Womans Work in the Civil War | Page 2

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;