PART I.

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[Illustration: MISS CLARA H. BARTON.

Eng. by John Sartain.]

[Illustration: WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR

"'SHOOT, IF YOU MUST, THIS OLD GRAY HEAD.

BUT SPARE YOUR COUNTRY'S FLAG,' SHE SAID."

Barbara Frietchie.

H. L. Stephens, Del. Samuel Sartain, Sc.]

WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR:

A RECORD OF HEROISM, PATRIOTISM AND PATIENCE

BY

L. P. BROCKETT, M.D.,

AUTHOR OF "HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR," "PHILANTHROPIC RESULTS OF THE

WAR," "OUR GREAT CAPTAINS," "LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN," "THE CAMP, THE

BATTLE FIELD, AND THE HOSPITAL," &C., &C.

AND

MRS. MARY C. VAUGHAN.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY HENRY W. BELLOWS, D.D.,

President U. S. Sanitary Commission.

ILLUSTRATED WITH SIXTEEN STEEL ENGRAVINGS.

ZEIGLER, McCURDY & CO.,

PHILADELPHIA, PA.; CHICAGO, ILL.; CINCINNATI, OHIO; ST. LOUIS, MO.

R. H. CURRAN,

48 WINTER STREET, BOSTON, MASS.

1867.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by

L. P. BROCKETT,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the

Eastern District of New York.

KING & BAIRD, PRINTERS,

607 Sansom Street, Philadelphia.

WESTCOTT & THOMSON, Stereotypers.

TO

THE LOYAL WOMEN OF AMERICA,

WHOSE PATRIOTIC CONTRIBUTIONS, TOILS AND SACRIFICES, ENABLED THEIR

SISTERS, WHOSE HISTORY IS HERE RECORDED, TO MINISTER RELIEF AND

CONSOLATION TO OUR WOUNDED AND SUFFERING HEROES;

AND WHO BY THEIR DEVOTION, THEIR LABORS, AND THEIR PATIENT ENDURANCE OF

PRIVATION AND DISTRESS OF BODY AND SPIRIT, WHEN CALLED TO GIVE UP THEIR

BELOVED ONES FOR THE

NATION'S DEFENSE,

HAVE WON FOR THEMSELVES ETERNAL HONOR, AND THE UNDYING REMEMBRANCE OF

THE PATRIOTS OF ALL TIME,

WE DEDICATE THIS VOLUME.

PREFACE.

The preparation of this work, or rather the collection of material for

it, was commenced in the autumn of 1863. While engaged in the

compilation of a little book on "The Philanthropic Results of the War"

for circulation abroad, in the summer of that year, the writer became so

deeply impressed with the extraordinary sacrifices and devotion of loyal

women, in the national cause, that he determined to make a record of

them for the honor of his country. A voluminous correspondence then

commenced and continued to the present time, soon demonstrated how

general were the acts of patriotic devotion, and an extensive tour,

undertaken the following summer, to obtain by personal observation and

intercourse with these heroic women, a more clear and comprehensive idea

of what they had done and were doing, only served to increase his

admiration for their zeal, patience, and self-denying effort.

Meantime the war still continued, and the collisions between Grant and

Lee, in the East, and Sherman and Johnston, in the South, the fierce

campaign between Thomas and Hood in Tennessee, Sheridan's annihilating

defeats of Early in the valley of the Shenandoah, and Wilson's

magnificent expedition in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, as well as

the mixed naval and military victories at Mobile and Wilmington, were

fruitful in wounds, sickness, and death. Never had the gentle and

patient ministrations of woman been so needful as in the last year of

the war; and never had they been so abundantly bestowed, and with such

zeal and self-forgetfulness.

From Andersonville, and Millen, from Charleston, and Florence, from

Salisbury, and Wilmington, from Belle Isle, and Libby Prison, came also,

in these later months of the war, thousands of our bravest and noblest

heroes, captured by the rebels, the feeble remnant of the tens of

thousands imprisoned there, a majority of whom had perished of cold,

nakedness, starvation, and disease, in those charnel houses, victims of

the fiendish malignity of the rebel leaders. These poor fellows, starved

to the last degree of emaciation, crippled and dying from frost and

gangrene, many of them idiotic from their sufferings, or with the

fierce fever of typhus, more deadly than sword or minie bullet, raging

in their veins, were brought to Annapolis and to Wilmington, and

unmindful of the deadly infection, gentle and tender women ministered to

them as faithfully and lovingly, as if they were their own brothers.

Ever and anon, in these works of mercy, one of these fair ministrants

died a martyr to her faithfulness, asking, often only, to be buried

beside her "boys," but the work never ceased while there was a soldier

to be nursed. Nor were these the only fields in which noble service was

rendered to humanity by the women of our time. In the larger

associations of our cities, day after day, and year after year, women

served in summer's heat and winter's cold, at their desks, corresponding

with auxiliary aid societies, taking account of goods received for

sanitary supplies, re-packing and shipping them to the points where they

were needed, inditing and sending out circulars appealing for aid, in

work more prosaic but equally needful and patriotic with that performed

in the hospitals; and throughout every village and hamlet in the

country, women were toiling, contriving, submitting to privation,

performing unusual and severe labors, all for the soldiers. In the

general hospitals of the cities and larger towns, the labors of the

special diet kitchen, and of the hospital nurse were performed steadily,

faithfully, and uncomplainingly, though there also, ever and anon, some

fair toiler laid down her life in the service. There were many too in

still other fields of labor, who showed their love for their country;

the faithful women who, in the Philadelphia Refreshment Saloons, fed the

hungry soldier on his way to or from the battle-field, till in the

aggregate, they had dispensed nearly eight hundred thousand meals, and

had cared for thousands of sick and wounded; the matrons of the

Soldiers' Homes, Lodges, and Rests; the heroic souls who devoted

themselves to the noble work of raising a nation of bondmen to

intelligence and freedom; those who attempted the still more hopeless

task of rousing the blunted intellect and cultivating the moral nature

of the degraded and abject poor whites; and those who in circumstances

of the greatest peril, manifested their fearless and undying attachment

to their country and its flag; all these were entitled to a place in

such a record. What wonder, then, that, pursuing his self-appointed task

assiduously, the writer found it growing upon him; till the question

came, not, who should be inscribed in this roll, but who could be

omitted, since it was evident no single volume could do justice to all.

In the autumn of 1865, Mrs. Mary C. Vaughan, a skilful and practiced

writer, whose tastes and sympathies led her to take an interest in the

work, became associated with the writer in its preparation, and to her

zeal in collecting, and skill in arranging the materials obtained, many

of the interesting sketches of the volume are due. We have in the

prosecution of our work been constantly embarrassed, by the reluctance

of some who deserved a prominent place, to suffer anything to be

communicated concerning their labors; by the promises, often repeated

but never fulfilled, of others to furnish facts and incidents which they

alone could supply, and by the forwardness of a few, whose services were

of the least moment, in presenting their claims.

We have endeavored to exercise a wise and careful discrimination both in

avoiding the introduction of any name unworthy of a place in such a

record, and in giving the due meed of honor to those who have wrought

most earnestly and acceptably. We cannot hope that we have been

completely successful; the letters even now, daily received, render it

probable that there are some, as faithful and self-sacrificing as any of

those whose services we have recorded, of whom we have failed to obtain

information; and that some of those who entered upon their work of mercy

in the closing campaigns of the war, by their zeal and earnestness, have

won the right to a place. We have not, knowingly, however, omitted the

name of any faithful worker, of whom we could obtain information, and we

feel assured that our record is far more full and complete, than any

other which has been, or is likely to be prepared, and that the number

of prominent and active laborers in the national cause who have escaped

our notice is comparatively small.

We take pleasure in acknowledging our obligations to Rev. Dr. Bellows,

President of the United States Sanitary Commission, for many services

and much valuable information; to Honorable James E. Yeatman, the

President of the Western Sanitary Commission, to Rev. J. G. Forman, late

Secretary of that Commission, and now Secretary of the Unitarian

Association, and his accomplished wife, both of whom were indefatigable

in their efforts to obtain facts relative to western ladies; to Rev. N.

M. Mann, now of Kenosha, Wisconsin, but formerly Chaplain and Agent of

the Western Sanitary Commission, at Vicksburg; to Professor J. S.

Newberry, now of Columbia College, but through the war the able

Secretary of the Western Department of the United States Sanitary

Commission; to Mrs. M. A. Livermore, of Chicago, one of the managers of

the Northwestern Sanitary Commission; to Rev. G. S. F. Savage, Secretary

of the Western Department of the American Tract Society, Boston; Rev.

William De Loss Love, of Milwaukee, author of a work on "Wisconsin in

the War," Samuel B. Fales, Esq., of Philadelphia, so long and nobly

identified with the Volunteer Refreshment Saloon, Dr. A. N. Read, of

Norwalk, Ohio, late one of the Medical Inspectors of the Sanitary

Commission, Dr. Joseph Parrish, of Philadelphia, also a Medical

Inspector of the Commission, Mrs. M. M. Husband, of Philadelphia, one of

the most faithful workers in field hospitals during the war, Miss

Katherine P. Wormeley, of Newport, Rhode Island, the accomplished

historian of the Sanitary Commission, Mrs. W. H. Holstein, of

Bridgeport, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Miss Maria M. C. Hall, of

Washington, District of Columbia, and Miss Louise Titcomb, of Portland,

Maine. From many of these we have received information indispensable to

the completeness and success of our work; information too, often

afforded at great inconvenience and labor. We commit our book, then, to

the loyal women of our country, as an earnest and conscientious effort

to portray some phases of a heroism which will make American women

famous in all the future ages of history; and with the full conviction

that thousands more only lacked the opportunity, not the will or

endurance, to do, in the same spirit of self-sacrifice, what these have

done.

L. P. B.

BROOKLYN, N. Y., _February, 1867_.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

DEDICATION. 19

PREFACE. 21

TABLE OF CONTENTS. 25-51

INTRODUCTION BY HENRY W. BELLOWS, D. D. 55

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

Patriotism in some form, an attribute of woman in all nations and

climes--Its modes of manifestation--Paeans for victory--Lamentations

for the death of a heroic leader--Personal leadership by women--The

assassination of tyrants--The care of the sick and wounded of national

armies--The hospitals established by the Empress Helena--The Beguines

and their successors--The cantinieres, vivandieres, etc.--Other modes in

which women manifested their patriotism--Florence Nightingale and her

labors--The results--The awakening of patriotic zeal among American

women at the opening of the war--The organization of philanthropic

effort--Hospital nurses--Miss Dix's rejection of great numbers of

applicants on account of youth--Hired nurses--Their services generally

prompted by patriotism rather than pay--The State relief agents

(ladies) at Washington--The hospital transport system of the Sanitary

Commission--Mrs. Harris's, Miss Barton's, Mrs. Fales', Miss Gilson's,

and other ladles' services at the front during the battles of 1862--

Services of other ladies at Chancellorsville, at Gettysburg--The

Field Relief of the Sanitary Commission, and services of ladies in the

later battles--Voluntary services of women in the armies in the field at

the West--Services in the hospitals of garrisons and fortified towns--

Soldiers' homes and lodges, and their matrons--Homes for Refugees--

Instruction of the Freedmen--Refreshment Saloons at Philadelphia--

Regular visiting of hospitals in the large cities--The Soldiers' Aid

Societies, and their mode of operation--The extraordinary labors of the

managers of the Branch Societies--Government clothing contracts--Mrs.

Springer, Miss Wormeley and Miss Gilson--The managers of the local

Soldiers' Aid Societies--The sacrifices made by the poor to contribute

supplies--Examples--The labors of the young and the old--Inscriptions

on articles--The poor seamstress--Five hundred bushels of wheat--The

five dollar gold piece--The army of martyrs--The effect of this

female patriotism in stimulating the courage of the soldiers--Lack of

persistence in this work among the Women of the South--Present and

future--Effect of patriotism and self-sacrifice in elevating and

ennobling the female character. 65-94

PART I. SUPERINTENDENT OF NURSES.

MISS DOROTHEA L. DIX.

Early history--Becomes interested in the condition of prison convicts--

Visit to Europe--Returns in 1837, and devotes herself to improving the

condition of paupers, lunatics and prisoners--Her efforts for the

establishment of Insane Asylums--Second visit to Europe--Her first

work in the war the nursing of Massachusetts soldiers in Baltimore--

Appointment as superintendent of nurses--Her selections--Difficulties in

her position--Her other duties--Mrs. Livermore's account of her labors--

The adjutant-general's order--Dr. Bellows' estimate of her work--Her

kindness to her nurses--Her publications--Her manners and address--

Labors for the insane poor since the war. 97-108

PART II. LADIES WHO MINISTERED TO THE SICK AND WOUNDED IN CAMP, FIELD

AND GENERAL HOSPITALS.

CLARA HARLOWE BARTON.

Early life--Teaching--The Bordentown school--Obtains a situation in the

Patent Office--Her readiness to help others--Her native genius for

nursing--Removed from office in 1857--Return to Washington in 1861--

Nursing and providing for Massachusetts soldiers at the Capitol in

April, 1861--Hospital and sanitary work in 1861--Death of her father--

Washington hospitals again--Going to the front--Cedar Mountain--The

second Bull Run battle--Chantilly--Heroic labors at Antietam--Soft

bread--Three barrels of flour and a bag of salt--Thirty lanterns for

that night of gloom--The race for Fredericksburg--Miss Barton as a

general purveyor for the sick and wounded--The battle of Fredericksburg--

Under fire--The rebel officer's appeal--The "confiscated" carpet--After

the battle--In the department of the South--The sands of Morris Island--

The horrors of the siege of Forts Wagner and Sumter--The reason why she

went thither--Return to the North--Preparations for the great campaign--

Her labors at Belle Plain, Fredericksburg, White House, and City Point--

Return to Washington--Appointed "General correspondent for the friends

of paroled prisoners"--Her residence at Annapolis--Obstacles--The

Annapolis plan abandoned--She establishes at Washington a "Bureau of

records of missing men in the armies of the United States"--The plan of

operations of this Bureau--Her visit to Andersonville--The case of

Dorrance Atwater--The Bureau of missing men an institution indispensable

to the Government and to friends of the soldiers--Her sacrifices in

maintaining it--The grant from Congress--Personal appearance of Miss

Barton. 111-132

HELEN LOUISE GILSON.

Early history--Her first work for the soldiers--Collecting supplies--

The clothing contract--Providing for soldiers' wives and daughters--

Application to Miss Dix for an appointment as nurse--She is rejected as

too young--Associated with Hon. Frank B. Fay in the Auxiliary Relief

Service--Her labors on the Hospital Transports--Her manner of working--

Her extraordinary personal influence--Her work at Gettysburg--Influence

over the men--Carrying a sick comrade to the hospital--Her system and

self-possession--Pleading the cause of the soldier with the people--

Her services in Grant's protracted campaign--The hospitals at

Fredericksburg--Singing to the soldiers--Her visit to the barge of

"contrabands"--Her address to the negroes--Singing to them--The hospital

for colored soldiers--Miss Gilson re-organizes and re-models it, making

it the best hospital at City Point--Her labors for the spiritual good

of the men in her hospital--Her care for the negro washerwomen and

their families--Completion of her work--Personal appearance of Miss

Gilson. 133-148

MRS. JOHN HARRIS.

Previous history--Secretary Ladies' Aid Society--Her decision to go to

the "front"--Early experiences--On the Hospital Transports--Harrison's

Landing--Her garments soaked in human gore--Antietam--French's Division

Hospital--Smoketown General Hospital--Return to the "front"--

Fredericksburg--Falmouth--She almost despairs of the success of our

arms--Chancellorsville--Gettysburg--Following the troops--Warrenton--

Insolence of the rebels--Illness--Goes to the West--Chattanooga--Serious

illness--Return to Nashville--Labors for the refugees--Called home to

watch over a dying mother--The returned prisoners from Andersonville and

Salisbury. 149-160

MRS. ELIZA C. PORTER.

Mrs. Porter's social position--Her patriotism--Labors in the hospitals

at Cairo--She takes charge of the Northwestern Sanitary Commission Rooms

at Chicago--Her determination to go, with a corps of nurses, to the

front--Cairo and Paducah--Visit to Pittsburg Landing after the battle--

She brings nurses and supplies for the hospitals from Chicago--At

Corinth--At Memphis--Work among the freedmen at Memphis and elsewhere--

Efforts for the establishment of hospitals for the sick and wounded

in the Northwest--Co-operation with Mrs. Harvey and Mrs. Howe--The

Harvey Hospital--At Natchez and Vicksburg--Other appeals for Northern

hospitals--At Huntsville with Mrs. Bickerdyke--At Chattanooga--

Experiences in a field hospital in the woods--Following Sherman's army

from Chattanooga to Atlanta--"This seems like having mother about"--

Constant labors--The distribution of supplies to the soldiers of

Sherman's army near Washington--A patriotic family. 161-171

MRS. MARY A. BICKERDYKE.

Previous history of Mrs. Bickerdyke--Her regard for the private

soldiers--"Mother Bickerdyke and her boys"--Her work at Savannah after

the battle of Shiloh--What she accomplished at Perryville--The Gayoso

Hospital at Memphis--Colored nurses and attendants--A model hospital--

The delinquent assistant-surgeon--Mrs. Bickerdyke's philippic--She

procures his dismissal--His interview with General Sherman--"She ranks

me"--The commanding generals appreciate her--Convalescent soldiers

_vs._ colored nurses--The Medical Director's order--Mrs. Bickerdyke's

triumph--A dairy and hennery for the hospitals--Two hundred cows and a

thousand hens--Her first visit to the Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce--"Go

over to Canada--This country has no place for such creatures"--At

Vicksburg--In field hospitals--The dresses riddled with sparks--The box

of clothing for herself--Trading for butter and eggs for the soldiers--

The two lace-trimmed night-dresses--A new style of hospital clothing

for wounded soldiers--A second visit to Milwaukee--Mrs. Bickerdyke's

speech--"Set your standard higher yet"--In the Huntsville Hospital--At

Chattanooga at the close of the battle--The only woman on the ground for

four weeks--Cooking under difficulties--Her interview with General

Grant--Complaints of the neglect of the men by some of the surgeons--

"Go around to the hospitals and see for yourself"--Visits Huntsville,

Pulaski, etc.--With Sherman from Chattanooga to Atlanta--Making dishes

for the sick out of hard tack and the ordinary rations--At Nashville and

Franklin--Through the Carolinas with Sherman--Distribution of supplies

near Washington--"The Freedmen's Home and Refuge" at Chicago. 172-186

MARGARET ELIZABETH BRECKINRIDGE. _By Mrs. J. G. Forman._

Sketch of her personal appearance--Her gentle, tender, winning ways--

The American Florence Nightingale--What if I do die?--The Breckinridge

family--Margaret's childhood and youth--Her emancipation of her slaves--

Working for the soldiers early in the war--Not one of the Home Guards--

Her earnest desire to labor in the hospitals--Hospital service at

Baltimore--At Lexington, Kentucky--Morgan's first raid--Her visit to the

wounded soldiers--"Every one of you bring a regiment with you"--Visiting

the St. Louis hospitals--On the hospital boats on the Mississippi--

Perils of the voyage--Severe and incessant labor--The contrabands at

Helena--Touching incidents of the wounded on the hospital boats--"The

service pays"--In the hospitals at St. Louis--Impaired health--She goes

eastward for rest and recovery--A year of weakness and weariness--In

the hospital at Philadelphia--A ministering angel--Colonel Porter

her brother-in-law killed at Cold Harbor--She goes to Baltimore to

meet the body--Is seized with typhoid fever and dies after five weeks

illness. 187-199

MRS. STEPHEN BARKER.

Family of Mrs. Barker--Her husband Chaplain of First Massachusetts Heavy

Artillery--She accompanies him to Washington--Devotes herself to the

work of visiting the hospitals--Thanksgiving dinner in the hospital--She

removes to Fort Albany and takes charge as Matron of the Regimental

Hospital--Pleasant experiences--Reading to the soldiers--Two years of

labor--Return to Washington in January, 1864--She becomes one of the

hospital visitors of the Sanitary Commission--Ten hospitals a week--

Remitting the soldiers' money and valuables to their families--The

service of Mr. and Mrs. Barker as lecturers and missionaries of the

Sanitary Commission to the Aid Societies in the smaller cities and

villages--The distribution of supplies to the disbanding armies--Her

report. 200-211

AMY M. BRADLEY.

Childhood of Miss Bradley--Her experiences as a teacher--Residence in

Charleston, South Carolina--Two years of illness--Goes to Costa Rica--

Three years of teaching in Central America--Return to the United

States--Becomes corresponding clerk and translator in a large glass

manufactory--Beginning of the war--She determines to go as a nurse--

Writes to Dr. Palmer--His quaint reply--Her first experience as nurse

in a regimental hospital--Skill and tact in managing it--Promoted by

General Slocum to the charge of the Brigade Hospital--Hospital Transport

Service--Over-exertion and need of rest--The organization of the

Soldiers' Home at Washington--Visiting hospitals at her leisure--Camp

Misery--Wretched condition of the men--The rendezvous of distribution--

Miss Bradley goes thither as Sanitary Commission Agent--Her zealous and

multifarious labors--Bringing in the discharged men for their papers--

Procuring the correction of their papers, and the reinstatement of

the men--"The Soldiers' Journal"--Miss Bradley's object in its

establishment--Its success--Presents to Miss Bradley--Personal

appearance. 212-224

MRS. ARABELLA GRIFFITH BARLOW.

Birth and education of Mrs. Griffith--Her marriage at the beginning

of the war--She accompanies her husband to the camp, and wherever

it is possible ministers to the wounded or sick soldiers--Joins the

Sanitary Commission in July, 1862, and labors among the sick and wounded

at Harrison's Landing till late in August--Colonel Barlow severely

wounded at Antietam--Mrs. Barlow nurses him with great tenderness, and

at the same time ministers to the wounded of Sedgwick Hospital--At

Chancellorsville and Gettysburg--General Barlow again wounded, and in

the enemy's lines--She removes him and succors the wounded in the

intervals of her care of him--In May, 1864, she was actively engaged at

Belle Plain, Fredericksburg, Port Royal, White House, and City Point--

Her incessant labor brought on fever and caused her death July 27,

1864--Tribute of the Sanitary Commission Bulletin, Dr. Lieber and

others, to her memory. 225-233

MRS. NELLIE MARIA TAYLOR.

Parentage and early history--Removal to New Orleans--Her son urged to

enlist in the rebel army--He is sent North--The rebels persecute Mrs.

Taylor--Her dismissal from her position as principal of one of the city

schools--Her house mobbed--"I am for the Union, tear my house down if

you choose!"--Her house searched seven times for the flag--The Judge's

son--"A piece of Southern chivalry"--Her son enlists in the rebel army

to save her from molestation--New Orleans occupied by the Union forces--

Mrs. Taylor reinstated as teacher--She nurses the soldiers in the

hospitals, during her vacations and in all the leisure hours from her

school duties, her daughter filling up the intermediate time with her

services--She expends her entire salary upon the sick and wounded--

Writes eleven hundred and seventy-four letters for them in one year--

Distributes the supplies received from the Cincinnati Branch of Sanitary

Commission in 1864, and during the summer takes the management of the

special diet of the University Hospital--Testimony of the soldiers to

her labors--Patriotism and zeal of her children--Terms on which Miss

Alice Taylor would present a confederate flag to a company. 234-240

MRS. ADALINE TYLER.

