Читать книгу The Women of the Confederacy - J. L. Underwood - Страница 9

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[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. 21 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.”