Читать книгу The Women of the Confederacy - J. L. Underwood - Страница 35

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[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 42 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.

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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 44 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 45 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 46 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 47 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 48 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 49 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, 50 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 51 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 52 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 53 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 54 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 55 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 56 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 57 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. 58 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 59 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 60 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 61 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 62 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.