Residence in Boston--Removal to Baltimore--Becomes Superintendent of

a Protestant Sisterhood in that city--Duties of the Sisterhood--The

"Church Home"--Other duties of "Sister" Tyler--The opening of the

war--The Baltimore mob--Wounding and killing members of the Sixth

Massachusetts regiment--Mrs. Tyler hears that Massachusetts men are

wounded and seeks admission to them--Is refused--She persists, and

threatening an appeal to Governor Andrew is finally admitted--She takes

those most severely wounded to the "Church Home," procures surgical

attendance for them, and nurses them till their recovery--Other Union

wounded nursed by her--Receives the thanks of the Massachusetts

Legislature and Governor--Is appointed Superintendent of the Camden

Street Hospital, Baltimore--Resigns at the end of a year, and visits New

York--The surgeon-general urges her to take charge of the large hospital

at Chester, Pennsylvania--She remains at Chester till the hospital

is broken up, when she is transferred to the First Division General

Hospital, Naval Academy, Annapolis--The returned prisoners--Their

terrible condition--Mrs. Tyler procures photographs of them--Impaired

health--Resignation--She visits Europe, and spends eighteen months

there, advocating as she has opportunity the National cause--The

fiendish rebel spirit--Incident relative to President Lincoln's

assassination. 241-250

MRS. WILLIAM H. HOLSTEIN.

Social position of Mr. and Mrs. Holstein--Early labors for the soldiers

at home--The battle of Antietam--She goes with her husband to care for

the wounded--Her first emotions at the sight of the wounded--Three

years' devotion to the service--Mr. and Mrs. Holstein devote themselves

mainly to field hospitals--Labors at Fredericksburg, in the Second Corps

Hospital--Services after the battle of Chancellorsville--The march

toward Pennsylvania in June, 1863--The Field Hospital of the Second

Corps after Gettysburg--Incidents--"Wouldn't be buried by the side of

that raw recruit"--Mrs. Holstein Matron of the Second Corps Hospital--

Tour among the Aid Societies--The campaign of 1864-5--Constant labors in

the field hospitals at Fredericksburg, City Point, and elsewhere, till

November--Another tour among the Aid Societies--Labors among the

returned prisoners at Annapolis. 251-259

MRS. CORDELIA A. P. HARVEY. _By Rev. N. M. Mann._

The death of her husband, Governor Louis P. Harvey--Her intense grief--

She resolves to devote herself to the care of the sick and wounded

soldiers--She visits St. Louis as Agent for the State of Wisconsin--Work

in the St. Louis hospitals in the autumn of 1862--Heroic labors at Cape

Girardeau--Visiting hospitals along the Mississippi--The soldiers' ideas

of her influence and power--Young's Point in 1863--Illness of Mrs.

Harvey--She determines to secure the establishment of a General Hospital

at Madison, Wisconsin, where from the fine climate the chances of

recovery of the sick and wounded will be increased--Her resolution and

energy--The Harvey Hospital--The removal of the patients at Fort

Pickering to it--Repeated journeys down the Mississippi--Presented with

an elegant watch by the Second Wisconsin Cavalry--Her influence over the

soldiers--The Soldiers' Orphan Asylum at Madison. 260-268

MRS. SARAH R. JOHNSTON.

Loyal Southern women--Mrs. Johnston's birth and social position--Her

interest in the Union prisoners--"A Yankee sympathizer"--The young

soldier--Her tender care of him, living and dead--Work for the

prisoners--Her persecution by the rebels--"Why don't you pin me to the

earth as you threatened"--"Sergeant, you can't make anything on that

woman"--Copying the inscriptions on Union graves, and statistics of

Union prisoners--Her visit to the North. 269-272

EMILY E. PARSONS. _By Rev. J. G. Forman._

Her birth and education--Her preparation for service in the hospitals--

Receives instruction in the care of the sick, dressing wounds,

preparation of diet, etc.--Service at Fort Schuyler Hospital--Mrs.

General Fremont secures her services for St. Louis--Condition of St.

Louis and the other river cities at this time--First assigned to the

Lawson Hospital--Next to Hospital steamer "City of Alton"--The voyage

from Vicksburg to Memphis--Return to St. Louis--Illness--Appointed

Superintendent of Nurses to the large Benton Barracks Hospital--Her

duties--The admirable management of the hospital--Visit to the East--

Return to her work--Illness and return to the East--Collects and

forwards supplies to Western Sanitary Commission and Northwestern

Sanitary Commission--The Chicago Fair--The Charity Hospital at

Cambridge established by her--Her cheerfulness and skill in her

hospital work. 273-278

MRS. ALMIRA FALES.

The first woman to work for the soldiers--She commenced in December,

1860--Her continuous service--Amount of stores distributed by her--

Variety and severity of her work--Hospital Transport Service--

Harrison's Landing--Her work in Pope's campaign--Death of her son--Her

sorrowful toil at Fredericksburg and Falmouth--Her peculiarities and

humor. 279-283

CORNELIA HANCOCK.

Early labors for the soldiers--Mr. Vassar's testimony--Gettysburg--The

campaign of 1864--Fredericksburg and City Point. 284-286

MRS. MARY MORRIS HUSBAND.

Her ancestry--Patriotic instincts of the family--Service in Philadelphia

hospitals--Harrison's Landing--Nursing a sick son--Ministers to others

there--Dr. Markland's testimony--At Camden Street Hospital, Baltimore--

Antietam--Smoketown Hospital--Associated with Miss M. M. C. Hall--Her

admirable services as nurse there--Her personal appearance--The

wonderful apron with its pockets--The battle-flag--Her heroism in

contagious disease--Attachment of the soldiers for her--Her energy and

activity--Her adventures after the battle of Chancellorsville--The Field

Hospital near United States Ford--The forgetful surgeon--Matron of Third

Division, Third Corps Hospital, Gettysburg--Camp Letterman--Illness of

Mrs. Husband--Stationed at Camp Parole, Annapolis--Hospital at Brandy

Station--The battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania--Overwhelming

labor at Fredericksburg, Port Royal, White House, and City Point--Second

Corps Hospital at City Point--Marching through Richmond--"Hurrah for

mother Husband"--The visit to her "boys" at Bailey's Cross Roads--

Distribution of supplies--Mrs. Husband's labors for the pardon or

commutation of the sentence of soldiers condemned by court-martial--Her

museum and its treasures. 287-298

THE HOSPITAL TRANSPORT SERVICE.

The organization of this service by the United States Sanitary

Commission--Difficulties encountered--Steamers and sailing vessels

employed--The corps of ladies employed in the service--The headquarters'

staff--Ladies plying on the Transports to Washington, Baltimore,

Philadelphia, New York, and elsewhere--Work on the Daniel Webster--The

Ocean Queen--Difficulties in providing as rapidly as was desired for

the numerous patients--Duties of the ladies who belonged to the

headquarters' staff--Description of scenes in the work by Miss Wormeley

and Miss G. Woolsey--Taking on patients--"Butter on _soft_ bread"--

"Guess I can stand h'isting better'n _him_"--"Spare the darning

needles"--"Slippers only fit for pontoon bridges"--Visiting Government

Transports--Scrambling eggs in a wash-basin--Subduing the captain of a

tug--The battle of Fair Oaks--Bad management on Government Transports--

Sufferings of the wounded--Sanitary Commission relief tent at the

wharf--Relief tents at White House depot at Savage's Station--The

departure from White House--Arrival at Harrison's Landing--Running past

the rebel batteries at City Point--"I'll take those mattresses you spoke

of"--The wounded of the seven days' battles--"You are so kind, I--am so

weak"--Exchanging prisoners under flag of truce. 299-315

OTHER LABORS OF SOME OF THE MEMBERS OF THE HOSPITAL TRANSPORT CORPS.

Miss Bradley, Miss Gilson, Mrs. Husband, Miss Charlotte Bradford, Mrs.

W. P. Griffin, Miss H. D. Whetten. 316, 317

KATHERINE PRESCOTT WORMELEY.

Birth and parentage--Commencement of her labors for the soldiers--The

Woman's Union Aid Society of Newport--She takes a contract for army

clothing to furnish employment for soldiers' families--Forwarding

sanitary goods--The hundred and fifty bed sacks--Miss Wormeley's

connection with the Hospital Transport Service--Her extraordinary

labors--Illness--Is appointed Lady Superintendent of the Lovell General

Hospital at Portsmouth Grove, Rhode Island--Her duties--Resigns in

October, 1863--Her volume--"The United States Sanitary Commission"--

Other labors for the soldiers. 318-323

THE MISSES WOOLSEY.

Social position of the Woolsey sisters--Mrs. Joseph Howland and her

labors on the Hospital Transport--Her tender and skilful nursing of the

sick and wounded of her husband's regiment--Poem addressed to her by a

soldier--Her encouragement and assistance to the women nurses appointed

by Miss Dix--Mrs. Robert S. Howland--Her labors in the hospitals and at

the Metropolitan Sanitary Fair--Her early death from over-exertion in

connection with the fair--Her poetical contributions to the National

cause--"In the hospital"--Miss Georgiana M. Woolsey--Labors on Hospital

Transports--At Portsmouth Grove Hospital--After Chancellorsville--Her

work at Gettysburg with her mother--"Three weeks at Gettysburg"--The

approach to the battle-field--The Sanitary Commission's Lodge near the

railroad depot--The supply tent--Crutches--Supplying rebels and Union

men alike--Dressing wounds--"On dress parade"--"Bread with _butter_ on

it and _jelly_ on the butter"--"Worth a penny a sniff"--The Gettysburg

women--The Gettysburg farmers--"Had never seen a rebel"--"A feller

might'er got hit"--"I couldn't leave my bread"--The dying soldiers--

"Tell her I love her"--The young rebel lieutenant--The colored

freedmen--Praying for "Massa Lincoln"--The purple and blue and yellow

handkerchiefs--"Only a blue one"--"The man who screamed so"--The German

mother--The Oregon lieutenant--"Soup"--"Put some meat in a little water

and stirred it round"--Miss Woolsey's rare capacities for her work--

Estimate of a lady friend--Miss Jane Stuart Woolsey--Labors in

hospitals--Her charge of the Freedmen at Richmond--Miss Sarah C.

Woolsey, at Portsmouth Grove Hospital. 324-342

ANNA MARIA ROSS.

Her parentage and family--Early devotion to works of charity

and benevolence--Praying for success in soliciting aid for the

unfortunate--The "black small-pox"--The conductor's wife--The Cooper

Shop Hospital--Her incessant labors and tender care of her patients--

Her thoughtfulness for them when discharged--Her unselfish devotion to

the good of others--Sending a soldier to his friends--"He must go or

die"--The attachment of the soldiers to her--The home for discharged

soldiers--Her efforts to provide the funds for it--Her success--The

walk to South Street--Her sudden attack of paralysis and death--The

monument and its inscription. 343-351

MRS. G. T. M. DAVIS.

Mrs. Davis a native of Pittsfield, Massachusetts--A patriotic

family--General Bartlett--She becomes Secretary of the Park Barracks

Ladies' Association--The Bedloe's Island Hospital--The controversy--

Discharge of the surgeon--Withdrawal from the Association--The hospital

at David's Island--Mrs. Davis's labors there--The Soldiers' Rest on

Howard Street--She becomes the Secretary of the Ladies' Association

connected with it--Visits to other hospitals--Gratitude of the men to

whom she has ministered--Appeals to the women of Berkshire--Her

encomiums on their abundant labors. 352-356

MARY J. SAFFORD.

Miss Safford a native of Vermont, but a resident of Cairo--Her thorough

and extensive mental culture--She organizes temporary hospitals among

the regiments stationed at Cairo--Visiting the wounded on the field

after the battle of Belmont--Her extemporized flag of truce--Her

remarkable and excessive labors after the battle of Shiloh--On the

Hospital steamers--Among the hospitals at Cairo--"A merry Christmas" for

the soldiers stationed at Cairo--Illness induced by her over-exertion--

Her tour in Europe--Her labors there, while in feeble health--Mrs.

Livermore's sketch of Miss Safford--Her personal appearance and _petite_

figure--"An angel at Cairo"--"That little gal that used to come in every

day to see us--I tell you what she's an angel if there is any". 357-361

MRS. LYDIA G. PARRISH.

Previous history--Early consecration to the work of beneficence in the

army--Visiting Georgetown Seminary Hospital--Seeks aid from the Sanitary

Commission--Visits to camps around Washington--Return to Philadelphia to

enlist the sympathies of her friends in the work of the Commission--

Return to Seminary Hospital--The surly soldier--He melts at last--Visits

in other hospitals--Broad and Cherry Street Hospital, Philadelphia--

Assists in organizing a Ladies' Aid Society at Chester, and in forming

a corps of volunteer nurses--At Falmouth, Virginia, in January, 1863,

with Mrs. Harris--On a tour of inspection in Virginia and North Carolina

with her husband--The exchange of prisoners--Touching scenes--The

Continental Fair--Mrs. Parrish's labors in connection with it--The

tour of inspection at the Annapolis hospitals--Letters to the Sanitary

Commission--Condition of the returned prisoners--Their hunger--The St.

John's College Hospital--Admirable arrangement--Camp Parole Hospital--

The Naval Academy Hospital--The landing of the prisoners--Their

frightful sufferings--She compiles "The Soldiers' Friend" of which more

than a hundred thousand copies were circulated--Her efforts for the

freedmen. 362-372

MRS. ANNIE WITTENMEYER.

Early efforts for the soldiers--She urges the organization of Aid

Societies, and these become auxiliary at first to the Keokuk Aid

Society, which she was active in establishing--The Iowa State Sanitary

Commission--Mrs. Wittenmeyer becomes its agent--Her active efforts for

the soldiers--She disburses one hundred and thirty-six thousand dollars

worth of goods and supplies in about two years and a-half--She aids in

the establishment of the Iowa Soldiers' Orphans' Home--Her plan of

special diet kitchens--The Christian Commission appoint her their

agent for carrying out this plan--Her labors in their establishment in

connection with large hospitals--Special order of the War Department--

The estimate of her services by the Christian Commission. 373-378

MELCENIA ELLIOTT. _By Rev. J. G. Forman._

Previous pursuits--In the hospitals in Tennessee in the summer and

autumn of 1862--A remarkably skilful nurse--Services at Memphis--The

Iowa soldier--She scales the fence to watch over him and minister to his

needs, and at his death conveys his body to his friends, overcoming all

difficulties to do so--In the Benton Barracks Hospital--Volunteers to

nurse the patients in the erysipelas ward--Matron of the Refugee Home at

St. Louis--"The poor white trash"--Matron of Soldiers' Orphans' Home at

Farmington, Iowa. 379-383

MARY DWIGHT PETTES. _By Rev. J. G. Forman._

A native of Boston--Came to St. Louis in 1861, and entered upon hospital

work in January, 1862--Her faithful earnest work--Labors for the

spiritual as well as physical welfare of the soldiers, reading the

Scriptures to them, singing to them, etc.--Attachment of the soldiers

to her--She is seized with typhoid fever contracted in her care for her

patients, and dies after five weeks' illness--Dr. Eliot's impressions

of her character. 384-388

LOUISA MAERTZ. _By Rev. J. G. Forman._

Her birth and parentage--Her residence in Germany and Switzerland--Her

fondness for study--Her extraordinary sympathy and benevolence--She

commences visiting the hospitals in her native city, Quincy, Illinois,

in the autumn of 1861--She takes some of the wounded home to her

father's house and ministers to them there--She goes to St. Louis--Is

commissioned as a nurse--Sent to Helena, then full of wounded from

the battles in Arkansas--Her severe labors here--Almost the only woman

nurse in the hospitals there--"God bless you, dear lady"--The Arkansas

Union soldier--The half-blind widow--Miss Maertz at Vicksburg--At

New Orleans. 390-394

MRS. HARRIET R. COLFAX.

Early life--A widow and fatherless--Her first labors in the hospitals in

St. Louis--Her sympathies never blunted--The sudden death of a soldier--

Her religious labors among the patients--Dr. Paddock's testimony--The

wounded from Fort Donelson--On the hospital boat--In the battle at

Island No. Ten--Bringing back the wounded--Mrs. Colfax's care of them--

Trips to Pittsburg Landing, before and after the battle of Shiloh--Heavy

and protracted labor for the nurses--Return to St. Louis--At the Fifth

Street Hospital--At Jefferson Barracks--Her associates--Obliged to

retire from the service on account of her health in 1864. 395-399

CLARA DAVIS.

Miss Davis not a native of this country--Her services at the Broad and

Cherry Street Hospital, Philadelphia--One of the Hospital Transport

corps--The steamer "John Brooks"--Mile Creek Hospital--Mrs. Husband's

account of her--At Frederick City, Harper's Ferry, and Antietam--Agent

of the Sanitary Commission at Camp Parole, Annapolis, Maryland--Is

seized with typhoid fever here--When partially recovered, she resumes

her labors, but is again attacked and compelled to withdraw from her

work--Her other labors for the soldiers, both sick and well--Obtaining

furloughs--Sending home the bodies of dead soldiers--Providing

head-boards for the soldiers' graves. 400-403

MRS. R. H. SPENCER.

Her home in Oswego, New York--Teaching--An anti-war Democrat is

convinced of his duty to become a soldier, though too old for the

draft--Husband and wife go together--At the Soldiers' Rest in

Washington--Her first work--Matron of the hospital--At Wind-Mill

Point--Matron in the First Corps Hospital--Foraging for the sick and

wounded--The march toward Gettysburg--A heavily laden horse--Giving up

her last blanket--Chivalric instincts of American soldiers--Labors

during the battle of Gettysburg--Under fire--Field Hospital of the

Eleventh Corps--The hospital at White Church--Incessant labors--Saving

a soldier's life--"Can you go without food for a week?"--The basin

of broth--Mrs. Spencer appointed agent of the State of New York for

the care of the sick and wounded soldiers in the field--At Brandy

Station--At Rappahannock Station and Belle Plain after the battle

of the Wilderness--Virginia mud--Working alone--Heavy rain and no

shelter--Working on at Belle Plain--"Nothing to wear"--Port Royal--White

House--Feeding the wounded--Arrives at City Point--The hospitals and

the Government kitchen--At the front--Carrying supplies to the men in

the rifle pits--Fired at by a sharpshooter--Shelled by the enemy--The

great explosion at City Point--Her narrow escape--Remains at City Point

till the hospitals are broken up--The gifts received from grateful

soldiers. 404-415

MRS. HARRIET FOOTE HAWLEY. _By Mrs. H. B. Stowe._

Mrs. Hawley accompanies her husband, Colonel Hawley, to South

Carolina--Teaching the freedmen--Visiting the hospitals at Beaufort,

Fernandina and St. Augustine--After Olustee--At the Armory Square

Hospital, Washington--The surgical operations performed in the

ward--"Reaching the hospital only in time to die"--At Wilmington--

Frightful condition of Union prisoners--Typhus fever raging--The

dangers greater than those of the battle-field--Four thousand sick--

Mrs. Hawley's heroism, and incessant labors--At Richmond--Injured by

the upsetting of an ambulance--Labors among the freedmen--Colonel

Higginson's speech. 416-419

ELLEN E. MITCHELL.

Her family--Motives in entering on the work of ministering to the

soldiers--Receives instructions at Bellevue Hospital--Receives a

nurse's pay and gives it to the suffering soldiers--At Elmore Hospital,

Georgetown--Gratitude of the soldiers--Trials--St. Elizabeth's Hospital,

Washington--A dying nurse--Her own serious illness--Care and attention

of Miss Jessie Home--Death of her mother--At Point Lookout--Discomforts

and suffering--Ware House Hospital, Georgetown--Transfer of patients and

nurse to Union Hotel Hospital--Her duties arduous but pleasant--Transfer

to Knight General Hospital, New Haven--Resigns and accepts a situation

in the Treasury Department, but longing for her old work returns to it--

At Fredericksburg after battle of the Wilderness--At Judiciary Square

Hospital, Washington--Abundant labor, but equally abundant happiness--

Her feelings in the review of her work. 420-426

JESSIE HOME.

A Scotch maiden, but devotedly attached to the Union--Abandons a

pleasant and lucrative pursuit to become a hospital nurse--Her

earnestness and zeal--Her incessant labors--Sickness and death--Cared

for by Miss Bergen of Brooklyn, New York. 427, 428

MISS VANCE AND MISS BLACKMAR. _By Mrs. M. M. Husband._

Miss Vance a missionary teacher before the war--Appointed by Miss Dix to

a Baltimore hospital--At Washington, at Alexandria, and at Gettysburg--

At Fredericksburg after the battle of the Wilderness--At City Point in

the Second Corps Hospital--Served through the whole war with but three

weeks' furlough--Miss Blackmar from Michigan--A skilful and efficient

nurse--The almost fatal hemorrhage--The boy saved by her skill--Carrying

a hot brick to bed. 429, 430

H. A. DADA AND S. E. HALL.

Missionary teachers before the war--Attending lectures to prepare for

nursing--After the first battle of Bull Run--At Alexandria--The wounded

from the battle-field--Incessant work--Ordered to Winchester, Virginia--

The Court-House Hospital--At Strasburg--General Banks' retreat--

Remaining among the enemy to care for the wounded--At Armory Square

Hospital--The second Bull Run--Rapid but skilful care of the wounded--

Painful cases--Harper's Ferry--Twelfth Army Corps Hospital--The mother

in search of her son--After Chancellorsville--The battle of Gettysburg--

Labors in the First and Twelfth Corps Hospitals--Sent to Murfreesboro',

Tennessee--Rudeness of the Medical Director--Discomfort of their

situation--Discourtesy of the Medical Director and some of the surgeons--

"We have no ladies here--There are some women here, who are cooks!"--

Removal to Chattanooga--Are courteously and kindly received--Wounded of

Sherman's campaign--"You are the _God-blessedest_ woman I ever saw"--

Service to the close of the war and beyond--Lookout Mountain. 431-439

MRS. SARAH P. EDSON.

Early life--Literary pursuits--In Columbia College Hospital--At Camp

California--Quaker guns--Winchester, Virginia--Prevalence of gangrene--

Union Hotel Hospital--On the Peninsula--In hospital of Sumner's Corps--

Her son wounded--Transferred to Yorktown--Sufferings of the men--At

White House and the front--Beef soup and coffee for starving wounded

men--Is permitted to go to Harrison's Landing--Abundant labor and care--

Chaplain Fuller--At Hygeia Hospital--At Alexandria--Pope's campaign--

Attempts to go to Antietam, but is detained by sickness--Goes to

Warrenton, and accompanies the army thence to Acquia Creek--Return to

Washington--Forms a society to establish a home and training school

for nurses, and becomes its Secretary--Visits hospitals--State Relief

Societies approve the plan--Sanitary Commission do not approve of it

as a whole--Surgeon-General opposes--Visits New York city--The masons

become interested--"Army Nurses' Association" formed in New York--Nurses

in great numbers sent on after the battles of Wilderness, Spottsylvania,

etc.--The experiment a success--Its eventual failure through the

mismanagement in New York--Mrs. Edson continues her labors in the army

to the close of the war--Enthusiastic reception by the soldiers. 440-447

MARIA M. C. HALL.

