South After Gettysburg: Letters of Cornelia Hancock, 1863-1868 (review)

Book Reviews121 SouthAfterGettysburg: Letters of Cornelia Hancock, 1863-1868. Edited by HenriettaStrattonJaquette. Foreword by Bruce Catton. (NewYork: Thomas Y. Crowell. 1956. Pp. xu, 288. $4.00.) while accounts of the battles and leaders of the Civü War wül always fascinate the student of American history, the experiences of the ordinary enlisted men and the citizens who managed to get close to the battlefields, prove equaUy as interesting. The observations of Cornelia Hancock are of that caliber. A Quaker girl of twenty-three, she went to Gettysburg after the battle and helped care for the wounded soldiers. Even though Dorothea Dix turned her down as a nurse, Cornelia stayed on and went right to the dirty and generaUy unpleasant task of keeping things clean and tending to the needs of the uncomplaining soldiers. In letters to her famfly and to the Friends Association in Philadelphia Cornelia Hancock gave an unrestrained account of her days. She had nothing but praise for the enlisted men who suffered their lot quietly and bore out the truism that those who are truly Ul have no mood for complaints. For the drunks and "goldbricks" of her day she was beautifully articulate and her comments within the hearing of the soldiers must have cheered them immeasurably. "The privates in the army who have nothing before them but hard marching , poor fare and terrible fighting," she wrote on one occasion, "are entitled to aU the unemployed muscle of the North and they wül get mine with a good will." And with a good wül Cornelia Hancock pitched into the disagreeable and exhausting job of trying to make conditions a little bit more pleasant for the casualties of Gettysburg. Whüe a tireless "angel of mercy," she could in no way be pictured as a radiant Nightingale moving about tents, barns, or crude sheds with a candle held high. In a letter to her sister she described herself as "dirty as a pig" but as weU as ever. Observing the terrible neglect of the wounded, the wagonloads of amputated arms and legs, and the men with headwounds set aside to die, this young nurse from New Jersey could grow fiercely impatient with those who just talked. In one letter she rang out with a hearty, "KuI the copperheads!" Liked by the soldiers, who presented her with a modest süver medal of appreciation and wrote letters of gratitude, Cornelia was ever busy on their behalf. After Gettysburg, and before going on to Washington to a new assignment , she echoed Sherman when she wrote, "I think war is a hellish way of settling a dispute." In Washington Nurse Hancock was assigned to a "Contraband Hospital," but she was not happy in her new location. She disliked the people she worked for and with. As for the men in charge of the contrabands she said they were being investigated for practicing "a sort of second hand slavery." Summing up aU she had seen of human rapacity and cussedness she felt it took "two good persons to watch one knave and then he can accomplish more evU than the two can overthrowin a long time." From Washington Miss Hancock went to the Second Corps Hospital at Brandy Station. She liked the congenial people she worked with there and found the tasks of a field hospital far less frustrating than her stint with the almost hopeless contraband muddle she had left in the Capitol. It became 122CIVIL WAR history routine in time, and she could conclude a letter with "There is nothing of importance happening here: the drums beat, the bugle sounds, the winds blow, the men groan—that is aU—" But it was not "routine" for long, and she was off again to help patch up the stream of wounded after the Wüderness. Under fire Cornelia was cool, quick witted, and observant. The "cowardly officers . . . crouching closely to the" river's bank disgusted her. At City Point she was back at her hospital work and letter writing. Her estimates were shrewd: "I am not at aU for faltering nor growing weary," she wrote her sister. "I would not acknowledge that it is any less our duty to whip...