The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1866-03-22
From the Courier des Eats Uws.
The Women of the South.

generally possesses the virtue OF self-re-
spect, not knowing, doubtless, how else
to give vent to its i'll humor at the turn
of affairs, has lavishod insults upon the
women of the South 1t seems to us that
q thousand reasons, not to mention the
simple ono of propriety, should restrain
Northern journal from such attacks. The
Tribune should remember, too, the hero
ism displayed by the Confederate women
for their cause. Whether this cause were
good or bad, the Southern women have
sustained it nobly, and with a force of
character which recalls the ancient wo-
men of Sparta, and which has everywhere
commanded respect and admiration.
Not satisfied with attacking the South
ern women, the Tribune Institutes be-
tween them and the women of the North
a comparison as odious as it is unjust.
! "Our women" says Mr.. Greeley's
newspaper, 'are everywhere most culti-
waited class; the women of the South are
more illiterate than the men,"
We dispute the truth of this assertion.
There are at the South, as at the North,
educated women and ignorant women,
we'll bred and i'll bred, vulgar women
But we do not believe that the proper
ton is so unfayWable at the South. The
ladies of Charleston, of New Orleans and
of Richmond have shone in all the Euro
pcan saloons where they have appeared,
as brilliantly as those of New York and
Boston. That the Southern women are
less literary than their husbands is very
possible, but we do not consider this surely
as a reproach. We do not like learned
women; we are repelled by women vcrsed
in latin and philosophy, and, unlike Mr.
Greeley, take the part of Henriette against
Armande. A woman may be educated,
certainly, but let her never become a
pedant; and, above all, let her never pa
rade her learning. We do not see at the
South such physical and philosophical
ladies; we see only too many of them at
the North and what these gain IN
science, ifscience that may be called which
consists in q great number of ideas, al
most always confused and supcrhcially
understood, Joined to enormous preten-
sion, lose in grace and attraction. We
say this without intending any injustice
to those charming Northern women who
avoid the grotesque and ridiculous, and
resemble in this their sisters of the South
Let us permit the Tribune to insist upon
the agross ignorance" of the Confederate
women, and to refer to this ignorance
their energy and constancy during the
war We attribute the great qualities OF
which the Southern women have given
noble example to higher origin. lgno-
rance, the Tribune has said it q hundred
times, can engender only vice and mean
ness-and if the { Confedcratc women have
been heroic, it is because they had faith
in their cause. There are occasions in
history when women, whose mission III
ordinary times is to make the good wife.
the tender mother, and to polish manners
by the charm and grace when she brings
into all social relations, may rise above
herself and give example Of the highest
virtues These occasions occur when the
sacred soil of her country, and with it Cor
through it) the domestic hearth and the
family are threatened with INVASION
These high virtues the women OF the
South have practiced without ostentatlon
without theatrical parade.
They have borne all privations, they
have defed all outrages by their proud
and impossible attitude. Soldiers, drunken
with blood, could outrage their bodies.
but their victims remained as pure as
those Christian virgins whose memories
the embraces of the executioner could not
defle. All that is precious to women
dress, Jewels, the luxuries Of home-all
these tho Southern women gave up-they
did not even recoil before sacrifices still
more painful-they did not fear to break
their hearts by sending forth their sons
to do battle for cause, sacred in their
eyes, like that Lacedemonian mother who
showed shield to her son and said SIM
ply-return with it-or on lido thy
duty or die. Do not expect such trials
apart frtm ignorant women, from souls
without elevation
And while desolation overall the hearths
of the South, while mothers had each day
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