Buttons, Lovers, Oaths, War Lords, and Prayers for Presidents
Some military orders were very irritating.
The “Button Order” prohibited our men from wearing Confederate buttons. Many possessed no others and had not money wherewith to buy. “Buttons were scarce as hens’ teeth.” The Confederacy had been reduced to all sorts of makeshifts for buttons. Thorns from thornbushes had furnished country folks with such fastenings as pins usually supply, and served convenience on milady’s toilette-table when she went to do up her hair.
One clause in that monstrous order delighted feminine hearts! It provided as thoughtful concession to all too glaring poverty that: “When plain buttons cannot be procured, those formerly used can be covered with cloth.” Richmond ladies looked up all the bits of crape and bombazine they had, and next morning their men appeared on the streets with buttons in mourning! “I would never have gotten Uncle out of the front door if he had realized what I was up to,” Matoaca relates. “Not that he was not mournful enough, but he did not want to mourn that way.”
Somehow, nobody thought about Sam’s button; he was a boy, only fifteen. He happened to go out near Camp Grant in his old gray jacket, the only coat he had; one of his brothers had given it to him months before. It was held together over his breast by a single button, his only button. A Yankee sergeant cutit off with his sword. The jacket fell apart, exposing bepatched and thread-bare underwear. His mother and sisters could not help crying when the boy came in, holding his jacket together with his hand, his face suffused, his eyes full of tears of rage and mortification.
The “Button Trouble” pervaded the entire South. The Tennessee Legislature, Brownlow’s machine, discussed a bill imposing a fine of $5 to $25 upon privates, and $25 to $50 upon officers for wearing the “rebel uniform.” The gaunt, destitute creatures who were trudging, stumping, limping, through that State on their way from distant battlefields and Northern prisons to their homes, had rarely so much as fifty cents in their pockets. Had that bill become a law enforced, Tennessee prisons must have overflowed with recaptured Confederates, or roads and woods with men in undress.
Many a distinguished soldier, home-returning, ignorant that such an order existed, has been held up at the entrance to his native town by a saucy negro sergeant who would shear him of buttons with a sabre, or march him through the streets to the Provost’s office to answer for the crime of having buttons on his clothes.
The provision about covering buttons has always struck me as the unkindest cut of all. How was a man who had no feminine relatives to obey the law? Granted that as a soldier, he had acquired the art of being his own seamstress, how, when he was in the woods or the roads, could he get scraps of cloth and cover buttons?
But of all commands ever issued, the “Marriage Order” was the most extraordinary! That order said people should not get married unless they took the Oath of Allegiance. If they did, they would be arrested. I have forgotten the exact wording, but if you will lookup General Order No. 4,[7]April 29, and signed by General Halleck, you can satisfy any curiosity you may feel. It was a long ukase, saying what-all people should not do unless they took the oath (some felt like taking a good many daily!). Naturally, young people were greatly upset. Many had been engaged a weary while, to be married soon as the war should be over.
Among those affected was Captain Sloan, whose marriage to Miss Wortham was due the Tuesday following. The paper containing the order, heavily ringed with black, darkened the roseate world upon which the bride-elect opened her lovely eyes Saturday morning. The same hand that had put the order in mourning had scribbled on the margin: “If Captain Sloan is not ready to take that oath, I am.”
Her maid informed her that Mr. Carrington, an elderly friend, fond of a joke, was awaiting her. Descending to the drawing-room, she found it full of sympathising neighbours, her betrothed in the midst, all debating a way out of the difficulty. Not even sharp-witted lawyers could see one. In times so out of joint law did not count.
The situation was saved by the fact that General Halleck had a namesake in Captain Sloan’s family. The Captain’s “Uncle Jerry” (otherwise General Jerry Gilmer, of South Carolina) had called a son“Henry Halleck” in honour of his one-time class-mate at West Point. When the idea of the namesake as basis of appeal dawned on Captain Sloan, day was passing. Miss Wortham’s father, who, before the Federal Government had interfered with his dominion as a parent, had been anxious that his very youthful daughter and her betrothed should defer their union, was now quite determined that the rights of the lovers should not be abrogated by Uncle Sam. As member of the Confederate Ambulance Committee, he had been in close touch with Colonel Mulford, Federal Commissioner of Exchange; Judge Ould, Confederate Commissioner, was his personal friend; in combination with these gentlemen, he arranged a meeting twixt lover and war lord.
General Halleck received Hymen’s ambassador with courtesy. The story of the namesake won his sympathetic ear. When told what consternation his order was causing—Captain Sloan plead other cases besides his own—the war lord laughed, scribbled something on a slip of official paper and handed it to Captain Sloan, saying: “Let this be known and I suppose there will be a good many weddings before Monday.” The slip read like this: “Order No. 4 will not go into effect until Monday morning. H. W. Halleck, General Commanding.”
Alas! there were no Sunday papers. The news was disseminated as widely as possible; and three weddings, at least, in high society, happened Sunday in consequence. Mrs. Sloan, a prominent member of Baltimore society, gave her own account of the whole matter in Mrs. Daniel’s “Confederate Scrap-Book,” which any one may see at the Confederate Museum.
“The gown I wore the day after my marriage,” she relates, “was a buff calico with tiny dots in it, and as itwas prettily and becomingly made, I looked as well, and I know I was as happy, as if it had been one of Worth’s or Redfern’s most bewildering conceits—and I am sure it was as expensive, as it cost $30 a yard.”
