"Performing My Plain Duty"
Women of the North at City Point, 1864 -1865
Jeanne Marie Christie
Virginia Cavalcade, Summer 1997
In the hot and dusty June and July of 1864, General Ulysses S. Grant and the Army of the Potomac crossed from White House Landing to the south side of the James river just outside of Richmond, Virginia. Grant selected the town of City Point as his base camp from which he would besiege Petersburg and conduct a campaign to capture Richmond. An army of more than 177 Northern women - nurses, relief agents, and officers' wives - also converged on the town from June 1864 to April 1865. Most of the women immediately set to work caring for the wounded soldiers who soon crowded the post.
Located eight miles northeast of Petersburg at the junction of the James and Appomattox Rivers, Grant's new headquarters and supply depot were well-suited to oversee the coming convergence of Union troops on the Confederate capital. The Army of the Potomac swiftly massed vast logistical and supply resources in the City Point area. Authorities established seven different hospitals there, with the largest the Depot Field Hospital, which covered two hundred acres and cared for ten thousand patients. Twelve hundred tents, along with ninety log barracks used in the winter, constituted the compound, along with laundries, dispensaries, kitchens, dining halls, and offices. The Depot Field Hospital - the largest facility of its kind - cared for the Second, Third, Fifth, and Ninth Corps. By December 1864, the military controlled approximately four hundred acres, including Appomattox manor, the home of Dr. Richard Eppes, who had fled to Petersburg in the face of approaching Union forces.
Medical conditions at the City point hospitals were an improvement over the bleak situation of the early years of the war, which were plagued by unsanitary practices, overcrowding, and limited knowledge of triage. Since then, the United States Sanitary Commission (USSC) had largely alleviated supply shortages and inefficient organization. New railroad lines from the front made wounded soldiers much more comfortable during transportation than before, when hastily constructed, bumpy corduroy roads had made ebbing life more precarious. At City Point, however, log sidewalks made life somewhat tolerable, allowing the residents of the post to keep their feet free of sucking mud or six inches of dust. Wilbur Fisk, a private from Vermont, reported from City Point's Sixth Corps Hospital that even with raised sidewalks he had to contend with "nasty, sloppy, mortar-mud" and dust that found "its way through the smallest crack or crevasse, and sprinkled its way over everything." Nurse Cornelia Hancock reported to her mother that the dust was "shoe top deep." Despite the many sanitary improvements, the post's latrine trenches were open, covered with sulfate of iron, and became breeding grounds for flies that swarmed the patients.
The military considered a logistical and headquarters post like City Point a safe location and permitted officers' wives and children to reside with them. Neither General Grant nor Brigadier General John A. Rawlins, his principal staff officer and advisor, wanted their wives to live at City Point, but Julia Dent grant and Mary H. Rawlins took up residency there nonetheless. Grant even brought along her youngest son, six-year-old Jesse. Seventy-three women came to offer medical aid to the soldiers. The remaining one-hundred-plus women were a hodgepodge of visiting dignitaries, gawking tourists, family members helping a wounded relative or retrieving a body. individuals in transit, escaped slaves who had taken refuge with the Union forces, free blacks, and area residents who were trapped behind Union lines. Camp followers - prostitutes - composed only a fractional minority of the women in the area of City Point; "strumpets," as they were called, operated on some of the ships that traveled from Washington, D.C., to the Virginia posts, but the roster of City Point women included just one known prostitute, a Madam Grundy.
Survival on the new post of the Army of the Potomac challenged the best of women. Those who had come to help the soldiers provided a much needed touch of home and family, maintaining a sense of normalcy during the chaos of war. The difficult days of July and August 1864, when the stench of decaying flesh and open wounds made the crowded hospital tents almost unbearable, tested an individual's limits. The Battle of the Crater (or Petersburg Mine Assault) and the Weldon Railroad Operations, among other action, brought wounded and dying men to City Point throughout the summer. "The absorbing nature of hospital labor," wrote enlisted army nurse Sophronia E. Bucklin, "gradually hardened my nerves to the strength of steel." The hot summer weather also taxed tolerance and endurance by provoking bouts of sunstroke. Nonetheless, the difficult situation also encouraged an intense camaraderie among its participants.
