th
all their strength, and whether for good or evil, there is none greater
in effect, they urged their husbands and lovers and brothers, the one
side to wipe out in blood, if need and opportunity were, the insult to
their womanhood; the other to free the oppressed from bondage and from
the tyranny shown by Southern women as well as men. The actions and
utterances of each were plain to the other; the standpoints which
dictated those acts and words were hidden by the dense mist of
prejudice. Thus by woman's influence was precipitated the conflict which
had already become almost inevitable.

CHAPTER XII

THE CIVIL WAR

The election of Abraham Lincoln to the chief magistracy annihilated the
last hope of peaceful solution of the vexed question of the time. Hope,
indeed, there was in few female breasts, for with deplorable unanimity
the women of our country looked forward to war as the most desirable
result of all the anger that smouldered in both sections. Secession
followed hard upon the election of Lincoln; the Southern senators and
representatives resigned their seats in the councils of the nation; and
that nation was a nation no more.

Though there were many contributing circumstances, and those of the
gravest, the women of our country had been the most influential cause of
the rupture and its immediate result of war. They had inflamed the
hearts of the men so that the few who retained some coolness of judgment
and some tolerance of spirit could make no headway against the
extremists. The women were now to bear the brunt of the hard-following
consequences of their furious enthusiasm; but, before they began to feel
those consequences in full measure, they were to enjoy a brief period of
delight: that delight which their sex ever finds in the "pomp and
circumstance of glorious war," until they learn something of its stern
realities.

When peace was formally declared impossible, the women of both sections
found congenial vent for the enthusiasm which had been so fatal to the
efforts of the peacemakers. Each side firmly believed its cause pure and
right, without the shadow of doubt being possible, and each acted from
the depths of a conviction which was as much the child of education as
of environing circumstances. All over the country there was enthusiasm
which hardly stopped short of gala merriment. The younger women of both
sides embroidered banners for their pet regiments and with their own
fair hands gave