Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/348

Rh tic servants, from time to time taking numbers of them to various northern and western cities, and placing them in homes. The cost of these expeditions she provided almost entirely from her own means, her daughters helping her as far as possible in her noble work.

There were great numbers of other women equally efficient in the freedmen's schools and homes, but their work was mainly under the direction of the American Union Commission, and it is impossible, therefore, to obtain accounts of their labors as individuals. It is all a tale of self-sacrifice and heroism. There were heroic women North and South, and if, as someone has said, "An heroic woman is almost an object of worship," there are many shrines to-day for the devotees of physical and moral heroism to visit in following the history of the good women of the Civil War. The women of Gettysburg won for themselves a high and honorable record for their faithfulness to the flag and their generosity and devotion to the wounded. Chief among these, since she gave her life for the cause, was Mrs. Jennie Wade, who continued her generous work of baking bread for the army until a shot killed her instantly. A southern officer of high rank was killed almost at the same moment near her door, and his troops hastily constructing a rude coffin, were about to place the body of their commander in it for burial when, in the swaying to and fro of the armies, a Union column drove them from the ground. Finding Mrs. Wade dead, they placed her in the coffin intended for the officer. In that coffin she was buried the next day, followed to the grave by hundreds of tearful mourners, who knew her courage and kindness of heart. The loyal women of Richmond were a noble band, and they never faltered in their allegiance to the flag nor in their sympathy and services to the Union prisoners at Libby, Belle Isle and Castle Thunder. With the aid of twenty-one loyal white men