In the 1860s, American society was just beginning to consider women worthy of owning land and property. Their roles in communities as leaders and business administrators were shifting and gaining strength while the men had gone off to war. Governments, both North and South, recognizing the deficit of employees in necessary industries and organizations, hired women, a ready and willing segment of the population. May women thought that their natural talents lay in caring for the sick and injured, so locations such as City Point, with its many hospitals, offered opportunities for strong, able individuals to gain new experiences and knowledge, as well as to fulfill their patriotic duty.
The Victorian ideal of a lady dictated pale skin, delicate composition and manner, and dress of corsets, hoopskirts, and silk. A lady spent her time raising children, guiding household activities with a gloved hand, and devoting herself to her religion, her husband, and his career and community. Many of the women who worked at City Point came from that upbringing, but they had a vested interest in the Civil war - a son, brother, or husband who needed their help. In 1862 Julia S. Wheelock had traveled from Ionia, Michigan, to Virginia to nurse her wounded brother Orville, but found on her arrival "that death had already done its work." Despite her loss, she resolved to help others and worked as a representative of the Michigan Relief Association for the remainder of the war, arriving at City Point in 1864.
Women like Sarah A. Palmer, of Ithaca, New York, hospital matron of the Ninth New York Regiment, longed to contribute to the war effort. Unable to enlist as soldiers, they served instead in hospitals like those at City Point, despite opposition from men who declared that the wards were "no place for a woman," as Palmer recalled. By working effectively to improve the welfare of soldiers, women proved their proficiency for the job ahead. "I found it was a place for a woman," countered Palmer. "All man's boasted ingenuity had been expended to devise terrible engines with which to kill and maim God's own image," she charged. "If war was right, it was right for women to go with brothers, husbands, and sons."
The women quickly adapted their dress to the crowded wards and quarters, abandoning impracticable finery for wool or cotton dresses covered with pocketed aprons. They pulled their hair back. wore sensible shoes, and (along with the soldiers) fought the ever-present problem of lice. Poor sanitation practices brought fevers and other illnesses to soldiers and their caretakers at City Point. Women contended with mice in their log quarters; those who lived in tents fought dust, mud, and dampness.
The majority of nurses were male-enlisted soldiers who were convalescing from their own wounds or ailments. However, Dorothea Lynde Dix, appointed Superintendent of women Nurses by the Federal War department in June 1861, hired female nurses and hospital matrons, the government occasionally recruited such women, and the United States Sanitary Commission swore them in. Some twenty thousand women performed nursing duties and other support services for the Union during the war; approximately thirty-two hundred women served as regular employees of the Union army under Dix. As government employees, nurses received $12 a month, hospital matrons $16 - payment that Sophronia E. Bucklin (a seamstress before the war, who lived on her earnings as a nurse at City Point) called a "poor pittance." It was "a sorry recompense," Sarah Palmer agreed, "as a return for the days of toil, and the haunted nights and the scanty fare." Volunteer and independent nurses, appointed by local, state, and national relief organizations or by the surgeons in charge, also helped to care for the sick and wounded. Still other women enlisted as laundresses or cooks, yet they also tended to ailing soldiers daily.
On the post, other women (and men) worked as state relief agents. Hired and paid by their home state, they traveled with regiments throughout the campaigns, providing a connecting link between the soldier and home. The female relief agents at City Point hailed from Maine, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Delaware, Michigan, New York, and New Jersey. A Mrs. Brainard of the Michigan State Relief Agency had served at Fredericksburg and White House Landing before coming to City Point. A Mrs. Price, representing Pennsylvania had also served at White House Landing. In 1865, Adelaide W. Smith, a New York state agent, received a salary of $60 a month. She carefully managed her expenses and administered the money to help New York soldiers acquire needed supplies and transportation home. The agents provided information about the soldiers to families and helped the wounded men keep their paperwork in order. The women rode out to picket lines to deliver messages, packages, and supplies from home. When soldiers needed accounts clarified or days of leave justified, the agents, by now battle-hardened, skilled negotiators, acted as their advocates. They also helped hometown visitors who became stranded at military locations.
The United States Sanitary Commission, a forerunner of the American Red Cross, hired both men and women. Women of the Sanitary Commission worked as army nurses, hospital matrons, and managers of kitchens on military posts. They also labored on the hospital transports and maintained dockside feeding stations. City Point had such women as Mary W. Lee, hardy and well tested through experience at Gettysburg, Brandy Station, Fredericksburg, and White House Landing, and Rebecca Gray, of Brooklyn, New York, who worked as a USSC representative on the hospital steamer Vanderbilt, which sailed the James River.
