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Thank you for posting all the wonderful information on Women, It's very useful especially as a new reenactor to not have to spend hours scouring books and the internet. I appreciate anything I can learn at this point.
__________________ Regards, Reese
"A true woman always loves a real soldier" ~Belle Boyd~
Thank you for posting all the wonderful information on Women, It's very useful especially as a new reenactor to not have to spend hours scouring books and the internet. I appreciate anything I can learn at this point.
Hang in there MsReese -- you're certain to be exposed to more than you ever wanted to know. Welcome aboard!
Ole
"Almost before the echoes of the gun which marked the commencement of hostilities between the North and the South had died away, Hon. Henry J. Raymond, of the New York Times, with that keen foresight which marked his career as a newspaperman, had formed the idea of organizing a band of ladies to proceed to Washington in the capacity of nurses, should they be needed. Several meetngs were held at the Cooper Institute or the Woman’s Library, under the auspices of Miss Elizabeth Powell who was selected for this purpose by Mr. Raymond.
At the first meeting, many of those who were confidently expected to go, declined their enthusiasms, which had worked itself to fever heat at the commencement, having died out, and they decided to remain with the "home guard." Six nurses were called as they had been selected, and when my name, Adelaide E. Thompson, was pronounced and I arose (I being very slightly built at that time), a gentleman in the hall inquired what she expected to do with that little creature; to which Miss Powell responded, "That ‘little creature’ is one of the reliables."
The group went by steamer to Baltimore, leaving May 3, 1861, and enduring a severe storm overnight. Since the rails had been torn up during the previous month’s insurrection to prevent federal troops from relieving Washington, from the city they chartered an omnibus to Washington, finally arriving there on their fourth day of travel. They found that the only hospital open at the time was a smallpox one (the First Battle of Bull Run had not yet occurred), and that a nurse was badly needed.
"One pretty little woman, the youngest of the party, whose husband was here in one of the regiments, declared she could not think of such a thing, for if she took the disease and got her face all marked up, her husband would never forgive her. It is but justice to say that she proved herself very efficient in another place. The oldest lady said she could not think of such a thing for she had not felt well since she left New York and she only felt able to read the Bible, and the poor fellows must be so sick that reading would only weary them.
The others being of the opinion that "silence is golden," remained silent. To me, anything was better than inaction, and I volunteered my services. . . .after a mournful dinner with my comrades I took my little bundle of clothing, and, accompanied by one of the ladies departed for the hospital. My friend bade me good-bye on the opposite side of the street, and with some trepidation I crossed over and entered the building. I was met by the physician, Dr. Robert I. Thomas, from Iowa. I handed him the letter from the surgeon-general appointing me a nurse in the small-pox hospital; and thus as the first nurse in the District of Columbia, on the 16th day of May, I entered upon my duties."
Spurgeon described deplorable conditions that she mainly bore alone. The doctor would leave after only a few hours work each day, the steward soon followed returning drunk each night, the laundress "pretended to wash" and the cook’s concoctions mainly consisted of making broth out of fat bacon and hot water. So Spurgeon took up the cooking along with her other duties.
"We had plenty of flour, and I proceeded to make up a large batch of bread which was greatly relished by the boys; but as to the meat,---here words fail me. Never before, or since, have I seen such meat. It would have required the power of a Hercules to masticate it. The sugar was of the consistency of mud, and, about the same color, and tasted more like salt than sugar. Butter was not to be thought of, and vegetables of any kind were out of the question."
Spurgeon made a trip to New York to raise supplies from friends and returned with many to find that the hospital had many added patients. "As the doctor did not come, I placed a cot in a corner of his office, where I could obtain two or three hours sleep during the night. I have passed many nights entirely alone in the building, except for the sick men; sometimes three or four bodies lay in the adjoining room, waiting for the morning light to bring the undertaker. The first man died from blood-poisoning, caused by impure vaccine put in his arm before he left Michigan. The weather was warm, and before his comrades arrived to bury him, the body burst. We were obliged to remove all the sick men to a tent in the adjoining lot, while the house was flooded with water."
