all the volunteer nurses.

But nursing in the hospitals, was only a small part of the work to which
patriotism called American women. There was the collection and
forwarding to the field, there to be distributed by the chaplains, or
some specially appointed agent, of those supplies which the families and
friends of the soldiers so earnestly desired to send to them; socks,
shirts, handkerchiefs, havelocks, and delicacies in the way of food. The
various states had their agents, generally ladies, in Washington, who
performed these duties, during the first two years of the war, while as
yet the Sanitary Commission had not fully organized its system of Field
Relief. In the West, every considerable town furnished its quota of
supplies, and, after every battle, voluntary agents undertook their
distribution.

During McClellan's peninsular campaign, a Hospital Transport service was
organized in connection with the Sanitary Commission, which numbered
among its members several gentlemen and ladies of high social position,
whose labors in improvising, often from the scantiest possible supplies,
the means of comfort and healing for the fever-stricken and wounded,
resulted in the preservation of hundreds of valuable lives.

Mrs. John Harris, the devoted and heroic Secretary of the Ladies' Aid
Society of Philadelphia, had already, in the Peninsular campaign,
encountered all the discomforts and annoyances of a life in the camp, to
render what assistance she could to the sick and wounded, while they
were yet in the field or camp hospital. At Cedar Mountain, and in the
subsequent battles of August, in Pope's Campaign, Miss Barton, Mrs. T.
J. Fales, and some others also brought supplies to the field, and
ministered to the wounded, while the shot and shell were crashing around
them, and Antietam had its representatives of the fair sex, angels of
mercy, but for whose tender and judicious ministrations, hundreds and
perhaps thousands would not have seen another morning's light. In the
race for Richmond which followed, Miss Barton's train was hospital and
diet kitchen to the Ninth Corps, and much of the time for the other
Corps also. At Fredericksburg, Mrs. Harris, Mrs. Lee, Mrs. Plummer, Mrs.
Fales, and Miss Barton, and we believe also, Miss Gilson, were all
actively engaged. A part of the same noble company, though not all, were
at Chancellorsville.

At Gettysburg, Mrs. Harris was present and actively engaged, and as soon
as the battle