“THE SADDEST GOOD FRIDAY”
“The Saddest Good Friday”
In Matoaca’s little devotional note-book, I read: “Good Friday, 1865. This is the saddest Good Friday I ever knew. I have spent the whole day praying for our stricken people, our crushed Southland.” “The saddest Good Friday I ever knew”; nearly every man and woman in the South might have said that with equal truth.
Her “Journal” of secular events contains a long entry for April 14; it is as if she had poured out all her woes on paper. For the most part it is a tale of feminine trivialities, of patching and mending. “Unless I can get work and make some money,” she writes, “we must stay indoors for decency’s sake.” Her shoes have holes in them: “They are but shoes I cobbled out of bits of stout cloth.” The soles are worn so thin her feet are almost on the ground. The family is suffering for food and for all necessaries. “O God, what can I do!” she cries, “I who have never been taught any work that seems to be needed now! Who is there to pay me for the few things I know how to do? I envy our negroes who have been trained to occupations that bring money; they can hire out to the Yankees, and I can’t. Our negroes are leaving us. We had to advise them to go. Cato will not. ‘Me lef’ Mars Ran?’ he cried, ‘I couldn’ think uv it, Miss Mato’ca!’”
Woes of friends and neighbours press upon her heart. Almost every home has, like her own, its empty chair, its hungry mouths, its bare larder, though some areaccepting relief from the Christian Commission or from Federal officers. Of loved ones in prison, they hear no tidings; from kindred in other parts of the South, receive no sign. There are no railroads, no mail service. In the presence of the conquerors, they walk softly and speak with bated breath. The evening paper publishes threats of arrest for legislators who may come to town obedient to the call Judge Campbell issued with Mr. Lincoln’s approval.
Good Friday was a day of joy and gladness North. From newspapers opened eagerly in radiant family circles men read out such headlines as these: “War Costs Over. Government Orders Curtailing Further Purchase of Arms, Ammunition and Commissary Stores.” “Drafting and Recruiting Stopped.” “Military Restrictions on Trade and Commerce Modified.” Selma, Alabama, with its rich stores of Confederate cotton, was captured. Mr. Lincoln’s conciliatory policy was commented on as “a wise and sagacious move.” Thursday’s stock market had been bullish.
Rachel weeping for her children was comforted because they had not died in vain. Larders were not bare, clothes were not lacking. The fastings and prayers of the devout were full of praise and thanksgiving. For the undevout, Good Friday was a feast day and a day of jollification.
In Charleston, South Carolina, gaping with scars of shot and shell of her long, long, siege, the roses and oleanders and palmettoes strove to cover with beauty the wounds of war, and in their fragrance to breathe nature’s sympathy and faithfulness. Her own desolate people kept within doors. The streets were thronged with a cheerful, well-clad crowd; the city was overflowing with Northern men and women of distinction. In the bay lay Dahlgren’s fleet, gayflags all a-flying. On land and water bands played merrily.
Fort Sumter’s anniversary was to be celebrated. The Union flag was to be raised over the ruined pile by General Robert Anderson, who had lost the fort in 1861. In the company duly assembled were Henry Ward Beecher, Theodore Tilton, William Lloyd Garrison, Rev. Dr. Storrs. Mr. Beecher uttered words of kindly sentiment towards the South. He gave God thanks for preserving Lincoln’s life, accepting this as a token of divine favor to the Nation. Dr. Storrs read: “‘When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream.’” The people: “‘Then was our mouth filled with laughter and our tongue with singing.’” And so on through the 126th Psalm. Then: “‘Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we will remember the name of the Lord our God.’” And: “‘They are brought low and fallen, but we are risen and stand upright.’”
“The Star-Spangled Banner” was sung, and the guns of Dahlgren’s fleet thundered honours to the Stars and Stripes, which, rising slowly and gracefully, fluttered out in triumph against the Southern sky. At sunset, guns boomed again, proud signal to the ending of the perfect day. The city, silent and sad as far as its own people were concerned, rang with the strangers’ joyaunce. Social festivities ruled the hour. General Gillmore entertained at a great banquet. The bay was ablaze with fireworks; all forts were alight; the beautiful Sea Islands, whose owners roamed in destitute exile, gleamed in shining circle, the jewels of the sea.
The 14th was a red-letter day in the National Capital. Everything spoke of victory and gladness. Washington held the two idols of the North—Lincoln and Grant. It was Mr. Lincoln’s perfect hour. He wentabout with a quiet smile on his face. The family breakfast at the White House was very happy; Captain Robert Lincoln was visiting his parents. General Grant was present at the Cabinet meeting during the forenoon, Mr. Lincoln’s last. These are some of the President’s words:
“I think it providential that this great rebellion is crushed just as Congress has adjourned and there are none of the disturbing elements of that body to hinder and embarrass us. If we are wise and discreet we shall reanimate the States and get their governments in successful operation with order prevailing, and the Union reëstablished before Congress comes together in December. I hope there will be no persecution, no bloody work, after the war is over. No one need expect me to take any part in hanging or killing these men. Enough lives have been sacrificed. We must extinguish resentment if we expect harmony and Union. There is too great a disposition on the part of some of our very good friends to be masters, to interfere with and dictate to these States, to treat the people not as fellow-citizens; there is too little respect for their rights.” He made it plain that he meant the words of his second inaugural address, hardly six weeks before, when he promised that his mission should be “to bind up the wounds of the Nation.”
“Very cheerful and very hopeful,” Mr. Stanton reported, “spoke very kindly of General Lee and others of the Confederacy, and of the establishment of the Government of Virginia.” Also, he spoke of the state government in Louisiana, and that which he had mapped out for North Carolina. General Grant was uneasy about Sherman and Johnston. The President said: “I have no doubt that favourable news will come. I had a dream last night, my usual dream which haspreceded every important event of the war. I seemed to be on a singular and indescribable vessel, always the same, moving with great rapidity toward a dark and indefinite shore.”
MRS. JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON
(Lydia McLane, daughter of Senator McLane, of Delaware.)
He did not know that on that day Sherman was writing Johnston, “I am empowered to make terms of peace.” But he knew he had so empowered Sherman. I can imagine that through his heart the refrain was beating: “There will be no more bloodshed, no more devastation. There shall be no more humiliations for this Southern people, and God will give it into my hands to reunite my country.”
He went for a long, quiet drive with his wife. “Mary,” he said, “we have had a hard time of it since we came to Washington; but the war is over, and with God’s blessing we may hope for four years of peace and happiness. Then we will go back to Illinois and pass the rest of our days in quiet.” He longed for quiet. The Sabbath before, while driving along the banks of the James, he said: “Mary, when I die, I would like to lie in a quiet place like this,” and related a dream which he felt to be presage of death.
