[Emailed July 7, 1997]

SOUTHERN WOMEN

I don't know if you remember, but last week I mentioned that Richard Weaver's _The Southern Tradition At Bay_ wasn't much for pure history, but it was wonderful for exploration of ideas and had some fantastic quotes. And this week I came upon a passage that was just too good to pass up.

Some weeks ago I detailed for you the partisan loyalty shown by the Yankee-hating women of Huntsville during that city's Federal occupation. Lest you think that was a few isolated belles or a mindset peculiar to the ladies of North Alabama, I offer this from the late Professor Weaver:

"From the very eve of the conflict [the women of the South] were filled with the most ardent spirit. Sallie Putnam tells in her _Richmond During the War_ that long before the secession convention of Virginia nearly every woman in the city had in her possession a Confederate flag. Mrs. Roger Pryor relates how Virginia girls refused to become engaged until their lovers fought the Yankees. George Cary Eggleston, who was critical of many things in the Confederacy, devotes a chapter of unsparing praise of the way in which Southern women sustained their country...

"There are numerous anecdotes in _A Rebel's Recollections_ to indicate the bitterness of their hostility. One young lady, finding herself the unwilling hostess of a Federal officer, severed the strings of her piano with a hatchet when he sat down to entertain himself with music. 'That's my piano, and it shall not give you a minute's pleasure,' was the angry explanation. Another destroyed her library because it was the only way she could prevent a general officer billeted near her home from enjoying the books each morning.

"If women had been in charge of the direction of the war, perhaps Lee would have gone into the mountains in 1865, there to prolong resistance indefinitely; for they were more violent in sentiment than the men, and the more grievous their loss, the more stubbornly they identified themselves with the cause...

"Kate Cumming was horrified by rumors that the ladies of Mobile had extended a warm welcome to the Yankees who had entered upon the capitulation of that stronghold. But when she arrived, she was relieved to find it looking like a city of the dead, with no sign of the invader being greeted. John S. Wise reports that some gay ladies in Richmond who were thoughtless enough to entertain Federal officers within a few days of the surrender were years in regaining their social standing."

One more quote, this one about a Georgia girl writing to her sweetheart on the front lines:

"Page was shown a letter which had been taken from the body of a Georgia private who had been killed in one of the battles around Richmond. It was an ordinary love letter except for one item: the writer, after begging here soldier lover to return, added the following postscript: "Don't come home without a furlough. For if you don't come home honorable, I won't marry you."