During the entire war—and through the entire South—it was the hospital that illustrated the highest and best traits of the tried and stricken people. Doubtless, there was good work done by the women of the North, and much of it. Happily, for the sanity of the nation, American womanhood springs from one common stock. It is ever true to its own, as a whole—and, for aught I shall deny—individually. But behind that Chinese wall of wood and steel blockade, then nursing was not an episode. It was grave duty, grim labor; heartbreaking endurance—all self-imposed, and lasting for years, yet shirked and relinquished only for cause.
But the dainty little hands that tied the red bandages, or “held the artery” unflinching; the nimble feet that wearied not by fever cot, or operating table, the active months of war, grew nimbler still on bridle, or in the dances when “the boys” came home. This was sometimes on “flying furlough,” or when an aid, or courier, with dispatches, was told to wait. Then “the one girl” was mounted on anything that could carry her; and the party would ride far to the front, in full view of the enemy, and often in point-blank range. Or, it was when frozen ruts made roads impassable for invader and defender; and the furlough was perhaps easier, and longer. Then came those now historic dances, the starvation parties, where rank told nothing, and where the only refreshment came in that intoxicant—a woman’s voice and eyes.
Then came the “Dies Irae,” when the Southern Rachel sat in the ashes of her desolation and her homespun was sackcloth. And even she rose supreme. By her desolate hearth, with her larder empty, and only her aching heart full, she still forced a smile for the home-coming “boy” through the repressed tears for the one left, somewhere in the fight.
In Richmond, Atlanta, Charleston and elsewhere was she bitter and unforgiving? If she drew her faded skirt—ever a black one, in that case—from the passing blue, was it “treason,” or human nature? Thinkers who wore the blue have time and oft declared the latter. Was she “unreconstructed?” Her wounds were great and 104 wondrous sore. She was true, then, to her faith. That she is to-day to the reunited land let the fathers of Spanish war heroes tell. She needs no monument; it is reared in the hearts of true men, North and South.
A MOTHER OF THE CONFEDERACY
[In Southern Historical Papers, Volume 22, pages 63-64. From the Memphis, Tenn., Appeal-Avalanche, June 30, 1894.]
Just upon the eve of preparations by ex-Confederates to celebrate the Fourth of July in a becoming manner and spirit, the sad news is announced of the death of the venerable Mrs. Law, known all over the South as one of the mothers of the Confederacy. She was also truly a mother in Israel, in the highest Christian sense. Her life had been closely connected with that of many leading actors in the late war, in which she herself bore an essential part. She passed away, June 28th, at Idlewild, one of the suburbs of Memphis, nearly 89 years of age.
She was born on the River Yadkin, in Wilson County, North Carolina, August 27, 1805, and at the time of her death was doubtless the oldest person in Shelby County. Her mother’s maiden name was Charity King. Her father, Chapman Gordon, served in the Revolutionary War, under Generals Marion and Sumter. She came of a long-lived race of people. Her mother lived to be 93 years of age, and her brother, Rev. Hezekiah Herndon Gordon, who was the father of General John B. Gordon (now Senator from Georgia), lived to the age of 92 years.
Sallie Chapman Gordon was married to Dr. John S. Law, near Eatonton, Georgia, on the 28th day of June, 1825. A few years later she became a member of the Presbyterian Church, in Forsyth, Georgia, and her name was afterward transferred to the rolls of the Second Presbyterian Church in Memphis, of which church she remained a member as long as she lived.