A Southern Woman's War Time Reminiscences

"She is to be held in lasting and grateful remembrance by the women of the nation." -A Woman of the Century, 1893

An Alabama southerner with Unionist sympathies, Elizabeth Saxon crossed lines to rescue her father being held by the North as a spy, only to be accused of being a spy herself.

In 1855, Saxon and her family spent the winters in Wetumpka, Alabama and summers in New York City, where her husband traveled for business. In 1860, tensions between the North and the South were growing, and Saxon traveled to Savannah, where she noted a buzz in anticipation of the American Civil War. Saxon's husband had strong Union sentiments which made him unpopular, and he returned to New York while Saxon remained in Memphis with their two children. On an 1861 trip to New Orleans just before the start of the war, Saxon had a dream of her father's death, and she fell into despair when she could not contact him in Arkansas, where he had traveled with her brothers. She returned to Alabama just as the war began. Alabama seceded on January 11, 1861, a day that Saxon described as the saddest in her life. She and her husband were unionists, and she hated slavery, but she remained in Alabama, describing herself as "Southern in every vein and fibre of being." As the war progressed, Saxon became a "Southern Mother", working day and night for suffering soldiers.

By 1863, news of significant Confederate losses reached Saxon, and she resolved to track down her father. Since the trip would involve leaving the Confederacy, she first secured a pass from the governor and exchanged her Confederate currency for gold. She reached Memphis, which by then was in Union territory, but was unable to secure another pass to travel further. Instead she boarded a steamer in effort to travel to New York to join her husband. There, she met a woman who knew Saxon's father and reported that he was gravely ill the Irving Block prison in Memphis, where he was being held as a Confederate spy. Saxon immediately returned to Memphis and arranged for his release. He died shortly after, and on his death-bed had Saxon promise him "never to cease working for unfortunate women, so long as her life should last." She remained in Memphis for two years, and was also accused of being a spy for the Confederacy, although she was not formally charged.

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