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Old Times in Dixie Land: A Southern Matron's Memories

by Caroline E. Merrick · English · Gutenberg #41475 · 375,526 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Old Times in Dixie Land: A Southern Matron's Memories

Author: Caroline E. Merrick


        
Release date: November 24, 2012 [eBook #41475]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD TIMES IN DIXIE LAND: A SOUTHERN MATRON'S MEMORIES ***

[Illustration: Caroline E. Merrick]




  OLD TIMES IN DIXIE LAND

  A Southern Matron’s Memories


  BY CAROLINE E. MERRICK


  NEW YORK
  THE GRAFTON PRESS
  1901




  COPYRIGHT, 1901,
  BY CAROLINE ELIZABETH MERRICK




CONTENTS.


  CHAPTER                                                             PAGE

      I. COTTAGE HALL                                                    5

     II. OLD TIMES                                                      11

    III. HOME LIFE                                                      17

     IV. RUMORS OF OUR CIVIL WAR                                        24

      V. MY DAUGHTER LAURA’S DIARY                                      37

     VI. WAR MEMORIES: HOW BECKY COLEMAN WASHED HESTER WHITEFIELD’S
         FACE                                                           48

    VII. WAR MEMORIES: THE STORY OF PATSY’S GARDEN.                     59

   VIII. HOW WOMAN CAME TO THE RESCUE                                   69

     IX. MISS VINE’S DINNER PARTY AND ITS ABRUPT CONCLUSION             83

      X. OUR FEDERAL FRIENDS AND THE COLORED BROTHER                   104

     XI. LAURA’S DEATH IN THE EPIDEMIC OF ’78                          116

    XII. A FIRST SPEECH AND SOME NOTED WOMEN                           124

   XIII. FRANCES WILLARD                                               141

    XIV. SORROW AND SYMPATHY                                           153

     XV. BECKY SPEAKS UP IN MEETING IN THE INTERESTS OF MORALITY       164

    XVI. MRS. JULIA WARD HOWE AND THE BLESSED COLORED PEOPLE           171

   XVII. NERVOUS PROSTRATION AND A VENERABLE COUSIN                    186

  XVIII. ENTER--AS AN EPISODE--MRS. COLUMBIANA PORTERFIELD             197

    XIX. THE SOUTHERN WOMAN BECOMES A “CLUBABLE” BEING                 212

     XX. “THE BEST IS YET TO BE”                                       229




OLD TIMES IN DIXIE LAND




CHAPTER I.

COTTAGE HALL.


I have not written these memoirs entirely for the amusement or instruction
of my contemporaries; but I shall feel rewarded if I elicit thereby the
interest and sympathy which follows an honest effort to tell the truth in
the recollections of one’s life--for, after all, truth is the chief virtue
of history. My ancestry may be of as little importance in itself as this
book is likely to be after the lapse of a few years; yet it is
satisfactory to know that your family is respectable,--even if you cannot
prove it to be so ancient that it has no beginning, and so worthy that it
ought to have no end. I am willing, however, that my genealogy should be
investigated; there are books giving the whole history; and it is surely
an innocent and praiseworthy pride--that of good pedigree.

I was born November 24th, 1825, at our plantation home, called Cottage
Hall, in the parish of East Feliciana, in the State of Louisiana. My
father was a man of firmness and of courage amounting to stoicism. He
appeared calm and self-possessed under all circumstances. He ruled his own
house, but so judicious was his management that even his slaves loved him.

Though I was very young when my mother died, I can remember her and the
great affection manifested for her by the entire family. While not
realizing the importance of my loss, I knew enough to resent the coming of
another to fill her place. My father said he wanted a good woman who could
see that his family of six children were properly brought up and educated.
His nephew, Dr. James Thomas, introduced him to Miss Susan Brewer, who he
thought would fill all these requirements. The marriage was soon arranged,
and I was brought home, to Cottage Hall, by my eldest sister, with whom I
had been living. The other children had laid aside their mourning and I
was informed that I also had new dresses; but I declined to wear them or
to call the new mistress of the household by the name of “Mother,” which
had been freely given her by the rest of the family. When my father lifted
me from the carriage he said: “My child, I will now take you to your new
mother.” As he kissed me affectionately I turned away and said: “I am not
your child, and I have no mother now.” I have never forgotten the sad look
he gave me nor the tenderness he manifested toward my waywardness as he
took me in his arms and carried me into the house. I was a troublesome
little girl with an impetuous temper; perhaps it was on this account that
he often said: “This golden-haired darling is the dearest little one in
the house--and the most exacting.” My father had a vein of quaint humor
and abounded in proverbial wisdom. I have heard him say, “Yes, I have a
very bad memory--I remember what should be forgotten.”

