the floors and made into blankets; the rare bronzes and brasses were
torn from their pedestals or their fastenings and sent to the
foundries to be made into cannon; silk dresses were transformed
into banners to lead the gray-clad men to victory, and dainty
linen and cambric garments and rare household napery and linen were
ruthlessly torn in strips to bandage the wounds of the men in the
hospitals. The granaries, smokehouses, and wine cellars gave up
their stores for the Confederacy, the wealth of these two loyal women
being laid gladly on their country's altar. Yet, through all this
troublous season, hospitality and merriment still reigned. The
rebel lads adored the loyal women; the Union soldiers tried more
than once to burn the house that sheltered such secessionists.
During the war the fair daughter of the house was married to Rev.
George Carroll Harris, of Nashville, and for many years rector of
Christ Church, and widely known throughout the South.
In 1880 Mrs. Johnstone died, and historic Annandale passed into her
daughter's hands, and is still owned by her. A few years ago the son
of Dr. and Mrs. Harris, George Harris, married Miss Cecile Nugent, of
Jackson, Mississippi, and they live on his place in the Delta, and
with the marriage of the daughter Helen to the son of the late Bishop
Thompson the younger generation of Annandale closed another chapter of
romances for the old home. But even though the windows are darkened
and no material form passes daily over the threshold, the inner air is
still palpitant with memories, and who knows what gay revels the
ghostly companies of the past may not hold in the grand salon when
midnight has come and the human world is wrapped in slumber?
A PLANTATION HEROINE
[In Southern Soldier Stories, pages 203-205.]
It was nearing the end. Every resource of the Southern States had been
taxed to the point of exhaustion. The people had given up everything
they had for "the cause." Under the law of a "tax in kind," they had
surrendered all they could spare of food products of every character.
Under an untamable impulse of patriotism they had surrendered much
more than they could spare in order to feed the army.
It was at such a time that I went to my home county on a little
military business. I stopped for dinner at a house, the lavish
hospitality of which had been a byword in the old days.
I found before
me at dinner the remnants of a cold boiled ham, some mustard greens,
which we Virginians called "salad," a pitcher of buttermilk, some corn
pones and--nothing else. I carved the ham, and offered to serve it to
the three women of the household. But they all declined.
They made
their dinner on salad, buttermilk, and corn bread, the latter eaten
very sparingly, as I observed. The ham went only to myself and to the
three convalescent wounded soldiers who were guests in the house.
Wounded men were at that time guests in every house in Virginia.
I lay awake that night and thought over the circumstance. The next
morning I took occasion to have a talk on the old familiar terms with
the young woman of the family, with whom I had been on a basis of
friendship in the old days that even permitted me to kiss her upon due
and proper occasion.
"Why didn't you take some ham last night?" I asked urgently.
"Oh, I didn't want it," she replied.
"Now, you know you are fibbing," I said. "Tell me the truth, won't
you?"
She blushed, and hesitated. Presently she broke down and answered
frankly: "Honestly, I did want the ham. I have hungered for meat for
months. But I mustn't eat it, and I won't. You see the army needs all
the food there is, and more. We women can't fight, though I don't see
at all why they shouldn't let us, and so we are trying to feed the
fighting men--and there aren't any others. We've made up our minds not
to eat anything that can be sent to the front as rations."
"You are starving yourselves," I exclaimed.
"Oh, no," she said. "And if we were, what would it matter? Haven't
Lee's soldiers starved many a day? But we aren't starving. You see we
had plenty of salad and buttermilk last night. And we even ate some of
the corn bread. I must stop that, by the way, for corn meal is a good
ration for the soldiers." A month or so later this frail but heroic
young girl was laid away in the Grub Hill church-yard.
Don't talk to me about the "heroism" that braves a fire of hell under
enthusiastic impulse. That young girl did a higher self-sacrifice than
any soldier who fought on either side during the war ever dreamed of
doing.
LUCY ANN COX
[In Southern Historical Papers, Volume 22, pages 54-55.
From the
Richmond _Star_, July 21, 1894.]
On the evening of October 15th an entertainment was given in
Fredericksburg, Virginia, to raise funds to erect a monument to the
memory of Mrs. Lucy Ann Cox, who, at the commencement of the war,
surrendered all the comfort of her father's home, and followed the
fortunes of her husband, who was a member of Company A, Thirteenth
Virginia Regiment, until the flag of the Southern Confederacy was
furled at Appomattox. No march was too long or weather too inclement
to deter this patriotic woman from doing what she considered her duty.
She was with her company and regiment on their two forays into
Maryland, and her ministering hand carried comfort to many a wounded
and worn soldier. While Company A was the object of her untiring
solicitude, no Confederate ever asked assistance from Mrs. Cox but it
was cheerfully rendered.
