Part 5 (1/2)
My brother Milton was surrendered with Port Hudson. July 25, 1863, he wrote as follows from Custom House Prison, No. 6, in New Orleans: ”About 2,000 of us are confined here. Many have called to see me but only one has succeeded--a young lady who announced herself as my cousin; said she was determined to have some relative here. I never saw her before. The ladies are very kind and contribute to all our wants. Hundreds of them promenade daily before our windows; they look very sweet and lovely to us. Their hearts are all right, but when they motion to us with their fans, or wave their handkerchiefs, the guards take them away. The whole city is overrun with Yankee soldiers, and the citizens have a subdued look. We have no reason to complain of our treatment, and we are not wholly discouraged.
General Lee's successes are favorable to our cause, and I now feel hopeful of a speedy termination of our troubles, though I see no prospect of our release.
”I learn that the Yankees took everything from Mr. Palmer's near Clinton--negroes, mules, horses, made the old man dig up his buried silver, and so alarmed the old lady that she died of fright. I wish to got back into the field--feel more and more the necessity to establish our independence, for we can never again live at peace with our hated enemy.”
Notwithstanding these things, and that this brother was confined for two years at Johnson's Island until after the surrender, he has been for years a loyal Republican, and is now an office-holder under Mr. McKinley.
The jayhawkers were a terror in the neighborhood of our Pleasant Hill plantation, where Mr. Merrick spent much of the war period. These guerilla ruffians gave many peaceable families much anxiety even when dwelling hundreds of miles from the seat of war. They were sometimes deserters and always outlaws, but wore the uniform of either army as fitted their purpose, and had no scruples about doing the most lawless and violent deed. At one time it was unsafe to let it be known when the head of the family would go or return, or to allow any plans to leak out, lest a descent should be made on the unprotected home or the equally unprotected absentee. A careful servant, closing the window-blinds at night, would caution Mr. Merrick to keep out of the range of wandering shots which were often fired by these desperadoes at unoffending persons. It has been a.s.serted that the guerillas were a part of the regular Confederate service, whereas they were outlawed by the army and subject to summary discipline if caught.
When the Confederates were about us we enjoyed immunity from terrors. For ten months General Walker's Division of our army camped on my land. It is true we divided our stores with them, but the sense of protection was an unspeakable comfort. I had rooms near my house furnished as a hospital, where I nursed friend or foe who came to me sick. Medicines were treasured more than gold; a whole neighborhood felt safer if it were known there was a bottle of quinine in it; drugs were kept buried like silver.
There was much delightful a.s.sociation with the officers and our other friends in the army. Every family had stored away for times of illness or extra occasions little remnants of our former luxuries--wine, tea, coffee.
General d.i.c.k Taylor was once my guest. While sipping his champagne at dinner he exclaimed: ”I'm astonished, madam, that in these times you can be living in such luxury!” I explained that it was the birthday of my daughter Laura for which we had long prepared, and that to honor it I had drawn on my last bottle of wine saved for sickness. I made him laugh by relating that every time there was a raid I got out a bottle of wine, and we all drank in solemn state to keep it from falling into the hands of the Yankees.
General Richard Taylor was the only son of President Zachary Taylor. He married a Louisiana lady and made his home in this State. He won conspicuous success as a brigade commander under Stonewall Jackson, and being placed in command of the Department of Mississippi and Alabama, his brilliant record culminated in the victories of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill. Having beaten General Banks one day at the former place, he pursued him to Pleasant Hill--where my husband was during the whole period of active warfare--and defeated him again. He was the idol of the Trans-Mississippi Department--and well he might be, for he alone had redeemed it from utter hopelessness.[1]
[1] Southern Historical Society Papers.
General Polignac was the brave Frenchman who set his men wild with amus.e.m.e.nt and enthusiasm, by placing his hand on his heart and exclaiming with _empress.e.m.e.nt_: ”Soldiers, behold your Polignac!” They beheld him and followed him ardently. While partaking of very early green peas and roast lamb at my table, he asked: ”Did you raise these peas under gla.s.s, madam?”
”Look at my broken windows,” I answered, ”all over this house, and tell whether I can raise peas under gla.s.s when we can't keep ourselves under it!” With such as we had everybody kept open house while the war lasted.
n.o.body, high or low, was turned from the door; so long as there was anything to divide, the division went on: all of which has confirmed me in the belief that in proportion as artificial social conditions are removed the divinity in man s.h.i.+nes out; and that Bellamy's vision for humanity need not be all a dream.
The news of Lee's surrender fell with stunning force, although it had long been feared that the Confederates were nearing the end of their resources.
Peace was welcomed by the cla.s.s of men who had begun to desert the army, because their little children were starving at home; it was also good news to the broad-minded student of history who knew that surrender was the only alternative for an army overpowered; that the victories of peace embodied the only hope. But there were many who said: ”Why not have fought on until all were dead--man, woman and child? What is left to make life worth the living?”
An impression prevailed among the victors of the civil war, that the Southern people were lying awake at night to curse the enemy that had wrought their desolation and impoverishment. Nothing could have been further from the truth. After the first stupefying effects of the surrender, the altered social and domestic conditions engrossed every energy. Every home mourned its dead. Those were counted happy who could lay tear-dewed flowers upon the graves of their soldier-slain--so many never looked again, even upon the dead face of him who had smiled back at them as the boys marched away to the strains of Dixie. The shadow of a mutual sorrow drew Southern women in sympathy and tenderness toward weeping Northern mothers and wives. True men who have bravely fought out their differences cherish no animosities--though still unconvinced.
