Pember searched and discovered the stowed champagne bottles filled with the missing whiskey. Incensed, she tracked down and confronted the ward master, but he indicated that another party was guilty. Pember was unsympathetic; in looking the other way the ward master had failed his charges, and the matron informed him that when she took ‘the matter to the proper authorities he would be sent to the field.’

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An hour later the ward surgeon accosted Pember in her office. He swore that his ward master did not drink. Pember replied, ‘I know he does not, and I also know who does.’ The doctor’s fiery flush revealed him as the true culprit. Despite his subsequent efforts to discredit Pember, it was the surgeon who soon left Chimborazo, never to return. It was a hollow victory for Pember, who soon realized that the whiskey barrel was not just a source of contention, but a troubling institution she would someday have to deal with once and for all.

That day came on the Monday following the evacuation of Richmond. The hospital was in enemy hands and Pember spent the day discharging orders given by Federal surgeons. She cleared one hospital division to make room for incoming Union patients, who were laid alongside the remaining Confederates. Exhausted at the end of the day, she entered her quarters and tumbled onto her straw mattress.

Suddenly, the sound of a door crashing down jolted her to her feet, and Pember found herself face to face with a threatening mob. She recognized the ringleader, a long-time hospital resident named Wilson. ‘We have come for the whiskey!’ he declared.

‘You cannot, and shall not have it,’ the matron answered, undeterred by the angry ‘hospital rats’ at Wilson’s back.

‘It does not belong to you,’ Wilson said. In this, Wilson was mistaken. Pember had remained at Chimborazo to execute her duties, and those duties included insuring the safety and disposition of 30 gallons of whiskey that had arrived the day before. Pember was determined to do her duty.

‘Boys!’ Wilson bellowed, ‘Pick up that barrel and carry it down the hill. I will attend to her!’

For nearly three years, Pember had given orders and the men had taken them. Now they backed away, leaving their leader to confront the defiant matron by himself.

‘Wilson,’ Pember said, ‘you have been in this hospital a long time. Do you think from what you know of me that the whiskey can be taken without my consent?’

That said, she stepped solidly between her foe and the whiskey barrel. She watched as Wilson’s ‘fierce temper blazed up in his face, and catching me roughly by the shoulder, he called me a name that a decent woman seldom hears and even a wicked one resents.’ The bully was about to shove Pember out of his way when he heard a telltale click–the sound of a pistol being cocked, barely muted by the folds of the matron’s homespun skirt. Pember told him to leave. ‘If one bullet is lost,’ she warned, ‘there are five more ready, and the room is too small for even a woman to miss six times.’

Wilson backed down, but left with a threat: ‘You think yourself very brave now, but wait an hour; perhaps others may have pistols too, and you won’t have it entirely your way after all.’ Wilson’s hateful words were chilling, and after the men retreated Pember nailed the head of a flour barrel across the back door and sat down on the whiskey barrel, her pistol within easy reach. Fortunately, the men did not return. ‘Warm with triumph and victory gained,’ Phoebe slept undisturbed, if uncomfortable, through the rest of the night.

On the morning of April 4, 1865, Federal authorities took possession of Chimborazo’s stores, and the troublesome whiskey was no longer Pember’s concern. The matron remained on duty until all her patients had convalesced, died, or been removed to another hospital. Then, after more than two years of selfless duty, Pember suddenly found herself alone in Union-occupied Richmond, without prospects, and with just a silver 10-cent piece and a box of useless Confederate money to her name. Laughing at her lot, she spent her paltry remaining funds on ‘a box of matches and five cocoa-nut cakes.’

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