[In Southern Historical Papers, Volume 18, pages 425-428.]
Besides the differences of race and religion, nature itself, through the varied geographical position of the States, had created relations of varied character that not only must conflict ensue, but the least law affecting the whole Union often aroused diametrically and sharply opposed interests; the consequences of which were to embitter sectional opinions to an intolerable degree.
When the North demanded tariff protection for their industries as against European competition, the Southern States insisted upon free trade, so as not to be compelled to buy costly products of the North. The New England States strove for concentration of power in the national government; the Southerners believed that the independence of the individual States must be maintained, and when the Southerners demanded protection for their labor, which was performed by imported negroes, the North answered with evasion of the laws, while, in direct opposition to these laws, it denied to the master the right to his escaped negroes. From any point of view, there existed, and exist to-day, interests almost irreconcilably opposed, which make it difficult for the most earnest student of American affairs to find a clew in such a tangled labyrinth. The difficulty in the present undertaking is to make good the fact that the so-called Confederates, who have been by almost all the German writers represented as “Rebels,” stood firm upon a ground of right of law.
If the central government at Washington was the sovereign power, then the (Southern) States were in the wrong, and their citizens were simply rebels. If, on the other hand, the individual States were separate and sovereign political bodies, then their secession, independent of consideration of expediency or selfishness, was a politically justifiable withdrawal from a previous limited alliance; and in this case it was the duty of citizens of 269 the States to go with their States. As a proper consequence of these different views, the Federals considered as a traitor every citizen who opposed the central government, however his individual State may have determined; while the Confederates, after the declaration of war on the part of the Union, looked on the Federalists indeed as enemies, but considered as traitors only those citizens who, in opposition to the vote of their States, yet adhered to the Union. * * * * Instead of inquiring into emotion and sympathies, the question is an historical one as to the origin of the Union; that is, to seek in the founding of the United States in what relation,—at that time, the States stood to the central government, the mode of their covenant, and how the relation of the several States to the common union was developed. The colonies, therefore, united not because the citizens in general were oppressed by the British Government, but because one colony felt, whether rightly or not, that it was oppressed and insulted as an independent political body. In the first movement of independence was exhibited clearly the consciousness that the colonies felt themselves separate political bodies. Even at that time the assembly of delegates designated itself “as a congress of twelve independent political bodies,” and in the Union each of the colonies issued its separate declaration. When the delegates of the thirteen colonies met in their first Congress the first permanent Union was founded; which was ratified by each colony as a separate body, as one by one they entered the Union.
With the question as to the origin of the war, the enemies of the South have mingled another—the slavery question—which strictly does not belong to it. This slavery question was inscribed on the banners of the war when it was seen that thereby could be enlisted on the side of the North the sympathies of the old world, and of a great part of their own inhabitants, especially of the German immigrants. This question could never legally be the cause of the war, for the Constitution expressly 270 says that the question of slavery should be regulated by the State legislatures. * * * * At the time of the founding of the Union, eleven of the thirteen States were slave-holding, and it is a remarkable fact that it then occurred to no writer nor humanitarian in America or Europe even to think that this ownership (of slaves) was a wrong or a crime. It is enough to say that the institution was accepted not only as a matter of course, but that it was also especially protected, the farming interest being granted an increased suffrage in proportion to the number of negroes on their plantations. * * * * * Even in the last days, before the outbreak of war, when the press and demagogues raised the slavery question in order to inflame the masses, the statesman (of the North) carefully avoided such a blunder, since the slavery question was not the ground of the war, and could not be proclaimed as such.
[By J. L. Underwood.]
For twenty years after the close of the war most of the Southern States, through the bayonet-enforced amendments to the Constitution and the carpet-bag negro governments established under them, were kept under military rule. The men met the awful responsibility and their hideous trials with an amazing courage and sought to counteract, in every possible way, the work of Congress at Washington and the work of the Union Leagues and other secret societies among the negroes at home, and to build up the South in spite of the demoralization of labor. The Ku Klux Klan, a secret vigilance committee, did much good in terrifying the carpet-bag deposits and breaking up the secret armed midnight meetings of the negroes. Rowdy imitators of the Ku Klux afterwards in many instances did much harm.