When wounded soldiers poured into City Point, Gray and other Sanitary Commission women worked a fifteen-hour day that started when the ship whistle blew at 4:30 A.M. and finished at 7:30 P.M. Gray and her coworkers would meet the wounded soldiers at the shore closest to a battle, check them on board, load them into bunks, give them fluids or food, and clean the blood and dirt from their wounds. The women worked constantly until the ship reached a new port for debarkation. At the feeding stations on shore, they procured soup, coffee, beef or chicken tea, and milk punch from the kitchens, then handed the beverages out along with bread or crackers to soldiers coming in from the field or being sent from the area. In the wards, women organized linens, made beds, wrote letters home for the wounded, and changed dressings. Occasionally USSC women, like the state agents, delivered supplies and messages and coordinated requisitions and other time-consuming paperwork.
The United States Christian Commission (USCC) was a charitable organization concerned with the spiritual and moral needs of the soldier. The women of USCC offered religious inspiration and consolation to the soldiers, and also worked as kitchen matrons. At City Point, women such as Ella Cole, of Medway, Massachusetts; Jennie Pitkins, for Hartford Connecticut; and a Miss Duncan managed to commission's kitchens. The soldiers commonly thought the USCC kitchens were not as well organized as those of the Sanitary Commission, and occasionally sent the women into the local area to trade for or otherwise procure food. In the wards, women moved from soldier to soldier, distributing Bibles, paper and pencils, or writing letters for the wounded men.
Other women tended to the soldiers' physical needs. A Mrs. Reading worked as "an assistant dresser" for some of the hospital wards, organizing supplies and changing bandages three times a day. Sophronia Bucklin recalled that this type of work was particularly grisly, but necessary:
"Beds were to be made, hands and face stripped of the hideous mask of blood and grime, matted hair to be combed out over the bronzed brows, and gaping wounds to be sponged with soft water, till cleansed of the gore and filth prepatory to the dressing. I busied myself with everything save touching the dreadful wounds till I could evade it no longer. Then with all my resolution I nerved myself to the task and bound up the aching limbs."
Women at City Point fought to improve the conditions in which the injured soldiers convalesced. Annie Wittenmyer, a sanitary agent from Keokuk, Iowa, and general superintendent of the Christian Commission Special Diet Kitchens, successfully argued that convalescing soldiers should have "delicate food Y in homelike preparation" to aid their recovery. As corresponding secretary, and later general agent, for the Keokuk Ladies' Soldiers' Aid Society, Whittenmyer resisted the efforts of the United States Sanitary Commission to exert control over her organization's relief efforts. Her society actively gathered supplies that Iowa's soldiers needed and aggressively managed and controlled their distribution, despite considerable opposition from other women and some officers. By the Spring of 1862, Wittenmyer had received a free federal government pass (presented by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and signed by President Lincoln) that allowed her to travel without restriction "on all rivers and railroads across the theater of war."
African American women, both contrabands and free blacks, composed a significant group at City Point. When slaves began to leave their owners and take up residence behind Union lines, the military designated them "contraband of war" (an appellation soon shortened to "contraband"), thus negating Southerners' claims of ownership. The African Americans at City Point often brought their families, taking advantage of freedom, new opportunities, and the chance to reconnect with friends and relatives. Many former slaves hoped to work their way north and welcomed their first-ever paychecks, $25 a month, from the government for such jobs as laundresses.
Harriet Jackson, a freed slave who had been the childhood nurse of Confederate general Fitzhugh Lee, found employment as chief cook on the steamer Prince Albert. From her years on a plantation, Jackson recognized one of the Confederate prisoners, Lucien Hall. Knowing the army would fire her if anyone saw her helping an enemy soldier, she contemplated his desperate condition and offered him coffee, bread, and "a large slice of beefsteak" before he headed north to Washington, D.C., with the other prisoners. Hall thought enough of his "friend of the Kitchen" to record her name in his diary on 12 April 1865.
