ERE RECORDED, TO MINISTER RELIEF AND
CONSOLATION TO OUR WOUNDED AND SUFFERING HEROES;

AND WHO BY THEIR DEVOTION, THEIR LABORS, AND THEIR PATIENT ENDURANCE OF
PRIVATION AND DISTRESS OF BODY AND SPIRIT, WHEN CALLED TO GIVE UP THEIR
BELOVED ONES FOR THE

NATION'S DEFENSE,

HAVE WON FOR THEMSELVES ETERNAL HONOR, AND THE UNDYING REMEMBRANCE OF
THE PATRIOTS OF ALL TIME,

WE DEDICATE THIS VOLUME.

PREFACE.

The preparation of this work, or rather the collection of material for
it, was commenced in the autumn of 1863. While engaged in the
compilation of a little book on "The Philanthropic Results of the War"
for circulation abroad, in the summer of that year, the writer became so
deeply impressed with the extraordinary sacrifices and devotion of loyal
women, in the national cause, that he determined to make a record of
them for the honor of his country. A voluminous correspondence then
commenced and continued to the present time, soon demonstrated how
general were the acts of patriotic devotion, and an extensive tour,
undertaken the following summer, to obtain by personal observation and
intercourse with these heroic women, a more clear and comprehensive idea
of what they had done and were doing, only served to increase his
admiration for their zeal, patience, and self-denying effort.

Meantime the war still continued, and the collisions between Grant and
Lee, in the East, and Sherman and Johnston, in the South, the fierce
campaign between Thomas and Hood in Tennessee, Sheridan's annihilating
defeats of Early in the valley of the Shenandoah, and Wilson's
magnificent expedition in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, as well as
the mixed naval and military victories at Mobile and Wilmington, were
fruitful in wounds, sickness, and death. Never had the gentle and
patient ministrations of woman been so needful as in the last year of
the war; and never had they been so abundantly bestowed, and with such
zeal and self-forgetfulness.

From Andersonville, and Millen, from Charleston, and Florence, from
Salisbury, and Wilmington, from Belle Isle, and Libby Prison, came also,
in these later months of the war, thousands of our bravest and noblest
heroes, captured by the rebels, the feeble remnant of the tens of
thousands imprisoned there, a majority of whom had perished of cold,
nakedness, starvation, and disease, in those charnel houses, victims of
the fiendish malignity of the rebel leaders. These poor fellows, starved