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

[36] and preparing supplies for the hospitals and the field, I cannot but think that the women who lived in the hospitals, or among the soldiers, required a force of character and a glow of devotion and self-sacrifice, of a rarer kind. They were really heroines. They conquered their feminine sensibility at the sight of blood and wounds; their native antipathy to disorder, confusion and violence; subdued the rebellious delicacy of their more exquisite senses; lived coarsely, and dressed and slept rudely; they studied the caprices of men to whom their ties were simply human-men often ignorant, feeble-minded-out of their senses-raving with pain and fever; they had a still harder service to bear with the pride, the official arrogance, the hardness or the folly-perhaps the impertinence and presumption of half-trained medical men, whom the urgencies of the case had fastened on the service.* Their position was always critical, equivocal, suspected, and to be justified only by their undeniable and conspicuous merits;--their wisdom, patience and proven efficiency; justified by the love and reverence they exacted from the soldiers themselves!

True, the rewards of these women were equal to their sacrifices. They drew their pay from a richer treasury than that of the United States Government. I never knew one of them who had had a long service, whose memory of the grateful looks of the dying, of the few awkward words that fell from the lips of thankful convalescents, or the speechless eye-following of the dependent soldier, or the pressure of a rough hand, softened to womanly gentleness by long illness,--was not the sweetest treasure of all their lives. Nothing in the power of the Nation to give or to say, can ever compare for a moment with the proud satisfaction which every brave soldier who risked his life for his country, always carries in his heart of hearts. And no public recognition, no thanks from a saved Nation, can ever add anything of much importance to the rewards of those who tasted the actual joy of ministering with their own hands and hearts to the wants of one sick and dying man.

It remains only to say a word about the influence of the work of the women in the War upon the strength and unanimity of the public sentiment, and on the courage and fortitude of the army itself.

The participation by actual work and service in the labors of the War,

* A large number of the United States Army and volunteer surgeons were indeed men of the highest and most humane character, and treated the women who came to the hospitals, with careful and scrupulous consideration. Some women were able to say that they never encountered opposition or hindrance from any officials; but this was not the rule.