General Halleck’s order was not unique. Restrictions on marriage had been incorporated in the State Constitution of Missouri, 1864, a section prescribing that “No person shall practice law, be competent as bishop, priest, deacon, minister, elder, or other clergyman of any religious persuasion, sect, or denomination, teach, preach, or solemnise marriage until such person shall have first taken the oath required as to voters.” “Under these provisions,” commented Senator Vest, from whom I borrow, “the parent who had given a piece of bread or a cup of water to a son in the Confederate service, or who had in any way expressed sympathy for such son, was prohibited from registering as voter, serving as juror, or holding any office or acting as trustee, or practicing law, or teaching in any school, or preaching the Gospel, or solemnising the marriage rite.”[8]
Strictly construed, the test-oath imposed by Congress in 1867, like that of Missouri, excluded from franchise and office, the parent who had given a piece of bread or a cup of water or his sympathy to a son in the Confederate service; and the negro who had made wheat and corn for his master’s family, as the applicant must swear that he had not “given aid or comfort to” Confederates.
The Missouri test-oath was one that prominent Union men, among them General Francis P. Blair, leader of the Union Party in his State, a man who had takenpart in the siege of Vicksburg and marched with Sherman to the sea, were unable to take. Americans beholding his statue in Statuary Hall, Washington, as that of one of the two sons Missouri most delights to honour, will find food for curious reflection in the fact that General Blair, going in full Federal uniform to register as a voter, was not allowed to do so. Visitors to Blair Hall at the St. Louis Exposition may have been reminded of this little incident of reconstruction. In 1867, Father John A. Cummings was arrested and tried for performing parochial duties without taking the oath. A bill forbidding women to marry until they took the oath was passed by Tennessee’s Senate, but the House rejected it. This bill, like Missouri’s law, discriminated against ministers of the Gospel; those who had sympathised with “rebels” or in any way aided them, were condemned to work on the public roads and other degrading forms of expiation.
There was no appreciable reluctance on the part of the people to take the oath of allegiance. They could honestly swear for the future to sustain the Government of the United States, but few, or no decent people, even Unionists, living among Confederates, could vow they had given no “aid or comfort” to one. The test-oath cultivated hypocrisy in natives and invited carpet-baggers. A native who would take it was eligible to office, while the honest man who would not lie, was denied a right to vote.
In readiness to take the oath of allegiance, people rushed so promptly to tribunals of administration that the sincerity of the South was questioned at the North, where it could not be understood how sharp was our need to have formalities of submission over and done with, that we might get to work. One striking cartoon pictured Columbia upon a throne gloomily regardinga procession that came bending, bowing, kneeling, creeping, crawling, to her feet, General Lee leader and most abject, with Howell Cobb, Wade Hampton, and other distinguished Southerners around him. Beneath was this: “Can I trust these men?” On the opposite page, a one-legged negro soldier held out his hand; beneath was: “Franchise? And not this man?”
MRS. HENRY L. POPE
(Sarah Moore Ewing)
First Kentucky State Regent D. A. R.
From a portrait by de Franca, photographed by Doerr. Louisville, Ky.
A few people had serious scruples of conscience against taking the oath. I know of two or three whose attitude, considering their personalities, was amusing and pathetic. There was one good lady, Mrs. Wellington, who walked all the way from Petersburg to Richmond, a distance of twenty miles, for fear the oath might be required if she boarded a car!
I turn to Matoaca’s journal:
“I have been visiting Cousin Mary in Powhatan. Of course they have military government there, too. Soldiers ride up, enter without invitation, walk through the house, seat themselves at the piano and play; promenade to the rear, go into the kitchen, sit down and talk with the darkeys.
“At church, I saw officers wearing side-arms. They come regularly to watch if we pray for the President of the United States. I hope they were edified; a number stood straight up during that prayer. Among the most erect were the M. girls, who have veryretroussénoses. The Yankees reported: ‘Not only do they stand up when the President is prayed for, but they turn up their noses.’ They sent word back: ‘A mightier power than the Yankee Army turned up our noses.’
“I hear they have dealt severely with Rev. Mr. Wingfield because he would not read that prayer for the President. When brought up for it, he told the examining officer he could not—it was a matter ofconscience. They put a ball and chain on him and made him sweep the streets. And these people are the exponents of ‘freedom,’ and ‘liberty of conscience.’ They come from a land whose slogan is these words! They have no right to force us to pray according to their views. For myself, I kneel during the prayer, I try to pray it; I seek to feel it, since to pray without feeling is mockery. But I don’t feel it.
“Uncle advised: ‘My daughter, no man needs your prayers more than the President of the United States. He has great and grave responsibilities. We must desire that a higher power shall direct him. The President is surrounded by advisers bent on revenge, so bent on it that they seem to care nothing whatever for the Union—the real union of the North and South.’ So I bow my head, and I try—God knows I try! But thoughts of all the blood that has been shed, of the homes that have been burned, the suffering and starvation endured, will rush into my mind as I kneel. Dear Christ! did you know how hard a command you laid upon us when you said, ‘Pray for your enemies?’”
An entry after Mr. Lincoln’s death says: “How can I pray that prayer in the face of this?” Below is pasted Johnson’s proclamation charging the assassination to Mr. Davis and other Southern leaders. This follows: “HowcanI pray for the President of the United States? That proclamation is an insult flung in the face of the whole South! And we have to take it.”
