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The preparation of this brief introduction to the part of this volume devoted to the women who dedicated their lives to the arduous duties devolving upon the women at home, in the field, and in the hospitals during the Civil War awakens vivid recollections of experiences that time cannot efface.

Residing between the border states of Kentucky and Missouri and in a community composed largely of southern born people, or those whose ancestors were southerners, and whose sympathies were strongly with their kindred south of Mason and Dixon's line, the inevitable horrors of war were greatly enhanced.

Recollections of pathetic scenes sweep over me with all the vividness of yesterday's events—the parting of sweethearts, husbands and wives, parents and their soldier sons; the speedy news which followed their departure of the misfortunes and calamities of war which had overtaken many of them, and all too often of their death from sickness, wounds or on the field of battle; the agony of waiting for the tardy reports after a battle; the scanning of the long lists which appeared in the papers of the casualties after every sanguinary engagement to see if the name of some loved one was among the killed or wounded; the being summoned to houses of mourning because of death in the families of the absent soldiers or sailors, and their efforts to comfort the members of stricken homes who had heard of the death of a husband, father or son far away in the Southland. The memory of the suffering of those left behind and those who had gone to the front comes back with all of its overwhelming force.

The western troops who were in the expeditions up the