But the women kept on at work. They have never faltered, and never shown any weariness. Thousands left penniless who were once wealthy, took up whatever work came to hand. The writer knew the daughter-in-law of a wealthy Congressman and the daughter of a governor of two States to plow her own garden with a mule. He saw all over the country the members of the oldest and wealthiest families of the Atlantic coast teaching school, even far in the west. Not a murmur escaped their lips. They cheered each other as they strengthened the nerves of the men.
But they kept up their work for the Confederate soldiers, and keep it up to this day. Soldiers’ graves were everywhere looked after. Memorial associations were organized all over the South. The two great societies 272 of Richmond, the Hollywood and the Oakwood, each looking after thousands of graves, the names of whose occupants are unknown, are doing the most sublime work the world ever saw. The Southern women soon extended their efforts to building Confederate monuments all over the South, providing soldiers’ homes in the various States and securing what pensions the Southern States could afford. As long as they live they work for the cause they loved; when they die their spirit lives on in their worthy daughters.
[By Dr. G. W. Bagby.]
[In Living Writers of the South, pages 28-29.]
Tom, old fellow, I grieve to see
That sleeve hanging loose at your side.
The arm you lost was worth to me
Every Yankee that ever died.
But you don’t mind it at all.
You swear you’ve a beautiful stump,
And laugh at the damnable ball.
Tom, I knew you were always a trump!
A good right arm, a nervy hand,
A wrist as strong as a sapling oak,
Buried deep in the Malvern sand—
To laugh at that is a sorry joke.
Never again your iron grip
Shall I feel in my shrinking palm.
Tom, Tom, I see your trembling lip.
How on earth can I be calm?
Well! the arm is gone, it is true;
But the one nearest the heart
Is left, and that’s as good as two.
Tom, old fellow, what makes you start?
Why, man, she thinks that empty sleeve
A badge of honor; so do I
And all of us,—I do believe
The fellow is going to cry.
“She deserves a perfect man,” you say.
You, “not worth her in your prime.”
Tom, the arm that has turned to clay
Your whole body has made sublime;
For you have placed in the Malvern earth
The proof and the pledge of a noble life,
And the rest, henceforward of higher worth,
Will be dearer than all to your wife.
I see the people in the street
Look at your sleeve with kindling eyes;
And know you, Tom, there’s nought so sweet,
As homage shown in mute surmise.
Bravely your arm in battle strove,
Freely for freedom’s sake you gave it;
It has perished, but a nation’s love
In proud remembrance will save it.
As I look through the coming years,
I see a one-armed married man;
A little woman, with smiles and tears,
Is helping as hard as she can
To put on his coat, and pin his sleeve,
Tie his cravat, and cut his food,
And I say, as these fancies I weave,
“That is Tom, and the woman he wooed.”
The years roll on, and then I see
A wedding picture, bright and fair;
I look closer, and it’s plain to me
That is Tom, with the silver hair.
He gives away the lovely bride,
And the guests linger, loth to leave
The house of him in whom they pride,—
Brave Tom, old Tom, with the empty sleeve.
[J. L. Underwood.]
The only ante-bellum property which Sherman and Thad Stevens left the Confederate woman was her old hoopskirt. They could neither confiscate nor burn, nor set this free. Like slavery, it was so closely connected with her life that it cannot be ignored in her history.
The Southern woman always kept well up with the latest fashions in dress. In the fifties the modistes of Paris, whose word, however absurd, was law to the women of the civilized world, sent out the famous hoopskirt. It was not an article of dress, but a mere contrivance for sustaining and exhibiting the clothes that were worn over it. It was made of a succession of small but strong steel wires bent into circles and fastened to each other by cross bars of tape. The lower hoop was usually from four to eight feet in diameter, according to taste, and the top one but little larger than the woman’s waist, from which the whole net-work was hung. It held whatever clothes were put over it in the shape of a church bell or a horizontal section of a balloon.
Like all new fashions, some carried this one to grotesque extremes. One of the bon-ton set of Columbia, S. C., in 1858 was the remarkably beautiful and charming Mrs. ——, the wife of one of the professors in South Carolina College. It is a fact that, on average 274 sidewalks in that beautiful city, wherever she was met by gentlemen they had to step into the street and give the whole pavement to her tremendous skirt. Most of our Southern beauties were more merciful.
