“Up and down through the wards where the feverStalks, noisome, and gaunt, and impure;You must go with your steadfast endeavorTo comfort, to counsel, to cure.I grant you the task is superhuman,But strength will be given to youTo do for those loved ones what womanAlone in her pity can do.”
“Up and down through the wards where the feverStalks, noisome, and gaunt, and impure;You must go with your steadfast endeavorTo comfort, to counsel, to cure.I grant you the task is superhuman,But strength will be given to youTo do for those loved ones what womanAlone in her pity can do.”
“Up and down through the wards where the fever
Stalks, noisome, and gaunt, and impure;
You must go with your steadfast endeavor
To comfort, to counsel, to cure.
I grant you the task is superhuman,
But strength will be given to you
To do for those loved ones what woman
Alone in her pity can do.”
Our women gave their carpets to make blankets, their dresses to be made into shirts for the soldiers, and their linen to furnish lint for their wounds, and then, clad in homespun, they gave themselves. Nearly every town and village in the South had its Soldiers’ Aid Society and its hospital. Thousands and thousands of the poor63fellows were taken to private houses, even away out in the country, and tenderly cared for. There was scarcely a woman near a battlefield or a railroad who did not nurse a soldier. Nearly every woman in Richmond served regularly on hospital committees. One of these, a Mrs. Roland, was blind, and her sweet guitar and sweeter song cheered many a poor hero. One of the songs of these days was “Let me kiss him for his Mother.” Here’s a story to show how woman’s petting, which always spoils a boy and sometimes a husband, occasionally found a hard case in a Confederate soldier. Among the sick in Richmond was a brave young fellow, who was a great favorite and the only son of a widowed mother, who was far away beyond the Mississippi. One morning the report got out that he was dying in the hospital, and one of the prettiest and sweetest young ladies in the city was so touched by the sad story that she determined to go and kiss him for his mother. She hastened to the ward where the poor youth was lying high up on one of the upper tiers of bunks and quickly told her mission to the nurses. “I don’t know him, but oh, its so sad, and I have come to ‘kiss him for his mother’ away out in Texas.” Now he wasn’t dying at all, but was much better, and as he peeped at the sweet face, the rascal, raising his head over the edge of the bunk, said, “Never mind the old lady, miss, just go it on your own hook.” Now that’s just the thanks these ununiformed sisters of mercy sometimes got for their pains.
Put on this monument a pair of crutches. You never see the bright star of womanhood until it shines in the darkness of man’s misfortune. It is the furnace of man’s suffering that brings out the pure gold of her love. Here’s a specimen. On a cold winter day, when Lee’s army was marching through one of the lower sections of Virginia, some of the veterans were completely barefooted, and the Sixth Georgia Regiment was passing. A plain country woman was standing in the group by the road side. “Lord, a mercy,” said she, “there’s a poor soldier ain’t go no shoes,” and off came hers in a jiffy and she ordered her negro woman standing by to give hers64up, too. The good woman wore number threes, and the soldier who got them was Jake Quarles, of Company B, Dade County, Georgia, who wore number twelves.
Soon after the war I once expressed my sympathy to a young lady friend who was about to marry a young one-armed soldier. “I want no sympathy. I think it a great privilege and honor to be the wife of a man who lost his arm fighting for my country,” was her prompt reply. That’s your Southern girl.
When John Redding, of Randolph County, Ga., was brought home wounded from Chickamauga, it was found necessary to amputate his leg. On the day fixed for the dangerous operation, his many friends were gathered at his father’s country home. Among them was Miss Carrie McNeil, to whom he was engaged. After he had passed safely through the ordeal she, of course, was allowed to be the first to go in to see him. They were left alone for a while. The next to go in was an aunt of Miss Carrie’s, and as she shook hands with poor John and was about to pass on, he said, “Ain’t you going to kiss me, too?” Ah, what a tale that question told. The gallant soldier had offered to release his betrothed from her engagement, but she said, “No, no, John, I can’t give you up, and I love you better than ever,” and a kiss had sealed their holy love.
When Tom Phipps, of Randolph County, Ga., came home on crutches he offered to release Miss Maggie Pharham from her engagement. “No, Tom,” she said. “We can make a living.” There are hundreds of these noble, God-given Carrie McNeils and Maggie Pharhams all over our war-wrecked South.
Let the next emblem be the oak riven by the lightning, and the tender ivy entwining itself around it. Let it tell of the sufferings of the refugee father and the wreck of the old man in the track of such vandals as Sherman, Hunter, Sheridan, Milroy and Kilpatrick. Let it tell of the horrors of the years of so-called peace that followed the war. Northern soldiers killed our young men in war; politicians killed our old men in peace. Sherman burned houses65from Atlanta to Bentonville. Thad Stevens in Congress blighted every acre of ground from Baltimore to San Antonio. The war of shot and shell lasted four years; the war of blind, revengeful reconstruction legislation lasted twenty years. War marshalled our enemies on the battlefield; reconstruction made enemies of the men who had held our plow handles and stood around our tables. War put the South under the rule of soldiers; reconstruction put us under the heel of the rapacious carpet-bagger and negro plunderers. War crushed some of our people. Vindictive legislation crushed all our people. War made the South an Aceldama; reconstruction made it a Gehenna. Grant held back the red right hands of Stanton and Holt from the throats of Lee and his paroled soldiers: alas, Lincoln was dead, and his patriotic arm was not there to hold back Thad Stevens and his revolutionary congress from our prostrate citizens.
Amid these horrors our young men could hope, but to our old men was nothing left but despair. Robbed of their property after peace was declared, without a dollar of compensation, their lands made valueless or confiscated; they themselves disfranchised and their slaves made their political masters, too old to change and recuperate, too old to hope even, but too manly to whine, they stood as desolate and uncomplaining as that old oak.
Do you see that tender vine binding up the shattered tree and hiding its wounds? That is Southern woman clinging closer and more tenderly to father and husband when the storms beat upon him, comforting as only such Christian women can comfort; smiling only as such heroines can smile; with “toil-beat nerves, and care-worn eye,” helping only as such women can help. In the schoolroom and behind the counter, over the sewing machine and the cooking stove, in garden and field, everywhere showing the gems of Southern character washed up from its depths by the ocean of Southern woe.
Let the last symbol on the monument be the clasped66right hands of the Union. These Southern women of 1861 were the daughters of the great American Union. Their fathers under the leadership of Jefferson, Madison and Washington, had proposed the Union, devised the Union, loved the Union, and, under Clay and Calhoun and Benton, had preserved the Union. As an inducement for union between the original States, without which the Northern States would not come into it, Virginia, the great mother of the Union, gave up all her splendid territory north of the Ohio, embracing what is now Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and agreed that they should be made States without slavery. She afterwards gave Kentucky. North Carolina gave Tennessee, and Georgia gave Alabama and Mississippi. Southern influence and Southern statesmanship made the Union strong at home and respected abroad by the war of 1812, which was gallantly fought by the South and bitterly opposed by New England—opposed to the very verge of secession from the Union in the Hartford convention. The Southern States had shown their devotion to the Union by yielding to the compromises on the tariff, the bounty, and the territorial questions. The South demanded no tariff tribute, no bounties and no internal improvements as the price of her devotion to the Union. She loved the Union for the Union’s sake. All that she demanded was that in the territory, while it was territory, belonging to the government, her sons, with their families, white and black, should have an equal share.
John C. Calhoun was not a disunionist. The nullification ordinance of South Carolina, “the Hotspur of the Union,” was not secession. It was the protest of a sovereign State against unconstitutional Federal taxation levied through the tariff on the consumer, not for government revenue, but for the benefit of the manufacturer. The nation heard the manly voice of the little State, and Calhoun and Clay stood side by side in the great compromise that followed. Calhoun and his people loved the Union, but they wanted a union that was a union. True religion is that which is laid down in the67Bible, not theory nor sentiment. True political union is the union formed by the Sovereign States and expressed in the Constitution. Constitutional union was the only true union. Everything else was a mere sentiment or a sham. History will yet hold that the secession of the Southern States in 1861 was itself a union movement. The Northern States had destroyed the old union. By their numerous nullification acts in State assemblies they had repudiated the legislative branch of the government; by their defiance of the Supreme Court they had virtually abolished the judiciary, the second branch; and in 1860, by the sectional platform of the dominant party and the election of a sectional president, they had denationalized the executive branch of the government. Where was the union? Gone, utterly gone. South Carolina only cut herself off from the union-breakers and attached herself to such States as clung to the Constitution and Union of the fathers. Secession in 1861 meant the preservation of the union of 1787. Coercion in 1861 was rebellion against the Federal compact and death of the old Union. The Star-Spangled Banner became the labarum of invasion, and the Southern Cross the standard of all the Union that was left.
The Union that our fathers and mothers loved lay buried for twenty-five years. From March, 1861, to March, 1885, any true Southern man in the national capital found himself a stranger in a strange land, and was looked upon as a political Pariah by those in power,—an intruder even in the house of his fathers. Every government office all over the land in the hands of the Northern States. What a travesty of union! The North a dictator, the South a satrapy. The Northern man, lord; the Southern man, a vassal.
But, thank God, the resurrection came; the door-stone of the tomb was rolled away by the national election of Cleveland in 1884. “The Southern States are in the Union, and they shall have their equal rights,” was the slogan of the triumphant party. Then go to the capital and you find the first national administration since Buchanan—Bayard, the champion of the South, in the68first place in the Cabinet, and by his side the Confederate leaders, Lamar and Garland. About the first act of the administration was to appoint General Lawton, the quartermaster-general of the Confederate army, to one of the most conspicuous embassies in Europe, Curry to Spain and other Confederates wherever there was a place for them. The sons of our Southern mothers were no longer under the ban. Peace, real peace, had come. The Union, real union, was herself again.
Again in 1892 the electoral votes of the Northern States alone were sufficient to make Grover Cleveland, the great pacificator, twice the choice of the solid South, again President of the United States. Once more there is a national Cabinet, the South having half of it, with a Confederate colonel in command of the navy, another minister to France, another to Mexico, another to Guatemala—Southern men at Madrid and Constantinople; and when this country needs a man to represent her in the crisis in Cuba to a Virginia Lee is given the conspicuous honor.
The last unjust election law is repealed; the last taint taken from the fair name of Confederate officers. The North has extended the right hand of union. The South has grasped it; and withered be the arm that would tear those hands asunder.
High above these hands, artist, place the crowning statue of the Southern woman. Let it be the queenly form of the proudest of the proud mothers of Southern chivalry. Let her sweet, calm image face the north,—no frown on her brow,—no scorn on her lip. Let her happy, hopeful smile tell the world that Southern womanhood felt most sadly the Union broken, and hails most joyfully the Union restored.
My countrymen, we have a country! In the name of God, our mothers, as they look down from heaven, beseech you to preserve it.
The art of sculpture was finished in ancient Greece, and69the statue of Venus de Medici will never be surpassed. In it the artist has put in marble the perfect form, face, majesty and grace of woman. The ancients in their sensual materialism adored beauty in form and feature and many moderns worship at the same shrine. The German poet Heine, when an invalid in Paris, had himself carried every day in a roller chair to the Tuilleries, to gaze upon the marble beauty of Venus de Milo. If in our age, the artist ever attempts to sculpture the true woman, the woman with soul, the Christian Psyche, with heart as perfect as her face, with character more charming than her form, the modern Praxitiles will take for his model the Southern woman, from among your mothers and grandmothers. They are your models in character now. To you much is given; of you will much be required. Study your mothers and may Heaven help you to learn the God-given lesson.
Young men, the model man, Jesus Christ, the divine Saviour of our world, asked for no carved stone, no statue to his memory. He wanted no marble cathedral. He demanded living monuments,—men and women to set forth in holy lives the lessons of his example. From childhood He honored his mother, nor did He forget her on the cross.
With something of his exalted spirit your mothers, who have gone before you, demand of you not a chiseled monument, but they do beseech you to honor them in manly life. Hold sacred the very blood they gave you. Lay hold of their lofty principles; drink in their noble spirit. Set forth their glorious patriotism, and you will be a crown to them, a blessing to your country, and an honor to your God.
70CHAPTER IITHEIR WORK
INTRODUCTION TO WOMAN’S WORK
[By J. L. Underwood.]
Throughout the South the women went to work from the first drum-beat. A great deal of it was done privately, the left hand itself hardly knowing what the modest, humble right hand was doing. In nearly every neighborhood soldiers’ aid societies, or relief associations, were organized and did systematic and efficient work throughout the four years. Supplies of every kind were constantly gathered and forwarded where most needed. The old men and women did an immense amount of work.
In all the railroad towns, hospitals and wayside houses were established for the benefit of the travelling soldier. These were maintained and managed almost exclusively by the women. They prepared as best they could such articles as pickles and preserves and other delicacies for the use of the hospitals. They sent testaments and other good books and good preachers to the army, and being nearly all women of practical piety, they helped greatly to infuse that spirit of patriotism which gave such strength to the Confederate army. The world has never known an army in which there were so many earnest, practical Christians like Jackson, Cobb, Lee, Polk, Price, and Gordon among the commanding officers, where there were so many ministers of the gospel of good standing who were fighting soldiers, and so many men in ranks who were God-fearing men. The world has never known an army where so many officers and soldiers came from homes where there were pious wives, mothers, and sisters. The inspiration of the knightly hearts of the Confederacy was home and the inspiration of a pious home was godly71woman. The world will never know how effective were the prayers and letters of the women at home in those great religious revivals with which the Confederate army was so often and so richly blessed. Thousands of men who entered the army wicked men went home or to their graves genuine Christians. The war ended; but the good woman’s work never ends. Our Confederate women began immediately to look after the soldiers’ orphans and the soldiers’ graves. In all directions the Confederate monuments have been erected mainly by their efforts. Soldiers’ homes have been established and in some few of the States homes provided for the Confederate widows. It is safe to say that women collected two-thirds of the money raised for all these objects. It is their dead they are honoring. And they will continue to break the alabaster box. Let them alone.
THE SOUTHERN WOMAN’S SONG
[Confederate Scrap Book.]
Stitch, stitch, stitch.Little needle, swiftly fly,Brightly glitter as you go;Every time that you pass byWarms my heart with pity’s glow.Dreams of comfort that will cheer,Dreams of courage you will bring,Through winter’s cold, the volunteer.Smile on me like flowers in spring.Stitch, stitch, stitch.Swiftly, little needle, fly,Through this flannel, soft and warm;Though with cold the soldiers sigh,This will sure keep out the storm.Set the buttons close and tight,Out to shut the winter’s damp;There’ll be none to fix them rightIn the soldier’s tented camp.Stitch, stitch, stitch.Ah! needle, do not linger;Close the thread, make fine the knot;There’ll be no dainty fingerTo arrange a seam forgot.Though small and tiny you may be,Do all that you are able.A mouse a lion once set free,As says the pretty fable.Stitch, stitch, stitch.Swiftly, little needle, glide.Thine’s a pleasant labor;To clothe the soldier be thy pride,While he wields the sabre.72Ours are tireless hearts and hands;To Southern wives and mothers,All who join our warlike bandsAre our friends and brothers.Stitch, stitch, stitch.Little needle, swiftly fly;From morning until eve,As the moments pass thee by,These substantial comforts weave.Busy thoughts are at our hearts—Thoughts of hopeful cheer,As we toil, till day departs,For the noble volunteer.Quick, quick, quick.Swiftly, little needle, go;For our homes’ most pleasant firesLet a loving greeting flowTo our brothers and our sires;We have tears for those who fall,Smiles for those who laugh at fears;Hope and sympathy for all—Every noble volunteer.
Stitch, stitch, stitch.Little needle, swiftly fly,Brightly glitter as you go;Every time that you pass byWarms my heart with pity’s glow.Dreams of comfort that will cheer,Dreams of courage you will bring,Through winter’s cold, the volunteer.Smile on me like flowers in spring.
Stitch, stitch, stitch.
Little needle, swiftly fly,
Brightly glitter as you go;
Every time that you pass by
Warms my heart with pity’s glow.
Dreams of comfort that will cheer,
Dreams of courage you will bring,
Through winter’s cold, the volunteer.
Smile on me like flowers in spring.
