 
 furrow maintain their outline, and show what 
 lies beneath. ^ 
 
 3 
 
MEMORIAL OF 
 
 These peculiarities God uses for his own 
 glory in the cliiFerent departments of his work. 
 He requires service as various as the characters 
 which he has formed, and which, though they 
 partake of all the imperfections of our fallen 
 nature, he can adapt to his use and fit them for 
 his purpose. 
 
 Miss Breckinridge's religion partook of the 
 energy of her character, and was not idle or un- 
 profitable. She entered immediately upon many 
 of those paths of usefulness which are open to 
 every one. She was a constant and faithful Sun- 
 day-school teacher; laboring especially among 
 the colored people, for whom many of the cir- 
 cumstances of her life had given her a special 
 interest. She had become by inheritance the 
 owner of several slaves in Kentucky, who were 
 a source of great anxiety to her; and the will of 
 her father, though carefully designed to secure 
 their freedom, had become so entangled with 
 State laws, subsequently made, as to prevent her, 
 during her life, from carrying out what was his 
 wish as well as her owm. By her will she di- 
 rected that they should be freed as soon as pos- 
 sible, and something be given them to provide 
 against the first uncertainties of self-support. 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 27 
 
 Miss Breckinridge's religion also partook of 
 the fearlessness of lier character. Though per- 
 haps morbidly averse to everything like Phari- 
 seeism, or a studied dialect of religious expres- 
 sion, yet she did not fear to speak on the subject 
 in social intercourse, especially with her young 
 friends, and to show plainly under whose banner 
 she served. Some of these still remember the 
 benefit which they have received from her con- 
 versation. Her aims were high in religion as 
 well as in the pursuit of knowledge; and she 
 tried to draw others with her up the toilsome 
 though delightful ascent. A young friend re- 
 marks in a note written just after her death, 
 "She has often stimulated me to improvement, 
 though unconscious of it herself, by an incidental 
 remark about a book, or an allusion indicating 
 how much she had read and studied." 
 
 Miss Breckinridge possessed an unusual facil- 
 ity in conversation, — partly natural and partly 
 the result of circumstances. During her visits 
 in widely different parts of the country, she had 
 been much thrown among strangers, in situa- 
 tions where she felt herself called upon for a 
 large part of their entertainment as guests. 'This 
 had produced a marked effect upon her qonver- 
 
28 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 sational habits, and the freedom thus acquired 
 gave her unusual facility in recommending what 
 is good to those around her in private life, as 
 well as in the hospital and by the bed of the 
 dying. 
 
 A large part of Miss Breckinridge's spiritual 
 training was in the school of affliction. The first 
 great trial of her life was the death of her sister, 
 Mrs. Porter, which occurred in 1854, very little 
 more than two years after her marriage, and while 
 she was enjoying everything that the world could 
 give to make her happy. She died of cholera, 
 after an illness of a few hours, but not without 
 time to look consciously into another world, and 
 to leave evidence that she had not put off till 
 then the necessary preparation for the exchange. 
 Miss Breckinridge had just left her sister in 
 health, and had been a few days at home, when 
 the terrible news reached her. It was one of 
 those fearful shocks which leave a life-long scar 
 upon the heart, which time may cover over, but 
 cannot efface; as the tree which the lightning 
 has scathed, in after-years of growth, and it may 
 be even of luxuriance, still shows its wounds. 
 The anticipations of the future had been bright 
 between these sisters; promising that, after so 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 29 
 
 many separations, one happy home would oftener 
 unite tliem; and, when this cup was dashed 
 from her lips, there seemed to be no earthly 
 stream that could take its place. 
 
 Until near the time of her own death, she 
 hardly ever mentioned the name of her sister 
 without a change of countenance and of voice, 
 which showed how deep was her feeling. These 
 private sorrows, however, were never allowed to 
 sadden the hours of family or of social inter- 
 course. She was naturally of a cheerful dispo- 
 sition, and was also conscientiously thoughtful of 
 the claims of those around her. 'No one who ever 
 enjoyed an evening of her fireside companion- 
 ship could forget its attractions. Old and young, 
 children and those of riper years, felt the fascina- 
 tion of her bright and cheerful conversation, and 
 regretted her absence. 
 
 But we will hasten to that period of Miss 
 Breckinridge's life which we especially wish to 
 commemorate, — the time of her short but earn- 
 est work for the army, and through that for the 
 country. The interval which we pass over was 
 spent as usual, divided between her homes at the 
 East and West; and during this time she aVUs in 
 the habit of writing occasionally for the Prince- 
 
 3* 
 
30 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 ton Standard, under tlie nom de plume of "A 
 Bohemian," such incidents of travel and fugi- 
 tive thoughts as might gratify her friends at 
 home. We will give two or three of these short 
 articles as reminiscences of those years, and as 
 the first productions of her pen, which was after- 
 ward devoted to the service of her country. 
 
 Princeton Standard — Children's Column. 
 The Little Eay of Sunliglit. 
 
 BY A BOHEMIAN. 
 
 There was once a little ray of sunlight — of golden, 
 beautiful sunlight ; but I am sorry to say, that like some 
 other little people I know, this little ray of sunlight was 
 very discontented, and had a sad habit of grumbling and 
 finding fault. Well, one fine, bright winter's day all 
 the other sunbeams were shining away with all their 
 might, dancing over the water, sparkling on the snow 
 till it looked like great heaps of diamonds, shining on 
 the steeples and vanes of all the churches in the city, 
 where what I am going to tell you happened, till they 
 shone like gold and silver, and going on as if they were 
 crazy; and yet, when everybody else was so happy, 
 what must this little sunbeam do but grumble worse 
 than ever. He was in a terrible humor, talking away 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDCJE. 81 
 
 to himself: ''It is no use for me to shine; tlie other 
 sunbeams are just as bright as I am ; nobody would 
 ever miss me, I am so little, if I should go out and 
 never shine again. I am of no use at all." 
 
 Now, all the time that he was grumbling in this way, 
 he was wandering carelessly over the roof of an old 
 house, so forlorn and dismal looking it was enough al- 
 most to make a sunbeam sad. The windows were l)ro- 
 ken, the shutters hung loosely, and creaked in the wind, 
 and everything was as dreary and wretched as it could 
 be. Well ! what should this little sunbeam find in the 
 roof, as he went groping over it, but a little narrow 
 crack just large enough for him to peep through. I 
 cannot say that I think peeping through a crack or a 
 key-hole a nice habit for any one, but still it is a way 
 sunbeams have always had, and as nobody seems to 
 think any less of them for it, I suppose it was all right 
 in our little sunbeam to peep in, and see all he could, 
 and indeed it was not a very pleasant sight ; but after 
 he looked in and lay in one long slanting ray across the 
 little bed in the corner of the poor old garret it looked 
 a little brighter. There was only one little window, 
 and so many of its panes were broken and stull'ed with 
 rags, to keep out the cold winds and rain, that you 
 could see nothing but the dark walls of the opposite 
 house, that rose up so much higher, you could not get 
 one peep at the blue sky above. 
 
 There was no fire in the rickety old stove, and no 
 furniture beside that in the room, but a broken chair and 
 a little pallet in the corner. By the side of it a woman 
 was kneeling with her face covered, and stretched upon 
 it a little child, as still and white as if she were on,ly an 
 
32 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 image made of the cold snow outside. Her eyes were 
 closed, and the little puny arms clung tight about the 
 neck of the kneeling woman, but as the sunbeam fell so 
 suddenly and hopefully across her face, she raised her 
 head, and holding up her arms to meet it, cried : " Oh ! 
 mother ! mother ! you will let me go now. See the 
 beautiful light God has sent down to take me up to 
 heaven," and with one little, quivering sigh, she fell 
 back upon the pillow. Perhaps her soul did go up to 
 God, with the little sunbeam — but after that I am sure 
 he never grumbled any more, and was the brightest 
 little ray — the very busiest and most hopeful of all the 
 rest. 
 
 Dear little children ! do jon know what I want to 
 teach you from this story ? I am sure you can tell. It 
 is this, that none of you are so little, and so unnoticed, 
 but that God has something for you to do in the world. 
 There is some one you can comfort and brighten, by 
 your gay little faces and bright hearts, and by being gen- 
 tle, patient, and meek tempered. May be you think you 
 are not bright enough to be a ray of sunlight, but then 
 you know you can at least be the little crack for the 
 sunlight to shine through. 
 
 For tlie Standard. 
 
 G-rowing up to Things. 
 
 Whenever I fall to thinking about that power of as- 
 sociation of which I have spoken before, I find myself 
 branching off into a train of thought relating to another 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 33 
 
 subject, but one closely coniiected with it and equally 
 curious and interesting; that is, the way in which we 
 outgrow our impressions ; or, to put it differently, the 
 way in which we grow up to things. 
 
 Do you not find that your notions of height, and size, 
 and distance are vastly different from what they were 
 in your youth ; so that if you come back after a long 
 absence to accustomed scenes you can hardly believe 
 that the change you perceive is in yourself and not in 
 them ? 
 
 Prominent in your early recollections, as in my own, 
 may be a high, old-fashioned mantle-piece, such a man- 
 tle-piece as is a constant distress to a child of inquiring 
 mind, staring before him as an actual tower of Babel, 
 impossible for him. You can just remember the time 
 when your father or your big brother, after carrying 
 you round the room on his shoulder, deposited you on 
 the smooth, broad shelf, from which you gazed down 
 on things below you with very much the same feelings 
 that you now look off from some high table-land. Its 
 actual uses, too, were calculated to tantalize you still 
 more, as the very impossibility of your reaching it made 
 it a place of deposit for all forbidden delights. There 
 was laid your sister's new book, which you had already 
 deprived of both backs and the title-page. There, too, 
 oh cruelty ! right within vicAV were placed all such arti- 
 cles of food as had on other occasions proved how slen- 
 der was your regard for the eighth commandment. By 
 the time you are tall enough to climb up, and with much 
 exertion and holding very tight, can flatten your* little 
 nose against the carved mantle-edge, and sweep the 
 smooth length with your inquisitive eyes, you M'e sent 
 
34 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 off to school. Years have passed since then, and now, 
 when you stand leaning against it, you smile as you re- 
 call your childish notions of its great height, and laugh 
 wonderingl}" over the fears and longings which were 
 such serious matters in your child-life. The simple 
 truth is, you have grown up to the mantle-piece. 
 
 So too it is with distance. Places that once seemed 
 very far off you consider now quite within easy walking 
 distance. What used to be a journey for your little feet 
 you talk of now as going "round the corner." Have 
 you never observed how hard it is to get a correct view 
 of the dimensions of anything from a person who has 
 not seen it since his childhood ? Even if you try it 
 yourself you will find a constant tendency to exaggera- 
 tion in your notions and recollections. A boy who has 
 been taken from a country home and introduced into 
 city life, will carry into his manhood an idea of gran- 
 deur and extent in connection with his early home which 
 will astonish him if he returns to it in later years. 
 Everything will look shrunken. He will hardly be able 
 to persuade himself that the fields have not been nar- 
 rowed in, and the fences made lower. He will at first 
 sight find fault with the last proprietor for cutting a 
 piece off of the garden. He will be sure the well has 
 been moved nearer to the house ; that the swing has 
 been trifled with, because, he says, it used to be so high, 
 and is now only a very moderate affair. The very doors 
 and windows will look as if in the extremity of their 
 loneliness they had crowded together for companion- 
 ship. In fact the place he thought so large, so grand, 
 is just a modest little farm. It is in all respects just 
 what it was when he looked back at it through his 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 35 
 
 tears ; but he, ah ! that is it, he has grown up to it and 
 is a man ! I went not long ago, the first time for 
 years, to a place once familiar, which had undergone 
 many alterations. One single room remained as it had 
 always been, and there I went for refuge from the 
 strange, unfamiliar looks that greeted me on every side. 
 *' Yes," I said, as I stepped across the threshold, "this 
 looks like an old friend; but why have you made it so 
 much smaller, what need was there to move in the 
 walls ?" Those who were with me smiled, but it was 
 long before they could persuade me that the room was 
 really unaltered — that I had grown up to it. 
 
 The same entire change of impression we all notice 
 in regard to time. We know how proverbial it is that 
 the years seem apparently shorter asw^e advance in life. 
 The mention of a year gives a child an idea of painful 
 length ; to an old man it seems a point — a dream. 
 Most striking of all is this change of impression when 
 it affects our relations with those about us. You can 
 think of some one perhaps who was the object of your 
 childish awe or admiration, some one that you never 
 thought of years afterward without a mental obeisance. 
 At last in the course of events you meet again, and 
 though it is unfair, you do feel a pang of disappoint- 
 ment. You say to yourself, " Why, I thought he was 
 a very tall man," or you fancy he is less cultivated and 
 intelligent than he used to be, or may be, poor man, he 
 never was such a Solon as you thought him. At any 
 rate, he is the same that he always was, — if anything 
 improved, — and you have grown up to him, tha^ is all 
 the change. A few years make a wonderful diflerence 
 in the fitness of men as companions for one «-nother. 
 
