Matthew Page Andrews

ICICLES AT THE SOUTH

The rain on the trees has ceased to freeze;
(’Twas molded with quaint device)
The bent boughs lean, like cimeters keen,
In scabbards of shining ice.
’Neath frozen cloaks the pines and oaks
Are stooping like Druids old,—
And the cedars stand—an arctic band—
Held in the clutch of cold.
Through the outer gloom the japonicas bloom,
With the lustre of rubies bright—
Like blossoms blown from a tropic zone,—
A marvellous land of light!
William Hamilton Hayne

December First

THE FIRST SNOW-FALL

The Fir-tree felt it with a thrill
And murmur of content;
The last dead Leaf its cable slipt
And from its moorings went;
The selfsame silent messenger,
To one that shibboleth
Of Life imparting, and to one,
The countersign of Death.
John B. Tabb

December Second

The avengers whose lives he had attempted, whose wives and children he had devoted to the hideous brutality of insurgent Africans, spared him all indignities, even moral torture.

Percy Greg
(England)

John Brown hanged, 1859

December Third

The Black and Tan Convention met December 3, 1867, in our venerable and historic capital to frame a new constitution for the Old Dominion. In this body were members from New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, Maryland, District of Columbia, Ireland, Scotland, Nova Scotia, Canada, England; scalawags, or turn-coats, by Southerners most hated of all; twenty-four negroes; and in the total of 105, thirty-five white Virginians, from counties of excess white population, who might be considered representative of the State’s culture and intelligence.

Myrta Lockett Avary

James Rumsey (1787) makes successful trial trip of the steamboat designed after the model of 1784, then witnessed by George Washington and others

December Fourth

A BIT OF RECONSTRUCTION ORATORY

“Mistah President, de real flatform, suh. I’ll sw’ar tuh high Heaven. Yas, I’ll sw’ar higher dan dat. I’ll go down an’ de uth shall crumble intuh dus’ befor’ dee shall amalgamise my rights. ’Bout dis question uh cyarpet-bags. Ef you cyarpet-baggers does go back on us, woes be unto you! You better take yo cyarpet-bags and quit, and de quicker you git up and git de better. I do not abdicate de supperstition tuh dese strange friens, lately so-called citizens uh Ferginny. Ef dee don’ gimme my rights, I’ll suffer dis country tuh be lak Sarah. I’ll suffer desterlation fus!”...

“I’se here tuh qualify my constituents. I’ll sing tuh Rome an’ tuh Englan’ an’ tuh de uttermos’ parts uh de uth.” (“You must address yourself to the chair,” said that functionary, ready to faint.) “All right, suh, I’ll not ’sire tuh maintain de House any longer.”

Hon. Lewis Lindsay
(From Stenographic Report)

December Fifth

Religion is as necessary to reason as reason is to religion. The one cannot exist without the other. A reasoning being would lose his reason, in attempting to account for the great phenomena of nature, had he not a Supreme Being to refer to; and well has it been said that if there had been no God mankind would have been obliged to imagine one.

George Washington

December Sixth

CLEMENCY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS

Honorable Jefferson Davis: My father, Harrison Self, is sentenced to hang at four o’clock this evening on a charge of bridge-burning. As he remains my earthly all, and all my hopes of happiness centre on him, I implore you to pardon him.

Elizabeth Self
(Telegram which secured pardon for her father)

Jefferson Davis dies, 1889

The county of Kentucky formed from Virginia, 1776

Duncan Nathaniel Ingraham, “Hero of the Koszta Rescue,” born, 1802

December Seventh

For years after the war, the Republican politicians in the South told the negroes that if the Democrats were elected, they would be put back into slavery. Consequently, after the first election of Cleveland, many of them began to make their arrangements to readapt themselves to the old regime. One old Virginia “aunty” living in Howard County, Maryland, announced that she was ready to return to Richmond; but declared most positively: “Deed, my ole Missus has got to send me my railroad ticket fust.”

December Eighth

Our one sweet singer breaks no more
The silence sad and long,
The land is hushed from shore to shore
It brooks no feebler song.
Carl McKinley

Henry Timrod born, 1829

Joel Chandler Harris born, 1848

December Ninth

JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS

It would be difficult to estimate the good done by a man like Harris, who brings a sense of relaxation and a thrill of pleasure to countless readers round the world. Such a man becomes a public benefactor. To-day men are better citizens, life’s tasks are easier, the roads are lighter, and heaven is nearer to earth because of the cheerful, hopeful, mirthful stories of Uncle Remus.

