Woman's Work in the Civil War A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience: & The Diary of Alice Williamson

An intense and passionate love of country, holding, for the time, all other ties in abeyance, has been a not uncommon trait of character among women of all countries and climes, throughout the ages of human history. In the nomadic races it assumed the form of attachment to the patriarchal rules and chiefs of the tribe; in the more savage of the localized nations, it was reverence for the ruler, coupled with a filial regard for the resting-places and graves of their ancestors.

But in the more highly organized and civilized countries, it was the institutions of the nation, its religion, its sacred traditions, its history, as well as its kings, its military leaders, and its priests, that were the objects of the deep and intense patriotic devotion of its noblest and most gifted women.