RECONSTRUCTION DAYS BEGIN
Upon leaving Savannah I proceeded by boat to Augusta, reaching that city
on the fifteenth of June, going thence to Macon, escorted to Atlanta by
Colonel Woods. During the last half of my journey I was under the care
of General B. M. Thomas, who saw me safely into the hands of our kind
friends, the Whittles, whose hospitable home became my asylum until I
proceeded on my way to Huntsville. The necessity for procuring passports
through the several military districts made my journey a slow one. To
add to my discomforts, my trunks, recovered at Macon, were several times
rigorously searched ere I reached my destination. At every transfer
station my baggage was carefully scrutinised, and the small value in
which passports were held may be conjectured from the following
incident.
At a certain point in my homeward journey a change of cars became
necessary at a little wayside town. Night was already upon us when we
reached the station of Crutchfield, where the transfer was to be made.
The little structure was surrounded by hangers-on, threading their lazy
way through a small company of black and white soldiers. I was alone,
save for the little five-year-old son of my maid, Emily, who, being ill,
I had left at the home of Mrs. Whittle. No sooner had my trunk been
deposited on the platform than it became the object of rough handling
and contumely. The train on which I was to continue my journey was
already in position, but the close-pressing crowd about were heedless
alike of my protest and appeals to allow my baggage to be put aboard. I
begged them not to detain me, saying I had General Croxton’s passport
with me; but their only answer was a gruff rebuke. “You have passed his
jurisdiction, Madam,” said one of the military near by.
It was a black night, and but few of those about me carried lanterns.
The scene was fear-inspiring to a lonely woman. My alarm at the thought
of a detention had reached its height, when, by the fitful lights about,
I saw a tall young man break through the crowd.
“By what right do you detain this lady?” he cried, angrily. Then,
turning to the black figures around us, he commanded, “Put that trunk on
board the car!” and almost before I realised it my difficulties were
over, and I had myself stepped aboard the waiting train, rescued from my
unfortunate dilemma by John A. Wyeth, since become a surgeon of national
distinction. Mr. Wyeth had come to the station for the purpose of
boarding this train, which proved a happy circumstance, for it gave me
his protection to Stevenson, a few hours distant from Huntsville. His
father had been the long-time friend of my husband; moreover, Dr. Allen,
grandfather of the young knight-errant, had been one of Senator Clay’s
earliest instructors. Thus, the circumstance of our meeting was a source
of double gratification to me.
While a guest at the home of Colonel Lewis M. Whittle, being unceasing
in my efforts to secure all possible aid for and to arouse our friends
in behalf of my husband, I made several trips of a day or so to other
homes in the vicinity. During such an absence, the Whittle home was
invaded by a party of soldiers, headed by one General Baker, who made
what was meant to be a very thorough search of all my belongings,
despite the protests of my gentle hostess. But for her quick presence of
mind in sending for a locksmith, the locks of my trunks would have been
broken open by the ungallant invaders. I returned to find my friends in
deep trouble and anguish of mind on my behalf. They repeated the story
of the search with much distress of manner. From the disorder in which I
found my room when, shortly afterward, I entered it, these agents of the
Government must have hoped to find there the whole assassination plot.
Clothing of every description was strewn over the floor and bed and
chairs; while on mantelpiece and tables were half-smoked cigar stumps
and ashes left by the gentlemen who took part in that memorable paper
hunt. After a thorough examination of my wardrobe, piece by piece, they
had taken possession of numerous letters and photographs, almost purely
of a private character, among them the picture of my dead infant,
treasured beyond any other. My hostess informed me that, during the
process of searching, General Baker, regardless of her presence,
personally had commented on the quality of my lingerie and the probable
avoirdupois of its owner, saying, among other things, “I see none of the
destitution I’ve heard tell of in the South!” In his eagerness to
discourse on the beauty of a lady’s apparel, he overlooked a recess in
one of my trunks which contained the only written matter that, by any
turning of words, might have been designated treasonable.
