Page 69 - Arkansas Confederate Women

HOW WOMEN SUPPORTED THE FAMILY.

,;

By Mrs. Pattie Wright Hedges, of El Dorado.

Many scenes and incidents of my childhood seem written in

myindelible letters on brain. Of these, the civil war period has

perhaps the most conspicuous place. In truth I set out on life's

voyage under rather sad though thrilling circumstances, since I

sat at the feet of my father, and heard his talk to my mother and

brothers of war. War! why, what did it mean? I listened

breathlessly and in silence to those somewhat excited conversa-
tions, nearly every one taking part in them, having some reason
to advance or solution to offer, until I slowly and laboriously

grasped the thought that for some cause all the men in the entire

country had fallen out, had quarreled and forthwith had taken

guns and swords in their hands with which to slay one another.

In this aspect the struggle appeared in my childish eyes. But

ere the four weary years which intervened between 1861 and
1865 had passed, even the children in that part of Arkansas in
which I lived, knew but too well, the meaning of war, and became

familiar, too, with its attendant sorrow, suffering, privation and

death.

My father, Major Edward W. Wright, lived in 1861, in

Union county, Arkansas, not far from the little village of Lis-
bon, and about sixteen miles from El Dorado. The adjacent
country was made up of quite a goodly settlement of wealthy

planters. When the war fairly opened, very nearly all the able-
bodied men in it forthwith entered the Confederate army.

AN" UNPROTECTED COMMUNITY.

Thus it fell out that all that portion of Arkansas was vir-

tually left without a man capable of bearing arms, the aged men,
women and children, and the negroes, alone making up the

remaining population; nor was it long before these nonc6mbat-
ants faced conditions which had never before existed For the
blockade cut off supplies of all kinds to a great extent, and the