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Cordelia Harvey: The Wisconsin Angel

>> Please join me and the Wisconsin Historical Museum in welcoming today’s History Sandwiched In presenter Bob Kann and his program, “Cordelia Harvey: The Wisconsin Angel.” [APPLAUSE] >>

Bob Kann: Thank you. This presentation is sponsored in part with funding from the Madison Arts Commission with further assistance from the Wisconsin Arts Board and the Wisconsin Assisted Living Association. Thank all those organizations and, of course, the Historical Society for bringing me here today and giving me the luxury of writing books for them.

Today, I’d like to take you back to the time of the Civil War. And to make this experience most meaningful for you, I’d like you to imagine a teenage boy, roughly between the ages of 10 and 18. If you’re male, it could be you at that younger age or if you’re male or female, it could be your son, grandson, niece, nephew, a boy you know. Somebody that you care about very much. But let’s put him back in the time of the Civil War. It was estimated there were a hundred thousand boys on both sides fighting in the Civil War under 18 years of age.

Now we’re going to take this boy you care about and you’re going to put him inside of a hospital. It could be in St. Louis. It could be in Helena, Arkansas. It could be in Memphis, Tennessee. It could be in New Orleans. He’s a northern soldier, but he was somehow placed in a southern hospital. Maybe he’s there because he’s sick, maybe he was dehydrated. Maybe he was wounded. Maybe he had food poisoning. Now, he doesn’t have you or people who love him to provide him comfort or care because this hospital is maybe 500 miles, or 1,000 miles from Wisconsin. The room he’s in, imagine there are maybe another hundred soldiers in the room. Some his age, some up to 60 years of age. There might be one doctor taking care of all these sick soldiers. There might be a couple of nurses, but the nurses would simply be fellow soldiers who were healthy enough at least to try and help some of the other soldiers who were in less dire straits than they were. No medical training whatsoever for these nurses.

Now don’t imagine a hospital like the ones we have in Madison here today. Imagine a hospital 150 years ago. It might have been an old school building that somehow was converted into a military hospital. Terrible, terrible ventilation. Now, the first thing that would strike you in this hospital would be the smells. Imagine the most putrid smell you could conjure up in your life’s experience. Before these soldiers even went to the hospital it was said that you could smell the soldiers before you could hear them or see them marching. They probably came to war carrying one uniform made of wool. Maybe they washed it once in a while, maybe they didn’t. The men themselves probably didn’t wash more than once a week, if that. Washing wasn’t necessarily considered especially hygienic back then. Then you take all these smelling human beings and you put them in these narrow quarters with poor circulation. You add chamber pots that were emptied erratically. Latrines that were very near the hospital space. Cots next to each other, one after another, after another.

That was the scenario that your young man is placed in. So, what does this poor kid want? Well, if he was a kid from Wisconsin during this time period, there’s a very good chance between roughly 1862 and 1865, one of the things he wanted very much was Cordelia Harvey. Because Cordelia Harvey would be the mother he wished would take care of him. She would provide him kind words and comfort. She would bring him good things to eat, good things to drink. She would read to him. She would write letters for him. If necessary, she would lobby the medical officials in the hospital to provide better care for this young man. If necessary, she would lobby the medical officials, the military officials and the governor of Wisconsin to get him discharged if it was unlikely that he would ever be healthy enough to return to the battlefield after he was taken care of.

And it was for competent and compassionate care like this for thousands and thousands of soldiers from Wisconsin that Cordelia Harvey was known as the Wisconsin Angel during the Civil War. And what I’d like to do today is simply share with you at least parts of Cordelia’s story. Now Cordelia was born in upstate New York, Bear Center, New York, in 1824. Around 1840 she and her family moved to Southport, Wisconsin, what’s now known as Kenosha. And in 1841, as a 17-year-old, Cordelia became a school teacher.

