bout many and
significant changes in the status and thought of the women of our land,
particularly in the Southern portion thereof. It was a period of honest
error on the part of those who guided the destinies of the nation, and
the errors made by them, largely founded on the old base of
misunderstanding of actual conditions, reacted upon the womanhood of the
South and prolonged the sectional animosity which still held its place
of prejudice and bitterness in our midst. Justice of judgment, as far as
applied to national issues and affairs, was unknown; hence, amelioration
of existent conditions, always the work of wise and tolerant public
opinion, was impossible. During that period the South, and with it its
women, passed through greater stress and suffering than even the days of
the Civil War had brought upon it.

In the North there were no such hampering conditions to development,
therefore there was progress in all social matters. Society, as
generally termed, became re-formed and settled down to its old pursuits
and ambitions; but there had come a great difference in its conditions.
The era of centralization which had dawned with the close of the
Revolution had again passed away. Never again, as far as we can see and
foresee, was Washington to be the social centre of the country. The
traditions of the White House had been overthrown, and the leadership of
the social world was not to be looked for from that quarter as of old.
For the future, the mistress of the White House might be in theory "the
first lady of the land," but she was no longer to be at the head of a
court or even a coterie. The social glory of Washington had departed.
Society resumed its ways all over our country; but when American women
were spoken of there was no longer in the mind of speaker or listener
the inevitable suggestion of the social world as generally recognized.
The term had emerged from its narrowness of meaning and had resumed all
its old inclusiveness; North and South, East and West, it was recognized
that American womanhood includes society, and not society American
womanhood. And this recognition of a great truth helped the coming of a
new era which was hard at hand.

Meanwhile, America was two countries, joined in a force-born alliance
but with no true union, far less unity. And of all the manifestations of
this deplorable fact, none was so convincing as the bearing of our
womankind in their attitude toward those of the opposite s