L. P. Brockett, The camp, the battlefield, and the hospital: or, lights and shadows of the great rebellion

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[343] when General Gillmore moved on his expedition against Morris Island, she could no longer remain away from her work, and accompanied the expedition. Pitching her tent on the sand of Morris Island, and herself engaging in the drudgeries of the kitchen, she ministered to the soldiers, who, amid the burning heat of the Southern sun, were besieging simultaneously Fort Sumter and Fort Wagner, and awaited the fierce and bloody assaults which she knew were coming. When Wagner was stormed and the assault repulsed, she went to the relief of the wounded, wading through the deep sand, and putting the cool water and the refreshing restoratives to their parched lips, while she staunched their bleeding wounds, and brought life and healing to those that were ready to perish. Throughout that long, hot summer, when all who could fled to cooler climes, she toiled on. “Some one,” she said, “must see to these poor wounded and fever-stricken men, and, as others could not or would not, it seemed to be her duty to do it.” More than once her health seemed about to give way, but she held out, and did not leave the island till winter, when, she said, she had become so accustomed to the shriek of the shells from Gillmore's monster guns, that she could not sleep at first, when no longer lulled to slumber by their music. In January, 1864, she returned to the North, and after a brief visit to her friends in Massachusetts and New York, returned to Washington, and employed herself in preparation for the great campaign of the summer of 1864. Her great services were recognized by the Government, and she was assigned to a position of usefulness and responsibility in connection with the Army of the James, in which,