During the early months of 1861 society was at its brightest and best. For several years social life had been characterized by a vague feeling of unrest. Political questions became social questions, society and politics I went hand in hand, and the social leaders were the political leaders. The women were well informed on all questions of the day and especially on the burning sectional issues that affected them so closely. After the John Brown episode at Harper's Ferry, the women felt that for them there could be no safety until the question was settled. They were strongly in favor of secession after that event if not before; they were even more unanimous than the men, feeling that they were more directly concerned in questions of interference with social institutions in the South. There was to them a great danger in social changes made, as all expected, by John Brown methods.1

women, but not the reason for their interest in public questions. He 1Colonel Higginson seems to understand the influence of the says: "But for the women of the seceding States, the war of the Re

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Brilliant social events celebrated the great political actions of the day. The secession of Alabama, the sessions of the Convention, the meeting of the legislature, the meeting of the Provisional Congress, the inauguration of President Davis-all were occasions for splendid gatherings of beauty and talent and strength. There were balls, receptions, and other social events in country and in town. There was no city life, and country and town were socially one. Enthusiasm for the new government of the Southern nation was at fever heat for months. At heart many feared and dreaded that war might follow, but had war been certain, the knowledge would have turned no one from his course.. When war was seen to be imminent, enthusiasm rose higher. Fear and dread was in the hearts of the women, but no one hesitated. From social gaiety they turned to the task of making ready for war their fathers, brothers, husbands and sweethearts. They hurriedly made the first gray uniforms and prepared supplies for the campaign. When the companies were fitted out and ready to depart, there were farewell balls and sermons, and presentations of colors by young women. These ceremonies took place in the churches, town halls, and court houses. Speeches of presentation were made by young

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bellion would have been waged more feebly, been sooner ended, and far more easily forgotten." * "Had the voters of the South been all women, it would have plunged earlier into the gulf of secession, dived deeper, and come up even more reluctantly."-Higginson, Common Sense About Women, 54, 209. Prof. Burgess, with a better understanding, explains the reason for the interest of the women in sectional questions. He says that after the attempt of John Brown to incite the slaves to insurrection, "Especially did terror and bitterness take possession of the hearts of the women of the South, who saw in slave insurrection not only destruction and death, but that which to feminine virtue is a thousand times worse than the most terrible death. For those who would excite such a movement or sympathize with anybody who would excite such a movement, the women of the South felt a hatred as undying as virtue itself. Men might still hesitate *** but the women were united and resolute, and their unanimous exhortation was: 'Men of the South, defend the honor of your mothers, your wives, your sisters, and your daughters. It is your highest and most sacred duty."-Burgess, Civil War and the Constitution, I, 42.

women and of acceptance by the officers. The men always spoke well. The women showed a thorough acquaintance with the questions at issue, but most of their addresses were charges to the soldiers, encouragement to duty. "Go, my sons, and return victorious or fall in the cause of the South," or a similar paraphrase was often heard. One lady said "we confide [to you] this emblem of our zeal for liberty, trusting that it will nerve your hearts and strengthen your hands in the hour of trial, and that its presence will forbid the thought of seeking any other retreat than in death." Another maiden told her soldiers that "we who present this banner expect it to be returned brightened by your chivalry or to become the shroud of the slain." "The terrors of war are far less to be feared than the degradation of ignoble submission," the soldiers were assured by another brighteyed girl. The legends embroidered or woven into the colors were such as these: "To the Brave," "Victory or Death," "Never Surrender."2

There were dress parades, exhibition drills, picnics, barbecues, and then the soldiers marched away. After a short season of feverish social gayety, the seriousness of war was brought home to the people, and those left behind settled down to watch and wait and work and pray for the loved ones and for the cause. It was soon a very quiet life, industrious, strained with waiting and listening for news. For a long time the interior country was not disturbed by fear of invasion. Life was monotonous; sorrow came afresh daily; and it was a blessing to the women that they had to work so hard during the war, as constant employment was their greatest comfort.

Our Women in War, passim; Ball, Clarke County, 261-274; oral accounts, scrapbooks, letters.

LIFE ON THE FARM.

The great majority of the people of Alabama lived in the country on farms and plantations. They had been dependent upon the North for all the finer and many of the commoner manufactured articles. The staple crop was cotton, which was sold in exchange for many of the ordinary necessaries of life. Now all was changed. The blockade shut off supplies from abroad and the plantations had to raise all that was needed for feeding and clothing the people at home and the soldiers in the field. This necessitated a change in plantation economy. After the first year of war less and less cotton was planted, and food crops became the staple agricultural productions. The State and Confederate authorities urged and encouraged this tendency by advice and by law. The farms produced many things which were seldom planted before the war when cotton was the staple crop. Cereals were cultivated in the northern counties and to some extent in central Alabama, though wheat was never successful in central and South Alabama. Rice, oats, corn, peas, pumpkins, ground-peas and chufas were grown more and more as the war went on. Groundpeas (called also, peanuts, goobers, or pindars, according to locality), and chufas were raised to feed hogs and poultry. The common field pea, or “speckled Jack," was one of the mainstays of the Confederacy. It is said that General Lee called it "the Confederacy's best friend." At "laying by" the farmers planted peas between the hills of corn and the vines grew and the crop matured with little further trouble. Sweet potatoes were everywhere raised, and became a staple article of food.

Rice was stripped of its husk by being beaten with a wooden pestle in a mortar cut out of a section of a tree. The threshing of the wheat was a cause of much trouble. Rude home made flails were used, for there were no regular threshers. No one raised much of it, for it was a great task

to clean it. One poor woman who had a small patch of wheat threshed it by beating the sheaves over a barrel while bed quilts and sheets were spread around to catch scattering grains. Another placed the sheaves in a large wooden trough, then she and her small children beat the sheaves with wooden clubs. After being threshed in some such manner the chaff was fanned out by pouring the grain from a measure in a breeze and catching it on a sheet.

LABOR.

Field labor was performed in the Black Belt by the negroes, but in the white counties the burden fell heavily upon the women, children and old men. In the Black Belt the mistress of the plantation managed affairs with the assistance of the trusty negroes. She superintended the planting of the proper crops, the cultivation and gathering of the same, and sent to the government stores the large share called for by the tax-in-kind. The old men of the community, if near enough, assisted the women managers by advice and direction. Often one old gentleman would have half a dozen feminine planters as his wards. Life was very busy in the Black Belt but there was never the suffering in this rich section that prevailed in the less fertile white counties from which the white laborers had gone to war. In the latter section the mistress of slaves managed much as did her Black Belt sister, but there were fewer slaves and life was harder for all, and hardest of all for the poor white people who owned no slaves. When few slaves were owned by a family the young white boys worked in the field with them while the girls of the family did the light tasks about the house, though at times they too went to the field. Where there were no slaves, the old men, cripples, women, and children worked on the little farms. All over the country the young boys worked like heroes. All had been taught that labor was honorable and all knew how work should be done. So when war made it necessary all went to work