African American women also worked as housekeepers for some of the white Northern women in residence at City Point. Some of the affluent officers' wives were talented in planning menus and other household maintenance, but had no interest in actually cooking, so former household slaves found a ready market for their domestic skills. One woman known only as "Aunty" Miranda worked for Septima M. Collis and her husband General Charles H.T. Collis. Another former slave, Hannah, worked for three women - Adelaide Smith, the state relief agent from New York, and two other agents from New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Friends and relatives of soldiers streamed into City point to nurse men back to health - or to accompany a body home for proper burial. On 26 August 1864, a Mrs. Dod, of Philadelphia, arrived with the hope of helping her dying son, Charles. "He was a splendid looking officer," remembered his nurse, Cornelia Hancock, "and died a Christian death." Women who managed to reach the hospital only to find that their loved ones had died and been buried elsewhere requested the assistance of state agents in locating and retrieving the remains.
Female curiosity-seekers seemed unaware of the fighting and dying taking place only a few miles from where they were enjoying such social nicetiesas late-evening balls, Sylvanus Cadwallader, a correspondent for the Chicago Times with Grant at City Point, complained that "swarms of civilians filled up the narrow avenues, plied everybody with ridiculous questions, and wandered around at nearly all hours." Such visitors, who seemed to view the war as a form of entertainment, caused much confusion at City Point as they invaded the privacy of mess hall and tent, poked their heads everywhere, asked questions of people who needed privacy, meandered through the wards while clad in silk dresses, and stepped in front of busy wagons and ambulances. The nurses resented such visitors, who sometimes dared to order mediacl personnel around while peering with scorn and disdain at the wounded or dying soldiers. Nurse Sarah Palmer was proud that her hands were "not afraid to touch the dirty blouse of a wounded soldier" and was disgusted with visiting women who "trailed costly silks and laces in the dry dust, when the help for which many died even, could not be given from their hands."
A small group of women at City Point played an active military role. Vivandieres, women who served with active regiments of the Union army, made their home in the saddle or in a tent, working as liaisons with the Sanitary and Christian Commissions, encouraging the men, and caring for the wounded in the field. Soldiers were devoted to vivandieres, and nurses and matrons respected their power and status. City Point knew such vivandieres as Annie Etheridge, with the Second, Third, and Fifth Michigan Regiments, and Bridget Divers, of the First Michigan Cavalry. When General Grant periodically forbade their presence at the front, Etheridge worked on the transports, and Divers took up residence as a housekeeper for nurse Cornelia Hancock. At least one soldier at City Point is known to have been a woman in disguise - Charlotte Anderson, of Cleveland, Ohio. She served with the 60th Ohio Infabtry as Charley Anderson until 18 January 1865, when she was discovered to be a female at City point, interviewed by Provost Marshal General Marsena Rudolph Patrick, and returned home four days later.
The military's attitudes toward women were restrictive, indifferent, and occasionally hostile. Some officers and soldiers considered women an imposition, too delicate for military life, and they thought that the nurses offered a direct challenge to the authority of the surgeons and officers in command. In the face of so much carnage and death, nurses had to remind themselves that they had come to the front "to work, not to wonder or weep," in the words of Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women, who also wrote a book about her work as a Civil war nurse, Hospital Sketches.
Despite grudging male opposition, women assumed positions of power and responsibility at City Point. They requisitioned, organized, and managed supplies for the wards. Wartime experiences encouraged women at City Point to hold their ground when challenged in the ward and in other areas. Adelaide Smith found herself in a difficult situation when she lost her pass, making her residence in City Point illegal. Three medical officers from headquarters - who were "slightly under the influence of liquor," as she recalled - visited her one evening. One of the men pestered her about the missing pass. Tired and in the midst of paperwork, Smith showed them the tent flap when "Taps" sounded. The trio left "in great indignation," and Smith feared they would report her for the missing pass and force her to leave City Point. Through a friend, Dr. Hettie Painter, Smith contacted General Grant's headquarters. Painter was a New Jersey state agent and, in Smith's opinion, "a living example of the usefulness of a lady in the army." The next time the harassing physician pressured for her pass, Smith produced one signed by Grant himself. Outranked and outmaneuvered, the doctor found himself the topic of unflattering camp gossip.
