Her schools having by that time become well-established, and general interest in the scheme awakened, Mrs. Porter felt herself constrained to once more devote herself exclusively to the soldiers, a large number of whom were languishing in Southern hospitals in an unhealthy climate. Failing in her attempts to get them rapidly removed to the North, through correspondence with the Governors of Ohio and Illinois, she went North for the purpose of obtaining interviews with these gentlemen. At Green Bay, Wisconsin, she joined Mrs. Governor Harvey, who was striving to obtain a State Hospital for Wisconsin. Here she proposed to Senator T. O. Howe to draft a petition to the President, praying for the establishment of such hospitals. Judge Howe was greatly pleased to comply, and accordingly drew up the petition to which Mrs. Howe and others obtained over eight thousand names. Mrs. Harvey desired Mrs. Porter to accompany her to Washington with the petition, but she declined, and Mrs. Harvey went alone, and as the result of her efforts, succeeded in the establishment of the Harvey Hospital at Madison, Wisconsin.
Other parties took up the matter in Illinois, and Mrs. Porter returned to her beloved work at the South, visiting Natchez and Vicksburg. At the latter place she joined Mrs. Harvey and Mrs. Bickerdyke, all three ministering by Sanitary stores and personal aid to the sick and wounded in hospitals and regiments.
While on her way, at Memphis, she learned that the battery, in which were her eldest son and a nephew, had gone with Sherman's army toward Corinth, and started by rail to overtake them. At Corinth, standing in the room of the Sanitary Commission, she saw the battery pass in which were her boys. It was raining, and mud-bespattered and drenched, her son rode by in an ague chill, and could only give her a look of recognition as he passed on to the camp two miles beyond. The next morning she went out to his camp, but missed him, and returning found him at the Sanitary Rooms in another chill. The next day she nursed him through a third chill, and then parting she sent her sick boy on his way toward Knoxville and Chattanooga.
After a short stay at Vicksburg she once more returned to Illinois to plead with Governor Yates to bring home his disabled soldiers, then went back, by way of Louisville and Nashville, to Huntsville, Alabama, where she met and labored indefatigably with Mrs. Lincoln Clark and her daughter, of Chicago, and Mrs. Bickerdyke.
After a few weeks spent there in comforting the sick, pointing the dying to the Saviour, and ministering to surgeons, officers, and soldiers, she followed our conquering arms to Chattanooga, Resaca, Kingston, Allatoona Pass, Marietta and Atlanta.
As a memorial of her earlier movements in this campaign, we extract the following letter from the Report for January and February, 1864, of the Northwestern Sanitary Commission.
"From a mass of deeply interesting correspondence on hand, we select the following letter from Rev. Mrs. Jeremiah Porter, who, with Mrs. Bickerdyke, the widely known and very efficient Hospital Matron, has been laboring in the hospitals of the 15th Army Corps, most of the time since the battle of Chickamauga. Mrs. Bickerdyke was assigned to hospital duty in this corps, at the request of General Sherman, and is still actively engaged there. This letter affords glimpses of the hardships and privations of our brave men, whose sufferings in Southern and Eastern Tennessee during the months of December and January, have been unparalleled."
"In Camp, November 4th Field Hospital,
"Chattanooga, January 24, 1864.
"I reached this place on New Year's Eve, making the trip of the few miles from Bridgeport to Chattanooga, in twenty-four hours. New Year's morning was very cold. I went immediately to the Field Hospital about two miles out of town, where I found Mrs. Bickerdyke hard at work, as usual, endeavoring to comfort the cold and suffering, sick and wounded. The work done on that day told most happily on the comfort of the poor wounded men.
"The wind came sweeping around Lookout Mountain, and uniting with currents from the valleys of Mission Ridge, pressed in upon the hospital tents, overturning some, and making the inmates of all tremble with cold and anxious fear. The cold had been preceded by a great rain, which added to the general discomfort. Mrs. Bickerdyke went from tent to tent in the gale, carrying hot bricks and hot drinks to warm and to cheer the poor fellows. 'She is a power of good,' said one soldier. 'We fared mighty poor till she came here,' said another. 'God bless the Sanitary Commission,' said a third, 'for sending women among us!' The soldiers fully appreciate 'Mother Bickerdyke,' as they call her, and her work.