Now I’m trying to imagine 17-year-olds I know being school teachers these days, but it was not uncommon back then. Now I never could find a description of her classroom, but I do know that when Bob LaFollette went to elementary school in Primrose about 20 years later, there were about a hundred kids in his classroom. So let’s imagine this 17-year-old girl teaching 50-100 kids. Well, what was Cordelia like back then? We do have one account that lets us see that, in fact, she was both short of an adolescent girl being a girl at the same time she was a school teacher. It said, “At recess time, Cordelia would take off her shoes and play pull away.” That’s kind of like the game Red Rover. “Play pull away with the crowd. She could run like a deer. And be just like one of the big girls. But when school called and she got her shoes on again, she became at once the school mistress in full control.”

Well, the principal of that school was Louis Harvey. Louis Harvey had been born in East Haddam, Connecticut, in 1820, came to Southport in 1841 and he became the principal of that school where Cordelia taught and he also was a teacher. Within three years he took on additional responsibilities in the community. He became the editor of the newspaper, the postmaster. He and Cordelia married in 1847. They moved to Clinton Corners near Beloit, where he opened a general store. The following year Cordelia had a baby, Mary. Four years after that their only child, Mary, died of what was then called canker rash, what we now know of as scarlet fever.

Louis Harvey immediately got involved in politics from the time he arrived in Clinton Corners. He was elected to serve on the Wisconsin Constitutional Convention in 1847 which wrote Wisconsin’s Constitution. 1852, he was elected to be a state senator from Rock County. 1859, he was elected to be the Secretary of State of Wisconsin. He and Cordelia moved to Madison. And in 1861, he was elected to be the governor of Wisconsin.

When Governor Harvey assumed his position as governor in January of 1862, the Civil War had now been raging for about eight months. Governor Harvey immediately established himself as a friend to the soldiers. One of his first acts was to go to the state legislature and successfully lobby them to provide more funding, higher salaries for the soldiers and to take care of their families. He actively recruited young men from Wisconsin to serve in the army so that Wisconsin could meet its quota for the Union Army.

Cordelia also did her bit to support the war effort. She was the president of the Madison Ladies Aid Society, an organization similar to aid societies that were established throughout the north, women wanting to the support the war effort. So Cordelia and the women in the Ladies Aid Society they would sew uniforms for the soldiers, they would do fundraising so that soldiers could have their own sewing kits to repair or mend their clothing if it got torn. So that they would have writing supplies, envelopes, writing utensils, stamps so they could actually send messages back home.

Well, about April 1862 Governor Harvey returned to Madison after he just had been visiting some Wisconsin soldiers stationed in St. Louis, when he learned that at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee, many soldiers from Wisconsin had been killed or seriously wounded. Governor Harvey immediately organized a mission of mercy. He got some doctors, he got medical supplies and they traveled down the Mississippi River to go down to Tennessee to provide aid for those soldiers. April 10, he wrote a letter back home describing how glad he was that he had gone to Tennessee. He wrote, “Thank God for the impulse which brought me here. I am doing a good work.”

Well, two days later having completed his good work Governor Harvey was ready to return back to Madison. On a dark, stormy, rainy night, he was stepping from one boat to the next and he fell into the Tennessee River and he drowned. Louis Harvey was 42 years old. Wisconsin had lost its governor, the soldiers had lost a friend, Cordelia Harvey had lost her husband.

Well, when they learned of Governor Harvey’s drowning, they sent a telegram back to the State Capitol. And eventually it made its way to the head of the Army, Edgerton General Augustus Gaylord. Well, General Gaylord went looking for Cordelia in the capitol. He found her brother-in-law, Nathaniel Sawyer. Eventually they tracked down Cordelia who happened to be in the capitol at the time fundraising for the families of soldiers. When he found Cordelia they asked her to come with them, they didn’t explain why but Cordelia knew something was up. And she stopped them and she said, “Tell me if he is dead.” They didn’t say anything, she knew he was and she fainted.

