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

[37] not only took out of women's hearts the soreness which unemployed energies or incongruous pursuits would have left there, but it took out of their mouths the murmurs and moans which their deserted, husbandless, childless condition would so naturally have provoked. The women by their call to work, and the opportunity of pouring their energies, sympathies and affections into an ever open and practical channel, were quieted, reconciled, upheld. The weak were borne upon the bosoms of the strong. Banded together, and working together, their solicitude and uneasiness were alleviated. Following in imagination the work of their own hands, they seemed to be present on the field and in the ranks; they studied the course of the armies; they watched the policy of the Government; they learned the character of the Generals; they threw themselves into the war! And so they helped wonderfully to keep up the enthusiasm, or to rebuke the lukewarmness, or to check the despondency and apathy which at times settled over the people. Men were ashamed to doubt where women trusted, or to murmur where they submitted, or to do little where they did so much. If during the war, home life had gone on as usual; women engrossed in their domestic or social cares; shrinking from public questions; deferring to what their husbands or brothers told them, or seeking to amuse themselves with social pleasures and striving to forget the painful strife in frivolous caprices, it would have had a fearful effect on public sentiment, deepening the gloom of every reverse, adding to the discouragements which an embarrassed commerce and trade brought to men's hearts, by domestic echoes of weariness of the strife, and favoring the growth of a disaffected, compromising, unpatriotic feeling, which always stood ready to break out with any offered encouragement. A sense of nearness of the people to the Government which the organization of the women effected, enlarged their sympathies with its movements and disposed them to patience. Their own direct experience of the difficulties of all co-operative undertakings, broadened their views and rendered intelligible the delays and reverses which our national cause suffered. In short the women of the country were through the whole conflict, not only not softening the fibres of war, but they were actually strengthening its sinews by keeping up their own courage and that of their households, under the inspiration of the larger and more public life, the broader work and greater field for enterprise and self-sacrifice afforded them by their direct labors for the benefit of the soldiers. They drew thousands of lukewarm, or calculating, or self-saving men into the support of the national cause by their practical enthusiasm and devotion. They proved what has again and again been demonstrated, that what the women of a country resolve shall be done, will and must be done. They shamed recruits into the ranks,