The Union Quilters (7 page)

But more did not come, not for the contraband and not for the men of the Susquehanna Militia, African Descent. One officer after another declined their invitation to lead them, and seeing their opportunity slipping away, the men named the corporal from the Zouave Guards who had trained them their commander, and made plans to report to Camp Curtin and enlist.

A second time, Constance prepared Abel’s supplies and packed his haversack with as much as it could hold. Again, Abel prepared the farm for his absence and instructed George and Joseph on their duties. Again, Constance steeled herself for a painful leave-taking, but she sent Abel off proudly, with silent prayers for God to protect him.

The next day, he returned home. The Susquehanna Militia had presented themselves to the commander in charge and had persuaded him to watch them march and drill. Abel had earned grudging praise as a fine marksman, and a few onlookers remarked that they carried themselves better than most new recruits, but in the end their appeal to be mustered in was rejected. A few of the men, Abel included, were offered work at Camp Curtin cooking and building and otherwise laboring, but the men had farms and businesses and jobs back home, and while they were willing to give them up for a time to become soldiers, they would not merely to cook and clean and carry if they could not also officially join the army.

Abel’s explanation was abrupt and angry, and after that first day, he said no more about his second rejection from Camp Curtin. The Susquehanna Militia, African Descent disbanded, and Abel’s fine uniform was put away, carefully folded and stored in a trunk, as proud and neat as the day he had first donned it.

But Constance knew from the cold fire in Abel’s eye that he had not given up.

 

Autumn faded, golden and glorious, and winter set in. Letters from Thomas arrived almost weekly, an unexpected blessing Dorothea attributed to his regiment’s posting in Washington City. If the 49th Pennsylvania were on the march instead of defending the capital, she doubted he would have the time to write letters or the ability to post them.

His letters always opened with reminders of his affectionate devotion and thanks for the necessary items she and her friends had sent to Company L. When Thomas’s first letter had described the primitive conditions at Camp Curtin—the inadequate and uncomfortable lodgings, the troubling lack of provisions and supplies—Dorothea had resolved to do all she could to improve his situation. At the next meeting of her sewing circle, she had read his letter aloud and had seen her own dismay reflected in her friends’ faces. Mary too had received a letter from her husband, which described the men’s circumstances in nearly identical phrases.

“Jonathan says the men have no fresh vegetables, either,” Gerda said, frowning in concern. “It’s been weeks since they’ve had so much as a potato, and the men are falling ill from it.”

“They can’t fight if they’re ill,” Mrs. Barrows said, turning to Charlotte. “What did your husband say afflicts them?”

Charlotte made no reply, her expression one of stark confusion. “No, no, I have it here,” Gerda said, taking a letter from her pocket. She murmured to herself as she scanned the first few lines, oblivious to the frowns and knowing looks some of the other women exchanged when they realized Jonathan had shared that news with Gerda rather than his own wife. “Ah. Here it is. ‘The men have received a ration of potatoes but once in the past month, and vinegar only a trifle more often. I have discovered a half dozen cases of scurvy in our brigade in the last fortnight. I have written to headquarters again and again to requisition fresh vegetables, but they are not to be had, and when I describe the men’s condition I am informed by men with no medical experience whatsoever that I must be mistaken. Scurvy, you see, comes from a want of fresh vegetables, so therefore our soldiers could not possibly be afflicted with it, because they receive plentiful quantities of nourishing food. Therefore my misdiagnosis and not the men’s pitiful diet is the cause of their trouble. I tell you, my dear, if my diagnosis had the power to create symptoms, I would gladly declare them the healthiest men in the army. We shall see if that course of treatment has them quickly leaping from their sickbeds. Unfortunately it is the only remedy army headquarters will provide.’ ”Gerda folded the letter, shaking her head. “Jonathan can hardly rely upon army headquarters to provide what the men need if they refuse to admit there’s a problem.”

