July 3, 1863, Menphis Daily Appeal (Atlanta, Ga)
What an immense amount of heroism among this class passes unnoticed, or is taken as a matter of course, not only in this most righteous war we are waging, but in those of all past time. For the soldier, he has his comrades about him, shoulder to shoulder. He has praise if he does well; he has mention and pitying tears if he fall nobly striving. But alas! for the soldier’s wife. Even an officer’s wife, who has sympathizing friends, who has the comforts and many luxuries of life, whose children’s future is provided for if their father fall, what hours of dreadful suspense and anxiety she must pass, even in these favorable circumstances. How hard for her. But for the wife of the poor soldier, who in giving her husband to her country, has given everything, who knows not whether the meal she and her little ones are eating may not be the last for many a hungry, desperate day, who has no friends to say “Well done” as the lagging weeks of suspense creep on, and she stands bravely at her post, keeping want and starvation at bay; imagination busy among the heaps of dead and wounded, or traversing the wretched prison dens, and shuddering at the though of their demoniac keepers; keeping down her sobs as her little daughter trustfully offers up her nightly prayers “for papa dear to come home;” or when her little son, just old enough to read, traces slowly with his fingers the long list of the killed and wounded, “to see if father is there;” shrouding her eyes from the possible future of her children, should her strength give out under the pressure of want and anxiety; no friend to turn to, when her hand is palsied with labor; nor waving banners, nor martial music, nor one procession to chronicle her valorous deeds; none but God and her own brave heart to witness her noble, unaided struggle; when I think of those solitary women scattered throughout the length and bredth of the land, my heart warms toward them; and I would fain hold them up in their silent struggle, for all the world to admire. When the history of this war shall be written (and that cannot be now,) let the historian chronicle the sublime valor of the hearthstone, all over our struggling land.–Fanny Fern.