We often had friends and schoolmates to spend the day or night at Cottage
Hall; but when these visits were returned we were always accompanied by
our married sister or some equally responsible _chaperone_. We complained
much of this rigid rule, yet I now think it was a wise exaction that every
night should find us sheltered under the home roof. My father had no
patience with the innocent flirtations of young people; he thought such
conduct implied a lack of straight-forward honesty which was inexcusable.
Few men can understand the temptations of a young girl’s environment,
which sometimes cause her to make promises in good faith that cannot be
carried out, and my father had no pity on one who so doted on general
admiration that she was unwilling to contract her life into a simple home
with one true, brave heart. Such an one, he thought, deserved to become a
lonely old maid and hold a pet dog in her arms, with never a child of her
own, because she had turned away from her highest vocation--and all for
pure vanity and folly.

My stepmother was a gifted woman. She was born in Wilbraham,
Massachusetts, in 1790, and died July 25th, 1876. She had come South by
the advice of Dr. Wilbur Fisk, and was instrumental in bringing into
Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana over sixty accomplished teachers, she
herself having been at the head of successful schools in New York,
Baltimore, Tuscaloosa and Washington. The calling of teaching she gave up
when she married my father, but the cause of education in the South was
greatly promoted by her influence, for which reason she has been compared
to Mary Lyon of New England.

On one occasion, when my stepmother had a large party of Northern people
at tea, they began praising the products of their own State and
depreciating those of Louisiana. My childish anger was stirred, and I
asked our guests why they had come down here if they had everything so
much nicer and better in Massachusetts? I said no more, for a maid was
called and I was sent to bed, retiring with indignation while the company
laughed spiritedly at my impertinence. One of my sisters wrote me later,
“Ma has no occasion to teach you how to manage, for you were born with a
talent for ruling--whether wisely or not time will show.”

Cottage Hall was five miles from Jackson, Louisiana. My father was for
many years trustee of the college there which afterward became Centenary
College of the Methodist Episcopal Church South. His death occurred in
1849, and I have preserved a eulogy delivered by President Augustus
Baldwin Longstreet during the Commencement exercises of the year. From
this I transcribe a few sentences:

    “A sad announcement will be anticipated by those who have been long in
    the habit of attending these occasions when they cast their eyes over
    the Board of Trustees and see that the seat of Captain David Thomas is
    vacant. Never since the foundation of the College was it so before.
    He was present at the birth of this institution; he saw it in all its
    promising and dispiriting visitations; and while it had no peculiar
    claims upon him, he watched over it with parental solicitude. At
    length he rejoiced in its commitment to the care of his own church;
    and under the management of my predecessor, he saw it assume an
    honorable rank among the kindred institutions of our Southern clime.
    His head, his heart and purse were all at its service. He was
    anticipating the events of this week with hopeful gratification when,
    within forty-eight hours of the time he expected to mingle his
    counsels with his colleagues, it pleased God to cut him down. Were our
    griefs always proportioned to our losses, his wife, his children, the
    orphan, the poor, the church, the trustees, the faculty, and the
    students would all have raised one wild shriek at the twang of the
    archer’s bow which laid him low. Were the joys of friendship
    proportioned to the good fortune of a friend, we should all rejoice
    and mingle our voices in loud hallelujahs that death had snatched him
    away; for that he has gone direct from earth to heaven none can doubt
    who knew him. I find it hard to restrain the starting tears; but this
    is my weakness. We all should rejoice, but this our nature will not
    permit; yet we must testify our respect for his memory.”

Then Judge Longstreet read the resolutions of the Board of Trustees of
Centenary College, which had been placed in his hands. This extraordinary
man was a dear friend of our family, and every child in the house enjoyed
his visits. He played on a glass flute for us, and it was a choice
privilege when we were allowed to hear him read from his “Georgia Scenes”
about the comical doings of Ned Brace and Cousin Patsy. His peculiarities
bordered on eccentricity and his wit was inimitable and irresistible.

Mrs. Longstreet was a lovely woman of whose presence one never wearied.
She wore the daintiest of white caps, and seemed in the eyes of all like
the angel she was. Of Byron, Walter Scott, and historical literature she
could give pages from memory with great expression and in the sweetest
voice imaginable. She was ideally sweet even in her most advanced years--a
vision which once seen can never be forgotten.




CHAPTER II.

OLD TIMES.


On a clear spring morning more than fifty years ago, Cousin Antoinette and
I sat on the front porch of Cottage Hall ready for a ride and waiting for
the stable boy to bring up our ponies. We were in the act of mounting when
my father appeared and inquired where we were going.

“We shall not take a long ride, papa. We are not going anywhere, and shall
return in good time for breakfast.”

“You will do nothing of the kind. You have no brother here to ride with
you, and it is improper for two young ladies to be seen on the public road
alone so early in the morning.” He then ordered the horses back to the
lot. We were obliged to submit to his authority without protest, though I
was ready to say, “There is a word sweeter than ‘mother, home, or heaven,’
and that word is ‘liberty.’” Contrast this with the freedom of the modern
girl on her bicycle!

