WARNING BY A BRAVE GIRL
[Our Women in the War, pages 63-64.]
I know of a girl who rode through the storm of a winter’s night, many miles, to give information to our soldiers when Sherman was on his way to Atlanta. The country far and wide was filled with soldiers, and skirmishing was of constant occurrence. By her efforts many lives were saved, and as she returned homeward the shot and shell were falling thick and fast around her. Later, a desperate encounter took place in her father’s yard between contending armies, and her courage was wonderful in assisting the wounded and baffling inquiries from the Yankee officers, who made headquarters in her home. She still managed to give important information, and defied detection. This girl is of an ancient family, and soldier blood is in her veins. Her grandfather was a general in the United States army before her mother was grown.
A PLUCKY GIRL WITH A PISTOL
[Our Women in the War, pages 37-39.]
Charleston was under an iron heel, the heel of despair. Every house had its shutters closed and darkened; all the rooms overlooking the streets were abandoned; the women endeavored to give a deserted and dreary aspect to every mansion, and lived as retiringly as possible in the back portions of their dwellings, hoping that the Northern soldiery in the city would suppose such houses to be deserted and therefore would not search them.
But this did not save Mr. Cunningham’s house. By a strange coincidence it was again a company of black Michigan troops, with a negro in command, that burst open the locked gate, tore up the flower garden, and finally streamed up the back piazza steps, armed with muskets and glittering bayonets that shone in the noonday sun, their faces blacker than ink, their eyes red with drink and malice. The three girls saw them from the dining-room and shivered, but not one moment was lost. Cecil pushed the other two into the room, saying, “Stay here, I will go close this door and meet them,” and advancing quickly she reached the entrance to the piazza just as the captain set his foot on the last step, and would have entered, but that her slight person filled up the narrow space.
“What do you want here?” she asked. “Why do you and your troops rush into my house?”
“We want quarters here, and quarters we will have. Move aside and let us in.”