Heroism In A Lost Cause

by George M. Apperson

Heroism in a lost cause has a timeless appeal that can survive the destruction of its most cherished aims. Once hailed as the “Mother of the Confederacy,” Sallie Chapman Gordon Law was a woman of remarkable courage and compassion whose humanitarian activities during the Civil War won respect, even from a carping critic, Dr. Robert C. Grundy of the Second Presbyterian Church in Memphis. He was Mrs. Law's minister. Two things caught Dr. Grundy’s eye. Mrs. Law along with ladies of Second Church made uniforms for the Tennessee Volunteers before the state seceded from the Union. No group in the South saw the need or took action so early. Using a large room in the basement, he recalled, “The ladies of the Second Presbyterian Church, formed a working society, and would absolutely meet as early as six o’clock in the morning and work all day!”

Second Presbyterian Church, Memphis, 1849

Dr. Grundy also remembered that these ladies organized the Southern Mothers’ Hospital in April 1861, with Mrs. Law as president. The first Southern effort, it was inspired by compassion for “the sick Confederate soldiers passing through Memphis.” A space for twelve beds provided by Mrs. W.B. Greenlaw, “quickly filled with sick and suffering soldiers, many of whom died and were laid away in quiet Elmwood (cemetery) before ever a battle had been fought.” Then a larger facility was found, where at one time there were three hundred cases of measles. Mrs. Law, passing through a ward, saw an old man from Arkansas by the bed of two boys, fifteen and sixteen, fanning off the flies. Asked why boys so young were allowed to join the army in Memphis, he replied, “Why, madam, it was all we could do to keep the women from coming.”

Mrs. Law’s son, a medical student, came home and announced, “Mother, I have enlisted for the war.” She answered, “You did right, my son, I should have been greatly mortified and ashamed of you had you not volunteered in defense of your oppressed country.” A professor from the medical school came by to offer his sympathy. Without hesitation Mrs. Law replied, “I need no condolence, Dr. Yandel, I only wish I had fifty sons to lay on the altar of my beloved country.”

Dr. Grundy distanced himself from the Confederate fervor sweeping Memphis while the legislature in Nashville wrestled with the issue of secession. He did not want Tennessee to withdraw from the Union, which he held sacred, and no sacrifice was too great for its preservation. Ardently opposing splitting the Presbyterian Church, he believed that strength and prosperity for both church and state were found only in unity. Southern loyalty was strong in Second Church, a rallying point for the city, providing leadership for the cause unequalled in other local congregations. Dr. Grundy took a stand calculated to affront radical Southern opinion. Alarmed by the secession of South Carolina late in 1860, he published a slashing attack on its sponsors. Targeting the spokesman of the convention, a distinguished Presbyterian theologian, Dr. James H. Thornwell, he held that secession predicted ruin for the South. Memphis Presbytery, however, when Dr. Grundy was absent, was first in the entire General Assembly to withdraw from the national church.

Dr. Grundy always showed concern for the spiritual welfare of the whole community. John Law recorded in his diary, “Our Company marched in the afternoon to the Second Presbyterian Church, where we were presented with a beautiful flag by the ladies of Memphis.” Giving the Company one hundred pocket Testaments, Dr. Grundy “sent us forth with patriotic words, together with an earnest prayer and benediction.” On furlough, young Law was at church, noting, “This is the holy Sabbath. Strange emotions were awakened in my soul as I entered the house of God, and taking my accustomed seat, listened again to words of wisdom from the lips of my pastor.” The young soldier was oblivious to the hostilities of those members who would donate the church bell to be cast into Confederate cannons and vote to remove Dr. Grundy from his pulpit.

Southern sentiment flared when Leonidas Polk, Episcopal bishop of Louisiana and Confederate General, made his headquarters in Memphis. Polk equated the cause of the South with faith in God. A war, he proclaimed, which has “no motive except lust or hate, and no object except ruin and devastation, under the shallow pretense of the restoration of the Union, is surely a war against Heaven.” Polk was less guided by Heaven than by poor military judgment when he invaded Kentucky, enraging Tennessee Governor Harris, who gave his word that the state would respect Kentucky neutrality.

