John C. Reed
Raphael Semmes born, 1809
September Twenty-Eighth
TheAlabamahad been built in perfect good faith by the Lairds. When she was contracted for no question had been raised as to the right of a neutral to build and sell to a belligerent such a ship. The reader has seen that the Federal Secretary of the Navy himself had endeavored not only to build anAlabama, but ironclads in England.
Raphael Semmes
John Laurens born, 1754
September Twenty-Ninth
When summer flowers are dying,August past,When Autumn’s breath is sighingOn the blast;When the red leaves flutter downTo the sod,Then the year kneels for its crown—Goldenrod!Virginia Lucas
September Thirtieth
Thistles send their missives whiteTo the sky;Robins southward wing their flight,(Sad goodbye!)But where Summer, yellow-gowned,Last has trod,Thorn-torn fragments strew the ground—Goldenrod!Virginia Lucas
Thy glory flames in every blade and leafTo blind the eyes of grief;Thy vineyards and thine orchards bend with fruitThat sorrow may be mute;A hectic splendor lights thy days to sleep,Ere the gray dusk may creepSober and sad along thy dusty ways,Like a lone nun, who prays;High and faint-heard thy passing migrant calls;Thy lazy lizard sprawlsOn his gray stone, and many slow winds creepAbout thy hedge, asleep;The Sun swings farther toward his love, the South,To kiss her glowing mouth;And Death, who steals among thy purpling bowers,Is deeply hid in flowers.John Charles McNeill
October First
Come on thy swaying feet,Wild Spirit of the Fall!With wind-blown skirts, loose hair of russet brownCrowned with bright berries of the bitter sweet.Trip a light measure with the hurrying leaf,Straining thy few late roses to thy breast:With laughter overgay, sweet eyes drooped down,That none may guess thy grief:Dare not to pause for restLest the slow tears should gather to their fall.Danske Dandridge
October Second
In all our associations; in all our agreements let us never lose sight of this fundamental maxim—that all power was originally lodged in, and consequently derived from, the people. We should wear it as a breastplate, and buckle it on as our armour.
George Mason
October Third
What a brave splendourIs in the October air! How rich and clear—How life-full, and all joyous! We must renderLove to the Spring-time, with its sproutings tender,As to a child quite dear—But autumn is a noon, prolonged, of glory—A manhood not yet hoary.Philip Pendleton Cooke
October Fourth
At morn—at noon—at twilight dim—Maria! thou hast heard my hymn!In joy and woe—in good and ill—Mother of God, be with me still!When the Hours flew brightly by,And not a cloud obscured the sky,My soul, lest it should truant be,Thy grace did guide to thine and thee!Now, when storms of Fate o’ercastDarkly my Present and my Past,Let my future radiant shineWith sweet hopes of thee and thine!Edgar Allan Poe
October Fifth
Tormented sorely by the chastening rod,I muttered to myself: “There is no God!”But faithful friend, I found your soul so true,That God revealed Himself in giving you.Walter Malone
October Sixth
Who said “false as dreams”? Not one who sawInto the wild and wondrous world they sway;No thinker who hath read their mystic law;No Poet who hath weaved them in his lay.Henry Timrod
Henry Timrod dies, 1867
Nathaniel Bacon dies, 1676
October Seventh
And the fever called “Living”Is conquered at last.Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe dies, 1849
Battle of King’s Mountain, N. C., 1780
October Eighth
EDGAR ALLAN POE
It is no small achievement to have sung a few imperishable songs of bereaved love and illusive beauty. It is no small achievement to have produced individual and unexcelled strains of harmony which have since so rung in the ears of brother poets that echoes of them may be detected even in the work of such original and accomplished versemen as Rossetti and Swinburne. It is no small achievement to have pursued one’s ideal until one’s dying day, conscious the while that, great as one’s impediments have been from without, one’s chief obstacle has been one’s own self.
William P. Trent
All who possess the divine element of pity will unite in feeling that his sufferings were his expiation.
Letitia H. Wrenshall
October Ninth
BATTLE OF KING’S MOUNTAIN: THE FIRST REBEL YELL
And they came, these mountaineers of the South. Congress has not ordered them; it is a rally of volunteers.... They neither hesitate nor parley; they hitch their horses to the trees; like a girdle of steel they clasp the mountain; and up they go, at the enemy—rifles blazing as they advance, and the Southern yell ringing through the woods.
Thomas E. Watson
It was the joyful annunciation of that turn of the tide of success which terminated the Revolutionary War with the seal of our independence.