They had as much trouble at Washington over our prayers as over our few buttons and clothes.
The Sunday after the evacuation—one week from the day on which the messenger came from General Lee to Mr. Davis—the Federals were represented in St. Paul’s by distinguished and respectful worshippers.Nearly all women present were in black. When the moment came for the petition for “the President of the Confederate States and all others in authority,” you could have heard a pin fall. The congregation had kinsmen in armies still under the authority of the President of the Confederacy; they were full of anxiety; their hearts were torn and troubled. Were they here before God to abjure their own? Were they to utter prayer that was mockery? To require them to pray for the President of the United States was like calling upon the martyrs of old to burn incense to strange gods. Dr. Minnegerode read the prayer, omitting the words “for the President of the Confederate States,” simply saying “for all in authority.” Generals Weitzel, Shepley and Ripley had consented that it was to be thus.
Assistant Secretary of War Dana writes to Secretary of War Stanton: “On Friday, I asked Weitzel about what he was going to do in regard to opening the churches on Sunday. He said ministers would be warned against treasonable utterances and be told they must put up loyal prayers.”
It seems that after this conversation the determination of the Commandant and his Staff to wrest piety and patriotism out of the rebels at one fell swoop, underwent modification, partly, perhaps, as a concession to the Almighty, of whom it was fair to presume that He might not be altogether pleased with prayers offered on the point of a sword.
Scandalised at official laxity in getting just dues from Heaven for the United States, Dana continues: “It shakes my faith a good deal in Weitzel.” In subsequent letters he says it was Shepley’s or Ripley’s fault; Weitzel really thought the people ought to be made to pray right; the crime was somehow fastened finallyon Judge Campbell’s back, and Weitzel was informed that he must have no further oral communications with this dangerous and seditious person. Thus Mr. Stanton rounded up Weitzel: “If you have consented that services should be performed in the Episcopal Churches of Richmond without the usual prayer said in loyal churches for the President, your action is strongly condemned by this Department. I am not willing to believe that an officer of the United States commanding in Richmond would consent to such an omission of respect for the President of the United States.” Weitzel: “Do you desire that I should order this form of prayer in Episcopal, Hebrew, Roman Catholic, and other churches where they have a liturgy?” Stanton: “No mark of respect must be omitted to President Lincoln which was rendered to the rebel, Jeff Davis.” Weitzel: “Dispatch received. Order will be issued in accordance therewith.”
Is it any wonder that Grant and Sherman between them finally said to President Johnson: “Mr. President, you should make some order that we of the army are not bound to obey the orders of Mr. Stanton as Secretary of War.”
The Episcopal clergy presented the case clearly to General Weitzel and his Staff, who, as reasonable men, appreciated the situation. “The Church and State are not one in this country; we, as men, in all good faith take the oath of allegiance required of us. As priests, we are under ecclesiastical jurisdiction; we cannot add to the liturgy. A convention of the Church must be called. Meanwhile, we, of course, omit words held treasonable, reciting, ‘for all in authority,’ which surely includes the President. Forcing public feeling will be unwise; members will absent themselves, or go to a church which, not using any ritual, is not undercompulsion; the order is, in effect, discrimination against the Episcopal Church.”
Our people, they said, “desire by quiet and inoffensive conduct to respond to the liberal policy of those in command; they deeply appreciate the conciliatory measures adopted, and all the more regret to appear as dissenters.” They wrote to President Johnson, asking opportunity for action by heads of the diocese; they said that when the South seceded, standing forms had obtained for months till change was so wrought. That letter went the rounds of the War, State, and Executive Departments, and was returned “disapproved,” and the Episcopal Churches of Richmond were actually closed by military order until they would say that prayer.
Even President Lincoln was moved to write General Weitzel, asking what it meant that he hadn’t made people pray as they ought! “You told me not to insist upon little things,” said Weitzel.
Had we been let alone in the matter of praying for the President, we would all very soon have come to see the subject in the light in which Uncle Randolph presented it. As it was, conscientious prelates were in straitened positions, not wishing to lead their people in petitions which the latter would resent or regard at the best as empty formula. Omission of the prayer altogether was recommended by Bishop Wilmer, of Alabama, as the wisest course for the moment; General Woods suspended the Bishop and all clergy of his diocese; they were not to preach or to lead in church service; and, I believe, were not to marry the living, baptise the new-born, or bury the dead. President Johnson set such orders aside as soon as he came to his senses after the shock of Mr. Lincoln’s death.
General McPherson commanded pastors of Vicksburg (1864) to read the prescribed prayer for thePresident at each and every service; pastors of churches without such prescribed form were instructed to invent one. The Bishop of Natchez, William Henry Elder, was banished because he would not read the prayer. Some young ladies, of Vicksburg, were banished because they rose and left the church, on Christmas morning, when a minister read it. An order signed by General McPherson, served on each, said she was “hereby banished and must leave the Federal lines within forty-eight hours under penalty of imprisonment.” No extension of time for getting “their things ready” was allowed. Permission was given for the mother of one delinquent to chaperon the bevy, which, with due ceremony, was deported under flag of truce, hundreds of Federal soldiers watching.
