could for the sick; her civility and
kindness were recognized, and she was treated with respect by all. After
the battle of Antietam, Frederick City and its hospitals were filled
with the wounded, and Mrs. McKay's heart and hands were full--but as
soon as the wounded became convalescent, she went to Washington and was
assigned to duty for a time in the hospitals of the Capital. In January,
she went to Falmouth and found employment as a nurse in the Third Corps
Hospital. Here by her skill and tact she soon effected a revolution,
greatly to the comfort of the poor fellows in the hospital. From being
the worst it became the best of the corps hospitals at the front.
General Birney and his excellent wife, seconded and encouraged all her
efforts for its improvement.

The battles which though scattered over a wide extent of territory, and
fought at different times and by different portions of the contending
forces, have yet been known under the generic name of Chancellorsville,
were full of horrors for Mrs. McKay. She witnessed the bloody but
successful assault on Marye's Heights, and while ministering to the
wounded who covered all the ground in front of the fortified position,
received the saddening intelligence that her brother, who was with
Hooker at Chancellorsville, had been instantly killed in the protracted
fighting there. Other of her friends too had fallen, but crushing the
agony of her own loss back into her heart, she went on ministering to
the wounded. Six weeks later she was in Washington, awaiting the battle
between Lee's forces and Hooker's, afterwards commanded by General
Meade. When the intelligence of the three days' conflict at Gettysburg
came, she went to Baltimore, and thence by such conveyance as she could
find, to Gettysburg, reaching the hospital of her division, five miles
from Gettysburg, on the 7th of July. Here she remained for nearly two
months, laboring zealously for the welfare of a thousand or fifteen
hundred wounded men. In the autumn she again sought the hospital of the
Third Division, Third Corps, at the front, which for the time was at
Warrenton, Virginia. After the battle of Mine Run, she had ample
employment in the care of the wounded; and later in the season she had
charge of one of the hospitals at Brandy Station. Like the other ladies
who were connected with hospitals at this place, she was compelled to
retire by the order of April 15th; but like them she returned to her
work early in