WOMAN’S PART IN OUR REBELLION IN the contemplation of the horrors of warfare there are three points which stand out prominently: the great sacrifice of the young man who cheerfully lays upon his country’s altar one or two or perhaps more, of the best years of his life; the shock and awful carnage of battle; and the triumphal return of the survivors, flushed with the glories of victory. All these things have been dwelt upon by the bards of ages but few have stopped to inquire whether or not the real burden of war enued here. To make war it is not sufficient that we launch against the enemy a well-regulated and well-equipped laud and naval force; it is not sufficient that we supply all the aggressive details but if we would be accounted a Christian people we must care for our sick and wounded and give comfort to the dying and the bereaved ones. In eighteen sixty-one when the call came for men to go to the front, there was another call audible only to the sympathetic ear of woman entreating her also to come, not indeed to make deadly havoc among the enemy but to do that work which only she could do. The men performed their part nobly whether upon the field of. battle or: But the women in the performance of their duties showed a spirit just as broad and. a courage just as true as that of any martyr to this great cause. How readily and nobly did the women respond, such grand women as Mrs. Fanny Ricketts, Mrs. Mary Lee, Helen Gilson, Margaret Breckenridge, Clara and scores of others whose names deserve to be graven upon the mind of every man, woman and child in our whole country; names that should be with us household words like the names of Grant and Sheridan, Sherman and Kearney. How little do we think of what a sacrifice was “ In treason’s prison hold Their martyred spirits grew To stature like the sainst of old; While, amid agonies untold, They starved for me and you.”
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers