Southern Women Record the Civil War

The Civil War As Seen Through The Eyes Of The Women Who Lived Through It

by Rochelle Ramga

The American Civil War is often described as the first modern war, a war not only between armed men in battle, but total war waged upon the ability of the enemy nation to make war. Total war rains destruction upon the unarmed civilians in their homes, factories and fields. It is war that destroys the lives of women and children unable to fight in their own defense. Hundreds of diaries were written during the Civil War. This essay will present six women caught in total war. They write of their pride in their own new nation and its soldiers and their outrage at the nation and soldiers who destroyed them and then expected their loyalty. Armed conflict may end on the battlefield, but total war waged on civilians caught in the anger and frustration of defenselessness does not end in surrender or peace agreements. These unarmed women are responsible for raising the next generation, whose loyalty to the federal government will be expected. These six women are Cornelia McDonald, Kate Stone, Emma Holmes, Sarah Morgan, Kate Cumming, and Emma LeConte, each leaving us her diary of the tragic Civil War years.

Only Kate Cumming as a nurse may be seen by some to have made a difference in the war, but each of these along with thousands of others kept the fields planted, the clothes made, and the children cared for and taught. Some worked in factories, while most worked in their homes. Wherever they served, these women knew what would be lost if their armies were defeated. They experienced the depredations and abuse of invasion. Their enthusiasm and patriotism encouraged many a doubtful soldier. Only when that spirit was broken, were the armies broken. When the battlefields fell silent, the women's work had only begun. They were left to heal and nurture shattered husbands, sons, and fathers, and they needed all their strength to raise the next generation, both at home and in the schoolroom. Their experiences during the war would affect the generations to come. They made a great difference before, during, and after the war.

Cornelia McDonald is the oldest of these six diarists. Born in Alexandria, Virginia, she was the thirty-eight year old second wife of Angus McDonald, living in Winchester, Virginia when the war began. Angus, who had previously worked with the Federal government and only recently returned from a conference in Europe, had requested she keep a record as "he wished to be informed of each day's events as they took place during his absence.1 Kate Stone, Emma Holmes, and Sarah Morgan were young women, ages twenty, twenty-two, and nineteen, living in Madison County, Louisiana, Charleston, South Carolina, and Baton Rouge at the war's beginning. These three, as well as Cornelia, would be forced to leave their homes and become refugees. In November of 1900, Kate wrote, "in the winter of 1861 commenced the great events. I took up the record of my journal that was to record many woeful changes before four years of agony and strife were over.2 Emma Holmes began her diary on February 13, 1861 writing, "How I wish I had kept a journal during the last three months of great political changes. 3 Sarah, whose diary was started on March 9, 1862 told her son in 1896, "Early in the war I began to keep a diary, and continued to the very end; I had to find some vent for my feelings." 4A Kate Cumming left her home in Mobile to serve the Army of Tennessee as a nurse. She wrote at the first publication of her diary in 1866, "These notes of passing events, often penned amid the active duties of hospital life, but feebly indicate, and only faintly picture, the sad reality... I now pray ...that nation may not lift a sword against nation, nor learn war any more. It is with that hope that the same feeling may be aroused in every reader that I present this volume to the public. 5 She also urged the South to continue to look to Scotland as an example of how a people "are as distinct a nationality as the first day they were united 6 with England. Emma LeConte was only thirteen when the war began, living in Columbia, South Carolina. She began her short diary December 31, 1864, explaining in old age, "I suppose it was a kind of New Year's start that would have been dropped but that events crowded with so much of horror and disaster that I could but try to chronicle them."7

From nearly one hundred and forty years ago, the words of these women, from seventeen to forty-two, Winchester to Mobile, Charleston to Texas speak to us today. Each suffered deep losses, and experienced the devastation of their lives by the government they would be forced to obey. Each deeply loved her homeland and new nation. Their words express their pride, suffering, anger, resentment, sorrow, courage, and endurance. None traveled in government circles, but each was a literate representative of the upper white class in the Confederacy.

Following Kernstown, which her twelve and thirteen year old sons had witnessed, Cornelia writes, "Not until the Federal dead were all buried on the field, and their wounded brought in, which occupied nearly two days, were our people allowed to go to the relief of their wounded. Then, no doubt, many had perished who could have been saved had timely relief been given. Our people buried their own dead."8 She rejoices on July 4, 1862 writing, "We have heard the result, We are victorious, McClellen driven back, driven away! 9 On November 28, 1862, she writes, "Gen. Hill's division passed through town. They were destitute, many without shoes, and all without overcoats or gloves, although the weather is freezing. Their poor hands looked so red and cold holding their muskets in the biting wind. Such delicate, small hands and feet some of them had. One South Carolina regiment I especially noticed, had hands and feet that looked as if they belonged to women, and so cold and red and dirty they were. That last must have been the hardest to bear, the dirt, for gentlemen, as most of them were. They did not, however, look dejected, but went on their way joyously." 10 Six months later she mourns the loss of Jackson; "The shadows are dancing around us in the devoted town. . . His place will be forever in the hearts of the Southern people. Not only the Hero's laurels bind his brow, but a crown incorruptible has been placed on it by the great Captain whose he was and whom he served." 11 In July of 1863 she was forced to leave her home with her seven children, spending time in Woodstock, New Market, Staunton, Charlottsville, and Lynchburg before finding a small place in Lexington, Virginia. That winter she writes of the hardships, "The little boys were without shoes, and the winter close upon us."12 In 1861, a stepson had been killed, in August of 1862 she lost her infant daughter, and on December 1, 1864 her husband died after months in a Union prison. Prior to his death, he had "left word that his sons were not to avenge his death, that they were to let the wicked alone to the vengeance of the Almighty. He said he did not wish the children, the young ones, to remain in the country if it was conquered, that he did not suppose the older ones would survive our defeat, but the younger ones must not remain in the country to suffer the humiliation." 13 He was sixty-four, unable to survive the rigors of prison. She witnesses the 1864 burning in the valley, writing "The Virginia Military Institute with all the professors' houses was set on fire. . . When I reached the scene, Mrs. Letcher was sitting on a stone in the street with her baby on her lap sleeping, and her other little children gathered around, 14 On March 20, 1865 she allowed her son, not yet seventeen, to enter service saying, "I felt it would be wrong to refuse him."15 Fortunately for him, if not the Confederacy, he did not have long to serve as "The eventful 9P of April came, and the day after we heard of Lee's surrender. I can never forget the effect the intelligence had on me and on my family. I felt as if the end of all things had come, at least for the Southern people. 16 She was living in Lexington when Lee came as the new Washington College president. She writes admiringly of how he refused offers of money saying that any "they could spare be given to the families of the dead soldiers. How different from the great man on the other side." 17 She also relates how in October of 1865 she told Gen. Pendleton's wife, `eve are starving, I and my children," 18 when Mrs. Pendleton had come to tell her of money "that had been sent to Canada for secret service; that after the surrender those in whose hands it was, determined to devote it to the relief of the destitute widows and orphans of Confederate soldiers."19

We do not have diaries of the mothers of Kate Stone, Emma Holmes, and Sarah Morgan who would have been of Cornelia McDonald's generation, and like her, each was responsible for the welfare of her family. Instead we have diaries written by their daughters. Kate and Emma had lost their fathers prior to the war and Sarah's died in November of 1861.