(A.) We were "stampeded" last night. A train arrived, and the ladies were at the kitchen ashore getting tea ready. Dr. Ware went to the cars, as usual, and two or three wounded men were brought down on litters, to be put on the Elm City. The doctor coming along with them said, "These men were shot on the train, just before arriving here." After they had been taken on board, M. said to me, "Do you know they are getting ready to take in the gang-plank, and are firing up on the Elm City?" I went on board; could not see the captain; the engineer was having the fires pushed, and said the orders had come from Colonel Ingalls, commander of the post, to fire up and get away as quickly as possible. All our boats had received the same. I went out, and with difficulty got the ladies to go on board. M., who had gone up to head-quarters to see if there was no mistake, came back with the message, "Drop down below the gunboats, at once, and look out to keep clear of vessels floating down on fire." We of course obeyed orders, knowing nothing of the reasons for them, and in half an hour all our boats were anchored a mile below, with steam up. As soon as this was accomplished, I took a yawl, and pulled back to the railroad landing, where I found everything quiet, Ware and H. taking care of the sick who had been left in the tents. Walking on to the post head-quarters, I found all the camp-followers, teamsters, sutlers, railroad and barge men, organizing in companies, and arms and ammunition serving to them. M., who had volunteered for this duty, had a company. I found the Provost-Marshal, who told me that the enemy had suddenly appeared, apparently in considerable force, about three miles from here, simultaneously on the river and the railroad. A wagon train had been captured, two or three schooners burned, the telegraph cut. It was presumed that it was an expedition designed to play havoc with this post, where there is an immense amount of army supplies of all kinds, with a force absurdly inadequate to its protection,—in fact, but a weak regiment of infantry, and a weaker one of horse; but some artillery was landing, and before daylight they would have two capital batteries of Napoleons ready, and were gathering supports. I got permission to send for the Small, which is short enough to be quickly handled at the landing, and to put on her the sickest of the men who had been brought down during the day to be sent to the post hospital, and who were still in tents near the landing, as it seemed to me they would suffer less disturbance afloat than ashore in case the attack was made. It was daybreak before I got them at anchor below again. At sunrise I was allowed to bring all the boats up; but as there was a standing order against the shipment of sick at this time, (in order to reserve the transports for the wounded,) we kept our patients on the Small for some days, the post surgeon not being able to receive them. The women were greatly annoyed and indignant at being sent, with the boats, out of harm's way.

(N.) We sat on deck ... watching the fleet of transports, hospital-ships, and supply-boats hurrying after and past us, and the signaling from gunboat to gunboat, which seemed done by a lantern at the end of a long pole, dashed up and down through the darkness. It was midnight when a messenger came in the yawl, with orders to bring the Small back to the railroad. All the way up we worked, getting ready for as many sick as could be taken on her. Forty-five beds filled every corner of the boat, and beef-tea, punch, and gruel were ready by the time we reached the railroad-bridge. Dr. Ware and H., who had not run away, had selected the sickest of the men in the tents, and had them all ready to put on board, and with the help of the Spaulding's nurses, whom we called for on the way up, we took them on board that night, and the next day and the next we had them in our little boat,—some of the sickest men I ever saw,—crazy and noisy, soaked, body and mind, with swamp-poison, and in a sort of delirious remembrance of the days before the fever came,—days of mortal chill and hunger,—screaming for food, for something "hot," for "lucifer matches" even. Two of these men died on board, not able to give their names.

The fright about the raid having somewhat subsided, we settled down again, as we supposed, into our daily routine of fitting up transports, and of receiving and feeding the sick who arrive on the trains. All sorts of messages and people are constantly coming to our tent;—surgeons from the front, to have requisitions filled for lemons and onions,^[8] beef-stock, and brandy; orderlies, for officers sick, and just arrived to take the mail-boat, needing refreshment; and miscellaneous crowds, who have constantly to be instructed that we are not free sutlers. Captain —— had kindly provided a wall tent for our use, and Dr. Ware, in thought for our comfort, has it pitched close by our kitchen, and the sickest men arriving by train are put into it, and we are able to care for them without hurrying across the railroad track with our hot gruel. Here I found myself the other day, spoon-feeding, with a napkin under his chin, the pleasant chaplain who came down on the Daniel Webster to join his regiment on the first day we started as a hospital company. His turn had arrived, poor fellow, and he came back to us with a blister on each temple, and symptoms of typhoid. We had in the tent at the same time five or six officers, all sick. Our little comforts, fans, slippers, mosquito-netting, napkins, cologne, are great comforts to the sick men, though to be sure one man did say to me to-day, when I put a few drops from my bottle, "GegenÜber dem Julichs Platz," on his handkerchief, "O my! how bad that smells! I don't mind it much, but perhaps you have spilt some of that medicine you have in your bottle!" My cologne of cologne!

