Fredericksburg Flowers

Nurse Woolsey

The verdant fields of Chancellorsville, Virginia, are bursting with wildflowers. The yellows, purple, lavender, white, and pink are delight in the blazing spring sun. It is a humbling experience to walk through the grounds where so many Americans have lost their lives in a Civil War battle won at such great cost, a Confederate pyrrhic victory of sorts, brother fighting against brother. How many cries of agony of the injured or dying soldiers were heard through the gun smoked air and how much innocent blood soaked into the fields surrounding us?

The wildflowers are beautiful every spring and bring to mind the Fredericksburg Flowers. Despite the Civil War doom and gloom, nature sprang to life that spring and with it, its colorful wild flowers. A relief nursing worker from New York, Georgeanna Woolsey, picked wild flowers for a new regiment heading to the front.

“We filled our baskets, trays, and the skirts of our gowns with snow-balls, lemon blossoms, and roses yellow, white, and red. The 8^th New York Heavy Artillery was in the column . . . and [we] tossed roses and snowballs in showers over the men. They were delighted . . . . ‘Oh, give me one . . . . I will carry it into the fight for you;’ and another cheerily, -- ‘I will bring it back again.’”

One such happy New York soldier brought the flowers back as promised – he returned three days later to Miss Woolsey as a corpse, wilted Fredericksburg flowers upon his chest.