Many a woman went day after day
and week after week without even the small portion of coarse corn-bread
which was ordinarily her common fare. They called oftener and oftener
at the house of their neighbors who owned the plantations near them,
and always received something; but as time went on the plantations themselves
were stripped; the little things they could take with them when they went,
such as eggs, honey, etc., were wanting, and to go too often
without anything to give might make them seem like beggars,
and that they were not. Their husbands and sons were in the army
fighting for the South, as well as those from the plantations,
and they stood by this fact on the same level.
The arrogant looks of the negroes were unpleasant, and in marked contrast
to the universal graciousness of their owners, but they were slaves and they
could afford to despise them. Only they must uphold their independence.
Thus no one outside knew what the women of the district went through.
When they wrote to their husbands or sons that they were in straits,
it meant that they were starving. Such a letter meant all the more
because they were used to hunger, but not to writing, and a letter meant
perhaps days of thought and enterprise and hours of labor.
As the war went on the hardships everywhere grew heavier and heavier;
the letters from home came oftener and oftener.
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