INTRODUCTORY NOTE
[By J. L. Underwood.]
For twenty years after the close of the war most of the Southern States, through the bayonet-enforced amendments to the Constitution and the carpet-bag negro governments established under them, were kept under military rule. The men met the awful responsibility and their hideous trials with an amazing courage and sought to counteract, in every possible way, the work of Congress at Washington and the work of the Union Leagues and other secret societies among the negroes at home, and to build up the South in spite of the demoralization of labor. The Ku Klux Klan, a secret vigilance committee, did much good in terrifying the carpet-bag deposits and breaking up the secret armed midnight meetings of the negroes. Rowdy imitators of the Ku Klux afterwards in many instances did much harm.
But the women kept on at work. They have never faltered, and never shown any weariness. Thousands left penniless who were once wealthy, took up whatever work came to hand. The writer knew the daughter-in-law of a wealthy Congressman and the daughter of a governor of two States to plow her own garden with a mule. He saw all over the country the members of the oldest and wealthiest families of the Atlantic coast teaching school, even far in the west. Not a murmur escaped their lips. They cheered each other as they strengthened the nerves of the men.
But they kept up their work for the Confederate soldiers, and keep it up to this day. Soldiers’ graves were everywhere looked after. Memorial associations were organized all over the South. The two great societies 272 of Richmond, the Hollywood and the Oakwood, each looking after thousands of graves, the names of whose occupants are unknown, are doing the most sublime work the world ever saw. The Southern women soon extended their efforts to building Confederate monuments all over the South, providing soldiers’ homes in the various States and securing what pensions the Southern States could afford. As long as they live they work for the cause they loved; when they die their spirit lives on in their worthy daughters.