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Dixie After the War
Dixie After the War
JEFFERSON DAVIS After his prison life Copyright 1867, by Anderson Dixie After the War An Exposition of Social Conditions Existing in the South, During the Twelve Years Succeeding the Fall of Richmond. By Myrta Lockett Avary Author of “A Virginia Girl in the Civil War” With an Introduction by General Clement A. Evans Illustrated from old paintings, daguerreotypes and rare photographs New York Doubleday, Page & Company 1906 Copyright, 1906, by Doubleday, Page & Company Publishe
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INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
This book may be called a revelation. It seems to me a body of discoveries that should not be kept from the public—discoveries which have origin in many sources but are here brought together in one book for the first time. No book hitherto published portrays so fully and graphically the social conditions existing in the South for the twelve years following the fall of Richmond, none so vividly presents race problems. It is the kind of history a witness gives. The author received from observers a
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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
The Falling Cross “The Southern Cross” and a cross that fell during the burning of Columbia occur to my mind in unison. With the Confederate Army gone and Richmond open to the Federal Army, her people remembered New Orleans, Atlanta, Columbia. New Orleans, where “Beast Butler” issued orders giving his soldiers license to treat ladies offending them as “women of the town.” Atlanta, whose citizens were ordered to leave; General Hood had protested and Mayor Calhoun had plead the cause of the old an
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
“ When This Cruel War is Over ” “When this cruel war is over” was the name of one of our war songs. So many things we planned to do when the war should be over. With the fall of the Southern Capital the war was over, though we did not know it at once. Again and again has the story been told of Sunday, April 2, in Richmond. The message brought into St. Paul’s Church from Lee to Davis, saying Richmond could no longer be defended; the quiet departure of the President; the noble bearing of the belov
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
The Army of the Union: The Children and the Flag The Army of the Union entered Richmond with almost the solemnity of a processional entering church. It was occasion for solemn procession, that entrance into our burning city where a stricken people, flesh of their flesh and bone of their bone, watched in terror for their coming. Our broken-hearted people closed their windows and doors and shut out as far as they could all sights and sounds. Yet through closed lattice there came that night to thos
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
The Coming of Lincoln The South did not know that she had a friend in Abraham Lincoln, and the announcement of his presence in Richmond was not calculated to give comfort or assurance. “Abraham Lincoln came unheralded. No bells rang, no guns boomed in salute. He held no levee. There was no formal jubilee. He must have been heartless as Nero to have chosen that moment for a festival of triumph. He was not heartless.” So a citizen of Richmond, who was a boy at the time, and out doors and everywher
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
The Last Capital of the Confederacy From Richmond, Mr. Davis went to Danville. Major Sutherlin, the Commandant, met him at the station and carried him and members of his Cabinet to the Sutherlin Mansion, which then became practically the Southern Capitol. The President was busy night and day, examining and improving defenses and fortifications and planning the junction of Lee’s and Johnston’s forces. Men were seeking his presence at all hours; couriers coming and going; telegrams flying hither a
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
The Counsel of Lee “A few days after the occupation, some drunken soldiers were heard talking in the back yard to our negroes, and it was gathered from what they said that the Federals were afraid General Lee had formed an ambuscade somewhere in the neighbourhood of the city, and that he might fall upon them at any time and deliver Richmond out of their hands. How our people wished it might be so!” Matoaca relates. “Do not buoy yourself up with that hope, my dear,” said her monitor. “There’s no
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
“ The Saddest Good Friday ” In Matoaca’s little devotional note-book, I read: “Good Friday, 1865. This is the saddest Good Friday I ever knew. I have spent the whole day praying for our stricken people, our crushed Southland.” “The saddest Good Friday I ever knew”; nearly every man and woman in the South might have said that with equal truth. Her “Journal” of secular events contains a long entry for April 14; it is as if she had poured out all her woes on paper. For the most part it is a tale of
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
The Wrath of the North The mad act of crazy Wilkes Booth set the whole country crazy. The South was aghast, natural recoil intensified by apprehension. The North, convulsed with anguish, was newly inflamed, and even when the cooler moment came and we were acquitted of any responsibility for Booth’s crazy act, the angry humour of a still sore heart was against us. We, of both sections, who suffered so lately as one people in the death of President McKinley, can comprehend the woe and unreason of
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
The Chaining of Jefferson Davis Strange and unreal seem those days. One President a fugitive, journeying slowly southward; the other dead, journeying slowly north and west. Aye, the hand of God was heavy on both our peoples. The cup of defeat could not be made more bitter than it was; and into the cup of triumph were gall and wormwood poured. Hunters pursuing one chieftain with hoarse cries of “rebel!” and “traitor!” For the other, bells tolling, guns booming requiem, great cities hung with blac
