Produced by Katherine Ward and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project.)
THE WOMEN OF THE CONFEDERACY
In which is presented the heroism of the women of the Confederacy
with accounts of their trials during the War and the period of
Reconstruction, with their ultimate triumph over adversity. Their
motives and their achievements as told by writers and orators now
preserved in permanent form.
BY REV. J. L. UNDERWOOD
Master of Arts, Mercer University, Captain and Chaplain in the
Confederate Army
New York and Washington
THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY
1906
Copyright, 1906
By
J. L. UNDERWOOD
[Illustration: _Yours Truly, J. L. Underwood_]
DEDICATION
To the memory of Mrs. ELIZABETH THOMAS CURRY, whose remains rest under
the live oaks at Bainbridge, Ga., who cheerfully gave every available
member of her family to the Confederate Cause, and with her own hands
made their gray jackets, and who gave to the author her Christian
patriot daughter, who has been the companion, the joy and the crown of
his long and happy life, this volume is most affectionately
dedicated.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I SYMPOSIUM OF TRIBUTES TO CONFEDERATE WOMEN 19
Mrs. Varina Jefferson Davis 19
Tribute of President Jefferson Davis 20
Tribute of a Wounded Soldier 21
Tribute of a Federal Private Soldier 21
Joseph E. Johnston's Tribute 22
Stonewall Jackson's Female Soldiers 23
Gen. J. B. Gordon's Tribute 23
General Forrest's Tribute 24
Tribute of Gen. M. C. Butler 24
Tribute of Gen. Marcus J. Wright 26
Tribute of Dr. J. L. M. Curry 26
Address of Col. W. R. Aylett Before Pickett Camp 28
Gen. Bradley T. Johnson's Speech at the Dedication of
South's Museum 28
Governor C. T. O'Ferrall's Tribute 30
Tribute of Judge J. H. Reagan, of Texas,
Postmaster-General of Confederate States 32
General Freemantle (of the British Army) 33
Sherman's "Tough Set" 33
Tribute of General Buell 34
Tribute of Judge Alton B. Parker, of New York 34
Heroic Men and Women (President Roosevelt) 35
The Women of the South 36
Eulogy on Confederate Women 41
II THEIR WORK 70
Introduction to Woman's Work 70
The Southern Woman's Song 71
The Ladies of Richmond 72
The Hospital After Seven Pines 73
Burial of Latane 73
Making Clothes for the Soldiers 74
The Ingenuity of Southern Women 75
Mrs. Lee and the Socks 77
Fitting Out a Soldier 77
The Thimble Brigade 79
Noble Women of Richmond 80
From Matoaca Gay's Articles in the _Philadelphia Times_ 81
The Women of Richmond 82
Two Georgia Heroines 83
The Seven Days' Battle 83
Death of Mrs. Sarah K. Rowe, "The Soldiers' Friend" 92
"You Wait" 93
Annandale--Two Heroines of Mississippi 95
A Plantation Heroine 98
Lucy Ann Cox 100
"One of Them Lees" 101
Southern Women in the War Between the States 101
A Mother of the Confederacy 104
"The Great Eastern" 105
Cordial for the Brave 106
Hospital Work and Women's Delicacy 107
A Wayside Home at Millen 108
A Noble Girl 110
The Good Samaritan 110
Female Relatives Visit the Hospitals 111
Mania for Marriage 116
Government Clerkships 117
Schools in War Times 118
Humanity in the Hospitals 118
Mrs. Davis and the Federal Prisoner 119
Socks that Never Wore Out 120
Burial of Aunt Matilda 120
"Illegant Pair of Hands" 121
The Gun-boat "Richmond" 122
Captain Sally Tompkins 124
The Angel of the Hospital 125
III THEIR TRIALS 127
Old Maids 127
A Mother's Letter 129
Tom and his Young Master 130
"I Knew You Would Come" 131
Letters from the Poor at Home 132
Life in Richmond During the War 133
The Women of New Orleans 140
"Incorrigible Little Devil" 141
The Battle of the Handkerchiefs 142
The Women of New Orleans and Vicksburg Prisoners 144
"It Don't Trouble Me" 147
Savage War in the Valley 147
Mrs. Robert Turner, Woodstock, Va. 148
High Price of Needles And Thread 149
Despair at Home--Heroism at the Front 151
The Old Drake's Territory 152
The Refugee in Richmond 154
Desolations of War 155
Death of a Soldier 156
Mrs. Henrietta E. Lee's Letter To General Hunter 159
Sherman's Bummers 161
Reminiscences of the War Times--a Letter 163
Aunt Myra and the Hoe-cake 164
"The Corn Woman" 166
General Atkins at Chapel Hill 167
Two Specimen Cases of Desertion 167
Sherman in South Carolina 171
Old North State's Trials 173
Sherman in North Carolina 175
Mrs. Vance's Trunk--General Palmer's Gallantry 177
The Eventful Third of April 178
The Federals Enter Richmond 181
Somebody's Darling 183
IV THEIR PLUCK 185
Female Recruiting Officers 185
Mrs. Susan Roy Carter 186
J. L. M. Curry's Women Constituents 191
Nora McCarthy 192
Women in the Battle of Gainesville, Florida 194
"She Would Send Ten More" 195
Women at Vicksburg 196
"Mother, Tell Him Not To Come" 198
Brave Woman in Decatur, Georgia 201
Giving Warning To Mosby 204
"Ain't You Ashamed of You'uns?" 211
False Teeth 212
Emma Sansom 213
President Roosevelt's Mother and Grandmother 215
The Little Girl at Chancellorsville 217
Saved Her Hams 217
Heroism of a Widow 218
Winchester Women 219
Sparta in Mississippi 219
"Woman's Devotion"--A Winchester Heroine 220
Spoken Like Cornelia 222
A Specimen Mother 223
Mrs. Rooney 224
Warning by a Brave Girl 226
A Plucky Girl With a Pistol 227
Mosby's Men And Two Noble Girls 228
A Spartan Dame and her Young 230
Singing Under Fire 231
A Woman's Last Word 232
Two Mississippi Girls Hold Yankees at Pistol Point 233
"War Women" of Petersburg 234
John Allen's Cow 235
The Family That Had No Luck 235
Brave Women at Resaca, Georgia 237
A Woman's Hair 238
A Breach of Etiquette 240
Lola Sanchez's Ride 241
The Rebel Sock 244
V THEIR CAUSE 246
Introductory Note to Their Cause 246
"When This Cruel War Is Over" 246
Northern Men Leaders of Disunion 247
The Union vs. A Union 248
The Northern States Secede From the Union 253
Frenzied Finance and the War of 1861 255
The Right of Secession 260
The Cause Not Lost 262
Slavery as the South Saw It 262
Vindication of Southern Cause 263
Northern View of Secession 266
Major J. Scheibert on Confederate History 268
VI MATER REDIVIVA 271
Introductory Note 271
The Empty Sleeve 272
The Old Hoopskirt 273
The Political Crimes of the Nineteenth Century 276
Brave to the Last 280
Sallie Durham 281
The Negro and the Miracle 283
Georgia Refugees 284
The Negroes And New Freedom 286
The Confederate Museum in the Capital of the Confederacy 287
Federal Decoration Day--Adoption from Our Memorial 290
The Daughters and the United Daughters of the Confederacy 291
A Daughter's Plea 293
Home for Confederate Women 297
Jefferson Davis Monument 297
Reciprocal Slavery 299
Barbara Frietchie 302
Social Equality Between the Races 304
Dream of Race Superiority 308
Roosevelt at Lee's Monument 311
PREFACE
It is remarkable that after a lapse of forty years the people of this
country, from the President down, are manifesting a more lively
interest than ever in the history of the women of the Confederacy.
Bodily affliction only has prevented the author from rendering at an
earlier date the service to their memory and the cause of the South
which he feels that he has done in preparing this volume. His friends,
Dr. J. Wm. Jones, and the lamented Dr. J. L. M. Curry, of Richmond,
Va., made the suggestion of this work several years ago. They both
rendered material assistance in the preparation of the lecture which
appears in this volume as the author's tribute in the Symposium, and
to Doctor Jones the author is greatly indebted for the practical
brotherly assistance he has continued to render.
Thanks are due to the Virginia State Librarian, Mr. C. D. Kennedy, and
his assistants, for kind attentions. The author is under obligations
to the lady members of the Confederate Memorial Literary Society of
Richmond, especially to Mrs. Lizzie Carey Daniels, Corresponding
Secretary, and Mrs. Katherine C. Stiles, Vice-Regent of the Georgia
Department of the Confederate Museum. In many ways great and valuable
service was kindly rendered by Miss Isabel Maury, the intelligent
House Regent of the Museum. To his old Commander, Gen. S. D. Lee, now
General Commander of Confederate Veterans, he is under obligation for
his practical help; also to Gen. Marcus J. Wright. In making
selections from the works of others, great pains have been taken to
give proper credit for all matter quoted. The author's home has been
for more than thirty years his delightful Pearland Cottage, in the
suburbs of Camilla, Ga. On account of his afflictions he has moved his
family to Blakeley, Ga., while he himself may remain some time for
medical treatment here in Richmond. The book is sent forth from an
invalid's room with a fervent prayer that it may do good in all
sections of our beloved country. Much of the work has been done under
severe pain and great weakness, and special indulgence is asked for
any defects.
J. L. UNDERWOOD.
Kellam's Hospital,
Richmond, Va.
INTRODUCTION BY REV. DR. J. B. HAWTHORNE
RICHMOND, VA., _January 30th, 1906_.
Only within the last two years have I had the opportunity to cultivate
an intimate personal acquaintance with Rev. J. L. Underwood, but as
the greater part of our lives have been spent in the States of Georgia
and Alabama, I have been quite familiar with his career through a
period which embraces a half century. Wherever he is known he is
highly esteemed for his intellectual gifts and culture, his fluency
and eloquence in speech, his genial manner, his high moral and
Christian ideals, and his unflinching fealty to what he believes to be
his country's welfare. No man who followed the Confederate flag had a
clearer understanding or a more profound appreciation of what he was
fighting for. No man watched and studied more carefully the progress
of the contest. No man interpreted more accurately the spirit,
purposes, and conduct of the contending armies. When the struggle
closed no man foresaw with more distinctness what was in the womb of
the future for the defeated South. His cultivated intellect, his high
moral and Christian character, his personal observations and
experiences, his residence and travels in Europe, his extensive
acquaintance and correspondence with public men, North and South, and
his present devotion to the interests of our united country, render
him pre-eminently qualified for the task of delineating some features
of the greatest war of modern times.
I have been permitted to read the manuscript of Mr. Underwood's book,
entitled, "The Women of the Confederacy." I do not hesitate to
pronounce it a valuable and enduring contribution to our country's
history. There is not a page in it that is dull or commonplace. No man
who starts to read it will lay it aside until he has reached the
conclusion of it. The author's definitions of the relations of each
sovereign State to the Federal Union and of her rights under the
Federal Constitution are exact. His argument in support of the
Constitutional right of secession amounts to a demonstration. His
interpretation of the long series of political events which drove the
South into secession is clear, just and convincing. His tributes to
the patriotism and valor of the Southern women are brilliant and
thrilling without the semblance of extravagance. His description of
the vandalism of Sherman's army in its march through Georgia and South
Carolina cannot fail to kindle a flame of indignation in the heart of
any civilized man who reads it. His anecdotes, both humorous and
pathetic, are well chosen.