Stitch, stitch, stitch.Swiftly, little needle, fly,Through this flannel, soft and warm;Though with cold the soldiers sigh,This will sure keep out the storm.Set the buttons close and tight,Out to shut the winter’s damp;There’ll be none to fix them rightIn the soldier’s tented camp.
Stitch, stitch, stitch.
Swiftly, little needle, fly,
Through this flannel, soft and warm;
Though with cold the soldiers sigh,
This will sure keep out the storm.
Set the buttons close and tight,
Out to shut the winter’s damp;
There’ll be none to fix them right
In the soldier’s tented camp.
Stitch, stitch, stitch.Ah! needle, do not linger;Close the thread, make fine the knot;There’ll be no dainty fingerTo arrange a seam forgot.Though small and tiny you may be,Do all that you are able.A mouse a lion once set free,As says the pretty fable.
Stitch, stitch, stitch.
Ah! needle, do not linger;
Close the thread, make fine the knot;
There’ll be no dainty finger
To arrange a seam forgot.
Though small and tiny you may be,
Do all that you are able.
A mouse a lion once set free,
As says the pretty fable.
Stitch, stitch, stitch.Swiftly, little needle, glide.Thine’s a pleasant labor;To clothe the soldier be thy pride,While he wields the sabre.72Ours are tireless hearts and hands;To Southern wives and mothers,All who join our warlike bandsAre our friends and brothers.
Stitch, stitch, stitch.
Swiftly, little needle, glide.
Thine’s a pleasant labor;
To clothe the soldier be thy pride,
While he wields the sabre.
72
Ours are tireless hearts and hands;
To Southern wives and mothers,
All who join our warlike bands
Are our friends and brothers.
Stitch, stitch, stitch.Little needle, swiftly fly;From morning until eve,As the moments pass thee by,These substantial comforts weave.Busy thoughts are at our hearts—Thoughts of hopeful cheer,As we toil, till day departs,For the noble volunteer.
Stitch, stitch, stitch.
Little needle, swiftly fly;
From morning until eve,
As the moments pass thee by,
These substantial comforts weave.
Busy thoughts are at our hearts—
Thoughts of hopeful cheer,
As we toil, till day departs,
For the noble volunteer.
Quick, quick, quick.Swiftly, little needle, go;For our homes’ most pleasant firesLet a loving greeting flowTo our brothers and our sires;We have tears for those who fall,Smiles for those who laugh at fears;Hope and sympathy for all—Every noble volunteer.
Quick, quick, quick.
Swiftly, little needle, go;
For our homes’ most pleasant fires
Let a loving greeting flow
To our brothers and our sires;
We have tears for those who fall,
Smiles for those who laugh at fears;
Hope and sympathy for all—
Every noble volunteer.
THE LADIES OF RICHMOND
The editor of the LynchburgRepublican, writing to his paper in June, 1862, says:
The ladies of Richmond, as of Lynchburg, and indeed of the whole country, are making for themselves a fame which will live in all future history, and brilliantly illuminate the brightest pages of the Republic’s history.
Discarding all false ceremony and giving full vent to those feelings and sentiments of devotion which make her the noblest part of God’s creation and the fondest object of man’s existence, the ladies of this city from all ranks have gone into the hospitals and are hourly engaged in ministering to the wants and relieving the sufferings of their countrymen.
Mothers and sisters could not be more unremitting in their attention to their own blood than these women are to those whom they have never seen before, and may never see again. They feed them, nurse them, and by their presence and sympathy cheer and encourage them. “Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless millions mourn,” but woman’s sympathy would heal every wound and make glad every heart.
73THE HOSPITAL AFTER SEVEN PINES
[Richmond During the War, pages 135-136.]
On this evening, as a kind woman bent over the stalwart figure of a noble Georgian, and washed from his hair and beard the stiffened mud of the Chickahominy, where he fell from a wound through the upper portion of the right lung, and then gently bathed the bleeding gash left by the Minie ball, as he groaned and feebly opened his eyes, he grasped her hand, and in broken whispers, faint from suffering, gasping for breath, “I could-bear-all-this-for-myself-alone-but my-wife and my-six little-ones,” (and then the large tears rolled down his weather-beaten cheeks,) and overcome he could only add, “Oh, God! oh, God!-how will-they endure it?” She bent her head and wept in sympathy. The tall man’s frame was shaking with agony. She placed to his fevered lips a cooling draught, and whispered: “Think of yourself just now; God may raise you up to them, and if not, He will provide for and comfort them.” He feebly grasped her hand once more, and a look of gratitude stole over his manly face, and he whispered, “God bless you! God bless you! God bless you! kind stranger!”
BURIAL OF LATANE
[“The next squadron moved to the front under the lamented Captain Latane, making a most brilliant and successful charge with drawn sabres upon the enemy’s picked ground, and after a hotly-contested, hand-to-hand conflict put him to flight, but not until the gallant captain had sealed his devotion to his native soil with his blood.”—Official Report of the Pamunkey Expedition, Gen. J. E. B. Stuart, C. S. A., 1862.]
[“The next squadron moved to the front under the lamented Captain Latane, making a most brilliant and successful charge with drawn sabres upon the enemy’s picked ground, and after a hotly-contested, hand-to-hand conflict put him to flight, but not until the gallant captain had sealed his devotion to his native soil with his blood.”—Official Report of the Pamunkey Expedition, Gen. J. E. B. Stuart, C. S. A., 1862.]
[From a private letter.]