Once when I left the schoolroom on account of a disagreement with the
governess, my stepmother thought my father should require me to return and
apologize. “No,” he replied, “she elects her own life and must abide by
her choice; she shall not be coerced.” I was never afterward a student in
any schoolroom, though at this time only in my thirteenth year. I had been
in class with girls three or four years older than myself, and was
considered quite mature in person and mental development. I early
ascertained that girls had a sphere wherein they were expected to remain
and that the despotic hand of some man was continually lifted to keep them
revolving in a certain prescribed and very restricted orbit. When mild
reproofs failed there were always other curbs for the idiot with eccentric
inclinations.

Yet it was with my father’s full consent, even by his advice, that at
fifteen years of age I married Edwin Thomas Merrick, for he thought I
could not enter too soon upon woman’s exclusive path, and be marching
along towards woman’s kingdom with a companion in the prime of a noble
manhood. I was indebted for my “bringing up” to the young man I married.
He was more than twice my age, and possessed many times over my amount of
wisdom. In one of Mr. Merrick’s love-letters, written in 1839, alluding to
a remark of mine on the absurdity of a “young thing like me” being
companionable for a man of thirty years, he says: “Is it not ‘ridiculously
absurd’ for a young lady who talks seriously of moving an island in the
lake of Windermere to suppose she is not old enough to marry anybody? I
have been reared in the cold North where mind and person come to maturity
slowly; you in the sunny South where the flower bursts at once into full
luxuriance and beauty.” Lover-like, he compliments me by continuing: “I
have never discovered in you anything to remind me of the disparity of our
ages; but, on the contrary, I have found a maturity of judgment,
correctness of taste and extent of accomplishments which cause me to feel
that you have every acquisition of a lady of twenty; and I have been
happier in your society than in that of any other human being.”

My husband, the nephew of my stepmother, was born July 9th, 1809, in
Wilbraham, Massachusetts. He was an advocate and jurist, served as
district judge of the Florida parishes, and was twice elected chief
justice of the Supreme Court of Louisiana.

The entire household at Cottage Hall was devoted to “Cousin Edwin,” as he
was called after our Southern fashion of claiming kinship with those we
like. I remember that when Mrs. Lafayette Saunders heard that Mrs. Thomas
had made this match, she replied: “It is a pity she did not do the same
for all the family, for she surely has made a good one for Caroline!” For
a year and a half Mr. Merrick and I had seen much of each other and had
exchanged frequent letters, many of which have been sacredly preserved to
the present time. Bishop John C. Keener, who was his lifelong friend, said
of him at the time of his death: “Judge Merrick was always a bright,
delightful person in his family and with his acquaintances and friends. He
was a scholar, and was familiar with several modern languages, especially
French and German. He had an investigating mind, loved to explore the
recent wonders of science, and the doctrine of evolution he accepted. Few
men had rounded their career into a grander expression of all the high
qualities which concur in the useful citizen and the influential public
magistrate. He was an incorruptible and capable judge, which is the most
important and admirable character in the official constituency of
government.”

The Law Association of New Orleans, in their tribute to his memory, said
to him--using his own words at a like meeting in honor of Chief Justice
Eustis: “His judicial opinions show a comprehensive intellect, cultivated
by long study, and familiarized with the sentiments of the great writers
and expounders of the law. They were, as became them, more solid than
brilliant, more massive than showy. They are like granite masonry, and
will serve as guides and landmarks in years to come. He was domestic,
temperate and simple in his habits; modest, patient, punctual, and
exceedingly studious. In his family relations he was a good husband, a
wise and loving father. He loved his fellow-men and enjoyed the success of
others. He encouraged young men, and with his brethren of the bar he was
always considerate, courteous and generous.”

Thus he received a beautiful and eloquent tribute which dealt with both
his public and private life.

In his home Mr. Merrick was always gentle and lovable without the least
apparent pride. He would entertain with the greatest simplicity the
youngest child in the house; and this fact reminds me of a little boy who
deposited with tears a bouquet at his lifeless feet. To the inquiry “Who
sent them?” he replied: “I brought them. For three years he has given me
money to buy all my school books, and I am so sorry he is dead!” In a
letter my daughter-in-law had written me while we were in Virginia during
one of his last summers on earth, she asked: “Does father still roam over
the hills gathering flowers for you to wear as he used to do?” Even in his
old age his cheerfulness, his equipoise and sweetness never deserted him.

In regard to early marriages, I cannot, in view of my own experience and
long life of contentment and domestic happiness, say aught unfavorable,
though there is another side to the question and modern custom tends
increasingly towards marriage at a later period. As it is true that the
progeny of immature plants and animals do not equal in vigor and capacity
for endurance the offspring of fully developed specimens, so human beings
who desire to establish a home and intend to bring up a family, should not
be children, but full-grown, matured men and women; yet, all things else
being equal, it is surely better they should unite to make up a perfect
life before the season of youth has passed away, and the man became
_blasé_, the woman warped. Men are much concerned about our sex and the
duties and peculiar functions belonging thereto. It is my opinion that
they too need some instruction in regard to the exercise and regulation of
their own relations and responsibilities toward the future welfare of the
race. They have decided that brain work is detrimental to the full
development of the organization of the female; but they do not worry over
the effects of tobacco, whisky and certain vile habits upon the congenital
vigor of both boys and girls. Fathers and medical men ought to look well
to the hygienic duties of their own sex; then both sexes would be born
with better capacity for life and growth, and the poor mother would not be
obliged to spend so much care and trouble in rearing the offspring of
debilitated manhood. Nature does not work in a hurry. She is patient,
persistent and deliberate, never losing sight of her own great ends, and
inexorable as to her rights.

