Nor should we fail to do honor to those loyal women in the mountainous districts and towns of the interior of the South. Our prisoners as they were marched through the towns of the South always found some tender pitying hearts, ready to do something for their comfort, if it were only a cup of cold water for their parched lips, or a corn dodger slyly slipped into their hand. Oftentimes these humble but patriotic women received cruel abuse, not only from the rebel soldiers, but from rebel Southern women, who, though perhaps wealthier and in more exalted social position than those whom they scorned, had not their tenderness of heart or their real refinement. Indeed it would be difficult to find in history, even among the fierce brutal women of the French revolution, any record of conduct more absolutely fiendish than that of some of the women of the South during the war. They insisted on the murder of helpless prisoners; in some instances shot them in cold blood themselves, besought their lovers and husbands to bring them Yankee skulls, scalps and bones, for ornaments, betrayed innocent men to death, engaged in intrigues and schemes of all kinds to obtain information of the movements of Union troops, to convey it to the enemy, and in every manifestation of malice, petty spite and diabolical hatred against the flag under which they had been reared, and its defenders, they attained a bad pre-eminence over the evil spirits of their sex since the world began. It is true that these were not the characteristics of all Southern, disloyal women, but they were sufficiently common to make the rebel women of the south the objects of scorn among the people of enlightened nations. Many of these patriotic loyal women, of the mountainous districts, rendered valuable aid to our escaping soldiers, as well as to the Union scouts who were in many cases their own kinsmen. Messrs. Richardson and Browne, the Tribune correspondents so long imprisoned, have given due honor to one of this class, "the nameless heroine" as they call her, Miss Melvina Stevens, a young and beautiful girl who from the age of fourteen had guided escaping Union prisoners past the most dangerous of the rebel garrisons and outposts, on the borders of North Carolina and East Tennessee, at the risk of her liberty and life, solely from her devotion to the national cause. The mountainous regions of East Tennessee, Northern Alabama and Northern Georgia were the home of many of these loyal and energetic Union women—women, who in the face of privation, persecution, death and sometimes outrages worse than death, kept up the courage and patriotic ardor of their husbands, brothers and lovers, and whose lofty self-sacrificing courage no rebel cruelties or indignities could weaken or abate.
MISS HETTY A. JONES.[N]
mong the thousands of noble women who devoted their time and services to the cause of our suffering soldiers during the rebellion there were few who sacrificed more of comfort, money or health, than Miss Hetty A. Jones of Roxborough, in the city of Philadelphia. She was a daughter of the late Rev. Horatio Gates Jones, D.D., for many years pastor of the Lower Merion Baptist Church, and a sister of the Hon. J. Richter Jones, who was Colonel of the Fifty-eighth Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers, and who was killed at the head of his regiment, near Newbern, N. C., in May, 1863, and grand-daughter of Rev. Dr. David Jones, a revolutionary chaplain, eminently patriotic.
At the commencement of the war Miss Jones freely gave of her means to equip the companies which were organized in her own neighborhood, and when the news came of the death of her brave oldest brother, although for a time shocked by the occurrence, she at once devoted her time and means to relieve the wants of the suffering. She attached herself to the Filbert Street Hospital in Philadelphia, and thither she went for weeks and months, regardless of her own comfort or health. Naturally of a bright and cheerful disposition, she carried these qualities into her work, and wherever she went she dispensed joy and gladness, and the sick men seemed to welcome her presence. One who had abundant means of observing, bears testimony to the power of her brave heart and her pleasant winning smile. He says, "I have often seen her sit and talk away the pain, and make glad the heart of the wounded." Nor did she weary in well-doing. Her services at the hospital were constant and efficient, and when she heard of any sick soldier in her village she would visit him there and procure medicine and comforts for him.
In the fall of 1864 she accompanied a friend to Fortress Monroe to meet his sick and wounded son, and thus was led to see more of the sufferings of our brave patriots. On returning home she expressed a wish to go to the front, and although dissuaded on account of her delicate health, she felt it to be her duty to go, and accordingly on the 2d of November, 1864, she started on her errand of mercy, to City Point, Va., the Headquarters of General Grant. The same untiring energy, the same forgetfulness of self, the same devotion to the sick and wounded, were exhibited by her in this new and arduous field of labor. She became attached to the Third Division Second Corps Hospital of the Army of the Potomac, and at once secured the warm affections of the soldiers.
She continued her work with unremitting devotion until the latter part of November, when she had an attack of pleurisy, caused no doubt, by her over exertions in preparing for the soldiers a Thanksgiving Dinner. On her partial recovery she wrote to a friend, describing her tent and its accommodations. She said: "When I was sick, I did want some home comforts; my straw bed was very hard. But even that difficulty was met. A kind lady procured some pillows from the Christian Commission, and sewed them together, and made me a soft bed. But I did not complain, for I was so much better off than the sick boys." The italics are ours, not hers. She never put her own ease before her care for "the sick boys."
She not only attended to the temporal comforts of the soldiers, but she was equally interested in their spiritual welfare, and was wont to go to the meetings of the Christian Commission. Her letters home and to her friends, were full of details of these meetings, and her heart overflowed with Christian love as she spoke of the brave soldiers rising in scores to ask for the prayers of God's people.