MARY A. BICKERDYKE 172

4.--MISS MARGARET E. BRECKENRIDGE 187

5.--MRS. NELLIE MARIA TAYLOR 234

6.--MRS. CORDELIA A. P. HARVEY 260

7.--MISS EMILY E. PARSONS 273

8.--MRS. MARY MORRIS HUSBAND 287

9.--MISS MARY J. SAFFORD 357

10.--MRS. R. H. SPENCER 404

11.--MISS HATTIE A. DADA 431

12.--MRS. MARIANNE F. STRANAHAN 651

13.--MRS. MARY A. LIVERMORE 577

14.--MRS. HENRIETTA L. COLT 609

15.--MRS. MARY B. WADE 736

16.--ANNIE ETHERIDGE 747

INTRODUCTION.

A record of the personal services of our American women in the late
Civil War, however painful to the modesty of those whom it brings
conspicuously before the world, is due to the honor of the country, to
the proper understanding of our social life, and to the general
interests of a sex whose rights, duties and capacities are now under
serious discussion. Most of the women commemorated in this work
inevitably lost the benefits of privacy, by the largeness and length of
their public services, and their names and history are to a certain
extent the property of the country. At any rate they must suffer the
penalty which conspicuous merit entails upon its possessors, especially
when won in fields of universal interest.

Notwithstanding the pains taken to collect from all parts of the
country, the names and history of the women who in any way distinguished
themselves in the War, and in spite of the utmost impartiality of
purpose, there is no pretence that all who served the country best, are
named in this record. Doubtless thousands of women, obscure in their
homes, and humble in their fortunes, without official position even in
their local society, and all human trace of whose labors is forever
lost, contributed as generously of their substance, and as freely of
their time and strength, and gave as unreservedly their hearts and their
prayers to the cause, as the most conspicuous on the shining list here
unrolled. For if

"The world knows nothing of its greatest men,"

it is still more true of its noblest women. Unrewarded by praise,
unsullied by self-complacency, there is a character "of no reputation,"
which formed in strictest retirement, and in the patient exercise of
unobserved sacrifices, is dearer and holier in the eye of Heaven, th