The State Annual Reunion of the Arkansas United Confederate Veterans, held at Fort Smith, October 17-19, 1906 appointed, through the commander, Gen. N. T. Roberts, a committee of five veterans, J.J. Berry, V.Y. Cook, Charles Coffin, Dan W. Jones and J.M. Lucey, to arrange for the cooperation of the United Confederate Veterans of Arkansas and Sons of Veterans with the general committee of the United Confederates of the South for the erection of at least one monument in each of the Southern States to commemorate the heroism of the Southern women in the Civil war period.
This monument movement came into prominence five years ago, when the fact began to dawn upon the minds of the old veterans and sons of veterans that the women of the South had borne a very conspicuous part in the glorious achievements of the Southern soldiery, so much so that had it not been for their superb nobility of character in cheerfully bidding what was often a last farewell to their loved ones and in working away the beauty and tenderness of Southern rearing in country and town to support their lonely families, the war could not have been sustained for any considerable length of time. But when this fact did finally dawn upon the minds of the old veterans they resolved to attest their appreciation of the greatness of the Southern women, who excelled the historic Roman matron and Spartan mother, by gathering and publishing the reminiscences of the work of the women of the South in the Civil war period and by erecting at least one monument in each Southern State to commemorate their heroism.
Gen. C. Irvin Walker, Charleston, S. C., commander of the U.C.V. Department of the Army of Northern Virginia, was made chairman at the Louisville reunion, three years ago, of the general committee. This committee has succeeded in gathering and publishing in newspaper supplements the chronicles of the work of Southern women in several Southern States, notably South Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee. This work will be pushed to completion in the remaining States of the South.
Gen. Walker's committee have also accomplished considerable work on the question of a monument to Southern women. It has been decided that the monument be of bronze. Designs were called for last year and at the meeting of the committee after the adjournment of the Richmond reunion of the present year a selection of a design was made. The committee are now selecting the artist who is to carry out their wishes and supervise the casting of the monuments. Within a short time the artist will be selected and the next step will be to estimate the cost of each monument for a State and to apportion it. The veterans and sons of veterans of each State will be asked to share State by State, in the expense incurred. It is impossible just now to estimate exactly what each State will have to pay as a approximate. Each monument will be an original under this plan and the uniformity throughout the South will be a striking feature. Everywhere will be seen that face and figure of Southern beauty and power, looking down with inspiring love and tenderness upon the rising generations of the Southland.
Our Arkansas committee met in Little Rock last winter and organized for work along those lines. It was discovered that quite a large number of papers written by Southern ladies of the State and full of interesting reminiscenses were in the hands of J. Kellogg, Little Rock, as the result of a previous effort in this direction. At the above meeting J. M. Lucey was made chairman and J. Kellogg was made honorary member of the board and elected secretary. The chairman was empowered to collect all accessible papers and to solicit new ones from the ladies of the State; all of which were to be carefully supervised by him and then published in a pamphlet form, rather than a newspaper supplement. It was, however, decided to publish the papers first in the Sunday edition of the Arkansas Gazette after submission to their authors to print them in a pamphlet of an edition of 3,000 copies.
The Memorial Committee were able to report to the State Reunion U.C.V., held October 4-5, this year, at Hot Springs, Ark., that the work of going over the old papers and collecting new ones was practically completed. All of the old papers, with possibly two or three exceptions, have appeared in the Sunday edition of the Arkansas Gazette. None of the new series of papers have been given to the Gazette, as it was only recently that the final copy of the old series was used, and it is thought best to get out the pamphlet without further delay. The report of the Memorial Committee was unanimously approved by the Reunion, and the Committee was made a permanent one and authorized to publish three thousand copies of the pamphlet and to arrange a plan to canvass the principal cities of the State to raise five thousand dollars for the monument to the Confederate Women of Arkansas of the Civil War period.
This volume is, therefore, published under the auspices of the United Confederate Veterans of Arkansas, as a tribute to the women of the South, and a slight acknowledgement of their many successful efforts to glorify the Confederate soldier. No effort has been made to give these papers a literary dress. They are given in the simple language and style in which they were orginally written. They will become a most desirable addition to the material that will some day be used to make up a satisfactory history of the mighty struggle of the North and South over forty years ago, as each paper contains some particular incident of historic value.
To render our volume more complete and perhaps more attractive, several selections have been inserted which refer to subjects dear to every Confederate heart; History of the Origin of the U.C.V., of the U.S.C.V., and of the Daughters; of the Confederate Uniform and Flag; of the Confederate Museum and the Memorial Association, and similar things. War songs and poems which have become historic are given, and finally anecdotes of camp life are presented not merely to relieve the heavier reading but to bring forward a feature of Confederate life that historians covet.
Few Confederate Veterans will read those pages with dry eyes. They will read of Stering Price's body guard of eighty men appearing on the streets of Camden from their Missouri raid with sockless feet and almost frozen when the Southern ladies gave every man of them a pair of socks and some of them shoes and then worked day and night, Sunday and weekday, to make up the deficit for the boxes they were sending to their own loved ones on distant battlefields. They will read of tenderly raised Southern women working in the fields alone with negro servants to raise a simple crop, that was to be carried off by Federal raiders.
The women who wove and spun the clothing of the Southern soldier and their own, who risked their lives in bearing important dispatches to Confederate generals, who spent days and nights at the cot of the soldier in the hospital and who have cared for the graves of the Confederate dead even to the extent of erecting countless memorial monments and leaving their own heroism to be unnoticed, if not unknown, deserve to be commemoriated in the grandest records and finest monument that man's genius can devise. The old Confederate veterans of Arkansas would otherwise indeed be ungrateful to the noble women who stood by the Southern cause in war and, when all was lost but honor, received the broken-down father, husband and brother, without a tear or anything but comforting words and cheerful smiles.
J.M. Lucey, Chairman,
Dan W. Jones,
Charles Coffin,
V.Y. Cook,
J.H. Berry,
J. Kellogg, Secretary.
Committee of the Arkansas Division, U.C.V., on Memorial to the Women of the Confederacy.