Nevertheless, there was no doubt, no dismay. The army must be fed and clothed. Boxes must still be sent to the dear boys in the West, or in the trenches around Petersburg and Richmond. Yet how different was the picture. Miss A. C. Clark, of Atlanta, draws a vivid sketch of the scene:
“Were these the same people—these haggard, wrinkled women, bowed with care and trouble, sorrow and unusual toil? These tame, pale, tearless girls, from whose soft flesh the witching dimples had long since departed, or were drawn down into furrows—were they the same school girls of 1861? These women who, with coarse, lean and brown hands, sadly and mechanically were stowing away into boxes, (not large ones,) meat, bread, cabbage, dried fruit, soda, syrup, home-made shoes and coarse home knit socks, garments of osnaburg and homespun, home-woven clothing of every description—these women with scant, faded cotton gowns and coarse leather shoes—these women who silently and apathetically packed the boxes, looking into them with the intense and sorrowful gaze that one casts into the grave—were these, I say, could these be the same airy-robed, white-fingered women, so like flowers, who, months and months ago, (it appeared an eternity) packed away, ’mid laughter and song, smile and jest those articles de luxe for the boys at the front?
“Before the close of the conflict I knew women to walk twenty miles for a half bushel of coarse, musty meal with which to feed their starving little ones, and leave the impress of their feet in blood on the stones of the wayside ere they reached home again. When there, the meal was cooked and ravenously eaten, though there was not even salt to be eaten with it. Yet these women did not complain, but wrote cheerful letters to their husbands and sons, if they were yet living, bidding them to do their duty and hold the last trench.”
What wonder is it? Even superhuman strength could not bear unmoved the burden placed upon the frail bodies and indomitable minds of the women and children. Think of what their losses were. Death on the battlefield or in hospital had brought desolation to tens of thousands of once joyous homes. Every household was in mourning. What Southern family had altogether escaped? The poor suffered with those who had been rich. Mr. James Argo, of Pulaski County, Ga., had fourteen sons and sons-in-law in service. Ex-Governor Wm. A. Graham, of North Carolina, had five sons in the army, and his sister, the wife of the Rev. Dr. Morrison, gave two sons and four sons-in-law to the Southern cause, and among these sons-in-law were D. H. Hill and Stonewall Jackson. The Shuler family, originally from Orangeburg District, South Carolina, had fifty-one direct representatives in the Confederate service. The Easterlings, of South Carolina, had sixty-three. Mrs. Hamrick, of Cleveland County, North Carolina, had seven children, all boys. Six of them went at once into service; the seventh was little more than a child. At Fredericksburg was killed Lieut. Bell, of Augusta County. Twelve of the members of his family wore the Confederate gray, and he was the ninth to be slain, and all of them in the same regiment. But why prolong the harrowing record! It establishes what was asserted in the beginning—that, in the nature and extent of their sorrows and sufferings, the Southern women were tried as no other women were ever tried, and that, whoever else grew hopeless and timorous, they were unflinching and unbending, faithful and true.
But the worst of the agony of the wives and mothers of the South, the worst of their trials and sufferings, was yet to come. It was in the very last days, in the march of Sherman’s columns through Georgia and Carolina, in the raids in Virginia, that the culmination of insult and wrong was reached. From the innumerable descriptions of the brutal and barbarous conduct of the invading armies it is difficult to select those which are most significant, and your patience may already be exhausted. But what is sought to be impressed upon you—so that you shall never forget it—is that the raiders and bummers had no respect for age or sex, for young children, tender women, decrepit old men.
Shortly after the burning of Columbia, a body of Northern troops crossed the Catawba River and entered the town of Lancaster, S. C. What followed is described by a gentle woman who was there:
“At daylight my aged mother was engaged in her devotions, her room being down stairs. In a moment her arms were seized by rough soldiers, who exclaimed: ‘Get up, old woman; praying will do you no good now, for Sherman’s bummers are upon you!’ Her gold spectacles were torn from her eyes, her pocket was rifled, her bureau, valise and dressing table were stripped of every article of value or comfort.
“A lovely little girl of six years, who had treasured her pet doll and a cake of sweet soap, a great luxury in those days, during all her journey from Columbia, sprang out of bed, seized her treasures, and, childlike, darted under the bed for refuge. The same disgusting scene of pillage and violence was occurring in the room as had happened below. At length one of the men approached the bed, and finding it warm, in dreadful language accused us of harboring and concealing a wounded rebel, and swore he would have his heart’s blood. He stooped to look under the bed, and seeing the little white figure crouching in a distant corner, caught her by one rosy little foot and dragged her forth. The child was too terror-stricken to cry, but clasped her little baby, and her soap, fast to the throbbing little heart. The man wrenched both from her and thrust the little one away with such violence that she fell against the bed.”
There were times, however, when the biter was bit. Mrs. Gilmer Breckinridge, of Fincastle, Va., was visited by the enemy. The usual searching and plundering began. One of the men opened a press and, finding a bottle labelled “blackberry wine,” seized it and swallowed the contents at a gulp. No sooner had he done so than, dashing the bottle from him with an oath, he yelled out in rage: