the fighting on Wednesday (the first day of the battle) it was for a time forcibly occupied by the Union sharp-shooters who fired upon the rebels from it. Towards evening the Union troops having retreated to Cemetery Hill, the house came into possession of the rebels, who bade the family leave it as they were about to burn it, in consequence of its having been used as a fort. Miss Harmon and her aunt both protested against this, explaining that the occupation was forcible and not with their consent. The young lady added that her mother, not now living, was a Southern woman, and that she should blush for her parentage if Southern men would thus fire the house of defenseless females, and deprive them of a home in the midst of battle. One of the rebels, upon this, approached her and proposed in a confidential way, that if she would prove that she was not a renegade Southerner by hurrahing for the Southern Confederacy, he would see what could be done. "Never!" was the indignant reply of the truly loyal girl, "burn the house if you will! I will never do that, while the Union which has protected me and my friends, exists." The rebels at once fired the house, and the brave girl and her aunt made their way to the home of friends, running the gauntlet of the fire of both armies, and both were subsequently unwearied in their labors for the wounded.

LOYAL WOMEN OF THE SOUTH.

E have already had occasion to mention some of those whose labors had been conspicuous, and especially Mrs.

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Sarah R. Johnson, Mrs. Nellie M. Taylor, Mrs. Grier, Mrs. Clapp, Miss Breckinridge, Mrs. Phelps, Mrs. Shepard Wells, and others. There was however, beside these, a large class, even in the chief cities of the rebellion, who not only never bowed their knee to the idol of secession, but who for their fidelity to principle, their patient endurance of proscription and their humanity and helpfulness to Union men, and especially Union prisoners, are deserving of all honor.

The loyal women of Richmond were a noble band. Amid obloquy, persecution and in some cases imprisonment (one of them was imprisoned for nine months for aiding Union prisoners) they never faltered in their allegiance to the old flag, nor in their sympathy and services to the Union prisoners at Libby and Belle Isle, and Castle Thunder. With the aid of twenty-one loyal white men in Richmond they raised a fund of thirteen thousand dollars in gold, to aid Union prisoners, while their gifts of clothing, food and luxuries, were of much greater value. Some of these ladies were treated with great cruelty by the rebels, and finally driven from the city, but no one of them ever proved false to loyalty. In Charleston, too, hot-bed of the rebellion as it was, there was a Union league, of which the larger proportion were women, some of them wives or daughters of prominent rebels, who dared everything, even their life, their liberty and

their social position, to render aid and comfort to the Union soldiers, and to facilitate the return of a government of liberty and law. Had we space we might fill many pages with the heroic deeds of these noble women. Through their assistance, scores of Union men were enabled to make their escape from the prisons, some of them under fire, in which they were confined, and often after almost incredible sufferings, to find their way to the Union lines. Others suffering from the frightful jail fever or wasted by privation and wearisome marches with little or no food, received from them food and clothing, and were thus enabled to maintain existence till the time for their liberation came. The negro women were far more generally loyal than their mistresses, and their ready wit enabled them to render essential service to the loyal whites, service for which, when detected, they often suffered cruel tortures, whipping and sometimes death.

In New Orleans, before the occupation of the city by the Union troops under General Butler, no woman could declare herself a Unionist without great personal peril; but as we have seen there were those who risked all for their attachment to the Union even then. Mrs. Taylor was by no means the only outspoken Union woman of the city, though she may have been the most fearless. Mrs. Minnie Don Carlos, the wife of a Spanish gentleman of the city, was from the beginning of the war a decided Union woman, and after its occupation by Union troops was a constant and faithful visitor at the hospitals and rendered great service to Union soldiers. Mrs. Flanders, wife of Hon. Benjamin Flanders, and her two daughters, Miss Florence and Miss Fanny Flanders were also well known for their persistent Unionism and their abundant labors for the sick and wounded. Mrs. and Miss Carrie Wolfley, Mrs. Dr. Kirchner, Mrs. Mills, Mrs. Bryden, Mrs. Barnett and Miss Bennett, Mrs. Wibrey, Mrs. Richardson, Mrs. Hodge, Mrs. Thomas, Mrs. Howell, Mrs. Charles Howe of Key West, and Miss Edwards from Massachusetts, were all faithful and earnest workers in the hospitals throughout the war, and Union women

when their Unionism involved peril. Miss Sarah Chappell, Miss Cordelia Baggett and Miss Ella Gallagher, also merit the same commendation.

Nor should we fail to do honor to those loyal women in the mountainous districts and towns of the interior of the South. Our prisoners as they were marched through the towns of the South always found some tender pitying hearts, ready to do something for their comfort, if it were only a cup of cold water for their parched lips, or a corn dodger slyly slipped into their hand. Oftentimes these humble but patriotic women received cruel abuse, not only from the rebel soldiers, but from rebel Southern women, who, though perhaps wealthier and in more exalted social position than those whom they scorned, had not their tenderness of heart or their real refinement. Indeed it would be difficult to find in history, even among the fierce brutal women of the French revolution, any record of conduct more absolutely fiendish than that of some of the women of the South during the war. They insisted on the murder of helpless prisoners; in some instances shot them in cold blood themselves, besought their lovers and husbands to bring them Yankee skulls, scalps and bones, for ornaments, betrayed innocent men to death, engaged in intrigues and schemes of all kinds to obtain information of the movements of Union troops, to convey it to the enemy, and in every manifestation of malice, petty spite and diabolical hatred against the flag under which they had been reared, and its defenders, they attained a bad pre-eminence over the evil spirits of their sex since the world began. It is true that these were not the characteristics of all Southern, disloyal women, but they were sufficiently common to make the rebel women of the south the objects of scorn among the people of enlightened nations. Many of these patriotic loyal women, of the mountainous districts, rendered valuable aid to our escaping soldiers, as well as to the Union scouts who were in many cases their own kinsmen. Messrs. Richardson and Browne, the Tribune correspondents so long im

prisoned, have given due honor to one of this class, "the nameless heroine" as they call her, Miss Melvina Stevens, a young and beautiful girl who from the age of fourteen had guided escaping Union prisoners past the most dangerous of the rebel garrisons and outposts, on the borders of North Carolina and East Tennessce, at the risk of her liberty and life, solely from her devotion to the national cause. The mountainous regions of East Tennessee, Northern Alabama and Northern Georgia were the home of many of these loyal and energetic Union women-women, who in the face of privation, persecution, death and sometimes outrages worse than death, kept up the courage and patriotic ardor of their husbands, brothers and lovers, and whose lofty selfsacrificing courage no rebel cruelties or indignities could weaken or abate.