nspicuous, and especially Mrs. Sarah R. Johnson, Mrs. Nellie M.
Taylor, Mrs. Grier, Mrs. Clapp, Miss Breckinridge, Mrs. Phelps, Mrs.
Shepard Wells, and others. There was however, beside these, a large
class, even in the chief cities of the rebellion, who not only never
bowed their knee to the idol of secession, but who for their fidelity to
principle, their patient endurance of proscription and their humanity
and helpfulness to Union men, and especially Union prisoners, are
deserving of all honor.

The loyal women of Richmond were a noble band. Amid obloquy, persecution
and in some cases imprisonment (one of them was imprisoned for nine
months for aiding Union prisoners) they never faltered in their
allegiance to the old flag, nor in their sympathy and services to the
Union prisoners at Libby and Belle Isle, and Castle Thunder. With the
aid of twenty-one loyal white men in Richmond they raised a fund of
thirteen thousand dollars in gold, to aid Union prisoners, while their
gifts of clothing, food and luxuries, were of much greater value. Some
of these ladies were treated with great cruelty by the rebels, and
finally driven from the city, but no one of them ever proved false to
loyalty. In Charleston, too, hot-bed of the rebellion as it was, there
was a Union league, of which the larger proportion were women, some of
them wives or daughters of prominent rebels, who dared everything, even
their life, their liberty and their social position, to render aid and
comfort to the Union soldiers, and to facilitate the return of a
government of liberty and law. Had we space we might fill many pages
with the heroic deeds of these noble women. Through their assistance,
scores of Union men were enabled to make their escape from the prisons,
some of them under fire, in which they were confined, and often after
almost incredible sufferings, to find their way to the Union lines.
Others suffering from the frightful jail fever or wasted by privation
and wearisome marches with little or no food, received from them food
and clothing, and were thus enabled to maintain existence till the time
for their liberation came. The negro women were far more generally loyal
than their mistresses, and their ready wit enabled them to render
essential service to the loyal whites, service for which, when detected,
they often suffered cruel tortures, whipping and sometimes death.

In New Orleans, before the occupation of the city by the Union troops
under