Sailing on the James, he read aloud twice, and in a manner that impressed Charles Sumner, who was present, this passage from Macbeth:
“‘Duncan is in his grave;After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well;Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,Can touch him further.’”
He was going, safe and whole, from the land of “rebels” to Washington. “We have had a hard time in Washington, Mary.” Read Sherman’s “Memoirs,” and see what little liking great Federal generals had for journeys to Washington; how for peace and safety, theypreferred their battle-fields to the place where politicians were wire-pulling and spreading nets.
The conclusion to his perfect day was a box in Ford’s Theatre, his wife and a pair of betrothed lovers for company; on the stage Laura Keene in “Our American Cousin.” The tragic sequel is indelibly impressed on the brain of every American—the people leaning forward, absorbed in the play, the handsome, slender figure of young Wilkes Booth moving with easy, assured grace towards the President’s box, the report of the pistol, the leap of Booth to the stage, falling as the flag caught his foot, rising, brandishing his weapon and crying: “Sic Semper Tyrannis!”, his escape with a broken ankle through the confused crowds; the dying President borne out to the boarding-house on Tenth Street.
Seward’s life was attempted the same evening by Booth’s confederate, Lewis Payne, who penetrated to the Secretary’s sick-room and wounded him and his son; Payne escaped. General Grant’s death was a part of the plot; he and Mrs. Grant had declined invitation to share the President’s box, and started west; Mr. Stanton’s murder was also intended; but he escaped, scathless of body but bitterer of soul than ever, bitterer than Mr. Seward, who was wounded.
In a letter which Matoaca wrote years afterward, she said: “I well remember the horror that thrilled our little circle when the news came. ‘Now, may God have mercy on us!’ Uncle exclaimed. He sat silent for a while and then asked: ‘Can it be possible that any of our own people could do this thing? Some misguided fanatic?’ And then, after a silence: ‘Can some enemy of the South have done it? Some enemy of the South who had a grudge against Lincoln, too?’ ‘What sort of secret service could they havehad in Washington that this thing could happen? How was it that the crippled assassin was able to make his escape?’ he said when full accounts appeared. The explanations given never explained to him.
“I heard some speak who thought it no more than just retribution upon Mr. Lincoln for the havoc he had wrought in our country. But even the few who spoke thus were horrified when details came. We could not be expected to grieve, from any sense of personal affection, for Mr. Lincoln, whom we had seen only in the position of an implacable foe at the head of a power invading and devastating our land; but our reprobation of the crime of his taking off was none the less. Besides, we did not know what would be done to us. Already there had been talk of trying our officers for treason, of executing them, of exiling them, and in this talk Andrew Johnson had been loudest.
“I remember how one poor woman took the news. She was half-crazed by her losses and troubles; one son had been killed in battle, another had died in prison, of another she could not hear if he were living or dead; her house had been burned; her young daughter, turned out with her in the night, had died of fright and exposure. She ran in, crying: ‘Lincoln has been killed! thank God!’ Next day she came, still and pale: ‘I have prayed it all out of my heart,’ she said, ‘that is, I’m not glad. But, somehow, Ican’tbe sorry. I believe it was the vengeance of the Lord.’”
Jefferson Davis heard of Lincoln’s death in Charlotte. A tablet in that beautiful and historic city marks the spot where he stood. He had just arrived from Greensboro, was dismounting, citizens were welcoming him when the dispatch signed by Secretary of War Breckinridge was handed him by Major John Courtney. Mrs. Courtney, the Major’s widow, told me that herhusband heard the President say: “Oh, the pity of it!” He passed it to a gentleman with the remark, “Here are sad tidings.” The Northern press reported that Jefferson Davis cheered when he heard of Lincoln’s death.
Mrs. Davis, at the Armistead Burt House, Abbeville, received a message from her husband announcing his arrival in Charlotte and telling of the assassination. Mrs. Davis “burst into tears, which flowed from sorrow and a thorough realization of the inevitable results to the Confederates,”—her own words.
General Johnston and General Sherman were in Mr. Bennett’s house near Raleigh. Just before starting to this meeting, General Sherman received a dispatch announcing Mr. Lincoln’s assassination. He placed it in his pocket, and, as soon as they were alone, handed it to General Johnston, watching him narrowly. “He did not attempt to conceal his distress,” General Sherman relates. “The perspiration came out in large drops on his forehead.” His horror and detestation of the deed broke forth; he earnestly hoped General Sherman would not charge this crime to the Confederacy. “I explained,” states General Sherman, “that I had not yet revealed the news to my own personal staff or to the army, and that I dreaded the effect when it was made known.” He feared that “a worse fate than that of Columbia would befall” Raleigh, particularly if some “foolish man or woman should say or do something that would madden his men.” He took pains when making the calamity known to assure his army that he did not consider the South responsible.
Mr. Davis, under arrest, and on the way to Macon, heard that Andrew Johnson had offered a reward of $100,000 for his arrest, charging him, Clement C. Clay and other prominent Southerners with “inciting,concerting, procuring” the “atrocious murder” of President Lincoln. Between threatening soldiery, displaying the proclamation and shouting over his capture, Mr. Davis and his family rode and walked.
At Macon, General Wilson received him with courtesy; when the proclamation was mentioned, Mr. Davis said one person at least in the United States knew the charge to be false, and that was the man who signed it, for Andrew Johnson knew that he preferred Lincoln to himself.
In Augusta, Colonel Randall (author of “Maryland, My Maryland”), meeting Clement C. Clay on the street, informed him of the proclamation. The old ex-Senator at once surrendered, asking trial.[5]
In Southern cities citizens held meetings condemning the murder and expressing sorrow and regret at the President’s death. Ex-Governor Aiken, known as the largest slave-owner in South Carolina, led the movement in Charleston, heading a petition to General Gillmore for use of the Hibernian Hall that the people might have a gathering-place in which to declare their sentiments.
Even the Confederates in prison were heard from. The officers confined at Fort Warren signed with General Ewell a letter to General Grant, expressing to “a soldier who will understand” their detestation of Booth’s horrible crime. The commandant of the Fort, Major William Appleton, added a note testifying to their deep sincerity.
THE WRATH OF THE NORTH
The Wrath of the North
The mad act of crazy Wilkes Booth set the whole country crazy. The South was aghast, natural recoil intensified by apprehension. The North, convulsed with anguish, was newly inflamed, and even when the cooler moment came and we were acquitted of any responsibility for Booth’s crazy act, the angry humour of a still sore heart was against us. We, of both sections, who suffered so lately as one people in the death of President McKinley, can comprehend the woe and unreason of the moment.
