LIFE IN SOUTHERN ALABAMA DURING THE CIVIL WAR BY PARTHENIA ANTOINETTE HAGUE BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1888 Copyright, 1888, By Parthenia Antoinette Hague . All rights reserved. The Riverside Press, Cambridge : Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co....

On a glorious sunshiny morning in the early summer of 1861 I was on my way to the school-house on the plantation of a gentleman who lived near Eufaula, Alabama, and in whose service I remained during the period of the war. As I was nearing the little school-room on a rising knoll, all shaded with great oaks and sentineled with tall pines, I heard skipping feet behind me, and one of my scholars exclaiming, “Here is a letter for you, Miss A——! It has just been brought from the office by ‘Ed’”—the

But now the giant emergency must be met, and it was not long ere all were in good training; and having put hands to the plow, there was no murmuring nor looking back. The first great pressing needs were food and clothing. Our government issued orders for all those engaged in agriculture to put only one tenth of their land in cotton, there being then no market for cotton. All agriculturists, large or small, were also required by our government to give for the support of our soldiers one tenth of

A woman whose husband and one son were in our army had raised, with the help of her few slaves, among other farm products, a surplus of watermelons. The season had been propitious, and her melons were large, well flavored, and very juicy. So one day she determined to make a trial of the juice of the watermelons for syrup. She gathered those which were thought to be ripe enough for use, prepared a large tub with a sack hanging over it, sliced up the melons, and scraped all the meat and juice into

There was some pleasant rivalry as to who should be the most successful in producing the brightest and clearest tinge of color on thread or cloth. Most of the women of southern Alabama had small plats of ground for cultivating the indigo bush, for making “indigo blue,” or “indigo mud,” as it was sometimes called. The indigo weed also grew abundantly in the wild state in our vicinage. Those who did not care to bother with indigo cultivation used to gather, from the woods, the weed in the wild sta

Willow wickerwork came in as a new industry with us. We learned to weave willow twigs into baskets of many shapes and sizes. A woman of our settlement wove of willow switches a beautiful and ornate body for her baby carriage. As much, she said, to show what she could make out of willow withes, as for the real use of her baby. The switches were gathered when the willows were flowering, and stripped of bark and leaves; what was not wanted for immediate use was put by in bundles, to be used in our

One blustering, drizzling March night at our home in Alabama the two little daughters of Uncle Ben and Aunt Phillis, who, since their early childhood had been brought up in Mr. G——’s house as servants, came rushing into our room with the startling intelligence that “Daddy’s arter mammy; he’s got an axe in his hand and says he’s gwine ter kill her dis berry night.” Where Phillis was hiding the little girls knew not. She was not in the kitchen, nor in her cabin; neither had she come into the house

As no muslin could be bought for summer wear, and our home-made cloth was very heavy and warm for hot weather, we women of southern Alabama devised a plan for making muslin out of our own homespun thread; and the fact that it was made of this thread added not a little to its excellence in our estimation. In the weaving of all heavy, thick cloth, whether plain or twilled, two threads, sometimes three, were always passed through the reeds of the sley, when the warp was put in the loom for weaving

One of our most difficult tasks was to find a good substitute for coffee. This palatable drink, if not a real necessary of life, is almost indispensable to the enjoyment of a good meal, and some Southerners took it three times a day. Coffee soon rose to thirty dollars per pound; from that it went to sixty and seventy dollars per pound. Good workmen received thirty dollars per day; so it took two days’ hard labor to buy one pound of coffee, and scarcely any could be had even at that fabulous pric

It may excite some amusement to record the fact that among the thousand and one industries and makeshifts which blossomed into life in southern Alabama during the period of the war, the making of hoopskirts, which were worn extensively before, as well as during, and even for some time after, hostilities between the North and South, was not neglected. One of the ladies of our county devised a means of weaving the hoopskirt on the common house-loom. It mattered not if the tapes were all broken, an

Often have we sat on the colonnade of that lovely Alabama home, and wondered if any part of the world could be more beautiful. We would number the stars at night as they peeped forth one by one, in the clear blue vault above, until they became innumerable, and then the full moon would deluge the whole scene with its shining flood of light. Or perhaps it would be in the deepening twilight, when the heavens were unrelieved by moon or star, that the soul would be touched, as the drowsy hum of natur

Leaving a broken home circle, I returned to southern Alabama, where everything was moving on as before; the thump of the house-loom and the whirring of the spinning-wheel were just as regular in every household; substitutes and expedients were still being devised or improved upon. There was no diminution of patience or perseverance, and we still felt, in that section, none of the effects of war, saving the privations and inconveniences to which allusion has been made. We still had our merry soci

When the morning came after that miserable night, another courier passed through our settlement, ending our state of uncertainty with the information that the Northern army was in Eufaula. We had been entirely passed by, after all our tumult and apprehension. How thankful we were, Heaven only knows! Mr. G—— came in towards night with all his stock, saying he hoped he should never have to spend another night in that uncanny dark swamp, with its tall trees all festooned with gray moss, almost reac

The return of our soldiers after the surrender, in their worn and ragged gray, as they tramped home by twos, threes, and sometimes in little squads of half a dozen or more, was pitiable in the extreme. Some were entirely without shoes or hats; others had only an apology for shoes and hats. They were coming home with nothing; and we could almost say, coming home to nothing; for many verily found, when they reached the spot that had been to them a happy home, nothing save a heaped-up mass of ruins

Just as soon as the railroads could be repaired and bridges builded anew, I made haste to get to my father’s again to find how all had gone with them while our foes were marching through Georgia. I had tried for three months or more to get a letter or message of some sort to them, as they had to me, but all communication for the time being was completely broken up. I had spent many sad hours thinking of those at home, and was almost afraid to hear from them; but as soon as a train ran to Columbu