 | ANNA MARIA ROSS. Women of the war : |  |
ANNA MARIA ROSS.
NO war was ever so sustained by the persistent devotion
and zeal of the home population as was the great
civil contest from which we have just emerged. Aside
from the regular and enormous expenditures of government,
nearly eighty millions of money were raised and expended
by the loyal citizens in providing for the soldier,
and the widows and orphans of those who perished in the
strife. The great cities near the border vied with each
other in the effort to do most for the columns of war-worn
soldiers, who, from time to time, filed through
their streets, or were hurried forward to the field. Philadelphia,
situated as it is in the direct line of travel, — a
point through which nearly every man who at any time
belonged to the army of the Potomac must pass, — was
noted throughout the war for the devotion of its citizens,
and especially of its ladies, to the comfort and welfare of
the soldier.
Several of its wives and mothers gave up the comfort of
happy homes, and, while the war raged, applied themselves,
with a constancy and a spirit of self-sacrifice that were never
surpassed, for the relief of those who were suffering in the
camp or languishing in the hospital. Among the home
laborers, no daughter of that City of Brotherly Love was
in her zeal, than she whose name is written above.
The Cooper's Shop Saloon, inaugurated mainly by her
exertions, and in a large measure sustained by her untiring
labors, became at once her grave and her monument. The
devotedness and the love she there manifested were witnessed
and will be remembered by thousands who will
never know the benefactress to whom they were indebted
till they meet her on the shining shore. And she passed
directly from these toils and anxieties, when the hoarse
voices of the war were loudest and most threatening, to the
crown of the just, to the kingdom of perpetual rest.
The blessed destiny of this saintly woman can be spoken
of with great certainty, for the life of beneficence in the
midst of which her days were cut short did not begin with
the demands of our civil war. By fifty years of active
usefulness, by the example and the blood of noble ancestors,
some of whom had moulded bullets for the army of
Washington, and fought under the eye of that great chieftain,
her character had been confirmed in excellence long
before the sullen roar from Charleston harbor went jarring
across the continent.
In a city famous for its public and its private charities, in
a community originally made up of philanthropists, she had
long been most favorably and widely known for the rare
kindness of her heart, the activity of her sympathies, and
her Christ-like consecration to good works.
When the war assumed its colossal proportions, and
brought its demands to the door of every cottage in the
land, the good ladies of Philadelphia, under the lead and
their power for the soldiers who were temporarily brought
within their reach. By their exertions the Cooper's
Shop Saloon was opened and sustained — a plain but
spacious building, where every soldier that passed through
the city was welcome, where he would find prepared for
him an abundance of wholesome food, and where, if sick
or exhausted, he could remain and receive medical advice,
nursing, and necessary articles of clothing, all the free gift
of the citizens of Philadelphia. As early as November,
1861, there is recorded a vote of thanks from the Cooper
Shop committee to Miss Ross and her lady friends for the
able and effective manner in which they had fitted up the
new hospital attached to the eating saloon, and for their
indefatigable exertions in providing all the necessary
comforts for sick and wounded soldiers.
From that time, for two years, when the curtain of
death fell upon her career of philanthropic devotion, she
shrank from no toil, avoided no exposure, withheld neither
time, nor money, nor life itself, from the cause in which she
had enlisted. Yet the work grew upon her hands, and its
demands increased, rather than diminished, as the war
deepened. As McClellan's campaign progressed to its disastrous
close; as Pope fell back to Washington, and the
Union force again advanced, and met the flushed enemy on
the hills of Antietam; as Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville,
and Gettysburg followed, with their great host
of wounded, — the hospital of the Cooper's Shop Saloon
was kept constantly full of soldiers, who had come, on
their way home, or to general hospitals in the North, and
for the remainder of their journey, sometimes on one of
these well-kept hospital cots to receive final discharge from
all earthly service.
In this hospital, with its various demands, Miss Ross
worked from the hour of its establishment, till those hands
that labored so faithfully, and were willing to do so much
more, were stiffened by the frosts of death.
In the summer and fall of 1863 these labors were uncommonly
severe and earnest. It was as though her
self-forgetting heart had received some premonition of the
change that awaited her; as though some voice in her dreams
had uttered those words of solemn incitement, "What thou
doest do quickly." The sick and wounded in the hospital
demanded her care. Tenderly and wakefully, while others
sleep, she passes from couch to couch, soothing the feverish
fancy, moistening the fever-cracked lips, giving medicine
here and cordial there. At the same time, a great fair is
in progress, and the substantial and permanent interests of
the hospital and the soldier can be secured as effectually by
labor there as among the sufferers. And thus she takes
upon herself double duty, and burns the candle at each end.
She canvasses through the city, pleading the soldiers'
cause from street to street, and from door to door. Then
her exertions take a wider range, and she travels through
many of the cities and towns of Pennsylvania on the same
noble errand. Restless and anxious, regardless of fatigue
and nervous exhaustion, forgetting herself, and imbued
with the one high aim of accomplishing a great and a
noble work for the soldier, she makes deep inroads on the
blood," that the pecuniary returns of the fair may be
abundant.
Private sorrows, at the same time, make their demands
upon the large sympathies of her heart. She
watches the dying hours of an aged and saintly clergyman,
and after his death remains to condole with the
bereaved family. The fair, in the mean time, is held, and
the returns are large, equal to her fondest hopes; and the
"Soldier's Home," the object to which these labors had
been aimed, is accomplished.
But her disposition was that which the old historian
applies to the nation of the Greeks — she thought nothing
accomplished so long as anything remained undone. The
pleasing task of furnishing and fitting up the Home is now
hers, and abundant funds are at her disposal. In making
these purchases, and effecting the necessary arrangements,
she continued her labors one night till past twelve o'clock,
retiring cold and benumbed, and thoroughly exhausted by a
succession of great exertions. She thought rest would restore
her; but in the morning the numbness is colder and
more alarming. Medical skill is summoned, and the practised
eye and hand soon pronounce the case hopeless. . . .
In the month of December, 1863, on the very day that her
pure spirit was released from its toil-worn frame, the
Home, for which she had lived, and for which she had
also died, was dedicated, and entered upon its mission of
blessing, and restoration, and cheer to the soldier.
The memory of one who was so truly noble, alike in her
life and in her death, was justly honored. The funeral
could say too much of such a life and such a work. Resolutions
were passed by the committees of the Saloon and
the Home, that had been the principal theatre of her
sacrifices and benevolence.
The incitement of so rich an example was not lost.
Others arose and labored in the same cause, with a devotion
only less entire than that which had cost her life. The
Saloon and the Home continued to flourish and bless
thousands upon thousands of weary and war-sick men,
for months and years after her hands were mouldering in
the long rest of the grave.
As truly as the hero who fell, pierced with his death shot
just as his regimental flag was carried by the storming
column over the battlements of the routed foe, so she, as
true a heroine as any, fell at her post, in the heat and
depth of the conflict, just before the blessed dawnlight and
the joyful shouts of victory.
| ANNA MARIA ROSS. Women of the war : | |