Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience

enji - Mary C.Brockett Vaughan , Mary C. Vaughan , Linus Pierpont Brockett

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Publié par	enji
Publié le	08 décembre 2010
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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Woman's Work in
the Civil War, by
Linus Pierpont Brockett and Mary C. Vaughan
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no
cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it,
give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg
License included
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Title: Woman's Work in the Civil War
A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience
Author: Linus Pierpont Brockett
Mary C. Vaughan
Commentator: Henry W. Bellows
Release Date: June 18, 2007 [EBook #21853]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CIVIL WAR ***Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Cally Soukup and the
Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
(This
file was made using scans of public domain works
from the
University of Michigan Digital Libraries.)
Transcriber's Note:
Illustrations originally printed in the middle of
sentences have been moved to the nearest paragraph
break.
Because sections of this book were written by different
people, accent, spelling and hyphen usage is
inconsistent. These inconsistencies have been
preserved except where noted.
For a complete list, please see the end of this
document.Miss Clara H. Barton
Miss Clara H. Barton.
Engd. by John Sartain.
Barbara Frietchie
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
OFHEROISM, 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 campaignbetween 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 minié 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 tohumanity 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,