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
Put here a knapsack, the rough, old, oil-cloth knapsack of the
Confederate soldier. Poor fellow! he had but few clothes in it, but it
contained something dearer to him than clothes--letters from home. He
kept them all, the most of them written on the blank side of old wall
paper and inclosed in brown envelopes, which perhaps had been turned
so as to be twice used. When our poor boys were killed, their letters
were gathered by the chaplains, litter bearers and burial details, to
be sent to their homes. I am not going to tell what sort of letters
were found in many knapsacks on our battlefields, but it is a fact,
borne out by the testimony of these men, that never was there found a
letter from a Confederate soldier's wife to her husband whose words
would make the most modest blush, or in which she exerted any of her
woman's power or used any of woman's arts to decoy him from the army.
Here is a specimen of a letter from home in a Confederate knapsack:
MITCHELL COUNTY, GA., _July 20, 1863_.
Mr. Jno. Iverson,
Company B, Fourth Regiment, Army of Virginia.
DEAR JOHN:
This leaves us all getting along very well. Nobody sick, and we
finished laying by the corn. The cattle are fat and the hogs doing
finely. We sell some butter and eggs every week. We have plenty to
eat, and know that it's only you that's having a hard time. But we
are all so proud that you are fighting for your country. Will be
so glad when you can get a furlough, but we know that you must,
and will stick to your post of duty. Willie and Jennie send kisses
to their brave papa. We never forget to pray for you. If you get
killed, darling, God will take care of us and we'll all meet in
heaven.
Your, MARY.
That's the way they wrote. Let that knapsack tell forever of the
fortitude, the purity, the loyalty and refinement of the Southern
woman.
Let the next picture be the humble hospital couch.
"Up and down through the wards where the fever
Stalks, noisome, and gaunt, and impure;
You must go with your steadfast endeavor
To comfort, to counsel, to cure.
I grant you the task is superhuman,
But strength will be given to you
To do for those loved ones what woman
Alone in her pity can do."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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