Thomas Jefferson
October Tenth
Soldiers! You are about to engage in an enterprise which, to insure success, imperatively demands at your hands coolness, decision, and bravery; implicit obedience to orders without a question or cavil; and the strictest order and sobriety on the march and in bivouac. The destination and extent of this expedition had better be kept to myself than known to you. Suffice it to say, that with the hearty cooperation of officers and men I have not a doubt of its success,—a success which will reflect credit in the highest degree upon your arms.
Maj.-Gen. J. E. B. Stuart
J. E. B. Stuart, with 1,800 men, begins his second circle around the Union Army, riding through Pennsylvania and Maryland, 1862
October Eleventh
His firmness and perseverance yielded to nothing but impossibilities. A rigid disciplinarian, yet tender as a father to those committed to his charge; honest, disinterested, liberal, with a sound understanding and a scrupulous fidelity to truth.
Thomas Jefferson
Meriwether Lewis dies, 1809
October Twelfth
LEE
He was a foe without hate, a friend without treachery, a soldier without cruelty, and a victim without murmuring. He was a public officer without vices, a private citizen without wrong, a neighbor without reproach, a Christian without hypocrisy, and a man without guile. He was Cæsar without his ambition, Frederick without his tyranny, Napoleon without his selfishness, and Washington without his reward. He was as obedient to authority as a true king. He was as gentle as a woman in life, pure and modest as a virgin in thought, watchful as a Roman vestal in duty, submissive to law as Socrates, and grand in battle as Achilles.
Benjamin H. Hill
Robert E. Lee dies, 1870
Chief Justice Roger B. Taney dies, 1864
October Thirteenth
TANEY
It was the conviction of his life that the Government under which we live was of limited powers, and that its constitution had been framed for war as well as peace. Though he died, therefore, he could not surrender that conviction at the call of the trumpet. He had plighted his troth to the liberty of the citizen and the supremacy of the laws, and no man could put them asunder.
Severn Teackle Wallis
October Fourteenth
LEE
He sent to the suffering private in the hospitals the delicacies contributed for his personal use from the meagre stores of those who were anxious about his health. If a handful of real coffee came to him, it went in the same direction, while he cheerfully drank from his tin cup the wretched substitute made from parched corn or beans.
Gen. John B. Gordon
October Fifteenth
THE CONFEDERATE VETERAN
Let the autumn hoarfrost gather,Let the snows of winter drift,For there blooms a fruit of valor thatThe world may not forget.Fold your faded gray coat closer, forIt was your country’s gift,And it brings her holiest message—There is glory in it yet.Virginia Frazer Boyle
October Sixteenth
This button here upon my cuff is valueless, whether for use or for ornament, but you shall not tear it from me and spit in my face besides; no, not if it cost me my life. And if your time be passed in the attempt to so take it, then my time and my every thought shall be spent in preventing such outrage. Let alone, the Virginian would gladly have made an end of slavery, but, strange hap, malevolence and meddling bound it up with every interest that was dear to his heart.
George W. Bagby(Slavery)
John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, 1859
October Seventeenth
JOHN BROWN’S RAID
Of course a transaction so flagitious with its attendant circumstances ... could but produce the profoundest impression upon the people of the South. Here was open and armed “aggression”; whether clearly understood and encouraged beforehand, certainly exulted in afterwards, by persons of a very different standing from that of the chief actor in this bloody incursion into a peaceful State.
George Lunt(Massachusetts)
“Saint John the Just” was the verdict of the Concord philosophers concerning John Brown. “The new Saint ... will make the gallows glorious like the Cross” was the sentiment of Emerson that drew applause from a vast assemblage in Boston.
Henry A. White
October Eighteenth
I address you on this occasion with a profound admiration for the great consideration which caused you to honor me by your votes with a seat in the Senate of Georgy. For two momentus and inspirin’ weeks the Legislature has been in solemn session, one of whom I am proud to be which. For several days we were engaged as scouts, making a sorter reconysance to see whether Georgy were a State or a Injin territory, whether we were in the old Un-ion or out of it, whether me and my folks and you and your folks were somebody or no body, and lastly, but by no means leastly, whether our poor innocent children, born durin’ the war, were all illegal and had to be born over agin or not. This last pint are much unsettled, but our women are advised to be calm and serene.
