The enemy, halting, made a stand a few yards below the entrance to their residence, firing up the street almost a hailstorm of Minie balls from their Spencer rifles. Apparently indifferent to their danger, these heroic ladies stood unmoved, cheering on our gallant soldiers, among whom were many near and dear to them. Captain Dickinson earnestly entreated them to return to the house, as they were in imminent danger of being killed.
Many ladies brought buckets of water for the heated, famished soldiers who had no time to give even to this needed refreshment. Through all the desperate fight not a citizen was hurt. The sweet incense of prayer arose from hundreds of agonized hearts to the mercy-seat, in behalf of husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers who were in the battle.
“SHE WOULD SEND TEN MORE”
[Judge John H. Reagan’s address in 1897.]
To illustrate the character and devotion of the women of the Confederacy, I will repeat a statement made to me during the war by Governor Letcher, of Virginia. He had visited his home in the Shenandoah Valley, and on his return to the State capitol called at the house of an old friend who had a large family. He found no one but the good old mother at home, and inquired about the balance of the family. She told him that her husband, her husband’s father and her ten sons were all in the army. And on his suggestion that she must feel lonesome, having had a large family with her and now to be left alone, her answer was that it was very hard, but if she had ten more sons they should all go to the army. Can ancient or modern history show a nobler or more unselfish and patriotic devotion to any cause?
WOMEN AT VICKSBURG
[J. L. Underwood.]
On first thought it would be expected that women would be greatly excited when under fire and amid other scenes of actual war. But almost invariably they exhibited during our war a calm fearlessness that was amazing. My girl wife and her war companion, Mrs. Lieutenant Lockett, of Marion, Ala., a daughter of Alabama’s noble war governor, A. B. Moore, spent several months of the spring of 1863 at Vicksburg and its vicinity, to be near their husbands. They were boarding in the city the night when Porter’s fleet ran down the river by the batteries. The cannonading was terrific. I was with my regiment, the Thirtieth Alabama, some few miles away. Next morning, as soon as regimental duties would allow, I hastened to the city. To my astonishment I found that neither “the girls” nor the ladies of the city had been at all alarmed. They seemed to look upon it as a sort of enjoyable episode.