Carlo Botta, the Italian historian, in his History of the War for Independence, says: “In that fierce struggle, the War of the American Revolution, the women of Carolina presented an example of fortitude more than manly. I know not the history, ancient or modern, which has recorded a story of devotion exceeding or equaling that exhibited by these heroic beings to their American country. Far from considering the epithet a reproach, they gloried and exulted in the name of Rebel women. Their example was inspiring, and it is owing principally to the firmness of these patriotic Carolinians that the name, as well as the love of liberty, was not extinguished in the Southern States.”
In the not distant future, let us hope that some foreign historian, reading this record of facts, and touched by the witchery of the theme, may, like Botta, tell another continent, in another tongue, how the descendants of those Carolina women of the Revolution, in the third and fourth generation, “presented an example of fortitude more than manly.” But he will have to add that, while the heroines of the first Revolution lived to exult with their surviving sons and brothers in a victory glorious and complete, the South Carolina Women of the Confederacy saw their cause go down in gloom and defeat; that cause which, throughout all the horrors of the Reconstruction era, they regarded and still hold in “boundless love and reverence and regret.”
The purpose of this book is to record, in part, the work of South Carolina women during the War for Southern Independence, not only in making banners, “binding her warriors’ sash,” and those offices which the coldblooded materialist classes as “sentimental”; but woman as a potent factor in furnishing food and clothing for the men on the battle line, and for the wounded and dying in the hospital.
- Introduction
- Report of the Work of the Women of South Carolina During the Confederate War
- Proceedings of Soldiers’ Relief Association
- Managers of Wards
- Committee on Donations
- Ladies’ Auxiliary Christian Association
- Women’s Associations, Names and Location
- A Sketch of the Work at Greenville, South Carolina
- Work at Cheraw, Marion, and Pendleton, South Carolina
- Organization of Ladies of Fairfield, South Carolina
- Membership of Fairfield, South Carolina
- Articles sent to Virginia
- Woman’s Work at Beaufort, Marlboro, Sumter, Union and Florence Hospital
- Black Oak Soldiers’ Relief Association Minutes
- Work at Eutawville, South Carolina
- Work at Grahamville and Camden, South Carolina
- Membership Kershaw Ladies Aid Association
- Work at Bethany Hospital and Abbeville, South Carolina
- Women’s Activities at the Capital and Columbia, South Carolina
- Charleston Wayside Hospital and Soldiers Depot
- Charleston, South Carolina and the Civil War
- Recollections of the First Year of the War
- St. Helena Parish, Columbia, South Carolina Women in the War
- Our First Confederate Flag
- Incidents of the First Battle of Manassas
- Women in the Civil War in Cheraw, South Carolina
- A Southern Household During the Years 1860 to 1865
- Tales of a Grandmother or Recollections of the Confederate War
- Why I Am a Daughter of the Confederacy
- Heroic Women of South Carolina
- Reminiscences of the Confederate War
- A Sketch of Life During the War Between the States
- The Trials of a Confederate Officer’s Wife in 1864
- The Last Bazaar
- Experiences During the Civil War
- The Boozer Glass Case
- Personal Experiences with Sherman’s Army at Liberty Hill
- Burning of Columbia
- Diary of Malvina S. Waring
- The Burning of Columbia by Sherman
- The Burning of the Ursuline Convent
- When Columbia South Carolina Burned
- The Sack of Columbia
- Recollections of the Burning of Columbia South Carolina
- Mrs. Lottie L. Green’s Experience
- The Response to the Negroes’ Call
- When Sherman Passed Through Lancaster
- Reminiscences of Sherman’s Raid
- In the Track of the Raiders
- Recollections of the Civil War
- With Stoneman’s Raiders
- The Yankee Raid Through Anderson
- Incidents of the Anderson Raid
- Reconstruction in South Carolina
- History of the Orangeburg County Monument Association