“Bill Arp”(To His Constituents)
October Nineteenth
Float out, oh flag, from Freedom’s burnished lance.Float out, oh flag, in Red and White and Blue!The Union’s colors and the hues of FranceCommingled on the view!James Barron Hope
Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown, 1781
Burning of the “Peggy Stewart” at Annapolis, 1774
October Twentieth
Her right to it rested upon as firm a basis as the right of any other Commonwealth to her own domain, and if there was any question of the Virginia title by charter, she could assert her right by conquest. The region had been wrested from the British by a Virginian commanding Virginian troops; the people had taken “the oath of allegiance to the Commonwealth of Virginia”; and her title to the entire territory was thus indisputable....
These rights she now abandoned; and her action was the result of an enlarged patriotism and devotion to the cause of union.
John Esten Cooke
Virginia cedes to the general government the territory north of the Ohio, 1783
October Twenty-First
When social relations were resumed between the North and South—they followed slowly the resumption of business relations—what we should call the color-blindness of the other side often manifested itself in a delicate reticence on the part of our Northern friends; and as the war had by no means constituted their lives as it had constituted ours for four long years, the success in avoiding the disagreeable topic would have been considerable, if it had not been for awkward allusions on the part of the Southerners, who, having been shut out for all that time from the study of literature and art and other elegant and uncompromising subjects, could hardly keep from speaking of this and that incident of the war. Whereupon a discreet, or rather an embarrassed silence, as if a pardoned convict had playfully referred to the arson or burglary, not to say worse, that had been the cause of his seclusion.
Basil L. Gildersleeve
October Twenty-Second
Oh, the rolling, rolling prairies, and the grasses waving, wavingLike green billows ’neath the gulf breeze in the perfumed purple gloam!Oh, my heart is heavy, heavy, and my eyes are craving, cravingFor the fertile plains and forests of my far-off Texas home.Judd Mortimer Lewis(Longing for Texas)
Samuel Houston inaugurated President of Texas, 1836
October Twenty-Third
BEARING THE NEWS FROM YORKTOWN TO PHILADELPHIA
All the night of the 22d he rode up the peninsula, not a sound disturbing the silence of the darkness except the beat of his horse’s hoofs. Every three or four hours he would ride up to a lonely homestead, still and quiet and dark in the first slumbers of the night, and thunder on the door with his sword: “Cornwallis is taken: a fresh horse for the Congress!” Like an electric shock the house would flash with an instant light and echo with the pattering feet of women, and before a dozen greetings could be exchanged, and but a word given of the fate of the loved ones at York, Tilghman would vanish in the gloom, leaving a trail of glory and joy behind him.
Bradley T. Johnson
Col. Tench Tilghman’s ride, 1781
October Twenty-Fourth
IMMORTALITY
Battles nor songs can from Oblivion save,But Fame upon a white deed loves to build;From out that cup of water Sidney gave,Not one drop has been spilled.Lizette Woodworth Reese
October Twenty-Fifth
Supposing a disintegration of the Union, notwithstanding all efforts to prevent it, to be forced upon us by the obstinacy and impracticability of parties on each side—the case would still be far from hopeless. The Border States, in that event, would form, in self-defence, a Confederacy of their own, which would serve as a centre of reinforcement for the reconstruction of the Union.
John P. Kennedy(In “The Border States—their Power and Duty in the Present Disordered Condition of the Country”)
John P. Kennedy born, 1795
October Twenty-Sixth
Give us back the ties of Yorktown!Perish all the modern hates!Let us stand together, brothers,In defiance of the Fates;For the safety of the UnionIs the safety of the States!James Barron Hope(Centennial Ode)
October Twenty-Seventh
The attempt made to establish a separate and independent confederation has failed, but the consciousness of having done your duty faithfully and to the end will in some measure repay for the hardships you have undergone. In bidding you farewell, rest assured that you carry with you my best wishes for your future welfare and happiness.... I now cheerfully and gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to the officers and men of my command, whose zeal, fidelity, and unflinching bravery have been the great source of my past success in arms. I have never on the field of battle sent you where I felt myself unwilling to pursue. You have been good soldiers, you can be good citizens. Obey the laws, preserve your honor, and the government to which you have surrendered can afford to be and will be magnanimous.
N. B. Forrest(Farewell Address to His Soldiers)
October Twenty-Eighth
Whether in the thickest of the battle, where hundreds or thousands were rushing at each other in deadly combat, or on the lonely highway where he came face to face with a single adversary, or in the reconnoissance by day or night, when alone or attended by a single member of his staff he would ride into the enemy’s lines and even into their camps, he was with pistol or sabre ever ready to assert his physical prowess. It is known that he placedhors de combatthirty Federal officers or soldiers fighting hand-to-hand.
