What the Hospital Transport service was under the management of the Sanitary Commission, we have elsewhere detailed, and have also given some glimpses of its chaotic confusion, its disorder and wretchedness under the management of government officials, early in the war. Under the efficient direction of Surgeon-General Hammond, and his successor, Surgeon-General Barnes, there was a material improvement; and in the later years of the war the Government Hospital Transports bore some resemblance to a well ordered General Hospital. There was not, indeed, the complete order and system, the thorough ventilation, the well regulated diet, and the careful and systematic treatment which marked the management of the great hospitals, for these were to a considerable extent impossible on shipboard, and especially where the changes of patients were so frequent.

For a period of nearly seventeen months, during the last two years of the war, the United States Steamship Connecticut was employed as a hospital transport, bringing the sick and wounded from City Point to Washington and Baltimore, and later, closing up one after another, the hospitals in Virginia and on the shores of Maryland and Delaware, and transferring their patients to convalescent camps or other hospitals, or some point where they could be put en route for home. On this steamship Miss Hattie R. Sharpless commenced her labors as matron, on the 10th of May, 1864, and continued with only a brief intermission till September 1st, 1865. She was no novice in hospital work when she assumed this position. A native and resident of Bloomsburg, Columbia County, Pa., she had first entered upon her duties as nurse in the Army in July, 1862, when in connection with Miss Rose M. Billing and Miss Belle Robinson, the latter being also a Pennsylvanian, she commenced hospital work at Fredericksburg. Subsequently, with her associate, she was at the Falls Church Hospital and at Antietam, and we believe also at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. She is a lady admirably adapted to the hospital-work; tender, faithful, conscientious, unselfish, never resting while she could minister to the suffering, and happiest when she could do most for those in her care. During her service on the Connecticut, thirty-three thousand sick and wounded men were conveyed on that steamer to hospitals in Washington, Alexandria, Baltimore and other points. Constant and gentle in the discharge of her duties, with a kind and if possible a cheering word for each poor sufferer, and skillful and assiduous in providing for them every needed comfort so far as lay in her power, she proved herself a true Christian heroine in the extent and spirit of her labors, and sent joy to the heart of many who were on the verge of despair.

Her religious influence upon the men was remarkable. Never obtrusive or professional in her treatment of religious subjects, she exhibited rare tact and ability in bringing those who were in the possession of their reason and consciousness to converse on their spiritual condition, and in pointing them affectionately to the atoning Sacrifice for sin.

In these works of mercy and piety she was ably seconded by her cousin, Miss Hattie S. Reifsnyder, of Catawissa, Columbia County, Pa., a lady of very similar spirit and tact, who was with her for about eight months; and subsequently by Mrs. Cynthia Case, of Newark, Ohio, who succeeded Miss Reifsnyder, and entered into her work in the same thorough Christian spirit.

Miss W. F. Harris is a native, and was previous to the war, a resident of Providence, Rhode Island. She was a faithful worker through the whole war, literally wearing herself out in the service. She commenced her work at the Indiana Hospital, in the Patent Office, Washington, in the spring of 1862. After the closing of that hospital, she transferred her service to Ascension Church Hospital, and subsequently early in 1863, to the Carver Hospital, both in Washington, where she labored with great assiduity and faithfulness. Early in May, 1864, she was appointed to service on the Transport Connecticut, where she was indefatigable in her service, and manifested the same tender spirit, and the same skill and tact, as Miss Sharpless. Of less vigorous constitution than her associates, she was frequently a severe sufferer from her over exertions. In the summer of 1864, she was transferred to the Hospital at Harper's Ferry, and at that hospital and at Winchester continued her service faithfully, though amid much pain and weariness, to the close of the war. Though her health was much shattered by her labors she could not rest, and has devoted herself to the instruction and training of the Freedmen from that time to the present. A gentleman who was associated with her in her service in the Carver Hospital and afterward on the Transport Connecticut, says of her: "I know of no more pure-minded, unselfish and earnest laborer among all the Women of the war that came under my notice."