The section of this book which relates most directly to "The Women of
the Confederacy," including Mr. Underwood's tribute in the Symposium
to their memory, is by far the most thrilling and meritorious part of
it. Into this the author has put his best material, his deepest
emotions, his finest sentiments, and his most eloquent words. To the
conduct of Southern women in that unprecedented ordeal, history
furnishes no parallel. Through many generations to come it will be the
favorite theme of the poets and orators.
I need no prophetic gift to see that this book will be immensely
popular and extensively circulated. Its aged and afflicted author has
done a work in writing it which deserves the gratitude and applause of
his fellow countrymen.
J. B. HAWTHORNE.
INTRODUCTION BY REV. DR. J. WM. JONES
J. WM. JONES,
_Secretary and Superintendent_,
_Confederate Memorial Association_,
109 N. 29th Street.
RICHMOND, VA.,
_January 23, 1906_.
I have carefully examined the manuscript of Mr. J. L. Underwood on
"The Women of the Confederacy" and I take great pleasure in saying
that in my judgment it is a book of very great interest and value, and
if properly published and pushed I have no doubt that it would have a
very wide sale.
Mr. Underwood has given a great deal of time to the collecting of
material for his book, and has had great advantages in doing so in
having had free access to the libraries of Richmond, and his book
abounds in touching and thrilling incidents, which present as no other
book that has been published does the true story of our Confederate
women, their sufferings and privations; their heroism and efficiency
in promoting the Confederate cause. I do not hesitate to say that it
is worthy of publication, and of wide circulation.
J. WM. JONES.
AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION
One of the last things the great Henry W. Grady said, was: "If I die,
I die serving the South, the land I love so well. My father died
fighting for it. I am proud to die speaking for it." The author of
this volume fought for the South and is now so afflicted that he can
no longer hope to speak for the South, but he will be happy to die
writing for it. Not half has yet been told of the best part of the
South, her women.
The Apostle John, on finishing his gospel story of Christ, said: "And
there are many other things which Jesus did, the which if they could
be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not
contain the books that should be written." While at work preparing
this volume, Mr. C. D. Kennedy, the courteous State librarian of
Virginia, said to the writer it would "take a whole library to tell
all about the Confederate women." As in the life of Christ, only a
small part can be told; and only a small part is necessary.
It is remarkable that the life of Christ was the most tragic,
thrilling, and beneficent life the world ever saw. And yet it is all
told in four booklets of simple incidents. Those four little books
have been worth more to the world than all other books combined.
Neither is there any system in the gospel record. There was no system
in Christ's life. It could not be told in a consecutive biography nor
in a scientific treatise. Science and system all fail when it comes to
telling of a life of such love and labor and sorrow.
It is not sacrilegious to say the same thing when we come to tell of
the heroic lives, the courage, the trials, the work of the Confederate
women. We can only give incidents, and these incidents tell all the
rest.
Fortunately the author, while a patient in a Richmond hospital, has
been strong enough to search the libraries of the city and gather
material scattered among the Confederate records already made. With
them and his own original sketches, it is hoped that a contribution of
some value has been made to a good cause. The story of the Southern
women is worth studying; and the author tells in his eulogy his
estimate of their great virtues. Then he shows that his estimate is
not from partiality or ignorance by giving a symposium of tributes
from others, some from the North and some from Europe.
It may surprise some that so much attention is given to holding up the
righteousness of the cause in which these women labored and suffered.
Why not? The great cause ennobled them, and they adorned the
Confederate cause. The truth must be told from both directions. This
is the ground idea of this humble volume.
It is hoped that it will fill a good place in our Southern literature,
suggesting further investigation on the same line. It has been a work
of love, a comfort to him in the days of very fearful bodily
affliction. He is conscious of the feebleness of his work and much
indulgence is asked for.
The author deems his subject a consecrated theme. And he rejoices that
he could labor at his task amid the consecrated memories of dear old
Richmond, where he has had the assistance and the smiles of
encouragement from the noble women who continue to keep guard over
Hollywood and Oakwood Cemeteries, the Soldiers' Home, and the Home for
Confederate Women, and keep vestal watch in the Confederate Museum.
Not a line is written in sectional prejudice or tainted by a touch of
hate. The author was a Confederate soldier. He hates sham, injustice,
falsehood, and hypocrisy everywhere, but he loves his fellow men, and
still bears the old soldier's respect and warm hand for the true
soldiers who fought on the other side. The barbarities of bummers and
brutal commanders must be repudiated by us all that the honor of true
soldiers like McClellan, Rosecrans, Thomas, and Buell, on the one
side, and Lee, Jackson and Johnston on the other, may stand forth in
its true light.
When our broad-brained and big-hearted President Roosevelt has just
stepped down from the White House to tell on Capitol Hill at Richmond
and at the feet of the monuments of Lee and Jackson, his great
admiration for the Confederate soldiers and the Confederate women, it
is time for us all to take a fresh look at their heroic lives.
J. L. UNDERWOOD.
KELLAM'S HOSPITAL,
_Richmond, Va., April 1st, 1906_.
CHAPTER I
SYMPOSIUM OF TRIBUTES TO CONFEDERATE WOMEN
MRS. VARINA JEFFERSON DAVIS
From her invalid chair in New York the revered and beloved wife of the
great chieftain of the Confederacy writes a personal letter to the
author of this volume, from which he takes the liberty of publishing
the following extract. There is something peculiarly touching in this
testimonial which will be prized and kept as a precious heirloom
throughout our Southern land:
HOTEL GERARD,
123 West Forty-fourth Street, New York.
_October 25, 1905._
MY DEAR MR. UNDERWOOD:
* * * I do not know in all history a finer subject than the
heroism of our Southern women, God bless them. I have never
forgotten our dear Mrs. Robt. E. Lee, sitting in her arm chair,
where she was chained by the most agonizing form of rheumatism,
cutting with her dear aching hands soldiers' gloves from waste
pieces of their Confederate uniforms furnished to her from the
government shops. These she persuaded her girl visitors to sew
into gloves for the soldiers. Certainly these scraps were of
immense use to all those who could get them, for I do not know how
many children's jackets which kept the soldiers' children warm, I
had pieced out of these scraps by a poor woman who sat in the
basement of the mansion and made them for them.
The ladies picked their old silk pieces into fragments, and spun
them into gloves, stockings, and scarfs for the soldiers' necks,
etc.; cut up their house linen and scraped it into lint; tore up
their sheets and rolled them into bandages; and toasted sweet
potato slices brown, and made substitutes for coffee. They put two
tablespoonfuls of sorghum molasses into the water boiled for
coffee instead of sugar, and used none other for their little
children and families. They covered their old shoes with old kid
gloves or with pieces of silk and their little feet looked
charming and natty in them. In the country they made their own
candles, and one lady sent me three cakes of sweet soap and a
small jar of soft soap made from the skin, bones and refuse bits
of hams boiled for her family. Another sent the most exquisite
unbleached flax thread, of the smoothest and finest quality, spun
by herself. I have never been able to get such thread again. I am
still quite feeble, so I must close with the hope that your health
will steadily improve and the assurance that I am,
Yours sincerely,
V. JEFFERSON DAVIS.
TRIBUTE OF PRESIDENT JEFFERSON DAVIS
[From Dr. Craven's Prison Life of Jefferson Davis.]
If asked for his sublimest ideal of what women should be in time of
war, he said he would point to the dear women of his people as he had
seen them during the recent struggle. "The Spartan mother sent her
boy, bidding him return with honor, either carrying his shield or on
it. The women of the South sent forth their sons, directing them to
return with victory; to return with wounds disabling them from further
service, or never to return at all. All they had was flung into the
contest--beauty, grace, passion, ornaments. The exquisite frivolities
so dear to the sex were cast aside; their songs, if they had any heart
to sing, were patriotic; their trinkets were flung into the crucible;
the carpets from their floors were portioned out as blankets to the
suffering soldiers of their cause; women bred to every refinement of
luxury wore homespuns made by their own hands. When materials for
army balloons were wanted the richest silk dresses were sent in and
there was only competition to secure their acceptance. As nurses for
the sick, as encouragers and providers for the combatants, as angels
of charity and mercy, adopting as their own all children made orphans
in defence of their homes, as patient and beautiful household deities,
accepting every sacrifice with unconcern, and lightening the burdens
of war by every art, blandishment, and labor proper to their sphere,
the dear women of his people deserved to take rank with the highest
heroines of the grandest days of the greatest centuries."
TRIBUTE OF A WOUNDED SOLDIER
A beautiful Southern girl, on her daily mission of love and mercy in
one of our hospitals, asked a badly wounded soldier boy what she could
do for him. He replied: "I am greatly obliged to you, but it is too
late for you to do anything for me. I am so badly wounded that I can't
live long."
"Will you not let me pray for you?" said the sweet girl. "I hope that
I am one of the Lord's daughters, and I would like to ask Him to help
you."
Looking intently into her beautiful face he replied: "Yes, do pray at
once, and ask the Lord to let me be his son-in-law."
TRIBUTE OF A FEDERAL PRIVATE SOLDIER
There is no more popular living hero of the Federal army of the war
between the States than Corporal Tanner, who is Commander of the Grand
Army of the Republic. He left both legs on a Southern battlefield and
is a universal favorite of the Confederate Veterans. The following is
an extract from his speech at the Wheeler Memorial in Atlanta, Ga., in
March, 1906:
"The Union forces would have achieved success, in my opinion,
eighteen months sooner than they did if it had not been for the women
of the South. Why do I say this? Because it is of world-wide knowledge
that men never carried cause forward to the dread arbitrament of the
battlefield, who were so intensely supported by the prayers and by the
efforts of the gentler sex, as were you men of the South. Every
mother's son of you knew that if you didn't keep exact step to the
music of Dixie and the Bonny Blue Flag, if you did not tread the very
front line of battle when the contest was on, knew in short that if
you returned home in aught but soldierly honor, that the very fires of
hell would not scorch and consume your unshriven souls as you would be
scorched and consumed by the scorn and contempt of your womanhood."
JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON'S TRIBUTE
As to the charge of want of loyalty or zeal in the war, I assert, from
as much opportunity for observation as any individual had, that no
people ever displayed so much, under such circumstances, and with so
little flagging, for so long a time continuously. This was proved by
the long service of the troops without pay and under exposure to such
hardships, from the cause above mentioned, as modern troops have
rarely endured; by the voluntary contributions of food and clothing
sent to the army from every district that furnished a regiment; by the
general and continued submission of the people to the tyranny of the
impressment system as practiced--such a tyranny as, I believe, no
other high-spirited people ever endured--and by the sympathy and aid
given in every house to all professing to belong to the army, or to be
on the way to join it. And this spirit continued not only after all
hope of success had died but after the final confession of defeat by
their military commanders.