If study could check and thwart a child’s growth Margaret D’Ossoli would
have been a case of arrested development instead of a large-souled woman.
It was her father who kept her little head all day over Greek and Latin
exercises at the age of seven years, when she should have been playing
with her dolls and romping in the fresh outdoor air. It was her father, M.
Necker, who trained Madame de Stael into a woman whom the great Napoleon
hated and even feared so much that he insulted her childless wifehood by
telling her that what France needed was mothers, and sent her into
banishment.

It is useless to get up a lamentation that the race will die out and
children be neglected because woman is going to college and becoming
informed and intellectual. Nature will take care that she keeps to her
principal business, which is to become a willing (or unwilling) medium to
continue the species.




CHAPTER III.

HOME LIFE.


My home during my early married life was in the town of Clinton, La. While
I never coveted the ownership of many slaves, my comfort was greatly
promoted by the possession of some who had been carefully trained to be
good domestics, and who were given to me by my father on my marriage. I
always liked to go into the kitchen, but sometimes my cook, who had been
for twelve years in training, scorned my inexperienced youth, would say
emphatically, “_Go_ inter de _house_, Miss Carrie! Yer ain’t no manner er
use heah only ter git yer face red wid de heat. I’ll have dinner like yer
wants it. Jes’ read yer book an’ res’ easy till I sen’s it ter de
dining-room.” I like just as much to go into the kitchen to-day, and am
accounted a “born cook,” by my family, being accredited with a genius for
giving those delicious and elusive flavors that are inspirations and
cannot be taught. The artist cook burns neither food nor fingers, is never
hurried or flurried, and does not reveal in appearance or manner that the
table is indebted to her handicraft.

The common idea of tyranny and ill-usage of slaves was often reversed in
my case, and I was subject at times to exactions and dictations of the
black people who belonged to me, which now seem almost too extraordinary
and incredible to relate. I made periodical visits to our plantation in
Point Coupe parish, over fifty miles distant from Clinton. _En route_ I
would often desire my coachman to drive faster, and he would do so for the
moment, then would fall back into the old pace. If I remonstrated he would
say: “I’s ’sponsible fer dese yeah horses, an’ dey got ter fotch us back
home, an’ I ain’t er gwine ter kill ’em gettin’ ter whar we gwine ter; an’
I’d tell Marse Edwin de same thing if he was heah.”

Gardening has always greatly claimed my heart and time. I have taken
prizes at horticultural exhibits, and have been no little vainglorious in
this last year of the century to be able to show the public the only
blooming century-plant in New Orleans, or indeed in the State, so far as I
know, and for whose blossoming I have been waiting thirty years. There is
a “mild and gentle” but indissoluble sympathy between the human soul and
the brown earth from which we have sprung, and to which we shall return.
There is no outward influence that can be compared to that of living,
growing, blooming things. The resurrections of the springtime cause an
epidemic of gardening fever that prevails until intenser sunshine
discourages exertions. When buds are bursting and color begins to glow on
every bush and trellis I do not see how any one can be wholly miserable.
The great season of hope and promise stirs into fruitfulness of some sort
the blood that has been marking time for many years. This ever renewed,
undiscouraged passion of making the earth produce seems a proof that
man’s natural occupation is husbandry. He keeps at it through love as well
as necessity, and every springtime he, as little subdued as nature, renews
the contest. It is his destiny.

Therefore it is hardly a matter for surprise that my first-born child
appealed so strongly to my love of growing things that the office of my
nurse was a mere sinecure, for my boy was always in my arms--perhaps the
more that I had been cut off prematurely from my dolls. With every moment
devoted to his interests he became such a precocious wonder that all the
servants prophesied: “Dat chile’s not long for _dis_ worl’, Miss
Cal_line_!” I was not disturbed, however, by these mournful predictions,
knowing how much time and patience had been invested in his baby
education. When I look back on this period I excuse myself on account of
my youth, yet at the same time I pity myself for my ignorance. The
experience I bought was high-priced.

The heavy and exacting responsibilities of a slaveholder did not rest upon
me with a lightness commensurate with my years. During my annual visits to
the plantation I was not sure of uninterrupted rest even at night, for I
never could refuse an interview to any of the negroes who called upon me.
I observe that my diaries of those days are full of notes of my attendance
upon sick servants. When President Lincoln issued his proclamation of
freedom to our slaves I exclaimed: “Thank heaven! I too shall be free at
last!”--forgetful of the legal disabilities to which white women of these
United States are yet in bondage.

