There is no question and no movement of real importance in which she is not interested. Her devotion and self-sacrifice in the past have consecrated her to the future, and her sufferings and privations have taught her the blessings of charity in its largest and best interpretation.
EULOGY ON CONFEDERATE WOMEN, BY J. L. UNDERWOOD, DELIVERED IN 1896
[The author offers as his tribute to the memory of the Confederate Women the following lecture just as it came from his brain and heart in 1896. It was delivered mainly for the benefit of the Confederate Monument in Cuthbert, Ga. A very serious lip cancer soon interrupted all lecture work and finally landed him in Kellam’s Hospital in Richmond, Va.]
Ever since 1861 the women of the South have been laying flowers on the graves of Confederate soldiers and building monuments to their memory. The humblest of surviving veterans begs the privilege of offering a wreath of evergreen and immortelles to the memory of the Confederate women. To the genuine woman, no bouquet is acceptable, not even the kiss of affection is welcome, unless hallowed by respect. Horatio Seymour, the great governor of New York, said that the South, prior to 1861, produced “the best men and the best women the world ever saw.” In the early part of the spring of 1861, your speaker heard M. Laboulaye, one of the foremost men of France in literature and public life, in a public lecture at the Sorbourne in Paris, utter the following memorable words: “I am told that in America a lady can travel alone from Baltimore to New Orleans and will all the way be protected and assisted. A country where woman is respected as she is in the Southern States of the American Republic,—a country where women so richly deserve that respect,—others may say what they 42 please about slavery in that sunny land, but that’s the country for me.” This profound admiration, expressed by the good and great of the world, while it fills the heart, must surely temper the words of a Southern writer.
That man is not qualified to admire one woman who sees no good in other women. Blind partiality is stupid idolatry. The just historian of Southern women will say nothing in disparagement of the warm-hearted fraus of Germany, the tasteful, tidy, sparkling women of France, our rosy cousins of old England, and especially those bustling, bright little creatures up North, who make things so lively everywhere. When Titian and Correggio put woman on canvas she is their Italian woman; Murillo paints her as the lustrous, dark-eyed beauty of his own Spain. Meissonier’s women are French women, and when Rubens paints an angel or unfallen Eve, she is the fat chubby girl of Holland. But Raphael, in his celebrated Madonna, the greatest of all paintings, forgets all nationality, and his picture is just that of a woman. Oh for something of this cosmopolitan spirit in our sacred task. Nor must history degenerate into panegyric. Weeds are near the flower-garden, and there are thorns among the roses. Even among the brave Confederate soldiers there were some shirkers and cowards. We had our “hospital rats” and “butter-milk-rangers.” In the battle there were some who suddenly got very thirsty and ran away to get water. As one of these was rushing from a hot fire to the rear one day, his colonel shouted to him, “What are you running for? I wouldn’t be a baby.” “I wish I was a baby, and a gal baby at that”—was the reply. Another one in Gordon’s command, in another battle, was making tracks to the rear as fast as he could. General J. B. Gordon shouted, “Stop there, Jim; what makes you run?” “Because I can’t fly,” was his reply, as he leaped the fence. So our Confederate women were not all paragons nor angels; not if you let their poor husbands tell it. An old soldier in Atlanta has sued for a divorce from his wife on the plea that during a long life she has allowed him only four years of peace, and that was when he was away in the war.
About the time of the surrender in 1865, a Federal brigade, on its march to take possession of a Georgia city, halted near a farm. As usual the soldiers went in to get supplies of milk, chickens, etc., offering to pay for everything. The old gentleman of the farm when he heard of their approach had taken to the woods. His wife stood her ground, and, seizing her first opportunity to let the Yankees “know what she thought of them,” let out upon their devoted heads a torrent of woman’s fury. Her tongue fought the war over again. They became enraged and literally “cleaned up” the farm, taking mules, wagons, corn, chickens,—everything in sight. When they had gone the old farmer came in and when he saw “wide o’er the plain the wreck of ruin laid” he became desperate. Finally, on the advice of his neighbors, he went to the headquarters of the general in the city and laid before him his pitiful complaint. That officer told him he could not help him. “If you people give my soldiers a civil treatment, I shall see that they respect your property and pay for everything they get; but when they are abused and insulted as they were at your house, I can’t restrain them, nor shall I try.” “But, see here, General, it is my mules and other property that they have taken, and I have not abused your soldiers; it was my wife.” “But, sir, you ought to make your wife hold her tongue.” “Well, now, General, I have been trying that forty years, and if you and your whole army can’t make her hold her tongue, how in the world can you expect me to do it?” The general saw the situation and kindly ordered everything which had been taken to be given back to the old farmer.
It has been said that the South has been busy making history and others busy writing it. Our own people must write it, and our children must study it. For more than twenty-five years the life of the South was the drama of the nineteenth century; and no drama is complete without woman’s part in it. The war between the Southern and Northern States was one of the bloodiest in history. The Southern States claimed the right of secession from the Union—a right which during the first 44 seventy years of the Nation’s life was never questioned. The Northern States claimed the right to coerce our States back into what they called the Union—a right never before thought of.
The die of war was cast, the Rubicon of coercion was crossed, the gauntlet of blood was thrown down, when the Northern States sent ships and soldiers to hold Fort Sumter on South Carolina’s soil. Again and again had the Southern States asked the Northern States for the fish of peace; they were given the serpent of Seward’s “irrepressible conflict.” They asked for the bread of simple right; they were given the stone of invasion. The reinforcement of Fort Sumter was a declaration of war on the South.