General Butler, no woman could declare herself a Unionist without
great personal peril; but as we have seen there were those who risked
all for their attachment to the Union even then. Mrs. Taylor was by no
means the only outspoken Union woman of the city, though she may have
been the most fearless. Mrs. Minnie Don Carlos, the wife of a Spanish
gentleman of the city, was from the beginning of the war a decided Union
woman, and after its occupation by Union troops was a constant and
faithful visitor at the hospitals and rendered great service to Union
soldiers. Mrs. Flanders, wife of Hon. Benjamin Flanders, and her two
daughters, Miss Florence and Miss Fanny Flanders were also well known
for their persistent Unionism and their abundant labors for the sick and
wounded. Mrs. and Miss Carrie Wolfley, Mrs. Dr. Kirchner, Mrs. Mills,
Mrs. Bryden, Mrs. Barnett and Miss Bennett, Mrs. Wibrey, Mrs.
Richardson, Mrs. Hodge, Mrs. Thomas, Mrs. Howell, Mrs. Charles Howe of
Key West, and Miss Edwards from Massachusetts, were all faithful and
earnest workers in the hospitals throughout the war, and Union women
when their Unionism involved peril. Miss Sarah Chappell, Miss Cordelia
Baggett and Miss Ella Gallagher, also merit the same commendation.

Nor should we fail to do honor to those loyal women in the mountainous
districts and towns of the interior of the South. Our prisoners as they
were marched through the towns of the South always found some tender
pitying hearts, ready to do something for their comfort, if it were only
a cup of cold water for their parched lips, or a corn dodger slyly
slipped into their hand. Oftentimes these humble but patriotic women
received cruel abuse, not only from the rebel soldiers, but from rebel
Southern women, who, though perhaps wealthier and in more exalted social
position than those whom they scorned, had not their tenderness of heart
or their real refinement. Indeed it would be difficult to find in
history, even among the fierce brutal women of the French revolution,
any record of conduct more absolutely fiendish than that of some of the
women of the South during the war. They insisted on the murder of
helpless prisoners; in some instances shot them in cold blood
themselves, besought their lovers and husbands to bring them Yankee
skulls, scalps and bones, for ornaments, betrayed innocent men to death,
engaged in intrigues and schemes of all kinds to obtain information of
the movements of Union troops