The wildflowers
are beautiful every spring and bring to mind the Fredericksburg Flowers.
Despite the Civil War doom and gloom, nature sprang to life that spring and
with it, its colorful wild flowers. A relief nursing worker from New York,
Georgeanna Woolsey, picked wild flowers for a new regiment heading to the
front.
“We filled
our baskets, trays, and the skirts of our gowns with snow-balls, lemon
blossoms, and roses yellow, white, and red. The 8th New York Heavy
Artillery was in the column . . . and [we] tossed roses and snowballs in
showers over the men. They were delighted . . . . ‘Oh, give me one . . . . I
will carry it into the fight for you;’ and another cheerily, -- ‘I will bring
it back again.’”
One such happy
New York soldier brought the flowers back as promised – he returned three days
later to Miss Woolsey as a corpse, wilted Fredericksburg flowers upon his
chest.
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