John A. Wyeth
October Twenty-Ninth
Swing, rustless blade, in the dauntless hand;Ride, soul of a god, through the deathless band,Through the low green mounds, or the breadth of the land,Wherever your legions dwell!Virginia Frazer Boyle
Gen. N. B. Forrest dies, 1877
October Thirtieth
It will be difficult in all history to find a more varied career than his, a man who, from the greatest poverty, without any learning, and by sheer force of character alone became the great fighting leader of fighting men, a man in whom an extraordinary military instinct and sound common-sense supplied to a very large extent his unfortunate want of military education. His military career teaches us that the genius which makes men great soldiers is not art of war.
Viscount Wolseley(England)
October Thirty-First
Rising from the position of a private soldier to wear the wreath and stars of a lieutenant-general, and that without education or influence to help him, wounded four times and having twenty-nine horses shot under him, capturing 31,000 prisoners, and cannon, flags, and stores of all kinds beyond computation, Nathan Bedford Forrest was a born genius for war, and his career is one of the most brilliant and romantic to be found in the pages of history.
Rev. J. William Jones
FALL
Sad-hearted Spirit of the solitudes,Who comest through the ruin-wedded woods!Gray-gowned in fog, gold-girdled with the gloomOf tawny sunsets; burdened with perfumeOf rain-wet uplands, chilly with the mist;And all the beauty of the fire-kissedCold forests crimsoning thy indolent way,Odorous of death and drowsy with decay.I think of thee as seated ’mid the showersOf languid leaves that cover up the flowers—The little flower-sisterhoods, whom JuneOnce gave wild sweetness to, as to a tuneA singer gives her soul’s wild melody—Watching the squirrel store his granary.Or, ’mid old orchards, I have pictured thee:Thy hair’s profusion blown about thy back;One lovely shoulder bathed with gypsy black;Upon thy palm one nestling cheek, and sweetThe rosy russets tumbled at thy feet.Was it a voice lamenting for the flowers?Or heart-sick bird that sang of happier hours?A cricket dirging days that soon must die?Or did the ghost of Summer wander by?Madison Cawein
November First
The white people owe a high duty to the negro. It was necessary to the safety of the State to base suffrage on the capacity to exercise it wisely. This results in excluding a great number of negroes from the ballot, but their right to life, liberty, property, and justice must be even more carefully safeguarded than ever. It is true that a superior race cannot submit to the rule of a weaker race without injury; it is also true in the long years of God that the strong cannot oppress the weak without destruction.
Charles B. Aycock
The New Constitution of Mississippi adopted, 1890
November Second
It becomes the duty of all States, and especially of those whose constitutions recognize the existence of domestic slavery, to look with watchfulness to the attempts which have been recently made to disturb the rights secured to them by the Constitution of the United States.
James Knox Polk
James Knox Polk born, 1795
November Third
FROM THE LAST-KNOWN DECLARATION OF THE NATURAL RIGHTS OF MAN! VIRGINIA, 1687
Man in marriage is said to repair his maimed side, and to regain his own rib. And the woman is then and thereby reduced to her first place.... From a rib to a helper was a happy change.
Col. John Page(In “A Deed of Gift”)
November Fourth
NOVEMBER
’Neath naked boughs, and sitting in the sun,With idle hands, because her work is done,I mark how smiles the lovely, fading year,Crowned with chrysanthemums and berries bright,And in her eyes the shimmer of a tear.Danske Dandridge
November Fifth
It came to pass that I was one of the few who witnessed the last descending glory of this attempted Republic, projected by men who considered that the only true and natural foundation of society was “the wants and fears of individuals,” but which was decided adversely totheirinterpretation of that natural law, by the God of battles.
Cornelius E. Hunt(Of “The Shenandoah”)
[Learning Aug. 2, 1865, in the course of her cruising in the Pacific, that the Confederate government no longer existed, and knowing that they had been rated as “pirates” by Federal officials, the captain and crew determined to surrender their flag and commission in a foreign port, setting out forthwith for Liverpool, England.—Editor]
November Sixth
The First Lieutenant stood ... gazing at the flag under which he had so long done battle, and then turned away with tears coursing down his bronzed cheeks.
He was not alone in this exhibition of weakness, if such it was, for more than one eye, unaccustomed to weep, turned aside to conceal the unwonted drops, as at a silent signal, the quartermaster hauled down the Stars and Bars, thereby surrendering the Shenandoah to the British authorities.
