 | LOYAL SOUTHERN WOMEN. Women of the war : |  |
LOYAL SOUTHERN WOMEN.
IN many parts of the South the sentiment of fidelity to
the Union was cherished by both sexes with as much
warmth as by any in the loyal states who volunteered their
services for hospital duty, or gave up their sons and husbands
to the call of patriotism.
Throughout the mountainous regions of Kentucky and
Tennessee this spirit was in the ascendant; and when the
rebel forces made their numerous raids through the Cumberland
Mountains for plunder in the rich counties of
Middle and Northern Kentucky, they were sure to encounter
the most vigorous hostility from the scattered and persecuted,
but unterrified, loyal men and women, whose cabins
are nestled in the lonely coves and glens of that wild
region.
In the fall of 1862, when Bragg and Kirby Smith made
their swift and inglorious retreat from Kentucky through
Cumberland Gap, they were sharply pursued by Rousseau.
One morning the regiment in the van, the twenty-third
Kentucky, when about twenty-five miles east of Wildcat
Mountain, were greatly surprised to see a squad of ragged
Confederates come filing slowly into camp disarmed,
and a woman walking behind them with a musket in her
hands. There were eleven of the Confederates, and the
of war.
She said they came to her house the night previous, and
finding that her husband was a volunteer in the Union
lines, proceeded to help themselves promiscuously to everything
they fancied. Some ran down the chickens, and began
to kill and eat, while others cut up her carpets for horse
blankets, and committed wanton depredations about the
house. The incensed woman remained quiet, but watched
her opportunity. Presently they were all collected in the
largest room, and making merry over the fire, having left
their muskets in a stack near the door. Weary, and suspecting
no mischief in a solitary woman, they relaxed
their watch, while she quietly removed all the fire-arms
but two loaded muskets, which she took in her hands,
and, standing by the door, demanded a surrender. One of
them, more alert than the rest, made a spring for the muskets,
but fell dead on the floor with a ball through his body.
She told them quietly that any further attempt to escape
would be met by a similar fate. As they had a resolute foe
to deal with, discretion now became the better part of
valor: they submitted to the fortunes of war, and at daylight
she marched them into the Union camp as described.
Noble Act of two Tennessee Women.
During the same autumn, when Grant was commanding
in West Tennessee with headquarters at Jackson, the
twenty-seventh Iowa was ordered to take the cars at Corinth
and proceed to Jackson. It was night time and the train
was crowded, men occupying the platforms and covering
saw two lanterns in the distance swung to and fro
with the greatest earnestness. He gave the signal of danger;
the breaks were instantly applied, the train stopped,
and men sent forward to ascertain the cause of the alarm.
Two women were found at the bridge, who said the coming
of the loaded train of Union soldiers was known to a gang
of guerrillas which infested the neighborhood. In the early
part of the night the assassins had fired the bridge, and
allowed the string-pieces to burn nearly off, when they
extinguished the fire, and left the structure standing, but
so weak that it would go down as soon as a train came over
it. Hearing of this piece of dastard villany, the women
had left home in the dead of night, and travelled on foot
several miles through the woods, to give an alarm and prevent
the fearful consequences that would otherwise have
ensued.
The officers and men whose lives were thus saved begged
of these heroic women to accept a purse of money, which
was made up on the spot. This they refused; and all the
return they would permit was that a small squad of the
soldiers might see them safely home.
Heroism of the Misses Taylor.
During the same campaign a scene took place at Danville,
Kentucky, which illustrates the lofty courage which
often inspires the soul of woman. This town was much
divided in allegiance, many who had long been neighbors
and friends espousing opposite causes. But there
was no doubt as to the sympathies of Mrs. Taylor and her
estimable family.
Broad and beautiful floated the striped bunting over her
cottage, which proclaimed that their hearts, and hopes, and
fears were all with the Union cause.
When Kirby Smith occupied Danville, he sent a squad of
half a dozen men to take down that piece of bunting from
Mrs. Taylor's house. They were met at the door by Mrs.
Taylor's two daughters, Maria and Mattie, who politely,
but firmly, announced their intention to resist any effort to
remove the national emblem. The valorous squad returned,
and reported that it would require a full company to remove
the flag. The force was detailed. A captain marched a
hundred men with loaded guns to the door, drew them up
in "battle's magnificently stern array," and made a formal
demand for the colors. The young ladies now came to
the front door, each armed with a revolver, and holding
the glorious banner between them. They replied to the
Confederate captain that they had vowed never to surrender
that flag to traitors, and declared their intention to shoot
the first rebel that polluted it with his touch. After hesitating
a few moments, the officer withdrew his force, and
reported that in the exercise of his discretion he had not
found it advisable to remove the colors referred to.