A native of Washington city--Desire to serve the sick and wounded--

Receives a sick soldier into her father's house--Too young to answer

the conditions required by Miss Dix--Application to Mrs. Fales--

Attempts to dissuade her--"Well girls here they are, with everything

to be done for them"--The Indiana Hospital--Difficulties and

discouragements--A year of hard and unsatisfactory work--Hospital

Transport Service--The Daniel Webster--At Harrison's Landing with

Mrs. Fales--Condition of the poor fellows--Mrs. Harris calls her to

Antietam--French's Division and Smoketown Hospitals--Abundant work but

performed with great satisfaction--The French soldier's letter--The

evening or family prayers--Successful efforts for the religious

improvement of the men--Dr. Vanderkieft--The Naval Academy Hospital at

Annapolis--In charge of Section five--Succeeds Mrs. Tyler as Lady

Superintendent of the hospital--The humble condition of the returned

prisoners from Andersonville and elsewhere--Prevalence of typhus fever--

Death of her assistants--Four thousand patients--Writes for "The

Crutch"--Her joy in the success of her work. 448-454

THE HOSPITAL CORPS AT THE NAVAL ACADEMY HOSPITAL, ANNAPOLIS.

The cruelties which had been practiced on the Union men in rebel

prisons--Duties of the nurses under Miss Hall--Names and homes of these

ladies--Death of Miss Adeline Walker--Miss Hall's tribute to her

memory--Miss Titcomb's eulogy on her--Death of Miss M. A. B. Young--

Sketch of her history--"Let me be buried here among my boys"--Miss Rose

M. Billing--Her faithfulness as a nurse in the Indiana Hospital, (Patent

Office,) at Falls Church, and at Annapolis--She like the others falls a

victim to the typhus generated in Southern prisons--Tribute to her

memory. 455-460

OTHER LABORS OF SOME OF THE MEMBERS OF THE ANNAPOLIS HOSPITAL CORPS.

The _Maine stay_ of the Annapolis Hospital--Miss Titcomb--Miss Newhall--

Miss Usher--Other ladies from Maine--The Maine camp and Hospital

Association--Mrs. Eaton--Mrs. Fogg--Mrs. Mayhew--Miss Mary A. Dupee and

her labors--Miss Abbie J. Howe--Her labors for the spiritual as well as

physical good of the men--Her great influence over them--Her joy in her

work. 461-466

MRS. A. H. AND MISS S. H. GIBBONS.

Mrs. Gibbons a daughter of Isaac T. Hopper--Her zeal in the cause of

reform--Work of herself and daughter in the Patent Office Hospital in

1861--Visit to Falls Church and its hospital--Sad condition of the

patients--"If you do not come and take care of me I shall die"--Return

to this hospital--Its condition greatly improved--Winchester and the

Seminary Hospital--Severe labors here--Banks' retreat--The nurses held

as prisoners--Losses of Mrs. and Miss Gibbons at this time--At Point

Lookout--Exchanged prisoners from Belle Isle--A scarcity of garments--

Trowsers a luxury--Fifteen months of hospital service--Conflicts with

the authorities in regard to the freedmen--The July riots in New York

in 1863--Mrs. Gibbons' house sacked by the rioters--Destruction of

everything valuable--Return to Point Lookout--The campaign of 1864-5--

Mrs. and Miss Gibbons at Fredericksburg--An improvised hospital--Mrs.

Gibbons takes charge--The gift of roses--The roses withered and dyed in

the soldiers' blood--Riding with the wounded in box cars--At White

House--Labors at Beverly Hospital, New Jersey--Mrs. Gibbons' return

home--Her daughter remains till the close of the war. 467-475

MRS. E. J. RUSSELL.

Government nurses--Their trials and hardships--Mrs. Russell a teacher

before the war--Her patriotism--First connected with the Regimental

Hospital of Twentieth New York Militia (National Guards)--Assigned

to Columbia College Hospital, Washington--After three years' service

resigns from impaired health, but recovering enters the service

again in Baltimore--Nursing rebels--Her attention to the religious

condition of the men--Four years of service--Returns to teaching after

the war. 477-479

MRS. MARY W. LEE.

Mrs. Lee of foreign birth, but American in feeling--Services in the

Volunteer Refreshment Saloon--A noble institution--At Harrison's

Landing, with Mrs. Harris--Wretched condition of the men--Improvement

under the efforts of the ladies--The Hospital of the Epiphany at

Washington--At Antietam during the battle--The two water tubs--The

enterprising sutler--"Take this bread and give it to that woman"--The

Sedgwick Hospital--Ordering a guard--Hoffman's Farm Hospital--Smoketown

Hospital--Potomac Creek--Chancellorsville--Under fire from the batteries

on Fredericksburg Heights--Marching with the army--Gettysburg--The

Second Corps Hospital--Camp Letterman--The Refreshment Saloon again--

Brandy Station--A stove half a yard square--The battles of the

Wilderness--At Fredericksburg--A diet kitchen without furniture--Over

the river after a stove--Baking, boiling, stewing, and frying

simultaneously--Keeping the old stove hot--At City Point--In charge

of a hospital--The last days of the Refreshment Saloon. 480-488

CORNELIA M. TOMPKINS. _By Rev. J. G. Forman._

A scion of an eminent family--At Benton Barracks Hospital--At Memphis--

Return to St. Louis--At Jefferson Barracks. 489, 490

MRS. ANNA C. McMEENS. _By Mrs. E. S. Mendenhall._

A native of Maryland--The wife of a surgeon in the army--At Camp

Dennison--One of the first women in Ohio to minister to the soldiers

in a military hospital--At Nashville in hospital--The battle of

Perryville--Death of Dr. McMeens--At home--Laboring for the Sanitary

Commission--In the hospitals at Washington--Missionary work among the

sailors on Lake Erie. 491, 492

MRS. JERUSHA R. SMALL. _By Mrs. E. S. Mendenhall._

A native of Iowa--Accompanies her husband to the war--Ministers to the

wounded from Belmont, Donelson, and Shiloh--Her husband wounded at

Shiloh--Under fire in ministering to the wounded--Uses all her spare

clothing for them--As her husband recovers her own health fails--The

galloping consumption--The female secessionist--Going home to die--

Buried with the flag wrapped around her. 493, 494

MRS. S. A. MARTHA CANFIELD. _By Mrs. E. S. Mendenhall._

Wife of Colonel H. Canfield--Her husband killed at Shiloh--Burying her

sorrows in her heart--She returns to labor for the wounded in the

Sixteenth Army Corps, in the hospitals at Memphis--Labors among the

freedmen--Establishes the Colored Orphan Asylum at Memphis. 495

MRS. THOMAS AND MISS MORRIS.

Faithful laborers in the hospitals at Cincinnati till the close of the

war. 496

MRS. SHEPARD WELLS. _By Rev. J. G. Forman._

Driven from East Tennessee by the rebels--Becomes a member of the

Ladies' Union Aid Society at St. Louis, and one of its Secretaries--

Superintends the special diet kitchen at Benton Barracks--An

enthusiastic and earnest worker--Labor for the refugees. 497, 498

MRS. E. C. WITHERELL. _By Rev. J. G. Forman._

A lady from Louisville--Her service in the Fourth Street Hospital, St.

Louis--"Shining Shore"--The soldier boy--On the "Empress" hospital

steamer nursing the wounded--A faithful and untiring nurse--Is attacked

with fever, and dies July, 1862--Resolutions of Western Sanitary

Commission. 499-501

PHEBE ALLEN. _By Rev. J. G. Forman._

A teacher in Iowa--Volunteered as a nurse in Benton Barracks hospital--

Very efficient--Died of malarious fever in 1864, at the hospital. 502

MRS. EDWIN GREBLE.

Of Quaker stock--Intensely patriotic--Her eldest son, Lieutenant John

Greble, killed at Great Bethel in 1861--A second son served through the

war--A son-in-law a prisoner in the rebel prisons--Mrs. Greble a most

assiduous worker in the hospitals of Philadelphia, and a constant and

liberal giver. 503, 504

MRS. ISABELLA FOGG.

A resident of Calais, Maine--Her only son volunteers, and she devotes

herself to the service of ministering to the wounded and sick--Goes to

Annapolis with one of the Maine regiments--The spotted fever in the

Annapolis Hospital--Mrs. Fogg and Mrs. Mayhew volunteer as nurses--The

Hospital Transport Service--At the front after Fair Oaks--Savage's

Station--Over land to Harrison's Landing with the army--Under fire--On

the hospital ship--Home--In the hospitals around Washington, after

Antietam--The Maine Camp Hospital Association--Mrs. J. S. Eaton--After

Chancellorsville--In the field hospitals for nearly a week, working day

and night, and under fire--At Gettysburg the day after the battle--On

the Rapidan--At Mine Run--At Belle Plain and Fredericksburg after the

battle of the Wilderness--At City Point--Home again--A wounded son--

Severe illness of Mrs. Fogg--Recovery--Sent by Christian Commission to

Louisville to take charge of a special diet kitchen--Injured by a fall--

An invalid for life--Happy in the work accomplished. 505-510

MRS. E. E. GEORGE.

Services of aged women in the war--Military agency of Indiana--Mrs.

George's appointment--Her services at Memphis--At Pulaski--At

Chattanooga--Following Sherman to Atlanta--Matron of Fifteenth Army

Corps Hospital--At Nashville--Starts for Savannah, but is persuaded

by Miss Dix to go to Wilmington--Excessive labors there--Dies of

typhus. 511-513

MRS. CHARLOTTE E. McKAY.

A native of Massachusetts--Enters the service as nurse at Frederick

city--Rebel occupation of the city--Chancellorsville--The assault on

Marye's Heights--Death of her brother--Gettysburg--Services in Third

Division Third Corps Hospital--At Warrenton--Mine Run--Brandy Station--

Grant's campaign--From Belle Plain to City Point--The Cavalry Corps

Hospital--Testimonials presented to her. 514-516

MRS. FANNY L. RICKETTS.

Of English parentage--Wife of Major-General Ricketts--Resides on the

frontier for three years--Her husband wounded at Bull Run--Her heroism

in going through the rebel lines to be with him--Dangers and privations

at Richmond--Ministrations to Union soldiers--He is selected as a

hostage for the privateersmen, but released at her urgent solicitation--

Wounded again at Antietam, and again tenderly nursed--Wounded at

Middletown, Virginia, October, 1864, and for four months in great

danger--The end of the war. 517-519

MRS. JOHN S. PHELPS.

Early history--Residence in the Southwest--Rescues General Lyon's

body--Her heroism and benevolence at Pea Ridge and elsewhere. 520, 521

MRS. JANE R. MUNSELL.

Maryland women in the war--Barbara Frietchie--Effie Titlow--Mrs.

Munsell's labors in the hospitals after Antietam and Gettysburg--Her

death from over-exertion. 522, 523

PART III. LADIES WHO ORGANIZED AID SOCIETIES, RECEIVED AND FORWARDED

SUPPLIES TO THE HOSPITALS, DEVOTING THEIR WHOLE TIME TO THE WORK, ETC.

WOMAN'S CENTRAL ASSOCIATION OF RELIEF. _By Mrs. Julia B. Curtis._

Organization and officers of the Association--It becomes a branch of the

United States Sanitary Commission--Its Registration Committee and their

duties--The Selection and Preparation of Nurses for the Army--The

Finance and Executive Committee--The unwillingness of the Government

to admit any deficiency--The arrival of the first boxes for the

Association--The sacrifices made by the women in the country towns and

hamlets--The Committee of Correspondence--Twenty-five thousand letters--

The receiving book, the day-book and the ledger--The alphabet repeated

seven hundred and twenty-seven times on the boxes--Mrs. Fellows and Mrs.

Colby solicitors of donations--The call for nurses on board the Hospital

Transports--Mrs. W. P. Griffin and Mrs. David Lane volunteer, and

subsequently other members of the Association--Mrs. D'Oremieulx's

departure for Europe--Mr. S. W. Bridgham's faithful labors--Creeping

into the Association rooms of a Sunday, to gather up and forward supplies

needed for sudden emergencies--The First Council of Representatives from

the principal Aid Societies at Washington--Monthly boxes--The _Federal

principle_--Antietam and Fredericksburg exhaust the supplies--Miss

Louisa Lee Schuyler's able letter of inquiry to the Secretaries of

Auxiliaries--The plan of "Associate Managers"--Miss Schuyler's incessant

labors in connection with this--The set of boxes devised by Miss

Schuyler to aid the work of the Committee on Correspondence--The

employment of Lecturers--The Association publish Mr. George T. Strong's

pamphlet, "How can we best help our Camps and Hospitals"--The Hospital

Directory opened--The lack of supplies of clothing and edibles,

resulting from the changed condition of the country--Activity and zeal

of the members of the Woman's Central Association--Miss Ellen Collins'

incessant labors--Her elaborate tables of supplies and their

disbursement--The Association offers to purchase for the Auxiliaries

at wholesale prices--Miss Schuyler's admirable Plan of Organization for

Country Societies--Alert Clubs founded--Large contributions to the

stations at Beaufort and Morris Island--Miss Collins and Mrs. W. P.

Griffin in charge of the office through the New York Riots in July,

1863--Mrs. Griffin, is chairman of Special Relief Committee, and makes

personal visits to the sick--The Second Council at Washington--Miss

Schuyler and Miss Collins delegates--Miss Schuyler's efforts--The

whirlwind of Fairs--Aiding the feeble auxiliaries by donating an

additional sum in goods equal to what they raised, to be manufactured by

them--Five thousand dollars a month thus expended--A Soldiers' Aid

Society Council--Help to Military Hospitals near the city, and the Navy,

by the Association--Death of its President, Dr. Mott--The news of

peace--Miss Collins' Congratulatory Letter--The Association continues

its work to July 7--Two hundred and ninety-one thousand four hundred and

seventy-five shirts distributed--Purchases made for Auxiliaries,

seventy-nine thousand three hundred and ninety dollars and fifty-seven

cents--Other expenditures of money for the purposes of the Association,

sixty-one thousand three hundred and eighty-six dollars and fifty-seven

cents--The zeal of the Associated Managers--The Brooklyn Relief

Association--Miss Schuyler's labors as a writer--Her reports--Articles

in the Sanitary Bulletin, "The Soldiers' Friend," "Nelly's Hospital,"

&c. &c.--The patient and continuous labors of the Committees on

Correspondence and on Supplies--Territory occupied by the Woman's

Central Association--Resolutions at the Final Meeting. 527-539

SOLDIERS' AID SOCIETY OF NORTHERN OHIO.

Its organization--At first a Local Society--No Written Constitution or

By-laws--Becomes a branch of the United States Sanitary Commission in

October, 1861--Its territory small and not remarkable for wealth--Five

hundred and twenty auxiliaries--Its disbursement of one million one

hundred and thirty-three thousand dollars in money and supplies--The

Northern Ohio Sanitary Fair--The supplies mostly forwarded to the

Western Depot of the United States Sanitary Commission at Louisville--

"The Soldiers' Home" built under the direction of the Ladies who managed

the affairs of the Society, and supplied and conducted under their

Supervision--The Hospital Directory, Employment Agency, War Claim

Agency--The entire time of the Officers of the Society for five and a

half years voluntarily and freely given to its work from eight in the

morning till six or later in the evening--The President, Mrs. B. Rouse,

and her labors in organizing Aid Societies and attending to the home

work--The labors of the Secretary and Treasurer--Editorial work--The

Society's printing press--Setting up and printing Bulletins--The

Sanitary Fair originated and carried on by the Aid Society--The Ohio

State Soldiers' Home aided by them--Sketch of Mrs. Rouse--Sketch of

Miss Mary Clark Brayton, Secretary of the Society--Sketch of Miss Ellen

F. Terry, Treasurer of the Society--Miss Brayton's "On a Hospital

Train," "Riding on a Rail"--Visit to the Army--The first sight of a

hospital train--The wounded soldiers on board--"Trickling a little

sympathy on the Wounded"--"The Hospital Train a jolly thing"--The dying

soldier--Arrangement of the Hospital Train--The arduous duties of the

Surgeon. 540-552

NEW ENGLAND WOMEN'S AUXILIARY ASSOCIATION.

Its organization and territory--One million five hundred and fifteen

thousand dollars collected in money and supplies by this Association--

Its Sanitary Fair and its results--The chairman of the Executive

Committee Miss Abby W. May--Her retiring and modest disposition--Her

rare executive powers--Sketch of Miss May--Her early zeal in the

Anti-slavery movement--Her remarkable practical talent, and admirable

management of affairs--Her eloquent appeals to the auxiliaries--Her

entire self-abnegation--Extract from one of her letters--Extract from

her Final Report--The Boston Sewing Circle and its officers--The Ladies'

Industrial Aid Association of Boston--Nearly three hundred and

forty-seven thousand garments for the soldiers made by the employes of

the Association, most of whom were from soldiers' families--Additional

wages beyond the contract prices paid to the workwomen, to the amount of

over twenty thousand dollars--The lessons learned by the ladies engaged

in this work. 553-559

THE NORTHWESTERN SANITARY COMMISSION.

The origin of the Commission--Its early labors--Mrs. Porter's connection

with it--Her determination to go to the army--The appointment of Mrs.

Hoge and Mrs. Livermore as Managers--The extent and variety of their

labors--The two Sanitary Fairs--Estimate of the amount raised by the

Commission. 560-561

MRS. A. H. HOGE.

Her birth and early education--Her marriage--Her family--She identifies

herself from the beginning with the National cause--Her first visit

to the hospitals of Cairo, Mound City and St. Louis--The Mound City

Hospital--The wounded boy--Turned over for the first time--"They had to

take the Fort"--Rebel cruelties at Donelson--The poor French boy--The

mother who had lost seven sons in the Army--"He had turned his face to

the wall to die"--Mrs. Hoge at the Woman's Council at Washington in

1862--Labors of Mrs. Hoge and Mrs. Livermore--Correspondence--

Circulars--Addresses--Mrs. Hoge's eloquence and pathos--The ample

contributions elicited by her appeals--Visit to the Camp of General

Grant at Young's Point, in the winter of 1862-3--Return with a cargo of

wounded--Second visit to the vicinity of Vicksburg--Prevalence of

scurvy--The onion and potato circulars--Third visit to Vicksburg in

June, 1863--Incidents of this visit--The rifle-pits--Singing Hymns under

fire--"Did you drop from heaven into these rifle-pits?"--Mrs. Hoge's

talk to the men--"Promise me you'll visit my regiment to-morrow"--The

flag of the Board of Trade Regiment--"How about the blood?"--"Sing,

Rally round the Flag Boys"--The death of R--"Take her picture from under

my pillow"--Mrs. Hoge at Washington again--Her views of the value of the

Press in benevolent operations--In the Sanitary Fairs at Chicago--Her

address at Brooklyn, in March, 1865--Gifts presented her as a testimony

to the value of her labors. 562-576

MRS. MARY A. LIVERMORE.

Mrs. Livermore's childhood and education--She becomes a teacher--Her

marriage--She is associated with her husband as Editor of _The New

Covenant_--Her scholarship and ability as a writer and speaker--The

vigor and eloquence of her appeals--"Women and the War"--The beginnings

of the Northwestern Sanitary Commission--The appointment of Mrs.

Livermore and Mrs. Hoge as its managers--The contributions of Mrs.

Livermore to the press, on subjects connected with her work--"The

backward movement of General McClellan"--The Hutchinsons prohibited from

singing Whittier's Song in the Army of the Potomac--Mrs. Livermore's

visit to Washington--Her description of "Camp Misery"--She makes a tour

to the Military Posts on the Mississippi--The female nurses--The scurvy

in the Camp--The Northwestern Sanitary Fair--Mrs. Livermore's address to

the Women of the Northwest--Her tact in selecting the right persons to

carry out her plans at the Fair--Her extensive journeyings--Her visit to

Washington in the Spring of 1865--Her invitation to the President to be

present at the opening of the Fair--Her description of Mr. Lincoln--His

death and the funeral solemnities with which his remains were received

at Chicago--The final fair--Mrs. Livermore's testimonials of regard and

appreciation from friends and, especially from the soldiers. 577-589

GENERAL AID SOCIETY FOR THE ARMY, BUFFALO.

Organization of the Society--Its first President, Mrs. Follett--Its

second President, Mrs. Horatio Seymour--Her efficient Aids, Miss Babcock

and Miss Bird--The friendly rivalry with the Cleveland Society--Mrs.

Seymour's rare ability and system--Her encomiums on the labors of the

patriot workers in country homes--The workers in the cities equally

faithful and praiseworthy. 590-592

MICHIGAN SOLDIERS' AID SOCIETY.

The Patriotic women of Michigan--Annie Etheridge, Mrs. Russell and

others--"The Soldiers' Relief Committee" and "The Soldiers' Aid Society"

of Detroit--Their Consolidation--The officers of the New Society--Miss

Valeria Campbell the soul of the organization--Her multifarious labors--

The Military Hospitals in Detroit--The "Soldiers' Home" in Detroit--

Michigan in the two Chicago Fairs--Amount of money and supplies raised

by the Michigan Branch. 593-595

WOMEN'S PENNSYLVANIA BRANCH OF UNITED STATES SANITARY COMMISSION.

The loyal women of Philadelphia--Their numerous organizations for the

relief of the Soldier--The organization of the Women's Pennsylvania

Branch--Its officers--Sketch of Mrs. Grier--Her parentage--Her residence

in Wilmington, N. C.--Persecution for loyalty--Escape--She enters

immediately upon Hospital Work--Her appointment to the Presidency of

the Women's Branch--Her remarkable tact and skill--Her extraordinary

executive talent--Mrs. Clara J. Moore--Sketch of her labors--Other

ladies of the Association--Testimonials to Mrs. Grier's ability and

admirable management from officers of the Sanitary Commission and

others--The final report of this Branch--The condition of the state

and country at its inception--The Associate Managers--The work

accomplished--Peace at last--The details of Expenses of the Supply

Department--The work of the Relief Committee--Eight hundred and thirty

women employed--Widows of Soldiers aided--Total expenditures of Relief

Committee. 596-606

THE WISCONSIN SOLDIERS' AID SOCIETY. _By Rev. J. G. Forman._

The Milwaukie Ladies Soldiers' Aid Society--Labors of Mrs. Jackson, Mrs.

Delafield and others--Enlargement and re-organization as the Wisconsin

Soldiers' Aid Society--Mrs. Henrietta L. Colt, chosen Corresponding

Secretary--Her visits to the front, and her subsequent labors among the

Aid Societies of the State--Efficiency of the Society--The Wisconsin

Soldiers' Home--Its extent and what it accomplished--It forms the

Nucleus of one of the National Soldiers' Homes--Sketch of Mrs. Colt--

Death of her husband--Her deep and overwhelming grief--She enters upon

the Sanitary Work, to relieve herself from the crushing weight of her

great sorrow--Her labors on a Hospital Steamer--Her frequent subsequent

visits to the front--Her own account of these visits--"The beardless

boys, all heroes"--Sketch of Mrs. Governor Salomon--Her labors in behalf

of the German and other soldiers of Wisconsin. 607-614

PITTSBURG BRANCH UNITED STATES SANITARY COMMISSION.

The Pittsburg Sanitary Committee and Pittsburg Subsistence Committee--

Organization of the Branch--Its Corresponding Secretary, Miss Rachael W.

McFadden--Her executive ability zeal and patriotism--Her colleagues in

her labors--The Pittsburg Sanitary Fair--Its remarkable success--Miss

Murdock's labors at Nashville. 615, 616

MRS. ELIZABETH S. MENDENHALL.

