A WOMANLY APPEAL TO THE LADIES
[From the February 6, 1864, edition of The Memphis Daily Appeal, p. 2]
. . . Who has caused this change? Are we willing to look the evil in the face? Are we willing to see, as well as feel in our inmost hearts, we are possessed with the demon of dress?--a demon that has bankrupted as many homes and blighted as many hearts as ever the wine cup when it is red.
But we--Oh what have we now to do with dress or show of any kind?
You wife that knowest that your gallant husband's head is pillowed only on the frozen ground, that his manly form is often covered only by Virginia's snow.
You, sister, whose loved brother writes that he is actually in need of sufficient food and clothing.
You, mother, whose darling boy now pines in a Northern dungeon; say what can you want with silks, satins, or "new styles?"
And you, bereaved, stricken ones, who, when told that your heart's idol had poured out his life blood in defense of his and your freedom, have felt as the deep waves of grief surge over you, and the blackness of despair settled over you, that to you the end was already come--arise! This is no time to give way to sorrow. A nation's loss theirs is. Freedom is the blood of the brave. Lay your bleeding hearts on the altar of your country. Would you call your loved ones back to life and slavery? You could not. They would not come, let not their deaths be useless. Let not coming ages brand them as rebels and traitors, but as heroes, who, by offering up their lives, gave a struggling nation life. Then stifle your grief and feed, clothe, and cheer on the living soldiers.
Sisters of the South, we have work to do! Think not that by draping your forms in crapes and bombazines you are honoring your noble dead. Think not that by giving [an]...extortioner a thousand dollars for a suit of deepest black, and a...milliner a hundred or two more for putting it in wearing order, you show that they are still fresh in your memory. That might do in peaceful times, when your friends died in their beds of disease, but now be up and doing; help on the cause. You who, in the first flush of your patriotism, gave twenty five and thirty dollars for homespuns and ostentatiously wore them, do not now discard them because they wash badly and cost so much; but get a wheel and cards, if you do live in a city, and make one for yourself, and not only that, clothe your husband, brother and little ones. Petition your President for a few cargoes of cotton cards to be sold to you at cost. Petition him to forbid, and that immediately, importations of all dry goods, save necessaries for the army.
And let us commence anew, discarding our old watch word of "working for the soldiers" as being worn threadbare by simpering misers, for the better one of working for our Government, of which our gallant soldiers are a part.
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