When inequality was threatened and States were to be degraded to counties, and the South became one great battlefield, and every citizen was aiding in the terrible conflict, the mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, with extraordinary unanimity and fervor, rallied to the support of their imperilled land. While the older women from intelligent conviction were ready to sustain the South, political events and the necessity of confronting privations, trials, and sorrows developed girlhood into the maturity and self-reliance of womanhood. Anxious women with willing hands and loving hearts rushed eagerly to every place which sickness or destitution or the ravages of war invade, enduring sacrifices, displaying unsurpassed fortitude and heroism. Churches were converted into hospitals or places for making, collecting, and shipping clothing and needed supplies. Innumerable private homes adjacent to battlefields were filled with the sick and wounded. It was not uncommon to see grandmother and youthful maiden engaged in making socks, hats, and other needed articles. Untrained, these women entered the fields of labor with the spirit of Christ, rose into queenly dignity, and enrolled themselves among the immortals. ADDRESS OF COL. W. R. AYLETT BEFORE PICKETT CAMP [In Southern Historical Papers, Volume 22, page 60.] I claim for Camp Pickett the paternity of the first of the public expressions, in the form of a Confederate woman's monument. On the 16th day of January, 1890, in an address made by me, upon the presentation of General Pickett's portrait to this camp by Mrs. Jennings, as my remarks, published in the Richmond _Dispatch_ of the 17th of January, 1890, will show, I urged that steps be taken to erect a monument to the women of the Southern Confederacy, and you applauded the suggestion. But this idea, and the execution of it, is something in which none of us should claim exclusive glory and ownership. The monument should be carried not alone upon the shoulders of the infantry, artillery, cavalry, engineers and sailors of the Confederacy, but should be urged forward by the hearts and hands of the whole South. And wherever a Northern man has a Southern wife (and a good many Northern men of taste have them) let them help, too, for God never gave him a nobler or richer blessing. The place for such a monument, it seems to me, should be by the side of the Confederate soldier on Libby Hill. It is not well for a man to be alone, nor woman either. To place her elsewhere would make a perpetual stag of him, and a perpetual wall-flower of her. Companions in glory and suffering, let them go down the corridors of time side by side, the representatives of a race of heroes. GEN. BRADLEY T. JOHNSON'S SPEECH AT THE DEDICATION OF SOUTH'S MUSEUM _What Our Women Stood_ [In Southern Historical Papers, Volume 23, pages 368-370.]