Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/362

Rh at once, "for the boys need so many things." At last war was over. Peace was declared, and the nation awoke to the fact that it had a mighty army on its hands. In a short time that army disappeared in a miracle that has been the wonder of every nation, and Mother Bickerdyke, the most picturesque of all war nurses, retired to the home of her son, Professor J. B. Bickerdyke, in Russell, Kansas, and there in that pleasant retreat came the sunset of her most helpful life.

Amanda M. Colburn was born in West Dover, Vermont, November 12, 1833. Her father was a farmer in moderate circumstances and having only one son a share in the outdoor work was often given to the daughter. This early training proved of inestimable value to her in later years when a large reserve of physical strength was so necessary to enable her to endure with comparative ease long marches where hundreds of men were overcome, as during Peninsula, Gettysburg and other campaigns. At about twenty-three years of age she was first married, and it was as Mrs. Farnham that she was so well known in the Army of the Potomac in the summer of 1861. After the war she was married to M. P. Felch. Left alone with her little boy and in poor health she returned to the old home to find the family in great trouble. Henry, her brother, had enlisted in the Third Vermont Regiment, and her parents were in pitiful anxiety for his welfare. The daughter's decision was instantaneous. She left her child with her parents and followed her brother to the front, and enlisted at St. John's July 5, 1S61. She was enrolled as a member of the regiment and appointed hospital matron. They were mustered in on July nth, left the state on the twenty-third, arrived in Charleston on the twenty-sixth and the next day went six miles up the river to Camp Lyon near Chain Bridge. And here began Mrs. Farnham's duty as soldiers' nurse. During the following winter sickness and death from disease assumed such alarming proportions that a special corps of noted physicians was sent for to aid the medical officers then in the field, and with them Mrs. Farnham worked almost constantly. In December, 1861, she was dropped from the pay roll as matron of the third, but she still continued her work, and until the Wilderness campaign in 1864, occupied a different position from any other army nurse. She did not do regular war duty but went from one regiment to another, wherever she was most needed. Day or night, it made no difference, she always responded to the call and would stay until the crisis was passed or death had relieved the patient of his suffering. The day after the battle of Antietam she arrived on the field where everything was confusion and where no supplies were at hand, and immediately went to work among the wounded. Nothing illustrated better the resourcefulness and clear-headedness of this remarkable woman than the surgical operation which she performed in an emergency here. A soldier had been stricken in the right breast by a partly spent ball with force enough to follow around the body under the skin, stopping Just below the shoulder blade. As quick as thought, taking the only implement she had, a pair of sharp buttonhole scissors, and pinching the ball up with the thumb and finger she made an incision and pressed the ball out, thus putting on record through