Dr. Mary Walker gave her services on the field as surgeon, winning an acknowledged reputation in the Second corps, army of the Potomac, for professional superiority. She applied for a commission as assistant surgeon, but was refused by Surgeon-General Hammond because of her sex. Dr. Walker suffered imprisonment in Castle Thunder, Richmond, having been taken prisoner.
The special correspondent of the N. Y. Tribune, Headquarters Army of the Potomac, Sept. 15, 1863, said: "She applied to both Surgeon-Generals Finlay and Hammond for a commission as assistant surgeon. Her competence was attested and approved, yet as the Army Regulations did not authorize the employment of women as surgeons, her petition was denied. A Senator from New York, with an enlightenment which did him honor, urged her appointment to the Secretary of War, but without success."
[23] Gilbert Hay, shortly before released from Fort La Fayette.
[24] Lee at Arlington.—Visitors to this noted place are so frequent that his appearance attracted no attention. He walked through the dreary hall, and looked in on the wide, vacant rooms, and passing to the front, stood for some time gazing out over the beautiful panorama, with its one great feature, the new dome of the old capitol, surmounted by a bronze statue of Liberty armed, and with her back to him, gazing seaward.
From this he passed to the garden, and looked over the line of the officers' graves that bound its sides, saw the dying flowers and wilted borders and leaf strewn walks, and continuing after a slight pause, he stopped on the edge of the field where the sixteen thousand Union soldiers lie buried in lines, as if they had lain down after a review to be interred in their places. Some negroes were at work here raking up the falling leaves, and one old man stopped suddenly and stared at the visitor as if struck mute with astonishment. He continued to gaze in this way until the stranger, walking slowly, regained his horse and rode away, when he dropped his rake and said to his companions: "Shuah as de Lord, men, dat was ole Massa Lee!"
One hastens to imagine the thoughts and feelings that must have agitated this fallen chief as he stood thus, like Marius amid the ruins of Carthage, on the one spot of all others, to realize the fact of the Lost Cause and its eventful history. About him were the scenes of his youth, the home of his honored manhood, the scenery that gave beauty to the peaceful joys of domestic life. They were nearly all the same, and yet between then and now, came the fierce war, the huge campaigns and hundred battles loud with the roar of mouthing cannons and rattling musketry, and stained into history by the blood of thousands, the smoke of burning houses, the devastation of wide States, and the desolation of the households, and all in vain. He stood there, old before his time, the nationality so fiercely struggled for, unrecognized; the great confederacy a dream, his home a grave-yard, and the capitol he sought to destroy grown to twice its size, with the bronze goddess gazing calmly to the East.—Correspondence of the Cincinnati Commercial, 1866.
[25] Peter Waldo, a merchant of Lyon, of the 12th century, was less the founder of a sect, than the representative and leader of a wide-spread struggle against the corruptions of the clergy. The church would have tolerated him, had he not trenched upon ground dangerous to the hierarchy. But he had the four Gospels translated and (like Wicklyffe) maintained that laymen had the right to read them to the people. He exposed thus the ignorance and the immorality of the clergy, and brought down their wrath upon himself. His opinions were condemned by a General Council, and he retired to the valleys of the Cottian Alps. Long persecutions followed, but his disciples could not be forced to yield their opinions. The protest of the Waldenses related to practical questions.—Encyc.
[26] It was almost as thrilling a sight to me to see these earnest women together at work with their needles, as it was to see the first colored soldier in the Union blue. He was from Camp Reed, near Boston. I met him in the church of Rev. Mr. Grimes, and could not have known before how much such a vision would stir me. It was with great satisfaction that I took him by the hand and rejoiced with him in the progress of the Government toward equality.
[27] Mrs. Briggs ("Olivia") writing to the Sunday Morning Chronicle after Mrs. Griffing had departed this life, said in this connection: "Altogether $166,000 were given by Congress to the helpless who had been so long held in bondage, and for the great good accomplished, the sufferers were more indebted to Mrs. Griffing than to all the women of the country combined, for the larger proportion of the supplies purchased with this money, was distributed by her own hands."
[28] This would at first thought seem to conflict with the knowledge of "the North Star" and "Canada," but, as elsewhere, we must draw the line between the ignorant and the intelligent.