usand
dollars--were appropriated at Miss Dickinson's request to the National
Freedman's Relief Society."

[37] James Redpath.

[38] See Appendix.

[39] When our leading journals, orators, and brave men from the
battle-field, complain that Northern women feel no enthusiasm in the
war, the time has come for us to pledge ourselves loyal to freedom and
our country. Thus far, there has been no united expression from the
women of the North as to the policy of the war. Here and there one has
spoken and written nobly. Many have vied with each other in acts of
generosity and self-sacrifice for the sick and wounded in camp and
hospital. But we have, as yet, no means of judging where the majority
of Northern women stand.

If it be true that at this hour the women of the South are more
devoted to their cause than we are to ours, the fact lies here. They
see and feel the horrors of the war; the foe is at their firesides;
while we, in peace and plenty, live as heretofore. There is an
inspiration, too, in a definite purpose, be it good or bad. The women
of the South know what their sons are fighting for. The women of the
North do not. They appreciate the blessings of slavery; we not the
blessings of liberty. We have never yet realized the glory of those
institutions in whose defence it is the privilege of our sons to bleed
and die. They are aristocrats, with a lower class, servile and
obsequious, intrenched in feudal homes. We are aristocrats under
protest, who must go abroad to indulge our tastes, and enjoy in
foreign despotisms the customs which the genius of a Republic
condemns.

But, from the beginning of the Government, there have been women among
us who, with the mother of the immortal John Quincy Adams, have
lamented the inconsistencies of our theory and practice, and demanded
for ALL the people the exercise of those rights that belong to every
citizen of a republic. The women of a nation mold its morals,
religion, and politics. The Northern treason, now threatening to
betray us to our foes, is hatched at our own firesides, where traitor
snobs, returned from Europe and the South, out of time and tune with
independence and equality, infuse into their sons the love of caste
and class, of fame and family, of wealth and ease, and baptize it all
in the name of Republicanism and Christianity. Let every woman
understand that this war involves the same principles that have
convulsed the nations of the earth from Pharaoh to Linc