In the year 1851 I made my first trip to the North.

While visiting in Ohio, my husband said: “I think a little longer stay
here will cure you of your anti-slavery principles;” but I rejected with
scorn the idea that I would allow my personal comfort to bias my judgment;
though I had to admit that one of my own trained “darkies” was superior
“help” to any that I had, so far, encountered. My diary of the day
records: “I find the children here are set to work as soon as they are
able ‘to do a turn’ or go on an errand, and are kept steadily at it until
they grow up, run away, or die. Dear little ‘Sis Daisy’ in this house is
running constantly all day long and her little fat hands are broader than
mine, from grasping things too large and heavy for so small a child to
handle. She drops to sleep sometimes in the big chair or on the lounge in
my room. I cover her with my dress and don’t know anything about her when
she is called--happy to be sure she is getting some rest. Night must be a
blissful time for the overworked hired girls of the North, as they know
nothing of the many restful stops our self-protected blacks allow
themselves ‘between times.’”

Slavery had many aspects. On the occasion of my sister Ellen’s marriage I
was visiting at my father’s home. Julia, my nurse, was of course deeply
interested in the preparations; and at one time when she wished to be a
spectator, my nine-months-old baby declined to oblige her by going to
sleep. I happened to follow her into a darkened room where she had taken
the child to be rocked, and was just in time to witness a heavy blow
administered in anger to the little creature. In an instant the child was
in my arms. “Go out of my sight,” I said, “you shall never touch her
again. You are _free_ from this hour!” At the end of the week I was seated
in the carriage with the baby on my lap, about to return home. Julia stood
awaiting orders. I gave her none. “Shall I get in?” she finally asked.
“You are free,” said I, “do as you please.” She hesitated until the
coachman peremptorily ordered her to get in and let him drive on.

I held the child during the long drive to Clinton, though I was very
tired, and installed another nurse as soon as I reached home, ignoring
Julia’s existence. She had her home in the yard and her meals from my
table as before. One of the other servants finally came to me saying: “I
declare, Miss Cal_line_, Julia goin’ to die if you doan’ giv’ her
somethin’ ter do. She doan’ eat nothin’. Can’t yo set her ter washin’?”
“She may wash for herself or for you if she wishes,” I replied; “she is
free!” At the end of two weeks Julia threw herself at my feet in a deluge
of tears begging to be forgiven and to be allowed to nurse her baby again.
I gave it back to her; but the child had turned against her, and it was
several days before the old relations were restored. There were afterward
no similar ruptures, but Julia always resented the slightest reproof or
adverse criticism administered to that child by parent or teachers.

At twenty I was the mother of three children, born in Clinton, Louisiana.
My last and youngest came twelve years later. When my friends remarked
upon the late arrival I informed them that he had come in answer to
special prayer, like Hannah’s of old, so that my husband might have a
child to comfort his old age when the others were all settled in homes of
their own.

Children are our treasure-idols; we are joined to them by our
heartstrings. We spend anxious days and sleepless nights soothing their
cries and comforting their wailings, and we rejoice in our power to
cherish and nourish them into a full and happy life by any sacrifice of
ourselves. God pity the desolate little ones who come into the world
unwelcomed, and grow up in loveless homes! When in the great yellow fever
epidemic of 1878 I lost my eldest daughter, my good children, David and
Lula, gave me their baby Bessie to comfort my sorrow. She was my own for
four years. I was in the habit of inviting my cousin, Miss Carrie Brewer,
to come regularly to instruct and play with her, making the visits a
recreation for both. In this manner one of the most successful teachers of
the kindergartens of this city began her development, and thus my interest
in systematic child culture was inaugurated.

Various children certainly require various management. Their education
cannot begin too soon. The Froebel system of kindergarten teaching has
usually a salutary influence on troublesome little folks, and is deserving
of the increasing attention it is receiving. It is only in these latest
days of the century that the initiatory period before school-life begins
has had any worthy recognition.

Mr. Merrick and I belonged to the New Orleans Educational Society. I was
chairman of a committee which was requested to make a report of its views
on the meeting of June 4th, 1884. Shortly after handing in this
report--which it had been thought proper a man should read--we attended a
special meeting for the annual election of officers. When the balloting
began, I found I was not to be allowed any part in this matter, though
paying the same dues ($5.00) as the men, and a working member of a
committee. In my disgust I said: “I always thought that a vote in
political affairs was withheld from woman because it is not desirable for
her to come in contact with the common rabble lest her purity be soiled.
She should never descend into the foul, dusty arena of the polling booth;
but here in Tulane Hall where we are specially invited, in the respectable
presence of many good men--some of them our ‘natural protectors’--it is
not fair; it is as unjust as it would be for me to invite a party to
dinner and then to summon half of them to the table while the other half
are required to remain as spectators only of the feast to which all had
had the same call.” After that I attended no other meeting of the
Educational Society, and requested my husband to discontinue paying my
dues.