Henry Stiles Bradley

Lord Dunmore defeated by Colonel Woodford at Battle of Great Bridge, Virginia, 1775

December Tenth

Mt. Vernon, 31 Jan. 1786

Sir:—If you have no cause to change your opinion respecting your mechanical boat, and reasons unknown to me do not exist to delay the exhibition of it, I would advise you to give it to the public as soon as it can be prepared conveniently.... Should a mechanical genius hit upon your plan, or something similar to it, I need not add that it would place you in an awkward situation and perhaps disconcert all your prospects concerning this useful discovery....

George Washington
(Letter to James Rumsey)

Mississippi admitted to the Union, 1817

December Eleventh

Mr. Rumsey’s steamboat, with more than half her loading (which was upwards of three ton) and a number of people on board, made a progress of four miles in one hour against the current of Potomac River, by the force of steam, without any external application whatsoever.

(Virginian Gazette and Winchester Advertiser, Jan. 11, 1788)

Second trip of Rumsey’s steamboat at Shepherdstown, Va., in boat designed after model of 1784

December Twelfth

I have taken the greatest pains to perfect another kind of boat, upon the principles I mentioned to you at Richmond, in November last, and have the pleasure to inform you that I have brought it to a great perfection ... and I have quite convinced myself that boats of passage may be made to go against the current of the Mississippi or Ohio rivers, or in the Gulf Stream (from the Leeward to the Windward-Islands) from sixty to one hundred miles per day. I know this will appear strange and improbable to many persons, yet I am very certain it may be performed, besides, it is simple (when understood) and is also strictly philosophical.

James Rumsey
(In letter to George Washington after construction of steamboat model seen in action by the latter in 1784)

December Thirteenth

On part of the field the Union dead lay three deep. So fearful was the slaughter that our men at certain points on the line cried out to the advancing Federal forces, “Go back; we don’t want to kill you all!” Still they pressed forward in the face of despair, and they fell in the unshrinking station where they fought. In six months Lee had effaced Pope, checked McClellan, and crushed Burnside—June 25 to December 13, 1862.

Henry E. Shepherd

Burnside repulsed at Fredericksburg, 1862

December Fourteenth

Washington stands alone and unapproachable, like a snow-peak rising above its fellows into the clear air of morning, with a dignity, constancy and purity which have made him the ideal type of civic virtue to succeeding generations.

James Bryce
(England)

George Washington dies, 1799

December Fifteenth

Of late I have opened a pawnbroker’s shop for my hard-pressed brethren in feathers, lending at a fearful rate of interest; for every borrowing Lazarus will have to pay me back in due time by monthly instalments of singing. I shall have mine own again with usury. But were a man never so usurious, would he not lend a winter seed for a summer song? Would he refuse to invest his stale crumbs in an orchestra of divine instruments and a choir of heavenly voices?

James Lane Allen

December Sixteenth

I fill this cup to one made up
Of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex
The seeming paragon;
To whom the better elements
And kindly stars have given
A form so fair, that, like the air,
’Tis less of earth than heaven.
Edward C. Pinkney
(“A Health”)

December Seventeenth

Her every tone is music’s own,
Like those of morning birds,
And something more than melody
Dwells ever in her words;
The coinage of her heart are they,
And from her lips each flows
As one may see the burdened bee
Forth issue from the rose.
Edward C. Pinkney
(“A Health”)

December Eighteenth

... Nay, more! in death’s despite
The crippled skeleton “learned to write.”
“Dear mother,” at first, of course; and then
“Dear Captain,” inquiring about the men.
Captain’s answer: “Of eighty-and-five,
Giffen and I are left alive.”
Francis O. Ticknor
(“Little Giffen”)

Francis O. Ticknor dies, 1874

December Nineteenth

Word of gloom from the war, one day;
Johnston pressed at the front, they say.
Little Giffen was up and away;
A tear—his first—as he bade good-bye,
Dimmed the glint of his steel-blue eye.
“I’ll write, if spared!” There was news of the fight;
But none of Giffen.—He did not write.
Francis O. Ticknor

Crittenden’s compromise opposed by dominant party in Congress, 1860

Some of the manufacturing states think that a fight would be awful. Without a little bloodletting this Union will not, in my estimation, be worth a rush.

Z. Chandler
(Senator from Michigan)

December Twentieth

The Convention of 1787 was composed of members, a majority of whom were elected to reject the Federal Constitution; and it was only after the clause declaring that “the power granted under the Constitution being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury and oppression, and that every power not granted thereby remains with them at their will,” was inserted in the ordinance of ratification, that six or more of the majority opposed to the measure consented to vote for it. Even with this accession of strength the Constitution was carried only by a vote of 89 to 79.