After the battle of Bull Run wounded flooded in and they established a second hospital. Spurgoen wrote, "It is impossible to describe the horrors of that long, hot summer." There was often no water. They could bury no bodies for a period of time. The laundress died "at her post" from over work. Spurgeon, herself, contracted blood poisoning from which she never fully recovered and had to resign the service. Yet she found a new vocation in which she ultimately served two years:
"I then entered the secret service at the provost marshal’s headquarters. I was sent for one day by the judge advocate, who wished me to interview two parties who had been taken out of the ranks as a regiment was marching up the avenue. I went into a back room, where I saw two boyish-looking persons in uniform.
After a short conversation they owned up to being of the gentler sex; but the deception was perfect. One was the wife of one of the men, and the other was engaged to one. They had traveled hundreds of miles with the regiment, and would probably have gone to the front but for the rascally behavior of one of the lieutenants, who was in the secret. He offered some insult to the young wife, which she resented, and in a spirit of revenge he signaled the provost guard, and had them taken out of the ranks. They both wept bitterly, not only at the disgrace, but at being obliged to return to their homes, leaving their loved ones, perhaps never to meet them again.
With some difficulty clothing was procured, and they were sent home very much wiser women than when they left."
"The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think." ~Harper Lee~
Lucy Adams Hart was born in Pittsford, Vermont in 1841 and in 1855, married Toby Hart by whom she had 21 children. During the Civil War, she went to Washington with the sole intent of persuading President Lincoln into bringing her husband home. The unstoppable Lucy Hart met with President Lincoln, after demanding that she be allowed to speak with him, and they had a long pleasant conversation. He could not bring her husband home, however, so she went to the front and stayed encamped with Toby through the war.
Toby was stationed at Beverly Ford, Virginia. He asked his men to build a cabin for Lucy, which they did. Lucy "tended" to the soldiers with the touch only a woman can bring. She was their morale booster. She became a member of The Army of the Potomac, and saw her husband through the Battle of Brandy Station, the Battle at Rappahanock Station, and possibly Gettysburg. She was well remembered by General Hugh Judson Kilpatrick even when she met up with him years after the war. She was a lady of strong character, who refused to allow the war to seperate her from the husband she loved so dearly.
In 1909, she received a letter from her brother, George H. Adams, who was living on Craig Mountain, in Benton, Idaho. Each had thought the other had died in the war. They were overjoyed to have found each other again after 40 years.
Lucy was not famous, but she was a fine lady of courage and indomitable spirit - one of the many unsung heroes of the Civil War, beloved by her husband, and the many men with whom he served.
Mrs. Catherine Haynes, whose home is near Charleston, Arkansas, is one of the oldest and most interesting of the few remaining women in that section who worked, suffered and endured, for the "Lost Cause."
She is living out her sunset years in the same old family homestead, which was once the scene of so much stirring adventure, and her recollections of those trying days are still fresh and unobscured, though Time is laying his hand heavily now upon her silvered locks.
Six men belonging to Col. McIntosh's regiment were quietly eating breakfast in one of three small cottages, built close to the Haynes' homestead. Mrs. Tobb, a Union woman, Mrs. Roberts, and Mrs. Knott, a widow, were the occupants of the houses. The men were totally unsuspicious of any danger, but were suddenly attacked by a small party, and three of them were shot down in Mrs. Roberts' yard, while the others escaped. The names of the three soldiers killed were: Perkins, Tom Jones, and Milton Hayes, all of them closely related to men widely known in this section of the State.
Mrs. Tobb ran alone all the way to the Haynes' home to tell the awful news, and to get assistance in caring for the bodies. There was not a man left on the Haynes' place so Miss Lizzie and Miss Sarah Jane accompanied Mrs. Tobb to the scene of the tragedy, determined that not one of our brave boys should lack a decent burial so long as there were tender, pitying hands to perform the last sad duties.