Mrs. Mendenhall's childhood and youth passed in Richmond, Va.--Her

relatives Members of the Society of Friends--Her early Hospital labors--

President of the Women's Soldiers' Aid Society of Cincinnati--Her appeal

to the citizens of Cincinnati to organize a Sanitary Fair--Her efforts

to make the Fair a success--The magnificent result--Subsequent labors in

the Sanitary Cause--Fair for Soldiers' Families in December, 1864--

Labors for the Freedmen and Refugees--In behalf of fallen women. 617-620

DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH.

Dr. M. M. Marsh appointed Medical Inspector of Department of the South--

Early in 1863 he proceeded thither with his wife--Mrs. Marsh finds

abundant work in the receipt and distribution of Sanitary Stores, in the

visiting of Hospitals--Spirit of the wounded men--The exchange of

prisoners--Sufferings of our men in Rebel prisons--Their self-sacrificing

spirit--Supplies sent to the prisoners, and letters received from

them--The sudden suspension of this benevolent work by order from

General Halleck--The sick from Sherman's Army--Dr. Marsh ordered to

Newbern, N. C., but detained by sickness--Return to New York--The

"Lincoln Home"--Dr. and Mrs. Marsh's labors there--Close of the Lincoln

Home. 621-629

ST. LOUIS LADIES' UNION AID SOCIETY.

Organization of the Society--Its officers--Was the principal Auxiliary

of Western Sanitary Commission--Visits of its members to the fourteen

hospitals in the vicinity of St. Louis--The hospital basket and its

contents--The Society's delegates on the battle-fields--Employs the

wives and daughters of soldiers in bandage rolling, and subsequently on

contracts for hospital and other clothing for soldiers--Its committees

cutting, fitting and examining the work--Undertakes the special diet

kitchen of the Benton Barracks Hospital--Establishes a branch at

Nashville--Special Diet Kitchen there--Its work for the Freedmen and

Refugees--Sketches of its leading officers and managers--Mrs. Anna L.

Clapp, a native of Washington County, N. Y.--Resides in Brooklyn, N. Y.,

and subsequently in St. Louis--Elected President of Ladies' Union Aid

Society at the beginning of the war, and retains her position till its

close--Her arduous labors and great tact and skill--She organizes a

Refugee Home and House of Industry--Aids the Freedmen, and assists in

the proper regulation of the Soldiers' Home--Miss H. A. Adams, (now Mrs.

Morris Collins)--Born and educated in New Hampshire--At the outbreak of

the war, a teacher in St. Louis--Devoted herself to the Sanitary work

throughout the war--Was secretary of the society till the close of 1864,

and a part of the time at Nashville, where she established a special

diet kitchen--Death of her brother in the army--Her influence in

procuring the admission of female nurses in the Nashville hospitals--

Mrs. C. R. Springer, a native of Maine, one of the directors of the

Society, and the superintendent of its employment department, for

furnishing work to soldiers' families--Her unremitting and faithful

labors--Mrs. Mary E. Palmer--A native of New Jersey--An earnest worker,

visiting and aiding soldiers' families and dispensing the charities of

the Society among them and the destitute families of refugees--Her

labors were greater than her strength--Her death occasioned by a

decline, the result of over exertion in her philanthropic work. 630-642

LADIES' AID SOCIETY OF PHILADELPHIA, &C.

Organization of the Society--Its officers--Mrs. Joel Jones, Mrs. John

Harris, Mrs. Stephen Caldwell--Mrs. Harris mostly engaged at the front--

The Society organized with a view to the spiritual as well as physical

benefit of the soldiers--Its great efficiency with moderate means--The

ladies who distributed its supplies at the front--Extract from one of

its reports--Its labors among the Refugees--The self-sacrifice of one

of its members--Its expenditures. THE PENN RELIEF ASSOCIATION--An

organization originating with the Friends, but afterward embracing

all denominations--Its officers--Its efficiency--Amount of supplies

distributed by it through well-known ladies. THE SOLDIERS' AID

SOCIETY--Another of the efficient Pennsylvania Organizations for the

relief of the soldiers--Its President, Mrs. Mary A. Brady--Her labors

in the Satterlee Hospital--At "Camp Misery"--At the front--After

Gettysburg, and at Mine Run--Her health injured by her exposure and

excessive labors--She dies of heart-disease in May, 1864. 643-649

WOMEN'S RELIEF ASSOCIATION OF BROOKLYN AND LONG ISLAND.

Brooklyn early in the war--Numerous channels for distribution of the

Supplies contributed--Importance of a Single Comprehensive

Organization--The Relief Association formed--Mrs. Stranahan chosen

President--Sketch of Mrs. Stranahan--Her social position--First

directress of the Graham Institute--Her rare tact and efficiency as a

presiding officer and in the dispatch of business--The Long Island

Sanitary Fair--Her excessive labors there, and the perfect harmony and

good feeling which prevailed--Rev. Dr. Spear's statement of her worth--

The resolutions of the Relief Association--Rev. Dr. Bellows' Testimony--

Her death--Rev. Dr. Farley's letter concerning her--Rev. Dr. Budington's

tribute to her memory. 650-658

MRS. ELIZABETH M. STREETER.

Loyal Southern Women--Mrs. Streeter's activity in promoting associations

of loyal women for the relief of the soldiers--Her New England parentage

and education--The Ladies' Union Relief Association of Baltimore--Mrs.

Streeter at Antietam--As a Hospital Visitor--The Eutaw Street Hospital--

The Union Refugees in Baltimore--Mrs. Streeter organizes the Ladies'

Union Aid Society for the Relief of Soldiers' families--Testimony of the

Maryland Committee of the Christian Commission to the value of her

labors--Death of her husband--Her return to Massachusetts. 659-664

MRS. CURTIS T. FENN.

The loyal record of the men and women of Berkshire County--Mrs. Fenn's

history and position before the war--Her skill and tenderness in the

care of the sick--Her readiness to enter upon the work of relief--She

becomes the embodiment of a Relief Association--Liberal contributions

made and much work performed by others but no organization--Mrs. Fenn's

incessant and extraordinary labors for the soldiers--Her packing and

shipping of the supplies to the hospitals in and about New York and to

more distant cities--Refreshments for Soldiers who passed through

Pittsfield--Her personal distribution of supplies at the soldiers'

Thanksgiving dinner at Bedloe's Island in 1862, and at David's Island

in 1864--"The gentleman from Africa and his vote"--Her efforts for the

disabled soldiers and their families--The soldiers' monument. 665-675

MRS. JAMES HARLAN.

Women in high stations devoting themselves to the relief of the

Soldiers--Instances--Mrs. Harlan's early interest in the soldier--At

Shiloh--Cutting red-tape--Wounded soldiers removed northward after the

battle--Death of her daughter--Her labors for the religious benefit of

the soldier--Her health impaired by her labors. 676-678

NEW ENGLAND SOLDIERS' RELIEF ASSOCIATION.

History of the organization--Its Matron, Mrs. E. A. Russell--The Women's

Auxiliary Committee--The Night Watchers' Association--The Hospital

Choir--The SOLDIERS' DEPOT in Howard Street, N. Y.--The Ladies'

Association connected with it. 679, 680

PART IV. LADIES DISTINGUISHED FOR SERVICES AMONG THE FREEDMEN AND

REFUGEES.

MRS. FRANCES DANA GAGE.

Childhood and youth of Mrs. Gage--Anti-slavery views inculcated by

her parents and grand-parents--Her marriage--Her husband an earnest

reformer--Her connection with the press--Ostracism on account of her

opposition to slavery--Propositions made to her husband to swerve from

principle and thereby attain office--"Dare to stand alone"--Removal to

St. Louis--A contributor to the Missouri Republican--The noble stand of

Colonel Chambers--His death--She contributes to the Missouri Democrat,

but is finally excluded from its columns--Personal peril--Her advocacy

of the cause of Kansas--Editor of an Agricultural paper in Columbus,

Ohio--Her labors among the freedmen in the department of the South for

thirteen months, (1862-3)--Helps the soldiers also--Her four sons in

the army--Return Northward in the Autumn of 1863--Becomes a lecturer--

Advocating the Emancipation Act and the Constitutional Amendment,

prohibiting slavery--Labors for the Freedmen and Refugees in 1864--

Is injured by the overturning of a carriage at Galesburg, Ill., in

September, 1864--Lecturing again on her partial recovery--Summary of her

character. 683-690

MRS. LUCY GAYLORD POMEROY.

Birth and early education--Half-sister of the poets Lewis and Willis

Gaylord Clark--Educates herself for a Missionary--A Sunday-school

teacher--Sorrow--Is married to S. C. Pomeroy (afterward United States

Senator from Kansas)--Residence in Southampton, Mass.--Ill health--

Removal to Kansas--The Kansas Struggle and Border Ruffian War--Mrs.

Pomeroy a firm friend to the escaping slaves--The famine year of 1860--

Her house an office of distribution for supplies to the starving--

Accompanies her husband to Washington in 1861--Her labors and

contributions for the soldiers--In Washington and at Atchison, Kansas--

Return to Washington--Founding an asylum for colored orphans and

destitute aged colored women--The building obtained and furnished--Her

failing health--She comes north, but dies on the passage. 691-696

MARIA R. MANN.

Miss Mann a near relative of the late Hon. Horace Mann--Her career as

a teacher--Her loyalty--Comes to St. Louis--Becomes a nurse in the

Fifth St. Hospital--Condition of the Freedmen at St. Helena, Ark.--The

Western Sanitary Commission becomes interested in endeavoring to help

them--They propose to Miss Mann to go thither and establish a hospital,

distribute clothing and supplies to them, and instruct them as far as

possible--She consents--Perilous voyage--Her great and beneficent labors

at Helena--Extraordinary improvement in the condition of the freedmen--

She remains till August, 1863--Her heroism--Gratitude of the freedmen--

"You's light as a fedder, anyhow"--Return to St. Louis--Becomes the

teacher and manager of a colored asylum at Washington, D. C.--Her school

for colored children at Georgetown--Its superior character--It is, in

intention, a normal school--Miss Mann's sacrifices in continuing in that

position. 697-703

SARAH J. HAGAR.

A native of Illinois--Serves in the St. Louis Hospitals till August,

1863--Is sent to Vicksburg in the autumn of 1863, by the Western

Sanitary Commission, as teacher for the Freedmen's children--Her great

and successful labors--Is attacked in April, 1864, with malarial fever,

and dies May 3--Tribute to her character and work, from Mr. Marsh,

superintendent of Freedmen at Vicksburg. 704-706

MRS. JOSEPHINE R. GRIFFIN.

Her noble efforts--Her position at the commencement of the war--Her

interest in the condition of the Freedmen--Her attempts to overcome

their faults--Her success--Organization of schools--Finding employment

for them--Influx of Freedmen into the District of Columbia--Their

helpless condition--Mrs. Griffin attempts to find situations for them at

the North--Extensive correspondence--Her expeditions with companies of

them to the Northern cities--Necessities of the freedmen remaining in

the District in the Autumn of 1866--Mrs. Griffin's circular--The denial

of its truth by the Freedmen's Bureau--Their subsequent retraction--The

Congressional appropriation--Should have been put in Mrs. Griffin's

hands--She continues her labors. 707-709

MRS. M. M. HALLOWELL.

Condition of the loyal whites of the mountainous district of the South.

Their sufferings and persecutions--Cruelty of the Rebels--Contributions

for their aid in the north--Boston, New York, Philadelphia--Mrs.

Hallowell's efforts--She and her associates visit Nashville, Knoxville,

Huntsville and Chattanooga and distribute supplies to the families of

refugees--Peril of their journey--Repeated visits of Mrs. Hallowell--The

Home for Refugees, near Nashville--Gratitude of the Refugees for this

aid--Colonel Taylor's letter. 710-712

OTHER FRIENDS OF THE FREEDMEN AND REFUGEES.

Mrs. Harris' labors--Miss Tyson and Mrs. Beck--Miss Jane Stuart

Woolsey--Mrs. Governor Hawley--Miss Gilson--Mrs. Lucy S. Starr--Mrs.

Clinton B. Fisk--Mrs. H. F. Hoes and Miss Alice F. Royce--Mrs. John S.

Phelps--Mrs. Mary A. Whitaker--Fort Leavenworth--Mrs. Nettie C.

Constant--Miss G. D. Chapman--Miss Sarah E. M. Lovejoy, daughter of Hon.

Owen Lovejoy--Miss Mary E. Sheffield--Her labors at Vicksburg--Her

death--Helena--Mrs. Sarah Coombs--Nashville--Mrs. Mary R. Fogg--St.

Louis Refugee and Freedmen's Home--Mrs. H. M. Weed--The supervision of

this Home by Mrs. Alfred Clapp, Mrs. Joseph Crawshaw, Mrs. Lucien Eaton

and Mrs. N. Stevens. 733-716

PART V. LADIES DISTINGUISHED FOR SERVICES IN SOLDIERS' HOMES, VOLUNTEER

REFRESHMENT SALOONS, ON GOVERNMENT HOSPITAL TRANSPORTS ETC.

MRS. O. E. HOSMER.

Mrs. Hosmer's residence at Chicago--Her two sons enter the army--She

determines to go to the hospitals--Her first experiences in the

hospitals at Tipton and Smithtown--The lack of supplies--Mrs. Hosmer

procures them from the Sanitary Commission at St. Louis--Return to

Chicago--Organization of the "Ladies' War Committee"--Mrs. Hosmer its

Secretary--Efficiency of the organization--The Board of Trade

Regiments--Mrs. Hosmer and Mrs. Smith Tinkham go to Murfreesboro'

with supplies after the battle of Stone River--Their report on their

return--Touching incident--The wounded soldier--Return to Chicago--

Establishment of the Soldiers' Home at Chicago--Mrs. Hosmer its first

Vice President--Her zeal for its interests and devotion to the Soldiers

there--To the battle-field after Chickamauga--Taken prisoner but

recaptured--Supplies lost--Return home--Her labors at the Soldiers'

Home and Soldiers' Rest for the next fifteen months--The Northwestern

Sanitary and Soldiers' Home Fair--Mrs. Hosmer Corresponding Secretary

of the Executive Committee--She visits the hospitals from Cairo to

New Orleans--Success of her Mission--The emaciated prisoners from

Andersonville and Catawba at Vicksburg--Mrs. Hosmer ministers to them--

The loss of the Sultana--Return and further labors at the Soldiers'

Rest--Removal to New York. 719-724

MISS HATTIE WISWALL.

Enters the service as Hospital Nurse in 1863--At Benton Barracks

Hospital--A Model nurse--Her cheerfulness--Removal to Nashville,

Tennessee--She is sent thence to Vicksburg, first as an assistant and

afterwards as principal matron at the Soldiers' Home--One hundred and

fifteen thousand soldiers accommodated there during her stay--The number

of soldiers daily received ranging from two hundred to six hundred--Her

admirable management--Scrupulous neatness of the Home--Her labors among

the Freedmen and Refugees at Vicksburg--Her care of the wounded from

the Red River Expedition--Her tenderness and cheerful spirit--She

accompanies a hospital steamer loaded with wounded men, to Cairo, and

cheers and comforts the soldiers on their voyage--Takes charge of a

wounded officer and conducts him to his home--Return to her duties--The

Soldiers' Home discontinued in June, 1865. 726-727

MRS. LUCY E. STARR.

A Clergyman's widow--Her service in the Fifth Street Hospital, St.

Louis--Her admirable adaptation to her duties--Appointed by the Western

Sanitary Commission, Matron of the Soldiers' Home at Memphis--Nearly one

hundred and twenty thousand soldiers received there during two and a

half years--Mrs. Starr manages the Home with great fidelity and

success--Mr. O. R. Waters' acknowledgment of her services--Closing of

the Home--Mrs. Starr takes charge of an institution for suffering

freedmen and refugees, in Memphis--Her faithfulness. 728-730

MISS CHARLOTTE BRADFORD.

Her reticence in regard to her labors--The public and official life of

ladies occupying positions in charitable institutions properly a matter

of public comment and notice--Miss Bradford's labors in the Hospital

Transport Service--The Elm City--The Knickerbocker--Her associates in

this work--Other Relief Work--She succeeds Miss Bradley as matron of the

Soldiers' Home at Washington--Her remarkable executive ability, dignity

and tenderness for the sick and wounded soldier. 731, 732

UNION VOLUNTEER REFRESHMENT SALOON OF PHILADELPHIA.

The labors of Mrs. Lee and Miss Ross in institutions of this class--The

beginning of the Union Volunteer Refreshment Saloon--Rival but not

hostile organization--Samuel B. Fales, Esq., and his patriotic labors--

The two institutions well supplied with funds--Nearly nine hundred

thousand soldiers fed at the Union Volunteer Refreshment Saloon, and

four hundred thousand at the Cooper Shop--The labors of the patriotic

women connected with the organizations--Mrs. Eliza G. Plummer--Her

faithful and abundant labors--Her death from over exertion--Mrs. Mary B.

Wade--Her great age, and extraordinary services--Mrs. Ellen J. Lowry--

Mrs. Margaret Boyer--Other ladies and their constant and valuable

labors--The worthy ladies of the Cooper Shop Saloon. 733-737

MRS. R. M. BIGELOW.

"Aunty Bigelow"--Mrs. Bigelow a native of Washington--Her services in

the Indiana Hospital in the Patent Office Building--"Hot cakes and

mush and milk"--Mrs. Billing an associate in Mrs. Bigelow's Labors--

Mrs. Bigelow the almoner of many of the Aid Societies at the North--Her

skill and judgment in the distribution of supplies--She maintains a

regular correspondence with the soldier boys who have been under her

care--Her house a "Home" for the sick soldier or officer who asked that

he might be sheltered and nursed there--She welcomes with open doors

the hospital workers from abroad--Her personal sorrows in the midst of

these labors. 738-740

MISS HATTIE R. SHARPLESS AND HER ASSOCIATES.

The Government Hospital Transports early in the war--Great improvements

made in them at a later period--The Government Transport Connecticut--

Miss Sharpless serves as matron on this for seventeen months--His

previous labors in army hospitals at Fredericksburg, Falls Church,

Antietam and elsewhere--Her admirable adaptation to her work--A true

Christian heroine--Thirty-three thousand sick and wounded men under

charge on the Transport--Her religious influence on the men--Miss Hattie

S. Reifsnyder of Catawissa, Penn. and Mrs. Cynthia Case of Newark, Ohio,

her assistants are actuated by a similar spirit--Miss W. F. Harris

of Providence, R. I., also on the Transport, for some months, and

previously in the Indiana Hospital, in Ascension Church and Carver

Hospital, and after leaving the Transport at Harper's Ferry and

Winchester--Her health much broken by her excessive labors--Devotes

herself to the instruction and training of the Freedmen after the close

of the war. 741-743

PART VI. LADIES DISTINGUISHED FOR OTHER SERVICES IN THE NATIONAL CAUSE.

MRS. ANNIE ETHERIDGE.

Mrs. Etheridge's goodness and purity of character--Her childhood and

girlhood passed in Wisconsin--She marries there--Return of her father to

Michigan--She visits him and while there joins the Second Michigan

Regiment, to attend to its sick and wounded--Transferred subsequently to

the Third Regiment, and at the expiration of its term of service joins

the Fifth Michigan Regiment--She is in the skirmish of Blackburn's Ford

and at the first battle of Bull Run--In hospital service--On a hospital

transport with Miss Amy M. Bradley--At the second battle of Bull Run--

The soldier boy torn to pieces by a shot while she is ministering to

him--General Kearny's recognition of her services--Kearny's death

prevents her receiving promotion--At Chancellorsville, May 3, 1863--She

leads in a skirmish, rides along the front exhorting the men to do their

duty, and finds herself under heavy fire--An officer killed by her side

and she herself slightly wounded--Her horse, wounded, runs with her--She

seeks General Berry and after a pleasant interview takes charge of a

rebel officer, a prisoner, whom she escorts to the rear--"I would risk

my life for Annie, any time"--General Berry's death--The wounded

artillery-man--She binds up his wounds and has him brought to the

hospital--Touching letter--The retreating soldiers at Spottsylvania--

Annie remonstrates with them, and brings them back into the fight, under

heavy fire--Outside the lines, and closely pursued by the enemy--

Hatcher's Run--She dashes through the enemy's line unhurt--She receives

a Government appointment at the close of the war--Her modesty and

diffidence of demeanor. 747-753

DELPHINE P. BAKER.

Her birth and education--Character of her parents--Her lectures on the

sphere and culture of women--Her labors in Chicago in the collection and

distribution of hospital supplies--Her hospital work--Ill health--She

commences the publication of "The National Banner" first in Chicago,

next in Washington and finally in New York--Its success but partial--Her

efforts long, persistent and unwearied, for the establishment of a

National Home for Soldiers--The bill finally passes Congress--Delay in

organization--Its cause--Miss Baker meantime endeavors to procure Point

Lookout as a location for one of the National Soldiers' Homes--Change in

the act of incorporation--The purchase of the Point Lookout property

consummated. 754-759

MRS. S. BURGER STEARNS.

A native of New York City--Her education at the State Normal School of

Michigan--Her marriage--Her husband a Colonel of volunteers--She visits

the hospitals and devotes herself to lecturing in behalf of the Aid

movement. 760

BARBARA FRIETCHIE.

Her age--Her patriotism--Whittier's poem. 761-763

MRS. HETTIE M. McEWEN.

Of revolutionary lineage--Her devotion to the Union--Her defiance of

Isham Harris' efforts to have the Union flag lowered on her house--Mrs.

Hooper's poem. 764-766

OTHER DEFENDERS OF THE FLAG.

Mrs. Effie Titlow--Mrs. Alfred Clapp--Mrs. Moore (Parson Brownlow's

daughter)--Miss Alice Taylor--Mrs. Booth--"_Never surrender the flag to

traitors_". 767-769

MILITARY HEROINES.

Those who donned the male attire not entitled to a place in our pages--

Madame Turchin--Her exploits--Bridget Divers--"Michigan Bridget" or

"Irish Biddy"--She recovers her captain's body, and carries it on her

horse for fifteen miles through rebel territory--Returns after the

wounded, but is overtaken by the rebels while bringing them off and

plundered of her ambulance horses--Others soon after provided--

Accompanies a regiment of the regular army to the plains after the

war--Mrs. Kady Brownell--Her skill as a sharp-shooter, and in sword

exercise--Color Bearer in the Fifth Rhode Island Infantry--A skillful

nurse--Her husband wounded--Discharged from the army in 1863. 770-774

THE WOMEN OF GETTYSBURG.

Mrs. Jennie Wade--Her loyalty and courage--Her death during the battle--

Miss Carrie Sheads, Principal of Oak Ridge Seminary--Her preservation of

Colonel Wheelock's sword--Her labors in the care of the wounded--Her

health impaired thereby--Miss Amelia Harmon--Her patriotism and

courage--"Burn the house if you will!" 775-778

LOYAL WOMEN OF THE SOUTH.