Eventually she was roused. Eventually she went back to the family home near Clinton Corners. Before they came to Madison they moved to, depending on your point of view, either Shop-i-ere, Sho-piere or Sho-pi-ere, I’ve been corrected three times. So there seems to be controversy about how you pronounce the name of that place. In any case, that was where they lived by then. Cordelia returned to the family home, back in that difficult to pronounce place, and tried to figure out what she was going to do with her life now that her husband had died, in addition to grieving.

Well, she contemplated becoming a school teacher again, but she felt too grief stricken. She thought it would be a disservice to the children to see such a sad adult as their teacher. Well, in August of 1862 Wisconsin senator Timothy Howe was visiting her and somehow they must have been talking about this and he suggested she become Wisconsin’s, what was called, Allotment Commissioner. And this particular job was to determine what percentage of a soldier’s salary should be sent to the families. Because remember during these times, men were essentially the sole breadwinners. If none of their money was going to the families back home, the families would starve to death. So this position would determine how much of their salary would go to support the families back home.

Cordelia thought this was a good idea so Timothy Howe must have then talked to the new governor, Edward Salomon, made this proposal, but he had a different idea for Cordelia. He asked Cordelia and she agreed to become Wisconsin’s Sanitary Agent. What this meant was Cordelia was the governor’s representative in the hospitals in the state of Missouri that housed Wisconsin soldiers. Her job would be to visit the hospitals, help take care of the soldiers and make recommendations to the governor for how their condition could be improved. Cordelia agreed to do this.

In September of 1862, Cordelia traveled down the Mississippi, and she went to St. Louis. Well, what I’m going to tell you from here on in largely comes from letters Cordelia wrote back to Governor Salomon and subsequent governors. In our marvelous State Historical Society, in the records, are the actual letters that Cordelia has written. And this, in a sense, is my synthesis of Cordelia’s experiences, as well as some secondary sources that sort of filled in the gaps for me. So when Cordelia arrived in St. Louis, initially her first letter was pretty upbeat. She visited three hospitals in St. Louis, saw many Wisconsin soldiers. The conditions in the hospitals seemed pretty good, much better than what I described to you, we’ll get to those hospitals soon. The men were pretty upbeat, they were recovering.

She did get one kind of painful experience. A soldier from Oshkosh who lamented the fact that he wasn’t going to be able to go home again because he didn’t feel very well. He was dying. And he said, “Too late to do anything now.” So that was sort of a taste of things to come for Cordelia.

Well, since things looked pretty good in St. Louis, she took a boat to Cape Girardeau, I’m sure I mispronounced that too, depending on who is talking about that, about 120 miles south on the Mississippi River. And here she got her first taste of the real horrors of the war. She went to a hospital where she saw the 1st Cavalry of Wisconsin. Soldiers she had seen in Madison before they had ever gone south. Only now when she saw them after they had fought in battles, very few of them were healthy enough to even stand. She described them as looking like ghosts of their former selves. One man said to her that he was in so much pain he wished he was dead like her husband. Another said, here’s how she described it. “I have seen much pain and suffering. The sick men cry like children. Some of them are only boys and say, ‘Oh, my mother, my mother, can’t I go home Mrs. Harvey?'”

Now, I think this was a critical juncture in Cordelia’s life. How does she respond to this nightmare of a scene she’s just walked into. I read accounts of other women like Cordelia, men as well, who weren’t fighting in the battle but wanted to go to the south to help the injured and wounded soldiers. And many of them, when they actually confronted the reality of it, simply couldn’t take it and, understandably, they fled back to the north. But not Cordelia. Cordelia immediately recognized that she could be of great use there. And she wrote the governor, “I have passed through scenes that I trust will give me strength for future action. I am very well and am glad I came.”

Well, Cordelia stayed there, helped tend to the Wisconsin soldiers and before long, she returned back to Madison to report back to the governor to tell him what she had seen. She also realized while she was in Madison that she could take advantage of the opportunity of being in Madison and she could try and rally the citizens to support the war effort. So she wrote a letter which was published in the Wisconsin Daily State Journal which said, among other things, “The soldiers greatly appreciated the food you have sent. They say, ‘Oh, can’t we have a little more, it is so good.'” And then she reminded the citizens that the soldiers were fighting to save their country. She encouraged them to provide food, clothing, blankets, towels and medical supplies.

