military and naval operations, though without these the efforts of all
others would have been in vain. Thousands of men and women who never
"smelled gunpowder," who never heard the booming cannon, or the rattling
musketry, who never witnessed a battle on sea or land, but who kept
their minds and hearts in touch with the holy cause, labored diligently
and faithfully to support and sustain the soldiers and sailors at the
front.

If all those who fought no battles are not honored like the leaders and
commanders in the loyal cause, if they wear no laurels on their brows,
if no monuments are erected to transmit their memory to posterity, if
their names and deeds are not recorded in the Valhalla of the redeemed
nation, they ought not to be disregarded and ignored. It was not on the
field of strife alone in the South that the battle was fought and won.
The army and the navy needed a moral, as well as a material support,
which was cheerfully rendered by the great army of the people who never
buckled on a sword, or shouldered a musket. Their work can not be summed
up in deeds, for there was little or nothing that was brilliant and
dazzling in their career. They need no monuments; but their work was
necessary to the final and glorious result of the most terrible war of
modern times.

No apology is necessary for placing the hero of the story and his
skilful associate in a position at a distance from the actual field of
battle. They were working for the salvation of the Union as effectively
as they could have done in the din of the strife. They were "Fighting
for the Right," as they understood it, though it is not treason to say,
thirty years later, that the people of the South were as sincere as
those of the North; and they could hardly have fought and suffered to
the extent they did if it had been otherwise.