Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/237

 could not be reasoned with. I do not mean to say that there were no women of social standing in the South capable of appreciating the true interest of the South, which was promptly to accept the legitimate results of the war in good faith and to make the best of the new order of things. But I mean to say that the general tendency of feminine nature to let the emotional impulse interfere with the cool and sober consideration of circumstances and interests, manifested itself at that time in the South with startling vigor. This might indeed have been expected in a country where the warmer sun enhances the vivacity of temperament, making that temperament apt to become peculiarly charming in friendly intercourse, but also peculiarly vehement in a conflict.

Southern women had suffered much by the Civil War, on the whole far more than their Northern sisters. There was but little exaggeration in the phrase which was current at the time, that the Confederacy, in order to fill its armies, had to “draw upon the cradle and the grave.” Almost every white man capable of bearing arms enlisted or was pressed into the service. The loss of men—not in proportion to the number on the rolls, but in proportion to the whole white population, was far heavier in the South than in the North. There were not many families unbereft, not many women who had not the loss of a father, or a husband, or a brother, or of a friend to deplore. In the regions in which military operations had taken place, the destruction of property had been great, and while most of that destruction seemed necessary in the opinion of military men,—in the eyes of the sufferers it appeared wanton, cruel, malignant, devilish. The interruption of the industries of the country, the exclusion, by the blockade of the ports, of all importations from abroad, and the necessity of providing for the sustenance of the armies in the field, subjected all classes to