36 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 A boy of ten and a man of twenty will take little pleas- 
 ure in each other's society. Ten years later, the man 
 of twenty and the man of thirty may be most congenial 
 friends. In ten years more the difference between men 
 of thirty and forty years will be hardly noticeable, and 
 ten years later they might be taken for men of precisely 
 the same age. I have heard a story of a lady who must 
 have had peculiar and hopeless ideas on this subject of 
 growing up to our associates. She was to be married 
 to a man sixty years old, she herself being thirty. When 
 she was rallied about the disparity of age, she replied, 
 " Oh, I don't mind it now ; but just think, when I am 
 sixty he will be one hundred and twenty !" There are 
 certain people, however, to whom we never do grow up. 
 No absence or lapse of years can wear away the feel- 
 ings of awe, and even in some cases of positive dread 
 with which they have inspired us. I think, for instance, 
 it must require a large amount of cool self-possession 
 to venture on a joke or take any liberty with a man who 
 once led your childish feet up the steep ascent of knowl- 
 edge by the assistance of a ferrule or a dunce-cap. I 
 remember reading of an eminent man in England who, 
 to the last years of his life, never heard the name of his 
 schoolmaster mentioned without a thrill of apprehen- 
 sion. He had not been an uncommonly severe teacher, 
 but his scholar, though far above him in j)Osition and 
 power, had not yet grown up to him. 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 37 
 
 At the beginning of the war which for four 
 years desolated our country, one idea, to the ex- 
 clusion of every other, seemed to take possession 
 of the mind of Miss Breckinridge. To do what 
 she could, and all that she could, to aid in the 
 fierce struggle against rebellion, was the object 
 ever before her eyes and filling her heart. Dur- 
 ing the first of these eventful years she was 
 detained at her home in Princeton, by duties 
 which she considered paramount; but still it was 
 a year of constant and laborous service. Her 
 heart and her hands answered readily to the 
 calls which came so. urgently in those early days 
 of the war, when supplies and comforts of every 
 kind were demanded from a government and 
 a country entirely unprepared for the emer- 
 gency. It was then even more necessary than 
 afterward that private exertion should be added 
 to the gigantic efforts of public ofiicers, and she 
 felt the duty and earnestly endeavored to meet 
 it. It may truly be said that, while she remained 
 at home, her thoughts and her hands never wan- 
 dered from the work of preparing and packing 
 those articles needed for the army, which .are 
 now so well known in every community, and 
 
38 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 lier frequent appeals to others were seldom un- 
 successful. 
 
 "A Word about the War," written by her 
 while thus engaged, may be interesting, as a 
 tribute to that spirit of liberty which bore the 
 people unflinchingly through four long and 
 weary years of warfare and bloodshed, to come 
 forth a regenerated nation. 
 
 From the Princeton Standard. 
 A Word about the War. 
 
 It always seemed to me a most unfair arrangement 
 that armies should be made to fight the battles of indi- 
 viduals ; that when some belligerent old king could not 
 live in peace with his royal neighbors, or coveted some 
 tempting island, or choice little fortification, which he 
 could neither cheat nor cajole them out of, he should 
 assemble his peaceably inclined and well disposed sub- 
 jects, and make them settle it by force of arms. 
 
 Goliath's plan of deciding the whole thing by single 
 combat was sensible and humane, though he did not 
 mean it so, and I have wished devoutly that all warlike 
 kings could be compelled to enter a "ring" in sight of 
 their respective armies, and settle their own disputes. 
 Two good results would follow: first, in all probability 
 their subjects would so be happily rid of them ; and sec- 
 ond, much blood and treasure would be spared. The wars 
 of modern times are more plausible, and generally more 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 39 
 
 abstract in their objects than those of earlier days, but 
 I can as little imagine now as then, any heartiness or 
 real patriotism among the mass of those who go to war 
 under a monarchy. Look, for instance, at the late wars 
 of Great Britain. Do you suppose that most of those 
 who wasted away in the Crimea, or fell at the Redan 
 and on the heights of Alma, cared a rush for that nice 
 question as to the balance of power which they had 
 been sent there to adjust, or that a whole-souled love of 
 Britain animated them? Or when the British soldier 
 felt his death wound on the coast of China, was it much 
 comfort to him to know that England had gained her 
 point, and that the Celestials were to chew opium 
 whether they wanted to or not? Even during the war 
 for the suppression of the Indian rebellion, enthusi- 
 asm and love of country struggled with many doubtful 
 thoughts which pointed backward to oppressions through 
 which those troublesome possessions were gained, and 
 anxious hearts questioned, thoughthey might not whis- 
 per it, whether they had a right to hope for peace and 
 comfort from them. 
 
 From this turn to our own land and see what war 
 can be under a republic. 
 
 Talk as you may of the horrors of this civil conflict 
 that is about to burst upon us, yet when you think of 
 the holy cause for which we fight, when you remember 
 how a nation of loyal hearts, roused from their trusting 
 security, greeted that cause with a whirlwind of loving 
 recognition that shook the land, when you consider who 
 those are that go forth to fight for it, is there not* a fit- 
 ness, a grandeur in it, such as war has never yet known ? 
 England has her standing army ready at her sowjreign's 
 
40 MEMORIAL OP 
 
 call, but England never saw what we have seen. She 
 never saw the hills and valleys start to life with armed 
 men, and from the Eastern seaboard, the Northern hills, 
 the Western prairies, and the sunny plains and mount- 
 ain sides which rebellion thought to claim, saw the grow- 
 ing streams pour inward to a common center, leaving 
 in their track the deserted workshop, the silent wheel, 
 the idle tool, and the ungathered harvest. All was for- 
 gotten but the danger threatening the countr}^ in which 
 each man was a sovereign, the city which belonged 
 alike to all, and the rulers whom the right of suffrage 
 had proclaimed the people's choice. Is not this as it 
 should be ? Surely they only who govern themselves 
 can fight heartily and bravely for the preservation of that 
 noble right of self-government, — There is a legend of a 
 holy man to whom God spoke at midnight, and said, 
 ''Rise and write what I shall tell thee;" but he an- 
 swered, " Lord, I have no light;" and God said, "Rise, 
 and write as I bid thee, and I will give thee hght;" so 
 he obeyed. His fingers sought the pen, and as he 
 touched it to the parchment, his hand glowed with light 
 that streamed from under it and illumined all the cham- 
 ber. 
 
 So it has been with us. It was the voice of God 
 that roused us to see the peril which menaced liberty 
 and union. It was only for the rescue of such liberty 
 and such a Union as ours that a nation could have been 
 so roused, and therefore from this very uprising comes 
 new light and strength, for that Union must be worth 
 our lives and fortunes, the possibility of whose destruc- 
 tion has called a nation to its feet. Yes, good seceding 
 brothers, the Union is worth all that we can give; 
 
MARGARET E, BRECKINRIIKIE. 41 
 
 "there are many things clearer to a nation than even 
 blood and treasure," and we must bring you home like 
 the prodigal, and restore to you all that you have madly 
 flung away, whatever it may cost us. You may hug to 
 your bosoms the narrow liberties and loose twisted 
 union of your new confederacy for a little while, but 
 your waking will come as surely as ours. Oh ! if he 
 who stirred the people with his war-cry a hundred 
 years ago, could come back now, and standing where 
 he stood then, gaze upon the ruins you have made, do 
 you not think he would hft his hand to Heaven once 
 more, praying, " If this is liberty, oh, give me death !" 
 
 A Bohemian. 
 
 But the time came when she wished to under- 
 take the more laborious and trying duties of a 
 hospital-nurse. Her friends, Avith hardly an ex- 
 ception, United to oppose this plan, knowing ^vell 
 that her delicate frame and excitable tempera- 
 ment were ill adapted to hear the hardships of 
 such a situation. Other arguments were also 
 thrown into the scale by anxious relatives; but 
 her whole soul was fixed on the work; she never 
 faltered for a moment; and even now, when the 
 w^orst fears of those friends have been realized, — 
 even now^, they cannot but feel that the sacrifice, 
 though it might have been a mistaken oae, and 
 4* 
 
42 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 partaking too much of her natural enthusiasm, 
 was a sincere offering, and was accepted by God, 
 and answered by that heavenly fire which alone 
 could give life and efficacy to the work. 
 
 In April, 1862, Miss Breckinridge left home 
 for the West; on her way remaining some weeks 
 in Baltimore, where she commenced her hospital 
 service. Her letters from that place show the 
 great interest which she felt in the work, and in 
 the individual cases which were committed to 
 her care. She left Baltimore, carrying with her 
 the seeds of measles, which she had contracted 
 in the hospital, and which developed themselves 
 on her journey, so that she was quite ill when 
 she arrived at the house of her cousin, in Lex- 
 ington, Kentucky. It was some weeks before 
 she was able to resume her work in the hospitals 
 of that place. In the beginning of July her let- 
 ters revert to the subject which was so near her 
 heart, and show that she had again become 
 actively engaged. 
 
 But deeper and nearer experiences of the war 
 were before her. Toward the middle of July, the 
 guerrillas, under John Morgan, reached the 
 neighborhood of Lexington in the course of a 
 wild raid, made into Kentucky, spreading con- 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 43 
 
 sternation among the inhabitants wherever they 
 came. 
 
 After this raid was over and Morgan was 
 driven back, there followed some weeks of com- 
 parative qniet, thongh not withont constant ru- 
 mors and threats of impending danger. About 
 the first of September, these threats were put 
 in execution by an invasion of the rebel army, 
 under General Kirby Smith, who, for about six 
 weeks, held possession of Lexington and the 
 neighborhood. "We will again use her own nar- 
 rative, written soon after: 
 
 The Kebels in Kentucky.— An Experience of Six "Weeks 
 among the Soldiers of Gens, Kirby Smith, and Bragg. 
 
 Nov. 15, 18G2. 
 
 The history of the late invasion of Kentucky was 
 written at the time in telegraphic dispatches and the 
 reports of Generals, but there were a hundred incidents 
 full of interest connected with it which will never be 
 known unless they are related by some one who lived 
 in the midst of them and knew of them as they oc- 
 curred. Perhaps such a history may be read with in- 
 terest. 
 
 It was on Tuesday, the 2d of September, that Kirby 
 Smith and his body-guard rode into Lexington, and 
 took formal possession of the town without the firing 
 of a gun. "Lor, massa!" said one of their nc^i'o ser- 
 
44 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 vants to an officer, " Lor, massa ! dis de easiest took 
 town we got yet !" It had evidently been a most agree- 
 able surprise to them that our troops had not made a 
 stand there. Worn out with the hardships of their ter- 
 rible march from Virginia, hungry and naked, they had 
 fought at Richmond with all the desperation of men 
 w^ho knew that defeat was utter destruction, and now, 
 out of ammunition and out of heart, they looked for- 
 ward to another struggle for the possession of Lexing- 
 ton. 
 
 The condition they were in was never known till 
 long after, or it might have altered affairs entirely, but 
 with the knowledge we had then, the evacuation of the 
 town was considered a military necessity. We had no 
 troops but the new recruits who had just been defeated 
 at Richmond, not from want of bravery, but of disci- 
 pline and knowledge, and were no match for the ragged 
 veterans of Kirby Smith. Most of them had been only 
 a fortnight in the service, and knew so little of military 
 terms that when ordered on the battle-field to "fire by 
 platoons," the greater part of both officers and men did 
 not know what was meant. Almost the only regiment 
 there which had seen service, the Eighteenth Kentucky, 
 had fought with a bravery and determination which called 
 forth the praise of Kirby Smith himself, and had come 
 out of the battle with but 300 men; and so, for the 
 present, Lexington was given up quietly to the rebels. 
 To them it was like reaching the promised land. Never, 
 perhaps, since the days of the retreat from Moscow, was 
 there such a terrible march as that one through Big 
 Creek Gap to the interior of Kentucky. They never 
 liked to talk of it, and seemed to look upon it as a time 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRTDGE. 45 
 
 of suffering to be forgotten as soon as possible. Many 
 of them said they would rather die than go back the 
 way they came ; and by little and little we drew from 
 them how they had been bushwhacked by the loyal 
 mountain men from the moment they entered the State ; 
 how, for fifteen miles, at one time, the crack of the 
 rifles had never ceased, and their comrades had dropped 
 one by one at their sides, shot by invisible hands. 
 Sometimes they would stop for a few moments to hang 
 some of these poor mountain men, who were trying, 
 "not wisely, but too well," to keep out the invaders, 
 and then pass on again, hardly stopping day or night, 
 for fear we might have time to prepare for them before 
 they got here. Their only food for days and days was 
 the green corn they pulled as they passed through the 
 country, and eat raw as they marched along. Kirby 
 Smith himself had nothing better for many days. 
 Their clothing was ragged and dirty, their feet bare, 
 and their heads uncovered. So wretched was their 
 condition, that, on the battle-field at Richmond, they 
 wrangled over the bodies of our dead and wounded, 
 each one angrily claiming that "those were his shoes," 
 and "that was his hat," and in some cases entirely 
 stripping our poor fellows, and leaving them wrapped 
 in blankets to take care of themselves. 
 
 As soon as possible after his entrance into the town, 
 Gen. Smith issued a proclamation in the usual concilia- 
 tory and even pathetic style. He had come to deliver 
 us from bondage; would we not receive him as our 
 friend? and promising (which we regarded as much 
 more to the point) to respect the property and persons 
 of private citizens. Their policy evidently was te make 
 
46 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 friends, to gain over the people and the State by good 
 treatment and plausible words ; and for a day or two it 
 had its effect. People who had expected to be impris- 
 oned, if not killed outright, were amazed at such be- 
 havior ; others who had never been very staunch or 
 loyal, were dazzled by what seemed the entire conquest 
 of the State, and young men of States' rights proclivi- 
 ties rushed in crowds to the recruiting office. It was 
 all a delusion and a dream. The reins tightened in 
 proportion to the distance and the numbers of the great 
 Union army gathering at Louisville and Cincinnati, 
 and as they felt their hold on the State relaxing, they 
 determined to make as much as possible out of their 
 campaign in Kentucky and were restrained at last only 
 by fears of retaliation. 
 