Nixon's graveyard was a full half-mile distant, but one of them knew of an empty grave which had been dug for the body of a Captain Bean who had been carried back home to Roseville, and buried there instead. There was one available vehicle. It was a small cart, roughly constructed, and mounted upon two old wagon wheels. To this was harnessed the only team oa brace of young steers. With Mrs. Knott driving and two of the other women walking behind to hold the lifeless bodies on the shaky cart, from which they were in imminent danger of falling, the pathetic little procession wended its way to the graveyard. With their own hands they laid the three bodies, uncoffined, in the same grave, and with an old shovel and a rusty spade, these faithful and heroic women put the clods of "earth to earth and ashes to ashes," upon the sacred dead.
Finally worn out with physical exertion and mental emotion, they turned wearily homeward. It was nearing the close of day when at last they arrived, and bright stars, just peeping out from the grey twilight, were soon to shed their cold unfeeling radiance upon the dark tragedies of human life.
"Stay" is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary." ~Louisa May Alcott~
The scale of the conflict at Gettysburg on the three July days in 1863 was huge; the day after Pickett's final onslaught upon the Federal centre, an area over two square miles was littered with dead and wounded soldiers of both sides. Both the armies were tired and somewhat shocked at the magnitude of the fight and all of the medical facilities were already overstretched with work.
As word spread of the battle, the need for extra help in caring for the wounded found its way into the Northern Press. Lee had left the area and had had to leave 5,500 wounded behind with surgeons who had very few supplies. The Federal forces had nearly 15,000 wounded of its own to care for and almost 2,000 wounded prisoners. At the start there was almost an adequate number of doctors and ambulances to deal with the situation, but when Gen. Meade, pressed by Washington, left the area to pursue the Rebels, he took all but 106 surgeons and left them only 30 ambulances.
Cornelia Hancock, a daughter in a well established New Jersey Quaker family, and Euphemia Goldborough, a Baltimore belle whose family's politic leanings were in sympathy with the Southern cause heard of the situation and made their way to Gettysburg.
Euphemia, a small 27 year old, had experience. She had travelled to Frederick after the battle at Antietam and helped in the hospital treating the Confederate wounded. Since then she had been helping prisoners kept at Point Lookout.
Cornelia journeyed to Baltimore and there was interviewed by the redoubtable Dorothea Dix, the Superintendent of women nurses. "She looked us all over and pronounced all suitable save me," she recalled. "I was then 23 and she objected to my youth and rosy cheeks." However, Cornelia travelled on to Gettysburg where she found that, "the need was so great that there was no further cavil over my age".
Cornelia was not alone in not passing Miss Dix's inspection. Every type of woman was to be found working in the hospitals and in the administration of supply; one, Helen Gilson from Massachusetts, was an attractive girl who wore a short-skirted costume and charmed her patients with her singing, another, Katherine Woolsey was the daughter of a British Admiral. The Army surgeons soon realised that any help was beneficial and gradually accepted that the work they were doing was admirable.
On arrival in the town, Euphemia went to the Pennsylvania College which was full of the Confederate wounded. As the supply of food, blankets and medical supplies improved, mainly due to the work of the Sanitary Commission rather than the Army, she found that the treatment of the Southern soldiers was on equal footing to that of the Union wounded. In fact as soldiers there became able to work they were given positions in trust much to the disapproval of the Provost Marshall who pestered the Medical Director to remove them to prison camps.
Cornelia went to work in the Union second corps field hospital where very soon she became a favourite with the soldiers as she wrote home to her influential parents of the plight. She had no overall picture of the medical problems at Gettysburg but told of what she saw. "There was a long table in the woods that was the operating table, and for seven days it literally ran blood. A wagon stood nearby rapidly filling with amputated arms and legs. So appalling was the number of the wounded as yet unsuccoured, so helpless seemed the few who were battling against tremendous odds to save life, and so overwhelming was the demand for any kind of aid that could be given quickly that one's senses were benumbed by the awful responsibility that fell to the living".
As the situation in the town and on the battlefield became more organised both of the ladies found themselves working in the huge Camp Letterman, a hospital of 12 man tents, six rows made up of some 400 tents in all. Conditions here were very much better, the camp resembled a small city with laundries, kitchens and wells of fresh water. Each tent had a stove and the patients were on beds with mattresses. There was no difference between the facilities given to either Union or Confederate soldiers, many tents contained both.