When the hoopskirt first came, it looked as if Paris had sent out the greatest of all the absurdities. The men laughed, the boys jeered, and the newspapers poured out invectives against the monster. The country preachers anathematized it and urged its excommunication from the church. But the hoopskirt came to stay. Veni, vidi, vici. It whipped the fight, and when the war between the States came on it was in control of the Southern female wardrobe. It enlisted for “three years or the war.” It clung to our mothers like Ruth to Naomi. “Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge.” It proved a godsend on account of the Federal blockade of the ports. Articles of clothing soon became scarce, and when the silks had all gone into flags and the gingham into shirts for the soldiers, with a dainty homespun skirt stretched over the hoopskirt, our mothers looked like they were dressed whether they were or not.
It was a good umbrella as far as it went and it was a special convenience to the refugee women who had to camp in the woods. At night a short pole was set in the ground with a short horizontal cross piece tacked across its top. Over this was stretched the hoopskirt and over it a sheet, and, behold a beautiful, cozy Sibley tent for two or three children to sleep under. It was our mother’s faithful friend and companion to the end of the war. Like the old soldier’s sword it came out very much battered and worn by long service. Like the old soldier himself, it had been wounded and broken and mended and spliced until it was hardly its former self. In their fatigue outfit our mothers laid aside the hoopskirt and tucked up what was left. But on dress parade, in meeting, company, and attending church it was her constant friend and companion. The South embalms in its memories the deeds of its men and the toil of its women. 275 Father’s old sword and John’s gray jacket are sacred heirlooms. So are the old spinning wheel and hand loom,
“And e’en the old hoopskirt which hung on the wall,
The old hoopskirt
The steel-ribbed shirt,
The old hoopskirt which hung on the wall.”
One thing in the management of the hoopskirt the men never could understand. How in the world could all those steel wires be bundled and controlled when a woman rode horseback or had to be packed in a buggy or carriage?
It was always a like wonder how the women could dance so nimbly and gracefully with long trains and never get tripped or tangled in them. Our women managed the trains and the hoopskirts just as tactfully and thoroughly and gracefully as they did their hard-headed husbands and silly sweethearts. How they did it nobody can tell, but they did it.
About the very last days of the war one of these old hoopskirts played a conspicuous part in a tragedy in the suburbs of Camilla, then a very small village, the county seat of Mitchell County, Ga. A farmer by the name of Taylor lived near the Hoggard Swamp. He had a friend living in the town by the name of O’Brien. Both of them often visited a very thrifty widow by the name of Woolley. On her disappearance Taylor had put out the report that she had moved back to South Carolina, but the truth was he had murdered her for her money and buried her body under some peach trees near the swamp. No suspicion was aroused until Taylor returned from a trip to Albany without O’Brien, who had gone off with him, and a report came down from Albany that O’Brien’s dead body had been found near there in the woods. Then suspicion put in its work. Murder was in the air, but nowhere else as yet. People held their breath. Some women late one afternoon happened to pass the peach trees mentioned and noticed the suspicious looking fresh soil under them. As soon as they reached home they reported the circumstance and a party was soon made up to go that night and make an examination. The women guided them to the spot. 276 They were afraid to make a bright fire and they used only a dim light by burning corn cobs. Their blood ran cold when in a very few moments they were satisfied that they were digging into the poor woman’s grave. Suddenly on the quick removal of a shovel or two more of dirt, up flew a woman’s dress and white underclothing pretty high in the air. Then there was a stampede for life. Terror seized the men’s very bones. After a while they mustered courage enough to return and find that the woman was dead and her hoopskirt had been weighted down by the soil and as soon as this was sufficiently removed, it flew up with all its fearful elasticity. There was life in it even in the grave. Taylor was tried, convicted, and hung.
[By J. L. Underwood.]
The first of the great crimes of the last century was the great rebellion of the Northern States against the Federal constitutional Union, “the best government the world ever saw.” Nine of these States in solemn legislative action, in the fifties, utterly repudiated their contract in the Federal Constitution. They nullified the acts of Congress and repudiated and defied the decisions of the Supreme Court.
