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