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
Our Friends, the Enemy There was small interchange of civilities between Northern and Southern ladies. The new-comers were in much evidence; Southerners saw them riding and driving in rich attire and handsome equipages, and at the theatre in all the glory of fine toilettes. There was not so much trouble opening theatres as churches. A good many stage celebrities came to the Richmond Theatre, which was well patronised. Decorated with United States flags, it was opened during the first week of the
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CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
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
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CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
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 f
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CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
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. T
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CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
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 dea
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CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
Tournaments and Starvation Parties It would seem that times were too hard and life too bitter for merry-making. Not so. With less than half a chance to be glad, the Southerner will laugh and dance and sing—and make love. At least, he used to. The Southerner is no longer minstrel, lover, and cavalier. He is becoming a money-maker. With cannons at our gates and shells driving us into cellars, guitars were tinkling, pianos were not dumb, tripping feet were not stayed by fear and sorrow. When boys i
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CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVI
The Bondage of the Free “Had slavery lasted a few years longer,” I have heard my mother say, “it would have killed Julia, my head-woman, and me. Our burden of work and responsibility was simply staggering.” In the ante-bellum life of the mistress of a Southern plantation there was no menial occupation, but administrative work was large and exacting. The giving out of rations, clothes, medicines, nursing of the sick, cutting out of garments, sewing, spinning, knitting, had to be directed. The eve
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CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVII
Back to Voodooism The average master and mistress of the old South were missionaries without the name. Religious instruction was a feature of the negro quarters on the Southern plantation—the social settlements for Africans in America. Masters and mistresses, if themselves religious, usually held Sabbath services and Sunday schools for blacks. Some delegated this task, employing preachers and teachers. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was the first rice planter to introduce systematic religious instr
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CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XVIII
The Freedmen’s Bureau Federal authorities had a terrific problem to deal with in four millions of slaves suddenly let loose. Military commanders found themselves between the devil and the deep sea. Varied instructions were given to bring order out of chaos. “Freedmen that will use any disrespectful language to their former masters will be severely punished,” is part of a ukase issued by Captain Nunan, at Milledgeville, in fervent if distracted effort for the general weal. By action if not by ord
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CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XIX
The Prisoner of Fortress Monroe An extract from a letter by Mrs. Robert E. Lee to Miss Mason, from Derwent, September 10, 1865, may interest my readers: “I have just received, dear Miss Em, a long letter from Mrs. Davis in reply to one of mine. She was in Augusta, Ga.; says she is confined to that State. She has sent her children to kindred in Canada. Says she knows nothing whatever of her husband, except what she has seen in the papers. Says any letter sent her under care of Mr. Schley will rea
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CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XX
Reconstruction Oratory Northern visitors, drawn to Richmond in the Spring of 1867, to the Davis trial, came upon the heels of a riot if not squarely into the midst of one. Friday, May 10, began with a mass-meeting at one of the old Chimborazo buildings, where negroes of both sexes, various ages, and in all kinds of rags and raiment, congregated. Nothing could exceed the cheerfulness with which their initiation fees and monthly dues were received by the white Treasurer of the National Political A
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CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXI
The Prisoner Free On a beautiful May afternoon, two years after Mr. Davis’ capture, the “John Sylvester” swung to the wharf at Rocketts and the prisoner walked forth, smiling quietly upon the people who, on the other side of the blue cordon of sentinels, watched the gangway, crying, “It is he! it is he!” Always slender, he was shadowy now, worn and thin to emaciation. He did not carry himself like a martyr. Only his attenuation, the sharpness of his features, the care-worn, haggard appearance of
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CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXII
A Little Plain History For clearness in what has gone before and what follows, I must write a little plain history. Many who ought to have known Mr. Lincoln’s mind, among these General Sherman, with whom Mr. Lincoln had conversed freely, believed it his purpose to recognise existing State Governments in the South upon their compliance with certain conditions. These governments were given no option; governors calling legislatures for the purpose of expressing submission, were clapped into prison.
