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.”