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.