One Sunday in New Orleans under Butler’s rule, Major Strong was at Dr. Goodrich’s church; time came for prayer for the Confederacy; there was silence. Major Strong rose and thundered: “Stop, sir! I close this church in ten minutes!” Rev. Dr. Leacock[9]wrote Butler a tender letter begging him not to force people to perjury in taking the oath through fear, prefacing: “No man more desires restoration of the Union than I.” Helen Gray, Dr. Leacock’s granddaughter, tells me: “My grandfather was arrested in church and marched through the city in ecclesiastical robes to answer for not praying as Butler bade; Rev. Dr. Goodrich and Rev. Mr. Fulton (now Editor of the ‘Church Standard’) were also arrested. Butler sent them North to be imprisoned in Fort Lafayette. The levee was thronged with people, many weeping to see them go. They were met at New York by influentialcitizens, among these Samuel Morse, the inventor, who offered them his purse, carriage and horses. They were paroled and entertained at the Astor House. Some people were bitter and small towards them; many were kind, among these, I think, was Bishop Potter. Hon. Reverdy Johnson took up their case. Grandfather served St. Mark’s, Niagara, Canada, in the rector’s absence; the people presented him, through Mrs. Dr. Marston, with a purse; he served at Chamblee, where the people also presented him with a purse. Mrs. Greenleaf, Henry W. Longfellow’s sister, sent him a purse of $500; she had attended his church during ante-bellum visits to New Orleans, and she loved him dearly. Rev. F. E. Chubbuck, the Yankee Chaplain appointed to succeed my grandfather, called on my grandmother, expressed regrets and sympathies, and offered to do anything he could for her. I tell the tale as it has come to me.” Government reports confirm this in essentials.
MRS. WILLIAM HOWELL (Mary Leacock)MRS. ANDREW GRAY (Lina Leacock)
Daughters of the Rev. Dr. Leacock, of Christ Church, New Orleans.
Of course, denominations not using a liturgy, had an advantage, but they were not exempt. Major B. K. Davis, Lexington, Mo., April 25, 1865, to Major-General Dodge: “On the 7th of April, from the well-known disloyalty of the churches of this place, I issued an order that pastors of all churches return thanks for our late victories. The pastor of the M. E. Church declined to do so, and I took the keys of his church.”
In Huntsville, Alabama, 1862, Rev. F. A. Ross, Presbyterian minister, was arrested and sent north by General Rousseau because, when commanded to pray for the Yankees, he prayed: “We beseech thee, O Lord, to bless our enemies and remove them from our midst as soon as seemeth good in Thy sight!”[10]
“The Confederate Veteran” tells this of General Lee. At Communion in St. Paul’s soon after the occupation, the first person to walk up to the altar and kneel was a negro man. Manner and moment made the act sinister, a challenge, not an expression of piety. The congregation sat, stunned and still, not knowing what to do. General Lee rose, walked quietly up the aisle and knelt near the negro. The people followed and service proceeded as if no innovation had been attempted. The custom by which whites preceded negroes to the altar originated, not in contempt for negroes, but in ideas of what was right, orderly and proper. So far were whites from despising negroes in religious fellowship that it was not strange for both races to assemble in plantation chapels and join in worship conducted by the black preacher in the white preacher’s absence. I sometimes think those old Southerners knew the negro better than we ever can. But just after the war, they were not supposed to know anything of value on any subject.
Wherever there was a press, it was muzzled by policy if not by such direct commands as General Sherman’s in Savannah, when he ordained that there should be no more than two newspapers, and forbade “any libelous publication, mischievous matter, premature acts, exaggerated statements,or any comments whatever upon the acts of the constituted authorities,” on pain of heavy penalties to editors and proprietors. Some people say we ought, even now, for the family honour, to hush up everything unpleasant and discreditable. Not so! It is not well for men in power to think that their acts are not to be inquired into some day.
CLUBBED TO HIS KNEES
Clubbed to His Knees
As illustrations of embarrassments we had to face, I have chiefly chosen incidents showing a kindly and forbearing spirit on the part of Federal commanders, because I desire to pay tribute wherever I may to men in blue, remembering that Southern boys are now wearing the blue and that all men wearing the blue are ours. I have chiefly chosen incidents in which the Federal officers, being gentlemen and brave men—being decent and human—revolted against exercise of cruelty to a fallen foe.
Truth compels the shield’s reverse.
In Richmond, one officer in position went to a prominent citizen and demanded $600 of him, threatening to confiscate and sell his home if he did not give it. This citizen, a lawyer and man of business, knew the threat could not be executed, and refused to meet the demand. Others not so wise paid such claims. In all parts of the South, many people, among them widows and orphans, were thus impoverished beyond the pinched condition in which war left them. Some sold their remnants of furniture, the very beds they slept on, a part of their scanty raiment, and in one case on official record, “the coverlid off the baby’s bed,” to satisfy the spurious claims of men misusing authority.
An instance illustrating our helplessness is that of Captain Bayard, who came out of the war with some make-shift crutches, a brave heart, and a love affair as the sum total of his capital in life. He made hisfirst money by clerical work for sympathetic Federal officials. This he invested in a new suit of clothes; “They are right nice-looking,” he said with modest pride when conveying the pleasing intelligence to one interested; and he bought a pair of artificial feet.
Then he set out to see his sweetheart, feeling very proud. It was the first time he had tried his feet on the street, and he was not walking with any sense of security, but had safely traversed a square or two and was crossing a street, when a Federal officer came galloping along and very nearly ran over him; he threw up his cane. The horse shied, the cavalryman jumped off and knocked him down. As fast as he struggled up, the cavalryman knocked him down again. A burly man ran to his assistance; the cavalryman struck this man such a blow that it made tears spring in his eyes; then mounted and galloped off. “He was obliged to see,” said the captain, “that I was a cripple, and that I could not get out of his way or withstand his blows.”
