The women of the Confederacy by John Levi Underwood - HTML preview

THE DAUGHTERS AND THE UNITED DAUGHTERS OF THE

CONFEDERACY

The following valuable bit of history is taken from the Macon (Ga.)

_Telegraph's_ account of the meeting of the United Daughters of the

Confederacy in Macon, October, 1905.

"In the presentation to Mrs. L. H. Raines of a gold pin, a testimonial

from the United Daughters of Georgia, a very pretty climax to the

morning's session was reached. The speech with which Miss Mildred

Rutherford presented the pin in behalf of the Daughters will be

memorable to every one present, for it was touched with emotion and

instruction as a bit of history. Miss Rutherford explained that when

the war between the States ended, the Ladies' Aid Societies resolved

themselves into associations whose work it was to care for the graves

of the fallen heroes and to collect the bodies from far-off fields.

"There was a woman in Nashville, who had ever been foremost in

Confederate work--a Mrs. M. C. Goodlet, who in 1892 was president of

the auxiliary to the Cheatham Bivouac. She had just aided in building

the soldiers' home near Nashville and felt that there was a work not

included in the work of the auxiliaries as then constituted. So she

resolved to form an organization to be called the

'Daughters of the

Confederacy.' The purpose of this organization was to be the care of

aged veterans and the wives and children of veterans, the building of

monuments, the collection and preservation of records.

"Mrs. L. H. Raines was one of the first to write for information to

Mrs. Goodlet, and on reply she took the matter before the Savannah

auxiliary. This auxiliary, while not willing to lose its individuality

in the new organization, quickly formed within its own ranks a chapter

of the Daughters of the Confederacy. So the charter chapter of Georgia

came into existence."

Miss Rutherford then related how the chapters grew in number until it

occurred to Mrs. Raines that strength would come through union. She

wrote to Mrs. Goodlet suggesting a "United Daughters of the

Confederacy," and Mrs. Goodlet agreed with the idea, so that a

constitution and by-laws were formulated and a convention of the

various chapters called at Nashville in 1894, "Mother"

Goodlet

presiding. The convention of the United Daughters at San Francisco

formally recognized Mrs. Goodlet as founder of the Daughters of the

Confederacy and Mrs. Raines as founder of the United Daughters.

A DAUGHTER'S PLEA

The following is an extract from the Macon (Ga.) _Telegraph's_ report

of the proceedings of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in Macon

on the 26th of October, 1905:

Mrs. Plaine had not then learned that Virginia opened last year a

large and comfortable home for Confederate women on Grace street in

the city of Richmond. It is a noble monument to our mothers and

grandmothers and a needed asylum for some of the very lonely. Mrs.

Plaine among other things said:

"We have corrected many falsehoods disseminated throughout the South

in Northern histories and readers, substituting impartial and truthful

Southern books; and we have children's chapters as auxiliaries to the

United Daughters of the Confederacy that they may learn even more of

the imperishable grandeur of the men and women of the old South. But,

my dear friends, have we not failed in one paramount duty? Should we

not in all these years have made some organized effort for the succor

and support of the aged women of the Confederacy whose noble deeds we

have been busily recording? Texas is the only State which has made any

decided move in this direction. The United Daughters of the

Confederacy of that State have purchased a lot in Austin and have

several thousand dollars towards building a home to be known as

'Heroines' Home.' They propose to have for these precious old ladies

pleasant and comfortable housing, good food cheerfully served,

efficient attendants, nurses and physicians, books, and all the little

pastimes with which cherished mothers should be provided to keep them

satisfied and happy as the depressing shadows grow longer.

"When we of Atlanta were working so hard to have the State accept

and maintain the soldiers' home which had been built by public

subscription eight years before and was fast going to decay, the

only opposition we had was from those who thought there were too few

soldiers left to need such a home. But what has been the result of

opening it to them? Why, hundreds of old, infirm and needy veterans

have found there a comfortable place in which to pass the remnant

of their lives, and we feel more than repaid for our small share in

opening it for their use.

"Now, in the effort to establish a home for the aged women of the

Confederacy, the same objection will be raised of 'so few to occupy

it.'

"Where are the women who represented the six hundred thousand valiant

soldiers who constituted the grandest army the world has yet known?

"Where are those who with unflinching courage sent forth husbands,

sons, fathers, brothers and lovers to swell that immortal host which

marched and suffered beneath the 'Stars and Bars?' Where the little

girls who carded and spun and knitted to help their mothers clothe the

naked soldiers? Where the young girls who stood by the wayside to feed

the hungry and quench the thirst of the men on their long and weary

marches? Where the women who with tireless energy ministered night and

day to the sick and wounded and spoke words of hope to the dying?

