gnificent work, which from this center had radiated
throughout the country, found its reward in the proposition by
Congress, on February 1, 1865, for Amendment XIII to the Federal
Constitution:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment
for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall
exist in the United States, or any place subject to their
jurisdiction.

The faithful, untiring, persistent chief of this Women's National Loyal
League was Susan B. Anthony, whose only material reminder of that great
achievement for the freedom of the slave is the arm-chair in which, for
the past thirty-five years, she has sat and conducted her vast
correspondence in the interest of liberty for the half of humanity
still in bondage; yet in the blessed thought that her efforts were an
important factor in securing freedom for millions of her
fellow-creatures, she has been rewarded a thousandfold. But what words
can express her sense of humiliation when, at the close of this long
conflict, the government which she had served so faithfully still held
her unworthy a voice in its councils, while it recognized as the
political superiors of all the noble women of the nation, the negro men
just emerged from slavery and not only totally illiterate but also
densely ignorant of every public question?

[Autograph: Elizabeth Blackwell]

There never can be an adequate portrayal of the services rendered by
the women of this country during the Civil War, but none will deny
that, according to their opportunities, they were as faithful and
self-sacrificing as were the men. A comparison of values is impossible,
but women's labors supplemented those of men, and together they wrought
out the freedom of the slave and the salvation of the Union. Among the
great body of women, a few stand out in immortal light. The plan of the
vital campaign of the Tennessee, one of the great strategic movements
of history, was made by Anna Ella Carroll. The work of Dorothea Dix,
government superintendent of women nurses, with its onerous and
important duties, needs no eulogy. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, fresh from
England and an intimacy with Florence Nightingale, originated the
Sanitary Commission. No name is held in more profound reverence than
that of Clara Barton, for her matchless services upon the battlefield
among the dead and dying. To Josephine S. Griffing belongs the full
credit of founding the Freedmen's Burea