From a womans point of view.
http://www.foodhistory.com/foodnotes/leftovers/davis/varina/mys/Good conduct of the negroes
All southern women acknowledge with pride the good conduct of the rank and file of negroes on the breaking out of the war. They generally remained true to the families left in their charge and protected the women and children to the best of their ability. In short, their cause was a powerful testimonial to the lifelong kind and just exercise of their masters' power over them.
The people found themselves confronted with problems which they must learn to solve. All these needs must be supplied by the women. The stores each family possessed of quinine and such other drugs as were needed for the diseases of a warm climate, was gradually relinquished for the use of the soldiers. Replenishment was impossible. Quinine had been proclaimed by the blockaders “Contrabands of War.” The women turned undaunted to the indigenous Materia Medica. Decoctions of willow bark, of dewberry root, orange flowers and leaves, red pepper teas and other tisanes took the place of drugs. One heart-broken woman wrote to her husband, “twenty grains of quinine would have saved our two children, they could not drink the bitter willow tea, but now they are at rest, and I have no one to work for but you.”
The placid gray haired women of today have covered with pride the scars of that dread struggle, but they are no less veteran conquerors in a mortal conflict in which every noble aspiration and human effort was called forth and answered with cheer.
No wonder they are called Steel Magnolias. God bless them one and all.
