THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
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standing all this, the social and political condition of women, not only of the South, but of all the world, at that time w r as not fully committed to the highest development of that sentiment which is woven in the warp and woof of every woman’s nature. The sentiment which induces her to wish for that higher education and self-culture that would enable her to become her husband’s intellectual companion, his friend and helpmate in the truest sense of the word, and to occupy that place in the world—not man’s world but God’s world—the place not above her husband, nor below him, but by his side.
Because of the difficulties of travel, and imperfect communication with the outside world, she knew little of the turmoil and strife for self-advancement that moved and swayed the restless heart of a dissatisfied world. Content to dwell at home among her own people, her mind and heart were not busy about the world’s affairs. She asked nothing better for herself than that she might become the wife and mother of great men. And true to the traditions of her grandmothers, it w r ould still be, perhaps, an impossible task to convince a Southern woman that there could be any higher mission for her.
With sometimes a hundred trained slaves to attend the immediate household, with better facilities for travel, with new books and imported musical instruments, and foreign magazines and home journals, the minds and hearts of the women of the land were fully attuned to “ catch the living manners as they rise.” Is it any wonder, then, that the sentiment in favor of the higher education of women first took root in the South and grew and blossomed forth into the building of the first college in the world for women at Macon, Ga?
It was not until the tocsin of civil war had been sounded that the womanliness of the women of the South shone out in all its brightest light; and our men, who had ever been foremost in true chivalry toward women, learned more fully the half-accepted truth, that woman had not been created man’s slave, his toy, his household drudge, nor yet, for that higher mission alone, of being his gentle nurse, his faithful companion, his prudent housewife, and the fond mother of his children; but to be also “his disinterested friend, his equal in resources of character and understanding, and his superior in the virtues of heart and soul.
The heroes of the South, who fought those dreadful battles at Gettysburg and Manassas, and enriched the earth with the crimson stream of their life’s blood “ by the Potomac, and the Cumberland, and in the valley of the Shenandoah,” had no cowardly mothers or vain and heartless wives. Their women were as heroic in every fiber as themselves. What a comparison exists between the heroic women of the American Revolution and the women of the Southern confederacy; the story of the one seems in many instances but a repetition of the other, except that women of the South were by far the greatest sufferers. Because of the peculiar circumstances which surrounded them, they passed through “ the more fiery ordeal, the one most terrible in its character, inasmuch as no triumph awaited their sacrifices, no glad conclusions wiped out the bitter memory of their griefs.”
The women of the South had ever been a peace party in themselves. They loved the Union and honored the Flag. In their hearts they prayed that the cords of love which bound the different sections of the land together might not be snapped asunder; but wffien one state after another thought it best to withdraw from the Union, and Old Virginia finally threw herself into the breach, the women of the entire land cast in their lot with the Confederacy, and gave as hearty allegiance to the new Government as had been so lavishly bestowed upon the other.
The sudden transition of the land, smiling with peace and plenty, to the awful turmoil of war was swift and appalling, but its women kept pace with the times. After the first burst of the storm the restless misery of the preceding suspense, was followed by the most faithful efforts of men and women alike. “ Every village green became a camping ground, and its courthouse or public halls a rendezvous for busy women.” The Confederacy—a new government which had sprung into being in an