MEETING A REBEL WOMAN AT NASHVILLE.
THERE was great rejoicing over the fall of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. The gunboats and transport vessels were pressing on to Nashville, which was occupied by the Union army soon after the fall of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. I went up on the first transport.
The women were mostly left behind in the scramble to get out of the city, and they were more intense in war spirit and partisan feeling than the men. In the heat of the excitement the chief hotel was thronged with both parties, where I took lodgings. The women sung ditties about Beauregard and Davis before the door of my bedroom till midnight, at intervals.
The great parlor of the hotel was a scene of the utmost confusion, judging from the tumult of angry voices.
The women blamed the men about them. “Every man who is able to bear arms ought to be ashamed to be seen outside of a war-camp in days like these,” was the sharp rejoinder of a woman to her husband. I did not hear his answer, but suppose from her reply that he said he would only be throwing away his life.
“Throwing away your life, indeed! A man that is not true to our cause at such a time ought not to live.”
Some one was sitting at the piano, and banged the keys of the instrument in wildest fury to drown the sound of the contentions.
The next morning, in the dining-room, every Southern man and woman gave us all a wide berth, not deigning to sit at the same end of the dining-room.
After breakfast I went for a few minutes into the parlor. The lady whose voice I heard in falsetto the night before followed me, accompanied by her colored nurse-girl carrying her baby, perhaps six months old.
I had no purpose of controversy in my heart; and so when the lady said, “My baby is named after the best man in the world—Beauregard,” I only smiled.
“I suppose you Yankees think you can conquer us?”
“That is what the people of the North hope to do.”
“Well, you can’t. There is not men enough in the North to conquer us; for when you kill the men off, the women will take up arms.”
“Well, madam, there are thousands of men gathering and drilling in the North, and they will soon be here; and it’s their firm purpose to maintain the Union, cost what it will.”
“They’ll kill the women, will they?”
“They will conquer the South.”
“Contemptible hirelings! they’ll kill the women, will they?” she hissed.
“I don’t think they want to kill the women; but if that is necessary for the maintenance of the Union, I suppose they will have to do it.”
“Wretches! wretches! They’ll kill the women, will they?” she screamed, and her eyes blazed fire and scintillated like the eyes of a maniac. I thought she was going to leap upon me in her fury. We were standing facing each other; and I made up my mind that if she did assault me that I would do my little share of fighting, and choke a little of the treason out of her. But she changed her mind, and rushed from the room, slamming the door after her with such force as to shake the house to its foundations. A year after that she was playing the rôle of a Union woman, and was quite popular as a loyal Southerner among the officers.
No one in these calm days can imagine the fiery, cruel spirit of war. I was not afraid; the Stars and Stripes were over us, and the Union army within call.
But what seems laughable to me now, was exceedingly exasperating and insulting at that time. There is no question about the matter—the Southern women, in their blind, partisan fury, prolonged the contest to the last extreme of desperation. They could not believe defeat possible.
No longer we hear the clash of arms,
And the cannon’s fearful booming;
No longer the torch of war alarms,
Our cities and homes consuming:
The smoke of battle has cleared away,
And Peace her vigil is keeping,
Though wet with tears are the flowers we lay,
Where our gallant dead are sleeping.