(From Editorial Article in Charleston “Courier,” 1861)

South Carolina secedes, 1860

December Twenty-First

RESOLVED.... As the powers of legislation, granted in the Constitution of the United States to Congress, do not embrace a case of the admission of a foreign State or Territory, by legislation, into the Union, such an act of admission would have no binding force whatever on the people of Massachusetts.

(Resolutions of Massachusetts Legislature, 1845. Nullification?)

President Tyler urges annexation of Texas, 1844

December Twenty-Second

Bowing her head to the dust of the earth,
Smitten and stricken is she;
Light after light gone out from her hearth,
Son after son from her knee.
Bowing her head to the dust at her feet,
Weeping her beautiful slain;
Silence! keep silence for aye in the street—
See! they are coming again!
Alethea S. Burroughs

Sherman enters Savannah, 1864

Reconstruction Act put in effect in Georgia, 1869

December Twenty-Third

The glory of your virtues will not terminate with your military command; it will continue to animate remote ages.

(President of Congress, to General Washington)

Washington resigns his commission as Commander-in-Chief, Annapolis, 1783

December Twenty-Fourth

CHRISTMAS EVE

The moon is in a tranquil mood;
The silent skies are bland:
Only the spirits of the good
Go musing up the land:
The sea is wrapped in mist and rest;
It is the night that God hath blest.
Danske Dandridge

December Twenty-Fifth

To the cradle-bough of a naked tree,
Benumbed with ice and snow,
A Christmas dream brought suddenly
A birth of mistletoe.
The shepherd stars from their fleecy cloud
Strode out on the night to see;
The Herod north-wind blustered loud
To rend it from the tree.
But the old year took it for a sign,
And blessed it in his heart:
“With prophecy of peace divine,
Let now my soul depart.”
John B. Tabb
(Mistletoe)

December Twenty-Sixth

Now praise to God that ere his grace
Was scorned and he reviled
He looked into his mother’s face,
A little helpless child.
And praise to God that ere men strove
Above his tomb in war
One loved him with a mother’s love,
Nor knew a creed therefor.
John Charles McNeill
(A Christmas Hymn)

December Twenty-Seventh

Hear the sledges with the bells—
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars, that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
Edgar Allan Poe

December Twenty-Eighth

In the future some historian shall come forth both strong and wise,
With a love of the Republic, and the truth, before his eyes.
He will show the subtle causes of the war between the States,
He will go back in his studies far beyond our modern dates,
He will trace our hostile ideas as the miner does the lodes,
He will show the different habits born of different social codes,
He will show the Union riven, and the picture will deplore,
He will show it re-united and made stronger than before.
James Barron Hope

December Twenty-Ninth

Slow and patient, fair and truthful must the coming teacher be
To show how the knife was sharpened that was ground to prune the tree.
He will hold the Scales of Justice, he will measure praise and blame,
And the South will stand the verdict, and will stand it without shame.
James Barron Hope

Texas admitted to the Union, 1845

December Thirtieth

I changed my name when I got free
To “Mister” like the res’,
But now dat I am going Home,
I likes de ol’ name bes’.
Sweet voices callin’ “Uncle Rome”
Seem ringin’ in my ears;
An’ swearin’ sorter sociable,—
Ol’ Master’s voice I hears.
······
He’s passed Heaven’s River now, an’ soon
He’ll call across its foam:
“You, Rome, you damn ol’ nigger,
Loose your boat an’ come on Home!”
Howard Weeden

December Thirty-First

’Tis midnight’s holy hour—and silence now
Is brooding, like a gentle spirit, o’er
The still and pulseless world. Hark! on the winds,
The bells’ deep notes are swelling. ’Tis the knell
Of the departed year. No funeral train
Is sweeping past; yet on the stream and wood,
With melancholy light, the moonbeams rest
Like a pale, spotless shroud; the air is stirred,
As by a mourner’s sigh; and on yon cloud,
That floats so still and placidly through heaven,
The spirits of the seasons seem to stand—
Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn’s solemn form,
And Winter, with his aged locks—and breathe
In mournful cadences, that come abroad
Like the far wind harp’s wild and touching wail,
A melancholy dirge o’er the dead Year,
Gone from the earth forever.
George Denison Prentice

Battle of Murfreesboro, Tenn., 1862

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