Cordelia then returned to Missouri and for the next three years, with one exception which I’ll tell you about, she spent most of her time doing everything possible to help these poor soldiers who were in dire straits. Initially, she just provided the care, but very quickly she realized that she had to lobby for those soldiers. So she realized very soon that a lot of these soldiers were never going to recover well enough to go back to the battlefield. So she began writing letters to the governor encouraging him to get them discharged.

But this was a very slow process. So she soon began lobbying the medical inspectors in charge of the hospitals to discharge the soldiers. Let them go home if they were clearly not healthy enough ever to return to battle. She also visited the Confederate soldiers who were prisoners of war, who were in even worse condition than those soldiers from Wisconsin. Again she wrote Governor Salomon asking that they be sent north to prison camps where they’ll receive better care so that they, too, could survive the war.

Well, in November she had a meeting with General Samuel Curtis, a general from Iowa who was in charge of what was called the Western Army, meaning under his command were soldiers in Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, parts of Tennessee and parts of Kentucky. And General Curtis asked Cordelia if she would not only visit soldiers in Missouri, but in all the states under his command. And he directed the quarter masters and the transportation agents to provide Cordelia with any supplies she requested for the soldiers and to take her and those supplies anywhere she wanted to go.

When I read this, I stepped back and I thought she’s only been there for two months. Why did he agree to do this? Particularly since women, by and large, were not welcome anywhere in the south when these battles were taking place or in the hospitals. Women were considered too weak, unable to deal with the pain and suffering that they would be subjected to. They were considered distractions, sexual distractions to the men. They were very, very unwelcome and there’s story after story after story about women who came down to help who were rejected by all these military and medical authorities. But not Cordelia. And I think General Curtis agreed to have her do this in part because very quickly people got it that this was an extraordinary woman. This was an incredibly compassionate human being and she was as competent as she was compassionate and she had no ego whatsoever. She would do anything to help these soldiers, and people got it very quickly and they wanted to help her do what they knew were good works. So I think General Curtis must have heard that she’s doing good works, let’s help her do even better works. But maybe not.

The other thing I got curious about was General Curtis himself. So I studied his history and I found out that six months before he met with Cordelia, his 20-year-old daughter had died of typhoid. So I’m just speculating that maybe he wanted to help Cordelia with the hope that perhaps she could save the lives of boys who might have been saved if she was not there, similar to his hope that perhaps his daughter might have survived if somehow she had received some kind of assistance that wasn’t provided for her.

Well, Cordelia took him at his word. She very soon went to a hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, where she saw 1500 soldiers in terrible, terrible health in very, very bad condition. She must have just been overwhelmed. Some of them were soldiers from Wisconsin, but many of them were not soldiers from Wisconsin. If you’re compassionate like Cordelia, you can’t go oh, I’ll take care of you you’re from Wisconsin, oh, you’re from Iowa, bye-bye. It wasn’t in her nature to do that, but how could she take care of all of them? She stayed up all night tossing and turning, trying to figure out what to do. She had an idea of what to do the next morning.

She went to see Colonel Allen, who was the medical inspector in charge of that hospital. She made a proposal to him. She said I will visit all approximately 1500 soldiers in this hospital. I’ll make an assessment about who I think is never going to be fit for duty, and in turn I’d like you to send him back home. And I’ll focus on boys 18 years old and under, men 60 years and older and anybody who’s got consumption, what we now know of as tuberculosis. Colonel Allen agreed and Cordelia did just what she promised to do in three days. I did the mathematics. If she worked 12 hours a day for three days that means she saw about 40 soldiers per hour.

Colonel Allen must have been notably impressed by this for he wrote a letter that was published in the Memphis Bulletin about what Cordelia actually had accomplished here and when he had seen her elsewhere. He wrote, “I have seen Cordelia Harvey work in camps and hospitals in Memphis and Helena. She is a true patriot. She has the courage to volunteer to help in dangerous places near where there are battles. She has the good heart to take care of the wounded. She gives hope to the sick and comforts the dying. What the best, highest and wisest can do, she is accomplishing.”

