"Death and the Civil War" airs on PBS

Last night I eagerly watched as American Experience debuted “Death and the Civil War,” a documentary film based on the remarkable This Republic of Suffering (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008) by Drew Gilpin Faust. My eagerness was generated in part by my personal interest in the Civil War, and in part because this past spring I had the pleasure of working with Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker Ric Burns and a wonderful production team from Steeplechase Films when they visited the MHS to work on this project. I assisted them in selecting documents and artifacts for filming and had the special opportunity of supervising the filming process in the Society’s Dowse Library. What an eye opening experience!  Seeing the care and time invested in the selection and filming, all the while knowing the MHS material only represented a small portion of the total material needed for the two hour film, left me with a deeper appreciation for those that research and create documentary films. 

So last night, I was anxious to see which MHS materials made the final cut and was thrilled to see a large number of our resources were used to tell portions of the story.  MHS materials feature prominently in two segments of the film. In the segment “Dying” a letter written by Wilder Dwight to his mother Elizabeth Dwight (available on our website), begun "in the saddle” at the opening of the Battle of Antietam and finished as he lay mortally wounded on that field, is read aloud while the letter and a photograph of Dwight are featured on screen.

Later in the film the story of Nathaniel Bowditch, a Massachusetts soldier mortally wounded at the Battle of Kelly’s Ford, and his father Henry Bowditch, who championed improvement of the ambulance service available to soldiers after the death of his son, weaves through the segment “Naming.”  This segment includes images of both Nathaniel and Henry Bowditch, a panning shot featuring a number of personal items belonging to “Nat” from the Bowditch Cabinet, as well as an assortment of items – the “terrible telegram” and the annotated map of Virginia showing the site of the younger Bowditch’s death, among others -- contained in the Nathaniel Bowditch Memorial Collection.   

If you missed the episode, look for it to re-air on PBS or watch it online. You will be glad that you did. 

Louisa Catherine Adams: A Father Reflects on the Death of his Infant Daughter

On 15 September 1812, John Quincy Adams (JQA), then serving in St. Petersburg as U.S. minister plenipotentiary to Russia, and his wife, Louisa Catherine Adams (LCA), suffered a huge loss—the death of their only daughter. Thirteen-month-old Louisa Catherine, named for her mother, had been unwell for weeks. She experienced extreme discomfort due to teething (in his diary, JQA stated she was cutting seven teeth at the same time), had dysentery, and was feverish. JQA sought out the best medical treatment for his daughter in St. Petersburg. The standard medical practices at this time, bleeding and the deliberate creation of boils, were based on the assumption that infections and toxins could be removed from a person by drawing out bodily fluids; however, rather than providing relief, these techniques usually only weakened the patient further.

JQA’s long diary entry for 15 September 1812 includes this passage: 

The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away— Blessed be the name of the Lord— At twenty-five minutes past one this morning, expired my daughter, Louisa Catherine, as lovely an infant as ever breathed the air of Heaven— … Her last moments were distressing to me and to her mother, beyond expression. (From John Quincy Adams diary 28, 1809–1813, page 413) 

The weeks leading up to young Louisa Catherine’s death were stressful for JQA. Following the advice of two doctors, Dr. Galloway and Dr. Simpson, who thought the infant might benefit from fresh country air, JQA made arrangements for his family to move to Ochta, about 7 miles northeast of St. Petersburg. JQA’s diary indicates that he traveled back and forth between the two locations, sometimes making more than one trip each day. Both doctors made frequent visits to check on the young patient. On 8 September, Dr. Galloway “ordered a blister between the shoulders” of young Louisa Catherine. Then, both doctors recommend that JQA and LCA bring their daughter back to St. Petersburg, which they did on 9 September. Two days later, on 11 September, Dr. Gibbs, a surgeon, lanced one of the infant’s gums. 

Understandably, JQA was distracted as he did his best to fulfill his duties during this time.  On 10 September 1812 JQA wrote: 

The agitation of mind occasioned by her illness, is so great that I have neither time for the ordinary occupations of my life, nor recollection of its common incidents. I have had in the course of the few last days several visitors, but have hardly the remembrance of their names, or of the occasions of their visits. (From John Quincy Adams diary 28, 1809 -1813, page 411)

JQA’s diary indicates the toll the baby’s final days took on the whole family. On the afternoon of 13 September, an exhausted and distressed LCA temporarily left her daughter’s side and went into a different chamber. JQA describes how he alternated between checking on his wife and checking on his daughter, who at that time was under the care of a nurse and LCA's sister, Catherine Johnson. According to JQA’s diary, 14 September was a particularly grueling day for all involved. LCA returned to her daughter’s side, but by evening all hope was gone. Catherine fainted (JQA states that for forty-eight hours she “had scarcely for an instant moved from the side of the Cradle”) and LCA “was suffering little less than her Child.” Young Louisa Catherine died early on the morning of 15 September.  

