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

Equally efficient, and perhaps exerting a wider influence, was the Secretary of the Soldiers' Aid Society at Peoria, Ill., Miss Mary E. Bartlett, a lady of superior culture and refinement, and indefatigable in her exertions for raising supplies for the soldiers, from the beginning to the close of the war. The Western Sanitary Commission had no more active auxiliary out of St. Louis, than the Soldiers' Aid Society of Peoria.

Among the ladies who labored for the relief of the Freedmen, Miss Sophia Knight of South Reading, Mass., deserves a place. After spending five or six months in Benton Barracks Hospital (May to October, 1864) she went to Natchez, Miss., and engaged as teacher of the Freedmen, under the direction of the Western Sanitary Commission. Not satisfied with teaching the colored children, she instructed also the colored soldiers in the fort, and visited the people in their homes and the hospitals for sick and wounded colored soldiers. She remained in Natchez until May, 1865. In the following autumn she.accepted an appointment from the New England Freedman's Aid Society as teacher of the Freedmen in South Carolina, on Edisto Island, where she remained until July, 1866; she then returned to Boston, where she is still engaged in teaching freedmen.

But time and space would both fail us were we to attempt to put on record the tithe of names which memory recalls of those whose labors and sacrifices of health and life for the cause of the nation, have been not less heroic or noble than those of the soldiers whom they have sought to serve. In the book of God's remembrance their names and their deeds of love and mercy are all inscribed, and in the great day of reckoning, when that record shall be proclaimed in the sight and hearing of an assembled universe, it will be their joyful privilege to hear from the lips of the Supreme Judge, the welcome words, “Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye did it unto me.”