But surprisingly, many of the members' male relatives, especially husbands, had not served in the Confederate military; rather, they had tended to remain in their communities either because of job obligations or age. For example, the Rev. Andrew H. H. Boyd, husband of Winchester LMA Vice President Eleanor Boyd, was an adamant supporter of the Confederate cause but remained in town throughout the war because of his position as minister of the Loudoun Street Church. And even when their loved ones did serve in the Confederate military, the men mostly had survived the war—Captain Richard Pegram, husband of Petersburg LMA member Helen Pegram, and Maj. Gen. William Mahone, husband of the LMA's vice president Otetia Mahone, had served but survived.
That LMA members tended not to be the widows and orphans of men who died in the war reveals in part their political agenda. They were not mourning their own fathers, sons or brothers at Memorial Days and cemetery dedications; they were grieving the loss of the Confederacy—the death of their cause. The act of hiring burial crews, establishing cemeteries and organizing elaborate Memorial Day spectacles all represented means by which they could keep alive their intense Confederate patriotism. What better way to demonstrate their disdain for Yankees and their undying loyalty to the Confederate cause than by honoring the South's dead?
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From Winchester to Lynchburg, LMAs appealed to a unified South to raise funds to continue their work. Both the Fredericksburg and Winchester associations appealed to every state of the former Confederacy, observing that scarcely a town or a county was unrepresented on the cities' battlefields. The Hollywood women's appeal addressed "the South as one family" and believed that "the southern heart throbs with one impulse." The Petersburg LMA claimed that the entire South should be expected to provide "aid of a work which has equal claims on them as on ourselves." The Virginia ladies group petitioned the whole region for good reason—they were caring for a substantial percentage of the Confederate graves.
Within just the seven LMAs located in Fredericksburg, Lynchburg, Richmond, Petersburg and Winchester, more than 72,520 remains would eventually be reinterred—nearly 28 percent of the South's total war dead. At a minimal estimate of $1 per body, that was a hefty price for the organizations to assume, especially given the financial circumstances of the postwar South.
These pleas for aid did not go unanswered. Donations reached the LMAs from as far away as Louisiana and Texas. Because of the number of Alabama soldiers who reposed in the Old Dominion, Alabama's women were especially generous to Virginia's LMAs, sending contributions to the Winchester, Hollywood and Fredericksburg associations.
If establishing Confederate cemeteries motivated Virginia's women to organize LMAs, their most visible and popular activity was the annual celebration of Memorial or Decoration Days. White Southerners celebrated these days in the spring as a sign of renewal and rebirth, but each community chose its own symbolic date on which to gather. For example, Fredericksburg, Lynchburg and Oakwood in Richmond all selected May 10, the anniversary of Lt. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's death. The women of Hollywood agreed to celebrate on May 31, the anniversary of the day Richmonders first heard the cannons of war.
Despite the omnipresent rhetoric of mourning at these Memorial Days, white Virginians were aware they were trodding on dangerous ground when they invoked the memory of the Confederacy so soon after defeat. Petersburg's Sara Pryor later recalled that the ladies recognized the need for discreet behavior given the presence of the U.S. Army in the city. To avoid any confrontations with these soldiers, LMA President Margaret Joynes quietly sent notes to all members requesting their presence for services at Blandford Church on the afternoon of June 9, 1866. Perhaps it was in an effort to prevent federal censure that the ladies decorated the Union graves that were scattered among those of the Confederates. On Lynchburg's first Memorial Day—May 10, 1866—the city newspaper attempted to forestall any negative reaction from Northern observers. The paper admitted that the services would "doubtless excite harsh and malignant remarks in certain quarters of the North, and be taken as evidence of a mutinous, malcontent spirit pervading our people." But, the writer maintained, "we are sure" that "this sentiment will for the main part be confined to men who took no active battle-part in the war." Northern soldiers, and perhaps their devoted wives and daughters, would surely recognize the need to honor the remains of those who had died "valiantly in the opposite ranks."
Indeed, ex-Confederates had every reason to suspect that the U.S. Army and Northern press closely monitored their actions. In the days following the first Confederate Memorial Days, an anonymous Northern woman lamented that "we have few flowers for the graves of our heroes, but we have crowns and honors for the heads of traitors." She implored her fellow Northerners to "not forget Andersonville, nor Libby, nor Castle Thunder, nor Belle Isle!"
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