Mrs. Senator Harlan ~ March 1863

HARLAN

Posted By: Pat Ryan White (email)
Date: 9/23/2010 at 18:19:55

MRS. SENATOR HARLAN.

The Washington correspondent of the Journal of Commerce makes the following complimentary mention of the lady of Senator Harlan and her labor on behalf of our sick and wounded soldiers:

The women of the war, not those who picturesquely doff petticoats, and don breeches to follow their lovers -- not the free and easy vivandieres -- but the Florence Nightingales who spend the long days and longer nights in waiting and watching, and in ministering to the creature comforts of our valiant soldiers, who in the sickening atmosphere of hospitals, amid contagion and death, walk with the blessed presence of God protecting them, doing their duty with high and holy hearts -- of such a class and character is Mrs. Senator Harlan -- whose time is not spent in showing off the charms of her admirable and cultivated intellect, but in seeking with purse in hand to relieve the distressed, whose name is legion, be it small pox or typhoid fever, gangrened wounds, or putrid erysipelas; to her, suffering humanity never calls in vain. It is of such as her that Zoroaster says -- “They shall have their names written in pearls upon the robes of angels.” Meek, quiet in her plain black dress, the soldiers call her “aunty,” and her coming lights their faces with the rays of hope, and makes them forget the tedium of a hospital cure. -- Would that the wives of all our Senators followed her example! Many think they would be quite as serviceable to the republic as their husbands.

[“The Home Journal”, March 7, 1863. Mt. Pleasant, Iowa.]