Alabama Homespun

This entry is from Letters from a Surgeon of the Civil War compiled by Martha Derby Perry.  They are letters of John G. Perry, surgeon with the 20th Massachusetts.

He tells about meeting a Confederate officer he is treating in this touching description.

May 28th, 1862

. . .On one of the beds there lies, fast asleep, a Confederate surgeon, — a thoroughbred South Carolinian, who never, before the war, passed his State lines. He was captured with a number of others in the last engagement before Richmond, and as most of these men were wounded, he was detailed to care for them.

Dressed entirely in Alabama homespun, — which is the ugliest snuff-colored stuff imaginable, — a broad-brimmed planter's hat covering his head, and stained with mud and blood from head to foot, the appearance of this officer when he first arrived was strange enough; but his face was bright and intelligent. His greeting was unexpected: "I am delighted to meet men from Massachusetts, for I know I shall find in them intelligence and hospitality "; and he certainly did find the latter, for we furnished him throughout with clothes. 

He enjoys reading the Boston newspapers, and we have many pleasant chats together, for I find he is anxious to discover for himself the true state of affairs at the North, and whether the Yankee hordes are such bloodhounds as he has been taught to consider them. We seem to be making each other's acquaintance by simple good fellowship, and this, after all, is the only true way.

Unidentified Confederate Officer Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-119426
Library of Congress Collection

The Rocking Chair

This entry is from Letters from a Surgeon of the Civil War compiled by Martha Derby Perry.  They are letters of John G. Perry, surgeon with the 20th Massachusetts

May 5th, 1863, Falmouth, VA.  Perry was in Fredericksburg at the time of this incident.

I had to run the gauntlet many times, and on one of my expeditions heard a woman's piercing screams from a house by the way. I rushed in, and found an elderly woman of immense size in a violent fit of hysterics. She was seated in a rocking-chair, swaying back and forth, evidently beside herself with terror, screaming, moaning, and crying.

While I did what I could in the hurry of the moment to reassure the poor thing, a shell came whizzing through the air above, exploding as it fell into the square in front of us. Over went the old woman backwards, turning a complete somersault, chair and all.

For a moment there was a convulsion of arms and legs, and then such shrieks that it seemed to me the din outside was nothing to that within. I gathered her together as quickly as I could, — it was difficult to find any particular part to hold on to, — and when she had wit and breath enough to answer, asked for the other inmates of the house; vague and muffled sounds told me they were near, and when she pointed with her finger downwards, sure enough, I found them in the cellar huddled together, both whites and negroes.

It seemed that the old woman was too large to manage the cellar stairs, and they, supposing from all the uproar that she was killed, were every moment expecting a like fate for themselves. However, they soon ventured up, and I hurried back to my hospital.

John C Perry, from Frontispiece of the book