She marched as the infantry did, seldom taking advantage of offered
rides in ambulances and wagon trains. When Mrs. Cox died, a few years
ago, it was her latest expressed wish that she be buried with military
honors, and, so far as it was possible, her wish was carried out. Her
funeral took place on a bright autumn Sunday, and the entire town
turned out to do honor to this noble woman.
The camps that have undertaken the erection of this monument do honor
to themselves in thus commemorating the virtues of the heroine, Lucy
Ann Cox.
"ONE OF THEM LEES"
[Phoebe Y. Pember, in Hospital Life.]
There was little conversation carried on, no necessity for
introductions, and no names ever asked or given. This indifference to
personality was a peculiarity strongly exhibited in hospitals; for
after nursing a sick or wounded patient for months, he has often left
without any curiosity as regarded my name, my whereabouts, or indeed
anything connected with me. A case in point was related by a friend.
When the daughter of our general had devoted much time and care to a
sick man in one of the hospitals, he seemed to feel so little
gratitude for the attention paid him that her companion to rouse him
told him that Miss Lee was his nurse. "Lee, Lee?" he said. "There are
some Lees down in Mississippi who keeps a tavern there.
Is she one of
them Lees?"
Almost of the same style, although a little worse, was the remark of
one sick, poor fellow who had been wounded in the head and who, though
sensible enough ordinarily, would feel the effect of the sun on his
brain when exposed to its influence. After advising him to wear a wet
paper doubled into the crown of his hat, more from a desire to show
some interest in him than from any belief in its efficacy, I paused at
the door long enough to hear him ask the ward-master,
"who that was?"
"Why, that is the matron of the hospital; she gives you all the food
you eat, and attends to things."
"Well," said he, "I always did think this government was a confounded
sell, and now I am sure of it, when they put such a little fool to
manage such a big hospital as this."
SOUTHERN WOMEN IN THE WAR BETWEEN THE STATES
[In Southern Historical Papers, Volume 32, pages 146-150. T. C.
DeLeon, in New Orleans _Picayune_.]
The great German who wrote:
"Honor to woman! to her it is given To garden the earth with roses of heaven!"
precisely described the Confederate conditions--a century in advance.
True, constant, brave and enduring, the men were; but the women set
even the bravest and most steadfast example. Nor was this confined to
any one section of the country. The "girl with the calico dress" of
the lowland farms; the "merry mountain maid" of the hill country, and
the belles of society in the cities, all vied with each other in
efforts to serve the men who had gone to the front to fight for home
and for them. And there was no section of the South where this desire
to do all they might and more was oftener in evidence than another. In
every camp of the early days of the great struggle the incoming troops
bore trophies of home love, and as the war progressed to need, then to
dire want, the sacrifices of those women at home became almost a poem,
and one most pathetic. Dress--misconceived as the feminine fetich--was
forgotten in the effort to clothe the boys at the front; the family
larder--ill-stocked at the best--was depleted to nothingness, to send
to distant camps those delicacies--so equally freighted with
tenderness and dyspepsia--which too often never reached their
destination. And later, the carpets were taken from the floors, the
curtains from the windows--alike in humble homes and in dwellings of
the rich--to be cut in blankets for the uncomplaining fellows,
sleeping on freezing mud.
So wide, so universal, was the rule of self-sacrifice, that no one
reference to it can do justice to the zeal and devotion of "Our
Girls." And the best proof of both was in the hospitals, where soon
began to congregate the maimed and torn forms of those just sent
forth to glory and victory. This was the trial that tested the
grain and purity of our womanhood, and left it without alloy of fear
or selfishness. And some of the women who wrought in home and
hospital--even in trench and on the firing line--for the
"boys,"
had never before handled aught rougher than embroidery, or seen
aught more fearsome than its needle-prick. Yes, these untried
women, young and old, stood fire like veteran regulars, indeed, even
more bravely in moral view, for they missed the stimulus of the
charge--the tonic in the thought of striking back.
During the entire war--and through the entire South--it was the
hospital that illustrated the highest and best traits of the tried and
stricken people. Doubtless, there was good work done by the women of
the North, and much of it. Happily, for the sanity of the nation,
American womanhood springs from one common stock. It is ever true to
its own, as a whole--and, for aught I shall deny--
individually. But
behind that Chinese wall of wood and steel blockade, then nursing was
not an episode. It was grave duty, grim labor; heartbreaking
endurance--all self-imposed, and lasting for years, yet shirked and
relinquished only for cause.
