[16] Women as loyal as these were to be found in the South, where an expression of love for the Union was held as a death offence. Among the affecting incidents of the war, was that of a woman who, standing upon the Pedee River bank, waved her handkerchief for joy at seeing her country's flag upon a boat passing up the stream, and who for this exhibition of patriotism was shot dead by rebels on the shore. During the bread riots in Mobile a woman was shot. As she was dying she took a small National flag from her bosom, where she had kept it hidden, wrapped it outside a cross, kissed it, and fell forward dead. "Indeed, we may safely say that there is scarcely a loyal woman in the North who did not do something in aid of the cause--who did not contribute time, labor, and money, to the comfort of our soldiers and the success of our arms. The story of the war will never be fully or fairly written if the achievements of woman in it are left untold. They do not figure in the official reports; they are not gazetted for deeds as gallant as ever were done; the names of thousands are unknown beyond the neighborhood where they live, or the hospitals where they loved to labor; yet there is no feature in our war more creditable to us as a nation, none from its positive newness so well worthy of record."--_Women of the War._ [17] The distinctive features in woman's work in that war, were magnitude, system, thorough co-operation with the other sex, distinctness of purpose, business-like thoroughness in details, sturdy persistency to the close. There was no more general rising among the men than among the women, and for every assembly where men met for mutual exertion in the service of the country, there was some corresponding gathering of women to stir each other's hearts and fingers in the same sacred cause.... And of the two, the women were clearer and more united than the men, because their moral feelings and political instincts were not so much affected by selfishness, or business, or party considerations.... It is impossible to over-estimate the amount of consecrated work done by the loyal women of the North for the army. Hundreds of thousands of women probably gave all the leisure they could command, and all the money they could save and spare, to the soldiers for the whole four years and more of the war.... No words are adequate to describe the systematic, persistent faithfulness of the women who organized and led the Branches of the United States Sanitary Commission. Their voluntary labor had all the regularity of paid service, and a heartiness and earnestness which no paid service can ever have.... Men were ashamed to doubt where women trusted, or to murmur where they submitted, or to do little where they did so much.--_Woman's Work in the Civil War_. L. P. BRACKETT. [18] Julia Ward Howe. See Appendix. [19] See Appendix.