The worst Virginia had to bear was as nothing to what the Carolinas suffered. There was that poor boy, who was hung in Raleigh on Lovejoy’s tree—where the Governor’s Mansion now stands. He had fired off a pistol; had hurt nobody—had not attempted to hurt anybody; it was just a boy’s thoughtless, crazy deed.
Entering Rosemont Cemetery, Newberry, S. C., one perceives on a tall marble shaft “The Lone Star of Texas” and this: “Calvin S. Crozier, Born at Brandon, Mississippi, August 1840, Murdered at Newberry, S. C., September 8, 1865.”
At the close of the war, there were some 99,000 Confederates in Federal prisons, whose release, beginning in May, continued throughout the summer.Among these was Crozier, slender, boyish in appearance, brave, thin to emaciation, pitifully weak and homesick. It was a far cry to his home in sunny Galveston, but he had traversed three States when he fell ill in North Carolina. A Good Samaritan nursed him, and set him on his way again. At Orangeburg, S. C., a gentleman placed two young ladies, journeying in the same direction, under his care. To Crozier, the trust was sacred. At Newberry, the train was derailed by obstructions placed on the track by negro soldiers of the 33d U. S. Regiment, which, under command of Colonel Trowbridge, white, was on its way from Anderson to Columbia. Crozier got out with others to see what was the matter. Returning, he found the coach invaded by two half-drunk negro soldiers, cursing and using indecent language. He called upon them to desist, directing their attention to the presence of ladies. They replied that they “didn’t care a d—!” One attempted gross familiarities with one of the ladies. Crozier ejected him; the second negro interfered; there was a struggle in the dark; one negro fled unhurt; the other, with a slight cut, ran towards camp, yelling: “I’m cut by a d—d rebel!” Black soldiers came in a mob.
The narrative, as told on the monument, concludes: “The infuriated soldiers seized a citizen of Newberry, upon whom they were about to execute savage revenge, when Crozier came promptly forward and avowed his own responsibility. He was hurried in the night-time to the bivouac of the regiment to which the soldiers belonged, was kept under guard all night, was not allowed communication with any citizen, was condemned to die without even the form of a trial, and was shot to death about daylight the following morning, and his body mutilated.”
He had been ordered to dig his own grave, but refused. A hole had been dug, he was made to kneel on its brink, the column fired upon him, he tumbled into it, and then the black troops jumped on it, laughing, dancing, stamping. The only mercy shown him was by one humane negro, who, eager to save his life, besought him to deny his identity as the striker of the blow. White citizens watched their moment, removed his remains, and gave them Christian burial.
There was the burning of Brenham, Texas, September 7, 1866. Federal soldiers from the post attended a negro ball, and so outraged the decencies that negro men closed the festivities. The soldiers pursued the negro managers, one of whom fled for safety to a mansion, where a party of young white people were assembled. The pursuers abused him in profane and obscene terms. The gentlemen reminded them that ladies were in hearing; they said they “didn’t care a d—!” and drew pistols on the whites. A difficulty ensued, two soldiers were wounded, their comrades carried them to camp, returned and fired the town. The incendiaries were never punished, their commander spiriting them away when investigation was begun.[11]
“Numbers of our citizens were murdered by the soldiers of the United States, and in some instances deliberately shot down by them, in the presence of their wives and children,” writes Hon. Charles Stewart, of reconstruction times, early and late, in Texas, and cites the diabolical midnight murder of W. A. Burns and Dallas, his son, giving the testimony of Sarah, daughter of one, sister of the other, and witness of the horrible deed, from the performance of which the assassins walked away “laughing.” “Let no one suppose thatthe instances given were isolated cases of oppression that might occur under any Government, however good,” says Mr. Stewart. “They were of such frequent occurrence as to excite the alarm of good people.”
Federal posts were a protection to the people, affording a sense of peace and security, or the reverse, according to the character of the commanders. To show how differently different men would determine the same issue, it may be cited that General Wilde confiscated the home of Mrs. Robert Toombs to the uses of the Freedmen’s Bureau, ordering her to give possession and limiting the supplies she might remove to two weeks’ provisions. General Steedman humanely revoked this order, restoring her home to Mrs. Toombs. There was no rule by which to forecast the course a military potentate, ignorant of civil law, might pursue. The mood he was in, the dinner he had eaten, the course of a flirtation on hand, motives of personal spite, gain or favoritism, might determine a decision affecting seriously a whole community, who would be powerless to appeal against it, his caprice being law.
In a previous chapter I have told a story showing General Saxton in a most attractive light. In his “Provisional Governorship of South Carolina,” Governor Perry says: “The poor refugees (of the Sea Islands) were without fortune, money or the means of living! Many had nothing to eat except bread and water, and were thankful if they could get bread. I appointed W. H. Trescott to go to Washington and represent them in trying to recover their lands. He procured an order for the restoration, but General Saxton or some of his sub-agents thwarted in some way the design and purport of this order, and I believe the negroes are still in possession.”
