HOW WOMAN CAME TO THE RESCUE.
Mary Wall’s letter from Clinton, Louisiana, December 27th, 1863, contains
some strong expressions showing the feeling and suffering among women at
that period: “You must keep in good heart, my dearest friend, about your
son David. I heard he was killed, but I have just seen Mr. Holmes, who has
read in a Yankee paper: ‘Capt. Merrick, of Gen. Stafford’s staff, slightly
wounded.’ When I heard your boy was killed I felt the blow, and groaned
under it, for I know just how the iron hoof of Death tears when it settles
down among the heart-strings. When my mother died last year I did not weep
so bitterly, for my only disinterested friend was taken from the evil to
come; but when my gifted, first-born soldier-boy, Willie--my pride and
joy--was laid in a lonely grave, after a mortal gunshot wound, on the
Atchafalaya, at Bute la Rose, _that_ was my hardest trial. I could not get
to him; yet he was decently buried; but of my brother, shot in the fight
in Tennessee, we only know that he was killed on the battlefield at
Franklin. My son Wesley was reported missing after the fight at
Chickamauga; he may be a prisoner. I have heard nothing more, and my
heart stands still when I think he too may have been killed, and his body
thrown in some ravine or creek, as the Texans are said sometimes to do
when they ‘lose’ their Yankee prisoners on the march. God knows, this is a
wicked war! And there is Bowman, my third son; he may be dead, too, for I
do not hear a word from him. I try to steady my aching heart, and go my
way, and do my work with a quiet face; but often when I am alone I sink
down, and the waves go over me. I can pour out my heart to you. I do hope
your boy is but ‘slightly wounded,’ so that he may be sent home to stay
with you for a long time. May God in mercy spare his life; but do not set
your heart on him.”
General Leroy Stafford, on his last visit to his family, stopped at Myrtle
Grove and gave me the particulars of the engagement at Payne’s Farm,
Virginia, where David was shot, the ball entering his head above the ear
and going out on the other side below the ear. He fell from his horse, it
was supposed, mortally wounded. By careful medical attention he survived
with the loss of the sight of one eye and power of hearing, the drum of
one ear being perforated. He suffered temporarily much disfigurement from
paralysis of the facial nerve.
When I saw my handsome boy in this condition my distress will not tax the
imagination. “O mother,” he said, “you ought not to feel in this way! So
many mothers’ boys can never come back to them, and I am alive and getting
better every day. If you have felt cramped in expression, or anybody has
ever done anything to you which rubbed you up the wrong way, throw down
your gauntlet and I’ll fight your battles for you. Don’t shed tears over
me!”
Judge Avery said, referring to David’s own letter from the hospital: “It
is the letter of a hero--not one word of complaint in the whole of it.”
The surgeon attributed my son’s extraordinary recovery to the purity of
blood uncorrupted by the use of tea, coffee, tobacco or alcoholic drinks.
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
asserted 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 association 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 Dick 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
amusement and enthusiasm, by placing his hand on his heart and exclaiming
with _empressement_: “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 glass, madam?”
“Look at my broken windows,” I answered, “all over this house, and tell
whether I can raise peas under glass when we can’t keep ourselves under
it!” With such as we had everybody kept open house while the war lasted.
Nobody, 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 shines 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 class 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 accumulations 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 circumstances, 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 Massachusetts. 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 astonishing 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-assessor 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 Massachusetts!
“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 incumbrances, 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
assassination 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.
“I saw a late article in the _Chicago Times_ in which the writer said:
‘You had better be a poor man’s dog than a Southerner now.’ If our negroes
are idle and impudent we are not allowed to send them away. If we have
crops waiting in the fields for gathering, the hands are all given by the
semi-military government ‘passes to _go_,’ though we pay wages; and
(weakly or humanely?) buy food, furnish doctors and wait on the sick, very
much in the old way, simply because nature refuses to snap the ties of a
lifetime on the authority of new conditions. I have it in mind to make
Myrtle Grove a very disagreeable place to some of the most trifling, so
that they will get into the humor to hunt a new home.
“General Price said: ‘We played for the negro, and the Yankees fairly won
the stake, with Cuffy’s help.’ Let them have him and _keep_ him! Your
father has just had a settlement with his freedmen. They are extremely
dissatisfied with the result. Though they acknowledge every item on their
accounts, furnished at New Orleans wholesale prices, it is a
disappointment not to have a large sum of money for their year’s
labor--that, too, after an extravagance of living we have not dared to
allow ourselves, and an idleness for which we are like sufferers, as the
crop was planted on shares. I am convinced the negroes are too much like
children to understand or be content with the share system.
“I have a good cook, but she has a _cavaliere servente_, besides her own
husband and children, to provide for out of my storeroom, which she does
in my presence very often--though it is not in the bond. I _am_ impatient
when she takes the butter given her for pastry and substitutes lard; yet I
cannot withhold my admiration when I see her double the recipe in order
that her own table may be graced with a soft-jumble as good as mine.
Somebody has said: ‘By means of fire, blood, sword and sacrifice you have
been separated from your black idol.’ It looks to me as if he is hung
around our necks like the Ancient Mariner’s albatross. You ridicule
President Johnson’s idea of loaning us farming implements. You must not
forget who burned ours. We need money, for we have to pay the four years’
taxes on our freed negroes!
“There is bad blood between the races. Those familiar with conditions here
anticipate that the future may witness a servile war--a race war--result
of military drilling, arming and haranguing the negro for political ends.
Secession was a mistake for which you and I were not responsible. But even
if our country was wrong, and we knew it at the time--which we did not--we
were right in adhering to it. The best people in the South were true to
our cause; only the worthless and unprincipled, with rare exceptions, went
over to the enemy. We must bear our trials with what wisdom and patience
we may be able to summon until our status is fully defined. I cannot but
feel, however, that if war measures had ceased with the war, if United
States officers on duty here, and the Government at Washington, had shown
a friendly desire to bury past animosities and to start out on a real
basis of reunion, we should have become a revolutionized, reconstructed
people by this time. But certain it is that the enemy--authorities and
‘scalawag’-friends, who now cruelly oppress the whites and elevate the
negro over us--are hated as the ravaging armies never were, and a true
union seems farther off than ever.”