mes; she therefore left
Richmond immediately, and traveling with her accustomed celerity, soon
reached Philadelphia, and gathering up from her liberal friends and her
own moderate means, a sufficient sum to procure the necessary stores,
she returned with an ample supply, met the soldiers of the corps to
which she had been attached at Bailey's Cross Roads, and there spent six
or seven days in distributing to them the clothing and comforts which
they needed. Her last opportunity of seeing them was a few days later at
the grand review in Washington.

There was one class of services which Mrs. Husband rendered to the
soldiers, which we have not mentioned, and in which we believe she had
no competitor. In the autumn of 1863, her attention was called to the
injustice of the finding and sentence of a court martial, which had
tried a private soldier for some alleged offence and sentenced him to be
shot. She investigated the case and, with some difficulty, succeeded in
procuring his pardon from the President.

She began from this time to take an interest in these cases of trial by
summary court martial, and having a turn for legal investigation, to
which her early training and her husband's profession had inclined her,
and a clear judicial mind, she made each one her study, and though she
found that there were some cases in which summary punishment was
merited, yet the majority were deserving of the interposition of
executive clemency, and she became their advocate with the patient and
kind-hearted Lincoln. In scores of instances she secured, not without
much difficulty, and some abuse from officials "dressed in a little
brief authority," who disliked her keen and thorough investigation of
their proceedings, the pardon or the commutation of punishment of those
sentenced to death. Rarely, if ever, did the President turn a deaf ear
to her pleadings; for he knew that they were prompted by no sinister
motive, or simple humane impulse. Every case which she presented had
been thoroughly and carefully examined, and her knowledge of it was so
complete, that he felt he might safely trust her.

Through all these multifarious labors and toils, Mrs. Husband has
received no compensation from the Government or the Sanitary Commission.
She entered the service as a volunteer, and her necessities have been
met from her own means, and she has also given freely to the soldiers
and to their families from her not over-full purse. Her reward is in