So, in some places you will hear Southerners say that,save for domestic and industrial upheavals resulting from emancipation and for the privations of acute poverty, they suffered no extreme trials while under the strictly martial regime—were victims of no act of tyranny from local Federal authorities; in other places, you will hear words reflecting praise on such authorities; in others, evidence is plain that inhabitants endured worse things of military satraps than Israel suffered of Pharaoh.
As the days went by, there were fresh occasions for the conclusion: “The officers who gave Captain Bayard work and the officer who knocked him down are types of two classes of our conquerors and rulers. One is ready to help the cripple to his feet, the other to knock him down again and again. Congress will club the cripple with the negro ballot.” “If that be true,” said some, “the cripple will rise no more. Let me go hence ere my eyes behold it. Spilled blood and ruin wrought I can forgive, but not this thing!”
NEW FASHIONS
New Fashions: A Little Bonnet and an Alpaca Skirt
The confessions of Matoaca:
“I will never forget how queer we thought the dress of the Northern ladies. A great many came to Richmond, and Military Headquarters was very gay. Band answered band in the neighbourhood of Clay and Twelfth Streets, and the sound of music and dancing feet reached us through our closed shutters.
“Some ladies wore on the streets white petticoats, braided with black, under their dresses, which were looped up over these. Their gowns were short walking length, and their feet could be seen quite plainly. That style would be becoming to us, we said to ourselves, thinking of our small feet—at least I said so to myself. Up to that time we had considered it immodest to show our feet, our long dresses and hoop-skirts concealing them. We had been wearing coal-scuttle bonnets of plaited straw, trimmed with corn-shuck rosettes. I made fifteen one spring, acquired a fine name as a milliner, and was paid for my work.
“I recall one that was quite stunning. I got hold of a bit of much-worn white ribbon and dyed it an exquisite shade of green, with a tea made of coffee-berries. Coffee-berries dye a lovely green; you might remember that if you are ever in a war and blockaded. Our straw-and-shuck bonnets were pretty. How I wish I had kept mine as a souvenir—and other specimens of my home-made things! But we threw all ourhome-made things away—we were so tired of make-shifts!—and got new ones as soon as we could. How eager we were to see the fashions! We had had no fashions for a long time.
“When the Northern ladies appeared on the streets, they did not seem to have on any bonnets at all. They wore tiny, three-cornered affairs tied on with narrow strings, and all their hair showing in the back. We thought them the most absurd and trifling things! But we made haste to get some. How did we see the fashions when we kept our blinds closed? Why, we could peep through the shutters, of course. Remember, we had seen no fashions for a long time. Then, too, after the earlier days, we did not keep our windows shut.
“I began braiding me a skirt at once. The Yankees couldn’t teach me anything about braid! To the longest day I live, I will remember the reign of skirt-braid during the Confederacy! There was quite a while when we had no other trimming, yet had that in abundance, a large lot having been run through the blockade; it came to the Department. The Department got to be a sort of Woman’s Exchange. Prices were absurd. I paid $75 for a paper of pins and thought it high, but before the war was over, I was thankful to get a paper for $100. I bought, once, a cashmere dress for the price of a calico, $25 a yard, because it was a little damaged in running the blockade. At the same time, Mrs. Jefferson Davis bought a calico dress pattern for $500 and a lawn for $1,000; one of my friends paid $1,400 for a silk, another, $1,100 for a black merino. Mine was the best bargain. It lasted excellently. I made it over in the new fashion after the evacuation. One of the styles brought by the Northern ladies was black alpaca skirts fringed. I got one as soon as I could.
“The Yankees introduced some new fashions in other things besides clothes that I remember vividly, one being canned fruit. I had never seen any canned fruit before the Yankees came. Perhaps we had had canned fruit, but I do not remember it. Pleasant innovations in food were like to leave lasting impressions on one who had been living on next to nothing for an indefinite period.”
The mystery of her purchase of the alpaca skirt and the little bonnet is solved by her journal:
“I am prospering with my needlework. I sew early and late. My friends who are better off give me work, paying me as generously as they can. Mammy Jane has sold some of my embroideries to Northern ladies. Many ladies, widows and orphans, are seeking employment as teachers. The great trouble is that so few people are able to engage them or to pay for help of any kind. Still, we all manage to help each other somehow.
“Nannie, our young bride, is raising lettuce, radish, nasturtiums, in her back yard for sale. She is painting her house herself (with her husband’s help). She is going to give the lettuce towards paying the church debt. She has nothing else to give. I think I will raise something to buy window-panes for this house. Window-panes patched with paper are all the fashion in this town.
“The weather is very hot now. After supper, we go up on Gamble’s Hill, our fashionable cooling-off resort, to get a breath of fresh air; then come back and work till late in the night. O, for a glimpse of the mountains! a breath of mountain air! But I can only dream of the Greenbrier White and the Old Sweet Springs!
“Last night, on Gamble’s Hill, we observed near usa party whom we recognized by accent and good clothes as Northerners. One of the ladies, looking down on our city, said: ‘Behold the fruits of secession!’ Below us in the moonlight lay Richmond on her noble river, beautiful in spite of her wounds. A gentleman spoke: ‘Massachusetts thought of seceding once. I am sorry for these people.’ How I wanted to shout: ‘Behold the fruits of invasion!’ But, of course, I did not. I thanked our advocate with my eyes.”
A few had a little store laid up previous to the evacuation. A short time before that, the Confederate Government was selling some silver coin at $1 for $60 in notes; at Danville, it was sold for $70; and thrifty ones who could, bought.
