Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Massachusetts in the Army and Navy during the war of 1861-1865, vol. 2

Mrs. C. R. Lowell, who gave two sons to the war, both of whom were slain at the head of their commands, was herself one of the most zealous laborers in behalf of the soldier, in Boston or its vicinity. Like many others east and west, she took a contract from the government for the manufacture of army clothing, that she might provide work for the families of soldiers, preparing the work for them, and paying them more than the government paid her. Her daughter, Miss Anna Lowell, served on one of the hospital transports in the peninsula. On arriving at Harrison's Landing, where she was to take charge of a ward on a hospital steamer that was transporting sick and wounded men to the North, she received the sad news that her beloved brother had fallen at the head of his men in one of the seven days battles that had occurred in her vicinity. Almost crushed with the blow, she buried her sorrow in her own bosom, went on board the steamer when it stopped at the Landing, nursed, fed, bathed and comforted the patients assigned to her care, appearing to them the sunniest and most sympathizing nurse on board.

When the men were removed to the hospitals to which they were assigned she returned to Washington, and from the summer of 1862 till the close of the war was in charge as ‘lady superintendent’ of the Armory Square Hospital, Washington.

Other women of Boston, hardly less active, were Mrs. Amelia L. Holmes, wife of the poet and essayist, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes; Miss Hannah E. Stevenson; Miss Isa E. Loring; Mrs. George H. Shaw; Mrs. Martin Brimmer; Mrs. George Ticknor and Mrs. William B. Rogers; Miss Mary Felton of Cambridge, Mass., who served in the same hospital for a long time with her friend, Miss Lowell. Mrs. Ticknor was president of the Boston sewing circle, which raised nearly $22,000 in money for material for hospital clothing, and manufactured from it over 21,000 garments, mostly flannel, for the sick and wounded. Mrs. Ticknor was also president of an organization formed for the relief of the Second Regiment of Massachusetts Infantry, and which afterward included other soldiers. This society raised nearly $4,000 in money, and sent to the men 4,969 articles of clothing, one-third of which were flannel.

Miss Dorothea L. Dix was a native of Worcester, Mass. In early life she became very much interested in prison reform, at a time when the inmates of penal institutions were shockingly neglected, and were almost wholly at the mercy of unprincipled and unfeeling keepers. She was aided and encouraged in her work by her friend and pastor, Rev. Dr. Channing, of whose children she had been governess. Energetic in character, humane and kindly in spirit, the work grew on her hands, until not only prisoners, but paupers and the insane, were included in her voluntary mission of philanthropy, which she early accepted as the work of her life. In pursuance of it she visited every State in the Union east of the Rocky Mountains, examining prisons, poor-houses and insane asylums, and endeavoring to persuade legislatures and influential people to take measures for the relief of these wretched classes. Her exertions resulted in the establishment of State insane asylums in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana, Illinois, Louisiana and North Carolina.

Only once during her long life did she turn aside from her chosen work. The war came, and men and women were kindled to a white heat of patriotic devotion. Among the very first to act was Miss Dix, who, self-reliant, and conscious of her