A WELL-KNOWN TYPE OF SOUTHERN MATRON BEFORE THE WAR
Full well she knew the seriousness of life. Over and over the cares and responsibilities of her station as the mother of so many children, the mistress of so many servants and the hostess of so many guests, had utterly overwhelmed her. * * * * * Into how many negro cabins had she not gone, when the night was far spent and the lamp of life flickered low in the breast of the dying slave! How often she ministered to him with her own hands! * * * * Nay, had she not knelt by his lowly bed and poured out her heart to God as his soul winged its flight, and closed his glazed and staring eyes as the day was dawning? Yet the morning meal found her at her accustomed seat, tranquil and helpful, and no one but her husband the wiser for her night’s ministrations.
George W. Bagby
Fort Marion, Florida, seized by order of the Governor of Florida, 1861
January Eighth
Jackson’s line, extending about half a mile from the river to the swamp, was defended by a water-filled ditch and by a parapet of varying height and thickness. The idea that it was built of cotton bales is an absurd fiction that brings back the inspiring picture in Peter Parley’s old history of our childhood days....
Pierce Butler
“What stopped you?” General Pakenham asked of a regiment of Scotch Highlanders. To which their colonel replied: “Bullets, mon! bullets! Auld Julius Caesar himself wouldn’t have charged those devils.”
The “Hunting Shirt Men” of the South versus Wellington’s Peninsular veterans in the Battle of New Orleans, 1815; General Pakenham, brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington killed