A year spent at city point took its toll on all of the camp's inhabitants. Everyday life so near the front was restricted and stressful. Women like Sarah Palmer grew "tired of noise; tired of the tongues which talk, talk, talk, talk at the supper-table ... tired of the Virginia mud; tired of trying to be happy; and tired of everything." "I wish Gen. Lee would surrender," she lamented on 5 March 1865, "and I could go home and get over being tired." Mental and physical exhaustion, combined with loss of privacy and an unending workday, wore the women out. "I would like this cruel war to get over," nurse Cornelia Hancock confessed wearily, "then I could come home."
Life at City Point was far from quiet. The sound of trains and the rumble of wagons coming in from the front, combined with noise from the waterfront, made the camp a cacophonous place. The women especially dreaded the sound of cannons, for it signaled that hostilities were raging nearby and that wounded men would soon arrive at the hospital. "This country is alive with cannon," wrote Cornelia Hancock to her mother on 15 August 1864. "You can hear them firing everywhere round." The absence of cannon fire was equally disturbing, since silence could be the precursor to renewed attack or incoming wounded. Most women made the most of quiet times. Some rode horses, took boat rides, or wrote letters; others tended flower and vegetable gardens and passed the time with card games and chess.
Sophronia Bucklin found it difficult to adjust to the horror of death. She felt at first that she could not sleep, since her "brain seemed on fire; [with] the groans of suffering men echoing on all sides." For many women, sleep proved elusive. It was not until they could ignore the suffering around them that they could rest. Anna Holstein, a nurse for the army of the Potomac, found it embarrassing and shocking that she could step inside her tent and block out the cries and groans of the wounded lying nearby. Other women found the ability to sleep amid camp and battle noises was a blessing, since without rest they would be unable to work. "I work all day long," Cornelia Hancock reported to her mother, "and at night I fall right down and sleep."
When confronted with a distraught soldier, women offered consoling words of encouragement. Their presence provided a reminder of home and family, and a kind voice telling a story or singing a song could be calming in the midst of dislocation and despair. Julia Wheelock noted that the very presence of women was "cheering to the soldier. A kind, cheerful look, a smile of recognition, one word of encouragement, enables him to bear his suffering more bravely."
During their stay at City point, some affluent women and many of the officers' wives and daughters chose to avoid the inured soldiers. They preferred the protocol and pleasures of the elite establishment, dining with officers, visiting one another, hosting parties and kettledrums (informal gatherings at which they served light refreshments), and dancing in the evening hours while the military bands played for them. During the day, they rode sidesaddle around City Point.
Riding in the proper attire, astride a well-groomed horse with a handsome escort, these women flaunted their equestrian skills and social position. Sories of women who borrowed and officers' horse, and then could not control it, were a rich source of gossip for all at City Point. Jokes about fast trips (back to the barn) or rapid dismounts (over the horse's head) were always in demand, as was gossip about who had a sidesaddle and how smart they looked when riding. Even relief agent Adelaide Smith borrowed a horse from General Charles S. Russell's headquarters and "found the animal quite unmanageable." "He at once started for a run," Smith recalled, and she "barely managed to hang on." The horse galloped past General Grant's tent, jumped over a pile of logs, then stopped abruptly in front of Russell's tent. "General, I didn't come to see you because I wanted to," Smith gasped, "but because I couldn't help it."
Confederate raids were a constant threat. Officers worried about getting their wives to a safe boat when Confederate vessels appeared in the river. On 9 August 1864, a blast rocked City point when the ordnance barge exploded. Colonel Theodore Lyman, stationed eight miles away with General George G. Meade near Petersburg, heard "a noise, like a quick, distant clap of thunder." Visitors to Grant's headquarters reported that "it perfectly rained shells, shot, bullets, [and] pieces of timber." Although many ex-slaves (mostly wharf workers) and soldiers were killed, only one woman sustained an injury. A spent ball struck Elmina Spencer, of Oswego, New York, who was at City Point with her husband, a surgeon attached to the 114th New York Infantry, and was working with the New York state Relief Agency. The injury temporarily paralyzed her legs and permanently damaged the sciatic nerve.
Occasionally, women were able to leave camp and enjoy a day off. On one such foray in 1864, a young Englishwoman named Annie Bain, Adelaide Smith, and two officers ate Thanksgiving dinner on a commissary barge anchored opposite Dutch Gap, a short distance to the northwest of City Point. Suddenly under fire from the other side of the James River, Smith and Bain, concerned with propriety, vowed they would risk the shells and drown trying to return to City point rather than stay all night in a strange camp and risk "even an appearance of evil." The two adventurous women survived the ordeal.