Names of loyal Southern Women already mentioned--The loyal women of

Richmond--Their abundant labors for Union prisoners--Loyal women of

Charleston--The Union League--Food and clothing furnished--Loyalty and

heroism of some of the negro women--Loyal women of New Orleans--The

names of some of the most prominent--Loyal women of the mountainous

districts of the south--Their ready aid to our escaping prisoners--Miss

Melvina Stevens--Malignity of some of the Rebel women--Heroism of Loyal

women in East Tennessee, Northern Georgia and Alabama. 779-782

MISS HETTY A. JONES. _By Horatio G. Jones, Esq._

Miss Jones' birth and lineage--She aids in equipping the companies

of Union soldiers organized in her own neighborhood--Her services in

the Filbert Street Hospital--Death of her brother--Visit to Fortress

Monroe--She determines to go to the front and attaches herself to the

Third Division, Second Corps, Hospital at City Point--Has an attack

of Pleurisy--On her recovery resumes her labors--Is again attacked

and dies on the 21st of December, 1864--Her happy death--Mourning of

the convalescent soldiers of the Filbert Street Hospital over her

death. 783-786

FINAL CHAPTER

THE FAITHFUL BUT LESS CONSPICUOUS LABORERS.

The many necessarily unnamed--Ladies who served at Antietam, Point

Lookout, City Point or Naval Academy Hospital, Annapolis--The faithful

workers at Benton Barracks Hospital, St. Louis--Miss Lovell, Miss

Bissell, Mrs. Tannehill, Mrs. R. S. Smith, Mrs. Gray, Miss Lane, Miss

Adams, Miss Spaulding, Miss King, Mrs. Day--Other nurses of great merit

appointed by the Western Sanitary Commission--Volunteer visitors in the

St. Louis Hospitals--Ladies who ministered to the soldiers in Quincy,

and in Springfield, Illinois--Miss Georgiana Willets, Misses Molineux

and McCabe--Ladies of Cincinnati who served in the hospitals--Mrs. C. J.

Wright, Mrs. Starbuck, Mrs. Gibson, Mrs. Woods and Mrs. Caldwell--Miss

E. L. Porter of Niagara Falls--Boston ladies--Mrs. and Miss Anna Lowell,

Mrs. O. W. Holmes, Miss Stevenson, Mrs. S. Loring, Mrs. Shaw, Mrs.

Brimmer, Miss Rogers, Miss Felton--Louisville, Ky.--Mrs. Bishop Smith

and Mrs. Menefee--Columbus, Ohio--Mrs. Hoyle, Mrs. Ide, Miss Swayne--

Mrs. Seward of Utica--Mrs. Cowen, of Hartford, Conn.--Miss Long, of

Rochester--Mrs. Farr, of Norwalk, Ohio--Miss Bartlett, of the Soldiers'

Aid Society, Peoria, Ill.--Mrs. Russell and Mrs. Comstock, of Michigan,

Mrs. Dame, of Wisconsin--Miss Bucklin, of Auburn, N. Y.--Miss Louise M.

Alcott, of Concord, Mass.--Miss Penfield, of Michigan--The Misses

Rexford of Illinois--Miss Sophia Knight, of South Reading, Mass., a

faithful laborer among the Freedmen. 787-794

INDEX OF NAMES OF LADIES. 795-800

ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

1.--MISS CLARA H. BARTON FRONTISPIECE.

2.--BARBARA FRIETCHIE VIGNETTE TITLE.

3.--MRS. MARY A. BICKERDYKE 172

4.--MISS MARGARET E. BRECKENRIDGE 187

5.--MRS. NELLIE MARIA TAYLOR 234

6.--MRS. CORDELIA A. P. HARVEY 260

7.--MISS EMILY E. PARSONS 273

8.--MRS. MARY MORRIS HUSBAND 287

9.--MISS MARY J. SAFFORD 357

10.--MRS. R. H. SPENCER 404

11.--MISS HATTIE A. DADA 431

12.--MRS. MARIANNE F. STRANAHAN 651

13.--MRS. MARY A. LIVERMORE 577

14.--MRS. HENRIETTA L. COLT 609

15.--MRS. MARY B. WADE 736

16.--ANNIE ETHERIDGE 747

INTRODUCTION.

A record of the personal services of our American women in the late

Civil War, however painful to the modesty of those whom it brings

conspicuously before the world, is due to the honor of the country, to

the proper understanding of our social life, and to the general

interests of a sex whose rights, duties and capacities are now under

serious discussion. Most of the women commemorated in this work

inevitably lost the benefits of privacy, by the largeness and length of

their public services, and their names and history are to a certain

extent the property of the country. At any rate they must suffer the

penalty which conspicuous merit entails upon its possessors, especially

when won in fields of universal interest.

Notwithstanding the pains taken to collect from all parts of the

country, the names and history of the women who in any way distinguished

themselves in the War, and in spite of the utmost impartiality of

purpose, there is no pretence that all who served the country best, are

named in this record. Doubtless thousands of women, obscure in their

homes, and humble in their fortunes, without official position even in

their local society, and all human trace of whose labors is forever

lost, contributed as generously of their substance, and as freely of

their time and strength, and gave as unreservedly their hearts and their

prayers to the cause, as the most conspicuous on the shining list here

unrolled. For if

"The world knows nothing of its greatest men,"

it is still more true of its noblest women. Unrewarded by praise,

unsullied by self-complacency, there is a character "of no reputation,"

which formed in strictest retirement, and in the patient exercise of

unobserved sacrifices, is dearer and holier in the eye of Heaven, than

the most illustrious name won by the most splendid services. Women there

were in this war, who without a single relative in the army, denied

themselves for the whole four years, the comforts to which they had

been always accustomed; went thinly clad, took the extra blanket from

their bed, never tasted tea, or sugar, or flesh, that they might wind

another bandage round some unknown soldier's wound, or give some parched

lips in the hospital another sip of wine. Others never let one leisure

moment, saved from lives of pledged labor which barely earned their

bread, go unemployed in the service of the soldiers. God Himself keeps

this record! It is too sacred to be trusted to men.

But it is not such humble, yet exalted souls that will complain of the

praise which to their neglect, is allotted to any of their sisters. The

ranks always contain some heroes braver and better than the most

fortunate and conspicuous officers of staff or line--but they feel

themselves best praised when their regiment, their corps, or their

general is gazetted. And the true-hearted workers for the soldiers among

the women of this country will gladly accept the recognition given to

the noble band of their sisters whom peculiar circumstances lifted into

distinct view, as a tribute offered to the whole company. Indeed, if the

lives set forth in this work, were regarded as exceptional in their

temper and spirit, as they certainly were in their incidents and

largeness of sphere, the whole lesson of the Record would be misread.

These women in their sacrifices, their patriotism, and their

persistency, are only fair representatives of the spirit of their whole

sex. As a rule, American women exhibited not only an intense feeling for

the soldiers in their exposures and their sufferings, but an intelligent

sympathy with the national cause, equal to that which furnished among

the men, two million and three hundred thousand volunteers.

It is not unusual for women of all countries to weep and to work for

those who encounter the perils of war. But the American women, after

giving up, with a principled alacrity, to the ranks of the gathering and

advancing army, their husbands and sons, their brothers and lovers,

proceeded to organize relief for them; and they did it, not in the

spasmodic and sentimental way, which has been common elsewhere, but with

a self-controlled and rational consideration of the wisest and best

means of accomplishing their purpose, which showed them to be in some

degree the products and representatives of a new social era, and a new

political development.

The distinctive features in woman's work in this war, were magnitude,

system, thorough co-operativeness with the other sex, distinctness of

purpose, business-like thoroughness in details, sturdy persistency to

the close. There was no more general rising among the men, than among

the women. Men did not take to the musket, more commonly than women took

to the needle; and for every assembly where men met for mutual

excitation in the service of the country, there was some corresponding

gathering of women, to stir each other's hearts and fingers in the same

sacred cause. All the caucuses and political assemblies of every kind,

in which speech and song quickened the blood of the men, did not exceed

in number the meetings, in the form of Soldiers' Aid Societies, and

Sewing Circles, which the women held, where they talked over the

national cause, and fed the fires of sacrifice in each other's hearts.

Probably never in any war in any country, was there so universal and so

specific an acquaintance on the part of both men and women, with the

principles at issue, and the interests at stake. And of the two, the

women were clearer and more united than the men, because their moral

feelings and political instincts were not so much affected by

selfishness and business, or party considerations. The work which our

system of popular education does for girls and boys alike, and which in

the middle and upper classes practically goes further with girls than

with boys, told magnificently at this crisis. Everywhere, well educated

women were found fully able to understand and explain to their sisters,

the public questions involved in the war. Everywhere the newspapers,

crowded with interest and with discussions, found eager and appreciative

readers among the gentler sex. Everywhere started up women acquainted

with the order of public business; able to call, and preside over public

meetings of their own sex; act as secretaries and committees, draft

constitutions and bye-laws, open books, and keep accounts with adequate

precision, appreciate system, and postpone private inclinations or

preferences to general principles; enter into extensive correspondence

with their own sex: co-operate in the largest and most rational plans

proposed by men who had studied carefully the subject of soldiers'

relief, and adhere through good report and through evil report, to

organizations which commended themselves to their judgment, in spite of

local, sectarian, or personal jealousies and detractions.

It is impossible to over-estimate the amount of consecrated work done by

the loyal women of the North for the Army. Hundreds of thousands of

women probably gave all the leisure they could command, and all the

money they could save and spare, to the soldiers for the whole four

years and more, of the War. Amid discouragements and fearful delays they

never flagged, but to the last increased in zeal and devotion. And their

work was as systematic as it was universal. A generous emulation among

the Branches of the United States Sanitary Commission, managed generally

by women, usually, however, with some aid from men, brought their

business habits and methods to an almost perfect finish. Nothing that

men commonly think peculiar to their own methods was wanting in the

plans of the women. They acknowledged and answered, endorsed and filed

their letters; they sorted their stores, and kept an accurate account of

stock; they had their books and reports kept in the most approved forms;

they balanced their cash accounts with the most pains-taking precision;

they exacted of each other regularity of attendance and punctiliousness

of official etiquette. They showed in short, a perfect aptitude for

business, and proved by their own experience that men can devise nothing

too precise, too systematic or too complicated for women to understand,

apply and improve upon, where there is any sufficient motive for it.

It was another feature of the case that there was no jealousy between

women and men in the work, and no disposition to discourage, underrate,

or dissociate from each other. It seemed to be conceded that men had

more invention, comprehensiveness and power of generalization, and that

their business habits, the fruits of ages of experience, were at least

worth studying and copying by women. On the other hand, men, usually

jealous of woman's extending the sphere of her life and labors, welcomed

in this case her assistance in a public work, and felt how vain men's

toil and sacrifices would be without woman's steady sympathy and patient

ministry of mercy, her more delicate and persistent pity, her

willingness to endure monotonous details of labor for the sake of

charity, her power to open the heart of her husband, and to keep alive

and flowing the fountains of compassion and love.

No words are adequate to describe the systematic, persistent

faithfulness of the women who organized and led the Branches of the

United States Sanitary Commission. Their volunteer labor had all the

regularity of paid service, and a heartiness and earnestness which no

paid services can ever have. Hundreds of women evinced talents there,

which, in other spheres and in the other sex, would have made them

merchant-princes, or great administrators of public affairs. Storms nor

heats could keep them from their posts, and they wore on their faces,

and finally evinced in their breaking constitutions, the marks of the

cruel strain put upon their minds and hearts. They engaged in a

correspondence of the most trying kind, requiring the utmost address to

meet the searching questions asked by intelligent jealousy, and to

answer the rigorous objections raised by impatience or ignorance in the

rural districts. They became instructors of whole townships in the

methods of government business, the constitution of the Commissary and

Quartermaster's Departments, and the forms of the Medical Bureau. They

had steadily to contend with the natural desire of the Aid Societies for

local independence, and to reconcile neighborhoods to the idea of being

merged and lost in large generalizations. They kept up the spirit of

the people distant from the war and the camps, by a steady fire of

letters full of touching incidents; and they were repaid not only by the

most generous returns of stores, but by letters from humble homes and

lonely hearts, so full of truth and tenderness, of wisdom and pity, of

self-sacrifice and patriotic consecration, that the most gifted and

educated women in America, many of them at the head of the Branches or

among their Directors, felt constantly reproved by the nobleness, the

sweetness, the depth of sentiment that welled from the hidden and

obscure springs in the hearts of farmers' wives and factory-girls.

Nor were the talents and the sacrifices of those at the larger Depots or

Centres, more worthy of notice than the skill and pains evinced in

arousing, maintaining and managing the zeal and work of county or town

societies. Indeed, sometimes larger works are more readily controlled

than smaller ones; and jealousies and individual caprices obstruct the

co-operation of villages more than of towns and cities.

In the ten thousand Soldiers' Aid Societies which at one time or another

probably existed in the country, there was in each some master-spirit,

whose consecrated purpose was the staple in the wall, from which the

chain of service hung and on whose strength and firmness it steadily

drew. I never visited a single town however obscure, that I did not hear

some woman's name which stood in that community for "Army Service;" a

name round which the rest of the women gladly rallied; the name of some

woman whose heart was felt to beat louder and more firmly than any of

the rest for the boys in blue.

Of the practical talent, the personal worth, the aptitude for public

service, the love of self-sacrificing duty thus developed and nursed

into power, and brought to the knowledge of its possessors and their

communities, it is difficult to speak too warmly. Thousands of women

learned in this work to despise frivolity, gossip, fashion and idleness;

learned to think soberly and without prejudice of the capacities of

their own sex; and thus, did more to advance the rights of woman by

proving her gifts and her fitness for public duties, than a whole

library of arguments and protests.

The prodigious exertions put forth by the women who founded and

conducted the great Fairs for the soldiers in a dozen principal cities,

and in many large towns, were only surpassed by the planning skill and

administrative ability which accompanied their progress, and the

marvellous success in which they terminated. Months of anxious

preparation, where hundreds of committees vied with each other in

long-headed schemes for securing the co-operation of the several trades

or industries allotted to each, and during which laborious days and

anxious nights were unintermittingly given to the wearing work, were

followed by weeks of personal service in the fairs themselves, where the

strongest women found their vigor inadequate to the task, and hundreds

laid the foundations of long illness and some of sudden death. These

sacrifices and far-seeing provisions were justly repaid by almost

fabulous returns of money, which to the extent of nearly three millions

of dollars, flowed into the treasury of the United States Sanitary

Commission. The chief women who inaugurated the several great Fairs at

New York, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, St.

Louis, and administered these vast movements, were not behind the ablest

men in the land in their grasp and comprehension of the business in

hand, and often in comparison with the men associated with them,

exhibited a finer scope, a better spirit and a more victorious faith.

But for the women of America, the great Fairs would never have been

born, or would have died ignominiously in their gilded cradles. Their

vastness of conception and their splendid results are to be set as an

everlasting crown on woman's capacity for large and money-yielding

enterprises. The women who led them can never sink back into obscurity.

But I must pass from this inviting theme, where indeed I feel more at

home than in what is to follow, to the consideration of what naturally

occupies a larger space in this work--however much smaller it was in

reality, _i. e._, to the labors of the women who actually went to the

war, and worked in the hospitals and camps.

Of the labors of women in the hospitals and in the field, this book

gives a far fuller history than is likely to be got from any other

source, as this sort of service cannot be recorded in the histories of

organized work. For, far the largest part of this work was done by

persons of exceptional energy and some fine natural aptitude for the

service, which was independent of organizations, and hardly submitted

itself to any rules except the impulses of devoted love for the

work--supplying tact, patience and resources. The women who did hospital

service continuously, or who kept themselves near the base of armies in

the field, or who moved among the camps, and travelled with the corps,

were an exceptional class--as rare as heroines always are--a class,

representing no social grade, but coming from all--belonging to no rank

or age of life in particular; sometimes young and sometimes old,

sometimes refined and sometimes rude; now of fragile physical aspect and

then of extraordinary robustness--but in all cases, women with a mighty

love and earnestness in their hearts--a love and pity, and an ability to

show it forth and to labor in behalf of it, equal to that which in other

departments of life, distinguishes poets, philosophers, sages and

saints, from ordinary or average men.

Moved by an indomitable desire to serve in person the victims of wounds

and sickness, a few hundred women, impelled by instincts which assured

them of their ability to endure the hardship, overcome the obstacles,

and adjust themselves to the unusual and unfeminine circumstances in

which they would be placed--made their way through all obstructions at

home, and at the seat of war, or in the hospitals, to the bed-sides of

the sick and wounded men. Many of these women scandalized their friends

at home by what seemed their Quixotic resolution; or, they left their

families under circumstances which involved a romantic oblivion of the

recognized and usual duties of domestic life; they forsook their own

children, to make children of a whole army corps; they risked their

lives in fevered hospitals; they lived in tents or slept in ambulance

wagons, for months together; they fell sick of fevers themselves, and

after long illness, returned to the old business of hospital and field

service. They carried into their work their womanly tenderness, their

copious sympathies, their great-hearted devotion--and had to face and

contend with the cold routine, the semi-savage professional

indifference, which by the necessities of the case, makes ordinary

medical supervision, in time of actual war, impersonal, official,

unsympathetic and abrupt. The honest, natural jealousy felt by

surgeons-in-charge, and their ward masters, of all outside assistance,

made it necessary for every woman, who was to succeed in her purpose of

holding her place, and really serving the men, to study and practice an

address, an adaptation and a patience, of which not one candidate in ten

was capable. Doubtless nine-tenths of all who wished to offer and

thought themselves capable of this service, failed in their practical

efforts. As many women fancied themselves capable of enduring hospital

life, as there are always in every college, youth who believe they can

become distinguished authors, poets and statesmen. But only the few who

had a _genius_ for the work, continued in it, and succeeded in elbowing

room for themselves through the never-ending obstacles, jealousies and

chagrins that beset the service. Every woman who keeps her place in a

general hospital, or a corps hospital, has to prove her title to be

trusted; her tact, discretion, endurance and strength of nerve and

fibre. No one woman succeeded in rendering years of hospital service,

who was not an exceptional person--a woman of larger heart, clearer

head, finer enthusiasm, and more mingled tact, courage, firmness and

holy will--than one in a thousand of her sex. A grander collection of

women--whether considered in their intellectual or their moral

qualities, their heads or their hearts, I have not had the happiness of

knowing, than the women I saw in the hospitals; they were the flower of

their sex. Great as were the labors of those who superintended the

operations at home--of collecting and preparing supplies for the

hospitals and the field, I cannot but think that the women who lived in

the hospitals, or among the soldiers, required a force of character and

a glow of devotion and self-sacrifice, of a rarer kind. They were really

heroines. They conquered their feminine sensibility at the sight of

blood and wounds; their native antipathy to disorder, confusion and

violence; subdued the rebellious delicacy of their more exquisite

senses; lived coarsely, and dressed and slept rudely; they studied the

caprices of men to whom their ties were simply human--men often

ignorant, feeble-minded--out of their senses--raving with pain and

fever; they had a still harder service to bear with the pride, the

official arrogance, the hardness or the folly--perhaps the impertinence

and presumption of half-trained medical men, whom the urgencies of the

case had fastened on the service.[A] Their position was always critical,

equivocal, suspected, and to be justified only by their undeniable and

conspicuous merits;--their wisdom, patience and proven efficiency;

justified by the love and reverence they exacted from the soldiers

themselves!

[Footnote A: A large number of the United States Army and volunteer

surgeons were indeed men of the highest and most humane character, and

treated the women who came to the hospitals, with careful and scrupulous

consideration. Some women were able to say that they never encountered

opposition or hindrance from any officials; but this was not the rule.]

True, the rewards of these women were equal to their sacrifices. They

drew their pay from a richer treasury than that of the United States

Government. I never knew one of them who had had a long service, whose

memory of the grateful looks of the dying, of the few awkward words that

fell from the lips of thankful convalescents, or the speechless

eye-following of the dependent soldier, or the pressure of a rough hand,

softened to womanly gentleness by long illness,--was not the sweetest

treasure of all their lives. Nothing in the power of the Nation to give

or to say, can ever compare for a moment with the proud satisfaction

which every brave soldier who risked his life for his country, always

carries in his heart of hearts. And no public recognition, no thanks

from a saved Nation, can ever add anything of much importance to the

rewards of those who tasted the actual joy of ministering with their own

hands and hearts to the wants of one sick and dying man.

It remains only to say a word about the influence of the work of the

women in the War upon the strength and unanimity of the public

sentiment, and on the courage and fortitude of the army itself.

The participation by actual work and service in the labors of the War,

not only took out of women's hearts the soreness which unemployed

energies or incongruous pursuits would have left there, but it took out

of their mouths the murmurs and moans which their deserted, husbandless,

childless condition would so naturally have provoked. The women by their

call to work, and the opportunity of pouring their energies, sympathies

and affections into an ever open and practical channel, were quieted,

reconciled, upheld. The weak were borne upon the bosoms of the strong.

Banded together, and working together, their solicitude and uneasiness

were alleviated. Following in imagination the work of their own hands,

they seemed to be present on the field and in the ranks; they studied

the course of the armies; they watched the policy of the Government;

they learned the character of the Generals; they threw themselves into

the war! And so they helped wonderfully to keep up the enthusiasm, or to

rebuke the lukewarmness, or to check the despondency and apathy which at

times settled over the people. Men were ashamed to doubt where women

trusted, or to murmur where they submitted, or to do little where they

did so much. If during the war, home life had gone on as usual; women

engrossed in their domestic or social cares; shrinking from public

questions; deferring to what their husbands or brothers told them, or

seeking to amuse themselves with social pleasures and striving to forget

the painful strife in frivolous caprices, it would have had a fearful

effect on public sentiment, deepening the gloom of every reverse, adding

to the discouragements which an embarrassed commerce and trade brought

to men's hearts, by domestic echoes of weariness of the strife, and

favoring the growth of a disaffected, compromising, unpatriotic feeling,

which always stood ready to break out with any offered encouragement. A

sense of nearness of the people to the Government which the organization

of the women effected, enlarged their sympathies with its movements and

disposed them to patience. Their own direct experience of the

difficulties of all co-operative undertakings, broadened their views and

rendered intelligible the delays and reverses which our national cause

suffered. In short the women of the country were through the whole

conflict, not only not softening the fibres of war, but they were

actually strengthening its sinews by keeping up their own courage and

that of their households, under the inspiration of the larger and more

public life, the broader work and greater field for enterprise and

self-sacrifice afforded them by their direct labors for the benefit of

the soldiers. They drew thousands of lukewarm, or calculating, or

self-saving men into the support of the national cause by their

practical enthusiasm and devotion. They proved what has again and again

been demonstrated, that what the women of a country resolve shall be

done, will and must be done. They shamed recruits into the ranks, and

made it almost impossible for deserters, or cowards, or malingerers to

come home; they emptied the pockets of social idlers, or wealthy drones,

into the treasuries of the Aid Societies; and they compelled the shops

and domestic trade of all cities to be favorable to the war. The

American women were nearer right and more thoroughly united by this

means, and their own healthier instincts, than the American men. The

Army, whose bayonets were glittering needles, advanced with more

unbroken ranks, and exerted almost a greater moral force than the army

that carried loaded muskets.

The Aid Societies and the direct oversight the women sought to give the

men in the field, very much increased the reason for correspondence

between the homes and the tents.

The women were proud to write what those at the hearth-stone were doing

for those who tended the camp-fires, and the men were happy and cheery

to acknowledge the support they received from this home sympathy. The

immense correspondence between the army and the homes, prodigious beyond

belief as it was, some regiments sending home a thousand letters a week,

and receiving as many more back; the constant transmission to the men of

newspapers, full of the records of home work and army news, produced a

homogeneousness of feeling between the soldiers and the citizens, which

kept the men in the field, civilians, and made the people at home, of

both sexes, half-soldiers.