However, many of the Southern men needed new clothing; Federal Provost Marshals were concerned about the Rebels getting clothing that might have aided an escape but had to allow the tattered uniforms to be replaced with whatever the Sanitary Commission sent, they did however ban them from having shoes or boots. That fact did not deter Euphemia. She would smuggle them in under the hoops of her skirt and also take letters to be sent via friends in Baltimore to families and friends.
Cornelia felt sad when her second corps hospital was closed and the wounded taken to Camp Letterman, she wrote home saying, "It is like parting with one's own family, I go to see the boys and some cry that I cannot stay with them". However, she was presented with silver medallion that they had made and inscribed "Testimonial of regard for ministrations of mercy to the wounded soldiers at Gettysburg, Pa - July 1863". It had cost the men $20 but to Cornelia it must have been priceless.
With the opening of the Camp Letterman Hospital the need for help subsided and many of the ladies who had worked non-stop to help the patients returned home. Both Cornelia and Euphemia stayed on though and it is quite likely that they knew each other although neither mentioned the other in her diary entries. As the wounded were now being moved away by railroad in ever increasing numbers, pressure was put on the medical staff to get the Confederates into prison camps, Euphemia decided that she could do more good in helping at Point Lookout. She left Gettysburg after the death of one of her favourite patients; Sam Watson of the 5th Texas had been nursed by her from the start and his passing particularly affected her.
Euphemia's sister was to remark that "She was never the same joyous girl again". She took home many letters of appreciation from soldiers and a wooden ring delicately carved by a soldier with the name "Effie" on its face.
Cornelia departed soon after, she felt that she was no longer required, warning her parents that although she was heading home she would not hesitate to go wherever she felt that she was needed. She was with the Army at the Wilderness all the way to the siege of Petersburg. After the surrender of Lee's forces at Appomattox she finally went home to settle in New Jersey.
Euphemia's southern sympathies were to get her into trouble with the Federal authorities, she was under investigation for aiding patients to escape. A letter from her to a Confederate was intercepted and on November 23 a Provost Marshall's detail arrived and searched her house. She was arrested and charged with treason. Found guilty she was sent by truce steamer to Virginia for the duration of the war. In Richmond where she had by then become quite a celebrity, she lived with the family of Col. W T Patton, an officer of the 7th Virginia whom she had nursed at Gettysburg. President Jefferson gave her a post at the Treasury Dept. in which she served in addition to carrying on her work in the area's many hospitals. At the end of the war she returned to Baltimore.
The two women were by no means unique in their service, many others gave up the comforts of home to serve the wounded. Their stories show that although they had no particular skills to offer, they were both so very compassionate that they gave their all to relieve some of the suffering faced by the men who fought.
"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing." ~Harper Lee~
"Soldiers in Blue", G W Adams; "Debris of Battle", Gerard A Paterson; "Letters of Cornelia Hancock."
The town of Orangeburg had little to make it a important place in the war years of 1861-65. Even Sherman remarked after overruning the town that its only importance was that it connected Columbia and Charleston. However the Charleston-Columbia Railroad ran near the town and the Charleston-Augusta Railroad was within about eighteen miles of the town. Along this vital railroad, many a Confederate soldier had been shipped to the frontlines from Virginia to the furthest reaches of the western confederacy. Naturally a trip along this railroad would entail its share of sick and men wounded from fighting. The majority of hamlets on the railroad were small establishments. Between these humble areas was the lonely South Carolina countryside. However at one strand of railroad a kind soul could be expected. Along the railroad from Columbia to Branchville was patrolled by the dedicated Sarah Kenziah Rowe. Instead of searching out Federals, the Orangeburg native searched out the wounded and sick on the Confederate trains. Whenever the train would stop in this area, sick and maimed soldiers could expect to see the motherly figure climb aboard. With the help of other women, Rowe would carry baskets of food to the soldiers on board. Possibly her greatest gift to these men was simply a warm smile and motherly nurturing to the lonely, homesick lads.