 The welcome which greeted Kirby Smith and his 
 army as he entered Lexington, was mistaken by him 
 for an expression of the town itself. Never was a poor 
 man more deceived. It was a demonstration made by 
 secessionists from all the neighboring counties, who had 
 flocked in for the very purpose, no doubt, of creating 
 such an impression. Lexington is, for the most part, 
 a loyal town, and so Kirby Smith found, to his chagrin, 
 a few days afterward. Flushed with his success, he 
 issued an order for the observance of Jeff. Davis's 
 Thanksgiving Day, and notified the different clergymen 
 that their churches must be opened. Perplexity sat 
 upon reverend faces, and at last the da}^ came. But 
 two churches were opened, and when the hour for ser- 
 vice arrived in one of them, a secretly delighted pastor 
 sat gazing at empty pews, and in the other a dismayed 
 con'gregation sat gazing at an empty pulpit. At last 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE, 47 
 
 they sent for Gen. Smith himself. He came and saw 
 the position at once. The church was Presbyterian, 
 but, nothing daunted, he drew his prayer-book from his 
 pocket, read the Episcopal service, and, in his agitation 
 perhaps, read it all wrong, dismissed his little flock of 
 goats, and went home a sadder and a wiser man. At 
 that very time, a train of ambulances, bringing our sick 
 and wounded from Richmond, was leaving town on its 
 way to Cincinnati. It was a sight to stir every loyal 
 heart; and so the Union people thronged round them 
 to cheer them up with pleasant, hopeful words, to bid 
 them God speed, and last, but not least, to fill their 
 haversacks and canteens. We went, thinking it possi- 
 ble we might be ordered off by the guard, but they only 
 stood off, scowling and wondering. 
 
 " Good-by," said the poor fellows from the ambu- 
 lances, "we're coming back as soon as ever we get 
 well." 
 
 "Yes, yes," we whispered, for there were spies all 
 round us, " and every one of you bring a regiment with 
 you." 
 
 Kirby Smith saw it all, and, disappointed, mortified, 
 and astonished at his day's adventures, confessed that 
 night, that after the welcome which had greeted him, ho 
 was not prepared for such a demonstration over Union 
 soldiers, and such an utter lack of interest in Jctf. 
 Davis's Thanksgiving Day. He found it was not 
 Lexington that had welcomed him. 
 
 "Where does Gen. Smith preach this morning?" 
 said a lovely Union lady to the sentinel at headquarters 
 the next Sunday. 
 
48 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 " You are mistaken, ma'am," replied the obtuse senti- 
 nel ; "Gen. Smith isnU a preacher at all." 
 
 Soon after their arrival, Confederate scrip began to 
 make its way into the stores. A proclamation came 
 out, ordering it to be taken, and taken at par. If a 
 merchant refused it, his goods were seized and the price 
 fixed by those who took them. One or two stores, 
 owned by obnoxious Union men, were taken possession 
 of and a guard placed at the door, and all were forced 
 to open their stores for a certain number of hours. The 
 most provoking thing was their own apparent contempt 
 for the scrip. When asked exorbitant prices for any- 
 thing (as it came to be the result, of course, that prices 
 became fabulous), they never seemed surprised, and 
 threw their money about ''as if it was brown paper," 
 said some one. Prominent secessionists refused to re- 
 ceive it, and some officers in the army took it as seldom 
 as possible, giving in one instance as an excuse, "that 
 they wanted greenbacks as a curiosity /" 
 
 It will not do, however, in telling these things, to let 
 it be supposed that Kirby Smith was answerable di- 
 rectly for all that happened. After John Morgan's 
 arrival, a few days afterward, many, or most of the 
 outrages were committed by his men. Horse-stealing 
 was their favorite amusement, and this Gen. Smith 
 exerted himself to put a stop to. Report said that they 
 quarreled often and sharply about it — Gen. Smith wish- 
 ing to restrain the men, and Morgan determined to allow 
 them every license. We were startled one morning by 
 the sudden and violent ringing of all the fire-bells in 
 town. Hearing of different threats that had been made 
 to burn the town, we supposed it must be that. It 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 49 
 
 turned out to be a welcome to John Morgan and his 
 men. A very significant sound to greet him with. 
 Thev rode through the town in triumph, the same wild, 
 ill-looking set who had become familiar to us at the 
 time of their first raid, 1500 of them, without uniform, 
 dirty, and desperate looking, an unwelcome sight to 
 Union people, or to any lover of law and order. Be- 
 sides their secession colors, they carried a number of 
 smaller flags. The Texan Rangers had their own — a 
 black cross and one white star upon a crimson ground ; 
 others had blue flags with an egg-shaped figure, or a 
 crescent and cluster of stars, and about which they were 
 so unwilling to be questioned that we concluded that 
 they were secret signs of the "Golden Circle." It 
 was a day of triumph for them, remembering how they 
 had been foiled in their last attempt upon the town. 
 "This is the town, boys," said one of their captains, 
 mockingly, to his men, ''this is the town they would 
 rather die than surrender." From that time, so far as 
 all feeling .of safety or protection went, we might as well 
 have lived among the Camanches. The carelessness and 
 recklessness, and utter disregard of right that grew 
 worse from day to day, might land us anywhere. It 
 was like living on a magazine of powder. 
 
 About the first of E'ovember, when Lexington 
 was again freed from this rebel invasion and from 
 its accompanying alarms, Miss Breckinric>ge, in 
 
 5 
 
50 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 pursuance of her original plan, left Kentucky to 
 spend the winter in St. Louis, with her brother. 
 Judge Breckinridge, whose house she considered 
 as her Western home. Immediately on her ar- 
 rival, she commenced her visits at the hospitals 
 in that city and its neighborhood. After two 
 days spent at Jefferson Barracks, she writes : 
 
 "I shall never be satisfied till I get right into a 
 hospital, to live till the war is over. If you are con- 
 stantly with the men, you have hundreds of opportuni- 
 ties and moments of influence in which you can gain 
 their attention and their hearts, and do more good than 
 in any missionary field." 
 
 But the most trying work of the winter, and 
 which left its mark most ineffaceably on her frail 
 constitution, was that which she performed on 
 the hospital boats which were sent down the 
 Mississippi to bring up the sick and wounded 
 from the posts below. Two excursions of this 
 kind she made in company with a few other 
 ladies from St. Louis; the two trips occupying 
 about two months, and affording every variety of 
 pleasurable and painful experience. These boats 
 went down the river either empty or carrying 
 companies of soldiers to rejoin their regiments; 
 and, as they left home with fresh supplies and in 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 61 
 
 comparatively good order, the first experiences 
 were not so trying. But, when returning, every 
 corner filled with the sick and dying, from the 
 malarious swamps of the White River, and 
 Young's Point, and even the cabin floor and 
 deck covered with these emaciated and fever- 
 stricken men, who must be tended and ministered 
 to in that position, it can easily be imagined, 
 that, with the fatigues of such nursing, with the 
 exposure to chilly and miasmatic air, which the 
 crowded state of the boat rendered necessary, 
 and with the injurious diet, when everything 
 salutary seemed to be needed by the sick and 
 suffering, very few could come unscathed out 
 of such an ordeal. And few did thus come. 
 Several were sick, or returned to be sick at 
 home, and Miss Breckinridge congratulated her- 
 self that she was among the few who were able 
 to hold out to the end and perform her neces- 
 sary duties. After her return to St. Louis, she 
 wrote, for the gratification of her own friends, 
 as well as to stimulate the friends of the sol- 
 diers, an account of her experiences on the 
 river, from which we will make some selections. 
 These records of the war, however informal, will 
 increase in interest as the Great Eebellion re- 
 
52 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 cedes from the bloody foreground to its place on 
 the page of history. 
 
 Adventures on a Hospital Boat on the Mississippi. 
 
 No. 1. 
 
 St. Louis, Feb. 4, 1863. 
 
 Dear : 
 
 I LITTLE thoug-lit when I wrote to you a month ago 
 what a strange adventurous life the JNew Year would 
 bring to me ; that I should go down to the borders of 
 Dixie, and then join the fleet bound for White River, 
 and go up with it into the very heart of Arkansas, see- 
 ing more of the war, and appreciating the hardship and 
 'danger of a soldier's life from experience. It all begins 
 to look dreamy to me already, and if I wait any longer to 
 write you the history of those four weeks I am afraid 
 it will float away from me entirely, like a great shadowy 
 island, and be lost in the ocean of the past. 
 
 It was on Monday evening, January 4th, that we left 
 St. Louis, with our boxes of hospital stores directed to 
 " Yicksburg, Mississippi," which, in the plenitude of 
 our faith in Sherman and the gunboats, we did not 
 doubt was already in our hands. It was not till we left 
 Cairo the next afternoon that the danger and excitement 
 of our journey began to impress us. We met steam- 
 boats coming up with saucy little cannon putting their 
 . noses out at the sides of the engine, and with their pilot- 
 houses protected by mattresses and sheets of iron, both 
 of which were suggestive of guerrillas, masked batteries, 
 and other ugly things. We passed the battle-field at 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 53 
 
 Belmont in the gray of the evening, a sombre, desolate 
 place at best, and desolate indeed when we recalled all 
 that had happened there. It was night when we passed 
 under the shadow of the frowning cliflf at Columbus, and 
 so dark that if Bishop Polk's chain and torpedoes had 
 been there we should have been wrecked assuredly. 
 The next day our acquaintance with guerrillas began. 
 They were very polite, they urged us in every possible 
 way to land, but our captain had been up and down 
 many times, had been fired into once, and knowing that 
 their signals were counterfeit, shook his head with a 
 funny smile and said, '* I know too much to land here, 
 old fellows." They did not fire at us, and we passed 
 on to Fort Pillow. I wish you could have seen it. It 
 is the most magnificent position for a fort, commanding 
 the whole sweep of the river up and down for miles, and 
 why any force holding it should ever surrender seems a 
 wonder. The water-battery, with its piles of sand bags, 
 so matted together now they look like white stone work, 
 is still there, the soldiers' tents crowning the bluff above 
 it, and long before we reached the landing a stream of 
 blue-coats began to pour down the steep road cut on 
 the hill-side, to meet us and hear the news from Yicks- 
 burg, which we could not tell ourselves. All along be- 
 low here the guerrillas are getting perfectly rampant ; 
 burning cotton, and decoying unwary captains ashore, 
 and then seizing and destroying their boats and freight, 
 are favorite pastimes with these playful creatures. At 
 a little town above Memphis we put off some country 
 merchants who had been up to St. Louis for goods; 
 they were professedly loyal men, and the first news they 
 5* 
 
54 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 heard as they went ashore was that a band of guerrillas 
 were then ravaging the country seven miles back, burn- 
 ing cotton and conscripting every man they could find. 
 Poor people, I did feel sorry for them. They looked 
 after us with despairing eyes, and the last I saw of them 
 they were hovering round their trunks and boxes, afraid 
 to go, and more afraid to stay. 
 
 Memphis is a perfect hot-bed of secessionists — and 
 they are only smothered, not extinguished. The city 
 is very handsomely laid out, and finely built up, and in 
 the square is a statue of Jackson. Some morbid rebel 
 has taken a chisel and almost scratched out the words 
 " Federal Union " from the inscription at its base. I 
 only wish Old Hickory had come to life, and caught 
 him doing it. To give you an idea of the audacity of 
 these guerrillas ; while we lay at Memphis that afternoon, 
 in broad daylight, a party of six dressed in our uniform 
 went on board a government boat lying just across the 
 river, and asked to be taken as passengers six miles up 
 the river, which was granted ; but they had no sooner 
 left the shore than they drew their pistols, overpowered 
 the crew, and made them go up eighteen miles to meet 
 another government boat coming down loaded with 
 stores, tied the boats together and burned them, setting 
 the crew of each adrift in their own yawl, and nobody 
 knew it till they reached Memphis, two hours later. 
 Being able to hear nothing of the wounded, we pushed 
 on to Helena, ninety miles below, and here dangers 
 thickened. We saw the guerrillas burning cotton with 
 our own eyes along the shore, we saw their little skiffs 
 hid away among the bushes on the shore, and just 
 before we got to Helena, had a most narrow escape 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 55 
 
 from their clutches. A signal to land on the river was 
 in ordinary times never disregarded, as the way busi- 
 ness of freight and passengers was the chief profit often 
 of the trip, and it seems hard for pilots and captains al- 
 ways to be on their guard against a decoy. At this 
 landing the signal was given all as it should be (they 
 had counterfeited the new signal), and we were just 
 rounding to, when, with a sudden jerk, the boat swung 
 round into the stream again. The mistake was dis- 
 covered in time by a government officer on board, and 
 we escaped an ambush. Just think: we might have 
 been prisoners in Mississippi now, but God meant bet- 
 ter things for us than that. I was amazed to find that 
 quite a force is constantly hovering in the rear of He- 
 lena. Hardly a week passes that there is not a skir- 
 mish, and our pickets are constantly ''gobbled up," as 
 the expression is here — which means captured and pa- 
 roled, though sometimes they never return any more. 
 Just before we reached Helena a picket-guard of twenty- 
 six were captured by a band who had our uniform on, 
 and who came behind them in the direction of our own 
 camps and so surprised them. Strangely enough, when 
 one of our gunboats captured a rebel mail on the White 
 River, a letter was given to me, as my share of the 
 spoils, containing a minute account of how " Capt. Gid- 
 dings " and his men had managed the affair, and re- 
 turned safe to their camp after having paroled their 
 prisoners. Still more strangely, on our hospital boat 
 coming up, who should be on their way to St. Louis 
 but these same paroled men, about twenty of them. I 
 sent them word that I had a letter telling how they 
 were taken, and if they had any curiosity to >know I 
 
56 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 would read it to them. It was quite funny to watch 
 their astonished faces, and to see their surprise and 
 amusement as I read the history of their own adven- 
 tures from rebel authority ! You never saw so wretched 
 a place as Helena ; low, damp, and enveloped in a con- 
 tinual fog, the rain poured down the whole time we 
 were there, and the camps stretching for miles up and 
 down the river looked like the constant and abiding 
 dwelling-place of fever and ague, and it is without 
 doubt a most sickly place. Why it should ever have 
 been chosen for a military post, and why it is held still, 
 though known and proved to be a most unhealthy 
 place, nobody seems able or willing to tell. The mud 
 is enough to frighten anybody who does not wear cav- 
 alry boots, and the soldiers, who with all their hard- 
 ships and privations have a joke for everything, tell 
 grave stories of mules and wagons being lost forever in 
 the streets of Helena, two pointed ears being the self- 
 erected monuments to tell where each mule is buried. 
 I saw myself, while we were making the tour of the 
 town, a great mud-hole, with a sign-board on a pole at 
 its edge. Three significant words were written on it, 
 " This is bottomless.^^ But oh ! the contrabands, my 
 heart did ache for them. Such wretched, uucared for, 
 sad-looking creatures I never saw. Just at the top of 
 the levee there were two groups waiting to be taken back 
 to Mississippi again. A poor dejected man* stood in the 
 midst of one group (women and children, boxes and 
 bags in a heap all round), holding an old horse by a 
 bridle. 
 
