 | LOYAL SOUTHERN WOMEN. Women of the war : |  |
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 : | |