Sadly little personal accounts survive detailing the actions of Sarah. However her reputation was apparently wide in the area. A Confederate soldier wounded in the fighting for Atlanta, Georgia spoke of knowing her reputation during a stopover in the Orangeburg area. The soldier, who had probably had a diet of hardtack and bacon previously, spoke of being fed until he felt ashamed of himself by the belle.
Perhaps the account that speaks the highest of Mrs. Rowe is an account by her daughter in the United Daughters of the Confederacy publication, "Recollections and Rememberances". Here she states that even Federal soldiers who fell in her care felt her kindness. According to her daughter a Federal soldier later stated that he would have starved while in the area with Sherman had it not been for Sarah Rowe.
Rowe's kindness was not reserved for the soldiers during the war. In the turbulent years after the war, Rowe would start a local fair to raise funds for the wounded Confederate veterans of the Orangeburg area. Perhaps we will never know how many soldiers recieved the help of Rowe. Nor will we know of just how many young Confederate and even Federal soldiers had their last moments on earth brightened by the motherly actions of her. However Sarah K. Rowe remains yet another unsung civilian hero of the War Between the States.
Mrs. Rowe is interred at the Episcopal Cemetary in Orangeburg.
"Adventure is worthwhile in itself." ~Amelia Earhart~
Susan Landon Vaughn was born in St. Charles, MO, 12 Oct 1835. Educated at the Fulton Synodical College in Missouri, receiving the degree, Mistress of LHD. She lived at the home of her uncle, Sen. Robert H. Adams of Mississippi and was a teacher. During the Civil War, she was a Confederate nurse, Rebel spy and land blockade runner. She carried medical supplies from St. Louis to Vicksburg in a carpet bag on the boats that operated on the Mississippi River. Posing as a missionary, she entered Union lines innumerable times, supposedly to minister to the needs of the troops. She jotted in her mind all the military information she could obtain.
After the soldiers return, she declared, "Garland the graves of our fallen braves," and wrote an Appeal to the Daughters of Southland to do this. Decoration Day was consecrated on April 26, 1865. When "The Lady with the Roses" wandered the groves of the cemetery, she noticed barren graves. She was told that these were Northern. She replied, "I will garland them with pink roses for the mothers and sisters sobbed prayers as they marched away."
Inside the monument is the inscription:
It reeks not where their bodies lie
By bloody hillside, plains or cave; Their names are bright on famous skies, Their deeds of valor live forever.
Decoration Day
Originated in Jackson, Mississippi,
April 26, 1865 By Sue Landon Vaughn
Memorial Day of the North was first observed May 30, 1868.
"The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience." ~Harper Lee~
Cordelia P. Harvey was the wife of Louis P. Harvey, the then governor of Wisconsin. On April 10, 1862, when her husband had been governor for only one hundred days, he slipped and fell while stepping from one boat to another, falling into the Mississippi River, and drowned. The governor had been on a mission to check on the treatment of soldiers from Wisconsin who had been wounded at the Battle of Shiloh. Four months after his death, a friend of Cordelia's wrote to the new governor and requested that she be appointed to the Sanitary Commission. The friend wrote, "It is the sort of missionary labor for which you know her to be very capable and she must have something to do or she will follow her husband I fear."
She received this appointment and immediately went to work in the Union hospitals along the Mississippi River. Devoted to her duties, she was soon labeled the "Wisconsin Angel." During the war, wounded or sick Wisconsin soldiers were not allowed to leave the hot southern temperatures for the cooler climates in the north to recover. The army felt that by letting the soldiers leave to other climates, they might desert. Cordelia was appalled by this logic.
Then, when she herself came down with one of the camp fevers, she then returned to Wisconsin, whereby she recuperated quickly, further convincing her that the soldiers should be afforded this same opportunity. She then appealed to President Lincoln telling him that keeping these sick and wounded men in the hospitals in the hot climates of the South was really a death sentence. She further told Lincoln that dead soldiers cannot fight, nor can they desert. At first, both Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton refused to alter the military procedures, however Ms. Harvey persisted in her plight. Finally, both Lincoln and Stanton saw the logic in her argument and authorized the construction of hospitals in the North.
