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Moore, Sallie Alexander (Mrs. John H. Moore), Memories of A Long Life in
Virginia,Staunton: McClure Company, 1920. During a Yankee search of her home Sallie Moore's silverware suddenly
fell from its concealment beneath her hoop skirt. The Union officer in
charge of the search gallantly helped her pick up the silverware and
returned it to her.
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A Confederate soldier, Nehemiah Atwood, stationed at Culpeper Court
House, tries to reassure his mother and sisters that the Yankees will
not bother them in Page County, March 6, 1862: "I do not think that the
enemy will hurt any of you and you must not be scared . . . Page is the
safest county in Virginia . . . I knows you that you are afraid to Stay
by your selves but I do not think that there will be any danger." Civil War Letters From Maryland and Virginia, #10801 |  Page 2
Page 2| Page 3
Confederate women starved for masculine company could be polite to
Yankee visitors yet remain defiantly Confederate. On January 8, 1863,
Union soldier A. F. Cowles, King George [County] Court House, Virginia,
tells his brother "the young Ladies here are very sociable but are
strong secesh, thare is hardly a house but contains Some of the fair sex
. . . I feal more at home here than eney place that I have been . . . I
tell you it is hard for me to think that I have to fight against . . .
thare brothers I cant but help fealing for them altho they differ with
me." | Civil War Letters From Maryland and Virginia, #10801
Some Yankees were viewed as potential husbands, not adversaries. In a
letter of February 8, 1864, an outraged George Neville informs Nellie
Newman their mutual acquaintance, Anne Eskridge, has married a New York
Yankee in Union-occupied Norfolk because at age 28 she was anxious to
marry: "She had told me that she intended to accept the first favorable
offer." | Neville-Newman Correspondence, #2024 
Jones, Katherine M. (Katherine Macbeth), Heroines of Dixie: Confederate
Women Tell Their Story of the War, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1955.
After a frantic day of hiding and burying family valuables during June
1864, Cornelia Peake McDonald of Winchester, Virginia, came upon her
three-year-old son Hunter who sobbingly exclaimed, "The Yankees are
coming to our house and they will take all our breakfast and will
capture me and Fanny." Fanny was a doll belonging to Hunter's sister
Nelly.
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The postscript of this July 3, 1864 letter by Elizabeth Winston Rosser
(wife of Confederate General Thomas L Rosser) matter-of-factly mentions
the search of a mutual acquaintance's home: "The Yankees searched their
house about fifty times and took every thing they could lay their eyes
on." | Gen. Thomas Rosser and Rosser Family Papers, #1171-G  Page 2| Page 3
Page 2
Southern women compared reactions after initial encounters with their
Yankee foes. In this letter of April 10, 1864, written two months after
a Union cavalry raid near Charlottesville, Virginia, "Nellie," an
Albemarle County school girl, writes her cousin: "You asked me if I was
much frightened when the Yankees came so near they came within a mile of
us the fight was only two or three miles from here we could hear the
cannon very distinctly. I was not frightened much not half as much as I
expected." | Edgehill School Letter, #38-421
De Fontaine, F. G. (Felix Gregory), Marginalia; or, Gleanings From an
Army Note-Book, by "Personne," Columbia, South Carolina: Steam
Power-Press of F.G. DeFontaine, 1864.
The anecdote "The Ladies of Fredericksburg," recounts the fierce heroism
of Confederate women in guarding their homes and defending male
relatives.
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Confederate women continued to express defiance after their homes and
towns fell to Union forces. Here "Laura," a young girl, describes her
disgust of General Philip Sheridan and his "hateful flag" during the
occupation of Charlottesville, Virginia, March 1865. | "Laura to Edith" Letter, #2929
 Page 1|Page 2| Page 3
Union soldier Wilbur F. Hawxhurst, stationed in Chattanooga, Tennessee,
attached this calotype print of an unidentified young Atlanta woman to
his May 31, 1865 letter to his brother and sister; in a faded pencilled
postscript he adds "dont know her got it in the Gallery." | Morrill Civil War Collection, #11031
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