To do for those loved ones what woman
Alone in her pity can do.”
Our women gave their carpets to make blankets, their dresses to be made into shirts for the soldiers, and their linen to furnish lint for their wounds, and then, clad in homespun, they gave themselves. Nearly every town and village in the South had its Soldiers’ Aid Society and its hospital. Thousands and thousands of the poor 63 fellows were taken to private houses, even away out in the country, and tenderly cared for. There was scarcely a woman near a battlefield or a railroad who did not nurse a soldier. Nearly every woman in Richmond served regularly on hospital committees. One of these, a Mrs. Roland, was blind, and her sweet guitar and sweeter song cheered many a poor hero. One of the songs of these days was “Let me kiss him for his Mother.” Here’s a story to show how woman’s petting, which always spoils a boy and sometimes a husband, occasionally found a hard case in a Confederate soldier. Among the sick in Richmond was a brave young fellow, who was a great favorite and the only son of a widowed mother, who was far away beyond the Mississippi. One morning the report got out that he was dying in the hospital, and one of the prettiest and sweetest young ladies in the city was so touched by the sad story that she determined to go and kiss him for his mother. She hastened to the ward where the poor youth was lying high up on one of the upper tiers of bunks and quickly told her mission to the nurses. “I don’t know him, but oh, its so sad, and I have come to ‘kiss him for his mother’ away out in Texas.” Now he wasn’t dying at all, but was much better, and as he peeped at the sweet face, the rascal, raising his head over the edge of the bunk, said, “Never mind the old lady, miss, just go it on your own hook.” Now that’s just the thanks these ununiformed sisters of mercy sometimes got for their pains.
Put on this monument a pair of crutches. You never see the bright star of womanhood until it shines in the darkness of man’s misfortune. It is the furnace of man’s suffering that brings out the pure gold of her love. Here’s a specimen. On a cold winter day, when Lee’s army was marching through one of the lower sections of Virginia, some of the veterans were completely barefooted, and the Sixth Georgia Regiment was passing. A plain country woman was standing in the group by the road side. “Lord, a mercy,” said she, “there’s a poor soldier ain’t go no shoes,” and off came hers in a jiffy and she ordered her negro woman standing by to give hers 64 up, too. The good woman wore number threes, and the soldier who got them was Jake Quarles, of Company B, Dade County, Georgia, who wore number twelves.
Soon after the war I once expressed my sympathy to a young lady friend who was about to marry a young one-armed soldier. “I want no sympathy. I think it a great privilege and honor to be the wife of a man who lost his arm fighting for my country,” was her prompt reply. That’s your Southern girl.
When John Redding, of Randolph County, Ga., was brought home wounded from Chickamauga, it was found necessary to amputate his leg. On the day fixed for the dangerous operation, his many friends were gathered at his father’s country home. Among them was Miss Carrie McNeil, to whom he was engaged. After he had passed safely through the ordeal she, of course, was allowed to be the first to go in to see him. They were left alone for a while. The next to go in was an aunt of Miss Carrie’s, and as she shook hands with poor John and was about to pass on, he said, “Ain’t you going to kiss me, too?” Ah, what a tale that question told. The gallant soldier had offered to release his betrothed from her engagement, but she said, “No, no, John, I can’t give you up, and I love you better than ever,” and a kiss had sealed their holy love.
When Tom Phipps, of Randolph County, Ga., came home on crutches he offered to release Miss Maggie Pharham from her engagement. “No, Tom,” she said. “We can make a living.” There are hundreds of these noble, God-given Carrie McNeils and Maggie Pharhams all over our war-wrecked South.
Let the next emblem be the oak riven by the lightning, and the tender ivy entwining itself around it. Let it tell of the sufferings of the refugee father and the wreck of the old man in the track of such vandals as Sherman, Hunter, Sheridan, Milroy and Kilpatrick. Let it tell of the horrors of the years of so-called peace that followed the war. Northern soldiers killed our young men in war; politicians killed our old men in peace. Sherman burned houses 65 from Atlanta to Bentonville. Thad Stevens in Congress blighted every acre of ground from Baltimore to San Antonio. The war of shot and shell lasted four years; the war of blind, revengeful reconstruction legislation lasted twenty years. War marshalled our enemies on the battlefield; reconstruction made enemies of the men who had held our plow handles and stood around our tables. War put the South under the rule of soldiers; reconstruction put us under the heel of the rapacious carpet-bagger and negro plunderers. War crushed some of our people. Vindictive legislation crushed all our people. War made the South an Aceldama; reconstruction made it a Gehenna. Grant held back the red right hands of Stanton and Holt from the throats of Lee and his paroled soldiers: alas, Lincoln was dead, and his patriotic arm was not there to hold back Thad Stevens and his revolutionary congress from our prostrate citizens.
Amid these horrors our young men could hope, but to our old men was nothing left but despair. Robbed of their property after peace was declared, without a dollar of compensation, their lands made valueless or confiscated; they themselves disfranchised and their slaves made their political masters, too old to change and recuperate, too old to hope even, but too manly to whine, they stood as desolate and uncomplaining as that old oak.
Do you see that tender vine binding up the shattered tree and hiding its wounds? That is Southern woman clinging closer and more tenderly to father and husband when the storms beat upon him, comforting as only such Christian women can comfort; smiling only as such heroines can smile; with “toil-beat nerves, and care-worn eye,” helping only as such women can help. In the schoolroom and behind the counter, over the sewing machine and the cooking stove, in garden and field, everywhere showing the gems of Southern character washed up from its depths by the ocean of Southern woe.