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.