L. P. Brockett, Women's work in the civil war: a record of heroism, patriotism and patience

[34] to the wearing work,were followed by weeks of personal service in the fairs themselves, where the strongest women found their vigor inadequate to the task, and hundreds laid the foundations of long illness and some of sudden death. These sacrifices and far-seeing provisions were justly repaid by almost fabulous returns of money, which to the extent of nearly three millions of dollars, flowed into the treasury of the United States Sanitary Commission. The chief women who inaugurated the several great Fairs at New York, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and administered these vast movements, were not behind the ablest men in the land in their grasp and comprehension of the business in hand, and often in comparison with the men associated with them, exhibited a finer scope, a better spirit and a more victorious faith. But for the women of America, the great Fairs would never have been born, or would have died ignominiously in their gilded cradles. Their vastness of conception and their splendid results are to be set as an everlasting crown on woman's capacity for large and money-yielding enterprises. The women who led them can never sink back into obscurity.

But I must pass from this inviting theme, where indeed I feel more at home than in what is to follow, to the consideration of what naturally occupies a larger space in this work-however much smaller it was in reality, i. e., to the labors of the women who actually went to the war, and worked in the hospitals and camps.

Of the labors of women in the hospitals and in the field, this book gives a far fuller history than is likely to be got from any other source, as this sort of service cannot be recorded in the histories of organized work. For, far the largest part of this work was done by persons of exceptional energy and some fine natural aptitude for the service, which was independent of organizations, and hardly submitted itself to any rules except the impulses of devoted love for the work-supplying tact, patience and resources. The women who did hospital service continuously, or who kept themselves near the base of armies in the field, or who moved among the camps, and travelled with the corps, were an exceptional class — as rare as heroines always are — a class, representing no social grade, but coming from all-belonging to no rank or age of life in particular; sometimes young and sometimes old, sometimes refined and sometimes rude; now of fragile physical aspect and then of extraordinary robustness-but in all cases, women with a mighty love and earnestness in their hearts — a love and pity, and an ability to show it forth and to labor in behalf of it, equal to that which in other departments of life, distinguishes poets, philosophers, sages and saints, from ordinary or average men.