Cornelius E. Hunt(Of “The Shenandoah”)
The “Shenandoah” furls the last Confederate battle flag, 1865
November Seventh
A very shy fellow was dusky Sam,As slow of speech as the typical clam.He couldn’t make love to his AngelineThough his love grew like the Great Gourd Vine;So he brought the telephone to his aidTo assist in wooing the chosen maid:“Miss Angeline? Dat you?” called he.“Yas.—Dis Angeline—Dis me—”“I—des wanter say—dat I does—love you—Miss Angeline—does you love me, too—?”“Why—yas—Of course I loves my beau—Say what’s de reason you wants to know?”“Miss—hold de wire—Will you marry me? True—?”“Yas. Course I will——Say. Who is you?”Martha Young
November Eighth
History will record the events attending this capture as a most extraordinary lapse in the career of a civilized nation—an instance where statesmen andJurisconsultsbetrayed their country to administer to the passions of a mob. Edward Everett ... wrote for the newspapers, vindicating on principles of public law, the act of Captain Wilkes.
James M. Mason
The English Royal Mail steamer “Trent” held up by the Federal war-ship “San Jacinto” and the Confederate commissioners, Mason and Slidell, arrested, 1861
November Ninth
I also propose that these surgeons shall act as commissaries, with power to receive and distribute such contributions of money, food, clothing, and medicines as may be forwarded for the relief of prisoners. I further propose that these surgeons be selected by their own Governments, and they shall have full liberty at any and all times, through the agents of exchange, to make reports, not only of their own acts, but of any matters relating to the welfare of prisoners.
Robert Ould(Agent of Exchange)
This letter was ignored by the Federal Government, as were others of similar import, although receipt was acknowledged by the Agent of Exchange.R. R. Stevenson’s Account
This letter was ignored by the Federal Government, as were others of similar import, although receipt was acknowledged by the Agent of Exchange.
R. R. Stevenson’s Account
I need not state how much suffering would have been prevented if this offer had been met in the spirit in which it was dictated. In addition, the world would have had truthful accounts of the treatment of prisoners on both sides, by officers of character, and thus much of that misrepresentation which has flooded the country would never have been poured forth.... The acceptance of the proposition made by me, on behalf of the Confederate Government, would not only have furnished to the sick, medicines and physicians, but to the well an abundance of food and clothing from the ample stores of the United States.
R. R. Stevenson
A. P. Hill born, 1825
November Tenth
The verdict has been found, said they, and no appeal will be permitted. “Besides,” said many, “why stir up these old matters? Let them be; they will be forgotten within a generation.” But there are some yet living, in both the South and the North, who prefer truth to falsehood, even though the attainment of the former costs some trouble.
R. R. Stevenson
Major Henry Wirz, Commandant of Andersonville prison, hanged, 1865
Robert Young Hayne born, 1791
November Eleventh
“The report of Mr. Stanton, as Secretary of War, on the 19th of July, 1866, exhibits the fact that of the Federal prisoners in Confederate hands during the war, 22,576 died; while of the Confederate prisoners in Federal hands 26,436 died.”
[Since Dr. Stevenson wrote the above (1876), the figures on either side have been added to, but the proportion remains about the same.If nothing more, these figures of comparative mortality should be borne in mind in exoneration of Henry Wirz, and of those of greater responsibility who were accused with him, but who were neither executed nor even brought to trial. A number of gallant Federal officers, once prisoners at Andersonville, have in later years come forward to testify in book and monograph as to the true character of Major Wirz.—Editor]
November Twelfth
When it was ascertained that exchanges could not be made, either on the basis of the cartel, or officer for officer and man for man, I was instructed by the Confederate authorities to offer the United States Government their sick and wounded,without requiring any equivalents. Accordingly, in the summer of 1864, I did offer to deliver from ten to fifteen thousand of the sick and wounded at the mouth of the Savannah River, without requiring any equivalents, assuring, at the same time, the Agent of the United States, General Mulford, that if the number for which he might send transportation could not readily be made up from sick and wounded, I would supply the difference with well men. Although this offer was made in the summer of 1864, transportation was not sent to the Savannah River until about the middle or last of November.
R. R. Stevenson
November Thirteenth
In the summer of 1864, in consequence of certain information communicated to me by the Surgeon-general of the Confederate States as to the deficiency of medicines, I offered to make purchases of medicines from the United States authorities, to be used exclusively for the relief of Federal prisoners. I offered to pay gold, cotton, or tobacco for them, and even two or three prices, if required. At the same time I gave assurances that the medicines would be used exclusively in the treatment of Federal prisoners; and moreover agreed, on behalf of the Confederate States, if it was insisted on, that such medicines might be brought into the Confederate lines by the United States surgeons, and dispensed by them.