 "Well, Uncle," I said, "how do you like being 
 free ?" 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 57 
 
 " I liaint seen no freedom yet, missis, I'se a gwine 
 home agin !" 
 
 They come in such swarms that it is impossible to do 
 an3'thing for them, unless benevolent people take the 
 thing into their hands. They have a little settlement 
 in one end of the town, and the government furnishes 
 them rations, but they cannot all get work, even if they 
 were all able and willing to do it (which many are not) ; 
 then they get sick from exposure, and now the small-pox 
 is making terrible havoc among them. They have a 
 hospital of their own, and one of our Union Aid ladies 
 had gone down to superintend it, and get it into some 
 order, but it seems as if there was nothing before them 
 but suffering for many a long day to come, and that sad, 
 sad truth came back to me so often as I went about 
 among them, that no people ever gained their freedom 
 without a baptism of fire. The soldiers seem to have a 
 latent notion that the contrabands were in the begin- 
 ning the cause of the war, and feel a little spiteful to- 
 ward them accordingly, forgetting that they, poor souls, 
 are innocent. It was Saturday morning that we left 
 Helena for the White River, at the mouth of which, we 
 had heard, lay the boat with the wounded from Yicks- 
 burg; our yellow flag, which we had made that morn- 
 ing, appealing silently to the hearts of the guerrillas ; 
 but we had gone only a few miles before we met Gen. 
 Gorman coming up, who convinced us that we were no 
 longer independent civilians, but enlisted soldiers, under 
 military rule. He told us we were not safe without an 
 escort, and that we must turn round and go up t© He- 
 lena again, which we did in the meekest manner, haul- 
 ing down our yellow flag, and following humbly in the 
 
68 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 rear. At Helena our plans were all changed. Gen. 
 Gorman was about to start on his White River expedi- 
 tion, and expecting to have severe fighting himself, 
 wanted us to go with his fleet. The City of Memphis, 
 with the wounded from Vicksburg, came up that very- 
 day, and finding that they had been well cared for, and 
 were all to be discharged at the Memphis hospitals, we 
 took a vote, and were unanimous for White River. That 
 day and the next was a scene of the wildest confusion. 
 The levee was alive with troops, and the river with 
 boats. The idea of leaving Helena, and of "getting a 
 chance at a fight," as they said, seemed to set the sol- 
 diers wild. One long, loud hurrah seemed to shake the 
 very air, and as one boat after another was loaded and 
 passed over to the other side to wait for the flag-ship 
 to join them and give the signal for starting, the shout 
 was taken up by the camps all along the river, and died 
 away among the woods, only to come surging back 
 again the next moment louder than ever. As we leaned 
 over the guards, watching the thronging crowds on the 
 levee, who were waiting to be ordered on their boats, 
 and listening to their cheerful talk and funny jokes, 
 checked every now and then by a dry hacking cough, 
 or a yawn that ended in something that wanted to be a 
 sigh, and watching one group in particular who were 
 singing the "red, white, and blue" most .lustily, one 
 man holding the lantern, which shone full in their faces, 
 and threw the whole thing out in bold relief; just then, 
 while we were watching them, the word of command 
 was given, they sprang to their feet, fell into line, and 
 marched down toward our boat. Yes, they were com- 
 ing on board, and before we knew it (we were so taken 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDCJE. 59 
 
 by surprise, and so busy watching them walking up the 
 plank), they had come up the steps and were all around 
 us, and, as I turned to see what it was, a blue cape 
 flapped in my face, a musket rapped me on the head, 
 and two soldiers, who were about to walk over me, 
 drew back as much bewildered as I was, and I beat a 
 hasty retreat into the cabin. We did not know then 
 how many pleasant hours we should spend among them, 
 how sadly we should bid them good-by, or how often 
 we should look back and wonder what the fortunes of 
 war had brought to them. m. e. b. 
 
 Adventures on a Hospital Boat on the Mississippi. 
 No. II. 
 
 St. Louis, Feb. 4, 18G3. 
 
 It was on Sunday evening, — alas ! that this should be 
 the day so often chosen for starting, — that the fleet, all 
 loaded and ready, twenty-nine vessels in all, lay waiting 
 for the flag-ship to give the signal for starting, and at 
 last it came, long and shrill, and one by one we dropped 
 down the river and joined the procession over which 
 the red and green lights of each floated like so many 
 stars, as far as we could see in the distance, and morn- 
 ing found us all at rest again at the mouth of White 
 Kiver, a narrow little stream that crept out from behind 
 a sharp bend between two thickets of cotton-wood, as 
 if it^was ashamed of something it had been doing. 
 
 ''Why don't we go on?" said the raw recruit.^ 
 
60 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 " Waiting for orders," said the old soldier, with a 
 compassionate smile, as if he remembered the time when 
 he wondered and asked questions too. 
 
 " Are you ready, for I am ?" shrieked the flag-ship at 
 last. 
 
 "Yes ! yes ! yes ! yes !" the answer came, and was car- 
 ried back from boat to boat, and as the last shrill 
 whistle came faintly from far up the shore the proces- 
 sion took up its march. At the mouth of the river two 
 stately ships lay at anchor, like a royal couple waiting 
 to receive their court. Slowly and gracefully our trans- 
 ports, one by one, glided past them, turned, advanced 
 again, it almost seemed as if they courtesied, and then 
 swept round the bend, and out of sight into White River. 
 It was a scene never to be forgotten. Now our tribu- 
 lations began. A wonder for crookedness is this little 
 river, and so narrow that some of our larger boats were 
 in danger of blockading the stream permanently, while 
 trying to get round the sharp bends. At first it was 
 terrific to feel the stern crushing in among the trees, 
 and hear the slight wood- work round the guards snap- 
 ping and tearing as some overhanging bough swept 
 along. Some of us made a rapid exit from one of the 
 state-rooms as a great cypress branch came poking its 
 bead almost into the door, and when we tied up for the 
 night, every boat had some disaster to tell of or some 
 dreadful wound to show. One had lost a piece of the 
 wheel-house, a branch had swept a dozen muskets and 
 knapsacks from the deck of another, and from a third 
 fourteen poor horses had fallen through a hole torn out 
 of the lower deck. Our boat was comparatively small, 
 so tTiat we did not share the anxiety of the larger ones. 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 61 
 
 It was soon after we got into the river that an order 
 was given to load muskets, and a guard was stationed 
 on the roof; and it was a place fit for all kinds of des- 
 perate deeds. A desolate, wilderness-looking country, 
 no signs of life for miles and miles together, the low, 
 swampy shore covered with cypress trees and wild cane 
 brakes, and the long tangled vines, like funeral draping, 
 fringing the trees and hanging in a trailing mass on the 
 ground. A hundred guerrillas and a dozen batteries 
 might have been hidden in it, and it was well to be pre- 
 pared. Occasionally, as we went on, a single house 
 might be seen set up on four high legs, as if it wished 
 to be prepared to walk away at a moment's notice. The 
 Spring floods are equal to an Egyptian overflow, and 
 the high water, twelve feet higher than the surface, 
 looks like a misty cloud floating along the shore. As 
 it subsides, it leaves the country covered with a rank 
 vegetation, and full of deadly vapors. The water is full 
 of fever, and the country almost uninhabitable. Even 
 now the water is almost poisonous to those who take 
 it without care. On our boat alone half the soldiers 
 were sick (some never recovered) from the effects of the 
 water. It has a peculiar color, as if chalk had been 
 mixed with it, and is very cold ; to me the pleasantest 
 water I have ever tasted. 
 
 I must not forget to tell you about our prayer meet- 
 ings. There were many religious men among the sol- 
 diers, and twice on Sunday, and three times in the week 
 we had little gatherings that reminded us all of home. 
 Away off there in that wild deserted country we s^ng 
 the same hymns that you were all singing at home, and 
 even among the soldiers, to whom people generally give 
 
 6 
 
62 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 little credit for religious principle, we found a little 
 church. I cannot tell you how it stirred and thrilled 
 me, and how I longed for you all to see the crowded 
 cabin, and hear the woods along shore ringing with the 
 notes of the dear old hymns I have sung in Princeton 
 so often, as the men sat on the guards singing together 
 hour after hour ; and when it was pleasant we went out 
 and sang with them. I don't believe the old Arkansas 
 woods ever heard of a prayer-meeting or a hymn before. 
 It was not till the third night, — the other two we spent 
 tied up along the shore, protected by a strong picket 
 force, — that we reached St. Charles; and here we had 
 expected to find troops to dispute our progress ; the little 
 gunboat which protected our advance had been passing 
 up and down, scouting, trying to draw any hidden fire 
 there was, and greeted with shouts and hurrahs on 
 every side. We knew how much our own safety de- 
 pended upon her, and we had just heard that it was to 
 the gunboats we owed the victory at Arkansas Post. 
 No enemy was to be found at St. Charles. The in- 
 trenchments were all deserted and the town almost 
 empty. A regiment was landed, and a chain of pickets 
 thrown out, and right at the spot where our poor drown- 
 ing men were murdered as they were clinging to the 
 sides of the gunboat, just where the Mound City lay, 
 we too lay all night. How little I thought then that I 
 should ever see the place. The next morning we went 
 on to Clarendon cautiously, for at any moment we might 
 meet an enemy, but here again the town had been left 
 for our occupation. The cavalry, which left Helena 
 when we did, had come across and were already in pos- 
 session. They had taken prisoners, and had several 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 63 
 
 skirmishes by the way, and had stories to tell of some 
 narrow escapes and hard marches. It did not take long 
 for our soldiers to scour the town, and capture every 
 house. A party would rush in, and finding nobody, up 
 stairs they would go and in a moment hang out a blue 
 blanket, a token of victory. Many a poor chicken and 
 pig fell an unwilling victim, and when we left for Du- 
 vall's Bluff next morning there was little that was eat- 
 able left in the town. Above Clarendon the river is 
 perfectly bewildering in its windings and convolutions. 
 Boats that we had seen in front of us a moment before, 
 appear suddenly away back among the trees behind us. 
 It is a perfect game of hide and seek. We turn a sharp 
 bend and two of our fleet are just in front of us, but in 
 a moment they are gone out of sight behind the next 
 point of land, and so we chase them all day long, just 
 to see them sweep around one bend as we come in sight 
 around the other. Wild geese and ducks and plenty of 
 crane rise in flocks as we come suddenly upon them, but 
 except where the bluff strikes the river suddenly, as at St. 
 Charles, no sign of life or human habitation appears for 
 miles together. It was on Friday, the 16th of Januar}^, 
 that we came cautiously and expectantly upon Duvall's 
 Bluff. It was here that there was sure to be a strong 
 force, it was here we hoped to retake the Blue Wing, 
 which had come up just a day in advance of us all the 
 way, and here was the railroad connecting with Little 
 Rock and only fifty miles from it, but there was nothing 
 to dispute our landing. On the shore, and just ready 
 to be carried off, were two large siege guns, the ropes 
 were round them, and the platform cars standing by all 
 ready to receive them, but they had gone, leaving it all. 
 
64 MEMORIAL OP 
 
 Further searcli brought to h'ght two hundred muskets 
 hid in a barn, and some sick rebels in a httle hut on the 
 hill. A contraband said that the cars were to come in 
 at midnight to carry all away, so the artillery was 
 posted on a hill commanding the track for miles, and we 
 all sat up to wait for the train, — not that we expected 
 any friends, — but they had had warning no doubt, and 
 we heard nothing of them. The fortifications here are 
 as commanding as they are at Fort Pillow, and if the 
 two siege guns had been mounted we should have found 
 it hard work to come within many miles of them. We 
 went out the next morning to look at the spoils we had 
 taken, and carried some books and tracts for the soldiers, 
 and some little comforts for our sick prisoners on the 
 hill. It was the wretchedest little hovel I ever saw. It 
 had no windows ; and as I stood in the doorway (the 
 bright snow had blinded my eyes so that I could see 
 nothing) I thought it looked as much like the picture 
 of a pirate's cave as anything I ever saw. It was pitch 
 dark, except the flickering fire-light. The sick men 
 were crouched up by the fire, and a group of soldiers 
 sat around on boxes and on the bed, the fitful blaze 
 giving them a most sinister look. The sick men were 
 very glad to see us, and the soldiers fixed seats for us, 
 and we sat and listened to the old story. How they 
 had been Union from the first, how they were " di^ug " 
 in and forced in, and how charmed they were to be 
 taken. I confess I am suspicious of these excessively 
 loyal prisoners, and the sequel does not always go to 
 confirm their stories. Of all benighted creatures I think 
 one, of these poor wretches did exceed anything I ever 
 knew. Mrs. C. had brought an apple with her, and 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 65 
 
 gave it to him. She told him he must roast it, and as 
 I had a long string in my pocket I tied it to the stem, 
 and then fastened the other end to a nail in the mantle- 
 piece, and it twirled and sputtered most beautifully 
 right over the coals. 
 
