Twas just after Stoneman’s memorable raid through VA. I was two weeks in making this trip-travelling by rail-ambulance & was finally landed at home on a dump car. Long e’er this the resources of the South were almost exhausted. and necessary supplies were growing beautifully scant. I never felt the actual pangs of hunger-but I have lived on little, and then on less-have lived three months solely on Irish potatoes & corn bread-have been nausiated on the fancy coffees of dried apples-sweet potatoes, and rye-I have paid $75.00 & $100.00 for shoes for mysel-& $60 & $75 for my little children-Have spent all night in cooking for our retreating soldiers-During the siege of Vicksburg-with mind torn & distracted, for my precious ones were there, a little stranger came to my home unattended by nurse or physician-I have seen my children sicken and the angel of death apparently hovering o’er them, and no resources at hand save a merciful heavenly fathers care and protection, & home remedies. I have carded & spun wook & cotton to make cloth, & with my own hands have helped to fashion it into garments for the soldier boys-I have spun flax on the little wheel for towels & able cloths. Have knit socks by the dozens-Have sent to the front boxes of bandages & lint. Have colored with cedar tops & barks the cotton for dresses & thought myself highly favored in having some turkey red & indigo blue to check them with-Have dyed, & braided straw & palmetto for hats, & time and memory would fail me to tell you, of all the troubles and disturbances and vexations we endured. Yet all so cheerfully borne. But when the surrender came-and the ashes or our dead hopes were scattered, When we realized that for some mysterious reason God saw it was best that the Southern Confederacy should not be established. It took a great deal of Grace to feel that all was for the best. Even the fact that the “cruel war was over”-and that some of our loved ones had been given back to us failed to soothe the bitter disappointment that filled our hearts. But God who sees the end from the begining, decreed that there should be no division of North & South-& we should try to “dwell to-gether in unity”-I have no apology to make-for actions & feelings of the past. Might does not make right-and I shall always believe we had a right- a constitutional right to seceed & the North had no right, to coerce, or force us back into the Union-but God makes no mistakes & we know “it is for the best.” Although in our blindness, we hoped for a different termination.
[A Southern Woman, in 1897, Remembers the Civil War, a paper written by Mrs. Anna Mary Deaderick Van Dyke, edited by Anna Mary Moon, The East Tennessee Historical Society’s Publications, No. 21, 1949, pp. 111-115]