N.C. women came through for Union POWs

On this day in 1865: Prisoner of war A.O. Abbott, first lieutenant in the 1st N.Y. Dragoons, records the POW train’s stop in Goldsboro, en route to Wilmington:

“There was also a camp of enlisted men about a mile from us, and they were suffering all it was possible for them to suffer and live. Many of them did not live. Some of the ‘ladies,’ God bless them, loyal women of North Carolina, heard of the sufferings of these poor men, and, regardless of the ‘order’ of the commandant of the post, visited them, ministering to their wants as best they could.

“Some of them came eight miles on foot, through the mud and wet. And one old lady and her two daughters came in an ox cart, twenty miles, to do what they could.”