Together Smith and Bain also managed to arrange the only wedding that took place at City point during the year of occupation. Bain, who was engaged to captain Robert C. Eden, was living at City point without a military pass. After three months at the camp, she became concerned about her impending marriage. Smith asked Bain if she would marry Eden at City Point if a wedding could be arranged. The answer was a quick "yes," so Smith set off to make arrangements. First, she contacted trustworthy friends, including Dr. Hettie Painter, nurse Mary Blackmar, and representatives from the USSC and USCC. She tried to arrange for an Episcopal minister, but settled for a Methodist who agreed to read the Episcopal service. While Hettie Painter cared for other logistics, Smith located the necessary authorities. Provost Marshal Patrick had just gone north, so Smith persuaded a Captain Beckwith to represent the government and serve as a groomsman. She found another minister willing to give the bride away.
At the designated time and location, they gathered at the Christian Commission chapel. Hannah, the former slave who worked for Smith, guarded the door to alert the bridal party of any curious strangers. Painter stepped in as the bride's surrogate mother when the clergyman who was to give her away could not attend. At exactly five o'clock, with no music to attract the soldiers, the two were married. After the service, the group retired to one of the participant's quarters for cake and a homemade bottle of wine.
After one year of constant duty, Grant forced General Robert E. Lee's hand, and Federal troops finally took Petersburg on 2 April. Richmond and the rest of the Confederacy were next. The Confederate government evacuated the capital city and Petersburg on the night of 2 and 3 April 1865, and Lee surrendered to grant at Appomattox on 9 April. With the end of the war came the closing of the union headquarters at City Point.
During their year in camp, women had managed to challenge successfully many of the barriers that held Victorian women in check. The opportunities and experiences of women working and living at City Point demonstrated their value in a war zone. After the war, the medical profession grew and with it the role of women in health care. Doctors' wives often became nurses, while some City Point nurses (like Mary Blackmar and Frances M. Nye) became doctors. Beginning in 1892, women who had worked as nurses during the war collected pension checks for $12 a month from the federal government for their service. The same year, the National Association of Army Nurses of the late War was organized, in part to "seek out and aid unfortunate and needy nurses" and assist them in procuring pensions.
Women at City Point during 1864-1865 shared many experiences. Northern women who joined the war effort faced all the stresses of the conflict. When they returned to their homes and families, they felt like strangers, unable to communicate with others who had not been directly involved in the war. Their experiences had transformed them, yet friends and neighbors expected them to be unchanged. Consequently, many returned to the South, where they could use their new skills.
Some women reflected on their wartime experiences and compiled books, including City Point's Septima Collis, Sophronia Bucklin, Julia Wheelock, Adelaide Smith, Sarah Palmer, Anna Holstein, Charlotte E. McKay, and Anne Wittenmyer. With the war over, women returned home and adjusted as well as they could. Vivandiere Annie Etheridge received the Kearney Cross for valor, married, and worked for the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C. War nurse Amanda C. Franham married and moved to Colorado, where she and her husband, Marshall Felch, searched for dinosaur bones. Ellen Osborne Harris worked in North Carolina and Virginia helping with the returning prisoners of war. Many women remained in the caregiving profession and became matrons of soldiers' homes. After the war, Helen L. Gilson of Massachusetts, who had organized the Colored Hospital Service at City point, worked in a black orphanage in Richmond. Other women, including City Point Sanitary Commission worker Mary Morris Husband, served in the Freedman's Bureau, working in the south during Reconstruction. A few, like vivandiere Bridget Divers, took off for the western territories.
Without doubt, the women who experienced life at City Point found their lives changed forever. Women like Sarah Palmer felt that "it was a nervous place," but they "endured it, rather feeling a kind of enthusiasm in the nearness to danger and death." They had devoted their lives, skills, and energies to the men who needed them, and grew wiser and more appreciative of what their country stood for as a result. In 1863, nurse Cornelia Hancock had received a note from a soldier writing for himself and his "poor wounded comrades." "You will never be forgotten by us," he promised, "for we often think of your kind acts and remember them with pleasure." The Union soldiers of City Point no doubt felt the same way.