Despite his usual comic turn of phrase, not even Charley Stokey could disguise his dissatisfaction. As the weather had turned colder, he wrote, the men had taken to constructing makeshift furnaces in their tents by digging trenches from the fireside in front, beneath their tents, and out the other side. They covered the trenches with stones, made chimneys of gun barrels at the far end, and thus drew the heat along, warming the ground they slept upon and keeping themselves warm and dry. “Eliza my dear we are so comfortable that I think I would move us into a tent when I return home except you would have no place for your pretty things,” he joked. In the same letter he told of how several hungry men had slaughtered some pigs they had found on the march and had been obliged to pay twenty dollars to their commander to reimburse the Rebel owner. Charley would not have minded so much, he said, if they could have used worthless Confederate dollars instead of good Federal greenbacks. “I guess we had the last laugh on our commander,” Charley had written, “because soon after we left, Jackson passed through the town and had the benefit of all the pigs we had not taken, at which time I figure our commander wished we had slaughtered a few more rather than leaving them to feed the Rebs.”

The women were shocked to discover that their soldiers had not been better provided for. “We must make a list of everything our men need,” Mrs. Claverton declared as Eliza put away Charley’s letter, “and see that they receive it, even if we must take it to them ourselves.”

Dorothea quickly fetched pen and ink and paper, and the list swiftly grew as the circle of friends called out suggestions inspired by letters from their own husbands, brothers, and sons. Before long, Dorothea had filled half a page, and after a brief debate, the ladies decided to make quilts, clothing, bandages, and food their priority. No longer would they sit and worry and wait as they went about their daily lives as best they could with their loved ones far away. They could take action; they could contribute.

After the quilting bee, the friends departed, feeling cheered, invigorated, and eager to begin their assigned tasks. Only Charlotte lingered after the others left, and as she helped Dorothea tidy the front room, Dorothea thought her sister-in-law seemed somewhat puzzled. “Jonathan has said nothing to me of shortages or discomfort,” she confided after Dorothea gently prompted her. “He describes the camaraderie of the physicians and the devotion of the nurses, but his only complaint is about the quality of the food—which I think he says only out of a wish to compliment me and my cooking rather than any real dissatisfaction.”

“His letter to Gerda was about little more than the quality of food,” said Dorothea, but she felt disingenuous and ashamed, since of course Gerda had not read the entire letter aloud. Dorothea also had seen Charlotte wince to hear her husband call Gerda “my dear,” and she wished Gerda had had the good sense or the discretion to omit the endearment.

That same pained expression marred Charlotte’s pretty features as she considered Dorothea’s words. “There was more . . . substance to his letter to her, even on the same topic. Don’t you agree?”

“Perhaps conditions are better for surgeons than for soldiers,” Dorothea replied. “Or perhaps Jonathan doesn’t wish to upset you in your condition.”

Instinctively, Charlotte rested her hands upon her abdomen. Though she was not as far along as Anneke, her waist had thickened, and the fullness of her petticoats did little to conceal her pregnancy from any but the most oblivious onlookers. “I’d rather have him upset me with the truth than pretend all is well when it isn’t.”

“All must be well,” Dorothea assured her. “Jonathan wouldn’t deceive you.”

Charlotte fixed her with a level stare. “Indeed.”

“Perhaps I should have said that Jonathan has never been particularly good at deceiving you,” Dorothea amended. “If he’s holding back some details out of concern that they’ll hurt you, you’ll discover the truth on your own in time.”

Charlotte had pondered Dorothea’s words for a moment before nodding and thanking her for her honesty.

Though sympathetic, Dorothea had almost forgotten the conversation until reminded of it a few days later, when Gerda showed her the first page of a letter she had received from Jonathan. For Gerda he had described his conflict with the regimental surgeon, whose outdated methods threatened to do more harm than good; his frustration with ongoing supply shortages; his concern about the rapid spread of the flux through camp due to unsanitary conditions; and his fears that his experience and resources would be inadequate if the men of the 49th faced more desperate action than they had seen thus far guarding Washington City. Dorothea did not ask to see the second page of the letter, which she assumed offered more of the same grim reports, as well as expressions of fond longing between her married brother and her friend. She did not wish to know how intimate they truly were, or had once been. She was troubled, but not surprised, that Jonathan had been more frank with Gerda than with his wife. Dorothea was one of the few who knew the truth about Joanna and her son, but she also knew that Jonathan and Gerda shared an intense and passionate friendship. Although Jonathan had not fathered a child with Gerda, Dorothea often suspected that he could have.

