Note 17 — Chapter XVI

The distinctive features in woman's work in that war, were magnitude, system, thorough co-operation with the other sex, distinctness of purpose, business-like thoroughness in details, sturdy persistency to the close. There was no more general rising among the men than among the women, and for every assembly where men met for mutual exertion in the service of the country, there was some corresponding gathering of women to stir each other's hearts and fingers in the same sacred cause.... And of the two, the women were clearer and more united than the men, because their moral feelings and political instincts were not so much affected by selfishness, or business, or party considerations.... It is impossible to over-estimate the amount of consecrated work done by the loyal women of the North for the army. Hundreds of thousands of women probably gave all the leisure they could command, and all the money they could save and spare, to the soldiers for the whole four years and more of the war.... No words are adequate to describe the systematic, persistent faithfulness of the women who organized and led the Branches of the United States Sanitary Commission. Their voluntary labor had all the regularity of paid service, and a heartiness and earnestness which no paid service can ever have.... Men were ashamed to doubt where women trusted, or to murmur where they submitted, or to do little where they did so much.—Woman's Work in the Civil War. L. P. Brackett.