This rebellion at the North broke up “the glorious Union of our fathers,” and drove the South, like poor Hagar, into the wilderness to look out for herself, without a charge from any quarter that a Southern State had committed one single act in violation of Federal law or in hostility to the Constitution. Then came the second great crime, the crime so vigorously denounced at the time by William Lloyd Garrison, the most consistent and the most heroic of the Northern Abolitionists, Horace Greeley and Wendell Phillips, the crime of coercion of the weaker by the stronger States, the military invasion of the South under the prostituted flag of the Union, and 277 the final subjugation of her people by fire and sword. O tempora! O mores!
The acts of congress for years after the Southern army had honorably laid down its arms and gone home to plow and plant the fields make the blackest pages in the history of modern times. The writer dreads to put in print his estimate of such a political monster as Thad Stevens, the misanthropic genius of reconstruction, the Robespierre of America. Robespierre’s guillotine cut off the heads of its victims. Thad Stevens’s guillotine cut off all hopes from Southern hearts. He avowed it his purpose to exterminate the Southern white people, to confiscate their property into the hands of the negroes, and with these negroes to keep the country forever under the dominion of his party. According to him and his followers to this day this party of (so-called) high moral ideas must be kept in power no matter what crimes are committed in securing the ascendency. This is political Jesuitism run mad.
The saddest, strangest part of the history is that it was twenty years before the Northern people came to their reason and put a check on this ruinous fratricidal policy. If the writer shall go to his grave with a holy horror of the bald malignity, the reckless folly, the cowardly spite, the sweeping curse of the reconstruction measures of Thad. Stevens and his Congress, he will find himself in good company. He once heard the great and good Dr. John A. Broadus, of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, say, “I can easily forgive and forget the war. It was war, and all the wrongs done in it died away with the cannon’s roar. But I find it so hard to forgive the excuseless wrongs done to the Southern people since the war.”
Dr. Broadus was a Southern man, but Rev. Dr. H. M. Field, the fair-minded and patriotic author of “Bright Skies and Dark Shadows,” is not a Southern man. Hear what he says in his book:
In South Carolina and the Gulf States negro government had a clean sweep, and if we are to believe the records of the times, it was a period of corruption such as had never been known in the 278 history of the country. The blacks having nothing to lose, were ready to vote to impose any tax, or to issue any bonds of town, country or State provided they had a share in the booty; and this negro government manipulated by the carpet baggers, ran riot over the South. It was chaos come again. The former masters were governed by their servants, while the latter were governed by a set of adventurers and plunderers. The history of these days is one which we cannot recall without indignation and shame. After a time the moral sense of the North was so shocked by their performances that a Republican administration had to withdraw its proconsuls, when things resumed their former condition and the management of affairs came back into the old hands.
These national crimes which so woefully afflicted the people of the South after peace was made were:
1. The refusal to carry out Mr. Lincoln’s cherished plan of reconstruction by immediate readmission of seceding States after an orderly and legal abolition of slavery.
2. The sudden emancipation of millions of African slaves. Gradual emancipation would have been so much better for their interests and for the welfare of the country.
3. The conferring of civil rights so early upon the freedmen. If they had not been made citizens they could have been colonized in due time and provided for, as the Indians have been, with land and homes.
4. Enfranchisement of these grossly ignorant Africans.
5. Disfranchisement of the best people of the South.
6. Arming the blacks and disarming the white people.
7. The un-American crime of uniting church and state and the employment of a religious society to carry out directly the schemes of a political faction. Jesus Christ never authorized any such work. He never gave the least authorization of any church machinery through which such a union could be effected. God wants the good lives of men, and not compact and imposing church organizations. They can be so easily perverted to unholy purposes and made so effective in destroying human liberty and crushing human rights. The union of church and state was the curse of the middle ages and the blight of modern Europe.
