Identifier: mystoryofwarwoma1889live (find matches)
Title: My story of the war: a woman's narrative of four years personal experience as nurse in the Union army, and in relief work at home, in hospitals, camps, and at the front, during the war of the rebellion
Year: 1889 (1880s)
Authors: Livermore, Mary Ashton Rice, 1820-1905
Subjects: United States Sanitary Commission Flags
Publisher: Hartford, A. D. Worthington and company
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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mule. Both of them are so abused in the army,and both are so dumbly patient, and uncomplaining,and receive so little sympathy, that I suffer a perpet-ual heartache on their account. To express pityfor, or interest in, a suffering mule, or to interposeentreaties on its behalf, was to Iun the gauntlet ofthe most stinging ridicule. Everybody beat andneglected the unhandsome brutes; and when theyfell into the hands of the ill-treated negroes, theyfared worse than ever. From their own persecutionand abuse, they seemed to have learned only lessonsof brutality and tyranny, when they became mule-drivers. As the half-imbruted contrabands came on board,under military surveillance^ clad in the tattered grayand black nigger cloth, and shod with the cloutedbrogans of the plantation, my heart went out to them.Subdued, impassive, solemn, hope and courage nowand then lighting up their sable faces, they werea most interesting study. Mothers carried theirpiquant-faced babies on one arm, and led little
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THE IMPASSIVE, SOLEMN CONTRABANDS. 345 woolly-headed toddlers by the other. Old men andwomen, gray, nearly blind, some of them bent almostdouble, bore on their heads and backs the smallplunder they had Hoted from their homes, onthe plantation, or the bread and meat furnishedthem by some friendly authorities. They were allgoing forth, like the Israelites, from the land ofbondage to a land they knew not. Like the Hebrews, they trusted implicitly in Godto guide them, and their common speech, as we spokewith them, had an Old Testament flavor. Neverbefore had I witnessed so impressive a spectacle.There were between three and four hundred ofthem. Half of the middle deck of the huge boatwas assigned them, into which they filed, and be-gan to arrange themselves in families and neighbor-hood groups. The other half of this deck was used by sick andwounded soldiers, who were brought on board ingreat numbers. They were either furloughed or dis-charged. Some of them were brought on stretchers,and

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