>> 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 he 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]