Thus there never grew up in the army any purely military and anti-social

or anti-civil sentiments. The soldiers studied and appreciated all the

time the moral causes of the War, and were acquainted with the political

as well as military complications. They felt all the impulses of home

strengthening their arms and encouraging their hearts. And their letters

home, as a rule, were designed to put the best face upon things, and to

encourage their wives and sweet-hearts, their sisters and parents, to

bear their absence with fortitude, and even with cheerfulness.

The influence on the tone of their correspondence, exerted by the fact

that the women were always working for the Army, and that the soldiers

always knew they were working, and were always receiving evidence of

their care, may be better imagined than described. It largely ministered

to that sympathetic unity between the soldiers and the country, which

made our army always a corrective and an inspiration to our Governmental

policy, and kept up that fine reciprocal influence between civil and

military life, which gave an heroic fibre to all souls at home, and

finally restored us our soldiers with their citizen hearts beating

regularly under their uniforms, as they dropped them off at the last

drum-tap.

H. W. B.

WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

Patriotism in some form, an attribute of woman in all nations and

climes--Its modes of manifestation--Paeans for victory--Lamentations

for the death of a heroic leader--Personal leadership by women--The

assassination of tyrants--The care of the sick and wounded of

national armies--The hospitals established by the Empress Helena--

The Beguines and their successors--The cantinieres, vivandieres,

etc.--Other modes in which women manifested their patriotism--

Florence Nightingale and her labors--The results--The awakening of

patriotic zeal among American women at the opening of the war--The

organization of philanthropic effort--Hospital nurses--Miss Dix's

rejection of great numbers of applicants on account of youth--Hired

nurses--Their services generally prompted by patriotism rather than

pay--The State relief agents (ladies) at Washington--The hospital

transport system of the Sanitary Commission--Mrs. Harris's, Miss

Barton's, Mrs. Fales', Miss Gilson's, and other ladies' services at

the front during the battles of 1862--Services of other ladies at

Chancellorsville, at Gettysburg--The Field Relief of the Sanitary

Commission, and services of ladies in the later battles--Voluntary

services of women in the armies in the field at the West--Services

in the hospitals, of garrisons and fortified towns--Soldiers' homes

and lodges, and their matrons--Homes for Refugees--Instruction of

the Freedmen--Refreshment Saloons at Philadelphia--Regular visiting

of hospitals in the large cities--The Soldiers' Aid Societies, and

their mode of operation--The extraordinary labors of the managers of

the Branch Societies--Government clothing contracts--Mrs. Springer,

Miss Wormeley and Miss Gilson--The managers of the local Soldiers'

Aid Societies--The sacrifices made by the poor to contribute

supplies--Examples--The labors of the young and the old--

Inscriptions on articles--The poor seamstress--Five hundred bushels

of wheat--The five dollar gold piece--The army of martyrs--The

effect of this female patriotism in stimulating the courage of the

soldiers--Lack of persistence in this work among the Women of the

South--Present and future--Effect of patriotism and self-sacrifice

in elevating and ennobling the female character.

An intense and passionate love of country, holding, for the time, all

other ties in abeyance, has been a not uncommon trait of character among

women of all countries and climes, throughout the ages of human history.

In the nomadic races it assumed the form of attachment to the

patriarchal rules and chiefs of the tribe; in the more savage of the

localized nations, it was reverence for the ruler, coupled with a filial

regard for the resting-places and graves of their ancestors.

But in the more highly organized and civilized countries, it was the

institutions of the nation, its religion, its sacred traditions, its

history, as well as its kings, its military leaders, and its priests,

that were the objects of the deep and intense patriotic devotion of its

noblest and most gifted women.

The manifestations of this patriotic zeal were diverse in different

countries, and at different periods in the same country. At one time it

contented itself with triumphal paeans and dances over victories won by

the nation's armies, as in the case of Miriam and the maidens of Israel

at the destruction of the Egyptians at the Red Sea, or the victories of

the armies led by David against the Philistines; or in the most

heart-rending lamentations over the fall of the nation's heroes on the

field of battle, as in the mourning of the Trojan maidens over the death

of Hector; at other times, some brave and heroic spirit, goaded with the

sense of her country's wrongs, girds upon her own fair and tender form,

the armor of proof, and goes forth, the self-constituted but eagerly

welcomed leader of its mailed hosts, to overthrow the nation's foes. We

need only recall Deborah, the avenger of the Israelites against the

oppressions of the King of Canaan; Boadicea, the daring Queen of the

Britons, and in later times, the heroic but hapless maid of Orleans,

Jeanne d'Arc; and in the Hungarian war of 1848, the brave but

unfortunate Countess Teleki, as examples of these female patriots.

In rare instances, this sense of the nation's sufferings from a tyrant's

oppression, have so wrought upon the sensitive spirit, as to stimulate

it to the determination to achieve the country's freedom by the

assassination of the oppressor. It was thus that Jael brought

deliverance to her country by the murder of Sisera; Judith, by the

assassination of Holofernes; and in modern times, Charlotte Corday

sought the rescue of France from the grasp of the murderous despot,

Marat, by plunging the poniard to his heart.

A far nobler, though less demonstrative manifestation of patriotic

devotion than either of these, is that which has prompted women in all

ages to become ministering angels to the sick, the suffering, and the

wounded among their countrymen who have periled life and health in the

nation's cause.

Occasionally, even in the earliest recorded wars of antiquity, we find

high-born maidens administering solace to the wounded heroes on the

field of battle, and attempting to heal their wounds by the appliances

of their rude and simple surgery; but it was only the favorite leaders,

never the common soldier, or the subordinate officer, who received these

gentle attentions. The influence of Christianity, in its earlier

development, tended to expand the sympathies and open the heart of woman

to all gentle and holy influences, and it is recorded that the wounded

Christian soldiers were, where it was possible, nursed and cared for by

those of the same faith, both men and women.

In the fifth century, the Empress Helena established hospitals for the

sick and wounded soldiers of the empire, on the routes between Rome and

Constantinople, and caused them to be carefully nursed. In the dark ages

that followed, and amid the downfall of the Roman Empire, and the

uprearing of the Gothic kingdoms that succeeded, there was little room

or thought of mercy; but the fair-haired women of the North encouraged

their heroes to deeds of valor, and at times, ministered in their rude

way to their wounds. The monks, at their monasteries, rendered some care

and aid to the wounded in return for their exemption from plunder and

rapine, and in the ninth century, an order of women consecrated to the

work, the Beguines, predecessors of the modern Sisters of Charity, was

established "to minister to the sick and wounded of the armies which

then, and for centuries afterward, scarred the face of continental

Europe with battle-fields." With the Beguines, however, and their

successors, patriotism was not so much the controlling motive of action,

as the attainment of merit by those deeds of charity and self-sacrifice.

In the wars of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and the early part of the

nineteenth century, while the hospitals had a moderate share of fair

ministrants, chiefly of the religious orders, the only female service on

the battle-field or in the camp, often the scene of fatal epidemics, was

that of the _cantinieres_, _vivandieres_, _filles du regiment_, and

other camp followers, who, at some risk of reputation, accompanied the

armies in their march, and brought to the wounded and often dying

soldier, on the field of battle, the draught of water which quenched his

raging thirst, or the cordial, which sustained his fast ebbing strength

till relief could come. Humble of origin, and little circumspect in

morals as many of these women were, they are yet deserving of credit for

the courage and patriotism which led them to brave all the horrors of

death, to relieve the suffering of the wounded of the regiments to which

they were attached. Up to the period of the Crimean war in 1854, though

there had been much that was praiseworthy in the manifestations of

female patriotism in connection with the movements of great armies,

there had never been any systematic ministration, prompted by patriotic

devotion, to the relief of the suffering sick and wounded of those

armies.

There were yet other modes, however, in which the women of ancient and

modern times manifested their love of their country. The Spartan mother,

who, without a tear, presented her sons with their shields, with the

stern injunction to return with them, or upon them, that is, with honor

untarnished, or dead,--the fair dames and maidens of Carthage, who

divested themselves of their beautiful tresses, to furnish bowstrings

for their soldiers,--the Jewish women who preferred a death of torture,

to the acknowledgment of the power of the tyrant over their country's

rulers, and their faith--the women of the Pays-de Vaud, whose mountain

fastnesses and churches were dearer to them than life--the thousands of

wives and mothers, who in our revolutionary struggle, and in our recent

war, gave up freely at their country's call, their best beloved,

regretting only that they had no more to give; knowing full well, that

in giving them up they condemned themselves to penury and want, to

hard, grinding toil, and privations such as they had never before

experienced, and not improbably to the rending, by the rude vicissitudes

of war, of those ties, dearer than life itself--those who in the

presence of ruffians, capable of any atrocity dared, and in many cases

suffered, a violent death, and indignities worse than death, by their

fearless defense of the cause and flag of their country--and yet again,

those who, in peril of their lives, for the love they bore to their

country, guided hundreds of escaped prisoners, through the regions

haunted by foes, to safety and freedom--all these and many others, whose

deeds of heroism we have not space so much as to name, have shown their

love of country as fully and worthily, as those who in hospital, in camp

or on battle-field have ministered to the battle-scarred hero, or those

who, in all the panoply of war, have led their hosts to the deadly

charge, or the fierce affray of contending armies.

Florence Nightingale, an English gentlewoman, of high social position

and remarkable executive powers, was the first of her sex, at least

among English-speaking nations, to systematize the patriotic ardor of

her countrywomen, and institute such measures of reform in the care of

sick and wounded soldiers in military hospitals, as should conduce to

the comfort and speedy recovery of their inmates. She had voluntarily

passed through the course of training, required of the hospital nurses

and assistants, in Pastor Fliedner's Deaconess' Institution, at

Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, before she entered upon her great mission in

the hospitals at Scutari. She was ably seconded in her labors by other

ladies of rank from England, who, actuated only by patriotic zeal, gave

themselves to the work of bringing order out of chaos, cheerfulness out

of gloom, cleanliness out of the most revolting filth, and the sunshine

of health out of the lazar house of corruption and death. In this heroic

undertaking they periled their lives, more certainly, than those who

took part in the fierce charge of Balaclava. Some fell victims to their

untiring zeal; others, and Miss Nightingale among the number, were

rendered hopeless invalids for life, by their exertions.

Fifty years of peace had rendered our nation more entirely unacquainted

with the arts of war, than was Great Britain, when, at the close of

forty years of quiet, she again marshalled her troops in battle array.

But though the transition was sudden from the arts of peace to the din

and tumult of war, and the blunders, both from inexperience and dogged

adherence to routine, were innumerable, the hearts of the people, and

especially the hearts of the gentler sex, were resolutely set upon one

thing; that the citizen soldiers of the nation should be cared for, in

sickness or in health, as the soldiers of no nation had ever been

before. Soldiers' Aid Societies, Sewing Circles for the soldiers, and

Societies for Relief, sprang up simultaneously with the organization of

regiments, in every village, town, and city throughout the North.

Individual benevolence kept pace with organized charity, and the

managers of the freight trains and expresses, running toward Washington,

were in despair at the fearful accumulation of freight for the soldiers,

demanding instant transportation. It was inevitable that there should be

waste and loss in this lavish outpouring; but it was a manifestation of

the patriotic feeling which throbbed in the hearts of the people, and

which, through four years of war, never ceased or diminished aught of

its zeal, or its abundant liberality. It was felt instinctively, that

there would soon be a demand for nurses for the sick and wounded, and

fired by the noble example of Florence Nightingale, though too often

without her practical training, thousands of young, fair, and highly

educated women offered themselves for the work, and strove for

opportunities for their gentle ministry, as in other days they might

have striven for the prizes of fortune.

Soon order emerged from the chaos of benevolent impulse; the Sanitary

Commission and its affiliated Societies organized and wisely directed

much of the philanthropic effort, which would otherwise have failed of

accomplishing its intended work through misdirection; while other

Commissions, Associations, and skillfully managed personal labors,

supplemented what was lacking in its earlier movements, and ere long the

Christian Commission added intellectual and religious aliment to its

supplies for the wants of the physical man.

Of the thousands of applicants for the position of Hospital Nurses, the

greater part were rejected promptly by the stern, but experienced lady,

to whom the Government had confided the delicate and responsible duty of

making the selection. The ground of rejection was usually the

youthfulness of the applicants; a sufficient reason, doubtless, in most

cases, since the enthusiasm, mingled in some instances, perhaps, with

romance, which had prompted the offer, would often falter before the

extremely unpoetic realities of a nurse's duties, and the youth and

often frail health of the applicants would soon cause them to give way

under labors which required a mature strength, a firm will, and skill in

all household duties. Yet "to err is human," and it need not surprise

us, as it probably did not Miss Dix, to learn, that in a few instances,

those whom she had refused to commission on account of their

youthfulness, proved in other fields, their possession of the very

highest qualifications for the care of the sick and wounded. Miss Gilson

was one of the most remarkable of these instances; and it reflects no

discredit on Miss Dix's powers of discrimination, that she should not

have discovered, in that girlish face, the indications of those high

abilities, of which their possessor was as yet probably unconscious. The

rejection of so many of these volunteer nurses necessitated the

appointment of many from another class,--young women of culture and

education, but generally from the humbler walks of life, in whose hearts

the fire of patriotism was not less ardent and glowing than in those of

their wealthier sisters. Many of these, though they would have preferred

to perform their labors without fee or reward, were compelled, from the

necessities of those at home, to accept the wholly inadequate pittance

(twelve dollars a month and their food) which was offered them by the

Government, but they served in their several stations with a fidelity,

intelligence, and patient devotion which no money could purchase. The

testimony received from all quarters to the faithfulness and great moral

worth of these nurses, is greatly to their honor. Not one of them, so

far as we can learn, ever disgraced her calling, or gave cause for

reproach. We fear that so general an encomium could not truthfully be

bestowed on all the volunteer nurses.

But nursing in the hospitals, was only a small part of the work to which

patriotism called American women. There was the collection and

forwarding to the field, there to be distributed by the chaplains, or

some specially appointed agent, of those supplies which the families and

friends of the soldiers so earnestly desired to send to them; socks,

shirts, handkerchiefs, havelocks, and delicacies in the way of food. The

various states had their agents, generally ladies, in Washington, who

performed these duties, during the first two years of the war, while as

yet the Sanitary Commission had not fully organized its system of Field

Relief. In the West, every considerable town furnished its quota of

supplies, and, after every battle, voluntary agents undertook their

distribution.

During McClellan's peninsular campaign, a Hospital Transport service was

organized in connection with the Sanitary Commission, which numbered

among its members several gentlemen and ladies of high social position,

whose labors in improvising, often from the scantiest possible supplies,

the means of comfort and healing for the fever-stricken and wounded,

resulted in the preservation of hundreds of valuable lives.

Mrs. John Harris, the devoted and heroic Secretary of the Ladies' Aid

Society of Philadelphia, had already, in the Peninsular campaign,

encountered all the discomforts and annoyances of a life in the camp, to

render what assistance she could to the sick and wounded, while they

were yet in the field or camp hospital. At Cedar Mountain, and in the

subsequent battles of August, in Pope's Campaign, Miss Barton, Mrs. T.

J. Fales, and some others also brought supplies to the field, and

ministered to the wounded, while the shot and shell were crashing around

them, and Antietam had its representatives of the fair sex, angels of

mercy, but for whose tender and judicious ministrations, hundreds and

perhaps thousands would not have seen another morning's light. In the

race for Richmond which followed, Miss Barton's train was hospital and

diet kitchen to the Ninth Corps, and much of the time for the other

Corps also. At Fredericksburg, Mrs. Harris, Mrs. Lee, Mrs. Plummer, Mrs.

Fales, and Miss Barton, and we believe also, Miss Gilson, were all

actively engaged. A part of the same noble company, though not all, were

at Chancellorsville.

At Gettysburg, Mrs. Harris was present and actively engaged, and as soon

as the battle ceased, a delegation of ladies connected with the Sanitary

Commission toiled most faithfully to alleviate the horrors of war. In

the subsequent battles of the Army of the Potomac, the Field Relief

Corps of the Sanitary Commission with its numerous male and female

collaborators, after, or at the time of all the great battles, the

ladies connected with the Christian Commission and a number of efficient

independent workers, did all in their power to relieve the constantly

swelling tide of human suffering, especially during that period of less

than ninety days, when more than ninety thousand men, wounded, dying, or

dead, covered the battle-fields with their gore.

In the West, after the battle of Shiloh, and the subsequent engagements

of Buell's campaign, women of the highest social position visited the

battle-field, and encountered its horrors, to minister to those who were

suffering, and bring them relief. Among these, the names of Mrs. Martha

A. Wallace, the widow of General W. H. L. Wallace, who fell in the

battle of Shiloh; of Mrs. Harvey, the widow of Governor Louis Harvey of

Wisconsin, who was drowned while on a mission of philanthropy to the

Wisconsin soldiers wounded at Shiloh; and the sainted Margaret E.

Breckinridge of St. Louis, will be readily recalled. During Grant's

Vicksburg campaign, as well as after Rosecrans' battles of Stone River

and Chickamauga, there were many of these heroic women who braved all

discomforts and difficulties to bring healing and comfort to the gallant

soldiers who had fallen on the field. Mrs. Hoge and Mrs. Livermore, of

Chicago, visited Grant's camp in front of Vicksburg, more than once, and

by their exertions, saved his army from scurvy; Mrs. Porter, Mrs.

Bickerdyke, and several others are deserving of mention for their

untiring zeal both in these and Sherman's Georgian campaigns. Mrs.

Bickerdyke has won undying renown throughout the Western armies as

pre-eminently the friend of the private soldier.

As our armies, especially in the West and Southwest, won more and more

of the enemy's territory, the important towns of which were immediately

occupied as garrisons, hospital posts, and secondary bases of the

armies, the work of nursing and providing special diet and comfort in

the general hospitals at these posts, which were often of great extent,

involved a vast amount of labor and frequently serious privation, and

personal discomfort on the part of the nurses. Some of these who

volunteered for the work were remarkable for their earnest and faithful

labors in behalf of the soldiers, under circumstances which would have

disheartened any but the most resolute spirits. We may name without

invidiousness among these, Mrs. Colfax, Miss Maertz, Miss Melcenia

Elliott, Miss Parsons, Miss Adams, and Miss Brayton, who, with many

others, perhaps equally faithful, by their constant assiduity in their

duties, have given proof of their ardent love of their country.

To provide for the great numbers of men discharged from the hospitals

while yet feeble and ill, and without the means of going to their often

distant homes, and the hundreds of enfeebled and mutilated soldiers,

whose days of service were over, and who, often in great bodily

weakness, sought to obtain the pay due them from the Government, and not

unseldom died in the effort; the United States Sanitary Commission and

the Western Sanitary Commission established Soldiers' Homes at

Washington, Cincinnati, Chicago, Louisville, Nashville, St. Louis,

Memphis, Vicksburg, and other places. In these, these disabled men found

food and shelter, medical attendance when needed, assistance in

collecting their dues, and aid in their transportation homeward. To each

of these institutions, a Matron was assigned, often with female

assistants. The duties of these Matrons were extremely arduous, but they

were performed most nobly. To some of these homes were attached a

department for the mothers, wives and daughters of the wounded soldiers,

who had come on to care for them, and who often found themselves, when

ready to return, penniless, and without a shelter. To these, a helping

hand, and a kind welcome, was ever extended.

To these should be added the Soldiers' Lodges, established at some

temporary stopping-places on the routes to and from the great

battle-fields; places where the soldier, fainting from his wearisome

march, found refreshment, and if sick, shelter and care; and the

wounded, on their distressing journey from the battle-field to the

distant hospitals, received the gentle ministrations of women, to allay

their thirst, relieve their painful positions, and strengthen their

wearied bodies for further journeyings. There were also, in New York,

Boston, and many other of the Northern cities, Soldiers' Homes or

Depots, not generally connected with the Sanitary Commission, in which

invalid soldiers were cared for and their interests protected. In all

these there were efficient and capable Matrons. In the West, there were

also Homes for Refugees, families of poor whites generally though not

always sufferers for their Union sentiments, sent north by the military

commanders from all the States involved in the rebellion. Reduced to the

lowest depths of poverty, often suffering absolute starvation, usually

dirty and of uncleanly habits, in many cases ignorant in the extreme,

and intensely indolent, these poor creatures had often little to

recommend them to the sympathy of their northern friends, save their

common humanity, and their childlike attachment to the Union cause. Yet

on these, women of high culture and refinement, women who, but for the

fire of patriotism which burned in their hearts, would have turned away,

sickened at the mental and moral degradation which seemed proof against

all instruction or tenderness, bestowed their constant and unwearying

care, endeavoring to rouse in them the instinct of neatness and the love

of household duties; instructing their children, and instilling into the

darkened minds of the adults some ideas of religious duty, and some

gleams of intelligence. No mission to the heathen of India, of Tartary,

or of the African coasts, could possibly have been more hopeless and

discouraging; but they triumphed over every obstacle, and in many

instances had the happiness of seeing these poor people restored to

their southern homes, with higher aims, hopes, and aspirations, and with

better habits, and more intelligence, than they had ever before

possessed.

The camps and settlements of the freedmen were also the objects of

philanthropic care. To these, many highly educated women volunteered to

go, and establishing schools, endeavored to raise these former slaves to

the comprehension of their privileges and duties as free men. The work

was arduous, for though there was a stronger desire for learning, and a

quicker apprehension of religious and moral instruction, among the

freedmen than among the refugees, their slave life had made them fickle,

untruthful, and to some extent, dishonest and unchaste. Yet the faithful

and indefatigable teachers found their labors wonderfully successful,

and accomplished a great amount of good.

Another and somewhat unique manifestation of the patriotism of our

American women, was the service of the Refreshment Saloons at

Philadelphia. For four years, the women of that portion of Philadelphia

lying in the vicinity of the Navy Yard, responded, by night or by day,

to the signal gun, fired whenever one or more regiments of soldiers were

passing through the city, and hastening to the Volunteer or the Cooper

Shop Refreshment Saloons, spread before the soldiers an ample repast,

and served them with a cordiality and heartiness deserving all praise.

Four hundred thousand soldiers were fed by these willing hands and

generous hearts, and in hospitals connected with both Refreshment

Saloons the sick were tenderly cared for.

In the large general hospitals of Washington, Philadelphia, New York,

Cincinnati, and St. Louis, in addition to the volunteer and paid nurses,

there were committees of ladies, who, on alternate days, or on single

days of each week, were accustomed to visit the hospitals, bringing

delicacies and luxuries, preparing special dishes for the invalid

soldiers, writing to their friends for them, etc. To this sacred duty,

many women of high social position devoted themselves steadily for

nearly three years, alike amid the summer's heat and the winter's cold,

never failing of visiting the patients, to whom their coming was the

most joyous event of the otherwise gloomy day.

