Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/359

326 delivered public addresses in the principal towns and cities of the Northwest; wrote the circulars and bulletins and monthly papers of the commission; made trips to the front to the sanitary stores, to whose distribution she gave personal attention; brought back large numbers of invalid soldiers who were discharged that they might die at home; assisted to plan, organize, and conduct colossal sanitary establishments; detailed women nurses for the hospitals by order of Secretary Stanton and accompanied them to their posts. In short, the story of Mrs. Livermore's work during the war has never been told and can never be understood save by those who worked with her. The war over, Mrs. Livermore resumed the even tenor of her life, took up again philanthropic and literary work, which she had temporarily relinquished. She afterwards left Chicago and returned to pass long years in her home in Melrose, Massachusetts, happy in the society of her husband, children and grandchildren, until her death in 1905. She was ever ready with advice, pen and influence to lend a helping hand to the weak and struggling; to strike a blow for the right against the wrong; to prophesy a better future in the distance, and to insist on a woman's right to help it along.

The following is Mother Bickerdyke's own concise account of her services to the nation: "I served in our great Civil War from January 9, 1861, to March 20, 1865. I did the work of one and tried to do it well. I was in nineteen hard-fought battles in the departments of the Ohio, Tennessee and Cumberland armies. Fort Donelson, February 15th and 16th, was the first battle to which I was an eye witness; Pittsburgh Landing, April 6th and 7th, the second; luka, September 20th, the third, and Corinth, October 3rd and 4th, the fourth." But certainly the rising generation, to whom the Civil War is already like a half- forgotten story, should know more of the work of this woman for the sake of the patriotism her whole-souled devotion to country and to suffering humanity teaches. After the surrender of Sumter her heart, which had been burdened with a mother's solicitude for the boys she had sent marching away, could no longer endure the dreadful suspense and still more dreadful confirmation of her fears that met her eye as she glanced over the crowded columns of the papers, and she decided to offer her services at the front. Perhaps no single incident in the life of Mrs. Bickerdyke as well as the following portrays her large-heartedness and the motherly care she felt for the wounded soldiers: The victory had been gained at Fort Donelson, and the glad news carried with it great rejoicing. Meanwhile, the soldiers who had won that victory were suffering more than tongue can tell. Their clothes even froze to their bodies, and there were no accommodations for them, so that many hundreds perished wholly without care. The night grew darker and darker, settling down over the deserted field where the dead still lay awaiting burial. The strange weird silence after such a day produced an indescribable feeling of awe. At midnight an officer noticed a light moving up and down among the dead and dispatched a messenger to see what it meant. The man soon returned and told him that it was Mrs. Bickerdyke who, with her lantern, was examining the bodies to make sure that no