Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1866-03-19
A CONTRAST.

Comparisons are said to be odions
They are suggestive, to say the least OF
them. The French are pretty good al
drawing them. The New York Tribune
having attacked the women of the South,
the French paper of New York, the Con-
rter des Etats Unfs, thus defends them
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 execu-
toner could not defile All that is pre-
cious to women-dress, jewels, the luxu-
ries Of home-all these the Southern
women gave up--they did not even recoil
before sacrifices still more painfnl-they
did not fear to break their hearts by send
ing forth their sons to do battle for
cause sacred in their eyes, like that La
cedemonian mother who showed shield
to her son and said simply-return with
it-or upon lido thy duty or die Do
not expect such trials from ignorant
women, from souls without elevation
Our French contemporary passes from
this vindication of our mothers, sisters
and daughters, to an allusion to the
women of the North:
And while desolation over all the
hearths of the South, while mothers had |
each day fresh tears to wipe away, yet |
bravely bore their grief, how were the
women Of the North employed? In de-
veloping costly luxury against which
the Tribune itself cried out. calling at
tention to its scandalous extent, femi-
nine prodigality became more and more
unrestrained We know TO what disas-
trous result this state of affairs had led.
Some ladies, it is true, like Miss Anna
Dickinson, gave tiresome lectures to pro-
miscuous audiences, others clamered for
pretended womans rights, and exposed
themselves TO the derision of the public
and others still enrolled themselves under
the banner of miscegenation. 1t is
among these classes of women, who defy
good sense and modesty in pnblic exhi-
bitions that the Tribune finds its ideal
If the editor would take the iroahle to
visit the fresides of the South, he might
make his picture of the sufferings of
Southern women still more truthful,
graphic and startling. The desolation
Of the fields and the villages is nothing to
that which sits around the hearthstones
and it will be recorded in veracious his
tory that great as were the sufferings of
the men of the South in the field, they
we're not in disproportion to those en-
dured by the women at home For three
years majority of them performed those
duties and labors generally allotted to
men, and with unmurmuring fortitude. |
They did not shrink away from the rigors
of summer or winter, but endured the
utmost peril that each could bring. If
their faith was misplaced their constancy
rendered it sublime. While the wheel
was made to sing, the fields were not
neglected To sustain the men in arms,
both demanded their attention She who
had been accustomed to array herself in
the most costly fabrics, learned to weave
with hands the most delicate and fair,
not only the garments she herself wore,
but those which arrayed the husband, the
brother or the lover, in the distant camp.