Indignation and memorial meetings simply flayed the South alive. At one in the New York Custom House, when the grieving, exasperated people did not know whether to weep or to curse the more, or to end it by simply hanging us all, Mr. Chittenden rose and said: “Peace, be still!” And declared the death of Lincoln providential, God removing the man of mercy that due punishment might be meted out to rebels. Before the pacific orator finished, people were yelling: “Hang Lee!” and “The rebels deserve damnation!” Pulpits fulminated. Easter sermons demanded the halter, exile, confiscation of property, for “rebels and traitors”; yet some voices rose benignly, as Edward Everett Hale’s, Dr. Huntington’s, and Rufus Ellis’, in words fitting the day. Beecher urged moderation.
The new President, Andrew Johnson, was breathing out threatenings and slaughter before Lincoln’s death. Thousands had heard him shout from the southernportico of the Patent Office, “Jeff Davis ought to be hung twenty times as high as Haman!”
In Nicolay and Hay’s Life of Lincoln, the following paragraph follows comment upon unanimity in Southern and Northern sentiment: “There was one exception to the general grief too remarkable to be passed over in silence. Among the extreme Radicals in Congress, Mr. Lincoln’s determined clemency and liberality towards the Southern people had made an impression so unfavourable that, though they were shocked at his murder, they did not, among themselves, conceal their gratification that he was no longer in the way. In a political caucus held a few hours after the President’s death, ‘the thought was nearly universal,’ to quote the language of one of their most representative members, ‘that the accession of Johnson to the Presidency would prove a godsend to the country.’”
The only people who could profit by Lincoln’s death were in the Radical wing of the Republican party. These extremists thought Johnson their man. Senator Wade, heading a committee that waited on him, cried: “Johnson, we have faith in you! By the gods, it will be no trouble now running the Government!”
“Treason,” said the new President, “is the highest crime in the calendar, and the full penalty for its commission should be visited upon the leaders of the Rebellion. Treason should be made odious.” It is told as true “inside history” that the arrest and execution of General Lee had been determined upon; General Grant heard of it and went in the night to see President Johnson and Secretary Stanton and said to them: “If General Lee or any of the officers paroled by me are arrested while keeping the terms of their parole, I will resign my commission in the United States Army.”
But on April 15, even General Grant was of a divided mind, for he wired General Ord: “Arrest J. A. Campbell, Mayor Mayo, and members of the old Council who have not yet taken the oath of allegiance, and confine them in Libby Prison ... arrest all paroled officers and surgeons until they can be sent beyond our lines unless they have taken the oath of allegiance. Extreme rigour will have to be observed whilst assassination is the order of the day with rebels.”
General Ord replied: “The two citizens we have seen. They are old, nearly helpless, and, I think, incapable of harm. Lee and staff are in town among the paroled prisoners. Should I arrest them under the circumstances, I think the rebellion here would be reopened. I will risk my life that present paroles will be kept, if you will allow me to so trust the people here, who are ignorant of the assassination, done, I think, by some insane Brutus with but few accomplices. Judge Campbell and Mr. Hunter pressed me earnestly yesterday to send them to Washington to see the President. Would they have done so if guilty?”
General Grant answered: “I leave my dispatch of this date in the light of a suggestion to be executed only as far as you may judge the good of the service demands.” But the venerable peace-maker and his associates were not to escape vengeance.
General Halleck, from Richmond, to General Grant, May 5: “Hunter is staying quietly at home, advises all who visit him to support the Union cause. His hostility to Davis did much to make Davis unpopular in Virginia. Considering this, and the fact that President Lincoln advised against arresting Hunter, I would much prefer not to arrest him unless specially ordered to do so. All classes are taking the Amnesty Oath; it wouldbe unfortunate to shake by unnecessary arrests this desire for general amnesty. Lee’s officers are taking the oath; even Lee himself is considering the propriety of doing so and petitioning President Johnson for pardon.”
May 11, Halleck to Stanton: “R. M. T. Hunter has, in accordance with General Grant’s orders, been arrested, and is now on a gunboat in the James. Judge Campbell is still at his house. If necessary, he can be confined with Mr. Hunter. He voluntarily submits himself to such punishment as the Government may see fit to impose. He is very destitute and much broken down, and his case excites much sympathy.”
Fortress Monroe, May 22, General Halleck wires General Ord, Richmond: “The Secretary of War directs that John A. Campbell be placed in the Libby or some other secure prison. Do this at once.” Announcements of arrivals at Fort Pulaski in June would have made a fine page for any hotel desiring a brilliant register, thus: “Ex-Senator R. M. T. Hunter, Virginia; ex-Assistant Secretary of War Judge J. A. Campbell, Alabama; ex-Senator D. L. Yulee, Florida; ex-Governor Clark, Mississippi; ex-Secretary of the Treasury G. A. Trenholm, South Carolina;” and so on. Pulaski had rivals in other Federal prisons.
A reward of $25,000 for “Extra Billy” did not bring him in, but he delivered himself up to General Patrick, was paroled, and went to his home in Warrenton, Fauquier, and set to work with a will, though he was, to quote General Halleck, “seventy years old and quite feeble.” The rightful Governor of Virginia, he advised her people to cheerful acceptance of Pierpont.
As soon as the aged Governor of Mississippi learned that General Dick Taylor would surrender, he convened the Legislature; his message, recommending therepeal of the secession ordinance and deploring Lincoln’s murder, was not more than read, when General Osband, under orders from Washington, dissolved the Legislature with threats of arrest. Governor Clark was arrested: “The old soldier straightened his mangled limbs as best he could, with great difficulty mounted his crutches, and with a look of defiance, said: ‘General Osband, I denounce before high Heaven this unparalleled act of tyranny and usurpation. I am the duly and constitutionally elected Governor of Mississippi, and would resist, if in my power, to the last extremity the enforcement of your order.’”
LIBBY PRISON, RICHMOND, VA.
Before 1861 this building was used as a warehouse, and in 1888-9 was transported bya syndicate to Chicago, and is now known as Libby Prison War Museum.
