Cairo's Civil War Ansel, Mary Jane Safford

CAIRO>S CIVIL WAR ANGEL
Another aspect of Mary's service, however, was probably
more appreciated by Mrs. Bickerdyke. When action nine·
teen miles distant at Belmont, Missouri, in November, 1861,
brought boatloads of General U. S. Grant's wounded to
Cairo, Mary on her own initiative went to the field of battle
to care for those not yet evacuated. While she was at·
tending to them, she was inadvertently fired upon by Confed·
erate forces and improvised a white flag by tying her hand·
kerchief to a stick. She continued to care for the wounded
in the chill of a keen wintry wind until the last of the men
were removed under her supervision to the hospitals at Cairo,
Mound City, and St. Louis. Mary had not planned to go
to the battle scene, but while she and Mrs. Bickerdyke were
working with the wounded on the Cairo docks, she was im·
pelled by the suffering to make the trip on the first return
boat. In the meantime, she had arranged with Cairo
friends to house some of the wounded in their extra
bedrooms. 1s
With the Belmont crisis behind, Mary settled down to
her customary routine of hospital rounds until the follow·
ing February, when Grant lunged at Fort Donelson - the
Confederate stronghold on the Cumberland River in Ten·
nessee - and there won the first important decisive victory
for the Union. MCJther Bickerdyke, who had accompanied
Grant, was working among the maimed and dying in the
field hospitals at Donelson when Mary arrived on the Sani·
tary Commission's hospital steamer, the City of Memphis,
peacetime queen of the Mississippi passenger boats. The
two women worked ceaselessly in the dirt and the freezing
cold. But Mary was too sensitive to her surroundings - the
15· Livermore, My Story of the War, 215; Brockett and Vaughan,
Woman's Work in the Civil War, 358; Baker, Cyclone in Calico, 62; Young,
Women and the Crisis, 145.
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