CHAPTER IV.

RUMORS OF OUR CIVIL WAR.


Mr. Merrick was elected chief-justice of the Supreme Court of Louisiana in
the year of 1855. I went with him to New Orleans for that winter and lived
at the old St. Louis hotel, taking my maid with me, but leaving my
children at home in the care of their grandmother. In a letter dated May
11th, 1856, my husband writes: “I bought a house yesterday, at public
auction, which I think will do very well for us, but it will cost a good
deal to make it as comfortable as our home at Clinton. The property is in
Bouligny, a little out of the city, where we can keep our horses. There is
a plank road to the city and the railroad station will be near the door.
It is an old-fashioned French house built upon brick walls and pillars,
with a gallery in front and rear. I send you a plan of it and a sketch of
the situation. You will surely be pleased with the place after it is
arranged. I dined with Mr. Christian Roselius yesterday and he
congratulated me on the purchase; says it is delightful to live out of
town. Bouligny is in the city of Jefferson, almost half a mile above
Washington Street. There are six fireplaces in the house, and if Aunt
Susan does not like any of those large rooms below we will finish off one
above or build one for her. The girls will go to school in the city by
the cars.”

We had done some house-hunting the winter before, and I was by no means
sure I should like living out of town. In his next letter Mr. Merrick
said: “I do not think you had better come down until you have somewhat
recovered from your disappointment. I have read your letter while my
colleagues are reading opinions, and now I take some of the precious time
of the State to try to console you. The more I see of the house and its
neighborhood the better I like it. You think it is an isolated place
up-town, still uninhabited. Well, in twenty years everything will be
different, and while I have you and the children in the house, it will be
all right. Therefore, you must dry up your tears and be happy.”

It is evident that the home chosen was not such as I should have selected;
but a residence in it for nearly half a century has made it very dear,
filled as it is with precious memories of those I have loved and lost. So
extensive are the surrounding grounds, abounding in flowers, fruit-trees
and gardens, that it has been called “the Merrick Farm.” Now that Napoleon
Avenue is built up with elegant residences, this large square with its
spacious, old-fashioned, double French cottage presents a comfortable,
unique appearance in the midst of its modern environment.

So, in November, 1856, I removed from Clinton to New Orleans. In a letter
written to Mr. Merrick during the distresses of dismantling the old home,
I said: “If it please heaven to give us a long life I hope it may never
be our misfortune to move many times.” Heaven seemed to have been
propitious to my wish, for here I am in the same loved home, chosen
without my consent, but where I expect to fold my willing hands and be
made ready for my final resting place.

I do not enter upon the subject of the civil war with a disposition either
to justify or condemn; and it is with reluctance that I revert to a
question that has been settled forever by fire and blood, and whose
adjustment has been accepted even by the vanquished. But as this period
came so vitally into my life, these recollections would be incomplete
without it; besides, personal records are the side-lights of history and,
in their measure, the truest pictures of the times. Years enough have
elapsed to make a trustworthy historical perspective, and intelligent
Americans should now be able to look upon the saddest war that ever
desolated a land without favor or prejudice and to use conditions so
severely cleared of the great evil of slavery as stepping-stones to our
freedom from all further national mischief.

It must be remembered that the South was not a unit in regard to
secession. The Southwest was largely a Whig area, and in the election of
1860 this element voted for Bell and Everett under the standard: “The
Union, the Constitution and the Enforcement of Law.” It has always been a
question whether secession would have carried could it have been put to
the test of a popular vote in Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas and
Tennessee; for whatever may have been personally believed respecting the
right of secession, it is probable the majority of Whigs and some
Democrats doubted its expediency. The most solemn, heart-breaking hour in
the history of the States was that in which men, shaken with sobs, signed
the ordinance which severed them from the Union. Up to that hour the fight
by the press had been bitter. But when the fate of the State was sealed,
the Stars and Stripes lowered and the State flag run up in its place,
almost every man, irrespective of opinions, accepted its destinies,
shouldered his musket and marched to the front--where he stayed until a
bullet, sickness or starvation emptied his place in the ranks, or until
the surrender of Lee at Appomattox.

Many Southern men said: “Never give up the United States flag; let us
settle our difficulties under it.” On a Fourth of July one of our
neighbors illuminated his house and decorated it with that flag. He was
entirely unmolested. We were kinder in that instance to Union people among
us than the Yankees sometimes were to “copperhead traitors” at the North.
A very few Union men among us went over the other side of the Mason and
Dixon line; a few more remained quietly at home, under great stress of
public opinion, but gave of their substance, and usually their sons, to
the Confederate cause. General Banks said, in his occupation of the city,
“I could put all the Union men in New Orleans in one omnibus.”

