Cordelia Harvey by Bob Kann

Author:Bob Kann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society Press
Published: 2013-04-20T04:00:00+00:00

After Cordelia left President Lincoln’s office, she read what he had written. It was a short note to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. It said, “Admit Mrs. Harvey at once; listen to what she says; she is a lady of intelligence and talks sense.” It was signed “A. Lincoln.”

Cordelia immediately went to see Secretary Stanton. After she explained what she wanted, Stanton said he had sent the surgeon-general to New Orleans to examine all the hospitals. Nothing could be done until the surgeon-general returned.

What Stanton told her wasn’t entirely true. Stanton was stalling because he didn’t want there to be northern hospitals. Like President Lincoln, he believed soldiers would desert from the army after they recovered. Cordelia returned to President Lincoln and told him about her conversation with Stanton. She ended by saying, “I have nowhere else to go but to you.”

President Lincoln knew that Secretary Stanton did not want to give in to Cordelia. He said that he would speak with Stanton himself and asked Cordelia to return the next morning. Cordelia got up to leave, but President Lincoln told her not to hurry away. Cordelia wrote that he “spoke kindly of my work, said he fully appreciated the spirit in which I came. He smiled pleasantly and bade me good evening.”

As Cordelia left the White House, she saw a congressman she knew. She told him about meeting with President Lincoln.

He asked, “How long are you going to stay here?”

“Until I get what I came after,” she replied.

When Cordelia returned to the White House the next morning, she could tell that the president was in a bad mood. He waited for her to speak, but she didn’t. Finally, he asked, “Have you nothing to say?”

“Nothing, Mr. President, until I hear your decision. Have you decided?”

“No, but I believe this idea of northern hospitals is a great humbug, and I am tired of hearing about it.”

Cordelia replied that she did not want to add any more problems to the many he already had. “I would rather have stayed at home,” she said.

With a kind of half smile, he said, “I wish you had.”

But Cordelia was there for a cause she believed in. She said, “I came to plead for the lives of those who were the first to hasten to the support of this government, who helped to place you where you are, because they trusted you… . I know that a majority of them would live and be strong men again if they could be sent north. I say I know, because when I was sick among them last spring, surrounded by every comfort, with the best of care, and determined to get well, I grew weaker day by day, until my friends brought me north. I recovered entirely, simply by breathing northern air.”

Lincoln snapped, “You assume to know more than I do.”

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