But, even if the men of the South had not been zealous in the cause,
the patriotism of their mothers and wives and sisters would have
inspired them with zeal or shamed them into its imitation. The women
of the South exhibited that feeling wherever it could be exercised:
in the army, by distributing clothing with their own hands; at the
railroad stations and their own homes, by feeding the marching
soldiers; and, above all, in the hospitals, where they rivaled the
Sisters of Charity. I am happy in the belief that their devoted
patriotism and gentle charity are to be richly rewarded.
STONEWALL JACKSON'S FEMALE SOLDIERS
In the southern part of Virginia the women had become almost shoeless
and sent a petition to General Jackson to grant the detail of a
shoemaker to make shoes for them. Here is his reply, in a letter of
November 14, 1862: "Be assured that I feel a deep and abiding interest
in our female soldiers. They are patriots in the truest sense of the
word, and I more and more admire them."
GEN. J. B. GORDON'S TRIBUTE
Back of the armies, on the farms, in the towns and cities, the fingers
of Southern women were busy knitting socks and sewing seams of coarse
trousers and gray jackets for the soldiers at the front.
From Mrs. Lee and her daughters to the humblest country matrons and
maidens, their busy needles were stitching, stitching, stitching, day
and night. The anxious commander, General Lee, thanked them for their
efforts to bring greater comfort to the cold feet and shivering limbs
of his half-clad men. He wrote letters expressing appreciation of the
bags of socks and shirts as they came in. He said he could almost
hear, in the stillness of the night, the needles click as they flew
through the meshes. Every click was a prayer, every stitch a tear. His
tributes were tender and constant to these glorious women for their
labor and sacrifice for Southern independence.
GENERAL FORREST'S TRIBUTE
There is a story told of General Forrest which shows his opinion of
the pluck and devotion of the Southern women. He was drawing up his
men in line of battle one day, and it was evident that a sharp
encounter was about to take place. Some ladies ran from a house which
happened to stand just in front of his line, and asked him anxiously,
"What shall we do, General, what shall we do?" Strong in his faith
that they only wished to help in some way, he replied, "I really don't
see that you can do much, except to stand on stumps, wave your bonnets
and shout, 'Hurrah, boys.'"
TRIBUTE OF GEN. M. C. BUTLER
Who of those trying days does not recall the shifts which the Southern
people had to adopt to provide for the sick and wounded: the
utilization of barks and herbs for the concoction of drugs, the
preparation of appliances for hospitals and field infirmaries? What
surgeons in any age or in any war excelled the Confederate surgeons in
skill, ingenuity or courage?
Who does not recall the sleepless and patient vigilance, the heroic
fortitude and untiring tenderness of the fair Southern women in
providing articles of comfort and usefulness for their kindred in the
field, preparing with their dainty hands from their scanty supplies,
food and clothing for the Confederate soldiers; establishing homes and
hospitals for the sick and disabled, and ministering to their wants
with a gentle kindness that alleviated so much suffering and pain? Do
the annals of any country or of any period furnish higher proofs of
self-sacrificing courage, self-abnegation, and more steadfast devotion
than was exercised by the Southern women during the whole progress of
our desperate struggle? If so, I have failed to discover it.
The suffering of the men from privations and hunger, from the wounds
of battle and the sickness of camp, were mild inconveniences when
compared with the anguish of soul suffered by the women at home, and
yet they bore it all with surpassing heroism. No pen can ever do
justice to their imperishable renown. The shot and shell of invading
armies could not intimidate, nor could the rude presence of a
sometimes ruthless enemy deter their dauntless souls. To my mind there
has been nothing in history or past experiences comparable to their
fortitude, courage, and devotion. Instances may be cited where the
women of a country battling for its rights and liberties have
sustained themselves under the hardest fate and made great sacrifices
for the cause they loved and the men they honored and respected, but I
challenge comparison in any period of the world's history with the
sufferings, anxieties, fidelities, and firmness of the fair, delicate
women of the South during the struggle for Southern independence and
since its disastrous determination. Disappointed in the failure of a
cause for which they had suffered so much, baffled in the fondest
hopes of an earnest patriotism, impoverished by the iron hand of
relentless war, desolated in their hearts by the cruel fate of
unsuccessful battle, and bereft of the tenderest ties that bound them
to earth, mourning over the most dismal prospect that ever converted
the happiest, fairest land to waste and desolation, consumed by
anxiety and the darkest forebodings for the future, they have never
lowered the exalted crest of true Southern womanhood, nor pandered to
a sentiment that would compromise with dishonor. They have found time,
amid the want and anxiety of desolated homes, to keep fresh and green
the graves of their dead soldiers, when thrift and comfort might have
followed cringing and convenient oblivion of the past. They had the
courage to build monuments to their dead, and work with that beautiful
faith and silent energy which makes kinship to angels, and lights up
with the fire from heaven the restless power of woman's boundless
capabilities. When men have flagged and faltered, dallied with
dishonor and fallen, the women of the South have rebuilt the altars of
patriotism and relumed the fires of devotion to country in the hearts
of halting manhood. They have borne the burden of their own griefs
and vitalized the spirit and firmness of the men.
All honor, all hail, to woman's matchless achievements, and thanks, a
thousand thanks, for the grand triumph and priceless example of her
devoted heroism. Appropriately may she have exclaimed:
"Here I and Sorrow sit.
This is my throne; let kings come bow to it."
TRIBUTE OF GEN. MARCUS J. WRIGHT
I know that it were needless to say that the character and conduct of
the women of the South during our late war stand out equally with
those of any age or country, and deserve to go down in history as
affording an example of fortitude, bravery, affection and patriotism
that it is impossible to surpass: and I am further proud to say that
the women of the Northern States exhibited in that war a devotion and
patriotism to their country and its cause deserving of all praise.
TRIBUTE OF DR. J. L. M. CURRY
[Civil History of the Confederate States, pages 171-174.]
We hear and read much of delicately pampered "females" in ancient Rome
and modern Paris and Newport, but in the time of which I speak in
this Southland of ours, womanhood was richly and heavily endowed
with duties and occupations and highest social functions, as wife
and mother and neighbor, and these responsibilities and duties
underlay our society in its structure and permanence as solid
foundations. Instead of superficial adornments and supine inaction,
the intellectual sympathies and interests of these women were
large, and they undertook, with wise and just guidance, the
management of household and farms and servants, leaving the men free
for war and civil government. These noble and resolute women were
the mothers of the Gracchi, of the men who built up the greatness
of the Union and accomplished the unexampled achievements of the
Confederacy. Knowing no position more exalted and paramount than
that of wife and mother, with the responsibilities which attach to
miniature empire, the training of children and guidance of slaves,
each one was as Caesar would have had his companion, above reproach
and above suspicion; and whose purity was so prized that a violation
of personal dignity was resented and punished, by all worthy to be
sons and husbands and fathers of such women, with the death of the
violator. "Strength and dignity were her clothing; she opened her
mouth with wisdom, and the law of kindness was on her tongue. She
looked well to the ways of her household, and she ate not the bread of
idleness. Her children rose up and called her blessed; her husband
also."
When inequality was threatened and States were to be degraded to
counties, and the South became one great battlefield, and every
citizen was aiding in the terrible conflict, the mothers, wives,
sisters, daughters, with extraordinary unanimity and fervor, rallied
to the support of their imperilled land. While the older women from
intelligent conviction were ready to sustain the South, political
events and the necessity of confronting privations, trials, and
sorrows developed girlhood into the maturity and self-reliance of
womanhood. Anxious women with willing hands and loving hearts rushed
eagerly to every place which sickness or destitution or the ravages of
war invade, enduring sacrifices, displaying unsurpassed fortitude and
heroism. Churches were converted into hospitals or places for making,
collecting, and shipping clothing and needed supplies. Innumerable
private homes adjacent to battlefields were filled with the sick and
wounded. It was not uncommon to see grandmother and youthful maiden
engaged in making socks, hats, and other needed articles. Untrained,
these women entered the fields of labor with the spirit of Christ,
rose into queenly dignity, and enrolled themselves among the
immortals.
ADDRESS OF COL. W. R. AYLETT BEFORE PICKETT CAMP
[In Southern Historical Papers, Volume 22, page 60.]
I claim for Camp Pickett the paternity of the first of the public
expressions, in the form of a Confederate woman's monument. On the
16th day of January, 1890, in an address made by me, upon the
presentation of General Pickett's portrait to this camp by Mrs.
Jennings, as my remarks, published in the Richmond _Dispatch_ of the
17th of January, 1890, will show, I urged that steps be taken to
erect a monument to the women of the Southern Confederacy, and you
applauded the suggestion. But this idea, and the execution of it, is
something in which none of us should claim exclusive glory and
ownership. The monument should be carried not alone upon the
shoulders of the infantry, artillery, cavalry, engineers and sailors
of the Confederacy, but should be urged forward by the hearts and
hands of the whole South. And wherever a Northern man has a Southern
wife (and a good many Northern men of taste have them) let them
help, too, for God never gave him a nobler or richer blessing. The
place for such a monument, it seems to me, should be by the side of
the Confederate soldier on Libby Hill. It is not well for a man to
be alone, nor woman either. To place her elsewhere would make a
perpetual stag of him, and a perpetual wall-flower of her. Companions
in glory and suffering, let them go down the corridors of time side
by side, the representatives of a race of heroes.
GEN. BRADLEY T. JOHNSON'S SPEECH AT THE DEDICATION OF SOUTH'S MUSEUM
_What Our Women Stood_
[In Southern Historical Papers, Volume 23, pages 368-370.]
Evil dies, good lives; and the time will come when all the world will
realize that the failure of the Confederacy was a great misfortune to
humanity, and will be the source of unnumbered woes to liberty.
Washington might have failed; Kosciusko and Robert E. Lee did fail;
but I believe history will award a higher place to them, unsuccessful,
than to Suwarrow and to Grant, victorious. This great and noble cause,
the principles of which I have attempted to formulate for you, was
defended with a genius and a chivalry of men and women never equalled
by any race. My heart melts now at the memory of those days.
Just realize it: There is not a hearth and home in Virginia that has
not heard the sound of hostile cannon; there is not a family which has
not buried kin slain in battle. Of all the examples of that heroic
time; of all figures that will live in the music of the poet or the
pictures of the painter, the one that stands in the foreground, the
one that will be glorified with the halo of the heroine, is the
woman--mother, sister, lover--who gave her life and heart to the
cause. And the woman and girl, remote from cities and towns, back in
the woods, away from railways or telegraph.
Thomas Nelson Page has given us a picture of her in his story of
"Darby." I thank him for "Darby Stanly." I knew the boy and loved him
well, for I have seen him and his cousins on the march, in camp, and
on the battlefield, lying in ranks, stark, with his face to the foe
and his musket grasped in his cold hands. I can recall what talk there
was at a "meetin'" about the "Black Republicans" coming down here to
interfere with us, and how we "warn't goin' to 'low it," and how the
boys would square their shoulders to see if the girls were looking at
'em, and how the girls would preen their new muslins and calicoes, and
see if the boys were "noticen'," and how by Tuesday news came that
Captain Thornton was forming his company at the court-house, and how
the mother packed up his little "duds" in her boy's school satchel and
tied it on his back, and kissed him and bade him good-bye, and watched
him, as well as she could see, as he went down the walk to the front
gate, and as he turned into the "big road," and as he got to the
corner, turned round and took off his hat and swung it around his
head, and then disappeared out of her life forever. For, after Cold
Harbor, his body could never be found nor his grave identified, though
a dozen saw him die. And then, for days and for weeks and for months,
alone, the mother lived this lonely life, waiting for news. The war
had taken her only son, and she was a widow; but from that day to
this, no human being has ever heard a word of repining from her lips.
