When the soldiers came home, there was a jubilee, for they brought particular tidings of others as well as themselves. They were feasted and danced to the top of their bent. What if the feast had in it more of tenderness and grace than of sumptuous cheer. Our women gave what they had—denying themselves in giving it—and the soldiers thought more of wife and sister and sweetheart than of mere “cakes and ale.” Then, while the soldiers were away, and before the bitterest times had come, there was the pleasant duty of sending boxes to camp. One of the chroniclers says:
“We girls worked very hard, as we thought, giving concerts, tableaux, &c., by which to raise money with which to purchase for these boxes. I can see even now the bevy of bright-eyed, red-lipped, white-handed girls, flitting hither and thither in their dainty dresses and bright ribbons. What a lovely picture they made tripping, or kneeling by the huge boxes, packing parcels marked for ‘Captain,’ or ‘Lieutenant,’ or ‘Private,’ so and so. I smile with a sadness akin to pain as I recall the contents of those first boxes, the proceeds of what we call labor! Wine and jellies, mammoth cakes and confections, dainty toilet appurtenances, china and majolica shaving cups, inlaid dressing cases, perfumery, &c. There were bursts of silvery laughter and little shrieks of delight as we found one more place where something could be stored. There were books, too, small blue and gold bound volumes of the poets, interlined with pencil, and holding between the leaves a cluster of blue-eyed violets, purple pansies, or a geranium leaf, clasping on its green heart a rosy oleander.”
All such giving of good gifts, be it remembered, was very early in the fray. Yet in the larger cities, as in Richmond, there was always abundant merry-making. In the soft summer days, the sweet stillness broken only by the boom of a distant gun on the lines, there was abundant opportunity for party-giving, for riding excursions, and, it must be said, for innocent flirtations. Though there was, by this time, an abiding ache in nearly every woman’s heart, there was ever a smile for the soldier and a cheering word besides. Nor was the paramount consideration, success in the war, ever forgotten. The man who was not quick to enter the service found no favor in the sight of our women, nor did he who was inclined to linger overlong in town. The story is told of a young lady who was engaged to be married. Her betrothed was, of course, in the army, but suddenly returned home. “Why, have you left the army?” she inquired of him. “I have found a substitute,” he replied. “Well, sir, I can follow your example, and find a substitute, too. Good morning.” And she left him in the middle of the room—a discarded lover, because he was a disgraced soldier.
Then were “starvation” parties in vogue. You remember them. There were no refreshments, save an abundance of water as tawny as the historic stream of Father Tiber. But there was no less merriment, no less jesting, no less coquetting, no less love-making. The coming events cast their shadows before, perhaps. There was something of feverishness in the joy of those days. But through it all the women—“Our Women in the War”—were undaunted and resolute, trusting in the God of Battles, and believing in the justice of our cause, as you and I believe—and as all of us who wore the Confederate gray, and are not renegades or apostates, will believe to the end!
Turn now for a moment from the gay cities to the plantations in the “far South.” There the mails were received irregularly, and news—even ill news—was slow in coming. This made the pain and suffering the greater. Everywhere the lot of the women at home was harder than that of the soldier in the field. A thousand anxieties were theirs which were unknown to him. If he were not killed or wounded in an engagement, he knew it, and he could contentedly await his next chance; but for days, and perhaps weeks, the poor women at home were kept in agonized suspense. Yet their hands were full. There was room for the exercise of all the administrative and executive ability—the power to direct and the will to command—which the slave system conferred upon the Southern women. Out upon those who speak of them, and write of them, as drones, as women who lived in luxurious indolence!
For the sake of one who knew of what he wrote, and who expressed it in every thought and aspiration of his learned and loving life, allow me to recall to you what my dear friend, Dr. G. W. Bagby, of Virginia—humorist, scholar and always gentleman—said of the Virginia matron, who is the type of all our mothers and sisters in the South:
“Over and over, the cares and responsibilities of her station, as the mother of so many children, the mistress of so many servants and the hostess of so many guests, had utterly overwhelmed her. Again and again had she been willing, nay, glad—were it God’s pleasure—to lay down the burden that was too heavy for poor human nature to bear. To her own sorrows she added the sorrows of her friends, her neighbors, her dependents. Into how many negro cabins had she not gone, when the night was far spent and the lamp of life flickered low in the breast of the dying slave! How often she ministered to him with her own hands! Thin hands, wasted with overwork—for she disdained no labor, manual or mental—I can see them now! Nay, had she not knelt by his lowly bed and poured out her heart to God as his soul winged its flight, and closed his glazed and staring eyes as the day was dawning. Yet the morning meal found her at her accustomed seat, tranquil and helpful, and no one but her husband the wiser for her night’s ministrations.