Mrs. Law at 87

Mrs. Law, concerned for the casualties in this disastrous move, had large boxes packed and escorted them up the river herself. Later, she, her five year-old grandson, and four ladies made the trip; and the next morning, General Grant attacked Belmont, Missouri, across the river from Kentucky, with gunboats. She found cannonading from the boats and Confederate artillery on the high bluffs, “sublimely grand.” But when the little boy said, “Grandma, I am so scared.” She replied, “You little coward, how dare you be frightened at the Yankees.”

Grant’s retreat left Union soldiers wounded and dying on the battlefield. Dr. Yandel, Mrs. Law’s neighbor, supervised taking water to these helpless men, and she asked General Polk to order four Union surgeons, prisoners at Columbus, to accompany them. They refused. But Dr. Yandel and his men worked through the night tending casualties. Mrs. Law knew her duty when the wounded were sent to Memphis hospitals. The Southern Mothers’ facility was moved to Overton Hospital, “where we all nursed and worked together, not only for our own dear, wounded soldiers, but many Federal prisoners, nursed with the same care and receiving the same treatment as our own soldiers.”

Memphis was captured on 11 June 1862; hospitals were emptied of Confederate patients, and Mrs. Law waited for a chance to go beyond the Federal lines. When the opportunity came, she and the Southern Mothers invested the $2500 in their treasury in quinine, morphine, and opium; and concealing it “on her person,” she escaped to La Grange, Georgia. Memphis soldiers were hospitalized there and doctors, including Alexander Erskine, her son-in-law, were on duty. Erskine headed the “Law Hospital,” named to honor her outstanding services. With Anna, General William Hardees’s daughter, she made ceaseless rounds of the wards. Devotion to their task was heroic—- washing blood from the wounded, medicating and feeding the helpless, “comforting the dying and burying the dead.”

News of suffering among Confederate soldiers in the mountains at Dalton reached her at Columbus, Georgia. She immediately appealed to the women of the city and in a week had collected boxes of blankets, socks, and underclothes. It was almost Christmas of 1863, and Mrs. Law thought of the youths, far from their mothers’ care, living under perilous conditions. She appealed again to the women of Columbus, “Won’t you give me some Christmas boxes to carry to our boys?” Mrs. Law had a way of touching people’s hearts. With the boxes and blankets, she set out alone.

The trip to Dalton required changing trains in Atlanta; and arriving at 3:00 A.M., she found snow falling and mud knee deep. A kindly gentleman she met in Atlanta rechecked her heavy boxes and alerted Dr. John Erskine, her “sainted friend,” by telegraph that she was coming. Informed that Mrs. Law was in Dalton, General Hardee called on her immediately, providing a carriage and an escort. She proceeded to visit the 154th Regiment of Tennessee Volunteers, filled with men from Memphis. How welcome her selfless actions were became clear. Hundreds of men lacked blankets, and General Patrick Cleburn said socks were “a luxury his men did not know.” News of their plight was published in Columbus, and another great effort by the women produced a generous gift. At Mrs. Law’s request, General Joseph E. Johnston sent an escort to bring the boxes directly to Dalton. In recognition of her concern for the welfare of his men, General Johnston ordered a grand parade of “thirty thousand brave, tattered troops,” to honor her extraordinary contributions. “Such a distinction was, perhaps, never accorded to any other woman in the South — not even to Mrs. Jefferson Davis or the wives of great generals.”

After the fall of the Confederacy, Mrs. Law returned to Memphis where members of the Southern Mothers’ Association reunited under her leadership. They aided the soldiers “many of whom were returning to desolated and impoverished homes.” When “the necessity of this passed away, their hearts and labors were given to the sad task of caring for the soldier’s graves in Elmwood.” In a tribute following the death of Mrs. Greenlaw, Mrs. Law’s faithful co-worker, a “Southern Mother” wrote, Only a little hill in Elmwood divides their graves from those of the soldiers they both so tenderly nursed, and all that is mortal of them (mingles) in the same mother earth, and we trust their gentle spirits now commune in that beautiful land where wars, alarms and suffering are unknown.”

Mrs. Law, Reminiscences of the War of the Sixties Between the North and the South (Memphis, 1892). Memphis and Louisville, Kentucky newspapers. Apperson, “Lincoln, the Churches and Memphis Presbyterians,” American Presbyterians, vol. 72, No. 2 (1994).

© Copyright, G.M. Apperson, 2004. Used with Permission.