At the beginning of the war, Miss Emily E. Parsons, daughter of Prof. Theophilus Parsons, of Cambridge, Mass., entered a hospital in Boston as pupil and assistant to educate herself for work among the soldiers. A year and a half later she volunteered and was sent to Fort Schuyler, near New York. Early in 1863 she went to St. Louis, where she served in the hospitals and on the hospital steamers. The Benton Hospital, under her superintendence, became famous for its efficiency and its large percentage of recoveries.
Next after the men who commanded armies, the name of Gen. James B. Ricketts is one of the most familiar in the history of the war. When he was gravely wounded at Bull Run and taken prisoner, his wife managed to make her way to him, sharing his captivity, and by careful nursing saved his life. He was exchanged in December, 1861, and his wife afterward devoted herself to the care of the wounded in the Army of the Potomac.
Mrs. Jane R. Munsell, of Maryland, entered upon the service when she saw the wounded of the battle of Antietam, and devoted both her life and her property to it until she died of the incessant labor.
Besides these women who served in the hospitals, there were others who performed quite as important work in organizing the means of supply—in holding fairs, in obtaining materials and workers and superintending the manufacture of garments and other necessary articles, and forwarding them to the right places at the right time. One of the foremost of these was Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, a native of Boston, who afterward became eminent as a pulpit orator. She organized numerous aid societies in the Northwestern States, made tours of the hospitals in the Mississippi valley, to find out what was needed and how the supplies were being disposed of, and was most active in getting up and carrying through to success the great Northwestern Sanitary Fair in Chicago. There was hardly a city in the North in which one or more similar women did not rise to the occasion and do similar work, though on a smaller scale.
NOTE.—For many of the facts related in this chapter we are indebted to Dr. L. P. Brackett's excellent volume on "Woman's Work in the Civil War."
| INTERIOR OF HOSPITAL CONSTRUCTED BY THE SANITARY COMMISSION. |
INDEX.
Besides the usual abbreviations for titles and given names of persons, and for names of States, N stands for National or Federal, C for Confederate, port. for portrait, inf. for infantry, cav. for cavalry, art'y for artillery.