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 dear, I have taken stock of our
assets. You pride yourself on your apple-pies. We have an apple-tree, and
a cow. I will gather the apples and milk the cow, and you will make the
pies, and I will go around and sell them."
Armed with pies, he met his aforetime antagonists at Camp Grant and
conquered them quite. The pies were delicious; the seller was a soldier,
an officer of distinction, in hard luck; and the men at Camp Grant were
soldiers, too. There was sharp demand and good price; only the
elite--officers of rank--could afford to indulge in these confections.
Well it was that Yankee mothers had cultivated in their sons an appetite
for pies. One Savannah lady made thirty dollars selling pies to Sherman's
soldiers; in Georgia's aristocratic "City by the Sea," high-bred dames
stood at basement windows selling cakes and pies to whoever would buy.
Colonel Cary had thrifty rivals throughout Dixie. A once rich planter near
Columbia made a living by selling flowers; a Charleston aristocrat peddled
tea by the pound and molasses by the quart to his former slaves. General
Stephen Elliott, Sumter's gallant defender, sold fish and oysters which he
caught with his own hands. His friend, Captain Stoney, did likewise.
Gentlemen of position and formerly of wealth did not pause to consider
whether they would be discredited by pursuing occupations quite as humble.
Men of high attainments, without capital, without any basis upon which to
make a new start in life except "grit," did whatever they could find to do
and made merry over it.
Yet reporters going over our battle-swept, war-scarred land from whose
fields our laboring class had been by one fell stroke diverted, judged us
by evidences of inertia seen from windows of creepy little cars--(where we
had any cars at all)--that stopped every few hours to take on wood or
water or to repair something or other. For a long time, there was good
reason why our creepy railroads should be a doubly sore subject. Under the
reconstruction governments every State paid thousands of dollars for
railroads that were never built.
All that Southern white men did, according to some ready scribes, was to
sit around cross-roads stores, expectorate tobacco-juice, swap jokes, and
abuse Yankees and niggers. In honesty, it must be confessed there was too
much of this done, any being too much. Every section has its corps of
idlers, its crew of yarn-spinners and drinkers, even in ordinary times
when war has not left upon men the inevitable demoralisation that follows
in its train. Had railway travellers gone into cotton and cornfields and
tobacco lots, they would have found there much of the flower and chivalry
of the Old South "leading the row." Sons of fathers who had been the
wealthiest and most influential men in Dixie came home from the war to
swing the hoe and drive the plow as resolutely as ever they had manned a
battery or charged the breastworks.
But the young men of the South were not born tillers of the soil; not
fitted by inheritance or education for manual toil. They were descendants
of generations who had not labored with their hands but had occupied
themselves as lawyers, doctors, politicians, gentlemen of leisure, and
agriculturists commanding large working forces. Our nation might have been
gainer had the Government devised measures by which talented men could
have been at once bound to its interests and their gifts utilised for the
common advantage. Instead of which, they were threatened with trial for
treason, with execution or exile, were disfranchised, disqualified, put
under the ban. Many who would have made brilliant and useful servants of
the Republic were driven abroad and found honourable service in Mexico,
Brazil, Egypt and Europe.
It is difficult for us at this day to realise what little promise life
held for the young American of the South; difficult even for the South of
the present to appreciate the irritations and humiliations that vexed and
chafed him. Many felt that they had no longer a country.
Mischief was inevitable as the result of repressed or distorted energies,
thwarted or stifled ambition. Some whose record for courage and steadiness
on the field of battle reflects glory on our common country, failed
utterly at adaptation. But as the patient effort of the great body politic
changed the times and opened opportunity, middle-age and youth were ready
to rush in with a will, occupying and improving fields of industry.
But the old people of the South never reacted. Many simply sat down and
died, succumbing to bereavement, hardships and heartbreak. They felt that
their country was dead. Men of their own blood, their brothers, had set
an alien race, an ignorant race, half-human, half-savage, above them; were
insisting that they should send their children to school with children of
this race, while their consciences cried out against the mere discussion
of this thing as an evil to themselves and the negro, and against the
thing itself as crime. Intermarriage was discussed in legislative halls;
bills sanctioning it were introduced; and the horrible black, social evil
due to passions of the white man and the half-human, half-savage
woman--the incubus, the nightmare, under which the whole section had
groaned with groanings that cannot be uttered--was flung in their faces as
more than fair reason.