Those who suffer most complain least.
Or, I recall that story of Bishop-General Polk, about the woman in the
mountains of Tennessee, with six sons. Five of them were in the army,
and when it was announced to her that her eldest born had been killed
in battle, the mother simply said: "The Lord's will be done. Eddie
(her baby) will be fourteen next spring, and he can take Billy's
place."
The hero of this great epoch is the son I have described, as his
mother and sister will be the heroines. For years, day and night,
winter and summer, without pay, with no hope of promotion nor of
winning a name or making a mark, the Confederate boy-soldier trod the
straight and thorny path of duty. Half-clothed, whole-starved, he
tramps, night after night, his solitary post on picket. No one can see
him. Five minutes' walk down the road will put him beyond recall, and
twenty minutes further and he will be in the Yankee lines, where pay,
food, clothes, quiet, and safety all await him. Think of the tens of
thousands of boys subjected to this temptation, and how few yielded!
Think of how many dreamed of such relief from danger and hardship!
But, while I glorify the chivalry, the fortitude, and the fidelity of
the private soldier, I do not intend to minimize the valor, the
endurance, or the gallantry of those who led him.
GOVERNOR C. T. O'FERRALL'S TRIBUTE
[In Southern Historical Papers, Volume 23, pages 361-362.]
I think I can say boldly that the bloody strife of 1861 to 1865
developed in the men of the South traits of character as ennobling and
as exalting as ever adorned men since the day-dawn of creation. I
think I can proclaim confidently that, for courage and daring
chivalry and bravery, the world has never seen the superiors of the
Southern soldiers. I think I can assert defiantly that the annals of
time present no leaves more brilliant than those upon which are
recorded the deeds and achievements of the followers of the Southern
Cross. I think I can proclaim triumphantly that, from the South's
beloved President, and the peerless commander of her armies in the
field, down to the private in her ranks, there was a display of
patriotism perhaps unequalled (certainly never surpassed) since this
passion was implanted in the human breast.
But as grand as the South was in her sons, she was grander in her
daughters; as sublime as she was in her men, she was sublimer in her
women.
History is replete with bright and beautiful examples of woman's
devotion to home and birthland; of her fortitude, trials, and
sufferings in her country's cause, and the women of the Confederacy
added many luminous pages to what had already been most graphically
written.
Yes, these Spartan wives and mothers, with husbands or sons, or both,
at the front, directed the farming operations, supporting their
families and supplying the armies; they sewed, knitted, weaved, and
spun; then in the hospitals they were ministering angels, turning the
heated pillow, smoothing the wrinkled cot, cooling the parched lips,
stroking the burning brow, staunching the flowing blood, binding up
the gaping wounds, trimming the midnight taper, and sitting in the
stillness, only broken by the groans of the sick and wounded, pointing
the departing spirit the way to God; closing the sightless eyes and
then following the bier to Hollywood or some humble spot, and then
dropping the purest tear.
They saw the flames licking the clouds, as their homes, with their
clinging memories, were reduced to ashes; they heard of the carnage of
battle, followed by the mother's deep moan, the wife's low sob--for,
alas! she could not weep--the orphan's wail, and the sister's lament.
But amid flame, carnage, death, and lamentations, though their land
was reddening with blood, and their beloved ones were falling like
leaves in autumn, they stood, like heroines, firm, steadfast, and
constant.
Oh! women of the Confederacy, your fame is deathless; you need not
monument nor sculptured stone to perpetuate it. Young maidens, gather
at the feet of some Confederate matron in some reminiscent hour, and
listen to her story of those days, now more than thirty years past,
and hear how God gave her courage, fortitude, and strength to bear her
privations, and bereavements, and live.
TRIBUTE OF JUDGE J. H. REAGAN, OF TEXAS, POSTMASTER-GENERAL OF
CONFEDERATE STATES
I never felt my inability to do justice to any subject so keenly as I
do when attempting to do justice to the character, services, and
devotion of the women of the Confederacy. They gave to the armies
their husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers, with aching hearts, and
bade them good-bye with sobs and tears. But they believed their
sacrifice was due to their country and her cause. They assumed the
care of their homes and of the children and aged. Many of them who had
been reared in ease and luxury had to engage in all the drudgery of
the farm and shop. Many of them worked in the fields to raise means of
feeding their families. Spinning-wheels and looms were multiplied
where none had been seen before, to enable them to clothe their
families and furnish clothing for the loved ones in the army, to whom,
with messages of love and encouragement, they were, whenever they
could, sending something to wear or eat. And like angels of mercy they
visited and attended the hospitals, with lint and bandages for the
wounded, and medicine for the sick, and such nourishment as they could
for both, and their holy prayers at all times went to the throne of
God for the safety of those dear to them and for the success of the
Confederate cause. There was a courage and a moral heroism in their
lives superior to that which animated our brave men, for the men were
stimulated by the presence of their associates, the hope of applause,
and by the excitements of battle. While the noble women, in the
seclusion and quietude of their homes, were inspired by a moral
courage which could only come from God and the love of country.
GENERAL FREEMANTLE (OF THE BRITISH ARMY)
[In "Three Months in Southern Lines."]
It has often been remarked to me that when this war is over the
independence of the country will be due in a great measure to the
women: for they declare that had the women been desponding they never
could have gone through with it. But, on the contrary, the women have
invariably set an example to the men of patience, devotion, and
determination. Naturally proud and with an innate contempt for the
Yankees, Southern women have been rendered furious and desperate by
the proceedings of Butler, Milroy, and other such Federal officers.
They are all prepared to undergo any hardship and misfortunes rather
than submit to the rule of such people; and they use every argument
which women can employ to infuse the same spirit into their male
relatives.
SHERMAN'S "TOUGH SET"
After Sherman took possession of Savannah he soon issued orders,
driving out of the city the wives of Confederate officers and
soldiers. While these women were packing their trunks, he sent
soldiers to watch them.
The ladies sent a remonstrance to the general, and here is his reply:
"You women are the toughest set I ever knew. The men would have given
up long ago but for you. I believe you would keep this war up for
thirty years."
TRIBUTE OF GENERAL BUELL
The following are some of the words quoted from General Buell, one of
the most high-toned and gallant of the Federal generals, and who saved
the Federal army from complete defeat at the battle of Shiloh. This
appeared in the _Century Magazine_, and afterward in the third volume
of "Battles and Leaders in the Civil War." After speaking of the
confidence of the Southern soldier in his commander, General Buell
then speaks of another influence which nerved the heart of the
Confederate soldier to valorous deeds:
"Nor must we give slight importance to the influence of Southern women
who, in agony of heart, girded the sword upon their loved ones and
bade them go. It was expected that these various influences would give
a confidence to leadership that would tend to bold adventure and leave
its mark upon the contest.
"Yes; the Confederate soldier has gone down in all histories as the
most peerless, most gallant and matchless hero the world ever
produced."
TRIBUTE OF JUDGE ALTON B. PARKER, OF NEW YORK
Nothing in all recorded history of mankind has been more pathetic,
more heroic, more deserving of admiration and sympathy than the
attitude of the Southern people since 1865. As fate would have it,
their defeat in war was the smallest of their woes, because it would
neither threaten nor bring dishonor. But the new _post-bellum_ contest
with military power, with theft and robbery, with poverty and enforced
domination of a race lately in slavery, forced as it was without time
for recovery, and that, too, in their own homes, required a courage a
little less than superhuman.
HEROIC MEN AND WOMEN
[President Roosevelt, in his speech at Richmond, October 18, 1905.]
Great though the meed of praise is which is due the South for the
soldierly valor of her sons displayed during the four years of war, I
think that even greater praise is due her for what her people have
accomplished during the forty years of peace which followed. For forty
years the South has made not merely a courageous, but at times a
desperate struggle, as she has striven for moral and material
well-being. Her success has been extraordinary, and all citizens of
our common country should feel joy and pride in it; for any great deed
done, or any fine qualities shown, by one group of Americans, of
necessity reflects credit upon all Americans. Only a heroic people
could have battled successfully against the conditions with which the
people of the South found themselves face to face at the end of the
civil war. There had been utter destruction and disaster, and wholly
new business and social problems had to be faced with the scantiest
means. The economic and political fabric had to be readjusted in the
midst of dire want, of grinding poverty. The future of the broken,
war-swept South seemed beyond hope, and if her sons and daughters had
been of weaker fiber there would have been in very truth no hope. But
the men and the sons of the men who had faced with unfaltering front
every alternation of good and evil fortune from Manassas to
Appomattox, and the women, their wives and mothers, whose courage and
endurance had reached an even higher heroic level--these men and these
women set themselves undauntedly to the great task before them. For
twenty years the struggle was hard and at times doubtful. Then the
splendid qualities of your manhood and womanhood told, as they were
bound to tell, and the wealth of your extraordinary natural resources
began to be shown. Now the teeming riches of mine and field and
factory attest the prosperity of those who are all the stronger
because of the trials and struggles through which this prosperity has
come. You stand loyally to your traditions and memories; you also
stand loyal for our great common country of to-day and for our common
flag, which symbolizes all that is brightest and most hopeful for the
future of mankind; you face the new age in the spirit of the age.
Alike in your material and in your spiritual and intellectual
development you stand abreast of the foremost in the world's
progress.
THE WOMEN OF THE SOUTH
[Joel Chandler Harris, in Southern Historical Papers.]
Southern women have been heretofore referred to only as the standards
of fiction. There are three pieces of fiction that have had a long and
popular run in what may be described in a large way as the North
American mind. One is that the stage representations of negro
characters are true to life; another is that the poor white trash of
the South are utterly worthless and thriftless; and the other is that
the white woman of the South lived in a state of idleness during the
days of slavery, swinging and languishing in hammocks while bevies of
pickaninnies cooled the tropical air with long-handled fans made of
peacock tails.
Preposterous as they are, age has made these fictions respectable,
especially in the North. They strut about in good company, and
sometimes a sober historian goes so far as to employ them for the
purpose of bolstering up his sectional theories, or, what is still
worse, his prejudices.
I do not know that these fictions are important, or that they are even
interesting. If there was an explosion every time truth was outrun by
his notorious competitor, the man who sleeps late of a morning would
wake up with a snort and imagine that the universe was the victim of a
fierce and prolonged bombardment.
_Wives of Planters_
The busiest women the world has ever seen were the wives and daughters
of the Southern planters during the days of slavery. They were busy
from morning until night, and sometimes far into the night. They were
practically at the head of the commissary and sanitary departments of
the plantation. It was a part of their duty to see that the negroes
were properly fed, clothed, and shod. They did not, it is true, go
into the market and purchase the supplies; that was a matter that
could be attended to by even a dull-witted man; but after the supplies
were bought it was the woman's intelligent management that caused them
to be properly distributed.
