ection. The
women of the South steadfastly refused to be "reconstructed." The same
feeling was prevalent among the men of that section; but it was at its
height among the women, who utterly refused to pretend to any feeling of
loyalty to the Union, and, worse yet, did not affect to conceal their
hatred of all things Northern. Among the evils which Reconstruction had
brought in its train was the advent in the South of a type of Northern
woman, entirely honest in her enthusiasm in the cause of the negro and
entirely ignorant of the true methods to further that cause. She came
armed with a thousand ill-founded prejudices, and she calmly proceeded
to work upon the lines suggested by those prejudices, with utter
disregard of the real conditions which she desired to ameliorate and
with dense ignorance of the true tendencies and nature of the people,
white and black, among whom she worked. Lacking the long line of racial
traditions and experiences which alone could give grasp of the
situation, she took council of her preconceived ideas only, and from her
darkness of ignorance and prejudice believed that she could shed light
into benighted souls. She was honest to a fault; but her honesty was
based in the supreme folly which believes that it can better see into
the nature of things than they to whom those things have been life-long
conditions. Seeing her, the Southern woman naturally believed that she
was a type of the womanhood of the North,--which she was not. Hearing
her reports, written from a standpoint utterly fatal to their truth or
even fairness, of the existent culture in the conquered country, the
Northern woman believed that her accounts gave a true picture of the
conditions of civilization and thought prevailing in the South,--which
they did not. So increased the poison of misunderstanding in the veins
of both sections.

The Southern woman was rebellious; the Northern woman was intolerant.
Were the women alone to be consulted, there was small hope of ever
fusing into one the severed elements which theoretically composed the
nation. And yet, because of conditions arising from the deplorable state
of things which then existed, the women were to become, though only
gradually and not of set purpose, the dominating constituents in such
fusion. The mills of the gods were grinding and the grist was to prove
of sustenance to the country in unlooked-for ways. Before following to
its end the movement which began in want and n