village, and hamlet soon poured its resources into the Commission. Through it $92,000,000 were raised in aid of the sick and wounded of the army. Nothing connected with the war so astonished foreign nations as the work of the Sanitary Commission.
Dr. Henry Bellows, its President at the close of the war, declared in his farewell address, that the army of women at home had been as patriotic and as self-sacrificing as the army of men in the field, and had it not been for their aid the war could not have been brought to a successful termination.[1]
At every important period in the nation's history, woman has stood by the side of man in duties. Husband, father, son, or brother have not suffered or sacrificed alone.
"The old Continentals
In their ragged regimentals
Faltered not,"
because back of them stood the patriotic women of the thirteen Colonies; those of the north-eastern pine-woods, who aided in the first naval battle of the Revolution; those of Massachusetts, Daughters of Liberty, who formed anti-tea leagues, proclaimed inherent rights, and demanded an independency in advance of the men; those of New York, who tilled the fields, and, removing their hearth-stones, manufactured saltpetre from the earth beneath, to make powder for the army; those of New Jersey, who rebuked traitors; those of Pennsylvania, who saved the army; those of Virginia, who protested against taxation without representation; those of South Carolina, who at Charleston established a paper in opposition to the Stamp Act; those of North Carolina, whose fiery patriotism secured for
- ↑ The distinctive features in woman's work in that war, were magnitude, system, thorough co-operation 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, and for every assembly where men met for mutual exertion in the service of the country, there was some corresponding gathering of women to stir each other's hearts and flnge is in the same sacred cause. . . . . 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, or business, or party considerations. . . . . 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. . . . . 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 voluntary labor had all the regularity of paid service, and a heartiness and earnestness which no paid service can ever have Men were ashamed to doubt where women trusted, or to murmur where they submitted, or to do little where they did so much.—Woman's Work in the Civil War. L. P. Brackett.