And it was for actions like that that Cordelia developed a second nickname. She became known as the Florence Nightingale of Wisconsin. And Cordelia hated that nickname. She did not want any recognition for what she did. She wrote, “I do not wish to be Florence Nightingale’d nor anything of the kind. I am simply doing my duty and doing very little compared with the great amount there is to be done.”

Cordelia’s letters soon had a new theme. Beginning in January 1863, I think Cordelia had an epiphany. I think she realized that she could do all the lobbying she needed to do to get better care for the soldiers, she could do anything that she could do personally and still these hospitals were hell holes, many of them, and she had a belief, as did most people of the time, that many, many diseases were called by what they called miasmas, bad air. Remember people didn’t understand what germs were back then, and they didn’t understand why it was there was contagion. So understandably, given how bad things smelled particularly in the hospitals, they assumed that it was the bad air that was causing all this contagion to take place.

So Cordelia started writing letters to the governor asking him to see if he could open military hospitals in Wisconsin. Because she contended that the good healthy northern air and the assistance they would receive from friends and families, they’d get better care, that would help many of the soldiers recover and become well enough so they could go back and rejoin the army. So this becomes a theme in the letters that she starts writing to Governor Salomon.

Well, March 1863 she goes to Vicksburg where she inspects the hospitals where General Grant is in charge of the armies. She meets with General Grant. She makes recommendations for how to improve the conditions in the hospitals, and he agrees to all of her recommendations. Then in April Cordelia got sick with what she thought was miasmas and she remained sick. And she couldn’t get better until finally her friends and family from Wisconsin came down to the south and they brought her back to Madison and eventually back to Buffalo, New York, where she had a sister to take care of her. It took her from roughly April until August until she fully recovered. She came back to Madison. It was a noteworthy event. There was an article about her recovery in the Wisconsin Daily State Journal. And Cordelia, I believe, had a very, very strong bee in her bonnet. She had recovered by coming up north just as she had been suggesting the other soldiers would do.

So again she met with Governor Salomon. And I think of Cordelia as kind of a bull dog. She must have sunk her teeth into his ankle and not let go until he agreed with her. Eventually he circulated a petition which was signed by 7,000 citizens from Wisconsin requesting that a military hospital be opened in Wisconsin so that the soldiers could come back and recover. Cordelia took the 7,000 petitions, a letter of introduction from Wisconsin’s senator and she went to Washington to meet with President Lincoln.

Now let me set the stage for three days of conversations Cordelia Harvey had with President Lincoln. And we know about them because after the three days of meetings, Cordelia wrote her own account of what transpired. On the one hand, we’ve got Cordelia Harvey wanting to convince Abraham Lincoln to open up military hospitals in the north. She’s absolutely convinced this is the best thing for the soldiers, and she’s determined to convince him to actually make this change in policy. On the other hand, she is a devoted patriot. She does not want to add one feather of burden to the great burden that she knows President Lincoln is already carrying on his shoulders.

On the other hand, we have president Lincoln. He probably is as compassionate as Cordelia Harvey is. There are many tales about Lincoln’s compassion. From a young age when he was a young boy he once found a bird’s egg, I think it was from a robin’s nest, on the ground and he picked it up and he climbed the tree and he put that egg back in the nest. He’s tremendously compassionate. He cares as much about these soldiers as Cordelia does. But at the same time he’s adamantly opposed to opening military hospitals in the north. Because his military advisers and his medical advisers have told him in no uncertain terms that if you send those boys back home and they recover, they’re going to desert. They’re not going to continue fighting.

