organizing and
systematizing their labor, rendered them highly efficient. In February,
1862, the sick and wounded began to pour into the government hospitals
of Cincinnati, from the siege of Fort Donelson, and ere these were
fairly convalescent, still greater numbers came from Shiloh; and from
that time forward, till the close of the war, the hospitals were almost
constantly filled with sick or wounded soldiers. To these suffering
heroes Mrs. Mendenhall devoted herself with the utmost assiduity. For
two and a half years from the reception of the first wounded from Fort
Donelson, she spent half of every day, and frequently the whole day, in
personal ministrations to the sick and wounded in any capacity that
could add to their comfort. She procured necessaries and luxuries for
the sick, waited upon them, wrote letters for them, consoled the dying,
gave information to their friends of their condition, and attended to
the necessary preparations for the burial of the dead. During the four
years of the war she was not absent from the city for pleasure but six
days, and during the whole period there were not more than ten days in
which she did not perform some labor for the soldiers' comfort.

Her field of labor was in the four general hospitals in the city, but
principally in the Washington Park Hospital, over which Dr. J. B. Smith,
who subsequently fell a martyr to his devotion to the soldiers,
presided, who gave her ample opportunities for doing all for the
patients which her philanthropic spirit prompted. During all this time
she was actively engaged in the promotion of the objects of the Women's
Soldiers' Aid Society, of which, she was at this time, president, having
been from the first an officer. The enthusiasm manifested in the
northwest in behalf of the Sanitary Fair at Chicago, led Mrs. Mendenhall
to believe that a similar enterprise would be feasible in Cincinnati,
which should draw its supplies and patrons from all portions of the Ohio
valley. With her a generous and noble thought was sure to be followed by
action equally generous and praiseworthy. She commenced at once the
agitation of the subject in the daily papers of the city, her first
article appearing in the _Times_, of October 31, 1863, and being
followed by others from her pen in the other loyal papers of the city.
The idea was received with favor, and on the 7th of November an
editorial appeared in the _Cincinnati Gazette_, entitled "Who speaks for
Cincin