The Ladies TeaStop in and grab a quick cup of tea! All sorts of ladies issues are disscussed here. Both Ladies and Gentlemen are welcome to join in the conversations.
According to Plutarch, women of ancient Sparta would send their sons to war giving them a shield and besetting them to return "With it or on it!". Likewise, at the outbreak of the American Civil War women were willingly giving their sons to the army, being aware that some would never come back.
I've just come across some examples from North Carolina: Two women of that state, Flora MacDonald Jones and Lucy Faucett Simpson, each gave eleven sons to the military service of the Confederacy; four gave nine sons; two gave eight; nine gave seven; eighteen gave six; nineteen gave five; thirteen gave four; and twenty-two gave three sons each. The spirit animating these North Carolina mothers is demonstrated in a statement given by one of them to a newspaper reporter in 1863. "I have three sons and my husband in the army" she said. "They are all I have, but if I had more, I would freely give them to my country". (F.B.Simkins, J.W.Patton, The Women Of The Confederacy, Richmond 1936, p. 17-18)
Sincerely,
Unionblue
PS Borderruffin, thank you for yours and your brothers service. It is appreciated, I assure you.
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
My grandmother sent 6 sons to fight Hitler and or Tojo. And three more to fight in Korea. 3 were killed 2 in WWII and one at the Chosin Resovior.
My maternal grandmother sent three sons to WWII. And lost one.
My mother sent two sons to the 1st Gulf War and we both went back for the second round. My youngest brother three times me twice.
For which your grandmothers, your mother, and you have my eternal gratitude.
__________________ "There must be more historians of the Civil War than there were generals figthing in it... Of the two groups, the historians are the more belligerent." David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered (1961)
Borderruffian,
I admire your family.
Many of my kinsmen also went to the Second World War, but they were mostly guerillas (Peasant Battalions and Home Army), one of them killed in action.
While describing the defence of Fort Fisher, Confederate Colonel William Lamb mentions participation of 140 boys between 16 and 18 years of age (7th Battalion Junior Reserves), and pays honor to both young soldiers and their mothers:
"The brave little boys, torn from their fire-sides by the cruel necessities of the struggle, were as bright and manly as if anticipating a parade. They should never have been called out for service; it was robbing the craddle. What nobler women can be found in all history, than the matrons of the Old North State, who, with prayers and tears sent forth their darlings in a cause they believed to be right, and in defence of their homes? Self-sacrificing courage seems indigenous to North Carolina. No breast is too tender for this heroic virtue. Since the ten-year-old son of the Regulator begged the tyrant Tyron, after the battle of the Alamance, to hang him and let his father live, lest his mother die and the children perish, even the boys of this sturdy commonwealth have been ever ready to rally in her defence. The first life-blood that stained the sands of Confederate Point, was from one of these youthful patriots". William Lamb, "Defence of Fort Fisher, North Carolina", Papers of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, vol.9, p. 360.
__________________ "Peace is a precious and a desirable thing. Our generation, bloodied in wars, certainly deserves peace. But peace, like almost all things of this world, has its price, a high but a measurable one. We in Poland do not know the concept of peace at any price. There is only one thing in the lives of men, nations and countries that is without price. That thing is honor" -Józef Beck
I'm new to CWT and delighted to see that other women are thinking similar thoughts!
Frankly, I'm suffering from "strains of music" written by a woman of my native state (Kentucky).
I am haunted.
It is neither the fact that a “lady” of the period would feel forced to publish anonymously nor the stilted, flowery language of the song that leave my mind so troubled.
I am disturbed by the eagerness to die, the enthusiasm to send husbands and sons into battle, the vision of a war sanctioned by God.
Please note this work has been published as found, no corrections have been made.
"The Southron's Chaunt of Defiance" (1861)
Words by a Lady of Kentucky
Music by Armand Edwand Blackmar
You can never win us back;
Never! Never!
Tho' we perish in the track
Of your endeavor;
Tho' our corpses strew the earth
Smiling now on our birth,
And tho' blood polute each hearth
Now and ever!
We have risen to a man,
Stern and fearless;
Of your curses, of your ban,
We are careless.
Ev'ry hand is on its knife,
Ev'ry gun is primed for strife.
Ev'ry palm contains a Life
High and peerless.
You have no such blood as our
For the shedding;
In the veins of Cavaliers
Was its heading!
You have no such stately men
In you abolution den
Marching through foe and fen,
Nothing dreading!
We may fall before the fire
Of your legions,
Paid with gold for murderous hire,
Bought allegiance;
But for every drop you shed,
You shall have a mound of dead,
So that vultures may be fed
In our regions!
But the battle to the strong
Is not given,
While the Judge of right and wrong
Sits in Heaven
And the God of David still
Guides the pebble in His will,
There are giants yet to kill,
Wrongs unshriven!
Awesome post, Koilady! Am not entirely certain where I come down on it, but it does remain awesome.
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
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