The following is one of the most moving and concise commentaries on that very special relationship that exists between the men and women of the Deep South. Major John C. Moncure's words are as true today as when he penned them on July 7, 1865 from his home in Shreveport, Louisiana. Upon his arrival at his home, he found that his family and household had endured his absence due to the strength of his wife. He had been away for five months, a period including General Lee's surrender. This letter to his dear friend, Major General Camille Armand Jules Marie, Prince de Polinac, whom he had so faithfully served during the late hostilities, closed with these observations:

“…This War has made heroes of all our Southern women and, so holy was the cause which demanded of them, the performance of duties entirely at variance with their education and previous experience, that they have been able to assume their new responsibilities and now to lay them aside, without the loss of any part of their delicacy or of that womanly dependence, which we have been taught to esteem as the chief attraction of their sex. In the time of war, their moral strength had assumed proportions in the inverse ratio of their physical weakness. For the sake of our noble and devoted women, if for no other motive, I sincerely trust that the principles for which we fought, may only be temporarily dormant, not dead, and may hereafter, under more favorable and with an adequate force to sustain them, assert their justice and everlasting supremacy”

Excerpted from a letter to General Polinac from his Aide-de-Camp, Major Moncure, after the latter's return to Louisiana. They performed the last diplomatic mission on behalf of the Confederate States of America. This was to France in March 1865.

Please reread this whenever someone attacks our Southern way of life and, thereby, our duty to preserve it. Remember that all our ancestors know very well why this duty is so very special, as it is a duty to our mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters - the ones who are the purpose of the South.