y of
battle were the products of the toil and the gifts of his countrywomen;
and he knew right well, that if he should fall in the fierce conflict,
the gentle ministrations of woman would be called in requisition, to
bind up his wounds, to cool his fevered brow, to minister to his fickle
or failing appetite, to soothe his sorrows, to communicate with his
friends, and if death came to close his eyes, and comfort, so far as
might be those who had loved him. This knowledge strengthened him in the
conflict, and enabled him to strike more boldly and vigorously for
freedom, until the time came when the foe, dispirited and exhausted,
yielded up his last vantage ground, and the war was over.

The Rebel soldiers were not thus sustained by home influences. At first,
indeed, Aid Societies were formed all over the South, and supplies
forwarded to their armies; but in the course of a year, the zeal of the
Southern ladies cooled, and they contented themselves with waving their
handkerchiefs to the soldiers, instead of providing for their wants; and
thenceforward, to the end of the war, though there were no rebels so
bitter and hearty in their expressions of hostility to the North, as the
great mass of Southern women, it was a matter of constant complaint in
the Rebel armies, that their women did nothing for their comfort. The
complaint was doubtless exaggerated, for in their hospitals there were
some women of high station who did minister to the wounded, but after
the first year, the gifts and sacrifices of Southern women to their army
and hospitals, were not the hundredth, hardly the thousandth part of
those of the women of the North to their countrymen.

A still more remarkable result of this wide-spread movement among the
women of the North, was its effect upon the sex themselves. Fifty years
of peace had made us, if not "a nation of shop-keepers," at least a
people given to value too highly, the pomp and show of material wealth,
and our women were as a class, the younger women especially, devoting to
frivolous pursuits, society, gaiety and display, the gifts wherewith God
had endowed them most bountifully. The war, and the benevolence and
patriotism which it evoked, changed all this. The gay and thoughtless
belle, the accomplished and beautiful leader of society, awoke at once
to a new life. The soul of whose existence she had been almost as
unconscious as Fouque's Undine, began to assert its powers, and the gay
and fashionable