Bravery of Miss Schwartz.
A year later, in the summer of 1863, a party of guerrillas
went in the night to the house of Mr. Schwartz,
twelve miles from Jefferson City, Missouri, and, on demanding
admittance, were refused by Miss Schwartz, a girl
of fifteen years. They answered that they would come in,
and commenced breaking down the door. Five or six
door, taking with them, as they supposed, all the firearms.
In their haste a revolver was left, which the heroic
girl seized, and pointing it at the head of the leader of
the gang, said, "Come on, if you want to; some of
you shall fall, or I will!" They then said they would
kill her if she did not leave the door. She answered,
"The first man of you that takes a step towards this
door dies. This is the home of my parents, my brothers
and sisters, and I am able to, and shall, defend it."
After a brief consultation the ruffians left. Brigadier-General
Brown, commanding the district, in a general
order, after setting forth the facts of this instance of noble
courage, concludes as follows: —
"It is with feelings of no common pride and pleasure
that the commanding general announces this occurrence to
the citizens and soldiers of his district. On the other hand,
those miserable cowards who deserted this brave girl in the
hour of danger, flying from the house and leaving her to
her fate, are unworthy the name of men, deserve the scorn
of the community in which they live, and should be
shunned by every man who has a spark of honor or
bravery within him."
Miss Oldom's Adventure.
Miss Cornelia Oldom, of Kentucky, displayed courage
and address equally brilliant, in the recovery of her horse
from a band of rebel marauders.
Her father lives near Mount Sterling, in the hills of
Eastern Kentucky. The Confederates came to the house
a large and beautiful animal belonging to the young
lady. Notwithstanding her earnest remonstrances, they
started off with her horse, when she sprang upon the back
of another, which was standing near, and galloped to town
as swiftly as possible to give the alarm. On her way home
she saw, on the roadside, a pair of holsters containing pistols.
Quickly dismounting, she found the weapons loaded,
and taking them with her, hurried after the horse thieves.
One of them was riding her beautiful pet. She dashed up
to him, and ordered him to dismount, with a grace and decision
worthy of Di Vernon. Finding he was dealing with
a resolute character, and seeing something in her eye which
looked dangerous, he surrendered her favorite steed.
When she had regained his back and patted his neck, the
noble creature seemed to know how much he owed to his
fearless mistress.
Spirited Conduct of Mrs. Phelps.
John F. Phelps, a loyal Missourian, resides near Wilson's
Creek, where the bloody engagement took place
in which General Lyon met his untimely but heroic death.
At the time of the battle he was away from home, in command
of a Union regiment of Missouri volunteers. After
Lyon's death the Union force retreated to Springfield, leaving
the body of their general in the hands of the enemy.
Mrs. Phelps determined to rescue it, and see that it had a
Christian burial. It was reported also that some of the
secessionists had threatened to cut out the heart of the
dead soldier, and preserve it as a trophy.
Arming herself, she went out on the field, appalling as it
was with the dead still unburied, and stood guard over the
body of the hero all night. When ordered to give it up,
she fearlessly refused; and when they insisted, she said they
must sacrifice her before they could lay ruthless hands on
the remains of that fallen brave.
After daylight she made the proper arrangements, and
removed the corpse to her house, where it was duly laid
out. To furnish him a funeral pall, she cut into breadths
and sewed together in a proper form a magnificent black
velvet robe, a part of her own apparel.
Though perfectly aware of her unprotected situation, the
rebels surrounded the house in which the lifeless form of a
gallant enemy was guarded by a solitary but heroic woman,
and made the night hideous by savage screams, horrible
oaths, and barbarous threats. In a short time, however, they
retreated, and the body of General Lyon was taken in charge
by the loyal army, removed to Connecticut, his native state,
and there interred with the fullest military honors.
General Price soon after returned to the vicinity of Wilson's
Creek, and called on Mrs. Phelps. He was about to enter
the house, when she forbade his crossing her threshold.
He remonstrated with her, and tried to cajole her by flatteries
and amusing talk. When he again spoke of coming
in, she addressed him in these words: "General Price, you
are a man, at the head of twenty thousand troops. I am a
helpless woman. You are armed. I am not. You have
the physical power to take possession of my house. If
you ever enter here, it will be simply by reason of my
weakness, not by my consent. I ask you, as a soldier,
to, Price did not insist, and whenever he came there,
stood in the yard, and conversed with the lady of the house
through the open door.
An Instance of Self-sacrifice.
