June 24, 1863, Menphis Daily Appeal (Atlanta, Ga)
Within the limits of a single civil district in Franklin county, there are twenty-five families whose hands are “off in the wars.” These good wives and children found themselves at the beginning of the present harvest without the means of gathering the coming crop. Some were poor, some were sick and all were unused to field labor. The spring days were on and the warm suns shone, “the showers of rain did fall,” and the ripening grain made the air breezy with its plaints for the sickle and the reaper. Now what did the Good Lord send to aid the families of the brave soldiers thus left alone? He sent the women and the children of all the surrounding country. Ladies who never before exposed themselves to the rays of the mid-day heat, went boldly out among the sheaves and cut, and bound and stacked; and girls and boys, accustomed rather to school books and play than toil in the fields, lent the vigor of little hands but stout hearts, to this labor of love; and in no great while these twenty-five families rejoiced in a gathered harvest, full and secure, with its plentiful hope for the future year. Men, women and children all over the land “go ye and do likewise.”–Chattanooga Rebel.