Where those who stood at the threshold of desolate homes to welcome

with smiles and loving caresses their uncrowned heroes, and who by

their courage and patient endurance, amidst want and poverty, saved

from despair and even suicide the men by whose heroic efforts a new

and greater South has arisen from the ashes of the old?

"Hundreds of these women, my dear friends, some of them once queens in

the old Southern society of which we still boast, and who would even

now grace the court of the proudest monarch on earth, are still with

us, but many of them in poverty and obscurity, suffering in silence

rather than acknowledge their changed condition.

"I know personally of four cultured, refined women, born and bred in

luxury, who gave some of the best years of their lives to help the

Southern cause, and who for the love of it still work with their

feeble hands to make the money with which to pay their dues as members

of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

"I know of another, reared by aristocratic, wealthy parents in this

city, who drove with her patriotic mother almost daily to take in

their private carriage the sick and wounded from the trains to the

hospitals, and who on one occasion retired behind one of the brick

pillars of your depot and tore off her undergarments to furnish

bandages for bleeding arteries. She is now quite advanced in years,

nearly all her relatives dead, and she is in very straitened

circumstances. But she is proud and brave still, and makes no moan.

"A few years ago it was announced in an Atlanta paper that a lady from

Sharpsburg, Md., was visiting a friend in Atlanta. A gentleman in

Griffin, after seeing the notice, took the next train to Atlanta and

called to see the lady without giving his name. As she entered the

parlor he stared at her for a moment and then grasped both her hands

in his and tears sprang to his eyes as he said with great emotion,

'Yes, yes, this is Miss Julia, only grown older--the same sweet face

that looked so compassionately into mine, and the same person who with

her beautiful sister Alice and her mother, worthy to have been the

mother of Napoleon, nursed me into life as you did so many poor

fellows after that awful battle. I have come to take you home with me.

My wife and children love you and all your family; your names are

honored household words with us.' Everything in the fine old mansion

of that family was literally soaked in the blood of Southern soldiers.

To these two young girls, Julia and Alice, scores of Southern families

owe the recovery of the bodies of their dead upon the memorable and

bloody field of Antietam or Sharpsburg. Most of the people around

there were Northern sympathizers, and took pleasure in desecrating

Confederate graves, and these young ladies, with the assistance of a

gentleman, who posed as a Yankee, made, secretly, diagrams of the

burial places of our dead, marking distances from trees, fences and

other objects, and sometimes burying pieces of iron or other

indestructible articles near by, that they might be able, if need be,

to recover the bodies, and thus many were restored to their friends.

So much was this family hated by the Yankee element in the

surrounding country it became unsafe for them to keep a light in the

house after night, for fear of being fired into. I have myself seen

since the war the bullets which lodged in the inside walls of the

rooms. Just at the close of the war these brave girls, in order to

send the body of a noble Confederate captain to his wife, then living

in Macon, drove with it in a wagon seventeen miles at night, crossing

the broad Potomac in a ferryboat, their only companion a boy of

twelve, and delivered the casket to the express agent at Leesburg, Va.

Both of these Southern heroines are still living.

Poverty long since

overtook them; the dear old home has passed into strange hands, and

they are left almost alone--one a widow, the other never married.

"Think you that such as these are not deserving the help of those of

us who have been more fortunate? In the language of Mrs.

Vincent, of

Texas, a native Georgian, 'because they have stifled their cries, and

in silent self-reliance labored all these years for subsistence, are

we Daughters to close our ears to their appeals, now that the patient

hands and the feeble footsteps hesitate in the oncoming darkness?'

"The time will come--is already here--when marble shafts will arise

to commemorate the deeds of the Spartan women of the South, but a

better and more enduring monument would be a home for such of them as

are still alive and in need, and for the benefit of the female

descendants of the men and women of the Confederacy who may yet

become old and homeless, and are eligible to the United Daughters of

the Confederacy.

"Memorial Hall in course of erection by the Daughters of the American

Revolution, commemorative of the deeds of our Revolutionary ancestry,

is a worthy and patriotic enterprise, but a home for the aged heroines

of the Confederacy would serve not alone as a memorial of our dead

heroes and heroines, but what is still better, it would be a blessing

to worthy, suffering humanity."

HOME FOR CONFEDERATE WOMEN

[J. L. Underwood.]

These women of the South not only work for the men, but when the men

undertake to work for them, they take up the work and do it for

themselves. In March, 1897, the Ladies' Auxiliary of the George E.

Pickett Camp, Confederate Veterans, began a movement to establish a

home for the wives, sisters, and daughters of dead and disabled

Confederate soldiers. Of this Auxiliary Society Mrs. R.