Lieutenant Latane carried his brother’s dead body to Mrs. Brockenbrough’s plantation an hour or two after his death. On this sad and lonely errand he met a party of Yankees, who followed him to Mrs. B.’s gate, and stopping there, told him that as soon as he had placed his brother’s body in friendly hands he must surrender himself prisoner. * * * Mrs. B. sent for an Episcopal clergyman to perform the funeral ceremonies, but the74enemy would not permit him to pass. Then, with a few other ladies, a fair-haired little girl, her apron filled with white flowers, and a few faithful slaves, who stood reverently near, a pious Virginia matron read the solemn and beautiful burial service over the cold, still form of one of the noblest gentlemen and most intrepid officers in the Confederate army. She watched the sods heaped upon the coffin-lid, then sinking on her knees, in sight and hearing of the foe, she committed his soul’s welfare and the stricken hearts he had left behind him to the mercy of the “All-Father.”
“And when Virginia, leaning on her spear,Victrix et vidua, the conflict done,Shall raise her mailed hand to wipe the tearThat starts as she recalls each martyred son,No prouder memory her breast shall sway,Than thine, our early lost, lamented Latane!”
“And when Virginia, leaning on her spear,Victrix et vidua, the conflict done,Shall raise her mailed hand to wipe the tearThat starts as she recalls each martyred son,No prouder memory her breast shall sway,Than thine, our early lost, lamented Latane!”
“And when Virginia, leaning on her spear,
Victrix et vidua, the conflict done,
Shall raise her mailed hand to wipe the tear
That starts as she recalls each martyred son,
No prouder memory her breast shall sway,
Than thine, our early lost, lamented Latane!”
MAKING CLOTHES FOR THE SOLDIERS
[In Our Women in the War, pages 453-454.]
Money was almost as unavailable as material with us for a time. “Uncle Sam’s” treasury was not accessible to “rebels.” Our government was young, and Confederate bonds and money yet in their infancy. We could do nothing more than wait developments, and try to meet emergencies as they trooped up before us. In the meantime, children grew apace. Our village stores were emptied and deserted. Our armies in the field became grand realities. All resources were cut off. Our government could poorly provide food and clothing and ammunition for its armies. Then it was our mothers’ wit was tested and did in no sort disappoint our expectations. Spinning-wheels, looms and dye-pots were soon brought into requisition. Wool of home production was especially converted, by loving hands, into warm flannels and heavy garments, with soft scarfs and snugly-fitted leggings, to shield our dear boys from Virginia’s wintry blasts and fast-falling snows. Later on, when the wants and privations of the army grew more pressing, societies75were formed to provide supplies for the general demand. Southern homes withheld nothing that could add to the soldiers’ comfort. Every available fragment of material was converted into some kind of garment. After the stores of blankets in each home had been given, carpets were utilized in their stead and portioned out to the suffering soldiers. Wool mattresses were ripped open, recarded, and woven into coverings and clothing. Bits of new woolen fabrics, left from former garments, were ravelled, carded, mixed with cotton and spun and knitted into socks. Old and worn garments were carried through the same process. Even rabbits’ fur was mixed with cotton and silk, and appeared again in the form of neat and comfortable gloves. Begging committees went forth (and be it truthfully said, the writer never knew of a single one being turned away empty) to gather up the offerings from mansion and hamlet, which were soon cut up, packed, and forwarded with all possible speed to the soldiers.
And who can tell what pleasure we took in filling boxes with substantials and such dainties as we could secure for the hospitals. Old men and little boys were occupied in winding thread and holding brooches, and even knitting on the socks when the mystery of “turning the heel” had been passed. The little spinning-wheel, turned by a treadle, became a fascination to the girls, and with its busy hum was mingled oft times the merry strain of patriotic songs.
“Our wagon’s plenty big enough, the running gear is good,’Tis stiffened with cotton round the sides and made of Southern wood;Carolina is the driver, with Georgia by her side;Virginia’ll hold the flag up and we’ll take a ride.”
“Our wagon’s plenty big enough, the running gear is good,’Tis stiffened with cotton round the sides and made of Southern wood;Carolina is the driver, with Georgia by her side;Virginia’ll hold the flag up and we’ll take a ride.”
“Our wagon’s plenty big enough, the running gear is good,
’Tis stiffened with cotton round the sides and made of Southern wood;
Carolina is the driver, with Georgia by her side;
Virginia’ll hold the flag up and we’ll take a ride.”
THE INGENUITY OF SOUTHERN WOMEN
[Our Women in the War, pages 454-455.]
During all that time, when every woman vied with the other in working for the soldiers, there were needs at home too urgent to be disregarded. These, too, had to be76met, and how was not long the question. For those very women who had been reared in ease and affluence soon learned practically that “necessity is the mother of invention,” and the story of their ingenuity, if all told, might surprise their Northern sisters, who always regarded them as inefficient, pleasure-loving members of society. Whatever may have been the fault of their institutions and rearing, the war certainly brought out the true woman, and no woman of any age or nation ever entered, heart and soul, more enthusiastically into their country’s contest than those who now mourn the “Lost Cause.” While our armies were victorious in the field hope lured us on. We bore our share of privations cheerfully and gladly.
