will always remain ignorant. It cannot be told. Neither can the deeds of nobleness performed by. the people who remained at home, and who stood loyally by the government in its every hour of extremity. They measured their ready aid by the nation's need, and, in their consecration to the cause of national unity and freedom, outran all outward demands made upon them. The patriotism of men, the solemn joyfulness with which they gave of their possessions and of themselves, the unfaltering faith which no disaster could shake and no treachery enfeeble, who has told us of these, in detail? Who has fully narrated the consecrated and organized work of women, who strengthened the sinews of the nation with their unflagging enthusiasm, and bridged over the chasm between civil and military life, by infusing homogeneousness of feeling into the army and the people, "keeping the men in the field civilians, and making the people at home, of both sexes, half soldiers"? It can never be understood save by those who lived through that period, when one year counted more in the history of noble development than a half-score of ordinary years of buying and selling, building and furnishing, visiting and feasting. If this book shall in any way help to supply the deficiency I have indicated, my purpose will be accomplished. I am largely indebted to my husband and friends for the materials from which this book has been made. My own tendency is to destroy the records of my past, as soon as an event or experience has ended. I have had little taste for preserving records, journals, memoranda, and letters, and am never hampered with this sort of impedimenta. "Let the dead past bury its dead!" has been one of my cherished mottoes. The duty of the hour, the work of the "living present," has enthralled me, rather than contemplation of } her purpos the past. But, in this instance, what I have been careless of preserving, my kindred and friends have held in trust for me. For more than a dozen years, covering the entire period of the war, I was associated with my husband in the editorship of his paper, published in Chicago. For its columns I wrote sketches of all events, that were interesting or inspiring, in connection with the Sanitary Commission. Its readers were informed of every phase of its relief work, as soon as it was undertaken, and of its special calls for aid. And when I went to the hospitals on errands connected with the sick, wounded and dying, or made trips into the army in charge of sanitary stores, for whose disbursement I was held responsible, I always corresponded for the press. And no issue of my husband's paper appeared, when I was thus engaged, that did not contain long letters from the front, packed with narrations of facts and events, for which I knew its readers were eagerly looking. I sent similar letters to other periodicals in the Northwest, wrote war sketches for magazines struggling for existence, edited the monthly bulletins of the Chicago Branch of the Commission, which were its means of communication with its four thousand Aid Societies, wrote its circular letters appealing for specific and immediate aid, wrote for its contributors a detailed history of the first great Sanitary Fair, which proved the inspiration and model of those which followed it, dictated and penned letters by the thousand from the rooms of the Commission, which were inspired by the emergencies of the time, and which have been largely preserved by the individuals and societies to whom they were addressed, answered every soldier's letter that I received, whether I had ever heard of him or not, wrote letters by the hundred to their friends at home, by the bed side of sick, wounded and dying soldiers, and in behalf of those who had died-in short, notwithstanding the herculean work imposed on me, as on all women at the head of the Branch Commissions, I accomplished more with my pen during the four years of the war than during any similar emph period of time before or since. husband & her worked together Whatever of mine was published, or whatever related to my work during the war, my husband preserved in chronological order, as he did all memoranda or diaries made by me. And whatever letters came to me from the army, or from civilians working in the interest of the country, he saved from destruction. When to these were added my personal letters to friends, which after twenty years were returned, in response to an appeal for them, copies of circulars, bulletins, reports, crude magazine sketches, synopses of addresses, all inspired by the one absorbing topic of the time - the war for the Union, and its brave soldiers, with their anxious and suffering families, I was embarrassed by the enormous bulk of the collection. It was no small task to collate and arrange the appalling mass of documents, and to decide what would be of present interest, and what had been made valueless by the lapse of years. rence. At last the book is completed, and is now presented to the public. In no sense does it purport to be a history. It is a collection of experiences and reminiscences, more interesting to me in the retrospect than at the time of their occurFor then all who loved their native land, and strove to save it from disintegration, carried its woes on their hearts like a personal bereavement, and only lived through the awful anguish by the help of the mighty panacea of absorbing work for others. No one is more keenly alive than I to the defects of this volume. But any farther attempt at improvement would result, I fear, in its entire joliers withdrawal. And as I have something to say in behalf of the common soldiers, most of them veritable Philip Sidneys in their heroism and unselfishness, and of that noble army of women who worked untiringly for the right, while the war lasted, "exerting a greater moral force on the nation than the army that carried loaded muskets," I hasten to save my work from destruction, by placing it beyond my reach, in the hands of the publisher. May it receive a warm welcome from the "Boys in Blue," whose thinning ranks can never know an increase, and from my surviving co-workers in the Sanitary Commission, whose beloved comradeship is one of the priceless possessions of which the covetous years have not wholly bereft me. Mary A. Livermore THE FLAG OF OUR UNION. Flag of the brave! thy folds shall fly, Like shools of flame on midnight's pall— Each gallant arm that strikes below That lovely messenger of death. Flag of the free heart's hope and home By angel hands to valor given! Thy stars have lit the welkin dome, And all thy hues were born in heaven. Forever float that standard sheet! Where breathes the foe that falls before us, J. RODMAN DRAKE 22 |