The Women of the ConfederacyUnderwood, J. L. (John Levi)
History
The Women of the Confederacy
Underwood, J. L. (John Levi)
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Anecdotes; Women -- Confederate States of America
Comparatively speaking, it has been but a few years since the Southern
woman has been compelled by circumstances to seek a wider and more
profitable field for her talent, her energy, and her industry than the
home and fireside afford, and the experience of these few years has
demonstrated the fact that she is amply able to take care of herself.
In shaping and developing what is called the new literary movement in
the South, she has shown herself to be a far more versatile worker
than the men, more artistic and more conscientious. She has made
herself in art, in science, and in schools; she has taken a place in
the ranks of the journalists; she has a place on the stage and the
platform; she is to be found in many of the trades that are next door
to the arts, in the professions and in business; she is stenographing,
typewriting, clerking, dairying, gardening. She is to be found, in
short, wherever there is room for her, and her field is always
widening.
I think she will exercise a mellowing and restraining influence on the
ripping and snorting age just ahead of us--the rattling and groaning
age of electricity. What part she may play in the woman's rights
movement of the future it is difficult to say. Just now she has no
aptitude in that direction. She has been taught to believe that the
influences that are the result of a happy home-life are more powerful
and more important elements of politics than the casting of a ballot;
and in this belief she seems to be with an overwhelming majority of
American women--the mothers and daughters who are the hope and pride
of the Republic.
Yet she is an earnest and untiring temperance worker. Conservative in
all other directions, she is inclined to be somewhat radical in her
crusade against rum. She is inclined to fret and grieve a little over
the fact that public opinion failed to keep pace with her desires. The
wheels of legislation do not move fast enough for her, and she is
inclined to wonder at it. In the innocence of her heart she has never
suspected that there is a demijohn in the legislative committee-room.
There is no question and no movement of real importance in which she
is not interested. Her devotion and self-sacrifice in the past have
consecrated her to the future, and her sufferings and privations have
taught her the blessings of charity in its largest and best
interpretation.
EULOGY ON CONFEDERATE WOMEN, BY J. L. UNDERWOOD, DELIVERED IN 1896
[The author offers as his tribute to the memory of the Confederate
Women the following lecture just as it came from his brain and
heart in 1896. It was delivered mainly for the benefit of the
Confederate Monument in Cuthbert, Ga. A very serious lip cancer
soon interrupted all lecture work and finally landed him in
Kellam's Hospital in Richmond, Va.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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