Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

“ [576] recognizing the ability and energy of Miss D. L. Dix in her arrangements for the comfort and welfare of the sick soldiers in the present exigency,” requested all women who offered their services as nurses to report to her. Like an angel of mercy, this self-sacrificing woman labored day and night throughout the entire war for the relief of the suffering soldiers, without expecting or receiving any pecuniary reward. She went from battle-field to battle-field, when the carnage was-over; from camp to camp; and from hospital to hospital, superintending the operations of the nurses, and administering with her own hands physical comforts to the suffering, and soothing the troubled spirits of the invalid or dying soldier with a voice low, musical, and attractive, and always burdened with words of heart-felt sympathy and religious consolation. The amount of happiness that resulted from the services of this woman of delicate frame, which seemed to be incapable of enduring the physical labor required of it, can never be estimated. The true record is only in the great Book of Remembrance. Yet she was not the only sister of charity engaged in works of mercy. She had hundreds of devoted, earnest, self-sacrificing co-workers of the gentler sex all over the land, serving with equal zeal in the camps and hospitals of the National and Confederate armies; and no greater heroism was displayed by soldiers in the field than was exhibited by these American women everywhere.

Working in grand harmony with those more extended organizations for the relief of the soldiers, were houses of refreshment and temporary hospital accommodations furnished by the citizens of Philadelphia. ú That city lay in the channel of the great stream of volunteers from New England, New York, and New Jersey, that commenced flowing abundantly early in May.

1861.

These soldiers, crossing New Jersey, and the Delaware River at Camden, were landed at the foot of Washington Avenue, where, wearied and hungry, they often vainly sought for sufficient refreshments in the bakeries and groceries in the neighborhood before entering the cars for Washington City. One morning, the wife of a mechanic living near, commiserating the situation of some soldiers who had just arrived, went out with her coffee-pot and a cup, and distributed its contents among them. That generous hint was the germ of a wonderful system of relief for the passing soldiers, which was immediately developed in that city. Some benevolent women, living in the vicinity of this landing-place of the volunteers, imitated their patriotic sister, and a few of them formed themselves into a Committee¹ for the regular distribution of coffee on the arrival of soldiers. Gentlemen in the neighborhood interested themselves in procuring other supplies, and for a few days these were dispensed under the shade of trees in front of the cooper-shop of William M. Cooper, on Otsego Street,