It was an ominous day for America and a woeful day for the South, when, upon the enfranchisement of the negroes, the politicians in power and the fanatical Northern Methodist Episcopal Church organized and transplanted in the South the African Methodist Episcopal Church and employed it directly in manipulating the votes of the ignorant negroes. The great iron wheel controlling the whole machine was put into the hands of a political boss committee in Washington. Just within this was the wheel turned by an absolute bishop in each State. The most malignant of all the Southern negro politicians, Bishop H. M. Turner, had the control of the Georgia wheel and turns it to this day. Then came the smaller wheels, turned by the presiding elder in each Congressional district, enclosing the little wheels in the hands of the preachers and circuit riders and stewards. The ignorant negroes were wound tightly by the ropes into a solid mass, and voted like slaves by the officers of the new imported Northern church and the strikers of the Union League. It was enough to make a patriot despair of the country and a Christian to despair of religion to witness these scenes. It made the white people of the South get together in self-defence. It inevitably set race against race in politics. This slimy trail of this union of church and state has done sad work for the South and dangerous work for the whole country. The church iron wheel organized a solid mass of ignorant negro voters on one side of the Southern ballot box. This necessitated a “solid South” of white voters on the other side.
8. Demoralizing the negroes for generations by making them believe themselves to be special wards of the nation and holding out to them the delusive promise of “forty acres and a mule” as a pension for slavery and a reward for party loyalty.
9. Taking away by act of Congress, without a dollar of compensation, the slave property of orphans, widows and Union men, the property recognized by the Constitution of the government.
10. By force of bayonets keeping in the Southern high 280 places of power the carpet-bag adventurer from the North and the irresponsible, unprincipled scalawag who had for the sake of office turned his back upon his native South.
11. Unlawful confiscation of Southern lands, much of it belonging to orphans and widows.
12. Enormous and unjust tax on cotton, at that time the only marketable product of the Southern farms.
These were the woes which the “Reconstruction” measures of the Federal Congress made for our Southern people, a burden mountain-high, Ossa on Pelion, Pelion upon Ossa. But grimly, patiently, bravely did our men bear up under it. Political crimes always hurt the women more than the men. Our women stood by and cheered and comforted and helped as only such women can help through all the toil, the gloom and wrongs of those dark days. God bless their memories!
[Eggleston’s Recollections, pages 73-76.]
But if the cheerfulness of the women during the war was remarkable, what shall we say of the way in which they met its final failure and the poverty that came with it? The end of the war completed the ruin which its progress had wrought. Women who had always lived in luxury, and whose labors and sufferings during the war were lightened by the consciousness that in suffering and laboring they were doing their part toward the accomplishment of the end upon which all hearts were set, were now compelled to face not temporary but permanent poverty, and to endure, without a motive or a sustaining purpose, still sorer privations than they had known in the past. The country was exhausted, and nobody could foresee any future but one of abject wretchedness. Everybody was poor except the speculators who had fattened upon the necessities of the women and children, and so poverty was essential to anything like good repute. The return of the soldiers made some sort of social festivity 281 necessary, and “starvation parties” were given, at which it was understood that the givers were wholly unable to set out refreshments of any kind. In the matter of dress, too, the general poverty was recognized, and every one went clad in whatever he or she happened to have. The want of means became a jest, and nobody mourned over it; while all were laboring to repair their wasted fortunes as they best could. And all this was due solely to the unconquerable cheerfulness of the Southern women. The men came home moody, worn out, discouraged, and but for the influence of woman’s cheerfulness the Southern States might have fallen into a lethargy from which they could not have recovered for generations. Such prosperity as they have since achieved is largely due to the courage and spirit of their noble women.
[From Life In Dixie, pages 304-308, by Mary A. H. Gay.]
Dr. Durham came to Decatur, Ga., in 1859. Well do I remember the children—two handsome sons, John and William—two pretty brown-eyed girls, Sarah and Catherine.
The Durham residence, which was on Sycamore Street, then stood just eastward of where Colonel G. W. Scott now lives. The rear of the house faced the site where the depot had been before it was burned by the Federals, the distance being about 350 yards. Hearing an incoming train, Sallie went to the dining-room window to look at the cars, as she had learned in some way that they contained Federal troops. While standing at the window, resting against the sash, she was struck by a bullet fired from the train. It was afterwards learned that the cars were filled with negro troops on their way to Savannah, who were firing off their guns in a random, reckless manner. The ball entered the left breast of this dear young girl, ranging obliquely downward, coming out just below the waist, and lodging in the door of a 282 safe, or cupboard, which stood on the opposite side of the room. This old safe, with the mark of the ball, is still in the village. The wounded girl fell, striking her head against the dining table, but arose, and, walking up a long hall, she threw open the door of her father’s room, calling to him in a voice of distress.
Springing from the bed, he said: “What is it, my child?”
“Oh, father,” she exclaimed, “the Yankees have killed me!”
Every physician in the village and city and her father’s three brothers were summoned, but nothing could be done except to alleviate her sufferings. She could only lie on her right side, with her left arm in a sling suspended from the ceiling. Every attention was given by relatives and friends. Her grandmother Durham came and brought with her the old family nurse. Sallie’s schoolmates and friends were untiring in their attentions.
During the week that her life slowly ebbed away, there was another who ever lingered near her, a sleepless and tireless watcher, a young man of a well known family, to whom this sweet young girl was engaged to be married. Sallie was shot on Friday at 7.30 A. M., and died the following Friday at 3.30 A. M. General Stephenson was in command of the Federal post at Atlanta. He was notified of this tragedy, and sent an officer to investigate. This officer refused to take anybody’s word that Sallie had been shot by a United States soldier from the train; but, dressed in full uniform, with spur and sabre rattling upon the bare floor, he advanced to the bed where the dying girl lay, and threw back the covering “to see if she had really been shot.” This intrusion almost threw her into a spasm. This officer and the other at Atlanta promised to do all in their power to bring the guilty party to justice, but nothing ever came of the promise, so far as we know.
As a singular coincidence, as well as an illustration of the lovely character of Sallie, I will relate a brief incident given by the gifted pen already quoted: “One of the most vivid pictures in my memory is that of Sallie Durham 283 emptying her pail of blackberries into the hands of Federal prisoners on a train that had just stopped for a moment at Decatur, in 1863. We had been gathering berries at Moss’s Hill, and stopped on our way home for the train to pass.”
[In Grady’s New South, pages 97-118.]
What of the negro? This of him. I want no better friend than the black boy who was raised by my side, and who is now trudging patiently, with downcast eyes and shambling figure, through his lowly way in life. I want no sweeter music than the crooning of my old “mammy,” now dead and gone to rest, as I heard it when she held me in her loving arms and bending her old black face above me stole the cares from my brain, and led me smiling into sleep. I want no truer soul than that which moved the trusty slave, who for four years, while my father fought with the armies that barred his freedom, slept every night at my mother’s chamber door, holding her and her children as safe as if her husband stood guard, and ready to lay down his humble life for her household. History has no parallel to the faith kept by the negro in the South during the war. Of five hundred negroes to a single white man, and yet through these dusky throngs the women and children walked in safety, and the unprotected homes rested in peace. Unmarshalled, the black battalions moved patiently to the fields in the morning to feed the armies their idleness would have starved, and at night gathered anxiously at the big house to “hear the news from marster,” though conscious that his victory made their chains enduring. Everywhere humble and kindly; the body-guard of the helpless; the observant friend; the silent sentry in his lowly cabin; the shrewd counsellor; and when the dead came home, a mourner at the open grave. A thousand torches would have disbanded every Southern army, but not one was lighted. When the master, going to a war in which 284 slavery was involved, said to his slave, “I leave my home and loved ones in your charge,” the tenderness between man and master stood disclosed. And when the slave held that charge sacred through storm and temptation he gave new meaning to faith and loyalty. I rejoice that when freedom came to him after years of waiting, it was all the sweeter, because the black hands from which the shackles fell were stainless of a single crime against the helpless ones confided to his care.
This friendliness, the most important factor of the problem, the saving factor now as always, the North has never, and it appears will never, take account of. It explains that otherwise inexplicable thing—the fidelity and loyalty of the negro during the war to the women and children left in his care. Had “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” portrayed the habit rather than the exception of slavery, the return of the Confederate armies could not have stayed the horrors of arson and murder their departure would have invited. Instead of that, witness the miracle of the slave in loyalty closing the fetters about his own limbs, maintaining the families of those who fought against his freedom, and at night on the far-off battlefield searching among the carnage for his young master, that he might lift the dying head to his humble breast and with rough hands wipe the blood away and bend his tender ear to catch the last words for the old ones at home, wrestling meanwhile in agony and love, that in vicarious sacrifice he would have laid down his life in his master’s stead. This friendliness, thank God, survived the lapse of years, the interruption of factions and the violence of campaigns in which the bayonet fortified and the drum-beat inspired. Though unsuspected in slavery, it explains the miracle of 1864; though not yet confessed, it must explain the miracle of 1888.
