Salt was the most difficult of all the necessities.  The earth from old smoke houses was dug up and boiled for the drippings of ham and bacon—­these being crystallized by a primitive process.

Newspapers were printed on coarse half-sheets.  Every scrap of blank paper in old note books, letters or waste was utilized.  Wall paper and pictures were turned for envelopes.  Glue from the peach tree gum served to seal the covers.  Poke berries, oak balls, and green persimmons, furnished ink.

The devotion of the people was sublime, always dividing with their neighbors; and the refugees were noted for heroic acts.  The negroes were faithful in guarding the families, all of whom were left unprotected, and in working the plantations.  Nowhere in the annals of nations has such fidelity been known.

Two negro men belonging to an army officer’s widow who lived with her young daughters on an Arkansas plantation, conveyed $50,000 in gold in the cushions of an ambulance to Houston, Texas—­a place of safety from marauding troops, who burned the house and cabins, and captured the live stock.  The Yankees would not molest escaping negroes.  These were faithful to their trust.  Similar instances are legion.  Leal and true, always and everywhere.

The memory of those hardships cannot die until all the survivors are dead.  Fertile fields and pleasant villages were destroyed by great armies.  Two billions of dollars in slaves were swept away.  Cotton, the chief staple, was burned, or captured.  Wealth placed in Confederate bonds, was lost forever.  Of the 1,000,000 men in the southern army, three fourths were killed; 400,000 were crippled; and no estimate was made of the wounded who recovered.  The cost of the war was $8,000,000.  Men and horses perished of starvation and disease.  The Southern Confederacy died, not for lack of the will and of the spirit to fight on—­for not even Washington’s ragged troops at Valley Forge endured greater sufferings or displayed greater heroism.  The Confederacy died of exhaustion.

I have said that the women of the South gave all their energies and ingenuities to the cause.  They shared the burdens of conflict.  They encouraged and stimulated the men by their sympathy and cheerful fortitude.  To their country they gave their dearest and best, and bore up bravely in defeat as well as in victory.  With silent courage they faced privation and danger.  They nursed the sick and wounded; took charge of farms and plantations.  With wonderful resource they supplied the growing deficiencies in domestic affairs.  They cared for and directed the thousands of negroes left dependent upon them.  They never lost their trust in God, or in the righteousness of their cause though their loved ones languished in prison, or lay dead on the battle field.  Their patriotism and womanly fidelity will be held in honor while the world lasts.

* * * * *

And the women refugees from the Border States suffered in addition, the cutting off of news from those they left behind them.  Letters went by chance messengers through the lines, or around by Liverpool, England, and finally, by special indulgence, in one-page missives, unsealed, by flag-of truce, via Newport News and Norfolk, Va.