Women who had been social queens, who had had everything heart could wish, and a retinue of servants happy to obey their behests and needing nothing, now found themselves reduced to harder case than their negroes had ever known, and gratefully and gracefully availed themselves of the lowliest tasks by which they might earn enough to buy a dress for the baby, a pair of shoes for little bare feet, coffee or tea or other luxury for an invalid dear one, or a bit of any sort of food to replenish a nearly empty larder.
The first greenbacks were brought to one family by a former dining-room servant. His mistress, unable to pay him wages, had advised him to seek employment elsewhere. At the end of a week, he returned, saying: “Mistiss, here is five dollahs. I’m makin’ twenty dollahs a month, an’ rations, waitin’ on one uh de Yankee officers. I’ll bring you my wages evvy week.” “John,” she said, “I don’t know how to take it, for I don’t see how I can ever pay it back.” He knew she was in dire straits. “You took care uh me all my life, Mistiss, an’ learnt me how to work. I orter do whutI kin fuh you.” Seeing her still hesitate: “You got property, you kin raise money on presen’y. Den you kin pay me back, but I’d be proud ef you wouldn’ bother yo’se’f.” Could her son have done more? The Old South had many negroes as good and true. Was the system altogether wrong that developed such characters?
Some of our people had Northern friends and relatives who contrived money to them. Mrs. Gracebridge was one of the fortunate; and everybody was glad. No one deserved better of fate or friends. She had entertained many refugees, was the most hospitable soul in the world. Had her table been large enough to seat the world, the world would have been welcome. From her nephew, living in New York, an officer of the United States Navy came with a message and money.
She had a way of addressing everybody as “my dear friend.” Her household teasingly warned her that she was going to call this messenger “my dear friend.” “Never!” she exclaimed. “Never in the world will I call a Yankee, ‘my dear friend!’ Never! How can you say such a thing to me! I am surprised, astonished, at the suggestion!” They listened, and before she and her guest had exchanged three sentences, heard her calling him “my dear friend,” in spite of the insistent evidence of his gorgeous blue uniform, gold lace and brass buttons, that he was decidedly a Yankee.
It was a custom, rooted and grounded in her being, to offer refreshments to guests; when nothing else was left with which to show good feeling, she would bring in some lumps of white sugar, a rarity and a luxury, and pass this around. Never will spying intimates forget the expression of that naval officer’s countenance when, at her call, a little black hand-maid presented on an old-fashioned silver salver, in an exquisite saucer, a fewlumps of white sugar! He looked hard at it; then grasped the situation and a lump, glancing first at her, then at the sugar, as if he did not know whether to laugh or to cry.
She was a delightful woman. She and her two little darkeys afforded her friends no end of diversion. She had never managed her negroes in slavery-time. After the war, everybody’s darkeys did as they pleased; hers did a little more so. At this pair, she constantly exclaimed, in great surprise: “They don’t mind a word I say!” “My dear lady!” she was reminded, “you must expect that. They are free. They don’t belong to you now.”
And she would ask: “If they don’t belong to me, whose are they?” That was to her a hopeless enigma. They had to belong to somebody. It was out of decency and humanity that they should have nobody to belong to! They would stand behind her chair, giggling and bubbling over with merriment.
THE GENERAL IN THE CORNFIELD
The General in the Cornfield
We did anything and everything we could to make a living. Prominent citizens became pie-sellers. Colonel Cary, of General Magruder’s Staff, came home to find his family desperately poor, as were all respectable folks. He was a brave soldier, an able officer; before the war, principal of a male academy at Hampton. Now, he did not know to what he could turn his hand for the support of himself and family. He walked around his place, came in and said to his wife: “My dear, I have taken stock of our assets. You pride yourself on your apple-pies. We have an apple-tree, and a cow. I will gather the apples and milk the cow, and you will make the pies, and I will go around and sell them.”
Armed with pies, he met his aforetime antagonists at Camp Grant and conquered them quite. The pies were delicious; the seller was a soldier, an officer of distinction, in hard luck; and the men at Camp Grant were soldiers, too. There was sharp demand and good price; only the elite—officers of rank—could afford to indulge in these confections. Well it was that Yankee mothers had cultivated in their sons an appetite for pies. One Savannah lady made thirty dollars selling pies to Sherman’s soldiers; in Georgia’s aristocratic “City by the Sea,” high-bred dames stood at basement windows selling cakes and pies to whoever would buy.
Colonel Cary had thrifty rivals throughout Dixie. A once rich planter near Columbia made a living by selling flowers; a Charleston aristocrat peddled tea bythe pound and molasses by the quart to his former slaves. General Stephen Elliott, Sumter’s gallant defender, sold fish and oysters which he caught with his own hands. His friend, Captain Stoney, did likewise. Gentlemen of position and formerly of wealth did not pause to consider whether they would be discredited by pursuing occupations quite as humble. Men of high attainments, without capital, without any basis upon which to make a new start in life except “grit,” did whatever they could find to do and made merry over it.
Yet reporters going over our battle-swept, war-scarred land from whose fields our laboring class had been by one fell stroke diverted, judged us by evidences of inertia seen from windows of creepy little cars—(where we had any cars at all)—that stopped every few hours to take on wood or water or to repair something or other. For a long time, there was good reason why our creepy railroads should be a doubly sore subject. Under the reconstruction governments every State paid thousands of dollars for railroads that were never built.
