Mary Sophia Hill served as a volunteer nurse for the 6th Louisiana Regiment during the first few years of the Civil War. My last blog recounted those experiences - but they were just the beginning of her adventures.
After months tending to sick and wounded in the field hospitals of Virginia, Mary tired of life in the field. In 1863, she decided to return to Ireland to attend to some financial matters (which she did not describe in her diary) and also to seek out some of the families of the soldiers she nursed to let them know of their sons service to the Confederacy and how they were faring.
The logistics of her journey make an interesting story - she first had to obtain a pass in Union occupied New Orleans to leave the Confederate states. Since she was from Ireland she was considered a British Subject so the local Union Authorities granted her passage on the steamer "Morning Star" to New York City.
Of course it didn't go well - she writes "on the morning we were to land in New York we struck a sandbar on the Jersey Coast, and had to be landed by lifeboat. I got both a good scare and a good dunking,which latter was inconvenient, as the baggage was all on the boat."
She was reunited with her bags at the Metropolitan Hotel in New York City, and took a Cunard steamer to Liverpool, and ferried to Dublin. She very briefly described her time in Ireland as delightful. She returned to America on the steamship Arabia, and arrived in Boston - where she visited Faneuil Hall.
The Arabia
After a long return journey she arrived in New Orleans in early 1864, and was arrested!
She describes her first day of imprisonment in a Union occupied home in New Orleans - " In the course of the day I was ordered to come down stairs, as the Provost-Marshal, Major Porter, wanted to see me."
"He introduced himself with a great deal of pomp and arrogance, and he had come for the purpose of informing me that I must behave better to those who had charge of me and were acting under his orders. I told him I was glad really to know who I had to thank for the brutal treatment I was receiving, and I gave him a piece of my mind, at which he actually turned livid. I asked him what was I arrested for and what were the charges against me. He could not tell; had not looked over the papers".
She later found she was accused of spying. Her acknowledged crimes were carrying letters to the enemy across the battle lines and also taking items of clothing and food to the soldiers. At least one of the “letters for the enemy” was to her brother, Sam.
Mary further describes the events "If those charges were to be proven against me, of course I would be some time in this delightful retreat, and as I did not feel like paying two dollars a day for board at the table of that irascible man Lawrence, as a Government prisoner I would be a boarder. This led to quite a lively discussion. I protested as a British subject and demanded to see the Consul. "
Her efforts were in vain, and she was convicted - but received the sentence of removal from New Orleans to Confederate occupied territory, where she remained nursing wounded soldiers until the war ended.
In peacetime, she became the first matron of a hospital in Louisiana, where she cared for injured patients for some time until its stability was assured. She then went to live with a nephew, William VanSlooten, in Brooklyn, N.Y., where she died of cancer on Jan. 7, 1902.
Her funeral received much attention - as this article from the New Orleans Times Picayune of January 13th 1902 illustrates:
"When she died, aging Confederate veterans rallied to pay her homage. Eighteen of them provided an honor cortege for her casket, which had the flag of Camp 1, Army of Northern Virginia covering it. Her coffin was shipped home to Louisiana by the Illinois Central Railroad. She had requested to be buried in New Orleans."
“A funeral at 9 o’clock in the morning is a rare occurrence in this city, and still more unusual is the sight of a large number of men in the twilight of life, some wearing the Confederate uniform of gray, reverently marching behind a hearse, while with martial tread a delegation of veterans walk along as pallbearers. Such a scene was witnessed yesterday morning, when, on the arrival of the 9:35 train of the Illinois Central, the remains of Miss Mary S. Hill were transferred to the hearse, and then accompanied to their last resting place in Greenwood Cemetery by veteran Confederates."
“Forty-one years ago Miss Hill was one of those ministering angels who, leaving their homes and firesides, and impelled by a call from on high, sought the battle fields and the crowded hospitals and devoted themselves to taking care of the dying and the wounded soldiers. She was a true type of feminine gentleness, charity and sympathy; with a sweet voice, a touch so light that care vanished at its charm, and footsteps as noiseless as a snowfall.”
It was fitting that she received the recognition she deserved in the end.
One very interesting entry from her diary deserves a look, in which she let her feelings out on the Irish involvement in the Civil War on the Union side.
Disgusted by what she witnessed she wrote - "Paddy was promised, over a glass of poteen, that his fortune was made if he went to America, where a choice of work awaited him, railroads in particular, and then the plantations. Of course he is enchanted and goes, reaches Castle Garden, gets plenty of well drugged whiskey, and finds he is a soldier in full rig, with his musket by his side."
"If my voice could have reached and influenced the Irish, but few recruits would have joined the North, as they were only wonted as a human battering-ram for Genl. Grant to use against Richmond. Not by science of war did he prevail, but by dogged perseverance and the slaughter of hecatombs of foreigners, as the 'creme de la creme' of Yankeedom talked, and sent paid substitutes, but fought not themselves. General Grant having Europe for a recruiting ground, simply after a four years' incessant On to Richmond, out-numbered the Confederates."
Her insights are pretty accurate when one studies the casualty record of the Unions Irish units!
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