Governors, generals and statesmen were arrested in all directions. No exception was made for Alexander H. Stephens, the invalid, the peace-maker, the gentlest Roman of them all. At Liberty Hall, Mr. Stephens and a young friend, Robert W. Hull, were playing casino, when Tim, a negro, ran in, exclaiming: “Marster, de town is full uh Yankees! Whole heaps uv ’em, gallopin’ all about, carryin’ guns.” Mr. Stephens rose and said to his guest: “I have been expecting this. They have come for me. Excuse me, please, while I pack.” He went into his bedroom and began this task, when an officer called. Mr. Stephens met him in the parlor. The officer said, “Are you Alex Stephens?” “That is my name.” “I have an order for your arrest.” “I would like to have your name and see your order.” “I am Captain Saint, of the 4th Iowa, acting under General Upton’s orders. Here is the order.” Mr. Stephens saw that himself and General Toombs were to be brought before General Upton in Atlanta. “I have been anticipating arrest,” he said quietly, “and have been careful not to be out of the way, remaining here at home. General Upton need not have sent an armed force for me. A simpleintimation from him that my presence was desired would have taken me to Atlanta.” His negroes were weeping when he was carried away; one, by special permission, accompanied him.
He was left under guard in a shanty on the road; the troops went on to Washington, “to be back in a little while with Bob Toombs.” “Where is General Toombs?” asked Mr. Stephens, when they returned. “We don’t know,” was the rejoinder. “He flanked us.” Thus:
General Toombs, going to the basement doorway of his house in Washington, exclaimed suddenly: “My God! the blue-coats!” turned and went rapidly through his house and out at the back door, saying to his wife: “Detain them at the front as long as you can.” Their daughter, Mrs. Du Bose, helped her. “Bob Toombs” was asked for. Mrs. Du Bose went to bring “Bob Toombs”; she reappeared leading a lovely boy. “Here is Bob Toombs,” she said, “Bob Toombs Du Bose, named for my father, General Toombs.”
Mrs. Toombs took them through the house, showing them into every room—keys of which were lost and had to be looked for. They would burn the building, they insisted, if General Toombs was not produced. “Burn,” she said, “and burn me in it. If I knew my husband’s hiding-place, I would not betray him.” They told her to move her furniture out. She obeyed. They changed their minds about the burning and went off. General Toombs escaped to the woods, where he remained hidden until nightfall. His friend, Captain Charles E. Irvin, got some gold from Mrs. Toombs, and carried the money to him, together with his mare, Gray Alice. From Nassau Island he crossed to England, where the doughty “rebel” was mightily liked.
Mr. Davis, Mr. Stephens, Mr. Clay, GeneralWheeler, and General Ralls met aboard the steamer at Augusta, all prisoners. The President’s arrest occurred the day before Mr. Stephens’, near Irwinsville. Picture it. Gray dawn in the Georgia woods. A small encampment of tents, horses, and wagons. Horses saddled and bridled, with pistols in holsters, picketed on the edge of the encampment. A negro watching and listening. Suddenly, he hurries to one of the tents: “Mars Jeff!” His call wakes a man lying fully dressed on one of the cots. “What’s the matter, Jim?” “Firin’ ’cross de branch, suh. Jes behin’ our camp. Marauders, I reckon.”
After leaving Washington, Mr. Davis had heard that marauders were in pursuit of his wife’s cortege, and turning out of his course, he rode hard across country, found his family, conveyed them beyond the present danger, as he thought, and was about to renew his journey south. Horses for himself and staff were ready, when he heard that marauders were again near; he concluded to wait, and so lay down to rest. At Jim’s call, he went to the tent-door, then turned to where his wife bent over her sleeping baby, Winnie. “They are not marauders,” he said, “but regular troopers of the United States Army.”
She begged him to leave her quickly. His horses and weapons were near the road down which the cavalry was coming. In the darkness of the tent, he caught up what he took to be his raglan, a sleeveless, waterproof garment. It was hers. She, poor soul, threw a shawl over his head. He went out of the tent, she keeping near. “Halt!” cried a trooper, levelling a carbine at him. He dropped his wraps and hurried forward. The trooper, in the dark, might miss aim; a hand under his foot would unhorse him; when Mr. Davis would mount and away. Mrs. Davis saw thecarbine, cast her arms about her husband, and lost him his one chance of escape.
In one of her trunks, broken open by pilferers of the attacking party, a hoop-skirt was found. I shall refer to this historic hoop-skirt again.
I left Generals Johnston and Sherman discussing Mr. Lincoln’s death and arranging terms of peace, based upon what Sherman recognized as the object of the war—salvation of the Union; and upon instructions received from Mr. Lincoln’s own lips in their last interview when the President authorized him to “assure Governor Vance and the people of North Carolina that, as soon as the rebel armies will lay down their arms, they will at once be guaranteed all their rights as citizens of a common country; and that, to avoid anarchy, the State Governments now in existence will be recognized.”
“When peace does come, you may call upon me for anything. Then, I will share with you the last crust and watch with you to shield your homes and families against danger from every quarter.” Thus Sherman closed his reply to Calhoun’s protest against the depopulation of Atlanta. Now that war was over, he was for living up to this.
In soldierly simplicity, he thought he had done an excellent thing in securing Johnston’s guarantee of disbandment of all Confederate forces, and settling all fear of guerilla warfare by putting out of arms not only regular Confederates, but any who might claim to be such.
Stanton disposed of the whole matter by ordering Grant to “proceed to the headquarters of Major-General Sherman and direct operations against the enemy.” This was, of course, the end to any terms for us. As is known, General Johnston surrendered onthe same conditions with Lee. Grant so ordered his course as not to do Sherman injustice.
General Sherman wrote a spicy letter for Mr. Stanton’s benefit: the settlement he had arranged for would be discussed, he said, in a different spirit “two or three years hence, after the Government has experimented a little more in the machinery by which power reaches the scattered people of this vast country known as the South.” He had made war “hell”; now, the people of “this unhappy country,” as he pityingly designated the land he had devastated, were for peace; and he, than whom none had done more to bring them to that state of mind, was for giving them some of its fruits. “We should not drive a people to anarchy”; for protection to life and property, the South’s civil courts and governments should be allowed to remain in operation.
“The assassination has stampeded the civil authorities,” “unnerved them,” was the conclusion he drew when he went to Washington when, just after the crime, the long roll had been beaten and the city put under martial law; public men were still in dread of assassination. At the grand review in Washington, Sherman, hero of the hour, shook hands with the President and other dignitaries on the stand, but pointedly failed to accept Mr. Stanton’s.
After Mr. Lincoln’s death, leniency to “rebels” was accounted worse than a weakness. The heavy hand was applauded. It was the fashion to say hard things of us. It was accounted piety and patriotism to condemn “traitors and rebels.” Cartoonists, poets, and orators, were in clover; here was a subject on which they could “let themselves out.”
THE CHAINING OF JEFFERSON DAVIS
The Chaining of Jefferson Davis
Strange and unreal seem those days. One President a fugitive, journeying slowly southward; the other dead, journeying slowly north and west. Aye, the hand of God was heavy on both our peoples. The cup of defeat could not be made more bitter than it was; and into the cup of triumph were gall and wormwood poured.
Hunters pursuing one chieftain with hoarse cries of “rebel!” and “traitor!” For the other, bells tolling, guns booming requiem, great cities hung with black, streets lined with weeping thousands, the catafalque a victor’s chariot before which children and maidens scattered flowers. Nearly a month that funeral march lasted—from Washington through Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Albany, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Chicago—it wound its stately way to Springfield. Wherever it passed, the public pulse beat hotter against the Southern chieftain and his people.
Yet the dead and the hunted were men of one country, born in the same State. Sharp contrasts in many ways, they were yet enough alike in personal appearance to have been brothers. Both were pure men, brave, patriotic; both kindly and true. The dead had said of the living: “Let Jeff escape.”
Johnson’s proclamation threw the entire South into a white rage and an anguish unutterable, when it charged the assassination to Mr. Davis and other representative men of the South. Swift on it came newsthat our President was captured, report being spread to cast ridicule upon him that, when caught, he was disguised in his wife’s garments. Caricatures, claiming to be truthful portraiture, displayed him in hoops and petticoats and a big poke bonnet, of such flaming contrasts as certainly could not have been found in Mrs. Davis’ wardrobe.
In 1904, I saw at avaudevilleentertainment in a New York department store, a stereopticon representation of the War of Secession. The climax was Mr. Davis in a pink skirt, red bonnet, yellow bodice, and parti-coloured shawl, struggling with several Federals, while other Federals were rushing to the attack, all armed to the teeth and pointing warlike weapons at this one fantastic figure of a feeble old man. The theatre was full of children. The attraction had been running some time and thousands of young Americans had doubtless accepted its travesties as history. The Northern friend with me was as indignant as myself.
When Mr. Davis’ capture was announced in theatres and other places of amusement in the North, people went crazy with joy, clapping their hands and cheering, while bands played “Yankee Doodle” and “Star-Spangled Banner.” Many were for having him hung at once. Wendell Phillips wanted him “left to the sting of his own conscience.”
Presently, we heard that the “Clyde” was bringing Mr. Davis, his family, General Wheeler, Governor Vance, and others, to Fortress Monroe. And then—will I ever forget how the South felt about that?—that Mr. Davis was a prisoner in a damp, casemated cell, that lights were kept burning in his face all night until he was in danger of blindness; that human eyes were fixed on him night and day, following his every movement; that his jailer would come and look at himcontemptuously and call him “Jeff”; that sightseers would be brought to peer at him as if he were some strange wild beast; that his feeble limbs had been loaded with chains; that he was like to lose his life through hardships visited upon him! To us who knew the man personally, his sensitiveness, dignity, and refinement, the tale is harrowing as it could not be to those who knew him not thus. Yet to all Americans it must be a regrettable chapter in our history when it is remembered that this man was no common felon, but a prisoner of State, a distinguished Indian-fighter, a Mexican veteran, a man who had held a seat in Congress, who had been Secretary of War of the United States, and who for four years had stood at the head of the Confederate States.
When they came to put chains upon him, he protested, said it was an indignity to which as a soldier he would not submit, that the intention was to dishonour the South in him; stood with his back to the wall, bade them kill him at once, fought them off as long as he could—fought them until they held him down and the blacksmiths riveted the manacles upon his wasted limbs. Captain Titlow, who had the work in charge, did not like his cruel task, but he had no choice but to obey orders.[6]
And this was in Fortress Monroe, where of old the gates fell wide to welcome him when he came as Secretary of War, where guns thundered greeting, soldiers presented arms, and the highest officer was proud to do him honour! With bated breath we speak of Russian prisons. But how is this: “Davis is in prison; he isnot allowed to say a word to any one nor is any one allowed to say a word to him. He is literally in a living tomb. His position is not much better than that of the Turkish Sultan, Bajazet, exposed by his captor, Tamerlane, in a portable iron cage.” (“New York Herald,” May 26, 1865.) The dispatch seemed positively to gloat over that poor man’s misery.
A new fad in feminine attire came into vogue; women wore long, large, and heavy black chains as decorations.
The military murder of Mrs. Surratt stirred us profoundly. Too lowly, simple, and obscure in herself to rank with heroic figures, her execution lifts her to the plane where stand all who fell victims to the troubled times. Suspicion of complicity in Mr. Lincoln’s murder, because of her son’s intimacy with Wilkes Booth, led to her death. They had her before a military tribunal in Washington, her feet linked with chains.
Several men were executed. Their prison-life and hers was another tale to give one the creeps. They were not allowed to speak to any one, nor was any one allowed to speak to them; they were compelled to wear masks of padded cloth over face and head, an opening at the mouth permitting space for breathing; pictures said to be drawn from life showed them in their cells where the only resting-places were not beds, but bare, rough benches; marched before judges with these same horrible hoods on, marched to the gallows with them on, hanging with them on.
One of the executed, Payne, had been guilty of the attack on Mr. Seward and his son; the others had been dominated and bribed by Booth, but had failed to play the parts assigned them in the awful drama his morbid brain wrought out.
OUR FRIENDS, THE ENEMY
Our Friends, the Enemy
There was small interchange of civilities between Northern and Southern ladies. The new-comers were in much evidence; Southerners saw them riding and driving in rich attire and handsome equipages, and at the theatre in all the glory of fine toilettes.
There was not so much trouble opening theatres as churches. A good many stage celebrities came to the Richmond Theatre, which was well patronised. Decorated with United States flags, it was opened during the first week of the occupation with “Don Cæsar de Bazan.” The “Whig” reported a brilliant audience. Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Grant, who had been driving over the city, were formally invited by General Weitzel to attend the play, but did not appear.
The band played every evening in the Square, and our people, ladies especially, were invited to come out. The Square and the Capitol were at one time overrun with negroes. This was stopped. Still, our ladies did not go. Federal officers and their ladies had their music to themselves. “There was no intentional slight or rudeness on our part. We did not draw back our skirts in passing Federal soldiers, as was charged in Northern papers; if a few thoughtless girls or women did this, they were not representative. We tried not to give offense; we were heart-broken; we stayed to ourselves; and we were not hypocrites; that was all.” So our women aver. In most Southern cities efforts were made to induce the ladies to come out and hear the band play.
