Page 389

and laborers; and in utilizing these in a somewhat imperfect fashion she kept her armies and citizens from starvation and maintained the struggle for four years. 28 Richmond was near the seat of war and, after the battles, the wounded were brought to the city in such numbers as to demand unremitting labor to relieve their sufferings. In 1862, there were thirty-five public and private hospitals in Richmond; and churches were likewise converted into temporary abiding-places for those who had been shot in the field. Devotion to the Southern cause beat high in the hearts of their womankind, compelling well-born and fastidious ladies to the care of men wounded in every distressful and revolting manner and tormented by physical suffering, which, from lack of anæsthetics and morphine, the surgeons were often powerless to relieve. It was the case we all know—

	“When pain and anguish wring the brow
	A ministering angel thou!”

But old as it is there is always fresh inspiration in it to those who tell the tale of a cause they have embraced. Confederate writings are full of gratitude to the women; their works in Richmond were matched everywhere throughout the Confederacy. 29 Heavily as the war bore on Northern women the distress of Southern women had a wider range. In the Union there were many families who had no near relative in the war; in the Confederacy it was a rare exception when neither husband, father, son nor brother was in the army: hardly a household was not in mourning. Moreover, the constant suspense affected a larger number than at the North. In Richmond, where intelligence of battles was received with comparative promptness, the frequent sounding of the

Contents -SUBJECT INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD