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

[51] and hastening to the Volunteer or the Cooper Shop Refreshment Saloons, spread before the soldiers an ample repast, and served them with a cordiality and heartiness deserving all praise. Four hundred thousand soldiers were fed by these willing hands and generous hearts, and in hospitals connected with both Refreshment Saloons the sick were tenderly cared for.

In the large general hospitals of Washington, Philadelphia, New York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis, in addition to the volunteer and paid nurses, there were committees of ladies, who, on alternate days, or on single days of each week, were accustomed to visit the hospitals, bringing delicacies and luxuries, preparing special dishes for the invalid soldiers, writing to their friends for them, etc. To this sacred duty, many women of high social position devoted themselves steadily for nearly three years, alike amid the summer's heat and the winter's cold, never failing of visiting the patients, to whom their coming was the most joyous event of the otherwise gloomy day.

But these varied forms of manifestation of patriotic zeal would have been of but little material service to the soldiers, had there not been behind them, throughout the loyal North, a vast network of organizations extending to every village and hamlet, for raising money and preparing and forwarding supplies of whatever was needful for the welfare of the sick and wounded. We have already alluded to the spontaneity and universality of these organizations at the beginning of the war. They were an outgrowth alike of the patriotism and the systematizing tendencies of the people of the North. It might have been expected that the zeal which led to their formation would soon have cooled, and, perhaps, this would have been the case, but for two causes, viz.: that they very early became parts of more comprehensive organizations officered by women of untiring energy, and the most exalted patriotic devotion; and that the events of the war constantly kept alive the zeal of a few in each society, who spurred on the laggards, and encouraged the faint-hearted. These