This was a season of great anxiety and perplexity. After the war became
inevitable it may be said that no woman wavered in her allegiance to the
Southern cause. Our boys clamored to be allowed to enlist. From Northern
relatives came letters wailing: “The war cry is abroad; blood is to be
spilled, the nation is to be involved in the bitterest of all wars. It may
be that your son, David, and one of my boys may meet in deadly conflict.
And when we have cut each other’s throats, destroyed commerce, ruined
cities, demoralized the people, outraged humanity, what have we gained?
Nothing! nothing! Would to God that some Washington might arise and stay
the deadly strife, save the country from shame and disgrace in the eyes of
the world.”

On the other side was asserted: “We have nothing else to do but to fight.
No door is open to us. Our position as freemen, our all is at stake.
Without slavery the best sugar plantation in Louisiana would be worthless.
The British thought our forefathers were wrong. We have ten times the
cause for revolt which they had. Constitutional rights are invaded. We
shall and _must_ succeed.”

Our son David, then in his seventeenth year, was at Centenary College,
La., when hostilities began. As he saw his comrades leaving in order to
join the army he became very impatient to do likewise. In a letter of
April 26, 1861, replying to his urgings, I wrote: “I know you will not
think us unkind in asking you to continue your college duties. You have
ever been true and filial without having it exacted. Persist in these
relations, my dear boy. Write us freely and tell us in perfect confidence
whatever you think and feel. Do not act hastily. We do not refuse your
request but wish you to wait for further advice. You have no wife and
children, but you have parents and sisters to fight for (I don’t count
little Eddie). I know you are patriotic and are willing to make sacrifices
for the sake of your country, but you must learn much before you go into
the army.

“27th, afternoon.--Father has come in and says Vice-President Alexander
Stephens writes to President Davis that there are plenty of men--as many
soldiers as are now wanted; and this is good news. With Virginia added to
the Southern Confederacy we ought to carry the day. It is a pity the
border States are so dilatory. Try to be content where you are until your
turn comes. Your father says it will come, sure and fast, and you know his
judgment is infallible. Last night I went to the Military Fair for the
benefit of the soldiers.”

War is the same the world over, and the women are always heroically
bearing their share of its responsibilities. I see it announced in this
morning’s paper (January 1st, 1900) that Adelina Patti and the Duchess of
Marlborough are to appear at an entertainment at Covent Garden in aid of
the English fund for officers’ wives and families, called for by the
present war in South Africa. It has been noted that after the States
seceded a Union woman could not be found in the entire South. However that
may be, I am told on authority that while Jackson, Miss., was burning and
being pillaged by troops whose horses were festooned with women’s clothes,
General Sherman was appealed to by a Southern woman. “Well, madam,” said
he, “don’t you know that the Southern women and the Methodist Church North
are keeping up this war?”

On June 1st, 1861, I find in one of my letters to my brother: “David is at
home. We are willing to give him to our country. His father spares no
trouble or expense to fit him for a soldier’s duty. He has a drill-master
who instructs him in military science during the day, and drills him with
the ‘State Rights Guards’ every night. This Frenchman, whose name I cannot
spell, says in two weeks more he will be equal to a captain’s duties; but
his father says he must understand the movements of a brigade, battalion
and regiment, as well as that of company drill; he must know something and
become qualified for everything; so I think he wishes him to have a
commission. He is the sole representative of our immediate family. I fear
for him, his youth is against him--he should be twenty-one instead of
seventeen--though this will not disqualify him in the volunteer service if
he is competent. He will go whenever called.”

Thus my young son left me for the army in Virginia where he served until
incapacitated by an extraordinary wound through the head received at Seven
Pines while a member of the staff of Gen. Leroy Stafford.

After this my brother went into an artillery company as first lieutenant,
and I went to the Myrtle Grove plantation to take leave of him. It was
during my temporary absence that New Orleans fell into Federal possession,
which fact caused me to spend the whole period of the war with my family
on the Atchafalaya river at this plantation, having only occasional visits
from my husband, who found it necessary to take the greater portion of his
slaves to a safer place in another part of the state. His own liberty was
also threatened, and since one of his colleagues, Judge Voorhies, had been
taken prisoner and detained away from his family and official business, it
was desirable that Judge Merrick should incur no such risk.

When Louisiana seceded from the Union many thought that no blood would be
spilled; that the Yankees would not fight, and would never learn to bear
arms. But this was not Mr. Merrick’s opinion, nor that of many others. The
men we called Yankees had fought bravely for their own independence and
gained it, and they would fight if necessary again; we should see our soil
dug up and earthworks made on our own secluded plantations.

I left my New Orleans home furnished with every comfort, but have never
since seen it in that perfect condition. Under General Ben Butler, a
public sale was made of the contents of the dwelling, stables and
outhouses for the benefit of the United States. Mrs. J. Q. A. Fellows told
me she counted thirteen wagon loads of furniture taken out, and had she
known me then as she afterwards did, she would have saved many valuable
things for me. I owned an excellent miscellaneous library, a new piano,
valuable carriages, pictures, china and cut glass--the acquisition of
twenty-five years, belonging to me personally who had done nothing to
bring on the hostilities between the sections. I was informed that my
carriage was appropriated by a Federal officer for his own use.

