From the Richmond Examiner, 7/17/1863

THE HOSPITALS – About fifteen hundred of the wounded in the Gettysburg battles have been received in Richmond at the Seabrook receiving hospital, from whence they are distributed to the others. With the influx of the wounded recurs the occasion for the display of woman’s heroism and ministering attentions to the disabled. The praise of the ladies of Richmond is in all the cities, and their past labors in the cause of humanity is indicative of what they are ready and anxious to do again when the necessity arises. There are hundreds of “Florence Nightengales” in the city willing to devote their hours to the alleviation of the soldier’s misery and suffering; whose kind offices, though unheralded to the world, are treasured up in the hearts of soldiers throughout the Confederacy. Woman, the light of every household, are angels in the hospitals and at the cot of the languishing soldier, far away from wife, mother and sister. Then we invite the ladies to visit the hospitals, daily if they can, carrying with them the delicacies they can afford, and which only a woman’s hand can prepare. Their presence dispels the gloom of those gloomy receptacles of wrecked humanity, cheers the wounded, is sunshine to the sick, and hope to the desponding. It may be said there are sights to be encountered in the hospitals shocking to the finer sensibilities of ladies. True, but the women of Virginia, and Richmond especially, are not weak nerved. Their experience has not been a stern one, to many a bitter one, and mock modesty and delicacy they have long since sacrificed to the necessities of the times, and the emergencies of the hour.

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