The women in every community seemed to far outnumber the men; and the empty sleeve and the crutch made men who had unflinchingly faced death in battle impotent to face their future. Sadder still was it to follow to the grave the army of men, of fifty years and over when the war began, whose hearts broke with the loss of half a century's acc.u.mulations and ambitions, and with the failure of the cause for which they had risked everything. Communities were accustomed to lean upon these tried advisers; it was almost like the slaughter of another army--so many such sank beneath the shocks of reconstruction.
It is folly to talk about the woman who stood in the breach in those chaotic days, being the traditional Southern woman of the books, who sat and rocked herself with a slave fanning her on both sides. She was doubtless fanned when she wished to be; but the ante-bellum woman of culture and position in the South was a woman of affairs; and in the care of a large family--which most of them had--and of large interests, she was trained to meet responsibilities. So in those days of awful uncertainties, when men's hearts failed them, it was the woman who brought her greater adaptability and elasticity to control circ.u.mstances, and to lay the foundations of a new order. She sewed, she sold flowers, milk and vegetables, and she taught school; sometimes even a negro school. She made pies and corn-bread, and palmetto hats for the Federals in garrison; she raised pigs, poultry and pigeons; and she cooked them when the darkey--who was ”never to wuk no mo'”--left her any to bless herself with; she washed, often the mustered-out soldier of the house filling her tubs, rubbing beside her and hanging out her clothes; and he did her swearing for her when the Yankee soldier taunted over the fence: ”Wall, it doo doo my eyes good to see yer have to put yer lily-white hands in the wash-tub!”
As soon as the war was over, my daughter went with her grandmother to visit her father's relatives in Ma.s.sachusetts. In letters to her, beginning September 16, 1865, I thus described the conditions under which we were living: ”The war was prosperity to the state of things which peace has wrought. Society is resolving itself into its original elements. Chaos has come again. St. Domingo is a paradise to this part of the United States, which is cut off from the benefits of government. The negroes who have gained their liberty are more unhappy and dissatisfied than ever before. Poor creatures! their weak brains are puzzling over the great problem of their future. Care seems likely to eat up every pleasure in their bewildered lives. They no longer dance and sing in the quarters at night, but sit about in dejected groups; their chief dissipation is prayer-meeting. It is a dire perplexity that they must pay their doctor's bills; they resent it as a bitter injustice that 'Marster' does not 'find them' in medicine and all the ordinary things of living as of old. They say no provision is made for them. They are left to work for white folks the same as ever, but for white folks who no longer care for them nor are interested in their own joys and sorrows. Freedom meant to them the abolition of work, liberty to rove uncontrolled, to drink liquor and to carry firearms. As Rose recently said to me: ”I don't crave fin'ry--jes plenty er good close, en vittles, en I 'spects ter get dese widout scrubbin' fer 'em,' 'Where is de gover'ment?' they ask anxiously, 'en de forty acres er lan', en de mule?'--which each one of them was led to reckon on. They expected a saturnalia of freedom; to be legislators, judges and governors in the land, to live in the white folks' houses, and to ride in their carriages. They cannot understand a freedom that involves labor and care. They say they were deceived; that white folks still have the upper hand, and ride while they walk. I pity them deeply.
”You know I have never locked up anything. Now I am a slave to my keys. I am robbed daily. Spoons, cups and all the utensils from the kitchen have been carried off. I am now paying little black Jake to steal some of them back for me, as he says he knows where they are. I cannot even set the bread to rise without some of it being taken. All this, notwithstanding the servants are paid wages. It is astonis.h.i.+ng that those we have considered most reliable are engaged in the universal dishonesty. I understand they call it 'sp'ilin' de 'Gypshuns!'
”The Mississippi river is open;--the boats ply daily up and down, but we have no mail. We are surely treated like stepchildren of the great United States. Already the tax-a.s.sessor has come to value our property; the tax-gatherer has collected the national revenues; agents of the Freedman's Bureau are taking the census of negro children preparatory to forming schools, and Northern land buyers are looking out for bargains in broken-up estates. Is it strange that we ask: 'Where is the postmaster?'
We have had already too much exclusion from the world in Confederate days.
Let us emerge from our former 'barbarous state of ignorance,'--and let me hear from my absent child in Ma.s.sachusetts!
”Your father has written from New Orleans as follows: 'I have extricated my Jefferson City property from the seizure of the Federals, and have paid $800 to release it, though I think it will cost several hundred more.
They--the Federals--burnt the mill mortgaged to me by G. B. M.--and I shall lose $5,000 on that. I think I have done remarkably well to have paid off so many inc.u.mbrances, but I wish you to have for the present a rigid management of all matters of expense. I am glad I have a prospect of getting my law library into my possession again. I find four hundred and fifty volumes of it in the quartermaster's department.
”I can only extricate my affairs by economy on the part of all my family, and am only asking that they show a little patience under our temporary separation. I do not wish them to aid me by earning anything, except it be David, for himself individually; but we shall all be in the city in our own home the sooner by the exercise of present self-denial.
”'I am glad to learn that the people of the South denounce the a.s.sa.s.sination of Lincoln,' for it was a ruinous misfortune to us.
”At present we are living at as little expense as possible with no perceptible income. We are taxed according to the ante-bellum tax lists--including our slaves and property swept off the earth by the armies. A fine sugar estate, near us on the river, worth two hundred thousand dollars, was sold last week for taxes, which were seven thousand five hundred dollars. The whole estate--land, dwelling, sugar house, stock--brought only four thousand dollars. There could scarcely be completer confiscation than these unrighteous tax-sales under which millions of dollars worth of property are advertised for sale.