That’s the setting for the meeting of these two people. So Cordelia is eventually led into President Lincoln’s office. And I’m going to read you excerpts from their conversation because it expresses it better than any way I could synthesize it. So after they exchange pleasantries, President Lincoln says, “Madam, this matter of northern hospitals has been talked of a great deal. And I thought it was settled, but it seems not. What have you so say about it?” Cordelia replied, “Only this, Mr. Lincoln, that many soldiers in our Western Army must have northern air or die. There are thousands of graves all along our southern rivers and in the swamps for which the government is responsible. Ignorantly, undoubtedly, but this ignorance must not continue. If you’ll let the sick come north, you’ll have 10 well men in the army one year from today. Where you’ll have one well one now. Whereas, if you do not let them come north, you will not have one from 10 for they will all be dead.”

“Yes, yes, I understand you, but if they are sent north, they will desert. Where is the difference?” Cordelia answered, “Dead men cannot fight and most of them will not desert.” “They would desert.” “You must pardon me when I say you are mistaken, Mr. Lincoln. You do not understand our people. They are true and loyal to the government.”

I think at this juncture Cordelia’s compassion and wisdom are starting to sink in with Abraham Lincoln. He’s not convinced but suddenly he’s kind of beginning to be open to the idea. Because what he tells Cordelia is, well, why don’t you go talk to my Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, about it and see when he says. So Cordelia is sent off to see Edwin Stanton with a note from President Lincoln and the note says, “Admit Mrs. Harvey at once. Listen to what she says. She is a lady of intelligence and talks sense. A. Lincoln.”

So Cordelia goes to see Edwin Stanton, and Edwin Stanton undoubtedly squirmed. Because, on the one hand, he wants no part of her whatsoever. He has no interest at all in opening military hospitals in the north. He was, in part, behind the policies to not let soldiers return to the north. At the same time, she is the wife of a hero. Her husband was a governor who sacrificed his life for the Union cause. He couldn’t just dismiss her outright, so he did what good politicians do. He stalled. He said, well, it’s really a decision that goes for the Surgeon General and he’s not going to be back for about two months, so come back in about two months and then we can talk about it.

Cordelia realized she’s hit a stone wall. She goes back to the White House, tells President Lincoln what happened. Lincoln immediately knows that Stanton is just stalling, and Lincoln says, okay, okay, I’ll go talk to Stanton, come back tomorrow. As Cordelia is leaving President Lincoln’s office, she comes across a Congressman from Wisconsin who she knew. And he asked why she was there and she explained. And he must have just almost laughed in her face because he knew how strongly opposed President Lincoln was to this policy, and he knew she was just beating her head against a wall. And so he sort of sarcastically says, “Well, how long you going to stay here?” And she says, “Until I get what I came after.” And she left.

The next day Cordelia returns to the White House at the appointed time. She’s led into the president’s office. Somebody is just leaving. And the president just glares at her. I thought about this for a while. I thought, you know, Cordelia spent six months in these hospitals in the south, undoubtedly having contact with many military and medical personnel who did not want her to be there at all. Soldiers who understandably were in pain, angry, moody, pouty. You name it, she saw the worst of male human behavior when she was in the south. And yet, somehow through her compassion and competence, she consistently could break through that sort of male ego to accomplish what she thought needed to be accomplished. She knew when she should beg somebody, when she should threaten them, when she should reason with them.

I just think intuitively she must have been a master at reading human behavior. And I think it just immediately kicked in that something was going on with Lincoln, he was in a bad mood and she had better wait him out. So he glared, and she just sat there very calmly. And so he glared some more. And she just sat there finally, very, very calmly. Finally she outlasted him. Finally he couldn’t stand it anymore. And he said, “Well, 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’m tired of hearing about it.”

“I’d like nothing less to add one more burden to the many you are carrying, I would rather have stayed at home.” And I think she sort of penetrated his anger at that point in time. He realized that she is not the enemy and whatever he was angry about before she came in has nothing to do with her being there. Because he cracked a little half-smile. And when she said, “I would rather have stayed at home,” he said, “I wish you had stayed at home.” [LAUGHTER]

Cordelia then immediately moved in for the kill. She said, “Nothing would have given me greater pleasure, but I have a keen sense of duty to this government. 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.”

