One of the most successful of the small independent aid societies was the Michigan Soldier's Relief Association, whose services were aimed exclusively at people of that state. From its Washington offices, the association lent a helping hand to stranded soldiers, anxious relatives and bereaved families. It also dispatched women volunteers to seek out the sick, wounded and dying in nearby hospitals. One of these courageous agents was 29 year-old Julia Wheelock, (seated at far left), who chronicaled her mission in a personal journal.
She searched for soldiers from Michigan in the 15 hospitals of Alexandria, Virginia, and then provided food, clothing, blankets - and the comfort of a friendly voice. It was trying work, the more so since she lacked the official status enjoyed by agents of the Sanitary Commission and had to contend with the indifference and even outright hostility on the part of military authorities. In time, she ventured to the Virginia battlefields to dispense lemonade, hot soup, gruel and tea to Michigan's walking wounded, and to do whatever was possible for the more setiously injured.
"Oh, what scenes of suffering I have witnessed," she wrote in May of 1864 in a Fredricksburg hospital, while attending the wounded from the Spottsylvania campaign.
"In every hospital found many Michigan men without blankets, sometimes 50 or 60 in one room. Many who have just arrived from the front have had nothing to eat for three or four days - literally starving to death! Men were busy from early dawn until night burying the dead."
Two months later, after two years of "excessive labor, anxiety and excitement, " she contracted typhoid fever and was sent home to recuperate. She reported for duty again in Washington on April 13, 1865 - the day the capital celebrated the surrender of Lee's army at Appomattox.
"The Civil War, 20 Million Yankees", Time - Life books, page 129
|