[Mrs. W. H. Felton, in Georgia Land and People, pages 404-405.]
From the time that Oglethorpe planted his colony upon Yamacraw Bluff, Georgia has never passed through such 285 an ordeal as the present. Nine-tenths of her sons were practically disfranchised because they had served the Southern Confederacy, and all the conditions of life were new; their servants were no longer subject to their control, and most of their property was scattered to the four winds of heaven. It tested the blood that had come down to them from Cavalier and Huguenot, from Scotch and Irish ancestry. The private life of many Georgians for the first few years after the war beggars description; but the women rose to the occasion.
The surrender found a gentle, shrinking Georgia woman on the Florida line, nearly four hundred miles from her luxurious home, from which she had fled in haste as Sherman “marched to the sea.” The husband was with General Lee in Virginia. The last tidings came from Petersburg—before Appomattox—and his fate was uncertain. Hiring a dusky driver, with his old army mule and wagon, she loaded the latter with the remnant of goods and chattels that were left to her, and, placing her four children on top, this brave woman trudged the entire distance on foot, cheering, guiding, and protecting the driver and her little ones in the tedious journey. Under an August sun through sand and dust she plodded along, footsore and anxious, until she reached the dismantled home and restored her little stock of earthly goods under their former shelter. When her soldier husband had walked from Virginia to Georgia, he found, besides his noble wife and precious children, the nucleus of a new start in life, glorified by woman’s courage and fidelity under a most trying ordeal. For a twelve-month the exigencies of their situation deprived her of a decent pair of shoes; still she toiled in the kitchen, the garden, and, perhaps, the open fields, without a repining word or complaining murmur. The same material is found in a steel rail as in the watch spring, and the only difference between the soldier and his wife was physical strength.
This was no exceptional case. The hardships of Georgia women were extreme and long-continued.
[In Last Ninety Days of the War, pages 186-187.]
The negroes, however, behaved much better, on the whole, than Northern letter-writers represent them to have done. Indeed, I do not know a race more studiously misrepresented than they have been and are at this present time. They behaved well during the war; if they had not, it could not have lasted eighteen months. They showed a fidelity and a steadiness which speaks not only well for themselves but well for their training and the system under which they lived. And when their liberators arrived, there was no indecent excitement on receiving the gift of liberty, nor displays of impertinence to their masters. In one or two instances they gave “missus” to understand that they desired present payment for their services in gold and silver, but, in general, the tide of domestic life flowed on externally as smoothly as ever. In fact, though of course few at the North will believe me, I am sure that they felt for their masters, and secretly sympathized with their ruin. They knew that they were absolutely penniless and conquered; and though they were glad to be free, yet they did not turn round, as New England letter-writers have represented, to exult over their owners, nor exhibit the least trace of New England malignity. So the bread was baked in those latter days, the clothes were washed and ironed, and the baby was nursed as zealously as ever, though both parties understood at once that the service was voluntary. The Federal soldiers sat a good deal in the kitchens; but the division being chiefly composed of Northwestern men, who had little love for the negro, (indeed I heard some d——n him as the cause of the war, and say that they would much rather put a bullet through an Abolitionist than through a Confederate soldier,) there was probably very little incendiary talk and instructions going on. In all of which, compared with other localities we were much favored.
This house, built for a gentleman’s private residence, was thus occupied until 1862, when Mr. Lewis Crenshaw, the owner, sold it to the city of Richmond for the use of the Confederate government. The city, having furnished it, offered it to Mr. Davis, but he refused to accept the gift. The Confederate government then rented it for the “Executive Mansion” of the Confederate States. President Davis lived here with his family, using the house both in a private and official capacity. The present “Mississippi” room was his study, where he often held important conferences with his great leaders. In this house, amid the cares of state, joy and sorrow visited him; “Winnie,” the cherished daughter, was born here, and here “little Joe” died from the effects of a fall from the back porch. It remained Mr. Davis’s home until the evacuation of the city of Richmond. He left with the government officials on the night of April 2, 1865. On the morning of April 3, 1865, General Godfrey Witzel, in command of the Federal troops, upon entering the city, made this house his headquarters. It was thus occupied by the United States Government during the five years Virginia was under military rule, and called “District No. 1.”
