dead at Andersonville, and informed the authorities that, through the death records of Dorence Atwater, the graves of the thirteen thousand buried there could be identified, and was requested by the Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, to take an expedition to Andersonville to mark the graves and inclose a cemetery, and did so, it had something to do with the government.
"Without this there could have been no cemetery of Andersonville, which the government now so worthily owns as a gift from our active women of the Woman's Relief Corps auxiliary to the Grand Army of the Republic.
"And when, in this long search for the missing men of the army, carried on at my own cost until I had invested the greater part of my own moderate means and the brave thirty-seventh Congress stepped into the breach and, unsolicited, voted remuneration and aid in the sum of fifteen thousand dollars, and sent it to me with thanks, it had something to do with the government.
"When a few years later, weary and weak from the war-sacked fields of Europe, I brought the germs of the thrice-rejected Red Cross of Geneva, and with personal solicitations from the 'International Committee' sought its adoption, I had very little to do with the government, for it steadily declined to have anything to do with me, or with the cause I brought to it.
"It had been 'officially declined'—books of the State Department were produced to show this—'we wanted no more war,’ neither 'Entangling Alliances.’
"Then followed five years of toil, cost and explanations with the people as well as the government to show that the Red Cross could mean neither war nor entangling alliances; and when at length one martyred President promised and a successor made his promise good, and Congress again acted and the treaty was signed, proclaimed and took its place among
