CHAPTER XXIX.

BUILDS A MONUMENT.

WITH the close of the war came honorable discharge from the service to hundreds of thousands of soldiers, officers, surgeons, and nurses. "Home, Sweet Home!" was now the rejoicing air struck up by the regimental bands. To a nature like Miss Dix's, however, this could not be. She had no home. She was a stranger and a pilgrim on the earth. She asked no discharge this side the grave. For her, then, another, but still a martial strain, must be taken up by drum and trumpet, set to the words of her favorite hymn,

"A soldier's life, from battles won

To new commencing strife,
A pilgrim's, restless as the Sun,
Behold the Christian's life."

Almost inevitably had it come about, through her duties as superintendent of women nurses that she should have assumed an immense number of commissions from soldiers dying in hospitals under her charge, commissions which involved large correspondence with their families. Moreover, for hundreds who had been wounded and had ultimately recovered, as well as for large numbers of nurses, who had become invalided in their work and were left poor and unprovided for, had she undertaken the rôle of volunteer pension agent. All this crowded her with work for eighteen months to come. Her authority with the

War Department here rendered her services to great numbers of the humble and uninfluential, invaluable.

No long time went by, however, before her ardent sympathies became enlisted in another work, the work this time of erecting an enduring monument to the memory of the thousands of brave men who lay, sleeping their last sleep, in the newly-established National Cemetery, at Hampton, Virginia, near Fortress Monroe. On this, to her hallowed ground, had she received too many dying messages from the soldiers she so loved, not to make the work seem to her a consecrated duty.

The first idea of such a monument had been conceived by others, who, either wearying in the task of raising the necessary funds for it, or, unequal to doing it, felt that they must transfer the burden to the shoulders of this overtasked woman, who swiftly and gladly took it up. To her it seemed a disloyal outrage that so devout a memorial should not be erected. Few shared so strong a sense of the duty of a nation's enduringly commemorating in bronze and stone its obligation to its martyrs to liberty, as the very woman who always refused point-blank to have her own name connected with any of her great works. It is a seeming inconsistency not uncommon with the order of minds to which she belonged. No doubt John Howard would have subscribed most liberally to a monument for any other philanthropist, while leaving behind, in far-away Cherson, the strict order, "Bury me where I die, and let me be forgotten."

The first allusion to any personal connection of Miss Dix with this projected monument is found in a letter to Mrs. William Rathbone, an extract from

which will attest the depth of the feelings that had moved the writer to undertake the work.

"WASHINGTON, D. C., August 18, 1866.

Lately I have collected in

"MY DEAR FRIEND, a quiet way among my friends $8,000, with which to erect a granite monument in a cemetery at Fortress Monroe where are interred more than 6,000 of our brave, loyal soldiers.

I had especial direction over most of these martyred to a sacred cause, and never forget the countless last messages of hundreds of dying men to fathers, mothers, wives, and children; never forget the calm, manly fortitude which sustained them through the anguish of mortal wounds and the agonies of dissolution. Nothing, in a review of the past four years' war, so astonishes me as the uniformly calm and firm bearing of these soldiers of a good cause, dying without a murmur as they had suffered without a complaint. Thank Heaven the war is over. I would that its memories also could pass away."

Once making herself responsible that the monument should, and so, necessarily, would, be built, Miss Dix set to work with her usual energy. She was by nature a builder, and always happier in dealing with those reliable and tangible servants of God, stone and iron, lime and hydraulic cement, rock foundations, than with the hay, wood, and stubble of politicians. She meant that, as a structure, this should be a monument that would tell its story of self-sacrifice for generations to come. With this end in view, weeks were spent by her in visiting quarry after quarry along the sea-coast of Maine, till she should find a granite of such imperishable quality as fitly to symbolize to her the granite in the character of the men whose name and fame it was to repeat to their children's children. "It promises to stand for centuries unless an earth

quake should shake it down," was her own word of happy congratulation when at last the structure stood completed.

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Contributions now flowed in rapidly in response to the appeals she made, and by December 11, 1867, all was in such state of forwardness that she could write to her friend Mrs. Torrey: "Reaching Washington, I proceeded at once to the Ordnance Bureau to see Major General Dyer, wrote a letter to General Grant, which was signed approved' by General Dyer, asking for 1,000 muskets and bayonets, 15 rifled guns, and a quantity of 24-pound shot, with which to construct my fence. I am rather gratified that every bill has been paid as soon as forwarded." So energetically was the work then pushed that early in May, 1868, the completed monument was handed over to the care of the United States Government, and the following letter received from Secretary Stanton :

"WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON CITY, May 12, 1868. "DEAR MADAM, Inasmuch as by the Act of Congress the National Cemeteries are placed in charge of the Secretary of War, and under his direction, I accept with pleasure the tender of this memorial to our gallant dead, and return the thanks of the Department to the public-spirited citizens who have furnished the means for erecting it; and to yourself for your arduous, patriotic, humane, and benevolent labors in bringing to a successful completion such a noble testimonial to our gallant dead who perished in the war to maintain their government and suppress the rebellion.

"Yours truly,

"EDWIN M. STANTON, Secretary of War."

In another and less ceremonious vein, now humorously writes to Miss Dix his felicitations, her dear old asylum friend, Dr. Isaac Ray.

"I congratulate you [he says] on the completion of your Monument. With so much stone and iron on your shoulders, I do not wonder you got sick. Pray, do take a lighter load the next time you undertake to shoulder other people's burdens."

In the National Cemetery in which this memorial stands, there sleep to-day, under the shade of the magnolias and cedars, more than twelve thousand Union soldiers, to whose ranks each year contributes its fresh quotum from the fast-vanishing inmates of the great Soldiers' Home close at hand. The monument itself is an obelisk of syenite rising to a height of seventy-five feet, and resting on a massive base twentyseven feet square. It is inclosed with a circular fence of musket-barrels, bayonets, and rifled cannon set in heavy blocks of stone. The impression it makes on the mind is simple, dignified, and martial. On it is set the inscription, "In Memory of Union Soldiers who Died to maintain the Laws." The first object visible over the low level of the peninsula to vessels coming in from sea to the Roads, it stands the reverential tribute of a heroic woman to the heroic men she honored with all her soul.