I have never yet heard of a Southern woman who surrendered the keys of
her smoke-house and store-room to an overseer. The distribution of the
supplies, however, was a comparatively small item. Take, for example,
the clothing provided for, say, one hundred negroes, male and female,
large and small. The cloth was bought in bolts, though occasionally a
considerable portion was woven on the plantation on the old-fashioned
hand-looms. Whether bought or woven, the cloth had to be cut out and
made into garments. Who was to superintend and see to all this if not
a woman? Who was at the head of the domestic establishment? There were
seamstresses to make up the clothes, but all the details and
preparations had to be looked after by the mistress, and it oftentimes
fell to her lot to go down on her knees on the floor and cut out the
garments for hours at a time.
_Sanitary Experts_
And then there was the health of the negroes--a very important item
where a twenty-year-old field hand was worth $1,500 in gold. Who was
to look after the sick when, as frequently happened, the physician was
miles away? Who, indeed, if not the mistress? It was natural,
therefore--and not only natural, but absolutely necessary--that a part
of the store-room should be an apothecary's shop on a small scale, and
that the Southern woman should know what to prescribe in all the
simpler forms of disease. It is to be borne in mind that when the
negroes came in from their work the plantation became a domestic
establishment, and its demands were such that it was necessary for a
woman to be at the head of it. On the energy, the industry and the apt
management of the mistress the success of the plantation depended to
a great extent. It was not often these qualities were lacking, either,
for they were absolutely essential to the success, the comfort, and
the moral discipline of the establishment.
_Queen of the Kitchen_
Then there was the kitchen. No Southern woman could afford to turn
that important department over to a negro cook. Such a thing was not
to be thought of. The mistress of the plantation was also the mistress
of the kitchen. In order to teach their negroes the art of cooking,
the Southern women had to know how to cook themselves, and they were
compelled to gain their knowledge by practical experience, for the
kitchen is one of the places where theories cannot be entertained.
There are negro women still living who got their training in the
plantation kitchen, under the eyes of their mistresses, and their
cooking is a spur to the appetite and a remedy for indigestion. It is
no wonder that a Georgia woman, when she heard the negroes were really
free, gave a sigh of relief and exclaimed: "Thank heaven! I shall have
to work for them no more!"
These Southern women were the outgrowth of the plantation system, the
result of six or seven generations of development. On that system they
placed the impress of their humanity and refinement; and the outcome
of it is to be seen in the condition of the negro race to-day. In the
sphere of their homes and in their social relations they exercised a
power and influence that has no parallel in history. As they were
themselves, so they trained their daughters to be.
_In This Generation_
As the vine was, so must the fruit be. I have tried to describe the
mistress of the plantation for the reason that her characteristics and
tendencies have been transmitted to the Southern women of this
generation and to the young girls who are growing into womanhood. It
is inevitable, however, that certain of these characteristics should
be modified or amplified according as the circumstances of an
environment altogether new may demand.
I know of no more beautiful or romantic civilization than that which
blossomed under the plantation system, and yet, in the natural order
of things, it would have inevitably run to caste distinctions. It had
social ideals that were impracticable, and it had literary ideals that
were foolish; nevertheless, after everything had been said, caste
distinctions under the plantation system would have been less
distasteful than those which are now in process of organization in
some parts of this country.
Whatever the development of Southern civilization might have been
under the old system it has come under the domination of the new. That
the new has been strengthened and sweetened thereby I think will not
be denied by impartial observers who have no pet theories to nurse.
Women of to-day still possess the characteristics that made their
mothers and their grandmothers beautiful and gracious; still possess
the refinement that built up a rare civilization amid unpromising
surroundings; still possess the energy and patience and gentleness
that wrought order and discipline on the plantations.
_An Inheritance of Graciousness_
Take, for example, the home life of the plantation. It was larger,
ampler, and more perfect than that which exists in the republic
to-day, not because it was more leisurely and freer from care, but
because the aims and purposes of the various members of the family
were more concentrated. The hospitality that was a feature of it was
more unrestrained and simpler, because it bore no relation whatever to
the demands and suggestions of what is now known in Sunday newspapers
as "Society."
The home life of the old plantation has had a marked influence on
the Southern women of to-day in their struggles with adverse
circumstances. They lack, for one thing, the assurance of those who
have inherited the knack of making their way among strangers. The
poetic young Bostonian who has been writing recently of "The
Mannerless Sex" and "The Ruthless Sex" could never have made the
Southern woman a text for his articles, and I trust that for
generations yet to come they will retain the gentleness and the
graciousness that belong to them by right of inheritance.
_A Beneficent Influence_
Comparatively speaking, it has been but a few years since the Southern
woman has been compelled by circumstances to seek a wider and more
profitable field for her talent, her energy, and her industry than the
home and fireside afford, and the experience of these few years has
demonstrated the fact that she is amply able to take care of herself.
In shaping and developing what is called the new literary movement in
the South, she has shown herself to be a far more versatile worker
than the men, more artistic and more conscientious. She has made
herself in art, in science, and in schools; she has taken a place in
the ranks of the journalists; she has a place on the stage and the
platform; she is to be found in many of the trades that are next door
to the arts, in the professions and in business; she is stenographing,
typewriting, clerking, dairying, gardening. She is to be found, in
short, wherever there is room for her, and her field is always
widening.
I think she will exercise a mellowing and restraining influence on the
ripping and snorting age just ahead of us--the rattling and groaning
age of electricity. What part she may play in the woman's rights
movement of the future it is difficult to say. Just now she has no
aptitude in that direction. She has been taught to believe that the
influences that are the result of a happy home-life are more powerful
and more important elements of politics than the casting of a ballot;
and in this belief she seems to be with an overwhelming majority of
American women--the mothers and daughters who are the hope and pride
of the Republic.
Yet she is an earnest and untiring temperance worker. Conservative in
all other directions, she is inclined to be somewhat radical in her
crusade against rum. She is inclined to fret and grieve a little over
the fact that public opinion failed to keep pace with her desires. The
wheels of legislation do not move fast enough for her, and she is
inclined to wonder at it. In the innocence of her heart she has never
suspected that there is a demijohn in the legislative committee-room.
There is no question and no movement of real importance in which she
is not interested. Her devotion and self-sacrifice in the past have
consecrated her to the future, and her sufferings and privations have
taught her the blessings of charity in its largest and best
interpretation.
EULOGY ON CONFEDERATE WOMEN, BY J. L. UNDERWOOD, DELIVERED IN 1896
[The author offers as his tribute to the memory of the Confederate
Women the following lecture just as it came from his brain and
heart in 1896. It was delivered mainly for the benefit of the
Confederate Monument in Cuthbert, Ga. A very serious lip cancer
soon interrupted all lecture work and finally landed him in
Kellam's Hospital in Richmond, Va.]
Ever since 1861 the women of the South have been laying flowers on the
graves of Confederate soldiers and building monuments to their memory.
The humblest of surviving veterans begs the privilege of offering a
wreath of evergreen and immortelles to the memory of the Confederate
women. To the genuine woman, no bouquet is acceptable, not even the
kiss of affection is welcome, unless hallowed by respect. Horatio
Seymour, the great governor of New York, said that the South, prior to
1861, produced "the best men and the best women the world ever saw."
In the early part of the spring of 1861, your speaker heard M.
Laboulaye, one of the foremost men of France in literature and public
life, in a public lecture at the Sorbourne in Paris, utter the
following memorable words: "I am told that in America a lady can
travel alone from Baltimore to New Orleans and will all the way be
protected and assisted. A country where woman is respected as she is
in the Southern States of the American Republic,--a country where
women so richly deserve that respect,--others may say what they
please about slavery in that sunny land, but that's the country for
me." This profound admiration, expressed by the good and great of the
world, while it fills the heart, must surely temper the words of a
Southern writer.
That man is not qualified to admire one woman who sees no good in other
women. Blind partiality is stupid idolatry. The just historian of
Southern women will say nothing in disparagement of the warm-hearted
fraus of Germany, the tasteful, tidy, sparkling women of France, our
rosy cousins of old England, and especially those bustling, bright
little creatures up North, who make things so lively everywhere. When
Titian and Correggio put woman on canvas she is their Italian woman;
Murillo paints her as the lustrous, dark-eyed beauty of his own Spain.
Meissonier's women are French women, and when Rubens paints an angel
or unfallen Eve, she is the fat chubby girl of Holland. But Raphael,
in his celebrated Madonna, the greatest of all paintings, forgets all
nationality, and his picture is just that of a woman. Oh for something
of this cosmopolitan spirit in our sacred task. Nor must history
degenerate into panegyric. Weeds are near the flower-garden, and there
are thorns among the roses. Even among the brave Confederate soldiers
there were some shirkers and cowards. We had our "hospital rats" and
"butter-milk-rangers." In the battle there were some who suddenly got
very thirsty and ran away to get water. As one of these was rushing
from a hot fire to the rear one day, his colonel shouted to him, "What
are you running for? I wouldn't be a baby." "I wish I was a baby, and
a gal baby at that"--was the reply. Another one in Gordon's command,
in another battle, was making tracks to the rear as fast as he could.
General J. B. Gordon shouted, "Stop there, Jim; what makes you run?"
"Because I can't fly," was his reply, as he leaped the fence. So our
Confederate women were not all paragons nor angels; not if you let
their poor husbands tell it. An old soldier in Atlanta has sued for a
divorce from his wife on the plea that during a long life she has
allowed him only four years of peace, and that was when he was away in
the war.
About the time of the surrender in 1865, a Federal brigade, on its
march to take possession of a Georgia city, halted near a farm. As
usual the soldiers went in to get supplies of milk, chickens, etc.,
offering to pay for everything. The old gentleman of the farm when he
heard of their approach had taken to the woods. His wife stood her
ground, and, seizing her first opportunity to let the Yankees "know
what she thought of them," let out upon their devoted heads a torrent
of woman's fury. Her tongue fought the war over again. They became
enraged and literally "cleaned up" the farm, taking mules, wagons,
corn, chickens,--everything in sight. When they had gone the old
farmer came in and when he saw "wide o'er the plain the wreck of ruin
laid" he became desperate. Finally, on the advice of his neighbors, he
went to the headquarters of the general in the city and laid before
him his pitiful complaint. That officer told him he could not help
him. "If you people give my soldiers a civil treatment, I shall see
that they respect your property and pay for everything they get; but
when they are abused and insulted as they were at your house, I can't
restrain them, nor shall I try." "But, see here, General, it is my
mules and other property that they have taken, and I have not abused
your soldiers; it was my wife." "But, sir, you ought to make your wife
hold her tongue." "Well, now, General, I have been trying that forty
years, and if you and your whole army can't make her hold her tongue,
how in the world can you expect me to do it?" The general saw the
situation and kindly ordered everything which had been taken to be
given back to the old farmer.
It has been said that the South has been busy making history and
others busy writing it. Our own people must write it, and our children
must study it. For more than twenty-five years the life of the South
was the drama of the nineteenth century; and no drama is complete
without woman's part in it. The war between the Southern and Northern
States was one of the bloodiest in history. The Southern States
claimed the right of secession from the Union--a right which during
the first seventy years of the Nation's life was never questioned.
The Northern States claimed the right to coerce our States back into
what they called the Union--a right never before thought of.
The die of war was cast, the Rubicon of coercion was crossed, the
gauntlet of blood was thrown down, when the Northern States sent ships
and soldiers to hold Fort Sumter on South Carolina's soil. Again and
again had the Southern States asked the Northern States for the fish
of peace; they were given the serpent of Seward's "irrepressible
conflict." They asked for the bread of simple right; they were given
the stone of invasion. The reinforcement of Fort Sumter was a
declaration of war on the South.
Then, and not till then, did Beauregard's cannon thunder forth the
protest for the rights of States, and the tocsin rang out from the
Potomac to the Rio Grande. The ultimatum was cowardly submission to
sectional dictation. There is something better than peace; that is
liberty. There is something dearer than a people's life; that is a
people's manhood. The South wanted no war; had prepared for no war;
and had but few arms, no navy, few factories and railroads. With a
small population, she was cut off by an effective blockade from the
rest of the world. The Northern States had the national army, navy,
treasury and flag, and all Europe from which to draw soldiers and
supplies.
The South, after mustering every able-bodied man, could enroll, in
all, but 600,000 soldiers, while she fought 2,600,000. Never was there
a war continued for four years at such fearful odds. And yet Richmond,
the Confederate capital, almost in sight of Washington, was only
captured when Sherman and Sheridan, the modern Atillas, had flanked it
with walls of fire, and pillaged the country in its rear. Never has
there been a war in which the weaker so long and so effectually held
the stronger at bay or so often defeated them on the field of battle;
never a war in which the valor of the finally vanquished was so
respected by foes and so universally applauded by the world. The
mention of no battle, from Manassas to Appomattox, from Shiloh to
Franklin, brings a blush to the Confederate soldier. The world
congratulates the Federal soldier on his pension and the Confederate
soldier on his valor. The surrender of Lee's 7,800 to Grant's 130,000
and the roll of 357,679 Federal soldiers living to-day in the Grand
Army of the Republic measure the odds against us. The reduction of the
Federal forces to 1,500,000 during the war and the present pension
roll of 800,000 tell our work. Our poor South was never vanquished.
Her sad fate was simply to be worn out, starved out, burned out, to
die out.
Generously, but truthfully, did Professor Worseley, of England, in his
poem on Robert E. Lee, say of the ill-fated Confederacy,
"Thy Troy is fallen, thy dear land
Is marred beneath the spoiler's heel;
I cannot trust my trembling hand
To write the things I feel.
"Ah, realm of tombs! but let her bear
This blazon to the end of times;
No nation rose so white and fair
Or fell so pure of crimes."
After the surrender a poor Southern soldier was wending his way down
the lane over the "red old hills of Georgia." His old gray jacket that
his wife had woven and his mother made, was all tattered and torn; the
old greasy haversack and cedar canteen hung by his side. From under
his bullet-pierced hat there beamed eyes that had seen many a
battlefield. Said one of his neighbors: "Hello, John; the Yankees
whipped you, did they?" "No, we just wore ourselves out whipping
them." "Well, what are you going to do now, John?" "Why, I'm going
home, kiss Mary, and make a crop and get ready to whip 'em again."
That "Mary" is our theme to-day. Others have told of Confederate
soldiers on the battlefield. God help me to tell of the soldier's
"other-self" behind the battlefield. The brave Southern army was
defending home. The arm of the hero is nerved by his heart, and the
heart of John was Mary, and Mary was the soul of the South. In peace
woman was the queen of that Arcadia which God's blessings made our
sunny land, and never has there been a war in which her enthusiasm
was so intense and her heroic cooperation so conspicuous. Her
effectual and practical work in the departments of the commissary, the
quartermaster and the surgeon, and her magic influence at home and on
the spirit of the army, were something wonderful. The Federal General
Atkins, of Sherman's army, said to a Carolina lady: "You women keep up
this war. We are fighting you. What right have you to expect anything
from us?"
And yet in all she was woman,--nothing but woman. "And the Lord said
it is not good for man to be alone; I will make a help-meet for him."
In Paradise she was the rib of man's side; in Paradise lost she bears
woman's heavy share of his labors and his fate. The history of the
South of 1861 will go down to the centuries with its immortal lesson
that woman's power is greatest, her work most beneficent and her
career most splendid when she moves in the orbit assigned her by
Heaven as the help-meet of man. It is the glory of Southern life and
society that with us woman is no "flaring Jezebel" but our own modest
Vashti.
Thank God the Confederate woman was no Lady Macbeth, plotting treason
for the advancement of her husband; but the loyal daughter Cordelia,
clinging to her old father Lear in his wrongs; no fanatical Catherine
de Medici, thirsting for Huguenot blood, but the sweet Florence
Nightingale, hovering over the battlefield with,
"The balm that drops on wounds of woe,
From woman's pitying eye,"
and making the dying bed of the patriot feel "soft as downy pillows
are." She was no Herodias, calling for the head of an enemy, but the
humble Mary, breaking the alabaster box to anoint the martyr of her
cause; weeping at His cross and watching at His grave. She was no
fierce Clytimnestra, but the loving Antigone leading the blind old
Oedipus, or digging the grave of her brother Polynices; no Amazon
Camilla, "_Agmen agens equitum et florentes aere catervas_," but the
Roman Cornelia, proud of her jewel Gracchi sons, and laying them upon
the altar of her country; no Helen, heartless in her beauty, but the
gentle Creusa, following her husband to be crushed in the ruins of her
ill-fated Troy; no cruel Juno, seeking revenge for wounded pride, but
a pure Vesta, keeping alive the fires of American patriotism; no
Charlotte Corday, plunging a dagger into the heart of the tyrant
Marat, but the calm Madame Roland, under the guillotine of the
Jacobins, raised to sever her proud but all womanly head, and crying
to her countrymen, "Oh, Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy
name!" Who begrudges a moment for the record of her patriotic services
and unremitting toil? Who does not see in her a glorious lesson?
Thank God! the clash of arms has long ago ceased. The temple of Janus
is closed. But the war of pens, the contest of history, is upon us.
For years Southern women had been written down as soulless ciphers or
weakling wives, dragged by reckless husbands into an unholy cause.
Text books of so-called history, teeming with such falsehoods, have
been thrust even into Southern schools. It is high time to protest.
Before God we tell them our mothers were not dupes, but women; they
and our men were not rebels, but patriots, obedient to every law,
loyal to every compact, State and National, of their country; true,
gloriously true, to every lesson taught by Washington and Jefferson,
and moved by every impulse that has made this country great.
But there must be no gall in the inkstand of history. No man can
justly record the truth of the Confederate war who has not risen above
the passions and prejudices incident to such terrible convulsions. No
man with malice to the North can write justly of the South. No man can
appreciate our great Jefferson Davis, who can see nothing good in
President Lincoln. No man can describe the glory of Lee and Jackson,
who shuts his eyes to the soldiership of McClellan, the patriotism of
Hancock, the generosity of Grant, and the knighthood of McPherson and
Custer.
But don't let us go too far in this direction. We might fall into the
other extreme of hypocritical "gush." Let us be careful; yea, honest.
About the best we could do in war times is well shown in the
preaching of a good old Alabama country Baptist preacher in the darker
days of the war. He was a thorough Southerner and "brim full of
secesh," as we used to say, and at the same time a devout Christian.
He was of the old-fashioned type and talked a little through his nose.
His text was the great day when the good people will be gathered to
Heaven from the four corners of the world. Warming up to his theme he
said: "And oh, my brethren,--ah; in the day of redemption the redeemed
of the Lord will come flocking from the four corners of the
earth,--ah! They will come from the East on the wings of the
morning,--ah! I hear them shouting Hallelujah, as they strike their
harps of gold--ah! And they'll come from the West shouting Hosanna in
the highest,--ah! and you'll see them coming in crowds from the
South,--ah; with palms of victory in their hands, ah! And they'll come
from the,--well, I reckon may be a few of them will come from the
North." Oh that's about the way men, women and children down South
felt for twenty years. But, we've moved up on that. Christians grow in
grace, you know. The war is over. There are no enemies now. We now
believe a great many will come from the North. Our old preacher would
not now have a misgiving about all four of the corners.
A few weeks after the surrender of Vicksburg, a large number of sick
paroled Confederate soldiers were sent home on a Federal steamer by
way of New Orleans and Mobile. The speaker was among them. He had been
promoted to the chaplaincy of the Thirtieth Alabama Regiment and soon
found himself strong enough at least to bury the dead as our poor
fellows dropped away every day. The Federal guard on the boat was
under command of Lieutenant Winslow, of Massachusetts, and a nobler
and bigger hearted soldier never wore a sword. Between New Orleans and
Mobile it was necessary to bury our dead in the Gulf. Having no
coffins the Federal lieutenant and the Confederate chaplain would lay
the body, wrapped in the old blanket or quilt, on a plank and then
bind it with ropes and, fastening heavy irons to the feet, we would
gently lower it and let it sink down, down in the briny deep, the
cleanest grave man ever saw. The Northern lieutenant not only took off
his cap and bowed in reverence when the Confederate chaplain prayed,
but with his own hands assisted in all the details of every burial. So
let the North and the South together bury the dead animosities of the
past, take the corpse of bitter falsehood, the prolific mother of
prejudice and hatred, bind it with the cords of patriotism and sink it
into the ocean of oblivion. But publish the truth. The truth lives and
ought to live. Truth never does harm; but, with God and man, it is the
peace angel of reconciliation. Let the testimony be the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth and our people will abide by it
and every patriot will welcome the verdict.
Who were the women of 1861? My old Tennessee father used to teach me
that there is a great deal more in the stock of people than there is
in horses. Blood will tell. These women were the direct descendants of
those bold, hardy Englishmen, who, under John Smith, Lord Delaware,
Lord Baltimore and General Oglethorpe made settlements on the Southern
shores and those who, from time to time, were added to their colonies.
They were broad men, bringing broad ideas. They came, not because they
were driven out of England, but because they wanted to come to
America; who thought it no sin to bring the best things of old
England, and give them a new and better growth in the new world; who
first gave the new world trial by jury and the election of governors
by popular vote. English cavaliers who knew how to be gentlemen, even
in the forest. This was the leading blood. From time to time it was
made stronger by a considerable addition of Scotch and Scotch-Irish
and an occasional healthful cross with the very best people of the
North, more soulful and impulsive by some of the blood of Ireland, and
more vivacious by the French Huguenot in the Carolinas and the Creole
in Louisiana. There thus grew up a new English race--English, but not
too English; English but American-English blood, of which old England
is proud to-day. With little or no immigration for many years from
other people, this blood under our balmy sun produced a race of its
own--a Southern people, as Klopstock says of the sweet strong language
of Germany, "Gesondert, ungemischt und nur sich selber gleich."
Distinct, unmixed and only like itself.
This was the blood that made America great, the blood from which the
South gave her Washington and so many men like Henry, Jefferson,
Madison and Monroe; that out of seventy-two first years of this
Republic furnished the President for fifty-two years; the Chief
Justice all the time, and the leaders of Senates and of Cabinets; the
blood of Calhoun and Clay and Lowndes and Pinkney and Benton and
Crawford; Cobb and Berrien, Hall and Jenkins, Toombs and Stevens; the
blood that produced our Washington, Sumter and Marion to achieve our
independence of Great Britain; Scott and Jackson to fight the war of
1812, Clark and Jackson to conquer from the Indians all the splendid
country between the mountains and the Mississippi, and Taylor and
Scott to win vast territories from Mexico.
This was the blood that so often showed how naturally and gracefully a
Southern woman could step from a country home to adorn the White House
at Washington; the blood that made the South famous for its women,
stars at the capital and at Saratoga; favorites in London and Paris;
and queenly ladies in their homes, whether that home was a log cabin
in the forest or a mansion by the sea. It was common for Northern and
European people to praise the taste of Southern women, especially in
matters of dress. They did have remarkable taste in dressing, for they
had a form to dress and a face to adorn that dress. Neither war nor
poverty could mar their grace of form nor beauty of face.
It is said of the great Bishop Bascomb, of the Southern Methodist
Church, that, in the early years of his ministry, he was so
handsome and graceful in person, and so neat in his dress, that a
great many of his brethren were prejudiced against him as being
what they called "too much of a dandy." For a long time the young
orator was sent on mountain circuits to bring him down to the level of
plain old-fashioned Methodism. It was proposed to one of his
mountain members who was very bitter about the preacher's fine
clothes that he give Bascomb a suit of homespun. The offer was
gladly accepted, and on the day for Bascomb's appearance in the
plain clothes the old brother was early on the church grounds to
glory in having made the city preacher look like other folks. Imagine
his chagrin when Bascomb walked up, looking in homespun as he looked
in broadcloth, an Apollo in form and a Brummel in style. "Well I do
declare!" said the old man. "Go it, brother Bascomb; I give it up; It
ain't your clothes that's so pretty, it's jist you." So our
Southern women were just as charming in the shuck hats and home-made
cotton dresses of 1864, as in the silks and satins of 1860.
But by their fruits ye shall know them. Walk with me on the streets of
Richmond and Charleston. Go with me to any of our country churches
throughout these Southern States and I will show you, among the many
poor daughters of these women, that same classic face that tells of
the blood in their veins. Go with me back to the Confederate army and
you will see in such generals as the Lees, Albert Sidney Johnston,
Breckinridge, Toombs, the Colquitts, Gordon, Evans, Gracie, Jeb.
Stuart, Price, Hampton, Tracy, Ramseur, Ashby and thousands of private
soldiers that face and form that tell of the knightly blood in the
veins of the mothers that bore them.
South Georgia is to be congratulated that in the Confederate monument
recently unveiled at Cuthbert, the artist has at least given what is
sadly lacking in other Confederate monuments to private soldiers, the
genuine face of the Southern soldier, that face which is a just
compliment to the Confederate mother. The artists who cast some other
monuments in the South had seen too little of Southern people, and had
put on some of our monuments the pug nose and bullet head of other
people.
Our mothers and grandmothers lived mostly in the country, and drank in
a splendid vigor from the ozone of field, and forest, and mountain.
They were trained mostly at home by private teachers or in common
schools run on common sense principles, and in "the old-time
religion," without "isms," fanaticism, or cant. They were taught the
philosophy of life by fathers who thought and manners by mothers who
were the soul of inborn refinement. They thought for themselves, and
indulged no craze for things new, and they aped no foreigners. In
conversation they didn't end every sentence with the interrogation
point, but followed nature and let their voices fall at periods. They
never said "thanks," but in the good old English of Addison and
Goldsmith, said "I thank you." They never spoke of a sweetheart as "my
fellow," and would have scorned such a word as "mash." They never
walked "arm clutch," nor allowed Sunday newspapers to make five-cent
museums of their pictures. Their entertainments were famous for
elegance and pleasure, but they had no euchre-clubs. Indeed, we doubt
if many of them ever heard of a woman's club of any kind. They were
fond of "society," but would have had a profound contempt for that
so-called "society" of our day, in which the man is a prince who can
lead the german, spend money for bouquets and part his hair in the
middle. They didn't wear bloomers, nor did many of them ever dress
decolette. They were clothed and in their right mind. They never
mounted platforms to speak nor pulpits to preach, and yet their
influence and inspiration gave Southern pulpits and platforms a
world-wide fame. Their highest ambition was to be president of home.
They were Southern women everywhere, at home and abroad, in church and
on the streets, in parlor and kitchen, when they rode, when they
walked. Gentle, but brave; modest, but independent. Seeking no
recognition, the true Southern woman found it already won by her
worth; courting no attention, at every turn it met her, to do willing
homage to her native grace and genuine womanhood.
Now, to appreciate the enthusiasm of such women in the Confederate
war, you must remember that great principles were at stake in that
struggle, and that woman grasps great principles as clearly as man,
and with a zeal known only to herself. See with what prompt intuition
and sober enthusiasm woman received the Christian religion. Martha, of
Bethany, uttered the great keynote of the Christian creed long before
an apostle penned a line. The primitive evangelist Timothy, the
favorite of the great Apostle Paul, was trained by his grandmother
Lois and his mother Eunice; and the pulpit orator Apollos studied at
the feet of Priscilla. The great lamented Dr. Thornwell, of South
Carolina, who was justly called the "John C. Calhoun of the
Presbyterian Church" of the United States, loved to tell it that he
learned his theology from his poor old country Baptist mother. In
politics, as in religion, our mothers may not have read much, and they
talked less, but they heard much and thought the more. Before the war
the reproach was often hurled at Southern men that they talked
politics. God's true people talked religion from Abel to the invention
of the art of printing. They had a religion to talk. Our fathers did
talk politics, for, thank God, they had politics worth talking--not
the picayune politics of the demagogue office-seeker of our day; not
the almighty dollar politics of the bloated bond-holder and the
trusts, the one-idea craze of the silver mine-owner, nor the tariff
greed of the manufacturer; not the imported European communism that
would crush one class to build up another, not the wild anarchy that
would pull down everything above it and blast everything around it.
The South was intensely American, and her people loved American
politics and talked American politics. She entered into the
Revolutionary war with all her soul. Southern statesmanship lifted
that struggle from a mere rebellion to a war of nations by manly
secession from Great Britain in North Carolina's declaration of
independence at Mecklenburg. The Philadelphia declaration was drawn up
by the South's Jefferson and proposed by Virginia. This was the great
secession of 1776. To the Revolutionary war the South sent one hundred
out of every two hundred and nine men of military age, while the North
sent one hundred out of every two hundred and twenty-seven. (We quote
from the official report of General Knox, Secretary of War.) Virginia
sent 56,721 men. South Carolina sent 31,000 men, while New York, with
more than double her military population, sent 29,830. New Hampshire,
with double the population of South Carolina, sent only 18,000. The
little Southern States sent more men in proportion to population than
even Massachusetts and Connecticut, who did their part so well in that
war.
It was Southern politics that proposed the great union of the
sovereign States in 1787. To that union the three States of Virginia,
North Carolina, and Georgia have added out of their own bosoms ten
more great States. These Southern States were the mothers of States,
and most naturally did they talk of States and State's rights.
Southern politics, prevailing in the national councils against the
bitter protests of New England, carried through the war of 1812; added
Florida to the Union, and, by the purchase of Louisiana, all the
Trans-Mississippi valley from the Gulf to Canada. It was Southern
politics against the furious opposition of New England that annexed
Texas, and, by the war with Mexico, brought in the vast territory far
away to the Pacific. The South sent 45,000 volunteers to the Mexican
war; the whole North, with three times the population, sent 23,000.
Thus the South was the mother of territories, and was it not natural
that she should talk of territories and of her rights in the
territories?
In political platforms, in legislative enactments, and notably in the
election of Mr. Lincoln in 1860, the more populous North declared that
the Southern States should be shut out from all share in the
territories bought with common treasure and blood. Our women, a child,
a negro, could see the iniquity of the claim.
The action of the North in regard to national territory was an edict,
too, that the negroes, through no fault of their own, should be shut
up in one little corner of the country.
Then when the South sought the only alternative left her, that of
peaceable secession, her right to go was justified by the terms of
the Constitution; by the distinct understanding among the sovereign
States when they entered the Union, more directly insisted and put on
record by the three States of Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island
than any other State; by the secession convention of New England in
the war of 1812; by the Northern secession convention in Ohio in 1859
and the reiterated declarations of Henry Ward Beecher, and by Wendell
Phillips, and Horace Greeley, William Lloyd Garrison and the other
great leaders of Northern thought in 1860.
As to coercing the States back into the Union, President Buchanan well
said at the time there was "not a shadow of authority" for it, and
Governor Seymour, of New York, truthfully said "coercion is
revolution."
Again, remember that wrongs pierce deeper into the heart of woman than
into the more callous soul of man. For years vast multitudes of the
people of the North had kept up a furious war against the South in
books and newspapers; in pulpits and religious conventions; in
political platforms and State assemblies. Oh, it makes the blood run
cold to think of the relentless malignity of the fanaticism of those
days. No parlors nor churches too sacred for bitter onslaught on
Southern people; no epithets too vile; no slanders too black; no
curses too deadly to be hurled at Southern men and women. But
war,--yes, blood-red war was really, and almost formally declared by
the Northern endorsement of Henry Ward Beecher's "Sharpe's rifles"
crusade against Southern settlers in Kansas; and the war of 1861 was
actually begun by John Brown's murderous raid at Harper's Ferry in
Virginia in 1859. The North made him a hero martyr. John Brown's
rifle shot in Virginia only alarmed the angel of peace. The Northern
applause of John Brown drove her away from our unhappy land. By his
apotheosis the Northern people made his rifle shot at Harper's
Ferry the skirmish firing of the impending war, to be answered by our
manly cannon at Charleston in 1861. Puritan intolerance scourged
Roger Williams out of Massachusetts for nonconformity in religion;
and Puritanism scourged the South out of the Union in 1861 for
nonconformity in politics. The Southern woman's heart felt to the
very core and resented as only woman can resent, the sting of that
merciless lash.
This is an age of monuments, and your speaker has undertaken to erect
one in book form to the memory of Confederate women. When this thought
comes to be put in marble or brass, as it will some day soon, let that
monument rest on the broad granite foundation of truth. Then as the
artist begins to put in bas relief the symbols of the virtues of the
Southern women of 1861, and the souvenirs of her heroic life, let the
first scene be that of a scroll, the Constitution of the United
States, held in the unsullied hands of the great Jefferson Davis, as
he marches out from the United States court, under whose warrants he
had been held for treason, again a free man. Let that picture tell of
the undying loyalty of our mother and her people to the organic law of
the land: that Southern men wrote it and their sons have ever honored
and loved it: Tell it in Gath, publish it in the streets of Aekelon,
that those who crushed us were the men who despised, hawked at and
cursed the Constitution.
The South at Montgomery swore fresh allegiance to the Constitution
handed down by our American fathers, and carried with her through all
the wilderness march the sacred old Ark of the Covenant. And when our
Confederate head, the peerless Jefferson Davis, our chosen standard
bearer of State sovereignty and home rule, was brought to trial,
bearing in himself the alleged sins of us all, charged with being a
rebel, that document showed him to be a stainless patriot; and though
the mob of millions was shouting, "Crucify him, crucify him!" the
highest courts of the Federal Government declared by his quiet and
silent, but significant release, as Pilate did of Jesus, "We find no
fault in this man." The Constitution of the United States is a
standing declaration of the sinlessness of the Confederate cause.
Let the artist next put on the monument a picture of an old negro
woman, the old Southern "mammy," with the child of her mistress in her
arms. Near by let old Uncle Jacob be leading the little white boy,
while down in the cornfield near by are seen Jacob's sons and
daughters at work singing the cheerful songs which the poor negro now
has heart to sing no more. In the distance picture the faithful Bob or
Mingo coming from the battlefield, bearing the dead body of his young
master.
Let that picture tell to all generations the story of slavery. We had
slavery, but, thank God, it was Southern slavery,--Christian slavery.
Truth will explain the paradox, if there was any paradox. It had its
evils, and nobody blushes because we had it, nor whines because it is
gone. But as for any sin of the South in it, let the first stone of
condemnation be thrown by that people who had no fathers cruel to
their children, no husbands harsh to their wives, and no rich man
unjust to the poor laborer.
The South never enslaved a single negro, never brought one to America.
Georgia was the first of the settlements to forbid slavery, and
Georgia and Virginia were the foremost States in cutting off the slave
trade. The colony of Virginia petitioned twenty times against the
continuance of the slave trade. The negroes were enslaved by their own
savage chiefs in Africa. England and the Northern people brought them
to America and sold them for gold. The Dutch brought twenty to
Virginia, but were forbidden to bring any more. When found less
profitable in the colder climate of the North, the negroes were sold
South to become valuable tillers of the soil, and, after the invention
of the cotton gin, to make the country rich. The Northern people at a
good profit sold their slaves down South, put the money at interest,
suddenly got pious, and waged a fierce war on the people who bought
them. That's history.
In 1861, on the first Sunday after the news of the fall of Fort
Sumter reached England, the author, in company with a friend from
Pennsylvania, who was an anti-slavery man, attended services in Mr.
Spurgeon's chapel in London. The great city was wrapped in the
deepest gloom. The war storm in America was expected to ruin
manufactures and trade throughout Great Britain. Mr. Spurgeon and
his people seemed bowed down with sorrow. On returning to our
hotel my Northern friend remarked that he knew I didn't approve of
Spurgeon's prayer about slavery. I said to him, "R----, just there
you are mistaken. Some of my people in Alabama some time ago burned
Spurgeon's books because of some of his abolition views, but when
I go home and tell them how this great Christian prayed to-day they
will respect his honesty and sincerity. We blame nobody for being
anti-slavery, but we do abominate fanatical abolitionism. Spurgeon is
no fanatic. Listen to this Englishman: 'O God, our people are in the
ashes of woe. A dreadful war beyond the ocean has cut off our
commerce and closed our factories, and thousands of our poor must
sadly suffer. The people of the American States are bone of our bone
and flesh of our flesh. O Lord, pity them, and pity us. O God, they
and we have sinned in enslaving our fellow men. England put slavery
on her colonies against the protest of those Southern people, and
England must suffer Thy judgments for her part. Forgive the North,
forgive the South, and forgive England. O pity especially the people
of that section where the war will bear so heavily and pity the poor
everywhere.'
"Now, R----, that's a Christian prayer that we respect; and while
Spurgeon goes back one hundred and fifty and even two hundred years
and tells the truth about slavery, and for his English people, even
to-day, shoulders their responsibility in this matter, how are
thousands (thank God, but not all) of your Northern preachers in your
churches at the North praying to-day? 'We thank Thee, Lord, that this
war has come. Somebody will get hurt, but we people up this way will
come out all right because we are so innocent and so righteous. O
Lord, we thank Thee that we are holy and not as other men are,
especially these wicked Southern people. We thank Thee for short
memories; that we have forgotten that we brought the negroes from
Africa, kept them as long as it paid us, and then sold them to these
Southerners; that we have forgotten that when Virginia and Maryland
wanted to put an end to the slave trade, we out-voted them and kept
the slave trade open until 1808. Lord, we could have seceded from
these savage Southern States long ago and got rid of any connection
with slavery, for we believed in secession until just now. But, Lord,
if we let the South go, as Mr. Lincoln says, where will we get our
revenues? We thank Thee too that we have forgotten that those
Southerners can't get rid of the negroes without kicking them into the
Gulf of Mexico. Lord, we thank Thee that we can see nothing but our
own righteousness. We have tried to reform those wicked Southerners
and make them good like ourselves, but we couldn't. Now, Lord, we have
brought on a war and we turn it over to Thee. We'll hire Dutchmen and
Irishmen to help Thee do our fighting, and we'll stand off and enjoy
the fun. Now, as Thou art about to pour out the vials of Thy mighty
wrath upon the abominable Southern people, do, Lord, just give
'em--fits.' Now, R----, there's the difference between honest
anti-slavery in England and the hypocrisy of the crusade in America."
The truth is that in Southern homes, the negro prospered and
multiplied as no other laboring class has ever done. The South shared
with him its bread, its medicines, its homes and its churches. M. de
La Tours, the eminent French hygienist, truthfully said that "The
slaves of the South were the best fed and the best cared for laborers
that the world ever saw." No chain-gang, no penitentiary, for the
negro, no lynchings, and no crimes to be lynched for, when the negro
was under the influence of our mothers and grandmothers. God forgive
the fanatic who in later days put folly in his head and the devil in
his heart. Our mothers trusted him and he trusted them. All through
the war, while nearly all the white men were away in the army, the
negro slave was the protector and the support of Southern families.
Our mothers would have died for the negroes, and negroes would have
died for them. In Wilson's raid near Columbus, Ga., his soldiers were
about to destroy a patch of cane belonging to a widow. The brave woman
took her gun and declared she would shoot the first man that touched
her property. In their rage they raised their rifles to shoot her
down. Just then her old cook rushed in between them, saying, "If you
are going to kill 'old miss,' you'll have to kill me, too."
When Sherman was plundering South Carolina, some of his soldiers heard
that a young lady had a very fine gold watch concealed in her bosom.
They demanded it, and on her refusal they were about to seize her,
when Delia, her faithful servant, defied them. "Fore God, buckra, if
one of younner put your nasty hand on dis chile of my ole missus you
got to knock Delia down fust."
The monument to the Southern woman will be a monument to our faithful
old Dinahs and Delias too. The old ex-slaves will gather at its base
and as the tears stream down their dusky cheeks they will say, as they
say now, "Dat's de best friend the poor nigger ever had," and
enlightened negroes, like Booker Washington, will tell the true story
that out of slavery the North got money, the South got ruin, and the
negro got civilization, Christianity, and contentment.
Let the next picture be an ear of corn, a spinning-wheel, and a
hand-loom. Ceres was the goddess of the Sunny South, and the staff of
our armies was the corn of our own fields. The South, however
prosperous, was not made up of rich people. Not one man in ten owned a
slave; not one slave holder in ten was wealthy. The small farms, many
of them under the care of the soldier's wife and the faithful old
negro foreman, and many more tilled by the soldier's boys under the
eye of their mother, yielded a very large share of the Confederate
supplies. While Minerva taught our men war she taught our women
household work, and quickly did she make Southern beauties Arachnes at
the loom and Penelopes with the knitting needles. They knew how to
adorn the parlor and play the piano, but, when necessity came, like
Lemuel's mother, they "sought wool and flax and wrought diligently
with their hands," or even, like Rebecca, they could go out into the
field and draw water for the cattle; or, like Ruth, hold the plow
steady in the furrows, or glean grain at harvest time. False histories
have pictured our mothers as doll babies. Let that monument tell of
the wonderful pluck, energy, and strength, while it tells of the
patriotism of the smartest and sweetest and bravest and strongest doll
babies the world ever saw.
The artist must do his best when he puts on that monument a little
white hand--the well-shaped, classic hand of the Southern woman. In
that hand must be held the little white handkerchief. What a part that
handkerchief played in the war! Old soldiers, as you rode off down the
lane, again and again you turned to take the farewell look at home,
sweet home, and there was that little white handkerchief waving at the
gate; or when your company left the railroad station there, all
around, were the good women of the neighborhood, and as you looked far
back down the track these little white flags bade you woman's "good
bye and God bless you." You never forgot it. Whether we marched past
country homes or through the streets of cities, woman's heart-cheer
greeted us in the handkerchief from the window. Perhaps it was held in
the rheumatic hand of Mrs. General Lee as she looked out from her
knitting in her Richmond home, or, later on we could see behind it the
sad, mourning sleeve of Stonewall Jackson's widow. I tell you, my
countrymen, the bonny blue flag or the Southern Cross was the banner
of the soldier on the battlefield, but the little white handkerchief
was our sacred banner behind the battlefield. The one, in the hands of
the color sergeants, guided our movements in the army; but the other,
in woman's hand, inspired our movements everywhere.
Put here a knapsack, the rough, old, oil-cloth knapsack of the
Confederate soldier. Poor fellow! he had but few clothes in it, but it
contained something dearer to him than clothes--letters from home. He
kept them all, the most of them written on the blank side of old wall
paper and inclosed in brown envelopes, which perhaps had been turned
so as to be twice used. When our poor boys were killed, their letters
were gathered by the chaplains, litter bearers and burial details, to
be sent to their homes. I am not going to tell what sort of letters
were found in many knapsacks on our battlefields, but it is a fact,
borne out by the testimony of these men, that never was there found a
letter from a Confederate soldier's wife to her husband whose words
would make the most modest blush, or in which she exerted any of her
woman's power or used any of woman's arts to decoy him from the army.
Here is a specimen of a letter from home in a Confederate knapsack:
MITCHELL COUNTY, GA., _July 20, 1863_.
Mr. Jno. Iverson,
Company B, Fourth Regiment, Army of Virginia.
DEAR JOHN:
This leaves us all getting along very well. Nobody sick, and we
finished laying by the corn. The cattle are fat and the hogs doing
finely. We sell some butter and eggs every week. We have plenty to
eat, and know that it's only you that's having a hard time. But we
are all so proud that you are fighting for your country. Will be
so glad when you can get a furlough, but we know that you must,
and will stick to your post of duty. Willie and Jennie send kisses
to their brave papa. We never forget to pray for you. If you get
killed, darling, God will take care of us and we'll all meet in
heaven.
Your, MARY.
That's the way they wrote. Let that knapsack tell forever of the
fortitude, the purity, the loyalty and refinement of the Southern
woman.
Let the next picture be the humble hospital couch.
"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 poor fellows 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 hers up, 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 houses from 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 clasped right 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 the Bible, 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 the first 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.
_Image of the Southern Woman Surmounting the Monument_
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, and the 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.