The day Governor Pierpont arrived, windows of the Spotswood and Monumental were crowded with Northern ladies waving handkerchiefs. “I only knew from the papers,” Matoaca tells, “that the Mansion was decorated with flowers for his reception. Our own windows, which had been as windows of a house of mourning, did not change their aspect for his coming. Our rightful governor was a fugitive; Governor Pierpont was an alien. We were submissive, but we could not rejoice.” This was the feminine and social side. On the political and masculine side, he was welcomed. Delegations of prominent Virginians from all counties brought him assurances of coöperation. The new Governor tried to give a clean, patriotic administration.
Northerners held socials in each others’ houses and in halls; there were receptions, unattended by Southerners, at the Governor’s Mansion and Military Headquarters. It might have been more politic had we gone out of our way to be socially agreeable, but it would not have been sincere. Federal officers and their wives attended our churches. A Northern Methodist Society was formed with a group of adherents, Governor and Mrs. Pierpont, and, later, General and Mrs. Canby among them. “We of the Northern colony were very dependent upon ourselves for social pleasures,” an ex-member who now considers herself a Southerner said to me recently. “There were some inter-marriages. I remember an elopement; a Petersburg girl ran away with a Federal officer, and the pair sought asylum at my father’s, in Richmond’s Northern colony. Miss Van Lew entertained us liberally. She gave a notable reception to Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase and his beautiful daughter, Kate.” Miss Van Lew, a resident, was suspected of being a spy during the war.
Our ladies went veiled on the street, the motive that caused them to close their windows impelling them to cover their faces with sorrow’s shield. There was not much opportunity for young blue-coats to so much as behold our pretty girls, much less make eyes at them, had they been so minded. That veil as an accompaniment of a lissome figure and graceful carriage must have sometimes acted as a tantalising disguise.
I heard of one very cute happening in which the wind and a veil played part. Mary Triplett, our famous blonde beauty, then in the rosy freshness of early youth, was walking along when the wind took off her veil and carried it to the feet of a young Federal officer. He bent, uplifted the vagrant mask, and, with his cap held before his eyes, restored it. That was a very honest, self-denying Yankee. Perhaps he peeped around the corner of his cap. There was at that time in Richmond a bevy of marvellously lovely buds, Mattie Ould, Miss Triplett’s antithesis, among the number.
The entire South seems to have been very rich then in buds of beauty and women of distinction. Or, was it that the fires of adversity brought their charms and virtues into high relief? Names flitting through my mind are legion. Richmond’s roll has been given often. Junior members of the Petersburg set were Tabb Bolling, General Rooney Lee’s sweetheart (now his widow); Molly Bannister, General Lee’s pet, who was allowed to ride Traveller; Anne Bannister, Alice Gregory, Betty and Jeannie Osborne, Betty Cabaniss, Betty and Lucy Page, Sally Hardy, Nannie Cocke, Patty Cowles, Julia, Mary and Marion Meade, and others who queened it over General Lee’s army and wrought their pretty fingers to the bone for our lads in the trenches. To go farther afield, Georgia had her youthful “Maid of Athens,” Jule King, afterwards Mrs. Henry Grady;in Atlanta were the Clayton sisters, and Maggie Poole, Augusta Hill, Ella Ezzard, Eugenia Goode, besides a brilliant married circle. In South Carolina were Mrs. James Chesnut, her sister, Mrs. David R. Williams, and all the fair troop that figure in her “Diary From Dixie.” Louisiana’s endless roster might begin with the Slocomb family, to which General Butler paid official tribute, recording that “Mrs. Slocomb equipped the crack military company of New Orleans, the Washington Artillery, in which her son-in-law, Captain David Urquhart, is an officer.” Mrs. Urquhart’s daughter, Cora (afterwards Mrs. James Brown Potter), was, I think, a tiny maiden then. Beloved for her social charm and her charities, Mrs. Ida B. Richardson, Mrs. Urquhart’s sister, still lives in the Crescent City. There were the Leacock sisters, Mrs. Andrew Gray and Mrs. Will Howell, the “madonna of New Orleans.” There was the King family, which produced Grace King, author and historian. A Louisiana beauty was Addie Prescott, whose face and presence gave warrant of the royal blood of Spain flowing in her veins. In Mississippi was “Pearl Rivers,” afterwards Mrs. Nicholson, good genius of the “Picayune”; and Mary E. Bryan, later the genius of the “Sunny South.” Georgia and Alabama claim Mme. Le Vert, to whose intellect Lamartine paid tribute, and Augusta Evans, whose “Macaria” ran the blockade in manuscript and came out up North during the war; that delightful “Belle of the Fifties,” Mrs. Clement C. Clay, is Alabama’s own. Besides the “Rose of Texas” (Louise Wigfall), the Lone Star State has many a winsome “Southern Girl” and woman to her credit. Mrs. Roger A. Pryor is Virginia’s own. Among Florida’s fair was the “Madonna of the Wickliffe sisters,” Mrs. Yulee, Senator Yulee’s wife and, presently, Florida’s Vice-Regent for the Ladies’ Associationof Mt. Vernon. Mrs. Sallie Ward Hunt and Mrs. Sallie Ewing Pope lead a long list in Kentucky, where Mary Anderson, the actress, was in her tender teens, and Bertha Honoré (afterwards Mrs. Potter Palmer) was in pinafores. To Mississippi and Missouri belongs Theodosia Worthington Valliant; and to Tennessee Betty Vance, whose beauty’s fame was world-wide, and Mary Wright, later Mrs. Treadwell. At a ball given Prince Arthur when in this country, a wealthy belle was selected to lead with him. The prince thinking he was to choose his partner, fixed on Mary Wright, exquisite in poverty’s simple white gown, and asked: “May I lead with her?” In North Carolina were Sophia Portridge, women of the houses of Devereaux, Vance, Mordecai—but I am not writing the South’s “Book of Fair and Noble Women.” I leave out of my list names brilliant as any in it.
MRS. DAVID L. YULEE
(Daughter of Governor Wickliffe, of Kentucky)
She was the wife of Senator Yulee, of Florida,Vice Regent of the Mount Vernon Association of Florida,and was known as the “Madonna of the Wickliffe Sisters.”
Of all the fair women I have ever seen, Mary Meade was fairest. No portrait can do justice to the picture memory holds of her as “Bride” to D’Arcy Paul’s “Bridegroom” in the “Mistletoe Bough,” which Mrs. Edwin Morrison staged so handsomely that her amateurs were besought to “star” in the interest of good causes. Our fair maids were no idle “lilies of loveliness.” The Meade sisters and others turned talents to account in mending fallen family fortunes. Maids and matrons labored diligently to gather our soldier dead into safe resting-places. The “Lyrical Memorial,” Mrs. Platt’s enterprise, like the “Mistletoe Bough” (later produced), was called for far and wide. The day after presentation in Louisville, the Federal Commandant sent Mary Meade, who had impersonated the South pleading sepulture for her sons, a basket of flowers with a live white dove in the center.