With reconstruction there was strengthening of the tendency towards
expatriation. Despair and disgust drove many away; and more would have
gone had means been at hand. Whole families left the South and made homes
in Europe; among these, a goodly proportion were proud old Huguenots from
South Carolina. In some of the Cotton States it looked as if more white
men were to be lost thus than had been lost in battle. In December, 1867,
Mr. Charles Nathan, of New Orleans, announced through the press that he
had contracted with the Emperor of Brazil to transport 1,000 yearly to
that empire.
Many went into the enemy's country--went North. Their reports to old
neighbours were that they liked the enemy immensely at home; the enemy was
serenely unconscious of the mischief his fad was working in other people's
homes. He set down everything ill that happened South to the Southern
whites' "race prejudice"; and sipped his own soup and ate his own pie in
peace. The immigrant learned that it was wise to hold his tongue when
discussion of the negro came up. He was considered not to know anything
worth hearing upon the subject. His most careful and rational utterances
would be met with a pitying look which said as plainly as words lips
polite withheld: "Race prejudice hallucination!"
General Lee raised no uncertain voice against expatriation; from his
prison cell, Jefferson Davis deplored it in the first letters he was
allowed to write. Lee set prompt example in doing what his hand found to
do, and in choosing a task rather for public service than for private
gain. I quote a letter written by Mrs. Lee to Miss Mason, dated Derwent,
Virginia, December, 1865:
"The papers will have told you that General Lee has decided to accept the
position at Lexington. I do not think he is very fond of teaching, but he
is willing to do anything that will give him an honourable support. He
starts tomorrow _en cheval_ for Lexington. He prefers that way, and,
besides, does not like to part even for a time from his beloved steed, the
companion of many a hard-fought battle.... The kindness of the people of
Virginia to us has been truly great, and they seem never to tire. The
settlement of Palmore's surrounding us does not suffer us to want for
anything their gardens or farms can furnish.... My heart sinks when I hear
of the destitution and misery which abound further South--gentle and
refined women reduced to abject poverty, and no hope of relief."
Far more lucrative positions had been offered him; salaries without work,
for the mere use of his name. Solicitations came from abroad, and
brilliant opportunities invited across the ocean. He took the helm at
Washington College with this avowal: "I have a self-imposed task which I
must accomplish. I have led the young men of the South in battle. I have
seen many of them fall under my standard. I shall devote my life now to
training young men to do their duty in life." Urged in 1867 to run for
office, he declined, believing that his candidacy might not contribute to
sectional unification. As nearly perfect was this man as men are made. Our
National Capitol is the poorer because his statue is not there. If it ever
is, I should like to see on its pedestal Grant's tribute: "There was no
use to urge him to do anything against his ideas of what was right."
When the crippled and impoverished General Hood refused to receive money
raised by subscription, the "Albany Evening Journal" commented: "It is the
first instance we have ever seen recorded of a 'Southern gentleman' too
proud or self-reliant to accept filthy lucre, come from what source it
may." The "Petersburg Index-Appeal" responded:
"Hood has only done what Lee did a dozen times, what Beauregard did,
what Magruder did, and what President Davis did. The noble response of
Magruder to the people of Texas, who contributed a handsome purse to
procure him a fine plantation, was the impulse and utterance of the
universal spirit of the Southern soldier: 'No, gentlemen, when I
espoused the cause of the South, I embraced poverty and willingly
accepted it.'"
Near Columbia, on the ruins of his handsome home which Sherman burned,
General Wade Hampton, clever at wood-work, built with his own hands and
with the help of his faithful negroes, a lowly cottage to shelter himself
and family. A section was added at a time, and, without any preconceived
design on his part, the structure stood, when completed, a perfect cross.
Miss Isabella Martin, looking upon it one day, exclaimed: "General, you
have here the Southern Cross!" So "Southern Cross" the place was called.
Here, Mrs. Wade Hampton, who, as Miss McDuffie, had been the richest
heiress in South Carolina, and as such and as Hampton's wife, the
guardian angel of many black folk, wrought and ruled with wisdom and with
sweetness unsoured by reverses. South Carolina offered Hampton a home, as
Virginia and then Washington College offered Lee, but Hampton, almost in
want, refused.
