Georgia Women Suffering During the Confederacy

In the February 2014 issue of the United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine is an article by Carolyn Golden Wilson titled Georgia's Confederate Women.

 

I had not really thought too much about the suffering experienced by the women of the Confederacy, whose husbands had left to fight, but this article tells about how so many, especially in Atlanta, had to flee their homes and even live in the woods to escape Sherman's men.

 

 

Ms. Wilson writes: "for weeks after an invasion, Georgia women described their physical and mental exhaustion, anxiety, sleep disturbances and nightmares, depression and rage against the Yankee invaders. They also had to deal with the emotional turmoil of the children". She points out that these women also had a great fear of unwanted pregnancies as death in childbirth was so prevalent, and there were no doctors nearby.

 

 

The author underscoring their suffering but also their will to survive, tells of one woman, Rebecca Latimer Felton, who lost all five of her sons during the war. Mrs. Felton became a refugee, losing her large plantation, but years later, in 1922 she would become the first woman to serve in the U.S. Senate.

 

 

Ms. Golden ends the article saying "The heroism of Georgia's Confederate Women has rarely been equaled by the women of any country. Numerous memorials have been built to Georgia's Confederate women, and no women in history deserved them more."