Slowly in Richmond interchange of little humankindnesses between neighbors established links. General Bartlett, occupying the Haxall house, who had lost a leg in the war, was “the Yankee who conquered my wife,” a Southerner bears witness. “I came home one day and found him sitting with her on my steps. He suffered greatly from his old wound, bore it patiently, and by his whole conduct appealed to her sweet womanliness. His staff was quiet and orderly.”
The beautiful daughter of one family and her feeble grandmother were the only occupants of the mansion into which General Ord and his wife moved. The pair had no money and were unable to communicate with absent members of the household who had been cut off from home by the accidents of war while visiting in another city. The younger lady was ill with typhoid fever. The general and his wife were very thoughtful and generous in supplying ice, brandy, and other essentials and luxuries.
“Under Heaven,” the invalid bore grateful witness when recovering, “I owe my life to General and Mrs. Ord.” Her loveliness and helplessness were in themselves an argument to move a heart of stone to mercy; nevertheless, it was virtue and grace that mercy was shown.
We made small appeal for sympathy or aid; were too much inclined to the reverse course, carrying poverty and other troubles with a stiff-neck, scantily-clad backs, long-suffering stomachs, and pride and conscience resolved. But—though some form of what we considered oppression was continually before our eyes—our conquerors, when in our midst, were more and more won to pity and then to sympathy. Our commandants might be stern enough when first they came, but when they had lived among us a little while, they softened and saw things in a new light; and the negroes and thecarpet-baggers complained of them every one, and the authorities at Washington could not change them fast enough.
Southerners here and in other cities who had Federal boarders were considered fortunate because of the money and protection secured. In such cases, there was usually mutual kindness and consideration, politeness keeping in the background topics on which differences were cruel and sharp; but the sectional dividing lines prevented free social intermingling.
In places garrisoned by soldiers of coarser types and commanded by men less gentlemanly, women sometimes displayed more pronounced disapprobation. Not always with just occasion, but, again, often with cause only too grave. At the best, it was not pleasant to have strange men sauntering, uninvited, into one’s yard and through one’s house, invading one’s kitchen and entertaining housemaids and cooks. That these men wore blue uniforms was unfortunate for us and for the uniform. At that time, the very sight of “army blue” brought terror, anguish and resentment.
Our famous physicians, Maguire and McCaw, were often called to the Northern sick. Dr. McCaw came once direct to Uncle Randolph from the Dents, where he had been summoned to Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant, and Matoaca listened curiously to his and her uncle’s cordial discussion of General Grant, who had made friends at the South by his course at Appomattox and his insistence on the cartel.
A conversation occurring between another of our physicians and a feminine patient is not without significance. The lady and the doctor’s wife had been friends before the war. “Why has your wife not called upon me, Doctor?” she asked. “Has she forgotten me?” “No, ma’am,” he answered gently, and then in a low,kindly voice: “But she cannot—yet—forget all that has happened since you were girls together.” “But she should not treasure it against me individually.” “She does not, ma’am. But she cannot forget—yet. You would understand if you had been in the beleagured land. If the good women of the North could only imagine themselves in the place of the women of the South during the last four years and in their place now!”
She sighed. “I can see only too plainly that they have suffered unutterably many things that we have been spared. And that they suffer now. It’s natural, too, that they should hate to have us here lording it over them.”
Very different was the spirit of the wife of a Federal officer stationed at Augusta, Georgia, whose declaration that she hoped to see the day when “black heels should stand on white necks” startled the State of Georgia. Many good ladies came South firm in the belief that all Southerners were negro-beaters, slave-traders, and cut-throats; a folk sadly benighted and needing tutelage in the humanities; and they were not always politic in expressing these opinions.
After war, the war spirit always lingers longest in non-combatants—in women and in men who stayed at home and cheered others on. “The soldiers,” said General Grant, “were in favor of a speedy reconstruction on terms least humiliating to the Southern people.” He wrote Mrs. Grant from Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1865: “The suffering that must exist in the South ... will be beyond conception; people who speak of further retaliation and punishment do not conceive of the suffering endured already, or they are heartless and unfeeling.”
General Halleck to General Meade, April 30, 1865:“The Army of the Potomac have shown the people of Virginia how they would be treated as enemies. Let them now prove that they know equally well how to treat the same people as friends.”
“The terrible sufferings of the South,” our press commented, “have softened the hearts of the stern warriors of the Armies of the Potomac and the Cumberland, and while they are calling for pity and justice for us, politicians and fanatics call for vengeance.” General Sherman said: “I do think some political power might be given to the young men who served in the rebel army, for they are a better class than the adventurers who have gone South purely for office.”
During an exciting epoch in reconstruction, I was sitting beside a wounded ex-Confederate in an opera-box, listening to a Southern statesman haranguing us on our wrongs, real and heavy enough, heaven knows, heavier than ever those of war had been. “Rather than submit to continued and intensified humiliations,” cried the orator, a magnetic man of the sort who was carrying Northern audiences to opposite extremes, “we will buckle on our swords and go to war again!” “It might be observed,” remarked my veteran drily, while I clapped my hands, “that if he should buckle on his sword and go to war, it would be what he did not do before.” I held my hands quite still during the rest of that speech.
“Our women never were whipped!” I have heard grizzled Confederates say that proudly. “There is a difference,” remarked one hoary-headed hero, who, after wearing stars on his collar in Confederate service represented his State in the Federal Congress, “between the political and the feminine war-spirit. The former is too often for personal gain. Woman’s is the aftermath of anguish. It has taken a long time to reconstructSouthern women. Some are not reconstructed yet. Suffering was stamped too deep for effacement. The Northern woman suffered with her Southern sister the agony of anxiety and bereavement. But the Southern had other woes, of which the Northern could have no conception. The armies were upon us. There was devastation. The Southern woman and her loved ones lacked food and raiment, the enemy appropriating what we had and blocking ways by which fresh supplies might come; her home was burned over her head. Sometimes she suffered worse things than starvation, worse things than the destruction of her home.
“And women could only sit still and endure, while we could fight back. Women do not understand that war is a matter of business. I had many friends among the men I fought—splendid, brave fellows. Personally, we were friends, and professionally, enemies. Women never get that point of view.”