“You assume to know more than I do?” “You must pardon me, Mr. President, it is because I do know what you do not know that I come to you. If you knew what I do and had not ordered what I asked for, I should know that an appeal to you would be vain. But I believe people have not trusted you for naught. The question only is whether you believe me or not. If you believe me, you will give me hospitals. If not, well…” “You assume to know more than generals do?” “Oh, no, Mr. Lincoln. I could not perform an amputation nearly as well as some of them do.” [LAUGHTER]

“The medical authorities know as well as I do that you are opposed to establishing northern military hospitals and they report to please you. What I will tell you now is hard to say but it is true nonetheless. I have visited the hospitals, sometimes from early morning until late at night. I come to you from the cots of men who have died. Some might have lived had you permitted them to come north. If you grant my petition, you’ll be glad as long as you live.”

Cordelia felt like she was taking up too much of his time. She asked him if he had made a decision. He said no, come back tomorrow at noon. Cordelia leaves. She wakes up the next morning, her stomach is churning, she feels like she’s failed in her mission. She goes to President Lincoln’s office at noon. He’s delayed, so he doesn’t finally come to her until about 3:00. He says, “My dear madam, I am very sorry to have kept you waiting.” Cordelia replies, “My waiting is no matter, but you must be very tired. We will not talk tonight.” “No, please, sit down. Mrs. Harvey, I only wish to tell you that an order equivalent to granting a hospital in your state has been issued nearly 24 hours ago.”

Cordelia could not speak. She was so surprised she burst into tears when she heard this decision. She said, “God bless you. I thank you in the name of thousands who will bless you for this act.” He told her to return the next day when he would give her a copy of the order mandating a military hospital be opened in Wisconsin. She returned the next day, he gave her a copy of that order. He told her he would like to name the hospital after her. She said no, please name it after my husband, and he agreed.

They had finished the business at hand. So what did the president do? He flirted. [LAUGHTER] He said… Bad timing on that one, wasn’t that? [LAUGHS] He said, “Mrs. Harvey, do you find me handsome?” [LAUGHTER] And I just imagine Cordelia holding up that order for the military hospital and she said, “You are perfectly lovely to me now Mr. Lincoln.” [LAUGHTER] And the president laughed. And as she was leaving she said, “God bless you Abraham Lincoln.” And she described this as the “most interesting interview of my life with one of the most remarkable men of the age.”

Well, the Harvey Hospital was soon opened in Madison in the old Governor Farwell mansion near Orton Park where Brearly Street meets the lake. It was opened for the duration of the war. Indeed, many of the soldiers recovered and returned to battle as Cordelia had anticipated. Cordelia returned to the south and continued tending to the soldiers.

She returned to Madison when the war was over, roughly the summer of 1865. She brought with five orphans from the south. She realized that there were going to be thousands of orphans now who weren’t going to have any parents to take care of them. So she convinced the Madison city council and the federal government to convert the Harvey Hospital into an orphanage for children, and she became of superintendent of that hospital. For about a year and a half, she was in charge of the orphanage and then she left. The orphanage remained open for about 10 years, and about 700 children from Wisconsin received care in that orphanage.

Cordelia eventually returned back to the family home in Shopiere. She eventually remarried Reverend Albert Chester who was the head of a girls’ private school in Buffalo, New York, where her sister had been teaching. She moved to Buffalo, she taught again at the school. Eventually after he died in 1892, she returned to Shopiere. She taught Sunday school at a congregational church in Fort Atkinson. One of her students described her as “a little woman with a sweet face hidden under a small bonnet with a long widow’s veil. A loving personality. Quick, keen and jolly.”

Cordelia died in 1895. She’s buried at the Forest Hill cemetery alongside of Governor Harvey. In many of the letters that Cordelia wrote to Wisconsin governors she would talk about “the little I have done to help the soldiers.” Well in my opinion, given the thousands of soldiers whose lives she improved and the hundreds of children who received care because of her efforts, she did a great deal more than a little. And indeed there were very, very good reasons why she was called the Wisconsin angel. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]