If nothing else, Jonathan’s conflicting letters underscored the dire conditions the men of the 49th faced, spurring Dorothea on to encourage her friends to work harder and faster to provide the men with all they lacked. They sewed quilts and clothing, and collected lint for bandages. They organized a Christmas fair to raise money to buy essential medicines and instruments. After Gerda read aloud an article from
The New York Times
describing the United States Sanitary Commission, an organization that accomplished on a grand scale what they attempted to do for their own men, they agreed to transform their group from a quilting bee into a local chapter of the commission for the duration of the crisis. “For the duration of the war, we’ll no longer be a simple sewing circle,” Dorothea had declared, making it official. “We’ll be the Water’s Ford Sanitary Commission and Union of Loyal Quilters.”

They soon shortened the cumbersome title to the Union Quilters in all but their official correspondence and applied for official recognition from the USCC. Their mission redefined, they redoubled their efforts, making whatever items they could, raising money to buy what they could not, knitting socks and scarves, and sending the men any books and magazines they could spare in addition to their own heartfelt, encouraging letters. The soldiers’ days were dull and tedious, Thomas had reported, and after hours of drilling and marching and standing picket duty, they had few worthwhile diversions to occupy their time, and thus sank into melancholy, longing for home. They were starved for reading material, but aside from a few novels and histories that had been passed around from soldier to soldier so often that the covers were falling off, they had only religious tracts distributed by the Christian Commission and “cheap books” full of sensational stories that promised thrilling adventures but, in Thomas’s words, “utterly and inexorably eroded the intellectual faculties.”

Dorothea felt such sympathy for her husband that it pained her, knowing how he despised boredom and dullness, and she promptly organized a book and periodical drive. The Union Quilters knocked on neighbors’ doors requesting donations of old copies of the
Atlantic Monthly
and
Harper’s Weekly
and any decent books their owners could bear to give away. As Dorothea weeded the shelves of the lending library, finding few duplicates that could be sent to the front, she fought the crushing weight of despondency that always seemed to come upon her when she was alone too long with her thoughts. The Union Quilters worked tirelessly, raising money and sewing for the soldiers in addition to their usual chores and all the extra work that had fallen to them in the wake of the men’s departure. And yet, for all their accomplishments, Dorothea despaired that their efforts would ever be enough to meet the enormous and perpetually increasing need of the men at the front. Their accomplishments, though essential, had been too small, their goals too limited in scope. They had to do more.

Exhausted, aching for Thomas, she sat down on the step stool and drew the back of her hand across her forehead, letting her gaze travel around the one-room library. The librarian, currently a private in the 49th, had organized a list of volunteers to manage the modest collection in his absence. Dorothea had immediately signed up for one weekly shift, and in March, when Anneke delivered a fine baby boy, Dorothea took over her shift too. She loved to read and adored the library, which she had played no small part in creating. More than a dozen years earlier, the wives of several prominent citizens had formed a library board and invited Dorothea to join. To raise money for the construction of a new building, Dorothea had proposed that they obtain the signatures of renowned authors on rectangles of bleached muslin and stitch them into an Authors’ Album opportunity quilt. As word of the quilt spread, the library board sold so many chances that Mr. Schultz twice had to print additional tickets. They had raised enough money for lumber and labor and new books as well, and the winner of the drawing had donated the quilt back to the library, more out of distaste for some of the “objectionable” and “radical” authors Dorothea had included than from true generosity. The priceless quilt was proudly displayed on the wall above the circulation desk, a tribute to the library board’s vision and perseverance. For Dorothea, expelled from the library board on the very night of their triumph, the quilt also served as a reminder that she could expect to suffer for her unpopular, unconventional beliefs. But gazing at it then, missing Thomas and Jonathan, longing to help and to share their burdens as best she could from so great a distance, she was suddenly inspired.