Woman’s war spirit is faithfulness and it is absolutely reckless of personal advantages, as the following incident may illustrate. General Hunton and General Turner knew each other pretty well, although in their own persons they had never met. They had commanded opposing forces and entertained a considerable respect for each other. General Turner was the first Federal officer that came to Lynchburg, when General Hunton’s wife and youthful son were refugees; he sent Dr. Murray, a Confederate surgeon, to call upon Mrs. Hunton with the message that she was to suffer for nothing he could supply. General Hunton was in prison, she knew not where; was not sure if he were alive or dead.
She had not the feelings her lord entertained for his distinguished antagonist, and her response was: “TellGeneral Turner I would not accept anything from him to save my life!”
Yet she must have been very hungry. She and her youthful son had been reduced to goober-peas. First, her supplies got down to one piece of beef-bone. She thought she would have a soup. For a moment, she left her son to watch the pot, but not to stir the soup. But he thought he would do well to stir it. So he stirred it, and turned the pot over. That day, she had nothing for dinner but goober-peas.
“When I came home,” said General Hunton, when asked for this story’s sequel, “and she told me about her message to General Turner, I wrote him the nicest letter I knew how to write, thanking him for his kindness to the wife of a man whose only claim on him was that he had fought him the best he knew how.
“I don’t think we would ever have had the trouble we had down here,” he continued, “if Northern people had known how things really were. In fact, I know we would not. Why, I never had any trouble with Northern men in all my life except that I just fought them all I knew how. And I never had better friends than among my Republican colleagues in Congress after the war. They thought all the more of me because I stood up so stoutly for the old Confederate Cause.”
Bonds coming about in the natural, inevitable order through interchange of the humanities were respected. But where they seemed the outcome of vanity, frivolity, or coquetry, that was another matter, a very serious one for the Southern participant. The spirit of the times was morbid, yet a noble loyalty was behind it.
Anywhere in the land, a Southern girl showing partiality for Federal beaux came under the ban. If there were nothing else against it, such a course appeared neither true nor dignified; if it were not treason toour lost Confederacy, it were treason to our own poor boys in gray to flutter over to prosperous conquerors.
Nothing could be more sharply defined in lights and shadows than the life of one beautiful and talented Southern woman who matronised the entertainments of a famous Federal general at a post in one of the Cotton States, and thereby brought upon herself such condemnation as made her wines and roses cost her dear. Yet perhaps such affiliations lessened the rigors of military government for her State.
One of the loveliest of Atlanta’s gray-haired dames tells me: “I am unreconstructed yet—Southern to the backbone.” Yet she speaks of Sherman’s godless cohorts as gently as if she were mother of them all. Her close neighbour was a Yankee encampment. The open ground around her was dotted with tents.
There were “all sorts” among the soldiers. None gave insolence or violence. Pilfering was the great trouble; the rank and file were “awfully thievish.” Her kitchen, as usual with Southern kitchens of those days, was a separate building. If for a moment she left her pots and ovens to answer some not-to-be-ignored demand from the house, she found them empty on her return, her dinner gone—a most serious thing when it was as by the skin of her teeth that she got anything at all to cook and any fuel to cook with; and when, moreover, cooking was new and tremendously hard work. “We could not always identify the thief; when we could, we were afraid to incur the enmity of the men. Better have our things stolen than worse happen us, as might if officers punished those men on our report. I kept a still tongue in my head.”
Though a wife and mother, she was yet in girlhood’s years, very soft and fair; had been “lapped in luxury,” with a maid for herself, a nurse for her boy, a servantto do this, that, or the other thing, for her. She thus describes her first essay at the family wash. There was a fine well in her yard, and men came to get water. A big-hearted Irishman caught the little lady struggling over soap-suds. It looked as if she would never get those clothes clean. For one thing, when she tried to wring them, they were streaked with blood from her arms and hands; she had peculiarly fine and tender skin.
“Faith an’ be jabbers!” said Pat, “an’ what is it that you’re thryin’ to do?” “Go away, and let me alone!” “Faith, an’ if ye don’t lave off clanin’ thim garmints, they’ll be that doirty—” “Go ’way!” “Sure, me choild, an’ if ye’ll jis’ step to the other soide of the tub without puttin’ me to the inconvaniance—” He was about to pick her up in his mighty hands. She moved and dropped down, swallowing a sob.
“Sure, an’ it’s as good a washerwoman as ivver wore breeches I am,” said Pat. “An’ that’s what I’ve larned in the army.” In short order, he had all the clothes hanging snow-white on the line; before he left, he cut enough wood for her ironing. “I’m your Bridget ivery wash-day that comes ’roun’,” he said as he swung himself off. He was good as his word. This brother-man did her wash every week. “Sure, an’ it’s a shame it is,” he would say, “the Government fadin’ the lazy nagurs an’ God an’ the divvil can’t make ’em wur-r-k.”
Through Tony, her son, another link was formed ’twixt late enemies. It was hard for mothers busy at housework to keep track of young children; without fences for definement of yard-limits, and with all old landmarks wiped out, it was easy for children to wander beyond bearings. A lost child was no rarity. One day General and Mrs. Saxton drove up in their carriage, bringing Tony. Tony had lost himself; fright, confusion, lack of food, had made him ill; he had beenbrought to the attention of the general and his wife, who, instead of sending the child home by a subordinate, came with him themselves, the lady holding the pale little fellow in her arms, comforting and soothing him. Thus began friendship between Mrs. S. and Mrs. Saxton; not only small Tony was now pressed to take airings with Yankees, but his mother. The general did all he could to make life easier for her; had wood hauled and cut for her. The Southern woman’s reduction to poverty and menial tasks mortified him, as they mortified many another manly blue-coat, witness of the reduction. “It is pitiable and it is all wrong,” said one officer to Mrs. S. “Our people up North simply don’t know how things are down here.” A lady friend of Mrs. S.’s tells me that she knew a Northern officer—(giving his name)—who resigned his commission because he found himself unable to witness the sufferings of Southern women and children, and have a hand in imposing them.
Rulers who came under just condemnation as “military satraps” governing in a democracy in time of peace by the bayonet, when divorced from the exercise of their office, won praise as men. Thus, General Meade’s rule in Georgia is open to severest criticism, yet Ellen Meade Clarke, who saw him as the man and not as the oppressor, says: “I had just married and gone to Atlanta when Sherman ordered the citizens out, which order I hastily obeyed, leaving everything in my Peachtree cottage home. Was among the first to return. Knew all the generals in command; they were all neighbors; General Meade, who was sent to see me by some one bearing our name, proved a good and faithful friend and, on his death-bed, left me his prayer-book.”
MISS MARY MEADE, OF PETERSBURG, VA.
She was known far and wide for her loveliness of personand character, her intellectual gifts and social graces.
LOVERS AND PRAYERS