CH. XII] THE SOUTHERN WOMEN 389 and laborers; and in utilizing these in a somewhat imperfect fashion she kept her armies and citizens from starvation and maintained the struggle for four years. Richmond was near the seat of war and, after the battles, the wounded were brought to the city in such numbers as to demand unremitting labor to relieve their sufferings. In 1862, there were thirty-five public and private hospitals in Richmond; and churches were likewise converted into temporary abiding-places for those who had been shot in the field. Devotion to the Southern cause beat high in the hearts of their womankind, compelling well-born and fastidious ladies to the care of men wounded in every distressful and revolting manner and tormented by physical suffering, which, from lack of anesthetics and morphine, the surgeons were often powerless to relieve. It was the case we all know "When pain and anguish wring the brow But old as it is there is always fresh inspiration in it to those who tell the tale of a cause they have embraced. Confederate writings are full of gratitude to the women; their works in Richmond were matched everywhere throughout the Confederacy. Heavily as the war bore on Northern women the distress of Southern women had a wider range. In the Union there were many families who had no near relative in the war; in the Confederacy it was a rare exception when neither, husband, father, son nor brother was in the army: hardly a household was not in mourning. Moreover, the constant suspense affected a larger number than at the North. In Richmond, where intelligence of battles was received with comparative promptness, the frequent sounding of the 390 PHYSICAL PRIVATIONS [1864 tocsin, indicating the proximity of danger, increased the general disquietude, while those who lived in the country where newspapers were infrequent and mails irregular, felt they would have preferred living in the midst of alarms to having their anxious uncertainty thus prolonged. Physical privations are far from alleviating moral distress and the lack of luxuries and then of necessaries increased the harshness of woman's lot in the Confederacy. The tale of poverty in its every-day aspect is familiar to us all, but at the South the contrast between life before the war and afterwards is most unusual and striking. In the domestic establishments plenty had been the rule, even lavishness. Tables groaned under the weight of food. The Southerners had been extravagant in their living and generous in their entertainment. Servants were numerous. Southern ladies who had never taken thought where food came from, who had themselves never stooped to the least physical exertion, were now forced by the advance of the enemy to leave their luxurious homes and take refuge in Richmond; there they might be seen in line before the cheapest shop awaiting their chance to spend the scant wages of "plain sewing" or copying or clerical work in a Government office, for a pittance of flour or bacon. No clerkship was given to a woman unless she would aver that she was in want, and in the Treasury Department one vacancy would elicit a hundred applications, a number of which came from ladies of gentle birth and former, affluence. Other ladies accustomed to luxury did the menial work of the household. Such labor was peculiarly distasteful to the Southern-bred woman, yet this and the insufficiency of wholesome food were borne with cheerfulness in the hope of independence and the preservation of their social institutions. It seemed to them that the North had undertaken a crusade Сн. ХІІ] RELIGIOUS FEELING SOUTH 391 against the social fabric under which they and their mothers had been reared and that the war which caused their sufferings had been forced upon the South which was now defending her vested rights. The devastation of country, the wanton destruction in cities, the pillage conducted by the more disreputable Northern soldiers exasperated them to a point where they could no longer control their feelings but gave vent to violent expressions of indignation, some of which are recorded in the diaries of the period. "If all the words of hatred in every language," wrote a young Georgia woman, “were lumped together into one huge epithet of detestation they could not tell how I hate Yankees.” 1 Fully as noticeable as at the North was the profound religious sentiment pervading soldiers and people. A preacher spoke of the "active piety" which prevailed in the army and Seddon attested "a large religious element and much devotional feeling." George Cary Eggleston related that in the last year of the war a revival took place among Lee's soldiers. "Prayer meetings were held in every tent. Testaments were in every hand and a sort of religious ecstasy took possession of the army." In the annals of the Episcopal Church, an incident is recorded which serves pleasantly to relieve the general bitterness of the war. The bishops and clergy of the South appealed to their brethren at the North to send down two or three thousand prayer books and a quantity of church tracts for use in the Confederate Army: the United States Government gave permission for passing these through the lines of the Union Army. In concluding this survey, a comparison between South and North with respect to certain prepossessions of 1 Report of Apr. 28, 1864. 392 THE WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS [1864 the two peoples naturally suggests itself. The Confederate Congress refused a number of times to make their Treasury notes a legal tender, construing the clause of the Constitution (alike in the Confederate and Federal) which related to the subject, more strictly than did the United States Congress in the thorough discussions that took place, it was mainly the constitutional arguments which prevented such legislation, although this was advocated by many men of influence, among them General Lee. In the practical application of the clause of the Constitution, "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it," the Confederate government exhibited the greater regard for the liberty of the individual, and the Southern citizen the greater jealousy of the use of arbitrary power. Lincoln from the first assumed the right to suspend the writ by Executive decree, a right never claimed by Davis. It was generally conceded at the South that Congress alone possessed this power and the privilege was available to the citizens of the Confederacy except when curtailed by express statute. And the Confederate Congress asserted its rights boldly enough, declaring in the Act of February 15, 1864, that "the power of suspending the privilege of said writ . . . is vested solely in the Congress which is the exclusive judge of the necessity of such suspension." The war may be said to have lasted four years the periods of suspension of the writ in the Confederacy amounted in the aggregate to one year, five months and two days, less than one-half of the war's duration. In the Union the writ was suspended or disregarded at any time and in any place where the Executive, or those to whom he delegated this power, deemed such action necessary. For anyone who in any manner or degree took CH. XII] ARBITRARY POWER SOUTH AND NORTH 393 an unfriendly attitude toward the recruitment of the army, for political prisoners, for persons suspected of "any disloyal practice," the privilege did not exist. It was suspended for one year, ten months and twenty-one days by Executive assumption and for the rest of the period by the authorization of Congress. The provocation for the use of arbitrary power was, all things considered, about equal in the Confederacy and the Union. In the Union the "disloyal" secret societies were larger and more dangerous, and the public criticism of the administration more copious and bitter. There was, too, the organized political party which made a focus for the opposition and developed Vallandigham, who had no counterpart at the South. But these considerations are balanced by the circumstance that in the South was the seat of war which was never but for brief periods moved north of Mason and Dixon's line and the Ohio river. "Civil administration is everywhere relaxed," wrote Judge Campbell as early as October, 1862, "and has lost much of its energy, and our entire Confederacy is like a city in a state of siege, cut off from all intercourse with foreign nations and invaded by a superior force at every assailable point." Where armies stand in opposition disloyalty may give the enemy aid and comfort so substantial as to decide an impending battle; far from the front it is apt to spend itself in bluster, threats and secret midnight oaths. In the Confederacy there was practically no important place east of the Mississippi river which was not at one time or another invaded or threatened by the invader. The courts, it is true, were open in the South, but, owing to the disorganized state of society, the interruption of trade and the passage of stay laws by the States, they tried few commercial cases but confined themselves to criminal jurisdic |