ntended the
operations at home--of collecting and preparing supplies for the
hospitals and the field, I cannot but think that the women who lived in
the hospitals, or among the soldiers, required a force of character and
a glow of devotion and self-sacrifice, of a rarer kind. They were really
heroines. They conquered their feminine sensibility at the sight of
blood and wounds; their native antipathy to disorder, confusion and
violence; subdued the rebellious delicacy of their more exquisite
senses; lived coarsely, and dressed and slept rudely; they studied the
caprices of men to whom their ties were simply human--men often
ignorant, feeble-minded--out of their senses--raving with pain and
fever; they had a still harder service to bear with the pride, the
official arrogance, the hardness or the folly--perhaps the impertinence
and presumption of half-trained medical men, whom the urgencies of the
case had fastened on the service.[A] Their position was always critical,
equivocal, suspected, and to be justified only by their undeniable and
conspicuous merits;--their wisdom, patience and proven efficiency;
justified by the love and reverence they exacted from the soldiers
themselves!

[Footnote A: A large number of the United States Army and volunteer
surgeons were indeed men of the highest and most humane character, and
treated the women who came to the hospitals, with careful and scrupulous
consideration. Some women were able to say that they never encountered
opposition or hindrance from any officials; but this was not the rule.]

True, the rewards of these women were equal to their sacrifices. They
drew their pay from a richer treasury than that of the United States
Government. I never knew one of them who had had a long service, whose
memory of the grateful looks of the dying, of the few awkward words that
fell from the lips of thankful convalescents, or the speechless
eye-following of the dependent soldier, or the pressure of a rough hand,
softened to womanly gentleness by long illness,--was not the sweetest
treasure of all their lives. Nothing in the power of the Nation to give
or to say, can ever compare for a moment with the proud satisfaction
which every brave soldier who risked his life for his country, always
carries in his heart of hearts. And no public recognition, no thanks
from a saved Nation, can ever add anything of much importance to the
rewards of those who tasted the actual joy of ministering with their