You should have—the South should have—the country should have, a day of commemoration of these women and their work. A waiting that, we can sanctify, with gratitude and devotion, the names of Mrs. B. C. Howard, Mrs. J. Hanson Thomas, Mrs. Peyton Harrison, Mrs. J. Harman Brown, Mrs. John S. Gittings, Mrs. Dora Hoffman, Mrs. Robert H. Carr, Mrs. D. Preston, Mrs. Lurman, Mrs. A. DuBois Egerton, and their associates in compassionate endeavor and merciful achievement.
It was my lot to be taken prisoner in 1862, the night after the battle of South Mountain. After a brief stay at Camp Curtin, near Harrisburg, I was lodged at Fort Delaware. The first persons to be seen in the Fort, excepting always the garrison, were citizens of Baltimore, who were confined there because they ventured to avow their convictions—because they dared to act and speak as freemen should. Among them was Mr. Carpenter, the editor of one of your newspapers, which had been suppressed with Muscovitish promptitude, because it had criticised and condemned some of the minor deities of the Northern Government. What grace and help it gave us to meet those men of yours. There was but the exchange of a glance and hasty word in passing from one barrack-room to another. But we felt that we were not alone, though captives we were. Only a day or two afterwards bales of blankets and clothing came from your city, from your women, to us in Delaware. They gave comfort and even health to many a dilapidated Confederate, for we had not dreamed of capture, and our supplies were meagre indeed. This was not all. Again and again, your superb women, in the pride of their conscience and the beauty of their budding years, came to the Fort and waited there hour after hour, in the trust that there might be some opportunity to bestow a word or a look on our poor boys in gray.
But time presses. Though I could speak of you for hours, you might not care to listen. It must, however, be recorded, that when all else was gone, when life was paralyzed, when hope was dead, you enlarged your sphere of nobility. Because the cause was lost there was new scope and verge for you. When all else failed—when the banner of the South was furled forever—you came forward to alleviate our grief in showing us that you were as true in defeat as in triumph, and that, for you, failure abated not a jot the merit, or the justice of the freedom for which we fought, nor lessened by a particle your interest in us, or your care for us. It seemed, indeed, that in our poverty, in the ashes of our homes and confronting a problem which was then insoluble and is not solved yet, we were dearer to you than in the pomp and pride of a struggle, which—if right were might—must have had the consummation we wished.
Immediately after the surrender at Appomattox, the Baltimore Agricultural Aid Society was formed by a number of your citizens, irrespective of party, to supply a portion of the Southern States, more particularly Virginia, with stock, farming-tools and seed. For this purpose over $80,000 were subscribed and judiciously distributed by local agents who understood the wants of their immediate neighborhoods. This noble charity was for the assistance of the people of the South “in their sorest need, without wounding their pride or insulting their poverty.”
In the spring of 1866 the ladies of Maryland organized the “Southern Relief Association,” with Mrs. B. C. Howard as president, and a strong array of vice-presidents and managers. To facilitate the objects of the association it was determined to hold a fair, which was opened on the 2d of April, 1866, in the Maryland Institute. It was continued until the 13th of the month, and at its close the net receipts were found to be $164,569.97, which was distributed through committees to the various Southern States.
In 1867 the Legislature also appropriated $100,000 “for the relief of the destitute people in the States wasted by civil war,” and appointed commissioners for its distribution. To this sum was added over $21,000 in money and goods, contributed by private individuals. As in many places the people were suffering for the want of food, the commissioners shipped large stores of provisions to various points in North and South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, to be distributed by agents appointed by the Governor of those States. The Secretary of the Navy of the United States, the Hon. G. Welles, placed at their disposal the United States storeship Relief, by which a full cargo of corn and bacon was shipped to Mobile, Ala. The total amount distributed by the commissioners in supplies and money reached $106,623.65.
The Ladies’ Depository, No. 56, North Charles Street, Baltimore, was formed in 1867, for the purpose of uniting in organized effort those who were endeavoring to obtain needle and fancy work for the destitute ladies in the South, impoverished by the war. The first officers and managers were: President, Mrs. Peyton Harrison; vice-president, Mrs. J. H. B. Latrobe.