Page 132 - Arkansas Confederate Women

Work of Mrs. James M. Keller 113

other hospitals during the gloomy days and nights when the
pall of Southern defeat was gathering over them like a bird of
evil prey. The courage of Southern womanhood was never more
severely tested, and their heroic conduct never more beautifully
illustrated than when they went forth at early morn from their
own lonely homes to remain until late at night beside the cot of
the dying Southern soldier. And among the women who distin-
guished themselves in the terrible ordeal, Mrs. Keller was pre-
eminent. Her intuitive knowledge of elementary medical prac-
tice, her maternal heart and ardent Southern nature made
her presence something to be watched for and greeted with the
grateful expression of eye when tongue was silent.

In the Confederate hospitals of Memphis, there were num-

Aerous cases of extraordinary interest: youth of tender years

whose delirium was about a loving mother; a soldier who was

brought in merely to die in comfort and who surprised doctors

and nurses by living; officers, whose impatience to return to

their commands and win promotion by bravery on the battle-

field, taxed the patience of every attendant. All these inci-

dents were looked upon as matters of course and no records were

kept, but the brave men of the commands of General Patrick

Cleburne and of General Nathan Bedford Forest, carried away

the images of the ministering angels of the hospitals as their

happiest mementoes.

The standing of Mrs. Keller in the army of the enemy may

be estimated from the fact that the very first thing which the
Federal commander did after the capture of Memphis was to
exile her and her two small children to the malarial swamp
below the city. It was supposed that she could not survive with
life, so close was the environment. This forecast would no
doubt have proven true but for the vigilance and fidelity of a
negro slave whose ingenuity rescued her from this frightful
captivity and enabled her to rejoin her husband.

With the close of the war, the family moved to Hot
Springs, Ark., when her active nature and strong Southern feel-
ing led her to the front in all the work of women for the conse-
cration in memoriam of the deeds of the heroes and heroines of

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