When the lines of field-works were being established
around the national capital, the military engineers in charge
of their location came upon a lovely spot near Bladensburg,
Maryland. A tasteful cottage home, standing on the verge
of a gentle slope, was surrounded by orchard shade trees,
grape-vines, a charming flower garden, a lawn of exquisite
smoothness, and "shrubberies that a Shenstone might have
envied." This little paradise was the residence of a lady
and her daughters, whose husband and father was away
fighting under the Union flag. The formation of the
country was such as to require the line of earth-works to
pass directly through these beautiful grounds and gardens.
The position commands the country around for miles, and is
the proper point for a battery. Yet the officers saw at a
glance that the planting of guns on the hill would make
terrible havoc of that charming rural home. Every tree in
the orchard must come down, the shrubbery be torn away,
a wide ditch cut through the flower garden, and the whole
place, in fact, desolated and ruined. Other lines were run
in the hope of avoiding this hill entirely, but in vain. No
other eminence afforded such a tactical position, and to
neglect it might be to throw the advantage thus afforded
into the hands of the enemy. It became the unpleasant
duty of the officers in charge of the survey to call on the
the mutilation of her grounds, and the destruction of all
that was loveliest on the premises. They stated their conclusion
in as delicate a manner as possible, and told her
how they had hoped to avoid an occupation of her land.
She heard their statement in silence, arose, walked to the
window, and gazed for a few moments on the tender lawn
and the blooming garden. Then, with tearful eyes, she
turned to the engineers and said, "If it must be so, take
it freely. I had hoped to live here in peace and quiet, and
never to leave this sweet spot, which my husband has taken
so much delight in making beautiful. But if my country
demands it, take it freely. You have my consent."
When the women of Tyre cut their long hair and braided
it into bowstrings for the archers on the walls of the besieged
city, their devotion was no greater than was here
shown by this patriotic lady of Bladensburg.
A Loyal Richmond Girl.
The following story of "hair-breadth 'scape," illustrates
at once the genuine loyalty of some of the citizens of the
rebel capital, and the unequalled fertility of woman's wit
in devising expedients.
S. R. McCullough, the hero of the story, is a Wisconsin
soldier, who was captured at Chickamauga, and brought as
prisoner to Richmond.
Being somewhat ill, he was sent to a hospital, and had not
been there long before a young lady of the city made him
a present in the form of a pretty bag filled with "Virginia
fine cut." It occurred to young McCullough that possibly
enough, at the bottom he found a slip of paper with these
words: "Would you be free? Then be prepared to act.
Meet me to-morrow at —." The meeting took place.
In a few brief words she told him her plan for his escape,
agreed upon a day for its execution, and the parties separated
without being noticed by the guard. In a few days
he received another note conveyed in a similar manner,
giving further instructions, and saying that he might bring
a comrade with him.
As the day approaches he can think of no way of passing
the guard but by feigning to be dead. The details of this
ruse were discussed with his fellow-prisoners; and on
the eventful day four of them laid him out as a corpse,
covered him with a blanket, and carried him to the dead
house, where he lay, still as a log, and nearly smothered
with his rude face-cloth, till dusk. At length he raised
himself, made a hasty reconnoissance barefoot, and finding
all right, sallied forth. Just at this time, as had been arranged,
a sham fight was played off in the opposite part of
the enclosure, by which the attention of all the guards was
arrested, when his comrade slipped into a hut near the dead
house, and McCullough, as had been arranged, when everything
was favorable, threw a stone against the logs. His
comrade came out; the two adventurers were together and
undiscovered. They quickly scaled the high board fence,
one standing on the other's shoulders, and then drawing his
companion up, and let themselves down on the other side
in the same manner. Once outside the prison, they went
to the place designated by the young lady, and found
keeping in sight her white handkerchief. Taking a circuitous
route she led them twenty-five blocks, and waited
for them on the steps of a house, which proved to be that
of her father. Here they were kindly received by him,
though he knew nothing of the plan of his daughter.
In a few days he procured them passes by paying for them
between two and three thousand dollars in Confederate
money. The young lady provided them with suitable
clothes; her father sent them away in his carriage, and he
and his daughter gave them their blessing as they departed
for the Federal lines, which they reached, with but little
difficulty, on the 23d of December, 1863, just three months
after they were made prisoners.
The Good Woman at Rome.
A large body of Union soldiers, that had been confined
in a distant southern prison, reached the town of Rome,
in Northern Georgia, on their way to Richmond. Weary,
famished, and thirsty, they were halted in the middle of
the streets, under a broiling sun, and exposed to the coarse
jeers of the embittered populace.
