Soldiers' Messenger Corps, gives among the very interesting facts of its history the subjoined number of applications up to December, 1865. Registered, 2,132: of these, 311 had lost the use of a limb, 83 wounded in various parts of the body, and 247 disabled by disease. Employment was furnished to 701, of whom 91 had useless limbs, 25 otherwise injured by wounds, and 106 wrecked by sickness. The Soldiers' Messenger Corps was another enterprise of great value to the unemployed soldiery. The colored soldiers more readily than others found places of employment, Mr. Walker states, because they so easily adapted themselves to whatever labor was offered them.

Reported Surgeon Dale,

The sick and wounded, through the liberality and kindness of the Trustees of the Massachusetts General Hospital, were admitted into that institution, kindly cared for, and the amount of cost remitted to the State.

The elegant mansion in Pemberton Square, belonging to our esteemed and respected fellow-citizen, R. M. Mason, Esq., was generously offered to the Government for a United-States General Hospital; Acting Assistant Surgeon W. E. Townsend, U.S.A., being in charge.

In every emergency, where official attention was rendered to the sick and wounded, I have had the cordial co-operation of the Assistant Quartermaster U.S.A., Capt. William W. McKim, and the Commissary of Subsistence, Col. E. D. Brigham, my relations with whom have always been of the most satisfactory and pleasant character. . . .

I should do injustice to my own feelings if I failed to acknowledge my indebtedness to the officers of the Relief Agency, established at 76, Kingston Street, where many of our sick and wounded soldiers have been lodged and provided with every thing necessary for their comfort, and where private beneficence has cheerfully supplied the wants of those who were unable to claim consideration either of the State or Federal Government.

We complete the record of the medical department with a few paragraphs from Gov. Andrew's address to the graduating class of the Medical School in the University of Cambridge, March 9, 1864, which present eloquently the noble service, often gratuitous, rendered by the profession :

I claim for the Commonwealth the honor of having put into the military service a medical staff, up to this day consisting, in all, of one hundred and one surgeons and one hundred and ninety-eight assistant surgeons, comprising some men of the most eminent merit, of noble patriotism, of distinguished professional acquirements and skill. To your profession, gentle men, belongs the honor of furnishing an array of proficients so numerous and

respectable; and to one of its members, in whom are united the characters of the amiable gentleman, the good physician, and the patriotic citizen, — I mean the Surgeon-General of the Commonwealth,*—and to those other eminent and most liberal-minded exemplars of your calling who have contributed to the State, in the capacity of a Board of Examiners,† their invaluable service,- to them belongs the credit of the selection. And, besides the three hundred members of the medical staff of our regiments, more than one hundred gentlemen of the profession, including some of the most distinguished practitioners of surgery, have been sent forward from the headquarters of the Commonwealth, on notice from the Department of War, to repair to the battle-ground after some of our severest actions. They obeyed our summons without hesitation or delay, and gave their efforts and their skill while the pressing character of a grave exigency continued to need them, receiving no reward but that priceless compensation, the thought of a good man's duty nobly done.

Eight gentlemen of those who entered the service from this Commonwealth, commissioned on our regimental staffs, have yielded up their lives, victims to disease, exposure, and over-toil. To one of them, who was among the earliest in the spring of 1861 to offer himself to the work, I must allude by name. I can never forget the impression his original offer of service, made in person, produced on my own mind. Of mature age, having passed the time when exposure to life in the army could often be expected, of ripe and large experience in some of the most difficult and the most intellectual duties of the profession, the possessor of a fame permanent and wide, a man of great ability and of large acquirements, Dr. Luther V Bell came out at once from the retirement and comparative leisure his former labors had richly earned. With youthful ardor, but with the grave and weighty sense of a thoughtful, matured, and philosophic mind, he proposed for himself the hardest and most active service; pointed to his younger brethren the path of duty and honor, and led the way. In camp, on the march, in hospital, and on the field, he was alike a model of earnest fidelity, of accomplished ability, of modest patience, and of that subordination of self to duty which renders a great man entirely great. In many instances, our surgeons have suffered the hardships of prisoners of war; the wounded and dying been deprived their aid; and five of our own medical staff, falling upon the battle-field, have breathed their last breath by the side of those they had come to rescue or relieve. Thus eight by diseases incident to the

* Dr. William J. Dale.

The members of the Medical Commission, from the time of its constitution in April, 1861, as a Board of Examiners of Candidates for Appointment as Surgeons and Assistant Surgeons of the Massachusetts Volunteer Regiments, to this date, are as follows: Dr. James Jackson (resigned); Dr. George Hayward (died); Dr. S. D. Townsend; Dr. John Ware (resigned); Dr. Samuel G. Howe (resigned); Dr. J. Mason Warren; Dr. Samuel Cabot, jun.; Dr. Richard M. Hodges; Dr. George H. Lyman (resigned); Dr. George H. Gay; Dr. William J. Dale; Dr. John C. Dalton (died); Dr. Robert W. Hooper; Dr. Samuel L. Abbot.

exposures of military employment, and five by the perils of battle, thirteen medical officers from our own Commonwealth, during these three years of war, have laid down their lives, giving to their country and to mankind the last pledge of patriotism, valor, and conscientious devotion to the behests of duty. Others, not a few, broken in health, disabled for such exacting labors, responsibilities, and exposures, have been relieved in season to permit their return in civil life to less perilous spheres of usefulness.

