those banners into the keeping of their knights, who
swore--they did not know the difficulties of the task--to bring back
those flags unsullied by defeat. The men were eager enough to meet the
hardships and perils which they had not yet measured; but the women
surpassed even the masculine eagerness, hurrying their sons and lovers
and brothers and often husbands to the front, hardly finding time for
tears in their enthusiasm and patriotism.

For patriotism, though sometimes not easily distinguished from selfish
delight in the romance which precedes war, it was on both sides--a
patriotism which was to be sorely tried and never to fail. It was
misdirected in most cases as yet; the social functions which made
brilliant the rival capitals for a time were mistaken expressions of the
deep feeling which glowed beneath; but they had their meaning and were
promises of better things to come. From Maine to Texas there burned a
flame of patriotism such as had not been called forth in like eagerness
of display even by the days of the Revolution, and its chief expressions
were from the women of the divided land. So trivial and misdirected as
yet were the majority of its expressions that it might have been thought
shallow and unenduring; but it was to prove its intensity and depth in
other guise, and these first ebullitions were but the foam that glances
on the unsounded sea.

There was little fear of suffering on either side. Each believed that,
so good was its cause, so valiant its supporters, it must triumph within
a short space. A prominent New York journal prophesied the fall of
Richmond within three months, saying: "We spit upon a longer-deferred
justice." The South thought that Washington would be taken at one blow.
In these beliefs, which seem to us, knowing the men who were to bear the
standards of both causes, such wild folly, the women more than shared.
Northern and Southern woman alike believed with full conviction that the
men of her country were unconquerable and that God fought on her side of
the quarrel; how then could defeat or disaster come to the cause she
loved? It was impossible.

It must be admitted that in the first stages of the war the weight of
feminine enthusiasm was in the Southern scale. There was good reason for
this. At the first call of battle, the South sent forth her best and
bravest, her own most cherished sons, while the North responded more
tardily, leaving much of its work in the hands of substi