With permission now to use Northern hospitals, she returned to her duties at the front, and served as such until war's end.
"The soul is of no sect, no party: it is, as you say, our passions and our prejudices, which give rise to our religious and political distinctions." ~Jane Austin~
In the newspapers and magazines you shall see many poems--written by women who meekly term themselves weak, and modestly profess to represent only the weak among their sex--tunefully discussing the duties which the weak owe to their country in days like these. The invariable conclusion is, that, though they cannot fight, because they are not men,--or go down to nurse the sick and wounded, because they have children to take care of,--or write effectively, because they do not know how, --or do any great and heroic thing, because they have not the ability,--they can pray; and they generally do close with a melodious and beautiful prayer. Now, praying is a good thing. It is, in fact, the very best thing in the world to do, and there is no danger of our having too much of it; but if women, weak or strong, consider that praying is all they can or ought to do for their country, and so settle down contented with that, they make as great a mistake as if they did not pray at all.
True, women cannot fight and there is no call for any great number of female nurses; notwithstanding this, I believe that today the issue of this war depends quite as much upon American women as upon American men,--and depends, too, not upon the few who write, but upon the many who do not. The women of the Revolution were not only Mrs. Adams, Mrs. Reed, and Mrs. Schuyler, but the wives of the farmers and shoemakers and blacksmiths everywhere. It is not Mrs. Stowe, or Mrs. Howe, or Miss Stevenson, or Miss Dix, alone, who is to save the country, but the thousands upon thousands who are at this moment darning stockings, tending babies, sweeping floors. It is to them I speak. It is they whom I wish to get hold of; for in their hands lies slumbering the future of this nation.
The women of today have not come up to the level of today. The do not stand abreast with its issues. They do not rise to the height of its great argument. I do not forget what you have done. I have beheld, O Dorcases, with admiration and gratitude, the coats and garments, the lint and bandages, which you have made. Tender hearts, if you could have finished the war with your needles, it would have been finished long ago; but stitching does not crush rebellion, does not annihilate treason, or hew traitors in pieces before he Lord. Excellent as far as it goes; it stops fearfully short of the goal. This ought ye to do, but there are other things which you ought not to leave undone. The war cannot be finished by sheets and pillow-cases.
Sometimes I am tempted to believe that it cannot be finished till we have flung them all away. When I read of the Rebels fighting bareheaded, barefooted, haggard, and unshorn, in rags and filth,--fighting bravely, heroically, successfully,--I am ready to make a burnt-offering of our stacks of clothing. I feel and fear that we must come down, as they have done, to a recklessness of all incidentals, down to the rough and rugged fastnesses of life, down to the very gates of death itself, before we shall be ready and worthy to win victories. Yet it is not so, for the hardest fights the earth has ever known have been made by the delicate-handed and purple-robed.
So, in the ultimate analysis, it is neither gold lace nor rags that overpower obstacles, but the fiery soul that consumes both in the intensity of its furnace-heat, bending impossibilities to the ends of its passionate purpose.
This soul of fire is what I wish to see kindled in our women,--burning white and strong and steady, through all weakness, timidity, vacillation, treachery in Church or State or press or parlor, scorching, blasting, annihilating whatsoever loveth and maketh a lie,--extinguished by no tempest of defeat, no drizzle of delay, but glowing on its steadfast path till it shall have cleared through the abomination of or desolation a highway for the Prince of Peace.
O my countrywomen, I long to see you stand under the time and bear it up in your strong hearts, and not need to be borne up through it. I wish you to stimulate, and not crave stimulants from others. I wish you to be the consolers, the encouragers, the sustainers, and not tremble in perpetual need of consolation and encouragement. When men’s brains are knotted and their brows corrugated with fearful looking for and hearing of financial crises, military disasters, and any and every form of national calamity consequent upon the war, come you out to meet them, serene and smiling and unafraid. And let your smile be no formal distortion of your lips, but a bright ray from the sunshine in your heart. Take not acquiescently, but joyfully, the spoiling of your goods. Not only look poverty in the face with high disdain, but embrace it with gladness and welcome. The loss is but for a moment; the gain is for all time.