We replaced our worn dresses with homespuns, planning and devising checks and plaids, and intermingling colors with the skill of professional “designers.” The samples we interchanged were homespuns of our last weaving, not A. T. Stuart’s or John Wanamaker’s sample envelopes, with their elaborate display of rich and costly fabrics. Our mothers’ silk stockings, of ante-bellum date, were ravelled with patience and transformed into the prettiest of neat-fitting gloves. The writer remembers never to have been more pleased than she was by the possession of a trim pair of boots made of the tanned skins of some half-dozen squirrels. They were so much softer and finer than the ordinary heavy calf-skin affairs to be bought at the village “shoe shop,” that no Northern maiden was ever more pleased with her ten-dollar boots. Our hats, made of palmetto and rye straw, were becoming and pretty without lace, tips, or flowers. Our jackets were made of the fathers’ old-fashioned cloaks, in vogue some forty years agone—those of that style represented in the pictures of Mr. Calhoun—doing splendid service by supplying all the girls in the family at once. We even made palmetto jewelry of exquisite designs, intermingled with our hair, that we might keep even with the boys who wore “palmetto cockades.” The flowers we wore were nature’s own beautiful, fragrant blossoms, sometimes, when in a patriotic mood, nestled, with symbolic cotton77balls. For our calico dresses, if ever so fortunate as to find one, we sometimes paid a hundred dollars, and for the spool of cotton that made it from ten to twenty dollars. The buttons we used were oftentimes cut from a gourd into sizes required and covered with cloth, they having the advantage of pasteboard because they were rounded. On children’s clothes persimmon seed in their natural state, with two holes drilled through them, were found both neat and durable. In short, we fastened all our garments after true Confederate style, without the aid of Madame Demorest’s guide book or Worth’s Parisian models, and suffered from none of Miss Flora McFlimsey’s harassing dilemmas.
MRS. LEE AND THE SOCKS
R. E. Lee, in his recollections of his father, General Lee, says:
“His letters to my mother tell how much his men were in need. My mother was an invalid from rheumatism, and confined to a roller chair. To help the cause with her own hands, as far as she could, she was constantly occupied in knitting socks for the soldiers, and induced all around her to do the same. She sent them directly to my father and he always acknowledged them.”
It was well known in the army what great pleasure it gave the General to distribute these socks.
FITTING OUT A SOLDIER
[Mrs. Roger A. Pryor’s Reminiscences of Peace and War, pages 131-133.]
When I returned to my father’s home in Petersburg I found my friends possessed with an intense spirit of patriotism. The First, Second and Third Virginia were already mustered into service; my husband was colonel of the Third Virginia Infantry. The men were to be equipped for service immediately. All of “the boys” were78going—the three Manys, Will Johnson, Berry Stainback, Ned Graham; all the young, dancing set, the young lawyers and doctors—everybody, in short, except bank presidents, druggists, a doctor or two (over age), and young boys under sixteen. To be idle was torture. We women resolved ourselves into a sewing society, resting not on Sundays. Sewing-machines were put into the churches, which became depots for flannel, muslin, strong linen, and even uniform cloth. When the hour for meeting arrived, the sewing class would be summoned by the ringing of the church bell. My dear Agnes was visiting in Petersburg, and was my faithful ally in all my work. We instituted a monster sewing class, which we hugely enjoyed, to meet daily at my home on Market street. My colonel was to be fitted out as never was colonel before. He was ordered to Norfolk with his regiment to protect the seaboard. I was proud of his colonelship, and much exercised because he had no shoulder-straps. I undertook to embroider them myself. We had not then decided upon the star for our colonels’ insignia, and I supposed he would wear the eagle like all the colonels I had ever known. We embroidered bullion fringe, cut it in lengths, and made eagles, probably of some extinct species, for the like were unknown in Audubon’s time, and have not since been discovered. However, they were accepted, admired, and, what is worse, worn.
The Confederate soldier was furnished at the beginning of the war with a gun, pistol, canteen, tin cup, haversack, and knapsack—no inconsiderable weight to be borne in a march. The knapsack contained a fatigue jacket, one or two blankets, an oil-cloth, several suits of underclothing, several pairs of white gloves, collars, neckties, and handkerchiefs. Each mess purchased a mess-chest containing dishes, bowls, plates, knives, forks, spoons, cruets, spice-boxes, glasses, etc. Each mess also owned a frying-pan, oven, coffee-pot, and camp-kettle. The uniforms were of the finest cadet cloth and gold lace. This outfit—although not comparable to that of the Federal soldier, many of whom had “Saratoga” trunks in the baggage train—was considered sumptuous by the Confederate volunteer. As79if these were not enough, we taxed our ingenuity to add sundry comforts, weighing little, by which we might give a touch of refinement to the soldier’s knapsack.
There was absolutely nothing which a man might possibly use that we did not make for them. We embroidered cases for razors, for soap and sponge, and cute morocco affairs for needles, thread, and courtplaster, with a little pocket lined with a bank note. “How perfectly ridiculous,” do you say? Nothing is ridiculous that helps anxious women to bear their lot—cheats them with the hope that they are doing good.
THE THIMBLE BRIGADE
[From Dickison and His Men, pages 161-162.]
With prayerful hearts, the devoted women of Marion formed themselves into societies for united efforts in behalf of our gallant defenders.
At Orange Lake, we formed a Soldiers’ Relief Association, playfully called the “Thimble Brigade;” and, with earnest faith in the blessing of God upon our work, we began our mission of love. With grateful hearts we labored to provide comforts for the brave soldiers, who around their campfires were keeping watch for us. The following notice will be read by our sisterhood with mingled emotions of pleasure and sadness:
“In this number of the OcalaHome Journalwill be found the proceedings of a meeting of the ladies of the neighborhood of Orange Lake, held for the purpose of organizing a ‘Soldiers’ Friend’ Association. They have not only succeeded in perfecting their organization, but have already accomplished a great deal for the benefit of the soldiers. They have made thirty pairs of pants for the soldiers at Fernandina, the ladies furnishing the material from their own private stores, besides knitting socks and making other garments. The manner in which they have commenced this patriotic work is, indeed, encouraging80to all who have the soldier’s welfare at heart, and we know that they will labor as long as the necessities of the soldier require it.”