But these varied forms of manifestation of patriotic zeal would have

been of but little material service to the soldiers, had there not been

behind them, throughout the loyal North, a vast network of organizations

extending to every village and hamlet, for raising money and preparing

and forwarding supplies of whatever was needful for the welfare of the

sick and wounded. We have already alluded to the spontaneity and

universality of these organizations at the beginning of the war. They

were an outgrowth alike of the patriotism and the systematizing

tendencies of the people of the North. It might have been expected that

the zeal which led to their formation would soon have cooled, and,

perhaps, this would have been the case, but for two causes, viz.: that

they very early became parts of more comprehensive organizations

officered by women of untiring energy, and the most exalted patriotic

devotion; and that the events of the war constantly kept alive the zeal

of a few in each society, who spurred on the laggards, and encouraged

the faint-hearted. These Soldiers' Aid Societies, Ladies' Aid

Associations, Alert Clubs, Soldiers' Relief Societies, or by whatever

other name they were called, were usually auxiliary to some Society in

the larger cities, to which their several contributions of money and

supplies were sent, by which their activity and labors were directed,

and which generally forwarded to some central source of supply, their

donations and its own. The United States Sanitary Commission had its

branches, known under various names, as Branch Commissions, General

Soldiers' Aid Societies, Associates, Local Sanitary Commissions, etc.,

at Boston, Albany, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Buffalo, Cleveland,

Cincinnati, and Chicago, and three central organizations, the Women's

Central Association of Relief, in New York, the Sanitary Commission, at

Washington, and the Western Depot of Supplies, at Louisville, Kentucky.

Affiliated to these were over twelve thousand local Soldiers' Aid

Societies. The Western Sanitary Commission had but one central

organization, besides its own depot, viz.: The Ladies' Union Aid

Society, of St. Louis, which had a very considerable number of

auxiliaries in Missouri and Iowa. The Christian Commission had its

branches in Boston, New York, Brooklyn, Baltimore, Buffalo, Cincinnati,

Chicago, and St. Louis, and several thousand local organizations

reported to these. Aside from these larger bodies, there were the

Ladies' Aid Association of Philadelphia, with numerous auxiliaries in

Pennsylvania, the Baltimore Ladies' Relief Association, the New England

Soldiers' Relief Association of New York; and during the first two years

of the war, Sanitary Commissions in Iowa, Indiana, and Illinois, and

State Relief Societies in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, New York, and some

of the other States with their representative organizations in

Washington. Several Central Aid Societies having large numbers of

auxiliaries, acted independently for the first two years, but were

eventually merged in the Sanitary Commission. Prominent among these were

the Hartford Ladies' Aid Society, having numerous auxiliaries throughout

Connecticut, the Pittsburg Relief Committee, drawing its supplies from

the circumjacent country, and we believe, also, the Penn Relief Society,

an organization among the Friends of Philadelphia and vicinity. The

supplies for the Volunteer and Cooper Shop Refreshment Saloons of

Philadelphia, were contributed by the citizens of that city and

vicinity.

When it is remembered, that by these various organizations, a sum

exceeding fifty millions of dollars was raised, during a little more

than four years, for the comfort and welfare of the soldiers, their

families, their widows, and their orphans, we may be certain that there

was a vast amount of work done by them. Of this aggregate of labor, it

is difficult to form any adequate idea. The ladies who were at the head

of the Branch or Central organizations, worked day after day, during the

long and hot days of summer, and the brief but cold ones of winter, as

assiduously and steadily, as any merchant in his counting-house, or the

banker at his desk, and exhibited business abilities, order, foresight,

judgment, and tact, such as are possessed by very few of the most

eminent men of business in the country. The extent of their operations,

too, was in several instances commensurate with that of some of our

merchant princes. Miss Louisa Lee Schuyler and Miss Ellen Collins, of

the Women's Central Association of Relief at New York, received and

disbursed in supplies and money, several millions of dollars in value;

Mrs. Rouse, Miss Mary Clark Brayton, and Miss Ellen F. Terry, of the

Cleveland Soldiers' Aid Society, somewhat more than a million; Miss Abby

May, of Boston, not far from the same amount; Mrs. Hoge, and Mrs.

Livermore, of the N. W. Sanitary Commission, over a million; while Mrs.

Seymour, of Buffalo, Miss Valeria Campbell, of Detroit, Mrs. Colt, of

Milwaukie, Miss Rachel W. McFadden, of Pittsburg, Mrs. Hoadley, and Mrs.

Mendenhall, of Cincinnati, Mrs. Clapp, and Miss H. A. Adams, of the St.

Louis Ladies' Aid Society, Mrs. Joel Jones, and Mrs. John Harris, of the

Philadelphia Ladies' Aid Society, Mrs. Stranahan, and Mrs. Archer, of

Brooklyn, if they did not do quite so large a business, at least

rivaled the merchants of the smaller cities, in the extent of their

disbursements; and when it is considered, that these ladies were not

only the managers and financiers of their transactions, but in most

cases the book-keepers also, we think their right to be regarded as

possessing superior business qualifications will not be questioned.

But some of these lady managers possessed still other claims to our

respect, for their laborious and self-sacrificing patriotism. It

occurred to several ladies in different sections of the country, as they

ascertained the suffering condition of some of the families of the

soldiers, (the early volunteers, it will be remembered, received no

bounties, or very trifling ones), that if they could secure for them, at

remunerative prices, the making of the soldiers' uniforms, or of the

hospital bedding and clothing, they might thus render them independent

of charity, and capable of self-support.

Three ladies (and perhaps more), Mrs. Springer, of St. Louis, in behalf

of the Ladies' Aid Society of that city, Miss Katherine P. Wormeley, of

Newport, R. I., and Miss Helen L. Gilson, of Chelsea, Mass., applied to

the Governmental purveyors of clothing, for the purpose of obtaining

this work. There was necessarily considerable difficulty in

accomplishing their purpose. The army of contractors opposed them

strongly, and in the end, these ladies were each obliged to take a

contract of large amount themselves, in order to be able to furnish the

work to the wives and daughters of the soldiers. In St. Louis, the terms

of the contract were somewhat more favorable than at the East, and on

the expiration of one, another was taken up, and about four hundred

women were supplied with remunerative work throughout the whole period

of the war. The terms of the contract necessitated the careful

inspection of the clothing, and the certainty of its being well made, by

the lady contractors; but in point of fact, it was all cut and prepared

for the sewing-women by Mrs. Springer and her associates, who, giving

their services to this work, divided among their employes the entire

sum received for each contract, paying them weekly for their work. The

strong competition at the East, rendered the price paid for the work,

for which contracts were taken by Miss Wormeley and Miss Gilson, less

than at the West, but Miss Gilson, and, we believe, Miss Wormeley also,

raised an additional sum, and paid to the sewing-women more than the

contract price for the work. It required a spirit thoroughly imbued with

patriotism and philanthropy to carry on this work, for the drudgery

connected with it was a severe tax upon the strength of those who

undertook it. In the St. Louis contracts, the officers and managers of

the Ladies' Aid Society, rendered assistance to Mrs. Springer, who had

the matter in charge, so far as they could, but not satisfied with this,

one of their number, the late Mrs. Palmer, spent a portion of every day

in visiting the soldiers' families who were thus employed, and whenever

additional aid was needed, it was cheerfully and promptly bestowed. In

this noble work of Christian charity, Mrs. Palmer overtasked her

physical powers, and after a long illness, she passed from earth, to be

reckoned among that list of noble martyrs, who sacrificed life for the

cause of their country.

But it was not the managers and leaders of these central associations

alone whose untiring exertions, and patient fidelity to their patriotic

work should excite our admiration and reverence. Though moving in a

smaller circle, and dealing with details rather than aggregates, there

were, in almost every village and town, those whose zeal, energy, and

devotion to their patriotic work, was as worthy of record, and as heroic

in character, as the labors of their sisters in the cities. We cannot

record the names of those thousands of noble women, but their record is

on high, and in the grand assize, their zealous toil to relieve their

suffering brothers, who were fighting or had fought the nation's

battles, will be recognized by Him, who regards every such act of love

and philanthropy as done to Himself.

Nor are these, alone, among those whose deeds of love and patriotism

are inscribed in the heavenly record. The whole history of the

contributions for relief, is glorified by its abundant instances of

self-sacrifice. The rich gave, often, largely and nobly from their

wealth; but a full moiety of the fifty millions of voluntary gifts, came

from the hard earnings, or patient labors of the poor, often bestowed at

the cost of painful privation. Incidents like the following were of

every-day occurrence, during the later years of the war: In one of the

mountainous countries at the North, in a scattered farming district,

lived a mother and daughters, too poor to obtain by purchase, the

material for making hospital clothing, yet resolved to do something for

the soldier. Twelve miles distant, over the mountain, and accessible

only by a road almost impassable, was the county-town, in which there

was a Relief Association. Borrowing a neighbor's horse, either the

mother or daughters came regularly every fortnight, to procure from this

society, garments to make up for the hospital. They had no money; but

though the care of their few acres of sterile land devolved upon

themselves alone, they could and would find time to work for the

sufferers in the hospitals. At length, curious to know the secret of

such fervor in the cause, one of the managers of the association

addressed them: "You have some relative, a son, or brother, or father,

in the war, I suppose?" "No!" was the reply, "not now; our only brother

fell at Ball's Bluff." "Why then," asked the manager, "do you feel so

deep an interest in this work?" "Our country's cause is the cause of

God, and we would do what we can, for His sake," was the sublime reply.

Take another example. In that little hamlet on the bleak and barren

hills of New England, far away from the great city or even the populous

village, you will find a mother and daughter living in a humble

dwelling. The husband and father has lain for many years 'neath the sod

in the graveyard on the hill slope; the only son, the hope and joy of

both mother and sister, at the call of duty, gave himself to the service

of his country, and left those whom he loved as his own life, to toil at

home alone. By and bye, at Williamsburg, or Fair Oaks, or in that

terrible retreat to James River, or at Cedar Mountain, it matters not

which, the swift speeding bullet laid him low, and after days, or it may

be weeks of terrible suffering, he gave up his young life on the altar

of his country. The shock was a terrible one to those lone dwellers on

the snowy hills. He was their all, but it was for the cause of Freedom,

of Right, of God; and hushing the wild beating of their hearts they

bestir themselves, in their deep poverty, to do something for the cause

for which their young hero had given his life. It is but little, for

they are sorely straitened; but the mother, though her heart is wrapped

in the darkness of sorrow, saves the expense of mourning apparel, and

the daughter turns her faded dress; the little earnings of both are

carefully hoarded, the pretty chintz curtains which had made their

humble room cheerful, are replaced by paper, and by dint of constant

saving, enough money is raised to purchase the other materials for a

hospital quilt, a pair of socks, and a shirt, to be sent to the Relief

Association, to give comfort to some poor wounded soldier, tossing in

agony in some distant hospital. And this, with but slight variation is

the history of hundreds, and perhaps thousands of the articles sent to

the soldiers' aid societies.

This fire of patriotic zeal, while it glowed alike in the hearts of the

rich and poor, inflamed the young as well as the old. Little girls, who

had not attained their tenth year, or who had just passed it, denied

themselves the luxuries and toys they had long desired, and toiled with

a patience and perseverance wholly foreign to childish nature, to

procure or make something of value for their country's defenders. On a

pair of socks sent to the Central Association of Relief, was pinned a

paper with this legend: "These stockings were knit by a little girl five

years old, and she is going to knit some more, for mother said it will

help some poor soldier." The official reports of the Women's Soldiers'

Aid Society of Northern Ohio, the Cleveland branch of the Sanitary

Commission, furnish the following incident: "Every Saturday morning

finds Emma Andrews, ten years of age, at the rooms of the Aid Society

with an application for work. Her little basket is soon filled with

pieces of half-worn linen, which, during the week, she cuts into towels

or handkerchiefs; hems, and returns, neatly washed and ironed, at her

next visit. Her busy fingers have already made two hundred and

twenty-nine towels, and the patriotic little girl is still earnestly

engaged in her work." Holidays and half holidays in the country were

devoted by the little ones with great zeal, to the gathering of

blackberries and grapes, for the preparations of cordials and native

wines for the hospitals, and the picking, paring and drying peaches and

apples, which, in their abundance, proved a valuable safeguard against

scurvy, which threatened the destruction or serious weakening of our

armies, more than once. In the cities and large villages the children,

with generous self-denial, gave the money usually expended for fireworks

to purchase onions and pickles for the soldiers, to prevent scurvy. A

hundred thousand dollars, it is said, was thus consecrated, by these

little ones, to this benevolent work.

In the days of the Sanitary Fairs, hundreds of groups of little girls

held their miniature fairs, stocked for the most part with articles of

their own production, upon the door step, or the walk in front of their

parents' dwellings, or in the wood-shed, or in some vacant room, and the

sums realized from their sales, varying from five to one hundred

dollars, were paid over, without any deduction for expenses, since labor

and attendance were voluntary and the materials a gift, to the

treasuries of the great fairs then in progress.

Nor were the aged women lacking in patriotic devotion. Such inscriptions

as these were not uncommon. "The fortunate owner of these socks is

secretly informed, that they are the one hundred and ninety-first pair

knit for our brave boys by Mrs. Abner Bartlett, of Medford, Mass., now

aged eighty-five years."

A barrel of hospital clothing sent from Conway, Mass., contained a pair

of socks knit by a lady ninety-seven years old, who declared herself

ready and anxious to do all she could. A homespun blanket bore the

inscription, "This blanket was carried by Milly Aldrich, who is

ninety-three years old, down hill and up hill, one and a-half miles, to

be given to some soldier."

A box of lint bore this touching record, "Made in a sick-room where the

sunlight has not entered for nine years, but where God has entered, and

where two sons have bade their mother good-bye, as they have gone out to

the war."

Every one knows the preciousness of the household linen which has been

for generations an heirloom in a family. Yet in numerous instances,

linen sheets, table-cloths, and napkins, from one hundred and twenty to

two hundred years old, which no money could have purchased, were

dedicated, often by those who had nought else to give, to the service of

the hospital.

An instance of generous and self-denying patriotism related by Mrs. D.

P. Livermore, of the Northwestern Sanitary Commission, deserves a record

in this connection, as it was one which has had more than one

counterpart elsewhere. "Some two or three months ago, a poor girl, a

seamstress, came to our rooms. 'I do not feel right,' she said, 'that I

am doing nothing for our soldiers in the hospitals, and have resolved to

do _something_ immediately. Which do you prefer--that I should give

money, or buy material and manufacture it into garments?'"

"You must be guided by your circumstances," was the answer made her; "we

need both money and supplies, and you must do that which is most

convenient for you."

"I prefer to give you money, if it will do as much good."

"Very well; then give money, which we need badly, and without which we

cannot do what is most necessary for our brave sick men."

"Then I will give you the entire earnings of the next two weeks. I'd

give more, but I have to help support my mother who is an invalid.

Generally I make but one vest a day, but I will work earlier and later

these two weeks." In two weeks she came again, the poor sewing girl,

her face radiant with the consciousness of philanthropic intent. Opening

her porte-monnaie, she counted out _nineteen dollars and thirty-seven

cents_. Every penny was earned by the slow needle, and she had stitched

away into the hours of midnight on every one of the working days of the

week. The patriotism which leads to such sacrifices as these, is not

less deserving of honor than that which finds scope for its energies in

ministering to the wounded on the battle-field or in the crowded wards

of a hospital.

Two other offerings inspired by the true spirit of earnest and active

philanthropy, related by the same lady, deserve a place here.

"Some farmers' wives in the north of Wisconsin, eighteen miles from a

railroad, had given to the Commission of their bed and table linen,

their husbands' shirts and drawers, their scanty supply of dried and

canned fruits, till they had exhausted their ability to do more in this

direction. Still they were not satisfied. So they cast about to see what

could be done in another way. They were all the wives of small farmers,

lately moved to the West, all living in log cabins, where one room

sufficed for kitchen, parlor, laundry, nursery and bed-room, doing their

own house-work, sewing, baby-tending, dairy-work, and all. What _could_

they do?

"They were not long in devising a way to gratify the longings of their

motherly and patriotic hearts, and instantly set about carrying it into

action. They resolved to beg wheat of the neighboring farmers, and

convert it into money. Sometimes on foot, and sometimes with a team,

amid the snows and mud of early spring, they canvassed the country for

twenty and twenty-five miles around, everywhere eloquently pleading the

needs of the blue-coated soldier boys in the hospitals, the eloquence

everywhere acting as an _open sesame_ to the granaries. Now they

obtained a little from a rich man, and then a great deal from a poor

man--deeds of benevolence are half the time in an inverse ratio to the

ability of the benefactors--till they had accumulated nearly five

hundred bushels of wheat. This they sent to market, obtained the highest

market price for it, and forwarded the proceeds to the Commission. As we

held this hard-earned money in our hands, we felt that it was

consecrated, that the holy purpose and resolution of these noble women

had imparted a sacredness to it."

Very beautiful is the following incident, narrated by the same lady, of

a little girl, one of thousands of the little ones, who have, during the

war, given up precious and valued keepsakes to aid in ministering to the

sick and wounded soldiers. "A little girl not nine years old, with sweet

and timid grace, came into the rooms of the Commission, and laying a

five dollar gold-piece on our desk, half frightened, told us its

history. 'My uncle gave me that before the war, and I was going to keep

it always; but he's got killed in the army, and mother says now I may

give it to the soldiers if I want to--and I'd like to do so. I don't

suppose it will buy much for them, will it?'" We led the child to the

store-room, and proceeded to show her how valuable her gift was, by

pointing out what it would buy--so many cans of condensed milk, or so

many bottles of ale, or pounds of tea, or codfish, etc. Her face

brightened with pleasure. But when we explained to her that her five

dollar gold-piece was equal to seven dollars and a half in greenbacks,

and told her how much comfort we had been enabled to carry into a

hospital, with as small an amount of stores as that sum would purchase,

she fairly danced with joy.

"Oh, it will do lots of good, won't it?" And folding her hands before

her, she begged, in her charmingly modest way, "Please tell me something

that you've seen in the hospitals?" A narrative of a few touching

events, not such as would too severely shock the little creature, but

which plainly showed the necessity of continued benevolence to the

hospitals, filled her sweet eyes with tears, and drew from her the

resolution, "to save all her money, and to get all the girls to do so,

to buy things for the wounded soldiers."

Innumerable have been the methods by which the loyalty and patriotism of

our countrywomen have manifested themselves; no memorial can ever record

the thousandth part of their labors, their toils, or their sacrifices;

sacrifices which, in so many instances, comprehended the life of the

earnest and faithful worker. A grateful nation and a still more grateful

army will ever hold in remembrance, such martyrs as Margaret

Breckinridge, Anna M. Ross, Arabella Griffith Barlow, Mrs. Howland, Mrs.

Plummer, Mrs. Mary E. Palmer, Mrs. S. C. Pomeroy, Mrs. C. M. Kirkland,

Mrs. David Dudley Field, and Sweet Jenny Wade, of Gettysburg, as well as

many others, who, though less widely known, laid down their lives as

truly for the cause of their country; and their names should be

inscribed upon the ever during granite, for they were indeed the most

heroic spirits of the war, and to them, belong its unfading laurels and

its golden crowns.

And yet, we are sometimes inclined to hesitate in our estimate of the

comparative magnitude of the sacrifices laid upon the Nation's altar;

not in regard to these, for she who gave her life, as well as her

services, to the Nation's cause, gave all she had to give; but in

reference to the others, who, though serving the cause faithfully in

their various ways, yet returned unscathed to their homes. Great and

noble as were the sacrifices made by these women, and fitted as they

were to call forth our admiration, were they after all, equal to those

of the mothers, sisters, and daughters, who, though not without tears,

yet calmly, and with hearts burning with the fire of patriotism,

willingly, gave up their best beloved to fight for the cause of their

country and their God? A sister might give up an only brother, the

playmate of her childhood, her pride, and her hope; a daughter might bid

adieu to a father dearly beloved, whose care and guidance she still

needs and will continue to need. A mother might, perchance, relinquish

her only son, he on whom she had hoped to lean, as the strong staff and

the beautiful rod of her old age; all this might be, with sorrow indeed,

and a deep and abiding sense of loneliness, not to be relieved, except

by the return of that father, brother, or son. But the wife, who, fully

worthy of that holy name, gave the parting hand to a husband who was

dearer, infinitely dearer to her than father, son, or brother, and saw

him go forth to the battle-field, where severe wounds or sudden and

terrible death, were almost certainly to be his portion, sacrificed in

that one act all but life, for she relinquished all that made life

blissful. Yet even in this holocaust there were degrees, gradations of

sacrifice. The wife of the officer might, perchance, have occasion to

see how her husband was honored and advanced for his bravery and good

conduct, and while he was spared, she was not likely to suffer the pangs

of poverty. In these particulars, how much more sad was the condition of

the wife of the private soldier, especially in the earlier years of the

war. To her, except the letters often long delayed or captured on their

route, there were no tidings of her husband, except in the lists of the

wounded or the slain; and her home, often one of refinement and taste,

was not only saddened by the absence of him who was its chief joy, but

often stripped of its best belongings, to help out the scanty pittance

which rewarded her own severe toil, in furnishing food and clothing for

herself and her little ones. Cruel, grinding poverty, was too often the

portion of these poor women. At the West, women tenderly and carefully

reared, were compelled to undertake the rude labors of the field, to

provide bread for their families. And when, to so many of these poor

women who had thus struggled with poverty, and the depressing influences

of loneliness and weariness, there came the sad intelligence, that the

husband so dearly loved, was among the slain, or that he had been

captured and consigned to death by starvation and slow torture at

Andersonville, where even now he might be filling an unknown grave, what

wonder is it that in numerous cases the burden was too heavy for the

wearied spirit, and insanity supervened, or the broken heart found rest

and reunion with the loved and lost in the grave.

Yet in many instances, the heart that seemed nigh to breaking, found

solace in its sorrow, in ministering directly or indirectly to the

wounded soldier, and forgetting its own misery, brought to other hearts

and homes consolation and peace. This seems to us the loftiest and most

divine of all the manifestations of the heroic spirit; it is nearest

akin in its character to the conduct of Him, who while "he was a man of

sorrows and acquainted with grief," yet found the opportunity, with his

infinite tenderness and compassion, to assuage every sorrow and soothe

every grief but his own.

The effect of this patriotic zeal and fervor on the part of the wives,

mothers, sisters, and daughters of the loyal North, in stimulating and

encouraging the soldiers to heroic deeds, was remarkable. Napoleon

sought to awaken the enthusiasm and love of fame of his troops in Egypt,

by that spirit-stirring word, "Soldiers, from the height of yonder

pyramids forty centuries look down upon you." But to the soldier

fighting the battles of freedom, the thought that in every hamlet and

village of the loyal North, patriotic women were toiling and watching

for his welfare, and that they were ready to cheer and encourage him in

the darkest hour, to medicine his wounds, and minister to his sickness

and sorrows in the camp, on the battle-field, or in the hospital wards,

was a far more grateful and inspiring sentiment, than the mythical watch

and ward of the spectral hosts of a hundred centuries of the dead past.

The loyal soldier felt that he was fighting, so to speak, under the very

eyes of his countrywomen, and he was prompted to higher deeds of daring

and valor by the thought. In the smoke and flame of battle, he bore, or

followed the flag, made and consecrated by female hands to his country's

service; many of the articles which contributed to his comfort, and

strengthened his good right arm, and inspirited his heart for the day of

battle were the products of the toil and the gifts of his countrywomen;

and he knew right well, that if he should fall in the fierce conflict,

the gentle ministrations of woman would be called in requisition, to

bind up his wounds, to cool his fevered brow, to minister to his fickle

or failing appetite, to soothe his sorrows, to communicate with his

friends, and if death came to close his eyes, and comfort, so far as

might be those who had loved him. This knowledge strengthened him in the

conflict, and enabled him to strike more boldly and vigorously for

freedom, until the time came when the foe, dispirited and exhausted,

yielded up his last vantage ground, and the war was over.

