Sarah Emma Edmonds, Memoirs, 1861-1865

See me now: I’m a contraband boy in the rebel camp. My paint rubs off my hands, and one of the other negros says, “I’ll be darned if that feller ain’t turnin’ white.” I add more silver nitrate.

I write down the position of eighteen four and a half-inch rifled cannon, twenty-one forty-two pounders, eleven nine-inch Dahlgrens, thirteen ten-inch Columbiads, fourteen ten-inch mortars, and seven eight-inch siege howitzers, tuck the paper in the inner sole of my shoe. On picket duty I step into the darkness and step again and one more time, and I’m gliding through forest back to the union side.

See me now: I’m an Irish pedlar woman, I practice a brogue. In between the picket lines I find an abandoned house.

Inside the house there’s red ink that I use to line my eyes, mustard that I make into a plaster for blistering my face, and pepper I sprinkle in a handkerchief. I can cry on caprice. I pull out earthenware, clothing, quilts, add them to my wares. In the reb camp I spot a salesman I’ve seen before, loitering behind the union lines selling newspapers. He’s talking about Yankee fortifications, doesn’t notice me.

I’m a nurse—quick, remember—man or woman this time?

I’m a nurse and I hold the one hand a soldier has left. He shifts toward death’s all-shifting.

Pull back the tent flap.

Inside a warmth from the bedroll swells toward you, thin smell of bread, sweat. The tent flap in hand, you feel its grain?

Last year in Washington, McClellan and the others interviewed me, a Canadian, to determine my patriotism. A phrenology test confirmed large bumps of secretiveness and adventure-love. I was hired.

I write with ink the color of skin.

I write on paper the color of skin. See me now.

Paint rubs off my face—which tint?

Back on the union side I spot him again--the newspaper salesman, in our camp, detestable spy. I finger him.

I pass back and forth sides of the line, as a hand in a coat sleeve.

That half-mile between yank and reb lines, I live there, search for left biscuits, butter, and tea, once a whole pie still warm. I eat with one leg crossed over the other.

See me now, but really you don’t. Each time you put on your coat I’ve served dinner to reb officers, sweating under black makeup. Straighten the seam at your elbow,

Who was it held a thumb to stop a spurting artery for three hours while the soldier put his affairs in order, finally had to undo the thumb, and he died in three minutes?

If the cuff chafes your wristbone I’ve found a soldier leaning against a tree, clear-eyed, ready to die, who recognized me and I her, for women, and she asks me to bury her and keep her cover, and I do.

See me now. The wig tilts. The voice cracks. I don’t doubt doubt, I ride across the line of it.

I don’t seem to be what I am, and the seeming is your weight.

Susie King Taylor, Memoirs, 1862-1865

Two or three times a week I walk the path to Fort Wagner overlooking Charleston where outside the fort, skulls lie on the ground.

I toe them out of the path. Sharp with reflected white, eyeholes deep as falling.

Tooth-smooth, they scrutinize. Which side were they on?--some say enemy skulls, some say the skulls of our boys.

It’s hard to tell what a thing is.

Magnolia blooms’ distressed hands.

The government hasn’t paid our black soldiers yet, of course they will never pay us black women.

I carry carved water in a wooden bucket. Sun thin today, like the paper we used to wrap our secret books in on our way to reading lessons downtown Savannah in the L kitchen.

First mission--our boys leave for Edisto and the camp turns lonesome, we know some of them might never come back.

Mary Shaw and I sleep together and get nearly eaten alive by fleas. It seems, now that the men are gone, that every flea in camp has located my tent.

The wounded begin to arrive, my husband Sergeant King hurt, some hurt much worse. Colonel Higginson wounded, too. They return with their legs off, arm gone, foot off, and wounds of all kinds imaginable. They had to wade through creeks and marshes, as they were discovered by the enemy and shelled very badly. A number of the men were lost, some got fastened in the mud and had to cut off the legs of their pants, to free themselves.

Swamp for a kitchen, and all I have are some turtle eggs and a few cans of condensed milk. I’ve never worked with this, but make a turtle custard, and the men enjoy it.

I salve Sergeant King’s arms and leg and hip. A reb jumped him, he held on. Sergeant King’s hip is crumpled, but the enemy got it worse.

And the government still hasn’t paid—now Washington offers the black soldier ½ pay and the men say no, they’ll wait for full pay.

There is no ½ musket, no ½ marching.

As the wounded recover, some doze with exhaustion, like my 120 year-old great-great grandmother we would set in the sun mornings to get her moving.

Of course Mary and I will never get paid, even half.

Mary and I hang laundry on the line. It shakes off impatience.

These things should be kept in history before the people.

Our troops went inland, found a deserted town, at its furthest edge were greeted by slaves. Turned out to be not slaves but rebs in blackface. Opened fire. It’s hard to tell what a thing is, until it fires.

I climb up to the ramparts outside Fort Wagner and watch shells explode over Charleston--explosions every fifteen minutes—which light up the skulls. Some skulls that were hidden in the grass turn bright.

The week continues: Monday, Sheets, Wednesday, Mess-pan, Un-sided skulls, Saturday, Bandage-windings.

We hang sheets wet with water that were wet with blood. We will fold them crisp as duty.