I must not omit to mention that three of our staff-surgeons have been relieved to accept positions more exclusively military. One is a major of cavalry; another is a captain; and the third † accepted a lieutenancy of cavalry, only to die by an accidental injury received in the line of his duty before he reached the field. Another Massachusetts physician, who had passed through the war of the Crimea as a surgeon of Omar Pacha, entered the First Regiment of Massachusetts Infantry Volunteers as a captain; afterwards commanded the Thirty-fifth as its colonel; lost an arm at the battle of South Mountain; and is now in command at Norfolk, Va., as a brigadier-general of volunteers.

Two of the members of the Medical Commission of this Commonwealth have died while in its service, Dr. George Hayward and Dr. John C. Dalton. The former, an eminent surgeon, a member of the corporation of the University, was among the earliest of the medical men who came to the assistance of the State, and among the most constant, upright, and efficient.

The names of these medical officers, and the corps to which they were attached, are as follows:

Died from disease or accident, in the line of their duty. Dr. Johnson Clarke, Surgeon's Mate Third Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, detailed as Surgeon of battalion Massachusetts troops at Fortress Monroe, subsequently organized as Twenty-Ninth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Dr. Luther V Bell, Surgeon Eleventh Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, promoted to be Brigade Surgeon of Volunteers, afterwards to be Medical Director of Gen. Hooker's division. Dr. Ephraim K. Sanborn, Surgeon Thirty-first Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Dr. Ariel J. Cummings, Surgeon Forty-second Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, captured at Galveston; held as prisoner by the rebels; died in a rebel prison. fourth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. First Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Second Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. French, Fifty-fifth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.

Dr. Robert Ware, Surgeon FortyAssistant Surgeon Neil K. Gunn, Assistant Surgeon James Wightman, Assistant Surgeon Nathaniel W.

Killed by the enemy. Surgeon S. Foster Haven, jun., Fifteenth Regiment Massachu setts Volunteer Infantry. Assistant Surgeon Albert A. Kendall, Twelfth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Assistant Surgeon John C. Hill, Nineteenth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, died in hospital from wounds received on the battle-field. Assistant-Surgeon Edward H. Revere, Twentieth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. Assistant Surgeon Franklin L. Hunt, Twenty-seventh Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry; killed by a rebel assassin.

Besides these, Dr. E. G. Pierce of Holyoke, and Dr. J. H. Morse of Lawrence, employed in the service of the United States as contract-surgeons, died of disease contracted in the line of their duty; and Dr. James M. Newhall of Sutton, engaged in the same service, was drowned in a chivalrous attempt to rescue some women and children from on board a sinking transport-vessel.

Lieut. Edward B. Mason, Second Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Cavalry, formerly Assistant Surgeon First Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Heavy Artillery.

66

DRS. DALTON AND WARE.

595

Dr. Dalton's whole heart, also, was in the national cause. When, in 1862, the 'Daniel Webster" steamed into port with two hundred wounded soldiers on board, happening to be aware of their arrival, he reported to the SurgeonGeneral with cordial offers of help. "What can I do for you, doctor?" he asked. He was answered, "Jump on to the box of this ambulance, and help me see these wounded soldiers to the hospital." The venerable patriot, ready to give his heart and hand and distinguished professional aid wherever the exigency of the moment called for him, mounted the box, and rode up State Street with his charge. I have heard of much younger and inferior men, whose sense of their own personal dignity would be contented with nothing less than the leading hand in a capital operation.

Another (whose family name is eminent in divinity as he has himself made it in medicine), having given his son to his country (the noble-hearted surgeon of the Forty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment, who died at his post in North Carolina), was compelled to retire from the commission; though he cannot withdraw from the public memory, nor its honor and gratitude.

The sum devoted by the State to charities and reforms, during the year 1865, was five hundred thousand dollars.

* Dr. John Ware.

CHAPTER V.

THE CHURCHES AND THE CLERGY IN THE WAR.

Sanction and Co-operation of the Church. - The New-England Conference of the Methodist-Episcopal Church. - Prostestant-Episcopal Church. - American Unitarian Association. The General Association of the Congregational Ministry of Massachusetts. - The Massachusetts Universalist Convention. The Massachusetts Baptist Convention. Chaplains supplied by various Churches.

HILE the outbreak of rebellion found an indignant reply

of the sanctions of religion. The churches were not only inspired by the duty of maintaining the authority of a mild and legal government: they felt that the iniquity of the rebellion was a sin against God. The foundation of the rebel government, human slavery, and the war, begun solely to maintain that relic of heathen barbarism, called out the protest of an insulted Christianity. The time had long passed when any considerable number of Christians had apologized for slaveholding, and rare was the church or man who hesitated to avow that that system was a blot upon a Christian nation. When, therefore, the traitors, in their infatuation, opened war in a foolish, criminal determination to perpetuate that institution, the voice of the churches was instantly heard.

In Massachusetts, from the days of the Pilgrims, the ministers of Christ had not hesitated to apply the rules of Christian principle to great public movements. As, in the days of the Revolution, the pulpits of Massachusetts had nerved the hearts of the people, and sent their influence into the camps of the soldiery; so, in 1861, the churches resounded with appeals in behalf of loyalty, and enforced the Christian duty of the hour. Hundreds of such appeals, printed in answer to the demand of loyal hearts, are already placed in libraries which collect their historic materials of the history of the war. In every special emergency, such words were spoken; on every success, praise was given to God; and, in every dark period, Christian hope was strengthened by the sturdy faith of the ministers of God.

Connected with many of the churches were associations to