The St. Mark arrived about this time, a splendid clipper East-Indiaman, and, after her, the Euterpe, both first-class new sailing vessels, entirely reconstructed interiorly by the Commission, as model hospital-ships, and having their own corps of surgeons, dressers, &c. Drawing too much water to come up the Pamunkey, they anchored at Yorktown, and the sick were taken down on steamboats to them, and they made the voyage round to New York in tow of steamers.

(A.) June 27th, 1862. I was intending to go down to the St. Mark last night. We had had some rumors the day before that Stonewall Jackson was making a dash to get in our rear, and take this post. I did not mind them, but about three o'clock, P. M., yesterday, Captain S., the active executive here, came to me, and said, privately: "Get away from this as soon as you can; the enemy is here again; our pickets are driven in, and I think we shall be obliged, within three hours, to burn everything that can't be run down the river. Give what help you conveniently can to the vessels on the river as you go down, but don't stop this side of Cumberland." I called in our men and women, found that our machinery, which had been repairing for two days, was in such disorder that it could only be used at all by the exertions of three men supplying the place of certain fractured iron, with their arms; and then but very slowly, and with great care, of course. We were in no condition to help anybody else. I pushed off, however, in quarter of an hour, taking the Wissahickon and Elizabeth in company. One or two boats started before us, and several immediately after. As we passed down, we found the gunboats with their boarding-nettings up, and all ready for action, and the skirt of wood along the shore of the White House grounds cut away to allow a sweep to their guns. We left our consorts at Cumberland to take forage vessels in tow down, and went on slowly to West Point, where we anchored. Soon after noon to-day the Captain reported his machinery repaired, and we started to return to White House. The river was full of vessels coming down. We could learn nothing from them except that everything had been ordered to "clear out." We got here about sunset, and found almost everything gone,—a remarkably orderly and successful removal of a vast amount of stores. Among what remained, whiskey and hay were distributed, and everything was ready for firing.

Stonewall Jackson had not come down upon us as we had supposed, but our right wing had been turned, and the enemy was hourly expected to be pushing into White House. The authorities at "Head-quarters" were by no means as much surprised as we were at it all. Every preparation had been quietly making for several days for the arrival of the enemy, and the evacuation and repossession were effected in as neat and complete a manner as if the affair had been arranged between the parties by the penny-post.

The Knickerbocker, and other of our boats, just as they were, were used as retreats for railroad-men and straggling Northerners, exclusive of sutlers. The government boats, with the Commodore, Daniel Webster, &c., were ordered up, and the fifteen hundred sick men from the shore hospital put on board. The Sisters of Charity, who had been for a few days occupying the White House, were distributed through the different government craft, glad now to do what they could; and so, all in good order, the hospital ships, one after another, departed, the Wilson Small lingering as long as possible, till the telegraph wires had been cut, and the enemy announced by mounted messenger to be at "Tunstall's," worried constantly in his advance by Stoneman with his cavalry, till all should have got safely off, when he would fall back towards Williamsburg, and the rebels would walk into our deserted places.

So we came away,—watching the moving off of the last transports and barges, and of the Canonicus, head-quarters' boat, with Colonel Ingalls and Captain Sawtelle and General Casey and staff.... But by far the most interesting incident was the spontaneous movement of the slaves, who, when it was known that the Yankees were running away, came flocking from all the country about, bringing their little movables, frying-pans and old hats and bundles, to the river-side. There was no more appearance of anxiety or excitement among them than among the soldiers themselves. Fortunately there was plenty of deck-room for them on the forage boats, one of which, as we passed it, seemed filled with women only, in their gayest dresses and brightest turbans, like a whole load of tulips for a horticultural show. The black smoke began to rise from the burning stores left on shore, and now and then the roar of the battle came to us, but they were quietly nursing their children and singing hymns. The day of their deliverance had come, and they accepted this most wonderful change in absolute placidity.

All night we sat on the deck of the Small, slowly moving away, watching the constantly increasing cloud, and the fire-flashes over the trees toward White House; watching the fading out of what had been to us, through these strange weeks, a sort of home where we had all worked together and been happy,—a place which is sacred to some of us now, from its intense, living remembrances, and for the hallowing of them all by the memory of one who through months of death and darkness lived and worked in self-abnegation,—lived in, and for, the sufferings of others, and finally gave himself a sacrifice for them.