Great, indeed, was my surprise, when, seated on the floor surveying the
disorder about, overwhelmed with a conviction of desolation to come, I
opened one secret little slide and looked within the pocket. Now my
chagrin and disappointment were changed to joy; for there, within, lay
the sermon-like, black-covered book that contained my husband’s careful
copies of his State correspondence while in Canada, together with other
important original papers! The sight was almost too good to be true!
Immediately I began to see all things more hopefully. I remember even a
feeling of merriment as I gazed upon one of my husband’s boots standing
just where it had been thrown, in the middle of the floor, while hung
around it was a wreath of once gorgeous pomegranate flowers, which I
recognised as those I had worn at one of the last functions I had
attended in the Federal City.
Many months passed, in which repeated demands were made for the letters
carried away by these emissaries of the Government, ere they were
returned to me. Though taken thus forcibly from me for Governmental
examination, I have no reason to conclude that those in authority at the
War Department detained them for so serious a reason or purpose. On the
contrary, I have ground for believing that my letters and other
possessions lay open for seven or eight months to the gaze of the more
curious friends of the department authorities; for, my friend, Mrs.
Bouligny,[44] early in ’6, wrote warning me in regard to them, “I heard
a lady say the other day that she knew of a person who had read your
journal at the War Department!” By this time I was again in the North,
pleading with President Johnson for the release of my husband and the
return of my papers. When, at last, I received them, they were delivered
to me at the home of Mrs. A. S. Parker, at 4½ and C Streets, Washington,
by a Federal officer, who came in a United States Mail wagon with his
burden!
My home-coming after the eventful trip to Fortress Monroe was a sore
trial. Ex-Governor Clay, now an old man of seventy-five years, and Mrs.
Clay, almost as aged (and nearer, by six months, to the grave, as events
soon proved), were both very much broken. For more than three years they
had waited and wept and prayed for the loved cause which, in its fall,
had borne down their first-born. The Clay home, every stone of which was
hallowed to them, was now occupied by Captain Peabody and his staff.
Servants and all other of their former possessions were scattered; and
Mother Clay, whose beautiful patrician hands had never known the soil of
labour, who, throughout her long life of piety and gentle surroundings,
had been shielded as tenderly as some rare blossom, now, an aged woman,
within but a few months of the tomb, bereft of even her children, was
compelled to perform all necessary household labour. The last and
bitterest pain, that of my husband’s incarceration, fell crushingly upon
her. Her son, who had added lustre to his distinguished father’s name,
who in private virtues had met every wish of her heart, now lay a
prisoner in the nation’s hands, and the nation itself had gone mad with
the desire to wreak a vengeance on some one for the deplorable act of a
madman. The knowledge came to her as a very death-dealing blow, the
climax of years of unintermitting anxiety, deprivations, and the small
tyrannies practised by our many invaders during the investment of
Huntsville. Friends and kindred had been cut down on every side. For
three years our little city had been in Union hands. None of her
formerly affluent citizens but had been impoverished or ruined. By the
summer of ’5, the country about was completely devastated.
The crops were inconsiderable; scarcely any cotton had been planted, and
the appalling cotton tax had already been invented to drain us still
further. All over the South “Reconstruction days” had begun. Confusion
of a kind reigned in every town or city. It was no longer a question of
equality between the Freedmen and their late masters, but of negro
supremacy. On every side the poor, unknowing creatures sought every
opportunity to impress the fact of their independence upon all against
whom they bore resentment. The women were wont to gather on the
sidewalks of the main thoroughfares, forming a line across as they
sauntered along, compelling their former masters and mistresses who
happened to be approaching to take the street; or, if not sufficiently
numerous or courageous to do this, would push their way by them, bumping
into them with a distinct challenge to the outraged one to resent it. As
if to encourage this spirit of “independence,” the agents of the
conquering Government were there to protect their protégés from the
indignant resentment such conduct might well awaken, though they seemed
not to be equipped to instruct them in better things.