NOBLE WOMEN OF RICHMOND
[In A Rebel’s Recollections, pages 66-69.]
In Richmond, when the hospitals were filled with wounded men brought in from the seven days’ fighting with McClellan, and the surgeons found it impossible to dress half the wounds, a band was formed, consisting of nearly all the married women of the city, who took upon themselves the duty of going to the hospitals and dressing wounds from morning till night; and they persisted in their painful duty until every man was cared for, saving hundreds of lives, as the surgeons unanimously testified. When nitre was found to be growing scarce, and the supply of gunpowder was consequently about to give out, women all over the land dug up the earth in their smokehouses and tobacco barns, and with their own hands faithfully extracted the desired salt, for use in the government laboratories.
Many of them denied themselves not only delicacies, but substantial food also, when, by enduring semi-starvation, they could add to the stock of food at the command of the subsistence officers. I myself knew more than one houseful of women, who, from the moment that food began to grow scarce, refused to eat meat or drink coffee, living thenceforth only upon vegetables of a speedily perishable sort, in order that they might leave the more for the soldiers in the field. When a friend remonstrated with one of them, on the ground that her health, already frail, was breaking down utterly for want of proper diet, she replied, in a quiet, determined way, “I know that very well; but it is little that I can do, and I must do that little at any cost. My health and life are worth less than those of my brothers, and if they give theirs to the cause, why should not I do the same? I would starve to death81cheerfully if I could feed one soldier more by doing so, but the things I eat can’t be sent to camp. I think it a sin to eat anything that can be used for rations.” And she meant what she said, too, as a little mound in the church-yard testifies.
Every Confederate remembers gratefully the reception given him when he went into any house where these women were. Whoever he might be, and whatever his plight, if he wore the gray, he was received, not as a beggar or tramp, not even as a stranger, but as a son of the house, for whom it held nothing too good, and whose comfort was the one care of all its inmates, even though their own must be sacrificed in securing it. When the hospitals were crowded, the people earnestly besought permission to take the men to their houses and to care for them there, and for many months almost every house within a radius of a hundred miles of Richmond held one or more wounded men as especially honored guests.
“God bless these Virginia women!” said a general officer from one of the cotton States, one day; “they’re worth a regiment apiece.” And he spoke the thought of the army, except that their blessing covered the whole country as well as Virginia.
FROM MATOACA GAY’S ARTICLES IN THEPHILADELPHIA TIMES
In a diary kept at the time by an official in the War Department I find this entry:
May 10, 1861.—The ladies are sewing everywhere, and are full of ardor. Love affairs are plentiful, but the ladies are postponing all engagements till their lovers have fought the Yankees. Their influence is very great. Day after day they go in crowds to the fair grounds, where the First South Carolina Volunteers are encamped, showering upon them smiles and every delicacy which the city can afford. They wine them and dine them, and they82deserve it, for they are just from the taking of Sumter, and have won historic distinction. I was presented to several very distinguished looking young men, all of them privates, and was told by their captain that many of them were worth from a hundred thousand to half a million. These are the men theTribunethought would all of them want to be captains; but that is only one of the hallucinations under which the North is now laboring.
THE WOMEN OF RICHMOND
[By Phoebe Y. Pember, in Hospital Life.]
But of what importance was the fact that I was homeless, houseless and moneyless, in Richmond, the heart of Virginia? Who ever wanted for aught that kind hearts, generous hands or noble hospitality could supply, that it was not here offered without even the shadow of a patronage that could have made it distasteful? What women were ever so refined in feeling and so unaffected in manner; so willing to share all that wealth gives, and so little infected with the pride of purse which bestows that power? It was difficult to hide one’s needs from them; they found them out and ministered to them with their quiet simplicity and the innate nobility which gave to their generosity the coloring of a favor received, not conferred.
Would that I could do more than thank the dear friends who made my life for four years so happy and contented; who never made me feel by word or act that my self-imposed occupation was otherwise than one which would ennoble any woman. If ever any aid was given through my own exertions, or any labor rendered effective by me for the good of the South—if any sick soldier ever benefited by my happy face or pleasant smiles at his bedside, or death was ever soothed by gentle words of hope and tender care—such results were only owing to the cheering encouragement I received from them.
83TWO GEORGIA HEROINES
[Mary L. Jewett, Corresponding Secretary Clement Evans Chapter, U. D. C.]
“To such women as these should a shaft of precious stone be erected.”
’Twas thus an old soldier spoke of the wife of Judge Alexander Herrington, of Dougherty County, Georgia, many years ago, when the heroism of the Southern women was mentioned. She was president of the ladies’ relief association during the war, and as such had thirty machines brought to her home and the neighbors gathered together and made leggings and clothing for “our boys,” as they were called. Many and many days did she work with bleeding hands, caused by the constant use of the shears, for with her own hands she did the cutting for the others to stitch. This was a work that is far beyond the understanding of the present day, for she had never known a day’s toil, being the wife of a wealthy planter and slave owner. Not only did she and Judge Herrington give money, cattle, cotton, and slaves to be used in the erecting of breastworks, but he being too old, and their only son being a mere child, they bravely sent two of their daughters to the field as army nurses, one of which served through the entire war. After the war, with slaves and money gone, her husband died, and it was then that she and her children suffered through the days of reconstruction, with never a murmur from her lips for the things she had given up and lost.