N. Northern

was president, Miss Alice V. Loehr, secretary. A call was made to the

people of the State and a Confederate festival, in charge of a

committee of which Mrs. Mary A. Burgess was chairman, was held in the

Regimental Armory in Richmond from the 19th to 29th of May for the

purpose of raising funds. The movement was most heartily endorsed by

the veterans, by Governor C. T. O'Ferrall, and the people generally,

and was continued to complete success. A very desirable building was

secured on Grace street and the home dedicated and opened in 1904 and

is now occupied by a number of grateful inmates. In all the historic

memorials about noble old Richmond there is no monument more touching

than this practical offering to the women of the Confederacy. A

similar home has already been provided in Texas and the R. A. Smith

Camp of Veterans at Macon, Ga., which recently laid the corner-stone

of a monument to the Confederate Women, has already begun a movement

for the establishment of a home in that city and the United Daughters

of the Confederacy are at work for its accomplishment.

JEFFERSON DAVIS MONUMENT

[J. L. Underwood.]

The project to erect an appropriate monument to the great Chieftain of

the Confederacy was undertaken by the veterans years ago. They raised

about $20,000. The Daughters of the Confederacy, just as they always

do, then took hold of the matter and they have increased the fund to

$70,000. The Georgia United Daughters of the Confederacy, who have

built a Winnie Davis dormitory at the Georgia Normal School, have been

very active in the work for the Davis Monument at Richmond, and

Georgia has the credit of leading all the States in the amount

contributed. The city of Richmond has donated a very eligible lot at

the crossing of Franklin and Cedar streets, near the splendid R. E.

Lee monument. It is fitting that the monuments to the leading civil

and military heroes of the great cause shall be so near each other.

Very near to these will be monuments each to Gen. J. E.

B. Stuart, and

to Gen. Fitz Hugh Lee. These monuments will all stand in the Lee

district, the new and coming choice residence section of the glorious

city.

It is expected that the splendid monument to Mr. Davis will be

unveiled at the Confederate reunion in 1907. Work has already begun

and the foundations are being laid. Dirt was formally broken on the

7th of November, 1905, by Mrs. Thomas McCullough, of Staunton,

president of the Davis Monument Association. Hon. J.

Taylor Ellyson,

lieutenant-governor elect, a noble veteran, and others, also took part

in the historic ceremonies. The picks and shovels will be preserved in

the Confederate Museum. The monument will be unique in its design and

will worthily tell future generations of the great man and the great

cause. The writer confesses to a great pleasure, while preparing this

volume, of almost daily visits to see the foundation work of this

monument going on. He spent five years of his life in Mississippi in

the old days, and he knows Mr. Davis before our war to have been a

gentleman, a patriot, and a Christian, and the kindest of masters to

his slaves. He was a Chevalier Bayard, a knight _sans peur et sans

reproche_, and yet, under the responsibility laid on him by the

Confederate States, he became the mark for all the abuse and slander

that could be heaped on the Confederate cause by the fanatics among

our foes. His grave in Hollywood Cemetery and the Confederate Memorial

Museum building, which was Mr. Davis's home during the sad war, have

been precious though mournful Meccas to the author during many months

of hospital suffering in Richmond, and, by courtesy of the Ladies'

Memorial Literary Society, a large part of the actual work on this

memorial volume was done in the very rooms occupied by our great

leader. May God bless our noble women for the monument which promises

to be worthy of its mission.

RECIPROCAL SLAVERY

[J. L. Underwood.]

Humanity and kindness were the rule which marked the treatment of the

slaves in the South. For this the Southern people have claimed no

credit. A man deserves no credit for taking care of a $50 cow. Much

more will his very self interest treat well a $250

horse. How much

more to his interest to feed, house, clothe and nurse a $1,500 negro.

As in all things human, there were evils connected even with Southern

slavery, and Southern patriots rejoice that it is all gone. But

history will only render simple justice to the men and women of the

South when it records that any real cruel treatment of the negro was

very rare.

The writer's life has nearly all been spent in the negro belts of

Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and South Carolina, and he knew of but

three cases where slave owners were charged with habitual cruel

treatment of the slaves. One of these, in the Alabama canebrake, gave

his slaves the best of medical attention, but they were evidently not

supplied with the clothing they ought to have. The other two, one man

and one woman, had the reputation of giving way to a cruel temper when

chastising their slaves. All of them stood branded with public odium.

The truth is that in Southern slavery there was a sort of mutuality.

The owner belonged to the negro as truly as the negro belonged to the

white man. In many respects the master rendered service to the slave.

The State laws, to say nothing of humanity and religion, made it so,

but you say "it was a very pleasant sort of slavery for the master."

Yes, and a very pleasant sort of slavery for the negro.

