What each family first started out to do for their own fathers, brothers, husbands and lovers soon became general, and many prompted by love and patriotism left home and its comforts and went down into the very edge of the great battles to help rescue the wounded. They endured hardships and proved themselves angels of mercy as only women can.
Tens of thousands of maimed veterans will remember with tenderness the noble women who ministered to them on the battlefield, on transports and in hospitals.
I am sure that none of Hancock’s old corps will ever cease to remember the motherly Mrs. Husband, Miss Clara Barton, Mrs. Lee, Mrs. Anna Holstein, Miss Cornelia Hancock, a relative of the general; Miss Willetts, or Mrs. Barlow, wife of Gen. Francis C. Barlow of the 1st division.
The story of the army life of the last named woman is full of interest and romance. She was a true friend of the men in the ranks, and her purse was frequently opened to give money to some wounded soldier who was being sent to some northern hospital without a cent in his pocket.
She followed her husband’s troops through the unequaled and appalling scenes of blood and hardship in Grant’s campaign of ’64, using her strength so that she finally sickened and went home to die in a few months. If ever there was a pure noble woman it was Mrs. Barlow.
I heard an incident of a lady going among the wounded at Spottsylvania. Seeing a pale-faced boy whose helplessness had touched her heart, she stopped by his side and said: “Is there anything that can be done for you, my poor boy?”
“No, thank you,” was the reply, “but there’s a fellow at my left that you might help,” pointing to an ashen-faced man dressed in confederate gray.
“He’s a rebel,” she said, “and there’s thousands of our own boys that need attention.”
“That’s so,” the boy in blue said, “but he is far from home, helpless and among the enemy, and is somebody’s boy and if he is a rebel, he’s an American.”
The reb feigned sleep, but he had heard every word, and when the woman kneeled down by his side and commenced to bathe his face and hands with bay rum the tears began to steal out from under his eyelashes and he finally burst right out crying. This was too much for the tender heart of woman and she cried, too, and rough men about them who had marched up in front of flaming guns the day before wept like children.