R. R. Stevenson
Texas declares her independence of Mexico, 1835
November Fourteenth
Were I to enter the Hall, at this remote period, and meet my associates who signed the instrument of our independence, I should know them all, from Hancock down to Stephen Hopkins.
Charles Carroll(Of Carrollton, at 90 years of age)
Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, dies, 1832
November Fifteenth
In other words, a veteran of our civil strife, General Sherman advocated in an enemy’s country the sixteenth century practices of Tilly, described by Schiller, and the later devastation of the Palatinate policy of Louis XIV, commemorated by Goethe. In the twenty-first century, perhaps, partisan feeling as regards the Civil War performances having by that time ceased to exist, American investigators, no longer regardful of a victor’s self-complacency, may treat the episodes of our struggle with the same even-handed and out-spoken impartiality with which Englishmen now treat the revenges of the Restoration, or Frenchmen the dragonnades of the Grand Monarque. But when that time comes, the page relating to what occurred in 1864 in the Valley of the Shenandoah, in Georgia, and in the Carolinas,—a page which Mr. Rhodes somewhat lightly passes over—will probably be rewritten in characters of far more decided import.
Charles Francis Adams(Massachusetts)
Sherman begins his march from Atlanta to the sea, 1864
November Sixteenth
HENRY WIRZ, THE UNFORTUNATE SWISS-AMERICAN COMMANDANT AT ANDERSONVILLE
On the evening before the day of the execution of Major Wirz a man visited me, on the part of a Cabinet officer, to inform me that Major Wirz would be pardoned if he would implicate Jefferson Davis in the cruelties at Andersonville....
When I visited Major Wirz the next morning he told me that the same proposal had been made to him.
F. E. Boyle(Priest in attendance upon Major Wirz)
Some parties came to the confessor of Wirz, Rev. Father Boyle, and also to me, one of them informing me that a high Cabinet officer wished to assure Wirz, that if he would implicate Jefferson Davis with the atrocities committed at Andersonville, his sentence would be commuted. He, the messenger, or whoever he was, requested me to inform Wirz of this.
Lewis Schade(German-American Attorney to Major Wirz)
November Seventeenth
Sad spirit, swathed in brief mortality,Of Fate and fervid fantasies the prey,Till the remorseless demon of dismayO’erwhelmed thee—lo! thy doleful destinyIs chanted in the requiem of the seaAnd shadowed in the crumbling ruins grayThat beetle o’er the tarn. Here all the dayThe Raven broods on solitude and thee:Here gloats the moon at midnight, while the BellsTremble, but speak not lest thy UlalumeShould startle from her slumbers, or LenoreHearken the love-forbidden tone that tellsThe shrouded legend of thine early doomAnd blast the bliss of heaven forevermore.John B. Tabb
First American Monument erected to the memory of Edgar Allan Poe dedicated in Baltimore, 1875
November Eighteenth
POE—He is the nightingale of our Southern poets—singing at night, singing on nocturnal themes, but with all the passionate tenderness and infinite pathos of his own angel Israfel, “whose heart-strings are a lute.”
Oliver Huckel(Pennsylvania)
November Nineteenth
The election of 1873 was the culmination of the evil effects of reconstruction. The rule of the alien and the negro was complete, with the latter holding the lion’s share of the offices. The lieutenant-governor, secretary of state, superintendent of education, and commissioner of immigration and agriculture, all were negroes; both houses of the legislature had negro presiding officers; in the senate ten negroes held seats; of the seventy-seven Republicans in the house, fifty-five were negroes and fifteen were carpet-baggers; the majority of the county offices were filled by negroes, 90 per cent. of whom could neither read nor write.
Dunbar Rowland(Mississippi in “Reconstruction”)
November Twentieth
Fleet on the tempest blown,Far from the mountain dell,Rose in their cloudy cone,Elfin and Spell;Woo’d by the spirit tone,Trembling and chill,Wandered a maiden lone,On the bleak hill:Mau-in-waun-du-me-nung,Trembling and chill.Joseph Salyards
November Twenty-First
Low in the moory dale,Green mossy waters flow,Under the drowsy gale,Moaning and slow;There in her snowy veil,Bleeding and bound,Lay the sweet damsel pale,On the cold ground,Mau-in-waun-du-me-nung,On the cold ground.Joseph Salyards
November Twenty-Second
The history of that period, of the reconstruction period of the South, has never been fully told. It is only beginning to be written.
