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.”