The daily clarion. [volume] (Meridian, Miss.) 1863-1866, 1866-03-23
A Tribute to the women Of the South.

Replying to Il coarse allusion of the New
York Tribune to the women of the South,
the Courier des Etats Unis says:
Let us permit the Tribune to insist upon
the gross Ignorance" of the Confederate
women and to refer to this ignorance their
energy and constancy during the war. We
attribute the qualities of which the South
ern women have given noble example to
higher origin. Ignorance, the Tribune has
said it q hundred times, can engender only
vice and meanness-and, if the Confederate
women have been heroic, it is because they
had faith in their cause. There are Occa-
sions in history when women, whose mission
i'll ordinary times is to make the good wife,
the tender mother, and to polish manners
by the charm and grace which she brings
INTO all social relations, may rise above her
self and give examples of the highest virtue.
These occasions occur when the sacred soil
of her country, and with it (Or through it)
the domestic hearth and the family are
threatened with invasion, These high vir-
tues the women of the South have practiced,
without ostentatiOn, without theatrical
parade.
They have borne all privations, they have
defed all outrages by their proud and i'm
passable 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 lux
uries of home-all these the Southern wo-
men gave up-they did not even recoil be-
fore sacrifices still more painful-they did
not fear to break their hearts by sending
forth their sons to do battle for a cause, sa-
cred in their eyes, like that Lacedemonian
mother who showed a shield to her son and
said smply-return with it-or upon lido
thy duty or die. Do not expect such trials
from ignorant women, from souls without
elevation
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 developing a costly
luxury against which the Tribune itself
cried out calling attention to its scandaiOus
extent feminine prodigality became more
and more unrestrained We know to what
disastrous result this state of affairs had led
Some ladies, it is true, like Miss Anna Dick.
inson, gave tireSome lectures to promiscuous
audiences, others clamored for pretended
woman's 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 public exhibitions, that the Tribune finds
it's ideal.
4
conquered women, of whom the defeat has
not diminished the greatness; let it cease 10
embitter and dishonor its pen in sustaining
an indefensible paradox. The North, like the
South, has its contingent of good, graceful
educated and elegant bred women; it has,
perhaps, large number of that class who so
little deserve the name of women, and for
whom certain announcements are made in
the Journals; it possesses, also, a greater
share of learned and pedantic ladies-but
for these. will New Orleans not become en-
vious of Boston. As for good and wellbred
society, it is the same everywhere; and the
Tribune may be sure that a woman of the
world coming from Boston, would not feel
out of place in New Orleans, nor would the
contrary be true. In calumniating the South
ern women, Mr.. Greeley has simply proved
that he does not know them, and that he
knows still less the common laws of pro-
priety.