Or fell so pure of crimes.”
After the surrender a poor Southern soldier was wending his way down the lane over the “red old hills of Georgia.” His old gray jacket that his wife had woven and his mother made, was all tattered and torn; the old greasy haversack and cedar canteen hung by his side. From under his bullet-pierced hat there beamed eyes that had seen many a battlefield. Said one of his neighbors: “Hello, John; the Yankees whipped you, did they?” “No, we just wore ourselves out whipping them.” “Well, what are you going to do now, John?” “Why, I’m going home, kiss Mary, and make a crop and get ready to whip ’em again.”
That “Mary” is our theme to-day. Others have told of Confederate soldiers on the battlefield. God help me to tell of the soldier’s “other-self” behind the battlefield. The brave Southern army was defending home. The arm of the hero is nerved by his heart, and the heart of John was Mary, and Mary was the soul of the South. In peace woman was the queen of that Arcadia which God’s blessings made our sunny land, and never has there been 46 a war in which her enthusiasm was so intense and her heroic cooperation so conspicuous. Her effectual and practical work in the departments of the commissary, the quartermaster and the surgeon, and her magic influence at home and on the spirit of the army, were something wonderful. The Federal General Atkins, of Sherman’s army, said to a Carolina lady: “You women keep up this war. We are fighting you. What right have you to expect anything from us?”
And yet in all she was woman,—nothing but woman. “And the Lord said it is not good for man to be alone; I will make a help-meet for him.” In Paradise she was the rib of man’s side; in Paradise lost she bears woman’s heavy share of his labors and his fate. The history of the South of 1861 will go down to the centuries with its immortal lesson that woman’s power is greatest, her work most beneficent and her career most splendid when she moves in the orbit assigned her by Heaven as the help-meet of man. It is the glory of Southern life and society that with us woman is no “flaring Jezebel” but our own modest Vashti.
Thank God the Confederate woman was no Lady Macbeth, plotting treason for the advancement of her husband; but the loyal daughter Cordelia, clinging to her old father Lear in his wrongs; no fanatical Catherine de Medici, thirsting for Huguenot blood, but the sweet Florence Nightingale, hovering over the battlefield with,
“The balm that drops on wounds of woe,
From woman’s pitying eye,”
and making the dying bed of the patriot feel “soft as downy pillows are.” She was no Herodias, calling for the head of an enemy, but the humble Mary, breaking the alabaster box to anoint the martyr of her cause; weeping at His cross and watching at His grave. She was no fierce Clytimnestra, but the loving Antigone leading the blind old Oedipus, or digging the grave of her brother Polynices; no Amazon Camilla, “Agmen agens equitum et florentes aere catervas,” but the Roman Cornelia, proud of her jewel Gracchi sons, and laying them upon the altar of her country; no Helen, heartless in her 47 beauty, but the gentle Creusa, following her husband to be crushed in the ruins of her ill-fated Troy; no cruel Juno, seeking revenge for wounded pride, but a pure Vesta, keeping alive the fires of American patriotism; no Charlotte Corday, plunging a dagger into the heart of the tyrant Marat, but the calm Madame Roland, under the guillotine of the Jacobins, raised to sever her proud but all womanly head, and crying to her countrymen, “Oh, Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!” Who begrudges a moment for the record of her patriotic services and unremitting toil? Who does not see in her a glorious lesson?
Thank God! the clash of arms has long ago ceased. The temple of Janus is closed. But the war of pens, the contest of history, is upon us. For years Southern women had been written down as soulless ciphers or weakling wives, dragged by reckless husbands into an unholy cause. Text books of so-called history, teeming with such falsehoods, have been thrust even into Southern schools. It is high time to protest. Before God we tell them our mothers were not dupes, but women; they and our men were not rebels, but patriots, obedient to every law, loyal to every compact, State and National, of their country; true, gloriously true, to every lesson taught by Washington and Jefferson, and moved by every impulse that has made this country great.
But there must be no gall in the inkstand of history. No man can justly record the truth of the Confederate war who has not risen above the passions and prejudices incident to such terrible convulsions. No man with malice to the North can write justly of the South. No man can appreciate our great Jefferson Davis, who can see nothing good in President Lincoln. No man can describe the glory of Lee and Jackson, who shuts his eyes to the soldiership of McClellan, the patriotism of Hancock, the generosity of Grant, and the knighthood of McPherson and Custer.