After a funeral service in St. Petersburg’s English Factory Church on 17 September 1812, the infant Louisa Catherine Adams was buried at the Lutheran Cemetery on nearby Vasilevsky Island. Two hundred years later she is still remembered—on 15 September 2012 the Consul General of the United States of America in St. Petersburg will host a ceremony in that cemetery to unveil a new memorial stone for Louisa Catherine Adams.

For some of JQA's wife's writings about the death of her daughter, please read, Louisa Catherine Adams: A Mother Reflects on the Death of her Infant Daughter.

Louisa Catherine Adams: A Mother Reflects on the Death of her Infant Daughter

Louisa Catherine Adams’ (LCA) only known writings about the period of her daughter and namesake’s final illness in St. Petersburg are eloquent in their brevity and starkness. In a second, shorter version of “The Adventures of a Nobody,” a memoir begun in 1840 and composed largely in diary form, LCA wrote: 

3 [30] August [1812]: Went into the Country with my sick Child.

9 [September]: Took my Babe back to the City in Convulsions Dr  Simpson and Galloway both attend the Babe

12 [15 September]: My Child gone to heaven

To assuage her grief, LCA on 22 October began to keep her Russian diary. “I have procured this Book with a view to write my thoughts and if possible to avoid dwelling on the secret and bitter reproaches of my heart for my conduct as it regarded my lost adored Child whose death was surely occasion’d by procrastination,” LCA explained, needlessly blaming herself for the loss. In her despair LCA wrote on 5 Dec. that her daughter’s death was a blow that left her “only desirous of mingling my ashes with those of my lovely Babe.”

In a 30 January 1813 letter, Abigail Adams, writing as one who early in life “had also been “call’d to taste the bitter cup”—a reference to the loss of her own daughter, Susanna, in infancy—offered her daughter-in-law consolation. When LCA replied on 4 April, her self-reproach was again evident: “I have the horrid idea that I lost my darling owing to a fall which I had with her in my arms in, which I did not percieve that she had met with the slightest injury but which is said to have been the cause of her death.” By 14 August of that year LCA could report relief of a kind. “What wonderful changes have taken place since I last took up this book even my health and spirits are so much amended that I scarcely know myself,” she wrote in her diary, and she thanked “the Almighty disposer of events for his great mercy in having raised me up and comforted me.” She would “ever put my trust in him for in heaven alone can I find consolation and I look forward with the hope of soon being reunited to my Angelic Babe—”

But on 7 February 1814 she wrote, with her usual forthrightness, “Mr Adams gave me Dr [Benjamin] Rush’s work upon the deseases of the Mind to read. . . . I confess it produced a very powerful effect upon my feelings and occasion’d sensations of a very painful kind since the loss of my darling babe I am sensible of a great change in my character and I often involuntarily question myself as to the perfect sanity of my mind.”

LCA gradually regained her confidence, showing remarkable resourcefulness and nerve on her 2,000-mile journey from St. Petersburg to Paris, 12 February to 23 March 1815, to meet her husband, John Quincy Adams (JQA), who had been negotiating the Treaty of Ghent. In “Narrative of a Journey from Russia to France” she reflected on her bitter experience in Russia: “In Petersburg for five long years I had lived a Stranger to all, but the kind regards of the Imperial family; and I quitted its gaudy loneliness without a sigh, except that which was wafted to the tomb of my lovely Babe— To that spot my heart yet wanders with a chastened grief, that looks to hopes above—”

An edition of Louisa Catherine Adams’ account of her demanding and eventful life—her childhood, courtship and marriage, and the years with JQA on his diplomatic missions to Prussia and Russia and during his periods of service as Massachusetts and U.S. senator, U.S. secretary of state, and U.S. congressman—has been prepared at the Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, and will shortly be published: Diary and Autobiographical Writings of Louisa Catherine Adams, ed. Judith S. Graham, Beth Luey, Margaret A. Hogan, and C. James Taylor, 2 vols., The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013.

For JQA's description of the death of his daughter, please read, Louisa Catherine Adams: A Father Reflects on the Death of his Infant Daughter.

Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch, Post 16

The following excerpt is from the diary of Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch.

Friday, Sept. 19^th, 1862

The war, - whose burden has lain on our spirits through this anxious period, will find more enduring records than this. The retreat of McClellan from the peninsula, & the battles near Washington, - the irruption of the rebel army into Maryland, have followed each other in sad succession. We have been saddened, besides other losses of more distinguished officers, to hear of that of Lieut. W. R. Porter, a young man of this town, known to us personally.

Come back to the Beehive in October to read Bulfinch's thoughts on the Emancipation Proclamation and the upcoming gubernatorial election.