Thomas Nelson Page
Convention in Louisiana disfranchising ex-Confederates, 1867
November Twenty-Third
But talkin’ the way I see it, a big feller and a little feller, SO-CALLED, got into a fite, and they fout and fout a long time, and everybody all round kep’ hollerin’ hands off, but kep’ helpin’ the big feller, until finally the little feller caved in and hollered enuff. He made a bully fite, I tell you, Selah. Well, what did the big feller do? Take him by the hand and help him up and brush the dirt off his clothes? Nary time! No, sur! But he kicked him arter he was down, and throwed mud on him, and drug him about and rubbed sand in his eyes, and now he’s gwine about hunting up his poor little property. Wants to confiscate is, SO-CALLED. Blame my jacket if it ain’t enuff to make your head swim.
Bill Arp(To Artemus Ward)
November Twenty-Fourth
PROTEST AGAINST THE TARIFF, SOUTH CAROLINA, 1832
The majority in Congress, in imposing protecting duties, which are utterly destructive of the interests of South Carolina, not only impose no burthens, but actually confer enriching bounties upon their constituents, proportioned to the burthens they impose upon us. Under these circumstances, the principle of representative responsibility is perverted into a principle of representative despotism. It is this very tie, binding the majority of Congress to execute the will of their constituents, which makes them our inexorable oppressors. They dare not open their hearts to the sentiments of human justice, or to the feelings of human sympathy. They are tyrants by the very necessity of their position, however elevated may be their principles in their individual capacities.
George McDuffie(Address to the People of the United States)
Ordinance of Nullification passed by South Carolina, 1832
Battle of the Clouds, Lookout Mountain, 1863
November Twenty-Fifth
PROTEST AGAINST THE WAR OF 1812, NEW ENGLAND
The call of the Secretary of War for the militia of the States met blunt refusal from the Governors of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. The Assembly of the latter State sustained its Executive in a formal address which denounced the war and declared Connecticut to be a free, sovereign, and independent State, and that the United States was not a national but a confederated republic. President Madison was held up as an invader of the State’s authority over her militia.
Henry A. White
Battle of Missionary Ridge, 1863
November Twenty-Sixth
THE HOMESPUN DRESS
Oh, yes! I am a Southern girl,And glory in the name,And boast it with far greater prideThan glittering wealth or fame.I envy not the Northern girlsTheir robes of beauty rare,Though diamonds grace their snowy necksAnd pearls bedeck their hair.Hurrah, hurrah!For the sunny South so dear.Three cheers for the homespun dressThe Southern ladies wear.
November Twenty-Seventh
But know, ’twas mine the secret powerThat waked thee at the midnight hourIn bleak November’s reign:’Twas I the spell around thee cast,When thou didst hear the hollow blastIn murmurs tell of pleasures past,That ne’er would come again.Washington Allston
November Twenty-Eighth
The cruel fire that singed her robe died out in rainbow flashes,And bright her silvery sandals shone above the hissing ashes!
Organization of Legislature in Carolina Hall after the election of General Hampton as Governor of South Carolina, 1876
November Twenty-Ninth
My fellow-people, let me, in conclusion, congratulate you on having a Governor once more as is a Governor. Oh, there is life in the old land yet, and by and by we’ll transport them black Republicans into the African desert, and put ’em to teaching Hottentots the right of suffrage. Winter Davis could then find a field of labor sufficient for the miserable remnant of his declining years. He is the winter of our discontent, and we want to get rid of him.
Bill Arp(On Hampton’s Election)
November Thirtieth
Yon marble minstrel’s voiceless stoneIn deathless song shall tell,When many a vanquished age hath flown,The story how ye fell;Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter’s blight,Nor Time’s remorseless doom,Shall dim one ray of glory’s lightThat gilds your deathless tomb.Theodore O’Hara(From “The Bivouac of the Dead”)
General Patrick R. Cleburne killed at Franklin, Tenn., 1864
ICICLES AT THE SOUTH
The rain on the trees has ceased to freeze;(’Twas molded with quaint device)The bent boughs lean, like cimeters keen,In scabbards of shining ice.’Neath frozen cloaks the pines and oaksAre stooping like Druids old,—And the cedars stand—an arctic band—Held in the clutch of cold.Through the outer gloom the japonicas bloom,With the lustre of rubies bright—Like blossoms blown from a tropic zone,—A marvellous land of light!William Hamilton Hayne
December First
THE FIRST SNOW-FALL
The Fir-tree felt it with a thrillAnd murmur of content;The last dead Leaf its cable sliptAnd from its moorings went;The selfsame silent messenger,To one that shibbolethOf Life imparting, and to one,The countersign of Death.John B. Tabb
December Second
The avengers whose lives he had attempted, whose wives and children he had devoted to the hideous brutality of insurgent Africans, spared him all indignities, even moral torture.