 " La !" said he, " I never seed a roast apple before !" 
 Mrs. C. then said, ''.Would you like a lemon ?" 
 " I can't say, ma'am," he answered, " I don't know 
 what that is." 
 
 She handed it to him, and he proceeded to smell it in 
 a feeble manner, and at last asked her what it was good 
 for ! "To make a drink," she said, and I am satisfied 
 that as soon as Ave were gone he boiled it. All the 
 spoils, guns, muskets, and prisoners, were taken on 
 board the fleet, and on Saturday we heard that as soon 
 as the gunboat returned from up the river we were to go 
 back to Helena again. The King of France is not the 
 only man who has had to march "down the hill again," 
 without accomplishing anything. It was not till Mon- 
 day morning that we left Duvall's Bluff, and our pas- 
 sage down was rapid compared with our slow rate of 
 speed going up. The current is very swift, and it was 
 with difficulty the boat was kept from being driven 
 ashore against the sharp bends, and we were all dilapi- 
 dated enough when we got out into the great broad 
 Mississippi again. We stopped again at Clarendon, 
 still leaving a force of cavalry there. At St. Charles, 
 which we left to its desolation, the town was all de- 
 stroyed but one Union house, and the intrenchments and 
 barracks made a blaze which lighted the sky all through 
 the night. We had many sick men on board, and 
 plenty to keep us busy all the time, but we W>ere not 
 6* 
 
66 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 sorry to see the broad waters of the Mississippi stretch- 
 ing- out before us again, and to know that we were turn- 
 ing homeward once more. The saddest, indeed the 
 only sad occurrence of the whole journey happened just 
 after we left the mouth of the White River again. We 
 stopped for wood, and the men imprudentl}^ scattered 
 all through the forest. The signal for starting was 
 given, the men all came on board again, and we went 
 on for a mile or two before it was found out that eleven 
 men were missing. We returned at once — a squad of. 
 men under their captain were marched ashore, and 
 were going up to the town when three of their lost com- 
 rades came rushing through the bushes, overjoyed to 
 see us all again. The others have never been heard of, 
 and as mounted guerrillas were seen by those who re- 
 turned, and revolver shots and shooting were heard in 
 the distance, they were probably overpowered and 
 taken prisoners. I will not think that they have been 
 killed ; they were some of the pleasantest of all the com- 
 pany. The captain would have gone on searching for 
 them, but it was thought an ambush had been prepared 
 to decoy them all into the bushes, and so we went off 
 sorrowfully enough. At Helena, where it was raining 
 again, we left our soldier friends. Their regiment, the 
 twenty -ninth Wisconsin, was not to go to Yicksburg, 
 and they went into camp again. We met Grant's army 
 going down, and found another excitement at Helena, 
 where, with troops and transports, all was life and stir. 
 But here for us the scene changes. We were transferred 
 to the hospital boats coming up with the sick, and Mrs. 
 C. and myself were detailed to take charge of the 
 smallest, on which were one hundred and sixty patients. 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 07 
 
 and of the week we spent among the sick and dying 
 there, I will tell you when I have time to write again. 
 Yours, etc., M. e. b. 
 
 From the Princeton Standard. 
 Adventures on a Hospital Boat on the Mississippi. 
 No. III. 
 
 St. Louis, Feb. 4, 1863. 
 It was on Sunday morning, the 25th of January, 
 that Mrs. C. and I went on board the hospital boat 
 which had received its. sad freight the day before, and 
 was to leave at once for St. Louis, and it would be im- 
 possible to describe the scene which presented itself to 
 me as I stood in the door of the cabin. Lying on the 
 floor with nothing under them but a tarpaulin and their 
 blankets, were crowded fifty men, many of them with 
 death written on their faces ; and looking through the 
 half-open doors of the state-rooms we saw that they 
 contained as many more. Young, boyish faces, old and 
 thin from suffering, great restless eyes that were fixed 
 on nothing, incoherent ravings of those who were wild 
 with fever, and hollow coughs on every side, — this, and 
 much more that I do not want to recall, was our wel- 
 come to our new work ; but as we passed between the 
 two long rows, back to our own cabin, pleasant smiles 
 came to the lips of some, others looked after us wondcr- 
 ingly, and one poor boy whispered, " Oh, l)ut it is good 
 
68 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 to see the ladies come in !" I took one long look into 
 Mrs. C.'s eyes to see how much strength and courage 
 was hidden in them. We asked each other, not in 
 words, but in those line electric thrills by which one 
 soul questions another, "Can we bring strength and 
 hope and comfort to these poor suffering men V and the 
 answer was, "Yes, by God's help we will." The first 
 thing was to give them something like a comfortable 
 bed, and Sunday though it was, we went to work to 
 run up our sheets into bed-sacks. Everyman that had 
 strength to stagger was pressed into the service, and by 
 night most of them had something softer than a tar- 
 paulin to sleep on. "Oh, I am so comfortable now!" 
 some of them said : "I think I can sleep to-night," 
 one little fellow exclaimed half-laughing with pleasure; 
 and a little ray of light seemed already to have pene- 
 trated the darkness. The next thing was to provide 
 something that sick people could eat, for coffee and bread 
 was poor food for most of them. We had two little 
 stoves, one in the cabin and one in the chambermaid's 
 room, and here, the whole time we were on board, we 
 had to do the cooking for one hundred men, for the stove 
 intended for it was down on the boiler deck, and quite 
 out of our reach. Twenty times that day I fully made 
 up ni}^ mind to cry with vexation, and twenty times 
 that day I laughed instead ; and surely a " kettle" of tea 
 was never made under so many difficulties as the one I 
 made that morning. It was the same little kettle I had in 
 all my wanderings, and I had an affection for it. Many 
 a cup of tea had been made in it on the White River, 
 and now somebody had been borrowing it down stairs 
 and had lost the Hd. " Where is the lid of my kettle V 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 69 
 
 I asked; "the water will not boil." A group of sol- 
 diers stood round ready to help. One went for the 
 kettle lid, one for some bread to make toast, another was 
 dispatched for a knife, and a fourth for a fork — all were 
 good natured and anxious to help, but they had not 
 learned "to make bricks without straw." The kettle 
 lid was not to be found, the water simmered and sang 
 at its leisure, and when I asked for the poker I could 
 get nothing but an old bayonet, and all the time, through 
 the half-open door behind me, I heard the poor hungry 
 fellows asking the nurses, " where is that tea the lady 
 promised me?" or, " when will my toast come?" But 
 there must be an end to all things, and when I carried 
 them their tea and toast, and heard them pronounce it 
 " plaguey good," and " awful nice," it was more than a 
 recompense for all the worry. One great trouble was 
 the intense cold. We could not keep life in some of the 
 poor emaciated frames. "Oh dear! I shall freeze to 
 death !" one poor little fellow groaned as I passed him. 
 Blankets seemed to have no effect upon them, and at 
 last we had to keep canteens filled with boiling water 
 at their feet. Down on the boiler deck were those who 
 were least sick, and with so much to fill our hands up 
 stairs, we had no time but for an occasional visit down 
 there, to see that they were suffering for nothing. 
 
 We had some serious cases of erysipelas, and at one 
 time it caused us great uneasiness by spreading rapidly 
 among those who were already weakened from sickness ; 
 but the surgeons had them all removed to state-uooms 
 and kept by themselves, and there the infection stopped. 
 Most of the cases were typhoid fever, the worsts form I 
 have ever seen. I had one patient, a poor fellow, who 
 
TO MEMORIAL OF 
 
 was the most patient sufferer I ever saw. He was deli- 
 rious for many days, and one day as I leaned over him 
 he looked up at me as if he had seen me for the first 
 time. " Who are you ?" he asked, " I don't know you ;" 
 and though he seemed satisfied when I told him I had 
 come to take care of him, to lie quietly, he still followed 
 me with his large bright eyes. The next day Mrs. C. 
 did several little things for him, and had charge of my 
 wards too, as I was busy cooking in the cabin. That 
 night I heard him call one of the nurses to him and 
 ask, "Who is that other old woman that has been 
 around to-day ?" Alas, for Mrs. C. and myself ! our 
 dreams of youth and beauty were rudely dispelled. 
 Think of it! To be called ''old women." We had 
 many a laugh over it. The day before his death he 
 was mercifully restored to consciousness, dictated a 
 letter to his wife, and though he longed to see " some 
 one from home," seemed willing to die. He had been 
 a Christian for many years. Near him lay a poor boy, 
 about whom from the first I had been very anxious. 
 He drooped and faded from day to day before my eyes. 
 Nothing but constant stimulant seemed to keep him 
 alive, and at last I summoned courage to tell him — oh, 
 how hard it was ! — that he could not live many hours. 
 "Are you willing to die ?" I asked him. He closed his 
 eyes, and was silent a moment, then came that pas- 
 sionate exclamation which I have heard so often, "My 
 mother, oh ! my mother !" and to the last, though I be- 
 lieve God gave him strength to trust in Christ, and wil- 
 lingness to die, he longed for his mother. I had to 
 leave him, and not long after he sent for me to come, 
 that he was dying, and wanted me to sing for him. He 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 71 
 
 prayed for himself in the most touchhig words ; he con- 
 fessed that he had been a wicked boy, and then with one 
 last message for that dear mother, turned his face to the 
 pillow and died ; and so, one by one, we saw them pass 
 away, and all the little keepsakes and treasures they 
 had loved and kept about them, laid away to be sent 
 home to those they should never see again. Oh ! it 
 was heart-breaking to see that. 
 
 Seventeen died on the way to St. Louis, not a large 
 number to those who saw how many dying men were 
 brought upon the boat; but on the other hand, it was 
 a happy thing to see many of those who seemed so 
 wretched at first, reviving gradually under a little care 
 and nursing. Some of them began to show signs of 
 returning health, in an appetite which required the strict- 
 est watching, and not a little scolding, to keep it in 
 check. One day we had eggs for dinner for all who 
 could eat them ; but there seemed to be a greater num- 
 ber distributed than there were men to eat them, though 
 we watched very closely as we thought, that none should 
 be helped more than once. The mystery was explained 
 at last. A little hungry-eyed fellow, who had declared 
 he could eat a dozen, raised himself in bed, and shouted 
 to me, "I say, ma'am, I know what them fellows does, 
 they eats one egg lying down, and then gets up and 
 goes and sits by the stove and gets another. " I ex- 
 pressed great horror and grief at such perfidy, and said, 
 ''You would not do so, would you?" "Oh! yes, 
 ma'am," he answered, "I would do most anything to 
 get another." 
 
 Tlie morning we got to Cairo, Mrs. C. and I went 
 on shore very early to buy some things they'^wei-e in 
 
72 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 need of, and left them to depend on the men nurses for 
 breakfast. "What had you for breakfast?" we asked 
 a convalescent on our return. " Oh I the old fai'e, 
 coffee and bread." "Very well," we told him. "You 
 shall have a good dinner ; there will be eggs for all to- 
 day." He seemed to think it was a joke, but finding 
 we were really in earnest, he clapped his hands and 
 chuckled, "Bully for you!" as strong an expression of 
 approbation as he could use probably. 
 
 I must not forget to tell you an adventure we had 
 coming up. We were all sitting quietly round the stove 
 resting, the sick men all quiet for the night, when a 
 cannon fired from the shore made us all start to our 
 feet. It seemed to have been fired directly at the boat. 
 Going out on the guards, we found we were, sure 
 enough, rounding to in obedience to the signal, and we 
 could see in the moonlight a tent and about thirty men 
 on shore. It was not a place where we had any troops, 
 it must be the rebels, and we remembered with not 
 much pleasure that a few miles below we had been 
 signaled from the woods by what we supposed were 
 guerrillas, and these it might be were some more of 
 them. The minutes that passed while we were coming 
 to shore seemed ages, and we waited breathless to know 
 our fate. I have half a mind to stop here, as novel 
 writers do, and tell you the result next time.; however, 
 it turned out all right. It was the other side of Island 
 No. 10 (we thought it was the Tennessee shore), and 
 it was our own men. They stopped every vessel, firing 
 a blank cartridge across the bow, as some suspicious 
 boats were about, probably. It was Friday night (we 
 left Helena on Sunday) when we reached the barracks, 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. Y3 
 
 twelve miles from here (St. Louis), where we were to dis- 
 charge our sick, but we did not send them ashore till the 
 morning. We had learned to feel at home among them, 
 and it was hard to bid them all good-by. We had seen 
 many sad hours together on that wretched, comfortless 
 boat, so utterly without all that was convenient and 
 comfortable, so miserably dirty, so worn out and tum- 
 bling to pieces, but it had not made us love them less 
 (that would not be nature), that we had suffered for them 
 and with them, and so, when the parting came, there were 
 touching scenes. They thought at first that we were 
 to be with them and take care of them in the hospital, 
 and seemed to feel as if it would not be like home with- 
 out us ; but we promised to see them soon, and so, 
 some carried down on stretchers, and some led by 
 those who were stronger, and some trying to totter 
 alone, they vanished up the hill and into the cheerful 
 pleasant buildings where I knew they would find friends 
 and tender care, o^othing remained to remind us of 
 what had- been, but four white shapes, lying silent on 
 the deck, four of our boys who had died the day before 
 and whom we were taking to be buried in St. Louis. 
 In a few moments, too, the cabin was all made a strange 
 place to us, the beds all thrown upon the shore to be 
 emptied and washed, the tarpaulins taken up, the straw 
 thrown overboard. It hurt me to see it, so we took 
 our bonnets and went up on the hurricane deck, to take 
 a last look at the place where we had left our old friends. 
 It was a soft spring-like morning, and from the shore, 
 as the boat passed out with the stream again, came the 
 lowing of the cows. I don'tknow what subtle associa- 
 tion brought Princeton to my mind like a flash. 1 
 
 7 
 
T4 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 seemed to look back to that dear old town as if it were 
 a picture spread before me. All the happy years I had 
 spent there rose up as if they were yesterday only. It 
 needed only this to break my heart outright. The feel- 
 ing of anxiety and responsibility that I had become ac- 
 customed to was gone, the familiar faces were no more 
 to be seen, there was no need to keep up any longer, 
 and so reaction came. I have told you what I thought 
 would interest you most, and did not want to tire you. 
 The every-day routine was all the same ; the same an- 
 noyances ; the same contrivances and devices to accom- 
 plish a great deal with little or no material. I shall 
 think now that in everything there may be found vast 
 undeveloped capacities. That boat bad an amazing 
 amount. I certainly never had so much comfort and 
 satisfaction in anything in all my life, and the tearful 
 thanks of those' who thought in their gratitude that they 
 owed a great deal more to us than they did, the bless- 
 ings breathed from dying lips, and the comfort it has 
 been to friends at home to hear all about the last sad 
 hours of those they love, and know their dying mes- 
 sages of love to them ; all this is a rich and full and 
 overflowing reward for any labor and for any sacrifice. 
 When you get this I shall be on my way down the 
 river again, and will write from there if I can. 
 
 Yours, etc., • m. e. b. 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 75 
 
 From the Princeton Standard. 
 Experience in the Western Hospital Boat Sei-vice. 
 
 St. Louis, March, 18G3. 
 
 I m' VE been sitting leaning my head on my hands 
 for the last half hour, trying to recall the most striking 
 incidents of the last week of sad pleasure which I spent 
 on the hospital boat coming up from Young's Point, 
 and gleaning from my life among the soldiers what I 
 think will interest you most and yet will not depress 
 you too much. I see so much of ''the shady side of 
 nature," and know so well what it is to be haunted for 
 days and weeks by some scene of heart-breaking sad- 
 ness, and to meet it in my dreams whenever I close my 
 eyes, that I like to bury such things in my own heart, 
 and save others the pain of knowing the suffering they 
 cannot relieve. 
 
 If you should ask me what our experience was on 
 this last boat, how we fared, etc., I should answer you 
 as the soldiers do when I question them about some 
 campaign of special hardship : " It was pretty tough, 
 ma'am." But remember I don't speak of it for one mo- 
 ment as a hardship. I knew perfectly well when I 
 Histed that if I wanted to help the soldiers I must rough 
 it with them, and learn to suffer as they did, and I find 
 I can stand it bravely ; but I lack one important equal- 
 ity for a soldier. / cannot eat beans, and never shall 
 learn, I am afraid. ^ 
 
 There is a soldier's song, of which they arc very fond, 
 
16 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 and which I shall copy for you some day, one verse of 
 which often comes back to me : 
 
 " So I've had a sight of drilling, 
 
 And I've roughed it many days ; 
 Yes, and death has nearly had me. 
 Yet I think the service pays." 
 
 Indeed it does — richly, abundantly, blessedly, and I 
 thank God that he has honored me by letting me do a 
 little and suffer a little for this grand old Union and the 
 dear, brave fellows who are fighting for it. 
 
 Long before Ave reached Young's Point the boat be- 
 gan to be put in readiness for the sick. The small bed- 
 steads, which had been piled in the middle of the cabin, 
 were put together and ranged through the cabin and 
 along the guards (which were boarded in all round, 
 with windows left here and there), and down on the 
 boiler-deck, etc., and we were ready to take four hundred 
 or more if necessary. This was different from anything 
 I had yet experienced, waiting on the boat to welcome 
 and take charge of the poor fellows as they came. Our 
 boat lay at the edge of the swamp, where it was the 
 dryest, and the long train of ambulances and wagons as 
 they stopped at the landing were met by the nurses 
 from our boat, bringing stretchers for the sickest, or a 
 strong arm to give support to those able to walk a mile ; 
 and so, one by one, the places were all filled, and faces 
 that soon grew familiar looked up at us from the little 
 bedsteads. The idea of having a woman's care, and the 
 constant presence of a woman's face, seemed to be a 
 glad surprise. One poor fellow, who had been lying 
 quietly watching me as I went round among the sick in 
 my ward, broke out at last : 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. f? 
 
 " Oh ! I just love to lie here and look at you— it puts 
 me in mind of home ;" and his eyes filled with tears at 
 the remembrance of his mother and sisters away off in 
 Iowa. 
 
 " I am very sick," said one poor fellow, as he held 
 my hand tight in both his own, for fear I might slip 
 away from him; "I am too weak to feed myself. Will 
 you take me under your care and not let me suffer ?" 
 
 I promised him I would, that I would feed him al- 
 ways myself; and so he closed his eyes and fell asleep, 
 saying, "Yes, I know you will" He lived but a day 
 or two, and always met me, as I came with his simple 
 food, with such a grateful look, that when he was gone, 
 and his place vacant, I never passed by it when I could 
 avoid it, I missed him so. But for him the change was 
 a blessed one. It was not long before he died, when I 
 was talking to him of Christ and of His many mansions 
 waiting for us all in heaven, that he clasped his hands, 
 and with his eyes gazing upward through tears, ex- 
 claimed," Oh, Jesus ! precious Jesus ! what should I do 
 without him ?" 
 
 I have never seen so many sick men together who 
 were Christians, and this was an unspeakable comfort. 
 I remember one evening in particular, when some very 
 sick men had come on board, how I was struck by the 
 brightening eyes, the eager, hearty response that came 
 from each of them as I spoke of Christ's love, and care, 
 and pity for all who are in trouble. I was going about 
 with some hot tea to revive and warm them, for jt was 
 late and very chilly, and as I gave it to them I had time 
 for a few words. ,^ 
 
 I stopped by the bed of one poor fellow who seemed 
 
 7* 
 
78 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 too low almost to be disturbed, but be smiled and asked 
 for a spoonful or two of tea, and seemed so revived tbat 
 I ventured to say a few words to him too. I spoke of 
 his being so far from home and friends, and then I tried 
 to point him to that Friend, so strong, so close, so ready 
 to help and comfort; and as I talked, such a glory 
 seemed to overspread his pale, wasted face, that I 
 waited for him to speak. 
 
 " I know Him ; oh ! yes, I have known Him for 
 many long years," he said. " I went away and left 
 Him once, but, since I went into the army I have come 
 back to Him, and He has helped me to be faithful, and 
 now, oh ! if I could just be baptized." 
 
 This was not possible, and he soon became satisfied 
 that faith and love were all Christ asked of him, and 
 then he begged me to read to him how Christ was cru- 
 cified for sinners. One of the other ladies, who hap- 
 pened to be more at leisure, read to him as he had de- 
 sired, and he listened eagerly to the end, but before 
 another morning he was dead ; he had seen Jesus as he 
 is. I am often touched with their anxiety not to give 
 trouble — ''not to bother,^' as they say. That same 
 evening I found a poor exhausted fellow lying on a 
 stretcher, on which he had just been brought in. There 
 was no bed for him just then, and he was to remain 
 there for the present, and looked uncomfortable enough 
 with his knapsack for a pillow. 
 
 ''I know some hot tea will do you good," I said. 
 
 " Yes, ma'am," he answered, "but I am too weak to 
 sit up with nothing to lean against ; it's no matter — 
 don't bother about me," but his eyes were fixed long- 
 ingly on the smoking tea. 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. ^9 
 
 Everybody was busy, not even a nurse in sight, but 
 the poor man must have his tea. T pushed away the 
 knapsack, raised his head and seated myself on the end 
 of the stretcher ; and, as I drew his poor tired head 
 back upon my shoulder and half held him, he seemed, 
 with all his pleasure and eager enjoyment of the tea, to 
 be troubled at my being so bothered with him. He 
 forgot I had come so many hundred miles on purpose 
 to be ''bothered." And so it was very often. They 
 would lie and suffer for anything rather than disturb us 
 if we seemed very much occupied. 
 
 There was in each ward, of course, every variety of 
 complaint and condition. There were some in mine 
 who tossed and moaned in constant delirium, and never 
 knew me, though they would stop me with some 
 anxious entreaty or some frightened question whenever 
 I came near them ; and to me this was unspeakably dis- 
 tressing, to see these strong, athletic men brought down 
 so low, terrified like children with the idlest fancies and 
 begging me to help them. There were many who sank 
 away from day to day, always saying, " I am better, if 
 I was only not so weak," and died, still chnging to this 
 dream of being well again. There were some who 
 were able to totter round a little, if the day was mild, 
 and there were a few who were called my " Hungry 
 Brigade." They were free from sickness, some of them 
 going home discharged, and needed stronger and more 
 abundant food than I gave the others. Here the stores 
 I had brought with me came into play. I had^some 
 condensed meat, some crackers and jellies, and many a 
 surreptitious dinner was conveyed from my trunk to 
 their beds or state-rooms, for fear the poor fellows too 
 
80 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 sick to be allowed such food should clamor for it and 
 have to be denied. Before they found out that I had 
 stores of my own, and a sympathy for hungry people, 
 they must have suffered a good deal. " I tell you what, " 
 said one of them to me afterward, ''the first day I 
 liked to have died for. something more to eat, but I just 
 thought I'd stick it through, and I did." 
 
 One night we had an awful storm, and the rain 
 dashed through the roof and kept the beds so wet I was 
 in despair. Fortunately we had a good many yards of 
 India-rubber cloth, which we cut into lengths and spread 
 over them. These had to be moved continually to meet 
 the new streams which trickled down in fresh places 
 every moment. I was very anxious about some who 
 had high fevers, but fortunately they seemed not to suf- 
 fer any ill effects ; and just as we were all worn out, 
 and the poor men were tired of lying with their heads 
 under the blankets (for the leaks were very often right 
 over their faces, and they had to cover their heads), 
 just then the rain ceased and we went to our state- 
 rooms to find them almost overflowed too. The boat 
 had been fitted up, but the roof had not been thoroughly 
 repaired, and after a boat has been used as a transport 
 it will leak. 
 
 We lost twenty-one coming up, and some who were 
 very low when we left the boat must have- died since. 
 They were all discharged at Memphis, according to 
 orders received from the Medical Director at Young's 
 Point. I longed to bring them on with us, so that we 
 might still have Avatched over them, but there was 
 plenty of room — and, they said, good care — in the 
 Memphis hospitals, and the soldiers promised to write 
 and tell us how they fared. 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 81 
 
 ''And don't you all live in Memphis ?" they asked, 
 " and won't you take care of us in the hospital ? and 
 will we never see you again ?" 
 
 This is the hardest of all ; to leave them to the care 
 of others just as we are learning to know them and to 
 know what they need and what they like. I had one 
 patient, a convalescent, who was a fine fellow, and so 
 trustworthy that since he had regained his strength he 
 had been of invaluable service to me. I could leave him 
 the food or stimulant to give to the sickest men when I 
 had other things to do, and know that he would give it 
 faithfully and take the best care of them. Just l)efore 
 we parted he came to me with a little note, which he 
 handed me without a word. " Read it at your leisure, '* 
 he said, when I asked him what it was. It contained a 
 few honest, touching; simple words of thanks, written in 
 the name of all the sick in my ward, and you may well 
 imagine it is a greater treasure to me than an autograph 
 letter from the greatest man on earth would be. 
 
 There' is one aspect of the Avar that saddens me more 
 and more every time I see it. It is the wrecks and 
 shadows it leaves, instead of the strong athletic men 
 that left their homes so little time ago. And all are so 
 patient, so cheerful, and often so full of fire and enthu- 
 siasm, and I have never heard one word of regret that 
 they had come. 
 
 I expected to have been on my way down again be- 
 fore this, but we have been detained by various things 
 and are ready to start as soon as everyting is^ ready, 
 but it may not be until there is a battle either down the 
 river or in Tennessee. ^ 
 
 I don't know that I have ever told you how much I 
 
82 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 am amused by the curiosity of people as to how much 
 salary I get, and how often I am assailed Avith the 
 question, ''How much do you get a month?" At first 
 I was indignant, now I laugh over it. 
 
 If I go down the river I will write again, and in the 
 mean time I have enough to keep me busy with the sick 
 at the barracks, where I still visit, and where I have 
 been distributing lately the "currant wine" from 
 Princeton. Yours, etc., m. e. b. 
 
 From the Buffalo Express. 
 Our Soldiers— Their Friends and Their Enemies at Home. 
 
 BY A LADY NURSE. 
 
 When I left the soldiers .this spring, with a heavy 
 heart, unfit any longer for active service among them, I 
 told them I felt sure I would find something still to do 
 for them, and I am thankful that it has proved so. 
 Among my pleasantest offices has been this of writing 
 about them, trying to speak a word for those who have 
 done so much for us that every heart should " delight to 
 honor" them. Nothing in all my experience among 
 them struck me more than the longing with which they 
 turn for sympathy and encouragement to the people at 
 home, and especially, as they say, to the "women at 
 home." " What do they think of us at home ?" "What 
 are the women at home saying about us, and what are 
 they doing for us ?" These were the questions first 
 upon their hps. It was pleasant then to point them to 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 83 
 
 the hospital stores with which our boat was loaded, and 
 say, " This is what the women at home think of you ; 
 this is what they are doing for you." We might have 
 told them, but we did not, how many at home were 
 lukewarm and indifferent, or even worse ; how many 
 are living in peace and security in their quiet homes, so 
 far from the war that the stories of suffering and blood- 
 shed seem to them like idle tales. We might have 
 told them, but we did not, how entirely such people 
 have forgotten the soldiers, never rousing themselves 
 to think that it is only that living wall of brave men 
 and those banks of green graves that are seen on every 
 plain and hillside that stand between our homes and 
 the enemy, and keep those very scenes of suffering and 
 bloodshed from our hearthstones. Oh ! it is hard that 
 the very peace and safety which the soldiers have bought 
 for us with their blood, should be the cause of our for- 
 getting them so often in their need. 
 
 Those only w^ho have been among them month after 
 month, know what it costs them to fight our battles and 
 save our country. 
 
 And yet they ask nothing from us as aright. Every- 
 thing we do for them they receive with the deepest 
 gratitude. *' Why do you take so much trouble for us ?" 
 they asked us while nursing them. " We are trying to 
 repay you for all you have done for us," we told them. 
 " Why, what did we ever do for you ?" And then we 
 reminded them that it was to save our country they 
 had fought and been wounded, that it was for us they 
 had lain all night upon the soaking ground ready for 
 the morning march, or had stood for hcnirs in rain and 
 snow as pickets on some dangerous outpost. When we 
 
84 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 told them this, they said, ''Yes, that is true, but we 
 never thought of it before." It is touching to see their 
 enthusiastic reception of those who come to take care 
 of them, and the child-hke confidence with which they 
 cast themselves upon our willingness and ability to help 
 them. " Oh, boys !" said a little fellow to his sick com- 
 panions, as the nurses were bringing them into our 
 boat, "oh, boys ! it is all right now, for the women have 
 come down to look after us." He told us afterward, 
 with a quivering lip, how his heart had bounded at the 
 sight of a woman, for, "we knew that they had not for- 
 gotten us at home," he said, "when we saw they had 
 sent you down to take care of us." 
 
 This is their dread — to be forgotten. " We are not 
 discontented," they often say to us; "we are willing to 
 bear all these hardships, and we never mean to come 
 home till this thing is over, but we do want the people 
 at honie to strengthen and encourage us." 
 
 The soldiers look for this now more than ever, when 
 home traitors are so busy trying to shake our confidence 
 in them and theirs in us. I wish I could give you some 
 faint idea of the indignation the soldiers feel toward the 
 copperheads. "Their treason only makes us stand the 
 firmer, and fight the better," they say ; "for it shows us 
 that we must make haste and crush the rebels and then 
 come home and punish the copperheads. . Let them 
 
 wait till the war is over," they say, " and then " 
 
 finishing the sentence with expressive looks and ges- 
 tures. They keep a list of the copperheads in their 
 own States, and this is well, for in a few years from 
 now, when the old flag is floating from the Lakes to the 
 Gulf,' we shall need some proof in black and white of 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 85 
 
 the treason of those who will then call Heaven to wit- 
 ness their unwavering and devoted patriotism ; but the 
 stain of their dishonor will cleave to them from gen- 
 eration to generation, as even at this day it does to the 
 tories of the Revolution. 
 
 I will give you one instance, among the hundreds I 
 have known, of their perfidious policy toward our sol- 
 diers. One of our Western soldiers, the only son of a 
 loyal father, was ill at Young's Point, and about the 
 time I was there, his cousin came down to see him, and 
 when he was able to bear the journey, to take him 
 home on furlough. He soon began to gain strength, 
 his fever left him — he was pronounced out of danger 
 and well enough to go home by the next boat. Soon 
 after his cousin came, and brought him a letter, which 
 proved to be from his uncle, a notorious copperhead, 
 and it was worthy of him. It began in the usual style, 
 deploring the iniquity of this abolition war, lamenting 
 that his nephew had ever taken any part in it, and 
 urging him that, as he was disgraced enough already by 
 his connection with it, he should instantly wash his 
 hands of the whole thing and come home, adding that 
 his father agreed with him entirely, and urged him to 
 give up and come home. " It is false," said the poor 
 boy, starting up ; " it is false, and he knows it," and he 
 took another letter from under his pillow. " Here is one 
 from my father written since that was, though it came 
 sooner, and see what he says : * My son, I love you better 
 than anything on earth, but I would rather see you dead 
 than that you should desert your post at such a time 
 as this;' and this is the way," said the poor fellow, 
 "this is the way we are to be treated by sucli* traitors 
 
 8 
 
86 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 as my uncle, when we come down here to fight and die 
 for our country." It was impossible to pacify him; 
 his fever returned ; he sank rapidly, and in a few hours 
 was dead, killed by a copperhead. This is no fiction. 
 A dozen witnesses can prove it, and the letter is still 
 held in proper hands, to bear testimony to the death of 
 that poor boy, whose body came up the river on its way 
 to his poor father, at the same time that I did. 
 
 And if brave men ever needed and deserved our 
 warmest support, it is now. The wounded and dying, 
 are calling to us for help from the victorious battle-fields 
 of Pennsylvania, and from the intrenchments of Port 
 Hudson, in a climate where disease and death have 
 these summer months for a carnival season ; and the 
 brave men who have endured every hardship for so 
 many months that they might plant our flag on the hills 
 at Yicksburg, will need our care still. Of all who have 
 filled soldiers' graves since the war commenced, the vast 
 proportion have died from sickness. At Young's Point, 
 last winter, we found 12,000 sick. At Helena, there 
 were 5000 soldiers' graves, of whom scarcely any were 
 wounded men. 
 
 And then one other thing we too often forget — what 
 these men are, for whom our help is so often asked. 
 Are they, as home traitors would have us believe, tired 
 of their country's service, discontented with the admin- 
 istration, and so sick of the war that they are ready 
 for peace on any terms ? There may be a few such 
 men in the army. To those of us who know how our 
 soldiers are tampered with by these very home traitors, 
 it would seem wonderful if there were not, but with 
 such exceptions, the slander is utterly and entirely false. 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 8T 
 
 We have an army of brave and earnest patriots, and 
 the history of every battle abounds in facts to prove 
 it From among the hundreds of touching stories I 
 could tell you, I will single just this one for an exam- 
 ple, and such examples are met with every day in our 
 hospitals. 
 
 Soon after the capture of one of the rebel forts in the 
 West, a lady went into the hospital where the wounded 
 had been taken. She was much attracted to two young 
 men, lying side by side, all splintered and bandaged, so 
 that they could not move hand or foot, but so cheerful 
 and happy looking, that she said : 
 
 "Why, boys, you look very bright to-day !" 
 
 "Oh, yes!'' they said, "we have been moved this 
 morning." 
 
 And she found that for six long weeks they had lain 
 in one position, and for the first time that morning had 
 been moved to the other side of their cot. 
 
 "And were you among those poor boys," she asked, 
 " who were left lying where you fell that bitter morn- 
 ing till you froze fast to the ground ?" 
 
 "Yes, ma'am," they said ; " we were lying there two 
 days. You know they had no time to attend to us, 
 they had to go and take the fort." 
 
 "And didn't you think it very cruel in them to leave 
 you to suffer so long?" 
 
 "Why, no, ma'am! we wanted them to go on and 
 take the fort." 
 
 "But when they took it, you were in too much agony 
 to know or care for it ?" 
 
 "Oh, no, ma'am !" they answered, with flashing eyes 
 and faces glowing with the recollections of ttat day, 
 
88 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 "there were a whole lot of us wounded fellows on the 
 hillside watching to see if they would get the fort ; 
 when we saw they had it, every one of us that had a 
 whole arm waved it in the air, and we hurrahed till the 
 air rang again." 
 
 Oh ! think of that scene, that hillside of wounded 
 men, forgetting their own agony to cheer on their com- 
 rades and hurrah for the victory ! It is such cheerful 
 patience, such heroic fortitude as this, that I have seen 
 from day to day in my hospital life. Can we do too 
 much for such men ? No, we can never do half enough. 
 And as they never rest in their labors and sufferings for 
 us, we must never rest in working for them till the war 
 is over, and the few who are left come home to us 
 again. 
 
 Yours truly, M. E. B. 
 
 Early in March slie returned to St. Louis, ex- 
 pecting to make anotlier trip; but happily some 
 circumstances prevented it, and she remained in 
 that city with a troublesome cough and disease 
 threatening, but still able to do the home work 
 in the hospitals and among the refugees. 
 
 We will insert a few stanzas written about this 
 time for the Princeton Standard, which record the 
 experience of many of our patriotic women : 
 
MARGARET E BRECKINRIDGE. 89 
 
 Knitting for the Soldiers. 
 
 Here I sit at the same old work, 
 
 Knitting and knitting from daylight till dark; 
 
 Thread over and under and back and through, 
 
 Knitting socks for— I don't know who; — 
 
 But in fancy I've seen him, and talked with him too. 
 
 He is no hero of gentle birth ; 
 He's little in rank, but he's much in worth ; 
 He's plain of speech and strong of limb ; 
 He's rich in heart, but he's poor of kin ; 
 There are none at home to work for him. 
 
 He set his lips with a start and a frown. 
 
 When he heard that the dear old flag was shot down 
 
 From the walls of Fort Sumter, and flinging away 
 
 His tools and his apron, stopped but to say 
 
 To his comrades, "I'm going, whoever may stay," 
 
 And was 'listed and gone by the close of the day. 
 
 And whether he watches to-night on the sea, 
 Or kindles his camp-fire on " lone Tybee," 
 By river or mountain, wherever he be, 
 I know he's the noblest of all that are there ; 
 The promptest to do and the bravest to dare; 
 The strongest in trust and the last in despair. 
 
 So here I sit at the same old work, 
 Knitting socks for the soldiers from daylight till dark, 
 And whispering low, as the thread flies through, » 
 To him who shall wear them,— I don't know who :— 
 "Ah, soldier, fight bravely, be patient, be true,^ 
 For some one is knitting and praying for you." 
 8* 
 
90 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 In a letter to lier family, written from St. 
 
 Louis, she says: 
 
 " I shall soon now turn my face Eastward, and I have 
 more and more to do as my time here grows shorter. I 
 have been at the hospital every day this week, and at 
 the Government rooms, where we prepare the Govern- 
 ment work for the poor women, four hundred of whom 
 we supply with work every week. I have also a family 
 of refugees to look after, so I do not lack employment." 
 
 She had determined to spend the summer 
 among her friends at the East for rest and re- 
 cuperation, and in the autumn to return and fix 
 herself, while the war lasted, in one of the West- 
 ern hospitals, where she could be entirely devoted 
 to the work which she so much loved. But it 
 was not so to be. Her strength was almost 
 spent, and a willing heart was all that she now 
 had to offer. 
 
 About the middle of May, Miss Breckinridge 
 left St. Louis and spent a fortnight at Chicago, 
 with her friend Mrs. Hoge, who had been with 
 her on the river, and who now claimed her as- 
 sistance in making their experiences useful to 
 the home work, by visiting among the Ladies' 
 Aid Societies in the neighborhood of that city. 
 A letter, written by this friend nearly a 3^ear 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 91 
 
 afterward, recalls some interesting and character- 
 istic incidents: 
 
 March 13th, 18G5. 
 My DEAR Friend : — 
 
 An interview to-day with a loved and loving relative 
 of our sainted friend, Margaret E. Breckinridge, has 
 vividly recalled some scenes of her hospital life. 
 Brightly as she shone elsewhere, I still think she was 
 nowhere so peerless as in the midst of the "boys in 
 blue," cheering, soothing, and nursing them. I stood 
 beside her one day in the midst of a group of soldiers, 
 on a steamer in the rear of Vicksburg, during the fear- 
 ful winter siege of that rebellious city. Even the de- 
 voted band of women who had gone down to nurse the 
 sick and suffering soldiers in that dreary place, felt that 
 she outstripped all ih her devotion, and was gaining a 
 martyr's crown almost too soon. One present chided 
 her and said : 
 
 "You must holdback, you are going beyond your 
 strength; you will die if you are not more prudent !" 
 
 Her slender form dilated, and her keen eye sparkled 
 with sublime earnestness as she said, " Well, Avhat if I 
 do ? Shall men come here by tens of thousands and 
 fight, and suffer, and die, and shall not some women be 
 willing to die to sustain and succor them ?" 
 
 The thrill of joy that her remark gave was not con- 
 fined to those that heard it from her lips. A good man 
 who stood by told it at the prayer-meeting of the sol- 
 diers that same night. It brought forth tears and bless- 
 ings, and her name and spirit became the watchword 
 and strengthener of many a brave heart and strong arm. 
 Many a prayer was offered for the heroic little army 
 
92 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 nurse, and if earnest petitions could have altered the 
 fiat of the Almighty, our beloved young friend would 
 not now be singing the new song and wearing the mar- 
 tyr's crown. 
 
 It has been my privilege to know many devoted 
 women in our American hospitals, but I can truly say 
 no one has impressed me as she did. Her fragile form, 
 beaming face, musical voice, and youthful appearance 
 were wonderfully fascinating to the soldiers. Her 
 transparent purity and simple dignity awed them, and, 
 as I have followed her from cot to cot, I have heard, 
 after she had passed, the outburst of a soldier's enthu- 
 siastic gratitude again and again. 
 
 "Ain't she an angel?" said a gray-headed veteran to 
 me as I followed her on the steamer " City of Alton," 
 to assist her in giving the boys their breakfast. " She 
 never seems to tire, she is always smiling, and don't 
 seem to walk — she flies, all but — God bless her!" 
 
 Said another, a fair boy of seventeen summers, as 
 she smoothed his hair and told him, with glistening 
 eyes, he would soon see his mother and the old home- 
 stead, and be won back to life and health, " Ma'am, 
 where do you come from ? How could such a lady as 
 you are come down here to take care of us poor, sick, 
 dirty boys ?" 
 
 Said she, '' I consider it an honor to wait on you, and 
 wash off the mud you've waded through for me." 
 
 '' Said another, " Lady, please write down your name 
 and let me look at it, and take it home, to show my wife 
 who wrote my letters and combed my hair and fed me. 
 I don't believe you're like other people." 
 
 And then, as she passed on, they would fold their 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 93 
 
 hands and say, " God bless her and spare her hfe." He 
 did, till her Avork was done, and then she was not, for 
 God took her. Her years of army life might count four- 
 score in usefulness and blessings. They must not be 
 measured as we count time. 
 
