[207] all along her path were strewed the blessings of thousands of grateful hearts. The increasing heats of summer warned her that she could not withstand the influences of another season of hard work in a warm climate, and on the day of the assassination of President Lincoln, she left Washington for Boston. Mrs. Barker had been at home about six weeks when a new call for effort came, 6n the return of the Army of the Potomac encamped around Washington previous to its final march for home. To it was presently added the Veterans of Sherman's grand march, and all were in a state of destitution. The following extract from the Report of the Field Relief Service of the United States Sanitary Commission with the Armies of the Potomac, Georgia, and Tennessee, in the Department of Washington, May and June, 1865, gives a much better idea of the work required than could otherwise be presented.
Armies, the aggregate strength of which must have exceeded two hundred thousand men, were rapidly assembling around this city, previous to the grand review and their disbandment. These men were the travel-worn veterans of Sherman, and the battle-stained heroes of the glorious old Army of the Potomac, men of whom the nation is already proud, and whom history will teach our children to venerate. Alas! that veterans require more than “field rations;” that heroes will wear out or throw away their clothes, or become diseased with scurvy or chronic diarrhea. The Army of the West had marched almost two thousand miles, subsisting from Atlanta to the ocean almost wholly upon the country through which it passed. When it entered the destitute regions of North Carolina and Virginia it became affected with scorbutic diseases. A return to the ordinary marching rations gave the men plenty to eat, but no vegetables. Nor had foraging put them in a condition to bear renewed privation. The Commissary Department issued vegetables in such small quantities that they did not affect the condition of the troops in