Percy Greg(England)
John Brown hanged, 1859
December Third
The Black and Tan Convention met December 3, 1867, in our venerable and historic capital to frame a new constitution for the Old Dominion. In this body were members from New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, Maryland, District of Columbia, Ireland, Scotland, Nova Scotia, Canada, England; scalawags, or turn-coats, by Southerners most hated of all; twenty-four negroes; and in the total of 105, thirty-five white Virginians, from counties of excess white population, who might be considered representative of the State’s culture and intelligence.
Myrta Lockett Avary
James Rumsey (1787) makes successful trial trip of the steamboat designed after the model of 1784, then witnessed by George Washington and others
December Fourth
A BIT OF RECONSTRUCTION ORATORY
“Mistah President, de real flatform, suh. I’ll sw’ar tuh high Heaven. Yas, I’ll sw’ar higher dan dat. I’ll go down an’ de uth shall crumble intuh dus’ befor’ dee shall amalgamise my rights. ’Bout dis question uh cyarpet-bags. Ef you cyarpet-baggers does go back on us, woes be unto you! You better take yo cyarpet-bags and quit, and de quicker you git up and git de better. I do not abdicate de supperstition tuh dese strange friens, lately so-called citizens uh Ferginny. Ef dee don’ gimme my rights, I’ll suffer dis country tuh be lak Sarah. I’ll suffer desterlation fus!”...
“I’se here tuh qualify my constituents. I’ll sing tuh Rome an’ tuh Englan’ an’ tuh de uttermos’ parts uh de uth.” (“You must address yourself to the chair,” said that functionary, ready to faint.) “All right, suh, I’ll not ’sire tuh maintain de House any longer.”
Hon. Lewis Lindsay(From Stenographic Report)
December Fifth
Religion is as necessary to reason as reason is to religion. The one cannot exist without the other. A reasoning being would lose his reason, in attempting to account for the great phenomena of nature, had he not a Supreme Being to refer to; and well has it been said that if there had been no God mankind would have been obliged to imagine one.
George Washington
December Sixth
CLEMENCY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS
Honorable Jefferson Davis: My father, Harrison Self, is sentenced to hang at four o’clock this evening on a charge of bridge-burning. As he remains my earthly all, and all my hopes of happiness centre on him, I implore you to pardon him.
Elizabeth Self(Telegram which secured pardon for her father)
Jefferson Davis dies, 1889
The county of Kentucky formed from Virginia, 1776
Duncan Nathaniel Ingraham, “Hero of the Koszta Rescue,” born, 1802
December Seventh
For years after the war, the Republican politicians in the South told the negroes that if the Democrats were elected, they would be put back into slavery. Consequently, after the first election of Cleveland, many of them began to make their arrangements to readapt themselves to the old regime. One old Virginia “aunty” living in Howard County, Maryland, announced that she was ready to return to Richmond; but declared most positively: “Deed, my ole Missus has got to send me my railroad ticket fust.”
December Eighth
Our one sweet singer breaks no moreThe silence sad and long,The land is hushed from shore to shoreIt brooks no feebler song.Carl McKinley
Henry Timrod born, 1829
Joel Chandler Harris born, 1848
December Ninth
JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS
It would be difficult to estimate the good done by a man like Harris, who brings a sense of relaxation and a thrill of pleasure to countless readers round the world. Such a man becomes a public benefactor. To-day men are better citizens, life’s tasks are easier, the roads are lighter, and heaven is nearer to earth because of the cheerful, hopeful, mirthful stories of Uncle Remus.
Henry Stiles Bradley
Lord Dunmore defeated by Colonel Woodford at Battle of Great Bridge, Virginia, 1775
December Tenth
Mt. Vernon, 31 Jan. 1786
Sir:—If you have no cause to change your opinion respecting your mechanical boat, and reasons unknown to me do not exist to delay the exhibition of it, I would advise you to give it to the public as soon as it can be prepared conveniently.... Should a mechanical genius hit upon your plan, or something similar to it, I need not add that it would place you in an awkward situation and perhaps disconcert all your prospects concerning this useful discovery....