Chapter I: Symposium of Tributes to Confederate Women (1)

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."