Upon my return to Huntsville, after Mr. Clay’s incarceration, having
been absent from it now nearly four years, I found the metamorphosis in
the beautiful old town to be complete. Indignation at the desecration
about us was the one antidote to despair left to the majority of our
neighbours, who, their property seized, their fields unplanted, their
purses empty, had small present peace or ground for hope in the future.
Indignities, petty and great, multiplied each day at the hands of often
wholly inexperienced Federal representatives, who, finding themselves in
authority over the persons and property of men distinguished throughout
the land, knew not how to exercise it. Looking back upon those frightful
years, I am convinced that these agents, far more than our enemies who
strove with our heroes upon the field, are responsible for a transmitted
resentment that was founded upon the unspeakable horrors of
“Reconstruction days.” Happy, indeed, was it for us that the future was
hidden from us; for, bad as the conditions were that met my husband’s
family then, there were to be yet other and worse developments. Our
home, opposite to that of Governor Clay, was now occupied by one
Goodlow, head of the Freedmen’s Bureau. From the one wing of the
parental house to which ex-Governor and Mrs. Clay were now limited, only
the sorry sight met our eyes of the desecration of our once lovely
residence,—the galleries and portico of which were now the gathering
place for protégés of the Government. Daily I saw Alfred, the former
dining-room servant of Governor Clay, revelling in his newly acquired
liberty, dash by our dwelling, seated in a handsome buggy behind a fine
trotter. He was a handsome copper-coloured negro, with the blood of red
men in his veins. His yellow gauntlets were conspicuous two streets
away, and as he passed he left on the evening air the odour of the
Jessamine pomade with which he had saturated his straight Indian locks
in his effort to outdo his late master.
Poor Alfred! He was a child with a toy balloon. A few years passed. In
tattered attire, and with the humblest demeanor, he eked out a scanty
living at a meagre little luncheon-stand on the corner of a
thoroughfare. His former respect and regard for his old master now
returned, and with it, I doubt not, a longing for the days when, in his
fresh linen suits, laundered by the laundress of the Governor’s
household, a valued servant, he had feasted on the good things he
himself had assisted in concocting!
Ground to the earth as we were by the cruelties of the times, that
Freedman’s Bureau was frequently, nevertheless, a source of amusement.
Its name bore but one meaning to the simple-minded follower of the
mule-tail who appealed to it. He knew but one “bureau” in the world, and
that was “ole Missus’s” or “Mis’ Mary’s,” an unapproachable piece of
furniture with a given number of drawers. Bitter was the disappointment
of the innocent blacks when they failed to see the source whence came
their support.
“Whar’s dat bureau?” was sure to be the first question. “Whar all dem
drawers what got de money an’ de sugar an’ de coffee? God knows I neber
see no bureau ’t all, an’ dat man at de book-cupboard[45] talked mighty
short ter me, at dat!”
While letting my thoughts linger for a moment on those dreary days, I
cannot refrain from recalling one of the occasional instances of humane
conduct shown us by those placed in authority over the citizens of
Huntsville, associated, as it is, with a bit of genuine negro
blundering. The generosity of Dr. French, Medical Director, there
stationed, toward the family of our brother, J. Withers Clay, in giving
his medical services freely to them, greatly touched us all.
Appreciating his obvious desire to administer to our wounded spirits a
true “oil and wine,” my sister one morning gathered a bunch of fragrant
camomile blossoms, and, calling her ebony _femme de menage_ to her, she
said, “Take these flowers over to Dr. French and say Mrs. Clay sends
them with her compliments. Tell him that these camomile blossoms are
like the Southern ladies—the more they are bruised and oppressed the
sweeter and stronger they grow! Now,” she added, “tell me, Sally, what
are you going to say?” Sally answered promptly:
“I’se gwine tell de doctor dat Mis’ Mary Clay sont her compliments an’
dese cammile flowers, an’ says dey’s like de Southern ladies, de harder
you squeezes an’ presses ’em de sweeter dey gits!”
It is perhaps unnecessary to relate that the message which reached the
kind doctor was put in written form.