In the present “Georgia” room, a day or two after the evacuation, Mr. Lincoln was received. He was in the city only a few hours. When at last the military was removed and the house vacated, the city at once took possession, using it as a public school for more than twenty years. In order to make it more comfortable for school purposes, a few unimportant alterations were made. It was the first public school in the city. War had left its impress on the building, and the constant tread of little feet did almost as much damage. It was with great distress that our people (particularly the women), saw the “White House of the Confederacy” put to such uses, and rapidly falling into decay. To save it from destruction, a mass-meeting was called to take steps for its restoration. 288 A society was formed, called the “Confederate Memorial Literary Society,” whose aim was the preservation of the mansion. Their first act was to petition the city to place it in their hands, to be used as a memorial to President Davis and a museum of those never-to-be-forgotten days, ’61-’65. It was amazing to see the wide-spread enthusiasm aroused by the plan. With as little delay as possible the city, acting through alderman and council, made the deed of conveyance, which was ratified by the then Mayor of Richmond, the Hon. J. Taylor Ellyson.
The dilapidation of the entire property was extreme, but to its restoration and preservation the society had pledged itself. They had no money—the city had already given its part—what could be done? To raise the needed funds it was decided to hold a “memorial bazaar” in Richmond for the joint benefit of the museum and the monument to the private soldier and sailor.
All through the South the plan of the museum and the bazaar was heartily endorsed; so that donations of every kind poured in. Each State of the Confederacy was represented by a booth, with the name, shield, and flag of her State. The whole sum realized was $31,400. Half of this was given to complete the monument to the private soldiers and sailors now standing on Libby Hill, and the other half went to the museum.
The partition walls were already of brick, and the whole house had been strongly and well built, but the entire building was now made fireproof, and every other possible precaution taken for its safety. In every particular the old house in its entirety was preserved, the wood work (replaced by iron) being used for souvenirs. The repairs were so extensive that the building was not ready for occupancy until late in 1895.
On February 22, 1896, the dedication service was held, and the museum formally thrown open to the public.
But the house was entirely empty. Rapidly the memorials were gathered from each loyal State and placed in their several rooms. From start to finish the 289 whole work has been free-will offering to the beloved cause.
The treasury had been nearly exhausted by the restoration of the building. The current expenses were met only by the strictest economy, and largely carried on by faith. In the past nine years much has been accomplished. The institution is free from debt; and the museum is now widely known. But much lies ahead in the ideal the patriotic women have set before them and the work grows larger, more important and far reaching as it is approached. Such is the interest felt in the museum that during the past year they have had 7,459 visitors, of whom 3,717 were from the North. It is by these door-fees that the expenses are met.
It would be quite impossible to enumerate all the articles of interest to be found here. The memorials gathered are not only interesting in themselves, but invaluable for the truth and lessons which they teach. Historians in search of information can here obtain original data in regard to the “War between the States.” The United States Government has already made use of these records for its new Navy Register. Each confederate State is hereby represented by a room, set apart in special honor of her sons and their deeds. A regent in that State has it in charge, and is responsible for its contents and appearance. A vice-regent (as far as possible a native of that State, but residing in Richmond) gives her personal supervision to the room and its needs. The labor is incessant, and would be impossible, but for the fact that it is impelled by a sense of sacred love and duty.
Of the women of the Confederacy, of our brave and uncomplaining soldiers, of their great leaders, as well as of our illustrious chief, it well may be said:
“Would you see their monument?
Look around.”
The late Dr. Everard DeRenne bequeathed to the Georgia room “The Mary DeRenne (of Georgia) collection.” 290 Mrs. Mary DeRenne, of Savannah, Ga., was his mother, an enthusiastic Georgian, and patriotic Confederate. Soon after the close of the war between the States, finding that an officer of the Northern army was making a collection of Southern relics, she felt that there were few in the South who had the means to do the same, but that it ought to be done. She determined at once to begin, and while life lasted she spared neither effort nor expense in gathering relics, books, papers, and all that added to their value. Mrs. DeRenne soon found that persons were glad to put together what made history, when isolated relics or papers told so little. The result tells an absorbing story.
Miss C. N. Usina, of Savannah, Georgia, presented in 1903 a liberal addition to this library.