They were the

jolliest set of working people the world ever saw. The chains of the

negro were not the only shackles removed by the great revolution. When

the time came the slave owners felt that a great burden had been

rolled from their own shoulders.

As far as the writer knows, the universal feeling of the slave owners

was expressed in the language of a good old couple who had worked hard

and finally become the owners of a hundred slaves. Said the old man,

"I didn't enslave the negroes, and I didn't set them free, and I am

glad the whole of the great responsibility has been lifted from my

shoulders." His wife, sitting by, said, "I feel like a new woman. I am

now set free from a great burden."

The truth is, while negro slavery was the most convenient property

ever owned in America, it made heavy and constant exactions of care,

attention, and worry on the part of the owner. The ignorant, childish

Africans needed a master more than any master needed them. There lived

near the author's home in Sumter county, Ala., a Mr.

Jere Brown. He

was of a fine family and a graduate of South Carolina College. He was

a splendid type of the intelligent, polished, Christian gentleman of

the old school. He owned at least a thousand negro slaves and kept

them all near him. While he had overseers and foremen to direct the

farm labor, he devoted all his time to attendance upon his slaves. He

was their physician and their nurse and very rarely ever left the

boundaries of his own land. His slaves all loved him, and it was long

said of him that he wore himself out looking after the negroes. They

belonged to him and he to them. This identity of interest, the

closeness of relationship, the mutual, kind feeling between owners and

slaves was never realized by the fanatics and party politicians of the

North until since the emancipation. The eyes of the world have been

opened to the fact that nearly all of the substantial help for the

negro's school, his church and for himself and his family when in

distress, has been rendered by the old slave owners and their

children. This practical help has been rendered all over the South.

Alas! this mutual interest is growing weaker very fast.

The slave

owners and their children, the true friends to the negro, will soon be

all dead. How much sympathy the negro is to get from the next

generation is for the negro himself to say. He has used his ballot in

such a way as to cut himself off from his neighbors, employers and

life-long friends; and to bring down the contempt of the world. For

years he used it as a bludgeon to beat the life out of what had been

sovereign States and free people. Later on he has made it a toy to be

sold for a drink of whiskey or thrown into the gutter.

The whole

American people know this negro ballot to be a travesty on liberty.

His natural civil rights are secure in the North and in the South. But

his own folly has raised the question of the continuance of the

privilege of voting. Anglo Saxons will continue to rule America. They

are not a people who will long put up with child's play and stupidity

in politics. They mean business. And if the negro expects to use the

ballot, he must catch the step of a freeman. He must vote for the

interest of his State and his section and through a prosperous united

State, work for the well being of the whole Union. In this Christian

land he has met with unbounded sympathy in his helplessness. That

sympathy is being at times sorely tried. It is waning, sadly waning.

If he expects the privilege of an American, he must act like an

American. It saddens the Confederate veterans of 1861 to see how far

white and black have drifted apart within the last twenty years. The

"friendliness" of which Henry Grady wrote in 1888 will not, it is

feared, last to 1908. God grant they may get closer together in all

that makes for the good of both races.

BARBARA FRIETCHIE

[J. L. Underwood.]

Here is a part of the story of the Maryland woman and the Federal flag

in the famous poem of John G. Whittier:

"Bravest of all in Fredericktown

She took up the flag the men hauled down; In her attic window the staff she set

To show that one heart was loyal yet.

Up the street came the rebel tread,

Stonewall Jackson riding ahead:

Under his slouch hat left and right

He glanced; the old flag met his sight.

'Halt!' the dust-brown ranks stood fast,

'Fire!' Out blazed the rifle blast,

It shivered the window pane and sash,

It rent the banner with seam and gash.

Quick as it fell from the broken staff, Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf."

This is poetry, but it is not history. It is not truth.

It does not

sound like it. Nobody but men like Whittier, blinded by New England

prejudice and steeped in ignorance of Southern people, would for a

moment have thought Stonewall Jackson capable of giving an order to

fire on a woman. None of the story sounds at all like

"Stonewall

Jackson's way." To their credit the later editions of Whittier's poems

cast a grave doubt on the truth of the story, and now Mr. John McLean,

an old next-door neighbor to the genuine Barbara Frietchie, has given

to Mr. Smith Clayton, of the Atlanta _Journal_, the true story showing

Whittier's tale to be nothing but a myth. Mr. Clayton says:

"Coming up to Washington from Richmond the other day I brushed up an

acquaintance with a very pleasant, intelligent and, by the way,

handsome gentleman, Mr. John McLean, a conductor on the Richmond,

Fredericksburg and Washington Railroad. In the course of conversation

he mentioned Frederick, Md. I laughed and said:

"Did you ever meet Barbara Frietchie?"

"Why, my dear sir," he replied, "she lived just across the street from

my father's home."