The Rebel soldiers were not thus sustained by home influences. At first,

indeed, Aid Societies were formed all over the South, and supplies

forwarded to their armies; but in the course of a year, the zeal of the

Southern ladies cooled, and they contented themselves with waving their

handkerchiefs to the soldiers, instead of providing for their wants; and

thenceforward, to the end of the war, though there were no rebels so

bitter and hearty in their expressions of hostility to the North, as the

great mass of Southern women, it was a matter of constant complaint in

the Rebel armies, that their women did nothing for their comfort. The

complaint was doubtless exaggerated, for in their hospitals there were

some women of high station who did minister to the wounded, but after

the first year, the gifts and sacrifices of Southern women to their army

and hospitals, were not the hundredth, hardly the thousandth part of

those of the women of the North to their countrymen.

A still more remarkable result of this wide-spread movement among the

women of the North, was its effect upon the sex themselves. Fifty years

of peace had made us, if not "a nation of shop-keepers," at least a

people given to value too highly, the pomp and show of material wealth,

and our women were as a class, the younger women especially, devoting to

frivolous pursuits, society, gaiety and display, the gifts wherewith God

had endowed them most bountifully. The war, and the benevolence and

patriotism which it evoked, changed all this. The gay and thoughtless

belle, the accomplished and beautiful leader of society, awoke at once

to a new life. The soul of whose existence she had been almost as

unconscious as Fouque's Undine, began to assert its powers, and the gay

and fashionable woman, no longer ennuyed by the emptiness and frivolity

of life, found her thoughts and hands alike fully occupied, and rose

into a sphere of life and action, of which, a month before, she would

have considered herself incapable.

Saratoga and Newport, and the other haunts of fashion were not indeed

deserted, but the visitors there were mostly new faces, the wives and

daughters of those who had grown rich through the contracts and

vicissitudes of the war, while their old habitues were toiling amid the

summer's heat to provide supplies for the hospitals, superintending

sanitary fairs, or watching and aiding the sick and wounded soldiers in

the hospitals, or at the front of the army. In these labors of love,

many a fair face grew pale, many a light dancing step became slow and

feeble, and ever and anon the light went out of eyes, that but a little

while before had flashed and glowed in conscious beauty and pride. But

though the cheeks might grow pale, the step feeble, and the eyes dim,

there was a holier and more transcendent beauty about them than in their

gayest hours. "We looked daily," says one who was herself a participant

in this blessed work, in speaking of one who, after years of

self-sacrificing devotion, at last laid down her young life in patriotic

toil, "we looked daily to see the halo surround her head, for it seemed

as if God would not suffer so pure and saintly a soul to walk the earth

without a visible manifestation of his love for her." Work so ennobling,

not only elevated and etherealized the mind and soul, but it glorified

the body, and many times it shed a glory and beauty over the plainest

faces, somewhat akin to that which transfigured the Jewish lawgiver,

when he came down from the Mount. But it has done more than this. The

soul once ennobled by participation in a great and glorious work, can

never again be satisfied to come down to the heartlessness, the

frivolities, the petty jealousies, and littlenesses of a life of

fashion. Its aspirations and sympathies lie otherwheres, and it must

seek in some sphere of humanitarian activity or Christian usefulness,

for work that will gratify its longings.

How pitiful and mean must the brightest of earth's gay assemblages

appear, to her who, day after day, has held converse with the souls of

the departing, as they plumed their wings for the flight heavenward, and

accompanying them in their upward journey so far as mortals may, has

been privileged with some glimpse through the opening gates of pearl,

into the golden streets of the city of our God!

With such experiences, and a discipline so purifying and ennobling, we

can but anticipate a still higher and holier future, for the women of

our time. To them, we must look for the advancement of all noble and

philanthropic enterprises; the lifting vagrant and wayward childhood

from the paths of ruin; the universal diffusion of education and

culture; the succor and elevation of the poor, the weak, and the

down-trodden; the rescue and reformation of the fallen sisterhood; the

improvement of hospitals and the care of the sick; the reclamation of

prisoners, especially in female prisons; and in general, the genial

ministrations of refined and cultured womanhood, wherever these

ministrations can bring calmness, peace and comfort. Wherever there is

sorrow, suffering, or sin, in our own or in other lands, these

heaven-appointed Sisters of Charity will find their mission and their

work.

Glorious indeed will be the results of such labors of love and Christian

charity. Society will be purified and elevated; giant evils which have

so long thwarted human progress, overthrown; the strongholds of sin,

captured and destroyed by the might of truth, and the "new earth wherein

dwelleth righteousness," so long foretold by patriarch, prophet, and

apostle, become a welcome and enduring reality.

And they who have wrought this good work, as, one after another, they

lay down the garments of their earthly toil to assume the glistening

robes of the angels, shall find, as did Enoch of old, that those who

walk with God, shall be spared the agonies of death and translated

peacefully and joyfully to the mansions of their heavenly home, while

waiting choirs of the blessed ones shall hail their advent to the

transcendent glories of the world above.

PART I.

SUPERINTENDENT OF NURSES.

DOROTHEA L. DIX

Among all the women who devoted themselves with untiring energy, and

gave talents of the highest order to the work of caring for our soldiers

during the war, the name of Dorothea L. Dix will always take the first

rank, and history will undoubtedly preserve it long after all others

have sunk into oblivion. This her extraordinary and exceptional official

position will secure. Others have doubtless done as excellent a work,

and earned a praise equal to her own, but her relations to the

government will insure her historical mention and remembrance, while

none will doubt the sincerity of her patriotism, or the faithfulness of

her devotion.

Dorothea L. Dix is a native of Worcester, Mass. Her father was a

physician, who died while she was as yet young, leaving her almost

without pecuniary resources.

Soon after this event, she proceeded to Boston, where she opened a

select school for young ladies, from the income of which she was enabled

to draw a comfortable support.

One day during her residence in Boston, while passing along a street,

she accidentally overheard two gentlemen, who were walking before her,

conversing about the state prison at Charlestown, and expressing their

sorrow at the neglected condition of the convicts. They were undoubtedly

of that class of philanthropists who believe that no man, however vile,

is _all_ bad, but, though sunk into the lowest depths of vice, has yet

in his soul some white spot which the taint has not reached, but which

some kind hand may reach, and some kind heart may touch.

Be that as it may, their remarks found an answering chord in the heart

of Miss Dix. She was powerfully affected and impressed, so much so, that

she obtained no rest until she had herself visited the prison, and

learned that in what she had heard there was no exaggeration. She found

great suffering, and great need of reform.

Energetic of character, and kindly of heart, she at once lent herself to

the work of elevating and instructing the degraded and suffering classes

she found there, and becoming deeply interested in the welfare of these

unfortunates, she continued to employ herself in labors pertaining to

this field of reform, until the year 1834.

At that time her health becoming greatly impaired, she gave up her

school and embarked for Europe. Shortly before this period, she had

inherited from a relative sufficient property to render her independent

of daily exertion for support, and to enable her to carry out any plans

of charitable work which she should form. Like all persons firmly fixed

in an idea which commends itself alike to the judgment and the impulses,

she was very tenacious of her opinions relating to it, and impatient of

opposition. It is said that from this cause she did not always meet the

respect and attention which the important objects to which she was

devoting her life would seem to merit. That she found friends and

helpers however at home and abroad, is undoubtedly true.

She remained abroad until the year 1837, when returning to her native

country she devoted herself to the investigation of the condition of

paupers, lunatics and prisoners. In this work she was warmly aided and

encouraged by her friend and pastor the Rev. Dr. Channing, of whose

children she had been governess, as well as by many other persons whose

hearts beat a chord responsive to that long since awakened in her own.

Since 1841 until the breaking out of the late war, Miss Dix devoted

herself to the great work which she accepted as the special mission of

her life. In pursuance of it, she, during that time, is said to have

visited every State of the Union east of the Rocky Mountains, examining

prisons, poor-houses, lunatic asylums, and endeavoring to persuade

legislatures and influential individuals to take measures for the relief

of the poor and wretched.

Her exertions contributed greatly to the foundation of State lunatic

asylums in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana, Illinois,

Louisiana and North Carolina. She presented a memorial to Congress

during the Session of 1848-9, asking an appropriation of five hundred

thousand acres of the public lands to endow hospitals for the indigent

insane.

This measure failed, but, not discouraged, she renewed the appeal in

1850 asking for ten millions of acres. The Committee of the House to

whom the memorial was referred, made a favorable report, and a bill such

as she asked for passed the House, but failed in the Senate for want of

time. In April, 1854, however, her unwearied exertions were rewarded by

the passage of a bill by both houses, appropriating ten millions of

acres to the several States for the relief of the indigent insane. But

this bill was vetoed by President Pierce, chiefly on the ground that the

General Government had no constitutional power to make such

appropriations.

Miss Dix was thus unexpectedly checked and deeply disappointed in the

immediate accomplishment of this branch of the great work of benevolence

to which she had more particularly devoted herself.

From that time she seems to have given herself, with added zeal, to her

labors for the insane. This class so helpless, and so innocently

suffering, seem to have always been, and more particularly during the

later years of her work, peculiarly the object of her sympathies and

labors. In the prosecution of these labors she made another voyage to

Europe in 1858 or '59, and continued to pursue them with indefatigable

zeal and devotion.

The labors of Miss Dix for the insane were continued without

intermission until the occurrence of those startling events which at

once turned into other and new channels nearly all the industries and

philanthropies of our nation. With many a premonition, and many a

muttering of the coming storm, unheeded, our people, inured to peace,

continued unappalled in their quiet pursuits. But while the actual

commencement of active hostilities called thousands of men to arms, from

the monotony of mechanical, agricultural and commercial pursuits and the

professions, it changed as well the thoughts and avocations of those who

were not to enter the ranks of the military.

And not to men alone did these changes come. Not they alone were filled

with a new fire of patriotism, and a quickened devotion to the interests

of our nation. Scarcely had the ear ceased thrilling with the tidings

that our country was indeed the theatre of civil war, when women as well

as men began to inquire if there were not for them some part to be

played in this great drama.

Almost, if not quite the first among these was Miss Dix. Self-reliant,

accustomed to rapid and independent action, conscious of her ability for

usefulness, with her to resolve was to act. Scarcely had the first

regiments gone forward to the defense of our menaced capital, when she

followed, full of a patriotic desire to _offer_ to her country whatever

service a woman could perform in this hour of its need, and determined

that it should be given.

She passed through Baltimore shortly after that fair city had covered

itself with the indelible disgrace of the 16th of April, 1861, and on

her arrival at Washington, the first labor she offered on her country's

altar, was the nursing of some wounded soldiers, victims of the

Baltimore mob. Thus was she earliest in the field.

Washington became a great camp. Every one was willing, nay anxious, to

be useful and employed. Military hospitals were hastily organized.

There were many sick, but few skilful nurses. The opening of the

rebellion had not found the government, nor the loyal people prepared

for it. All was confusion, want of discipline, and disorder. Organizing

minds, persons of executive ability, _leaders_, were wanted.

The services of women could be made available in the hospitals. They

were needed as nurses, but it was equally necessary that some one should

decide upon their qualifications for the task, and direct their efforts.

Miss Dix was present in Washington. Her ability, long experience in

public institutions and high character were well known. Scores of

persons of influence, from all parts of the country, could vouch for

her, and she had already offered her services to the authorities for any

work in which they could be made available.

Her selection for the important post of Superintendent of Female Nurses,

by Secretary Cameron, then at the head of the War Department, on the

10th of June, 1861, commanded universal approbation.

This at once opened for her a wide and most important field of duty and

labor. Except hospital matrons,[B] all women regularly employed in the

hospitals, and entitled to pay from the Government, were appointed by

her. An examination of the qualifications of each applicant was made. A

woman must be mature in years, plain almost to homeliness in dress, and

by no means liberally endowed with personal attractions, if she hoped to

meet the approval of Miss Dix. Good health and an unexceptionable moral

character were always insisted on. As the war progressed, the

applications were numerous, and the need of this kind of service great,

but the rigid scrutiny first adopted by Miss Dix continued, and many

were rejected who did not in all respects possess the qualifications

which she had fixed as her standard. Some of these women, who in other

branches of the service, and under other auspices, became eminently

useful, were rejected on account of their youth; while some, alas! were

received, who afterwards proved themselves quite unfit for the position,

and a disgrace to their sex.

[Footnote B: In many instances she appointed these also.]

But in these matters no blame can attach to Miss Dix. In the first

instance she acted no doubt from the dictates of a sound and mature

judgment; and in the last was often deceived by false testimonials, by a

specious appearance, or by applicants who, innocent at the time, were

not proof against the temptations and allurements of a position which

all must admit to be peculiarly exposed and unsafe.

Besides the appointment of nurses the position of Miss Dix imposed upon

her numerous and onerous duties. She visited hospitals, far and near,

inquiring into the wants of their occupants, in all cases where

possible, supplementing the Government stores by those with which she

was always supplied by private benevolence, or from public sources; she

adjusted disputes, and settled difficulties in which her nurses were

concerned; and in every way showed her true and untiring devotion to her

country, and its suffering defenders. She undertook long journeys by

land and by water, and seemed ubiquitous, for she was seldom missed from

her office in Washington, yet was often seen elsewhere, and always bent

upon the same fixed and earnest purpose. We cannot, perhaps, better

describe the personal appearance of Miss Dix, and give an idea of her

varied duties and many sacrifices, than by transcribing the following

extract from the printed correspondence of a lady, herself an active and

most efficient laborer in the same general field of effort, and holding

an important position in the Northwestern Sanitary Commission.

"It was Sunday morning when we arrived in Washington, and as the

Sanitary Commission held no meeting that day, we decided after breakfast

to pay a visit to Miss Dix.

"We fortunately found the good lady at home, but just ready to start for

the hospitals. She is slight and delicate looking, and seems physically

inadequate to the work she is engaged in. In her youth she must have

possessed considerable beauty, and she is still very comely, with a soft

and musical voice, graceful figure, and very winning manners. Secretary

Cameron vested her with sole power to appoint female nurses in the

hospitals. Secretary Stanton, on succeeding him ratified the

appointment, and she has installed several hundreds of nurses in this

noble work--all of them Protestants, and middle-aged. Miss Dix's whole

soul is in this work. She rents two large houses, which are depots for

sanitary supplies sent to her care, and houses of rest and refreshment

for nurses and convalescent soldiers, employs two secretaries, owns

ambulances and keeps them busily employed, prints and distributes

circulars, goes hither and thither from one remote point to another in

her visitations of hospitals,--and pays all the expenses incurred from

her private purse. Her fortune, time and strength are laid on the altar

of the country in this hour of trial.

"Unfortunately, many of the surgeons in the hospitals do not work

harmoniously with Miss Dix. They are jealous of her power, impatient of

her authority, find fault with her nurses, and accuse her of being

arbitrary, opinionated, severe and capricious. Many to rid themselves of

her entirely, have obtained permission of Surgeon-General Hammond to

employ Sisters of Charity in their hospitals, a proceeding not to Miss

Dix's liking. Knowing by observation that many of the surgeons are

wholly unfit for their office, that too often they fail to bring skill,

morality, or humanity to their work, we could easily understand how this

single-hearted, devoted, tireless friend of the sick and wounded soldier

would come in collision with these laggards, and we liked her none the

less for it."

Though Miss Dix received no salary, devoting to the work her time and

labors without remuneration, a large amount of supplies were placed in

her hands, both by the Government and from private sources, which she

was always ready to dispense with judgment and caution, it is true, but

with a pleasant earnestness alike grateful to the recipient of the

kindness, or to the agent who acted in her stead in this work of mercy.

It was perhaps unfortunate for Miss Dix that at the time when she

received her appointment it was so unprecedented, and the entire service

was still in such a chaotic state, that it was simply impossible to

define her duties or her authority. As, therefore, no plan of action or

rules were adopted, she was forced to abide exclusively by her own ideas

of need and authority. In a letter to the writer, from an official

source, her position and the changes that became necessary are thus

explained:

"The appointment of nurses was regulated by her ideas of their

prospective usefulness, good moral character being an absolute

prerequisite. This absence of system, and independence of action, worked

so very unsatisfactorily, that in October, 1863, a General Order was

issued placing the assignment, or employment of female nurses,

exclusively under control of Medical Officers, and limiting the

superintendency to a 'certificate of approval,' without which no woman

nurse could be employed, except by order of the Surgeon-General. This

materially reduced the number of appointments, secured the muster and

pay of those in service, and established discipline and order."

The following is the General Order above alluded to.

GENERAL ORDERS, NO. 351.

WAR DEPARTMENT, ADJUTANT-GENERAL'S OFFICE, WASHINGTON,

_October 29, 1863_.

The employment of women nurses in the United States General

Hospitals will in future be strictly governed by the following

rules:

1. Persons approved by Miss Dix, or her authorized agents, will

receive from her, or them, "certificates of approval," which must be

countersigned by Medical Directors upon their assignment to duty as

nurses within their Departments.

2. Assignments of "women nurses" to duty in General Hospitals will

only be made upon application by the Surgeons in charge, through

Medical Directors, to Miss Dix or her agents, for the number they

require, not exceeding one to every thirty beds.

3. No females, except Hospital Matrons, will be employed in General

Hospitals, or, after December 31, 1863, born upon the Muster and Pay

Rolls, without such certificates of approval and regular assignment,

unless specially appointed by the Surgeon-General.

4. Women nurses, while on duty in General Hospitals, are under the

exclusive control of the senior medical officer, who will direct

their several duties, and may be discharged by him when considered

supernumerary, or for incompetency, insubordination, or violation of

his orders. Such discharge, with the reasons therefor, being

endorsed upon the certificate, will be at once returned to Miss Dix.

BY ORDER OF THE SECRETARY OF WAR:

E. D. TOWNSEND,

_Assistant Adjutant-General_.

OFFICIAL:

By this Order the authority of Miss Dix was better defined, but she

continued to labor under the same difficulty which had from the first

clogged her efforts. Authority had been bestowed upon her, but not the

power to enforce obedience. There was no penalty for disobedience, and

persons disaffected, forgetful, or idle, might refuse or neglect to obey

with impunity. It will at once be seen that this fact must have resulted

disastrously upon her efforts. She doubtless had enemies (as who has

not)? and some were jealous of the power and prominence of her position,

while many might even feel unwilling, under any circumstances, to

acknowledge, and yield to the authority of a woman. Added to this she

had, in some cases, and probably without any fault on her part, failed

to secure the confidence and respect of the surgeons in charge of

hospitals. In these facts lay the sources of trials, discouragements,

and difficulties, all to be met, struggled with, and, if possible,

triumphed over by a woman, standing quite alone in a most responsible,

laborious, and exceptional position. It indeed seems most

wonderful--almost miraculous--that under such circumstances, such a vast

amount of good was accomplished. Had she not accomplished half so much,

she still would richly have deserved that highest of plaudits--Well done

good and faithful servant!

Miss Dix has one remarkable peculiarity--undoubtedly remarkable in one

of her sex which is said, and with truth--to possess great

approbativeness. She does not apparently desire fame, she does not enjoy

being talked about, even in praise. The approval of her own conscience,

the consciousness of performing an unique and useful work, seems quite

to suffice her. Few women are so self-reliant, self-sustained,

self-centered. And in saying this we but echo the sentiments, if not the

words, of an eminent divine who, like herself, was during the whole war

devoted to a work similar in its purpose, and alike responsible and

arduous.

"She (Miss Dix) is a lady who likes to do things and not have them

talked about. She is freer from the love of public reputation than any

woman I know. Then her plans are so strictly her own, and always so

wholly controlled by her own individual genius and power, that they

cannot well be participated in by others, and not much understood.

"Miss Dix, I suspect, was as early _in_, as _long_ employed, and as

self-sacrificing as any woman who offered her services to the country.

She gave herself--body, soul and substance--to the good work. I wish we

had any record of her work, but we have not.

"I should not dare to speak for her--about her work--except to say that

it was extended, patient and persistent beyond anything I know of,

dependent on a single-handed effort."

All the testimony goes to show that Miss Dix is a woman endowed with

warm feelings and great kindness of heart. It is only those who do not

know her, or who have only met her in the conflict of opposing wills,

who pronounce her, as some have done, a cold and heartless egotist.

Opinionated she may be, because convinced of the general soundness of

her ideas, and infallibility of her judgment. If the success of great

designs, undertaken and carried through single-handed, furnish warrant

for such conviction, she has an undoubted right to hold it.

Her nature is large and generous, yet with no room for narrow grudges,

or mean reservations. As a proof of this, her stores were as readily

dispensed for the use of a hospital in which the surgeon refused and

rejected her nurses, as for those who employed them.

She had the kindest care and oversight over the women she had

commissioned. She wished them to embrace every opportunity for the rest

and refreshment rendered necessary by their arduous labors. A home for

them was established by her in Washington, which at all times opened its

doors for their reception, and where she wished them to enjoy that

perfect quiet and freedom from care, during their occasional sojourns,

which were the best remedies for their weariness and exhaustion of body

and soul.

In her more youthful days Miss Dix devoted herself considerably to

literary pursuits. She has published several works anonymously--the

first of which--"The Garland of Flora," was published in Boston in 1829.

This was succeeded by a number of books for children, among which were

"Conversations about Common Things," "Alice and Ruth," and "Evening

Hours." She has also published a variety of tracts for prisoners, and

has written many memorials to legislative bodies on the subject of the

foundation and conducting of Lunatic Asylums.

Miss Dix is gifted with a singularly gentle and persuasive voice, and

her manners are said to exert a remarkably controlling influence over

the fiercest maniacs.

She is exceedingly quiet and retiring in her deportment, delicate and

refined in manner, with great sweetness of expression. She is far from

realizing the popular idea of the strong-minded woman--loud, boisterous

and uncouth, claiming as a right, what might, perhaps, be more readily

obtained as a courteous concession. On the contrary, her successes with

legislatures and individuals, are obtained by the mildest efforts, which

yet lack nothing of persistence; and few persons beholding this delicate

and retiring woman would imagine they saw in her the champion of the

oppressed and suffering classes.

Miss Dix regards her army work but as an episode in her career. She did

what she could, and with her devotion of self and high patriotism she

would have done no less. She pursued her labors to the end, and her

position was not resigned until many months after the close of the war.

In fact, she tarried in Washington to finish many an uncompleted task,

for some time after her office had been abolished.

When all was done she returned at once to that which she considers her

life's work, the amelioration of the condition of the insane.

A large portion of the winter of 1865-6 was devoted to an attempt to

induce the Legislature of New York to make better provision for the

insane of that State, and to procure, or erect for them, several asylums

of small size where a limited number under the care of experienced

physicians, might enjoy greater facilities for a cure, and a better

prospect of a return to the pursuits and pleasures of life.

Miss Dix now resides at Trenton, New Jersey, where she has since the war

fixed her abode, travelling thence to the various scenes of her labors.

Wherever she may be, and however engaged, we may be assured that her

object is the good of some portion of the race, and is worthy of the

prayers and blessings of all who love humanity and seek the promotion of

its best interests. And to the close of her long and useful life, the

thanks, the heartfelt gratitude of every citizen of our common country

so deeply indebted to her, and to the many devoted and self-sacrificing

women whose efforts she directed, must as assuredly follow her. She

belongs now to History, and America may proudly claim her daughter.