After another half hour, Dorothea Dix was in possession of three things: Mr. Lincoln’s blessing, a written order to see Secretary of War Cameron, whose responsibility it would be to appoint her Female Superintendent of Army Nurses, and the troubling sense that despite her intentions, she had generated more worries for the president than she had allayed. As she said good-bye, she finally settled on the reason for her concern. She pitied him. Not because he had taken on a thankless job. That impetus she was entirely familiar with. No, she pitied him because he seemed to possess an endless
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