THE SEVEN DAYS’ BATTLE
[Mrs. R. A. Pryor’s Reminiscences.]
All the afternoon the dreadful guns shook the earth and thrilled our souls with horror. I shut myself in my darkened room. At twilight I had a note from Governor Letcher, telling me a fierce battle was raging, and inviting me to come to the governor’s mansion. From the roof one might see the flash of musket and artillery.
No; I did not wish to see the infernal fires. I preferred84to watch and wait alone in my room. And so the night wore on and I waited and watched. Before the dawn a hurried footstep brought a message from the battlefield to my door:
“The general, madame, is safe and well. Colonel Scott has been killed. The general has placed a guard around his body, and he will be sent here early to-morrow. The general bids me say he will not return. The fight will be renewed, and will continue until the enemy is driven away.”
My resolution was taken. My children were safe with their grandmother. I would write. I would ask that every particle of my household linen, except a change, should be rolled into bandages, all my fine linen be sent to me for compresses, and all forwarded as soon as possible. I would enter the new hospital which had been improvised in Kent & Paine’s warehouse, and would remain there as a nurse as long as the armies were fighting around Richmond.
But the courier was passing on his rounds with news to others. Presently Fanny Poindexter, in tears, knocked at my door.
“She is bearing it like a brave, Christian woman.”
“She? Who? Tell me quick.”
“Mrs. Scott. I had to tell her. She simply said, ‘I shall see him once more.’ The general wrote to her from the battlefield and told her how nobly her husband died, leading his men in the thick of the fight, and how he had helped to save the city.”
Alas! that the city should have needed saving. What had Mrs. Scott and her children done? Why should they suffer? Who was to blame for it all?
Kent & Paine’s warehouse was a large, airy building, which had, I understood, been offered by the proprietors for a hospital immediately after the battle of Seven Pines. McClellan’s advance upon Richmond had heavily taxed the capacity of the hospitals already established.
When I reached the warehouse, early on the morning after the fight at Mechanicsville, I found cots on the lower floor already occupied, and other cots in process of85preparation. An aisle between the rows of narrow beds stretched to the rear of the building. Broad stairs led to a story above, where other cots were being laid.
The volunteer matron was a beautiful woman, Mrs. Wilson. When I was presented to her as a candidate for admission, her serene eyes rested doubtfully upon me for a moment. She hesitated. Finally she said:
“The work is very exacting. There are so few of us that our nurses must do anything and everything—make beds, wait upon anybody, and often a half a dozen at a time.”
“I will engage to do all that,” I declared, and she permitted me to go to a desk at the farther end of the room and enter my name.
As I passed by the rows of occupied cots, I saw a nurse kneeling beside one of them, holding a pan for a surgeon. The red stump of an amputated arm was held over it. The next thing I knew I was myself lying on a cot, and a spray of cold water was falling over my face. I had fainted. Opening my eyes, I found the matron standing beside me.
“You see it is as I thought. You are unfit for this work. One of the nurses will conduct you home.”
The nurse’s assistance was declined, however. I had given trouble enough for one day, and had only interrupted those who were really worth something. A night’s vigil had been poor preparation for hospital work. I resolved I would conquer my culpable weakness. It was all very well,—these heroics in which I indulged, these paroxysms of patriotism, this adoration of the defenders of my fireside. The defender in the field had naught to hope from me in case he should be wounded in my defence.
I took myself well in hand. Why had I fainted? I thought it was because of the sickening, dead odor in the hospital, mingled with that of acids and disinfectants. Of course, this would always be there—and worse, as wounded men filled the rooms. I provided myself with sal volatile and spirits of camphor,—we wore pockets in our gowns in those days,—and thus armed I presented86myself again to Mrs. Wilson. She was as kind as she was refined and intelligent. “I will give you a place near the door,” she said, “and you must run out into the air at the first hint of faintness. You will get over it, see if you don’t.”
Ambulances began to come in and unload at the door. I soon had occupation enough, and a few drops of camphor on my handkerchief tided me over the worst. The wounded men crowded in and sat patiently waiting their turn. One fine little fellow of fifteen unrolled a handkerchief from his wrist to show me his wound. “There’s a bullet in there,” he said proudly. “I am going to have it cut out, and then go right back to the fight. Isn’t it lucky it’s my left hand?”
As the day wore on I became more and more absorbed in my work. I had, too, the stimulus of a reproof from Miss Deborah Couch, a brisk, efficient, middle-aged lady, who asked no quarter and gave none. She was standing beside me a moment, with a bright tin pan filled with pure water, into which I foolishly dipped a finger to see if it were warm, to learn if I would be expected to provide warm water when I should be called upon to assist the surgeon.
“This water, madame, was prepared for a raw wound,” said Miss Deborah, sternly. “I must now make the surgeon wait until I get more.”
Miss Deborah, in advance of her time, was a germ theorist. My touch evidently was contaminating.
As she charged down the aisle, with a pan of water in her hand, everybody made way. She had known of my “fine-lady faintness,” as she termed it, and I could see she despised me for it. She had volunteered, as all the nurses had, and she meant business. She had no patience with nonsense, and truly she was worth more than all the rest of us.
“Where can I get a little ice?” I one day ventured of Miss Deborah.
“Find it,” she rejoined, as she rapidly passed on; but find it I never did. Ice was an unknown luxury until brought to us later from private houses.