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CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIII
The Black and Tan Convention: The “Midnight Constitution” The Black and Tan Convention met December 3, 1867, in our venerable and historic Capitol 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 Virginia
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CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXIV
Secret Societies Loyal League, White Camelias, White Brotherhood, Pale Faces, Ku Klux Parent of all was the Union or Loyal League, whose history may be briefly summarised: Organisation for dignified ends in Philadelphia and New York in 1862-3; extension into the South among white Unionists; formation, 1866, of negro leagues; admission of blacks into “mixed” leagues; rapid withdrawal of native whites and Northern settlers until leagues were composed almost wholly of negroes dominated by a few whi
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CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXV
The Southern Ballot-Box Free negroes could vote in North Carolina until 1835, when a Constitutional Convention, not without division of sentiment, abolished negroid franchise on the ground that it was an evil. Thereafter, negroes first voted in the South in 1866, when the “Prince of Carpet-Baggers,” Henry C. Warmouth, who had been dismissed from the Federal Army, conferred the privilege in a bogus election; he had a charity-box attachment to every ballot-box and a negro dropping a ballot into on
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CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVI
The White Child Upon the Southern white child of due age for schooling the effects of war fell with cruel force. The ante-bellum planter kept a tutor or governess or both for his children; his neighbours’ children sometimes attended the school which he maintained for his own. Thus, were sons and daughters prepared for academy and college, university, finishing school. Private schools were broken up quite generally by the war. It became quite the custom for the mother or an elder sister to fill t
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CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVII
Schoolmarms and Other Newcomers Many good people came down to do good to us and the negroes; we were not always so nice to these as we ought to have been. But very good people can try other very good people sorely sometimes. Besides, some who came in sheep’s clothing were not sheep, and gave false ideas of the entire flock. Terms of professional philanthropy were strange in the Southerner’s mouth. It never occurred to the men, women and maidens who visited all the poor, sick, old and feeble negr
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CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXVIII
The Carpet-Bagger The test-oath was invitation to the carpet-bagger. The statements of Generals Schofield and Stoneman show how difficult it was to find in the South men capable of filling office who could swear they had “never given aid or comfort” to a Confederate. Few or no decent people could do it. In the summer of 1865, President Johnson instructed provisional governors to fill Federal offices of mail, revenue and customs service with men from other States, if proper resident citizens—that
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CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXIX
The Devil on the Santee (A Rice-Planter’s Story) Between the plantation where harmony and industry still prevailed and that in which was complete upheaval of the old order, were thousands showing its disintegration in intermediate grades. On the James River, in Virginia, and on waterways in rice and cotton lands up which Federal gunboats steamed, and on the Sea Islands, plantations innumerable furnished parallel cases to that set forth in the following narrative, which I had from Captain Thomas
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CHAPTER XXX
CHAPTER XXX
Battle for the State-House South Carolina’s first Governor under her second reconstruction was General R. K. Scott, of Ohio, ex-Freedmen’s Bureau Chief. His successor was Franklin J. Moses, Jr., scalawag, licentiate and débauché, four years Speaker of the House, the “Robber Governor.” Moses’ successor was D. H. Chamberlain, a cultivated New Englander, who began his public career as Governor Scott’s Attorney General. A feature of the Scott-Moses administration was a black army 96,000 strong, enro
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CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXI
Crime Against Womanhood The rapist is a product of the reconstruction period. In the beginning he commanded observation North less by reason of what he did than by reason of what was done unto him. His chrysalis was a uniform; as a soldier he could force his way into private homes, bullying and insulting white women; he was often commissioned to tasks involving these things. He came into life in the abnormal atmosphere of a time rife with discussions of social equality theories, contentions for
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CHAPTER XXXII
CHAPTER XXXII
Race Prejudice As late as 1890, Senator Ingalls said: “The use of the torch and dagger is advised. I deplore it, but as God is my judge, I say that no people on this earth have ever submitted to the wrongs and injustice which have been put upon the coloured men of the South without revolt and bloodshed.” Others spoke of the negro’s use of torch and sword as his only way to right himself in the South. When prominent men in Congressional and legislative halls and small stump speakers everywhere fu
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CHAPTER XXXIII
CHAPTER XXXIII
Memorial Day and Decoration Day. Confederate Societies Peculiar interest attaches to the inauguration of Memorial Day in Richmond, in 1866, when Northerners, watching Southerners cover the graves of their dead with flowers, went afterwards and did likewise, thus borrowing of us their “Decoration Day” and with it a custom we gladly share with them. [31] In Hollywood and Oakwood slept some 36,000 Southern soldiers, representing every Confederate State. On April 19, Oakwood Memorial Association “wa
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