Shiloh.

Mrs. Porter was very successful in this work. In her youth she had
gathered an infant school among the half-breed children at Mackinac and
Point St. Ignace, and understood well how to deal with these minds
scarce awakened from the dense slumber of ignorance.

The school flourished, and others entered into the work, and other
schools were established. Ministering to their temporal wants as well,
clothing, feeding, medicating these unfortunate people, visiting their
hospitals as well as those of the army, Mrs. Porter remained at Memphis
and in its vicinity until June, 1863.

Her schools having by that time become well-established, and general
interest in the scheme awakened, Mrs. Porter felt herself constrained to
once more devote herself exclusively to the soldiers, a large number of
whom were languishing in Southern hospitals in an unhealthy climate.
Failing in her attempts to get them rapidly removed to the North,
through correspondence with the Governors of Ohio and Illinois, she went
North for the purpose of obtaining interviews with these gentlemen. At
Green Bay, Wisconsin, she joined Mrs. Governor Harvey, who was striving
to obtain a State Hospital for Wisconsin. Here she proposed to Senator
T. O. Howe to draft a petition to the President, praying for the
establishment of such hospitals. Judge Howe was greatly pleased to
comply, and accordingly drew up the petition to which Mrs. Howe and
others obtained over eight thousand names. Mrs. Harvey desired Mrs.
Porter to accompany her to Washington with the petition, but she
declined, and Mrs. Harvey went alone, and as the result of her efforts,
succeeded in the establishment of the Harvey Hospital at Madison,
Wisconsin.

Other parties took up the matter in Illinois, and Mrs. Porter returned
to her beloved work at the South, visiting Natchez and Vicksburg. At the
latter place she joined Mrs. Harvey and Mrs. Bickerdyke, all three
ministering by Sanitary stores and personal aid to the sick and wounded
in hospitals and regiments.

While on her way, at Memphis, she learned that the battery, in which
were her eldest son and a nephew, had gone with Sherman's army toward
Corinth, and started by rail to overtake them. At Corinth, standing in
the room of the Sanitary Commission, she saw the battery pass in which
were her boys. It was raining, and mud-bespattered and drenched, her son
rode by in an ague chill, and could only give her a look of recognition
as he passe