Many women put their own lives on hold during the war to devote themselves to nursing or charitable activities. An agent for the United States Sanitary Commission, Mary Ann Bickerdyke worked within and outside of official channels to procure supplies for wounded soldiers and ensure sanitary conditions in military hospitals. “Mother Bickerdyke” left her own sons in the North to tend to Union boys in the field, which included those in Major General William T. Sherman’s army in Georgia in 1864.