Woman on the American Frontier: A Valuable and Authentic History of the Heroism, Adventures, Privations, Captivities, Trials, and Noble Lives and Deaths of the "Pioneer Mothers of the Republic"Fowler, William Worthington
History
Woman on the American Frontier: A Valuable and Authentic History of the Heroism, Adventures, Privations, Captivities, Trials, and Noble Lives and Deaths of the "Pioneer Mothers of the Republic"
Fowler, William Worthington
Frontier and pioneer life -- United States; Women -- United States -- Biography
She shared the hardships as well as the perils of the soldiers, and in the
bivouac wrapped herself in her blanket and lay on the bare ground, with no
other shelter but the sky, rising at the sound of reveille to partake with
her comrades of the plain camp fare. All this she did cheerfully and with
her whole heart. Her sympathy was not bounded by the wants and sufferings
of the soldiers of the federal army, but embraced in its boundless
outpouring those of her countrymen who were then ranged against her as
foes. Many a sick and suffering Southerner had cause to bless the kindness
and devotion of this noble girl. Herein she showed herself a Christian
woman and a practical example of the teachings of Him who said,--"Love your
enemies." Such deeds as her's shine amid the terrible passions and carnage
of war with a heavenly radiance which time can never dim.
Either in the army or in close connection with it, woman's affectionate
devotion was illustrated in all those relations of life in which she stands
beside man. As a mother, as a wife, and as a sister, she brightly displayed
this quality. The following instance of wifely devotion is related of a
woman who came from the Red River of Louisiana with her husband, who was a
Southern officer.
In the fall of 1863, during the bombardment of Charleston by the federal
batteries, this young woman, being tenderly attached to her husband, who
was in one of the forts, begged the military authorities to allow her to
join her husband and share the fearful dangers and hardships to which he
was daily and nightly exposed. All representations of the difficulties,
privations, and perils she would encounter failed to daunt her in her
purpose. The importunities of the loving wife prevailed over military rules
and even over the expostulations of her husband, and she was allowed to
take her post beside the one whom she regarded with an affection amounting
to idolatry. Sending her two children to the care of a maiden aunt some
miles from the city, she was conveyed to her husband's battery, a large
earth-work outside of the city.
Here she remained for sixty days, during which the battery where she was,
made one of the principal targets for the federal cannon. For weeks
together she lay down in her clothes in the midst of the soldiers. The
bursting of the shells and the sound of the federal hundred-pounders, with
answering volleys from the fort, scarcely intermitted night or day. Sleep
was for several days after her arrival out of the question. But at length
she became used to the cannonade and enjoyed intermittent slumbers, from
which she was sometimes awakened by the explosion of a shell which had
penetrated the roof of the fort and strewed the earth with dead and
wounded.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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