All that Southern white men did, according to some ready scribes, was to sit around cross-roads stores, expectorate tobacco-juice, swap jokes, and abuse Yankees and niggers. In honesty, it must be confessed there was too much of this done, any being too much. Every section has its corps of idlers, its crew of yarn-spinners and drinkers, even in ordinary times when war has not left upon men the inevitable demoralisation that follows in its train. Had railway travellers gone into cotton and cornfields and tobacco lots, they would have found there much of the flower and chivalry of the Old South “leading the row.” Sons of fathers who had been the wealthiest and most influential men in Dixie came home from the war to swing the hoe and drive the plow asresolutely as ever they had manned a battery or charged the breastworks.
But the young men of the South were not born tillers of the soil; not fitted by inheritance or education for manual toil. They were descendants of generations who had not labored with their hands but had occupied themselves as lawyers, doctors, politicians, gentlemen of leisure, and agriculturists commanding large working forces. Our nation might have been gainer had the Government devised measures by which talented men could have been at once bound to its interests and their gifts utilised for the common advantage. Instead of which, they were threatened with trial for treason, with execution or exile, were disfranchised, disqualified, put under the ban. Many who would have made brilliant and useful servants of the Republic were driven abroad and found honourable service in Mexico, Brazil, Egypt and Europe.
It is difficult for us at this day to realise what little promise life held for the young American of the South; difficult even for the South of the present to appreciate the irritations and humiliations that vexed and chafed him. Many felt that they had no longer a country.
Mischief was inevitable as the result of repressed or distorted energies, thwarted or stifled ambition. Some whose record for courage and steadiness on the field of battle reflects glory on our common country, failed utterly at adaptation. But as the patient effort of the great body politic changed the times and opened opportunity, middle-age and youth were ready to rush in with a will, occupying and improving fields of industry.
But the old people of the South never reacted. Many simply sat down and died, succumbing to bereavement, hardships and heartbreak. They felt that their country was dead. Men of their own blood, their brothers,had set an alien race, an ignorant race, half-human, half-savage, above them; were insisting that they should send their children to school with children of this race, while their consciences cried out against the mere discussion of this thing as an evil to themselves and the negro, and against the thing itself as crime. Intermarriage was discussed in legislative halls; bills sanctioning it were introduced; and the horrible black, social evil due to passions of the white man and the half-human, half-savage woman—the incubus, the nightmare, under which the whole section had groaned with groanings that cannot be uttered—was flung in their faces as more than fair reason.
With reconstruction there was strengthening of the tendency towards expatriation. Despair and disgust drove many away; and more would have gone had means been at hand. Whole families left the South and made homes in Europe; among these, a goodly proportion were proud old Huguenots from South Carolina. In some of the Cotton States it looked as if more white men were to be lost thus than had been lost in battle. In December, 1867, Mr. Charles Nathan, of New Orleans, announced through the press that he had contracted with the Emperor of Brazil to transport 1,000 yearly to that empire.
Many went into the enemy’s country—went North. Their reports to old neighbours were that they liked the enemy immensely at home; the enemy was serenely unconscious of the mischief his fad was working in other people’s homes. He set down everything ill that happened South to the Southern whites’ “race prejudice”; and sipped his own soup and ate his own pie in peace. The immigrant learned that it was wise to hold his tongue when discussion of the negro came up. He was considered not to know anything worthhearing upon the subject. His most careful and rational utterances would be met with a pitying look which said as plainly as words lips polite withheld: “Race prejudice hallucination!”
General Lee raised no uncertain voice against expatriation; from his prison cell, Jefferson Davis deplored it in the first letters he was allowed to write. Lee set prompt example in doing what his hand found to do, and in choosing a task rather for public service than for private gain. I quote a letter written by Mrs. Lee to Miss Mason, dated Derwent, Virginia, December, 1865:
“The papers will have told you that General Lee has decided to accept the position at Lexington. I do not think he is very fond of teaching, but he is willing to do anything that will give him an honourable support. He starts tomorrowen chevalfor Lexington. He prefers that way, and, besides, does not like to part even for a time from his beloved steed, the companion of many a hard-fought battle.... The kindness of the people of Virginia to us has been truly great, and they seem never to tire. The settlement of Palmore’s surrounding us does not suffer us to want for anything their gardens or farms can furnish.... My heart sinks when I hear of the destitution and misery which abound further South—gentle and refined women reduced to abject poverty, and no hope of relief.”
Far more lucrative positions had been offered him; salaries without work, for the mere use of his name. Solicitations came from abroad, and brilliant opportunities invited across the ocean. He took the helm at Washington College with this avowal: “I have a self-imposed task which I must accomplish. I have led the young men of the South in battle. I have seen many of them fall under my standard. I shall devote my lifenow to training young men to do their duty in life.” Urged in 1867 to run for office, he declined, believing that his candidacy might not contribute to sectional unification. As nearly perfect was this man as men are made. Our National Capitol is the poorer because his statue is not there. If it ever is, I should like to see on its pedestal Grant’s tribute: “There was no use to urge him to do anything against his ideas of what was right.”
When the crippled and impoverished General Hood refused to receive money raised by subscription, the “Albany Evening Journal” commented: “It is the first instance we have ever seen recorded of a ‘Southern gentleman’ too proud or self-reliant to accept filthy lucre, come from what source it may.” The “Petersburg Index-Appeal” responded: