were made into banners, woolen dresses and shawls into soldiers'
shirts--carpets into blankets--curtains, sheets, and all linens, were
made into lint and bandages for the wounded. Soft white fingers knitted
socks, shirts and gloves, to keep the cold from the men in the trenches.
Calico was $10 per yard quite early in the strife. Homespun was made
upon the old colonial wheels and looms that had been kept as souvenirs
and curios. Buttons were obtained from persimmon seeds with holes
pierced for eyes. Women plaited their hats from straw or palmetto leaf,
and used feathers from barnyard fowls.
One mourning dress would be loaned from house to house as disaster came.
Shoes were made of wood, or carriage curtains, buggy tops, saddle tops
or any thing like leather. There were thin iron soles like horse shoes.
They were patched with bits of old silk dresses. For little children
shoes were made from old morocco pocket-books. Flour was $250 per
barrel; meal, $50 a bushel; corn, $40 a bushel; oats, $25; black-eyed
peas, $45; brown sugar, $10; coffee, $12; tea, $35 a pound; French
merino or mohair sold at $800 to $1,000 a yard; cloth cloak, $1000 and
$1500; Balmoral boots, $250 the pair; French gloves, $125 and $150.
The stores came to be opened only on occasions.
Salt was the most difficult of all the necessities. The earth from
old smoke houses was dug up and boiled for the drippings of ham and
bacon--these being crystallized by a primitive process.
Newspapers were printed on coarse half-sheets. Every scrap of blank
paper in old note books, letters or waste was utilized. Wall paper and
pictures were turned for envelopes. Glue from the peach tree gum served
to seal the covers. Poke berries, oak balls, and green persimmons,
furnished ink.
The devotion of the people was sublime, always dividing with their
neighbors; and the refugees were noted for heroic acts. The negroes were
faithful in guarding the families, all of whom were left unprotected,
and in working the plantations. Nowhere in the annals of nations has
such fidelity been known.
Two negro men belonging to an army officer's widow who lived with her
young daughters on an Arkansas plantation, conveyed $50,000 in gold in
the cushions of an ambulance to Houston, Texas--a place of safety from
marauding troops, who burned the house and cabins, and captured the
live stock. The Yankees would not molest escaping negroes. These were
faithful to their trust. Similar instances are legion. Leal and true,
always and everywhere.
The memory of those hardships cannot die until all the survivors are
dead. Fertile fields and pleasant villages were destroyed by great
armies. Two billions of dollars in slaves were swept away. Cotton, the
chief staple, was burned, or captured. Wealth placed in Confederate
bonds, was lost forever. Of the 1,000,000 men in the southern army,
three fourths were killed; 400,000 were crippled; and no estimate was
made of the wounded who recovered. The cost of the war was $8,000,000.
Men and horses perished of starvation and disease. The Southern
Confederacy died, not for lack of the will and of the spirit to fight
on--for not even Washington's ragged troops at Valley Forge endured
greater sufferings or displayed greater heroism. The Confederacy died
of exhaustion.
I have said that the women of the South gave all their energies and
ingenuities to the cause. They shared the burdens of conflict. They
encouraged and stimulated the men by their sympathy and cheerful
fortitude. To their country they gave their dearest and best, and bore
up bravely in defeat as well as in victory. With silent courage they
faced privation and danger. They nursed the sick and wounded; took
charge of farms and plantations. With wonderful resource they supplied
the growing deficiencies in domestic affairs. They cared for and directed
the thousands of negroes left dependent upon them. They never lost their
trust in God, or in the righteousness of their cause though their loved
ones languished in prison, or lay dead on the battle field. Their
patriotism and womanly fidelity will be held in honor while the world
lasts.
* * * * *
And the women refugees from the Border States suffered in addition, the
cutting off of news from those they left behind them. Letters went by
chance messengers through the lines, or around by Liverpool, England,
and finally, by special indulgence, in one-page missives, unsealed,
by flag-of truce, via Newport News and Norfolk, Va.
Sometimes months of silence elapsed. Oftener the letters were lost.
In many cases they straggled in after two, or three years.
Forty-four years have dragged their slow lengths since the last
roll-call. We, the survivors and descendants, have buckled on the
armor of faithfulness and are honoring the memory of our martyred
heroes. We are rearing monuments to perpetuate their deeds of valor.
We are cleaning their revered names from aspersion. We are striving to
educate the generations to come in the true history of their marvelous
struggle for the inalienable rights of every free-born American. How
sublime that struggle! How undaunted their attitude! How unsurpassed
their fortitude amid the upheaval of their colossal ruin! The conquered
banner's tattered folds hang on the wall her standard-bearer lies in the
dust--the sod is green above the heads of her valiant leaders--her rank
and file sleep in many an unknown grave. _We_ are in the cooling
valleys of peace, where refreshing lies, and above us waves the flag of
the old, old Union our people once loved so well. So mote it be. We were
loyal to the powers that were; we are loyal to the powers that be. Good
citizenship is now, as ever, the watchword of the South. We do not
forget our martyrs. Upon our devoted heads rests this sacred duty of
consecration. Let us cling together in a cause so noble. Let us merge
all thought of self in the glorious work that lies before us.
And what of our beautiful, our historic southland about which the halo
of poesy so lovingly lingers? Nature and man have wrought a mighty
restoration. Through the grand old States of Virginia and South
Carolina, whose annals contain names which will ever adorn the pages
of history, down into the prosperous States of Georgia, Alabama, and
Mississippi, through Louisiana, unrivaled in fertility, on to the vast
expanse of Texas, whose coming wealth and power may not be measured,
there arise prophetic voices from field, forest, mine, and workshop,
fortelling the grand stirring into life of extended commerce,
enterprise, and capital. Her products have increased and multiplied in
kind and in variety, till we hear in the Senate chamber of Congress
an eloquent plea for the protection of her interests in the country's
political economy. We hear from the lips of the Kentucky Senator
a full recognition of our worth, our greatness and alas! the tardy
acknowledgement of our _rights_.
These beautiful States are swept by the ocean and mountain winds,
and nurtured by the glowing sun and gentle rains. The palmetto and the
cypress and the lordly live oak, stand above the glowing orange grove
and fragrant magnolia bloom, and the grey moss on the trees, wearing the
uniform of the men in grey, wafts a solemn requiem above their narrow
beds. The light of prosperity spreads transcendent radiance over the
land. The throb of commercial triumph pulsates in the hum of the
factory, in the smelting furnace, and ascends in the soft twilight from
the rich furrows of her incomparable fields; while the salt sea billows,
as they rock her shipping, and dash against pier and wharf, add their
exultant voices in prophecy of still greater prosperity.
May advancing wealth rebuild her mansions and fill her coffers, and
fittingly crown the efforts of her ambition, and of her genius. May she
never lose the aspirations that have made her people through sunshine
and storm, a lofty and noble race.
E.D. POTTS.