beloved!

The courage and endurance of the Southern women, who took full charge of
the cotton plantations and helped support Lee's army, stirs the sense of
wonder. There were many Northern women who had no relatives at the
front, but there was scarcely a Southern home where the father, husband
or sons were not on the battle line. For that reason the Southern women
were always in a state of suspense. Homes were entirely broken up during
the four years. The men were at the front, and all the women were
either at work at home or were in the hospitals as nurses. During 1862
and 1863 practically every church in Richmond was a hospital, and there
were twenty-five other buildings used by surgeons. Physicians had no
morphine and no quinine. For coffee they used parched corn. Tea rose to
$500 a pound. For sugar they steeped watermelon rind. For soda these
women burned corncobs and mixed the ashes with their corn-meal. They had
neither ice nor salt. They tore up their ingrain carpets to make
trousers for the soldiers. Women wore coarse hemp and calico. Having no
leather, one little factory turned out five hundred pairs of wooden
shoes a month in Richmond.

When Lee needed bullets, a minister tore the lead pipe out of his house
in Richmond to send the lead to Lee. Flour rose to $400 a barrel. In one
little town iron became so scarce that tenpenny nails were used for
money. No tale more pitiful than that of the women who took charge of
the slaves on the plantation, comforted their little children, buried
their dead, smiled, wept, prayed, worked, compelled their lips to
silence, staggered on, groaned inly while they taught men peace, and
died while others were smiling. Whether or not men are made in the image
of God, these women certainly were. And it was because they believed
with all their mind and soul that independence for the State was the
sovereign gift of God; and they died for independence, just as the boys
in blue lived and died for the Union.

It was this moral earnestness and intensity of conviction that made the
war so terrible. When England hired Hessians to fight Washington's
troops, and they fought for so much a week, the hired soldiers were slow
to begin attack and quick to retreat. Mercenaries have to be scourged
into battle. Stonewall Jackson's men believed in their cause and
thirsted for the excitement of the attack and onslaught. And yet all the
time the two opposing armies maintained mutual respect and even