But the dainty little hands that tied the red bandages, or "held the
artery" unflinching; the nimble feet that wearied not by fever cot, or
operating table, the active months of war, grew nimbler still on
bridle, or in the dances when "the boys" came home. This was sometimes
on "flying furlough," or when an aid, or courier, with dispatches, was
told to wait. Then "the one girl" was mounted on anything that could
carry her; and the party would ride far to the front, in full view of
the enemy, and often in point-blank range. Or, it was when frozen ruts
made roads impassable for invader and defender; and the furlough was
perhaps easier, and longer. Then came those now historic dances, the
starvation parties, where rank told nothing, and where the only
refreshment came in that intoxicant--a woman's voice and eyes.
Then came the "Dies Irae," when the Southern Rachel sat in the ashes
of her desolation and her homespun was sackcloth. And even she rose
supreme. By her desolate hearth, with her larder empty, and only her
aching heart full, she still forced a smile for the home-coming "boy"
through the repressed tears for the one left, somewhere in the fight.
In Richmond, Atlanta, Charleston and elsewhere was she bitter and
unforgiving? If she drew her faded skirt--ever a black one, in that
case--from the passing blue, was it "treason," or human nature?
Thinkers who wore the blue have time and oft declared the latter. Was
she "unreconstructed?" Her wounds were great and wondrous sore. She
was true, then, to her faith. That she is to-day to the reunited land
let the fathers of Spanish war heroes tell. She needs no monument; it
is reared in the hearts of true men, North and South.
A MOTHER OF THE CONFEDERACY
[In Southern Historical Papers, Volume 22, pages 63-64.
From the
Memphis, Tenn., _Appeal-Avalanche_, June 30, 1894.]
Just upon the eve of preparations by ex-Confederates to celebrate the
Fourth of July in a becoming manner and spirit, the sad news is
announced of the death of the venerable Mrs. Law, known all over the
South as one of the mothers of the Confederacy. She was also truly a
mother in Israel, in the highest Christian sense. Her life had been
closely connected with that of many leading actors in the late war, in
which she herself bore an essential part. She passed away, June 28th,
at Idlewild, one of the suburbs of Memphis, nearly 89
years of age.
She was born on the River Yadkin, in Wilson County, North Carolina,
August 27, 1805, and at the time of her death was doubtless the oldest
person in Shelby County. Her mother's maiden name was Charity King.
Her father, Chapman Gordon, served in the Revolutionary War, under
Generals Marion and Sumter. She came of a long-lived race of people.
Her mother lived to be 93 years of age, and her brother, Rev. Hezekiah
Herndon Gordon, who was the father of General John B.
Gordon (now
Senator from Georgia), lived to the age of 92 years.
Sallie Chapman Gordon was married to Dr. John S. Law, near Eatonton,
Georgia, on the 28th day of June, 1825. A few years later she became a
member of the Presbyterian Church, in Forsyth, Georgia, and her name
was afterward transferred to the rolls of the Second Presbyterian
Church in Memphis, of which church she remained a member as long as
she lived.
She became an active worker in hospitals, and when nothing more could
be done in Memphis she went through the lines and rendered substantial
aid and comfort to the soldiers in the field. Her services, if fully
recorded, would make a book. She was so recognized that upon one
occasion General Joseph E. Johnston had 30,000 of his bronzed and
tattered soldiers to pass in review in her honor at Dalton. Such a
distinction was, perhaps, never accorded to any other woman in the
South--not even Mrs. Jefferson Davis or the wives of great generals.
Yet, so earnest and sincere in her work was she that she commanded the
respect and reverence of men wherever she was known.
After the war she
strove to comfort the vanquished and encourage the down-hearted, and
continued in her way to do much good work.
"THE GREAT EASTERN"
[In Christ in Camp, pages 94-98; J. William Jones, D.
D.]
Here is another sketch of a soldier's friend who labored in some of
our largest hospitals.
"She is a character," writes a soldier. "A Napoleon of her department,
with the firmness and courage of Andrew, she possesses all the energy
and independence of Stonewall Jackson. The officials hate her; the
soldiers adore her. The former name her 'The Great Eastern,' and steer
wide of her track, the latter go to her in all their wants and
troubles, and know her by the name of 'Miss Sally.' She joined the
army in one of the regiments from Alabama, about the time of the
battle of Manassas, and never shrunk from the stern privations of the
soldier's life from the moment of leaving camp to follow her wounded
and sick Alabamians to the hospitals of Richmond. Her services are not
confined, however, to the sick and wounded from Alabama.
Every sick
soldier has now a claim on her sympathy. Why, but yesterday, my system
having succumbed to the prevailing malaria of the hospital, she came
to my room, though a stranger, with my ward nurse, and in the kindest
manner offered me her pillow of feathers, with case as tidy as the
driven snow. The very sight of it was soothing to an aching brow, and
I blessed her from heart and lips as well. I must not omit to tell why
'Miss Sally' is so disliked by many of the officials.
Like all women
of energy, she has eyes whose penetration few things escape, and a
sagacity fearful or admirable, as the case may be, to all interested.
If any abuse is pending, or in progress in the hospital, she is
quickly on the track, and if not abated, off 'The Great Eastern' sails
to headquarters. A few days ago one of the officials of the division
sent a soldier to inform her that she must vacate her room instantly.
'Who sent you with that message to me?' she asked him, turning
suddenly around. 'Dr. ----,' the soldier answered.
'Pish!' she
replied, and swept on in ineffable contempt to the bedside, perhaps,
of some sick soldier."
CORDIAL FOR THE BRAVE
[Eggleston's Recollections, pages 70-71.]
The ingenuity with which these good ladies discovered or manufactured
onerous duties for themselves was surprising, and having discovered or
imagined some new duty they straightway proceeded to do it at any
cost.
An excellent Richmond dame was talking with a soldier friend, when he
carelessly remarked that there was nothing which so greatly helped to
keep up a contented and cheerful spirit among the men as the receipt
of letters from their woman friends. Catching at the suggestion as a
revelation of duty, she asked, "And cheerfulness makes better soldiers
of the men, does it not?" Receiving yes for an answer, the frail
little woman, already over-burdened with cares of an unusual sort, sat
down and made out a list of all the men with whom she was acquainted
even in the smallest possible way, and from that day until the end of
the war she wrote one letter a week to each, a task which, as her
acquaintance was large, taxed her time and strength very severely.
Not content with this, she wrote on the subject in the newspapers,
earnestly urging a like course upon her sisters, many of whom adopted
the suggestion at once, much to the delight of the soldiers, who
little dreamed that the kindly, cheerful, friendly letters which every
mail brought into camp were a part of woman's self-appointed work for
the success of the common cause. From the beginning to the end of the
war it was the same.
HOSPITAL WORK AND WOMEN'S DELICACY
[Phoebe Y. Pember, in Hospital Life.]
There is one subject connected with hospitals on which a few words
should be said--the distasteful one that a woman must lose a
certain amount of delicacy and reticence in filling any office in
them. How can this be? There is no unpleasant exposure under proper
arrangements, and if even there be, the circumstances which
surround a wounded man, far from friends and home, suffering in a
holy cause and dependent upon a woman for help, care and sympathy,
hallow and clear the atmosphere in which she labors.
That woman
must indeed be hard and gross who lets one material thought lessen
her efficiency. In the midst of suffering and death, hoping with
those almost beyond hope in this world; praying by the bedside of the
lonely and heart-stricken; closing the eyes of boys hardly old enough
to realize man's sorrow, much less suffer by man's fierce hate, a
woman must soar beyond the conventional modesty considered correct
under different circumstances.
If the ordeal does not chasten and purify her nature, if the
contemplation of suffering and endurance does not make her wiser and
better, and if the daily fire through which she passes does not draw
from her nature the sweet fragrance of benevolence, charity, and
love,--then, indeed, a hospital has been no fit place for her.
A WAYSIDE HOME AT MILLEN
[Electra Tyler Deloache, in Augusta _Chronicle_, October 29, 1905.]
Only a few of the present inhabitants of Millen know that it was once
famous as the location of a Confederate Wayside Home, where, during
the civil war, the soldiers were fed and cared for. The home was built
by public subscription and proved a veritable boon to the soldiers, as
many veterans now living can testify.
The location of the town has been changed slightly since the 60's, for
in those days the car sheds were several hundred yards farther up the
Macon track, and were situated where the railroad crossing is now. The
hotel owned and run by Mr. Gray was first opposite the depot, and the
location is still marked by mock-orange trees and shrubbery.
The Wayside Home was on the west side of the railroad crossing and was
opposite the house built in the railroad Y by Major Wilkins and
familiarly known here as the Berrien House. The old well still marks
the spot. The home was weather-boarded with rough planks running
straight up and down. It had four large rooms to the front,
conveniently furnished with cots, etc., for the accommodation of any
soldiers who were sick or wounded and unable to continue their
journey. A nurse was always on hand to attend to the wants of the
sick. Back of these rooms was a large dining hall and kitchen, where
the weary and hungry boys in gray could minister to the wants of the
inner man. And right royally they performed this pleasant duty, for
the table was always bountifully supplied with good things, donated by
the patriotic women of Burke county, who gladly emptied hearts and
home upon the altar of country. This work was entirely under the
auspices of the women of Burke. Mrs. Judge Jones, of Waynesboro, was
the first president of the home. She was succeeded by Mrs. Ransom
Lewis, who was second and last. She was quite an active factor in the
work, and it was largely due to her efforts that the home attained the
prominence that it did among similar institutions.
Miss Annie Bailey, daughter of Captain Bailey, of Savannah, was matron
of the home. She was assisted in the work by committees of three
ladies, who, each in turn, spent several days at the home. The regular