This is the plight in which General M. C. Butler, Hampton's aide, came out
of the war: "Twenty-nine years old, with one leg gone, a wife and three
children to support, seventy slaves emancipated, a debt of $15,000, and,
in his pocket, $1.75 in cash." That was the situation of thousands. It
took manhood to make something of it.
For months after the surrender, Confederates were passing through the
country to their homes, and hospitality was free to every ragged and
footsore soldier; the poor best the larder of every mansion afforded was
at the command of the gray-jacket. How diffidently proud men would ask for
bread, their empty pockets shaming them! When any man turned them off with
cold words, it was not well for his neighbours to know, for so, he was
like to have no more respectable guests. The soldiers were good company,
bringing news from far and wide. Most were cheerful, glad they were going
home, undaunted by long tramps ahead. The soldier was used to hard
marches. Now that his course was set towards where loved ones watched for
his coming, life had its rosy outlook that turned to gray for some who
reached the spot where home had stood to find only a bank of ashes.
Reports of country through which they came were often summed up: "White
folks in the fields, negroes flocking to towns. Freedmen's Bureau offices
everywhere thronged with blacks."
A man who belonged to the "Crippled Squad," not one of whom had a full
complement of arms and legs, told this story: As four of them were
limping along near Lexington, they noticed a gray-headed white man in
rough, mud-stained clothes turning furrows with a plow, and behind him a
white girl dropping corn. Taking him for a hired man, they hallooed:
"Hello, there!" The man raised his head. "Say," they called, "can you tell
us where we can get something to eat?" He waved them towards a house,
where a lady who was on the porch, asked them to have a seat and wait
while she had food cooked.
They had an idea that she prepared with her own hands the dinner to which
they presently sat down, of hot hoe-cakes, buttermilk, and a little meat
so smothered in lettuce leaves that it looked a great deal. When they had
cleared up the table, she said: "I am having more bread cooked if you can
wait a few minutes. I am sorry we have not more meat and milk. I know this
has been a very light repast for hungry men, but we have entertained
others this morning, and we have not much left. We hate to send our
soldiers hungry from the door; they ought to have the best of everything
when they have fought so long and bravely and suffered so much." The way
she spoke made them proud of the arms and legs they didn't have.
Now that hunger was somewhat appeased, they began to note surroundings.
The dwelling was that of a military man and a man of piety and culture. A
lad running in addressed the lady as "Mrs. Pendleton," and said something
about "where General Pendleton is plowing."
They stumbled to their crutches! and in blushing confusion, made humble
apologies, all the instincts of the soldier shocked at the liberties they
had taken with an officer of such high grade, and at the ease of manner
with which they had sat at his table to be served by his wife. They knew
their host for William Nelson Pendleton, late Brigadier-General, C. S. A.,
Chief of Artillery of the Army of Northern Virginia, a fighting preacher.
She smiled when they blundered out the excuse that they had mistaken him
for a day-labourer.
"The mistake has been made before," she said. "Indeed, the General is a
day-labourer in his own field, and it does not mortify him in the least
now that all our people have to work. He is thankful his strength is
sufficient, and for the help that the schoolboys and his daughters give
him." She put bread into their haversacks and sent them on their way
rejoicing. The day-labourer and his plow were close to the roadside, and
as they passed, they drew themselves up in line and brought all the hands
they had to their ragged caps in salute.
Dr. Robert G. Stephens, of Atlanta, tells me of a Confederate soldier who,
returning armless to his Georgia home, made his wife hitch him to a plow
which she drove; and they made a crop. A Northern missionary said in 1867,
to a Philadelphia audience, that he had seen in North Carolina, a white
mother hitch herself to a plow which her eleven-year-old son drove, while
another child dropped into the furrows seeds Northern charity had given. I
saw in Virginia's Black Belt a white woman driving a plow to which her
young daughters, one a nursing mother, were hitched; and near the same
time and place an old negro driving a milch-cow to his cart. "Uncle Eph,
aren't you ashamed," I asked, "to work your milch-cow?" "Law, Miss,
milch-white-'oman wuk. Huccom cow can't wuk?"
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