 In her tour of a week with me, through the North- 
 west, to visit the Aid Societies, her earnestness and 
 whole-souled devotion to the soldiers' interests overcame 
 her timidity, and she was induced to tell some interest- 
 ing facts concerning the sufferings of the soldiers and 
 loyal people in the border States. Her memory is fra- 
 grant now among these simple-hearted, patriotic people. 
 She stirred them up to increased labor, and the mention 
 of her name, and allusion to her death, brings forth tears, 
 often sobs, from those who only saw and heard her 
 once, but they loved her. She looked beyond the sur- 
 face and loved and valued them. 
 
 She plead her own cause eloquently when admon- 
 ished to rest from her hospital work. She had counted 
 the cost -and stood ready to die, if need be, as the hero 
 in the front ranks of battle. 
 
 I saw her last in Philadelphia in June, 1864. The 
 frail tenement of her soaring spirit was tottering. The 
 pins were being removed surely, but noiselessly. Her 
 great grief was that she was laid aside from work, just, 
 as she said, when she was learning to do it so much better. 
 Her great desire to recover was that she might labor 
 till the war was over. None of us realized that she 
 was so near her rest. Her croAvn of rejoicing must, 
 methinks, be richly studded with immortal souls*, for in 
 her army work she preached Christ and him crucified. 
 Her Christ-like self-abnegation and devotion s'fealed her 
 
94 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 exhortations, and I doubt not led many to the New 
 Jerusalem, where they were waiting and have received 
 her now. God grant the beautiful, inspiring lesson of 
 her life and death may not be lost to those left behind. 
 Yours truly, j. c. h. 
 
 Early in June of that year, Miss Breckinridge 
 reached I^iagara, on her way to the East, and 
 spent there nearly the whole of the month : still 
 at work in the way of giving information and 
 encouragement to the loyal women of that neigh- 
 borhood, but feeble and exhausted, and, for the 
 first time, obliged in a measure to yield to her 
 mfirmities. She wrote: "They tell me I look 
 tired all the time, and so I feel. I am never 
 hardly fresh and bright, but hope I shall be a 
 great deal better when I get to Princeton." And 
 again, when speaking of her physician: ''He 
 says that I will soon, he thinks, be well and 
 strong, and able to go back to the hospitals in 
 the fall." 
 
 The year that followed this time, bjought to 
 her only a succession of these hopes doomed to 
 disappointment; like phantoms receding, as day 
 after day brought but little relief to her feeble 
 frame, yet only receding; for it was always the 
 goal toward which she looked, and her spirit 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 95 
 
 chafed at the long delay. Everything that phy- 
 sicians or friends could suggest was tried for her 
 relief. She spent some weeks at the sea-shore, 
 and for a time the air and bathing seemed to 
 give her strength; but she received no perma- 
 nent benefit, and the poison still lurked in her 
 veins. The winter was spent in Philadelphia, 
 waiting, amidst the kind attentions of old friends 
 and new, for the health so much desired but 
 never to return. 
 
 Another spring came, and, though still unable 
 to make much exertion, she determined to put in 
 execution a plan that had engaged her thoughts 
 during the winter, as one which would prepare 
 her for greater skill and usefulness in the army 
 hospitals whenever she might be able to resume 
 her place there. 
 
 A letter from a friend much endeared to Miss 
 Breckinridge by being associated in this under- 
 taking, and by the hospitality and kind atten- 
 tion with which she and her family sootlicd tlie 
 hours of sickness and sorrow, gives an interest- 
 ing sketch of this portion of her work : 
 
96 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 Phila., May 5, 1865. 
 My dear Friend : — 
 
 This day is full of sweet memories of your dear Mar- 
 garet, as it is the anniversary of the day she entered 
 upon her brief residence at the Episcopal Hospital, a 
 residence which she purposed should extend to three 
 months; before the termination of that short period 
 her labors on earth were over, and she had been received 
 by a loving Saviour into that "home not made with 
 hands, eternal in the heavens," where is no sorrow or 
 suffering, "the inhabitants whereof shall not say I am 
 sick." 
 
 I had often heard Margaret spoken of by friends who 
 loved and admired her, but I never met her till she came 
 to talk with me of her wish to spend a few weeks at the 
 Episcopal Hospital, that she might acquire more expe- 
 rience in nursing, especially in surgical cases, so that in 
 the autumn, she could resume her work of love among 
 the soldiers more efficiently and confidently than before. 
 But, beside this, she expressed an earnest desire to do 
 what she could for the spiritual welfare of the patients 
 in our hospital, hoping in the time spent there to acquire 
 more facility in speaking for Christ, and more famiharity 
 in dispensing religious truth than she then had. Her 
 ardent desire was to work for Christ in the noble army 
 which was fighting in a cause only second in her heart's 
 affection to the cause of the Saviour himself 
 
 She came to the hospital a year ago ; lovely in form 
 and feature, full of animation and enthusiasm, over- 
 flowing with sympathy and tenderness. In her presence 
 there was always sunshine, and her bright spirit tinged 
 and influenced all about her. 
 
MARGARET E. BRKCKINRI IHIE. 97 
 
 I SO rejoiced to welcome her as a helper, and, hoping 
 against hope, I indulged sometimes in the vision that 
 she might identify herself permanently with us. That 
 evening I had a Mother's Meeting of about thirty poor 
 women from the neighborhood, who were in the habit 
 of bringing their sewing and thus occupying themselves, 
 while I spoke to them individually or read aloud. Here 
 Margaret was at once at home, talking to these poor 
 women of their interests, domestic and eternal, sympa- 
 thizing with their troubles, and leading them to Him 
 who alone could bear their heavy burdens. She was a 
 great help to me every Wednesday afterward, and won 
 the hearts of these people as those only can who know 
 how to "condescend to men of low degree." 
 
 Here was one great secret of her usefulness ; she had 
 the power of adaptation in her intercourse with her 
 inferiors, happily blending that dignity which inspired 
 them with respect, with that gentle sympathy which 
 won for her their gratitude and love. 
 
 We sat together in her room till midnight, inter- 
 changing views and plans for Christian usefulness, and 
 then together poured out our united supplications for 
 the blessing of our Heavenly Father upon us, co-laborers 
 in the hospital. Margaret often alluded to this after- 
 ward, saying, she had felt it to be a consecration of her 
 work then, and I felt we were no longer strangers, but 
 of one heart and one mind in Christ Jesus. Without 
 delay she began to interest herself in the patients, 
 spending an hour or two in the morning, following the 
 surgical nurse, who instructed her in the best mode of 
 bandaging and treating the various wounds. She was 
 not satisfied with seeing this, but often wJlshed and 
 
 9 
 
98 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 dressed the wounds with her own hands, saying to me 
 with her bright smile, "I shall be able to do this for the 
 soldiers when I get back to the army." The patients 
 could not understand this, and would often expostulate, 
 and say, " Oh, no, miss ! that is not for the like of you 
 to do ;" but she would playfully insist, and have her way. 
 
 Her attention in the wards was constant. With her 
 httle Testament in her hand she went from one bedside 
 to another, really a ministering angel to all there ; 
 cheering the desponding, encouraging the timid and 
 doubtful. At twilight it was her custom to sing hymns 
 in the ward, and long after she had left us, her sweet 
 voice was spoken of as a blessing lost by the sick and 
 suffering. 
 
 She was with us but one short month. In that time 
 a call was made for ladies of experience to go to the 
 front after the dreadful battles beyond Fredericksburg. 
 Her heart responded immediately to the call, and 
 though her friends opposed it on the score of her deli- 
 cate health, she decided to join two friends who ex- 
 pected to leave in three days, and so made all her prep- 
 arations; but changes in the field hospitals postponed 
 their going, and finally the necessity passed, and again 
 Margaret talked of the autumn, when she would be 
 with the army. 
 
 I was away from the hospital on the 2d o^ June, but 
 heard that Margaret had an attack of erysipelas. I was 
 quite alarmed, and sent to Dr. M. to know if it would 
 be safe to bring her to town. He approved, and I went 
 out early next day, and was glad to find her aunt with 
 her. She consented to be removed, and on the 3d it 
 was my privilege to bring her home with me. She was 
 
MARGARET E. BREI^KINRIDGE. '.19 
 
 not considered ill, but suffered much discomfort, yet 
 was unselfish, uncomplaining, and cheerful. Her face 
 was swollen, and so disfigured one could not have re- 
 cognized her ; she jested a great deal about it, and after 
 a day or two was in bright spirits. 
 
 Then came news of the fighting before Richmond, 
 and the probability that Col. Porter had fallen. It was 
 thought best to conceal this from her, and I shall not 
 soon forget how painfully her joyousness smote upon 
 our hearts, which were trembling for the sorrow which 
 seemed impending. At last came the awful certainty 
 that the brother whom she loved, and about whose 
 safety she had been solicitous for a fortnight, had fallen 
 in the terrible struggle at Cold Harbor, fallen nobly, 
 leading his men with heroic valor. 
 
 This blow fell upon her with overwhelming force. 
 One wild cry of agony, one hour of unmitigated sorrow, 
 and then she sweetly, submissively bowed herself to the 
 will of her Heavenly Father and was still. She seemed 
 more of heaven than earth as she talked over her past 
 life, and the discipline she had passed through, praying 
 earnestly that this sorrow might be sanctified to her and 
 to those more closely connected with the departed. I 
 recollect so well her intense longing that little Peter, 
 the representative of her darling sister, now left father- 
 less, should be spared for a life of honor and usefulness. 
 We only had her with us a few days. I did not think 
 she was strong enough to bear the journey and the ex- 
 citement which awaited her at Baltimore, but she was 
 so anxious to go that it was thought best she should do 
 so. I little thought, when I parted from heT in the car, 
 that on earth I should behold her face no more. We 
 
100 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 talked of meeting in the fall, and hoped that some asso- 
 ciation might again bring us together as in the past 
 month. Almost her last words to me were, "I feel as 
 if my life's work was truly to begin now." Strangely 
 indeed were these words fulfilled : in a few weeks she 
 had begun that life eternal which alone is the true life — 
 no more labor, no more sorrow, no more discipline. For 
 her, the unspeakable bliss of being "forever with the 
 Lord,'' whose footsteps she had so closely followed on 
 earth : for us is left the fragrant memory of her many 
 virtues, and the sweet example of her daily life : " she 
 being dead, yet speaketh." 
 
 While writing this note I have been interrupted by a 
 visit from an old colored woman who was in the hos- 
 pital last spring. I asked if she remembered Miss 
 Breckinridge ? She looked wonderingly at the ques- 
 tion, saying emphatically : 
 
 ''I never could forget her, she was so good to old 
 Sydney. Why, she never went to her bed without 
 looking in on me to see how I was getting on. Oh ! I 
 never saw her like. She used to sing to me too ; now 
 she is singing Jesus' praise in heaven. She was my 
 lady." 
 
 Margaret was a universal favorite with the officers, 
 nurses, patients, and lady visitors, and many a tear was 
 shed when the intelligence of her death reached us. I 
 have no incidents to give, but wish simply to express 
 to you my admiration and love for her whom you have 
 lost. Affectionately, 
 
 The sad events related in this letter — sick- 
 ness, bereavement, and sorrow — followed each 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 101 
 
 other in quick succession, and changed, for the 
 time, Miss Breckinridge's plans of usefuhiess. 
 She had originally intended to spend the close 
 of the summer at Magara, and she at once de- 
 termined to join the afflicted family of Colonel 
 Porter at Baltimore, and return home with them, 
 saying, "I can do more good at Niagara than 
 anywhere else just now." It was by a kind 
 Providence that her brother had been called to 
 the East on business at that time, and was ready 
 to take charge of her on the journey, and in a 
 measure to relieve the anxiety of those who 
 feared that the fatigue and excitement would be 
 too great for her feeble frame. After a week's 
 rest in Baltimore at the house of a kind friend, 
 she accompanied the sad party to Niagara, and 
 apparently bore the journey with comfort and 
 safety; but the night after her arrival at the 
 house of her cousin, Miss Porter, she became 
 alarmingly ill, and lay down, never to rise again 
 from her couch of languor and weariness. The 
 exhaustion of her system was so complete, that 
 very soon hardly a vestige remained of her former 
 vivacity and earnestness. Though desirous of 
 recovering in order to finish her w^orjc, whicli 
 she felt was only half done, yet she again and 
 
102 MEMORIAL OF 
 
 again said that she did not fear to die, and was 
 willing to leave herself entirely in God's hands. 
 Her state of mind, during her whole sickness, 
 seemed to be expressed in a remark made to one 
 who was bending anxiously over her. She said 
 quietly, "Underneath are the everlasting arms;" 
 and there she rested through all the vicissitudes 
 of hope and discouragement by w^hich those 
 around her were exercised. For more than 
 five weeks life and death hung trembling in 
 the balance, and gave opportunity for those 
 unwearied attentions of friends and physician 
 which can never be. forgotten, and which, if it 
 were possible, would have averted the stroke of 
 death. But it could not be; and on the 27th 
 of July calmly and peacefully her spirit passed 
 away. 
 
 It had always been the earnest desire of Miss 
 Breckinridge to be buried at Magara, near her 
 sister; and she had requested her friends that 
 this wish might be gratified whenever her death 
 should occur. The providence of God, in bring- 
 ing her to that place, made it easy to fulfill the 
 request; and she was laid in the cemetery, by the 
 side .of those whom she loved so well, where the 
 neighboring waters, with their ceaseless mono- 
 
MARGARET E. BRECKINRIDGE. 103 
 
 tone, sound a continual dirge. From all tlie 
 neighborhood were assembled those — kindred 
 and friends — who had known and loved her 
 when she so often dwelt among them; and with 
 their offerings of flowers they followed her to 
 her last resting-place. It is only a resting place; 
 for she is not dead, but sleepeth, and waits for 
 the angel's call to wake to newness of life.