My appointment to a clerkship in the Commissary Department
has been received, with a salary of $125 per month. The rooms are not ready for
us to begin our duties, and Colonel R. has just called to tell me one of the
requirements. As our duties are those of accountants, we are to go through a
formal examination in arithmetic. If we do not, as the University boys say, “pass,”
we are considered incompetent, and of course are dropped from the list of
appointees. This requirement may be right, but it certainly seems to me both
provoking and absurd that I must be examined in arithmetic by a commissary
major young enough to be my son. If I could afford it, I would give up the
appointment, but, as it is, must submit with the best grace possible,
particularly as other ladies of my age have to submit to it.
SOURCE: Judith W. McGuire, Diary of a Southern
Refugee, During the War, p. 244-5
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