South Carolina Women In The Confederacy- UDC

JPK Huson 1863

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
Joined
Feb 14, 2012
Location
Central Pennsylvania
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Once again have to thank Jno for an excellent head's up on a book, Ladies Tea would be a ton less cluttered without his eye for this stuff.

Before Daughters of the Confederacy existed Daughters IN the Confederacy- because the Confederacy was real, it was here and soldiers therein vastly in need of the kind of nurturing hand only these women's organizations could pull off. Witness the Federal Ladies and their intricate networks, coming to the aid of overburdened surgeons and a government which just, plain forgot to bring bandaids in all the excitement of planning an entire war. Southern women were faced with the same problem, Southern men being no different than Northern counterparts. " Oh boy a WAR! You go get the cannon, we'll get us some of those lancer thingmebobs, a few dozen flintlocks, what do you mean they don't make them anymore, make it ten, anyone invent Napalm yet, no? That'll have to wait, OH and tell Ace down at the hardware store we'll need black powder, as much as he can get, gonna have to get the misses sewing some bags here. OH I'm so excited I could spit chaw over the moon, a real, live WAR! " I don't know. Maybe the shopping list got torn off at the end, both sides just neglected all the bandaids Our women untied their aprons, folded and laid them aside, handed babies off to grandmothers and sisters and aunts- set about bringing order to chaos.

There will be other books- this one is probably typical in massive outpouring of support, effort, skill and devotion- am not posting this on ' cause ' as I did not when presenting our Federal sisters. These women came to aid people, an eye on those ' boys ' at the front; certainly had their own cause, am not saying they did not. But these women stepped forward heart-first, is the thing.


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After the introduction, the book itself is snippets rather than long, explanatory chapters, so will post random pages- interesting as-is

Just a page fro the intro, which is the only place I can see where the Northern Ladies suffer slightly under a waspish pen- I won't repeat it here, it's just notable, many years post-war there's still some grim grudges held. Ouch.
:smile:

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In a lot of these, you'll see the women of the South delivering to the soldiers, company by company, items of clothing their supply trains just could not. It's amazing, an entirely different set-up fro that of the North.

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https://archive.org/details/southcarolinawom00unit

As dry as I'm making it sound, promise it isn't. The ladies of this era manage to underplay achievments while pointing out perhaps their best is still better than the best pitifully boasted of in northern climes. Admit it can make for dry reading- no reason not to. I always, always have adored the idea of those Gunboat Quilts, where women literally quilted the South's way into war machines- something hysterical about the concept. Well- these women kind of kept the war machine rolling to, not ' kind of ' they did.

This is Wayside Hospital, ' No. 9 '. Richmond, not SC but better believe it also benefitted
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Reading this material makes you realize once again how woefully unprepared the Confederacy was to undertake a long war. "Why, one of our Southern boys is worth ten of them Yankee hirelings" may or may not be true, but they still need socks.
 
You find the best stories and information to share, JKP Huson, thanks! :wub:


That was kind of you, thanks very much Anna Elizabeth! It's just rampant curiosity plus a lot of these old books ( if not all ) tend to be Jno Hartwell passing along cool finds. NO idea how he bumps into this stuff- every so often I'll receive a link relevant to our Civil War women- then of course nothing else gets done for the day. TOO absorbing!
 
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