Anna Moffett's Civil War - 13

November 1964

CHARLESTON MERCURY,
November 1

From a Lady.

Pendleton, S. C.,
October 20.

To the Editor of the Mercury:

Dear Sir: As I am a constant reader of your most valuable & interesting paper, I address a few lines to you, because I know not whom else to interest in the cause which I plead.

I was much struck with a statement which I saw lately, that there are one hundred & twenty five thousand detailed men, between the ages of eighteen & forty-five, in our country. Surely our strength is not yet put forth. Many of these men - perhaps a hundred thousand - could be replaced by
women. Many of our ladies are capable of carrying on the education, both of boys & girls, up to the ages of seventeen & eighteen. & some men are detailed to teach girls. The noble, wise & virtuous of our ladies would come forward, if called upon & supply their places.

Those offices, in the quartermaster & commissary departments, where the occupant is stationary, could, many of them, be filled by ladies. I am acquainted with several ladies of first rate business capacity, who, I am sure, would fill such offices with ability, zeal & faith.

It is a conventional idea with some persons that a lady steps out of her sphere when she
becomes useful to any but her own family. Oh!  let us remember the noble Polish ladies, driven in chains to labor in the mines of Siberia; & now, in this crisis of our country's fate, let us
arise & do our part. Let us, also, be held worthy to toil for our country, our homes, our children & our dead. How noble & glorious the toil which fills a man's place & gives a soldier more to the armies of our country.

We have seen the whole Treasury Department filled by ladies. Oh! let us now see the stationary quartermaster & commissary departments - leaving a few men to perform those parts which require most strength & exposure. Have ever the women failed to respond when called upon?
Reward us now in allowing us to be of use.

Carolina. 

November 8
 

Abe Lincoln has been elected again. But things are much different than they were four
years ago.

James has written that he has been granted a forty day furlough to go to South Carolina
to procure a horse, as his was killed in action. Thank goodness, it was the horse & not him.

November 15

Our fortune turns even worse. We now have this madman, William Sherman who has decided
the best way to end this war is to destroy everything in his path.

30,000 Union troops marched into Milledgeville. That is the town where Alex's family live. When they left a couple of days later, the statehouse had been ransacked; the state arsenal & powder magazine had been destroyed; the penitentiary, the central depot & the Oconee bridge were burned; & the surrounding countryside was devastated.

 November 20

I mentioned before the remarkable woman spy, Rose O'Neal Greenhow. She is now dead, poor
woman, and less than 50 years old. Among her accomplishments was the secret message she sent to General Pierre G.T. Beauregard which ultimately caused him to win the battle of Bull Run. She spied so successfully for the Confederacy that Jefferson Davis credited her with winning the battle of Manassas.

She was imprisoned for her efforts first in her own home & then in the Old Capital Prison in Washington DC.. Despite her confinement, Greenhow continued getting messages to the Confederacy by means of cryptic notes which traveled in unlikely places such as the inside of a woman's bun of hair. After her second prison term, she was exiled to the Confederate states where she was received warmly by President Jefferson Davis.

Her next mission was to tour Britain & France as a propagandist for the Confederate
cause. Two months after her arrival in London, her memoirs were published & enjoyed a wide sale throughout the British Isles. In Europe, Greenhow found a strong sympathy for the South, especially
among the ruling classes. During the course of her travels she hobnobbed with many members of the nobility. In Paris, she was received into the court of Napoleon III & was granted an audience
with the Emperor at the Tuileries.

This fall, after a year abroad, she boarded the Condor, a British blockade-runner  which was to take her home. Just before reaching her destination, the vessel ran aground at the mouth of the Cape Fear River near Wilmington, North Carolina. In order to avoid the Union gunboat that pursued her ship, Rose fled in a rowboat, but never made it to shore. Her little boat capsized & she was dragged down by the weight of the gold she received in royalties for her book.

In October, Rose was buried with full military honors in the Oakdale Cemetery in Wilmington. Her coffin was wrapped in the Confederate flag & carried by Confederate troops. The marker for her grave, a marble cross, bears the epitaph, "Mrs. Rose O'Neil. Greenhow, a bearer of dispatches to the Confederate Government."

And this I copied from her funeral oration.

"At the last day, when the martyrs who have with their blood sealed their devotion to liberty shall stand together firm witnesses that truth is stronger than death, foremost among the shinning throng, coequal with the Rolands & Joan d'Arcs of history will appear the Confederate heroine, Rose A. Greenhow."

November 25 One day we were told that some Union soliders wre riding into Spartnabury. We had notyet heard of the arrangement between Generals Johnston & sherman bywhich hostilities had ceased east of the Mississippi River. The state of those soldiers changed my feelings & fixed me with indigation. I realized for the first time how men could fight with zest in a war like ours. All my fear left me &, ridiculous as it now seems, I felt an impulse, hard to suppress, to hurl defiance at the whole of them. I had fully purposed not to speak to, or be spoken to by, these officers, but my resolution was overcome when the Ohio man said to our friend, Captain Chichester, "I would like to talk this whole matter over with you, but it would seem mean, now that we have whipped you."

"I would be ashamed," I said, "to mention it, since you have taken four years, with the help of every nation under the sun, to crush, not to whip, a handful of Confederate soldiers."

He looked amazed, made no reply & resumed his talk with Captain Chichester. I astonished him again at supper. He remarked that he admired "the pluck of Southern women," & said if he were not a married man he would like to marry one of them. I could not keep quiet & in spite of my resolution not to open my mouth to these officers, I exclaimed, boiling over with indignation, "and what Southern woman do you suppose would marry a Yankee?"

The other officer, a lieutenant from Massachusetts, looked daggers at me; but the Ohio captain, who was evidently a gentleman, behaved very well. Palmer's Brigade did not remain long in Spartanburg. The general, as we learned, was in pursuit of President Davis & it was with great satisfaction I saw them leave us.

November 30

Here is a letter from Alex.

Dear Mother,

I think I wrote to you some time ago about my friend Sidney Lanier who entered service
in Mahon at the same time I did. We were together for the first year or so & the went separate ways. Earlier this year he saw service as a signal office aboard a blockade runner from Wilmington to the
West Indies. His ship The Lucy was captured & he was sent to prison at Point Lookout in Maryland.
He is such a delicate man, I hope he will survive there. Anyway, I've promised to ask anyone I
know to write to him, as I'm sure he would appreciate it. And any warm clothing would probably be useful to him too at the prison. He apparently sneeked his flute up his uniform sleeve & managed to
get it into the prison. He plays like an angel & it was his music that kept us going on many an occasion. The prisoners have to live in tents - despite the snow & freezing weather, &
it is no wonder they get ill.

He also writes poetry & this is one of his. I think you will agree with me that he has a great talent.
 

Into the woods my
Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent,
Into the woods my Master came,

Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were
not blind to Him.
The little grey leaves were kind to Him,
The thorn tree had a mind to Him,
When into the woods He came.

Out of the woods my
Master came
and he was well content;
Out of the woods my Master came,
Content with death and shame.
When death and shame would woo Him last,
From under the trees they drew Him last,
’Twas on a tree they slew Him—last
When out of the woods He came.

Love from Alex