Handsomely dressed women came out with handfuls of
little cotton bullets, which they threw at the poor, helpless
fellows, with such words as, "So you have come to Rome —
have you? How do you like your welcome?" Hour after
hour of this tedious waiting and insult had passed, when a
Union major, who was leaning wearily against a post, was
lightly touched on the arm, and turned around expecting
some fresh opprobrium. He saw a fine-looking boy, about
at the guard, who was then looking the other way, pulled
the major's skirt, and asked, "Are you from New England?"
"I was born in Massachusetts," was the reply. "So was
my mother," returned the boy, brightening up. "She was
a New England girl, and she was what you call a school-ma'am;
she married my father, and I'm their boy; but
how she does love New England and the Yankees, and the
old United States! and so do I."
The poor major was touched at finding this stray scion
of the good old stock away here by "the rivers of Babylon."
There was nothing he could give the boy to strengthen
his loyalty but one of the buttons on his frock. As he
was cutting this from his breast, the lad pulled a string of
them from his pocket, and said, "See, I have a dozen just
like it, gifts of other boys in blue. My mother would like
to see you. I'll go and tell her."
"What are you doing here?" growled the guard, with an
oath, as he turned upon him. But the little fellow slipped
away through the crowd, and presently returned, walking
beside a lovely lady, who moved slowly along the pavement,
near the curb-stone, and quietly thrust bank notes into the
hands of one and another of the prisoners.
As she approached the major, the bright-faced boy gave
him a look that seemed to say, "This is my Massachusetts
mother, sir, who has taught me to love Yankees and the
Union." The glances interchanged as the lady threw her
eyes upon the war-worn New England soldier were hasty,
for the suspicious guard was near, but how full of mutual
admiration and esteem!
Mrs. Hetty M. McEwen.
Nashville, Tennessee, was the only city in the seceding
states that contained a large number of genuine Unionists
who had the courage to assert their sentiments openly and
in defiance of southern sympathizers. This fearlessness
was as often manifested by women as by men. The southern
character, frank, ardent, and uncalculating, was never
more aptly illustrated than by the high-spirited defiance with
which they dared all danger and all criticism in manifesting
their fidelity to the Union.
During the spring and summer of 1861, while Isham G.
Harris and his co-traitors were plotting dishonor and disaster
for Tennessee, and a majority in the middle and western
districts sympathized with him, there were a few in Nashville
who frankly characterized his conduct in no measured
terms, and advertised their sentiments by keeping the national
colors always flying from their house-tops.
Of these few, Mrs. Hetty M. McEwen was perhaps the
most conspicuous, and her conduct in the defence of the
flag upon her house is truly memorable.
She is an old lady, having been born during the Presidency
of George Washington. She had six uncles at the
battle of King's Mountain, four of whom wet that hard-fought
field with their life-blood.
Her husband, Colonel Robert H. McEwen, fought under
Jackson at Horseshoe, and his father was a surgeon in the
revolutionary army. She could remember the time when
there was no Tennesseean that did not live in a log cabin,
him as regularly as his Bible, and was as familiar with one
as with the other. When secession was talked of, with her
own fingers she stitched together the folds of bunting, and
reared the Red, White, and Blue on a flag-staff in the yard
of the residence that had been known as theirs almost from
the time when Nashville was an Indian fort. As treason
grew less and less odious, the flag was subjected to various
insults. Boys threw stones at it. The papers noticed it,
and advised its removal. Colonel McEwen received an
anonymous letter full of plantation venom, and threatening
assassination unless the odious colors were removed. When
at length the machinations of Governor Harris culminated,
and Tennessee was made to appear of secession preferences
by forty thousand majority, Colonel McEwen fastened a
pole into one of his chimneys, and nailed the national colors
where they could float solitary, yet dauntless and defiant,
over the rebellion-cursed city. The hostility now became
fiercer than ever. He was told that the flag must come
down from that roof if they had to fire the house to bring
it down. He asked his wife what they had better do about
the flag, adding that he would sustain her in any course she
thought best to adopt. "Load me the shot gun, Colonel
McEwen," said the heroic old lady. And he loaded it for
her with sixteen buckshot in each barrel. "Now," added she,
"I will take the responsibility of guarding that flag. Whoever
attempts to pass my door on their way to the roof for
that star-spangled banner, under which my four uncles fell
at King's Mountain, must go over my dead body!"
Not long after, Governor Harris issued an order for all
fire-arms to be brought to him at the state-house, and
enforced it by sending a squad of soldiers to Colonel
McEwen's house. In reply to their demand she said, "Go
tell your master, the governor, that I will not surrender
my gun to any one but himself, and, if he wants it, to come
in person and risk the consequences."
| LOYAL SOUTHERN WOMEN. Women of the war : | |