Go ****her than this. Consecrate to a holy cause not only the incidentals of life, but life itself. Father, husband, child,--I do not say, Give them up to toll, exposure, suffering, death, without a murmur;--that implies reluctance. I rather say, Urge them to the offering; fill them with sacred fury; fire them with irresistible desire; strengthen them to heroic will. Look not on details, the present, the trivial, the fleeting aspects of our conflict, but fix your ardent gaze on its eternal side. Be not resigned, but rejoicing. Be spontaneous and exultant. Be large and lofty. Count it all joy that you are reckoned worthy to suffer in a grand and righteous cause.. Give thanks evermore that you were born in this time; and because it is dark, be you the light of the world.
And follow the soldier to the battle-field with your spirit.
The great army of letters that marches southward with every morning sun is a powerful engine of war. Fill them with tears and sighs, lament separation and suffering, dwell on your loneliness and fears, mourn over the dishonesty of contractors and the incompetency of leaders, doubt if the South will ever be conquered, and foresee financial ruin, and you will damp the powder and dull the swords that ought to deal death upon the foe. Write as tenderly as you will. In camp the roughest man idealizes his far off home, and every word of love uplifts him to a lover. But let your tenderness unfold its sunny side, and keep the shadows for His pity who knows the end from the beginning, and whom no foreboding can dishearten..Glory in your tribulation. Show your soldier that his unflinching courage, his undying fortitude, are your crown of rejoicing. Incite him to enthusiasm by your inspiration.
Make a mock of your discomforts. Be unwearying in details of the little interests of home. Fill your letters with kittens and canaries, with baby’s shoes, and Johnny’s sled, and the old cloak which you have turned into a handsome gown. Keep him posted in all the village gossip, the lectures, the courtings, the sleigh-rides, and the singing-schools. Bring out the good points of the world in strong relief. Tell every sweet and brave and pleasant and funny story you can think of. Show him that you clearly apprehend that all this warfare means peace, and that a dastardly peace would pave the way for speedy, incessant and more appalling warfare. Help him to bear his burdens by showing him how elastic you are under yours. Hearten him, enliven him, tone him up to the true hero pitch. Hush your plaintive Miserere, accept the nation’s pain for penance, and commission every Northern breeze to bear a Te Deum laudamus.
Under God, the only question, as to whether this war shall be conducted to a shameful or an honorable close, is not of men or money or material resource. In these our superiority is unquestioned. As Wellington phrased it, there is hard pounding; but we shall pound the longest, if only our hearts do not fail us. Women need not beat their pewter spoons into bullets, for there are plenty of bullets without them. It is not whether our soldiers shall fight a good fight; they have played the man on a hundred battle-fields.
It is not whether officers are or are not competent; generals have blundered nations into victory since the world began. It is whether this people shall have virtue to endure to the end,--to endure, not starving, not cold, but the pangs of hope deferred, of disappointment and uncertainty, of commerce deranged and outward prosperity checked. Will our vigilance to detect treachery and our perseverance to punish it hold out? If we stand firm, we shall be saved, though so as by fire. If we do not, we shall fall, and shall richly deserve to fall; and may God sweep us off from the face of the earth, and plant in our stead a nation with the hearts of men, and not of chickens!
O women, stand here in the breach,--for here you may stand powerful, invincible, I had almost said omnipotent. Rise now to the heights of a sublime courage,--for the hour has need of you. When the first ball smote the rocky sides of Sumter, the rebound thrilled from shore to shore, and [illegible] the slumbering hero in every human soul. Then every eye flamed, every lip was touched with a live coal from the sacred altar, every form dilated to the stature of the Golden Age. Then we felt in our veins the pulse of immortal youth. Then all the chivalry of the ancient days, all the heroism, all the self-sacrifice that shaped itself into noble living, came back to us, poured over us, swept away the dross of selfishness and deception and petty scheming, and Patriotism rose from the swelling wave stately as a goddess.
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