It was not long before the predictions of my husband were realized by
General Banks’ invading our retreat with the purpose of investing Port
Hudson in the rear, Farragut meanwhile was trying to force a passage past
its guns on the Mississippi river. While Gen. Banks’ command was in
transit we were in daily and hourly contact with the troops. When
Brig.-Gen. Grover ascertained that my household consisted of women alone,
he had his tent pitched very near the dwelling, informing me himself that
he did this to secure our safety, and assuring me that we should be
unmolested inside the enclosure of our dooryard and the lawn bordering in
front on the Atchafalaya river. To this end three men were detailed to act
as a guard. I had then a family consisting of two daughters, Laura and
Clara, their baby brother Edwin and the two Misses Chalfant and Miss
Little, who were my guests for a long time.

We were abundantly furnished with the necessaries of life, and had a
bountiful supply of vegetables besides the products of our dairy and
poultry yard. Lacking new books to read and mail to bring us letters,
newspapers or magazines, there yet came into our lives an intenser
interest in what was before us so constantly--this war between the North
and the South; and in one way or another everybody, white and black, man,
woman and child, took a more or less active part in carrying it on.

A letter from Mrs. Mary Wall gives the following: “I hear my son Benjamin
has gone to the war, Willie too, and Bowman has joined the ‘Hunter
Rifles.’ There is nothing talked of here but war. God help me, but it is
hard! I nursed these boys and they are part of myself; life would be
utterly barren without them. But I cannot keep them, nor say a word to
stay them from defending their country; but I think it will kill me. I
should be better off without children in this extremity.

“What do you think the North intends? Is it to be a war of extermination?
Have you read Helper’s book? He says, ‘Go out of the Union to-day and we
will scourge you back to-morrow, and make the banks of the Mississippi one
vast sepulchre, but you shall give up your slaves.’

“Christians ought to pray constantly that the great Omnipotent may help
us. We cannot fathom God’s plans. I am ready to let my negroes go if the
way opens, but I do not see that it is my duty to set them free right here
and now, though the time may be approaching for them to emerge from their
captivity. God’s will is just and good. Oh for perfect reliance on His
promises to all who love and serve Him!”

Those who were a part of ante-bellum affairs will remember how earnestly
serious-minded and conscientious slaveholders discussed the possibility of
gradual emancipation as advocated by Henry Clay. The negroes were in their
possession by inheritance and by the customs and laws of the land in which
they were born. The slaves were not only a property which had come to them
as a birthright, but also a responsibility which could not be laid aside
except in a manner that would secure the future good of the slave, with
proper consideration for what was justly due the master and his posterity
in the settlement of the great question. If politicians on both sides, who
cared more for party control and for the money value of a negro than for
the nation’s good, could have been ordered to the rear, there is little
doubt but that slaveholder and abolitionist and the great American people
could have been brought to weigh the subject together on its own merits,
and slavery might have been abolished to the satisfaction of North and
South by law instead of in a cataclysm of blood.

Those were anxious days when families were left without their male
protectors and we women had only ourselves and our young children in our
disquieted homes. Yet we were cheerful and marvelously comforted, drawing
nearer day by day to the Almighty Father, and sleeping the sleep of the
just, though often awakened by the sound of guns and to the sight of
Federal blue-coats drawn up in battle-line with gleaming bayonets. There
was fasting and prayer everywhere during all the long struggle. The most
pathetic sight was thousands of women, children and slaves, with the few
non-combatant men the army had spared, on their knees in daily union
prayer-meetings, at sunrise or sunset, before the God of Battles.

Each of us sympathized with the words of Lizzie Dowdell, writing in May,
1861: “I do believe the Lord is on our side. If we fail, God have mercy on
the world--for the semblance of human liberty will have fled. The enemy
has men, money, horses and chariots; they are strong and boastful. Our
sins may be flagrant, and we may need to be scourged with scorpions; but
will God permit us to be overwhelmed?” Both sides referred their case to
the Court of Heaven--as the assaulted Boers are doing to-day. If they
sink beneath the unlimited resources of the British, will the triumph of
might now be the triumph of right and of human liberties? Three and
one-half decades have softened the shadow of prejudice and the high lights
of self-interest. It is well for the whole nation that slavery has been
abolished and the Union preserved. How much loss will be revealed by time
in the sacrifices of the rights of States against Federal encroachment, is
a problem for future statesmanship. But it is certain to-day that the
moral loss to the United States by the civil war will not be recovered in
fifty years; while the baneful corruption of public sentiment and the
ruling Administration, by reason of the late Spanish-American conflict, is
sufficiently apparent to send every Christian to his knees, or to the
ballot-box--the only worldly corrector of political wrongs.

We set a second table for our guard. One middle-aged man named Peter, a
very young German and another--all foreigners--made up the trio. I had
every delicacy within my reach provided for them, and insisted that my
young ladies should see that the table was arranged tastefully, enjoining
it on them that they should respond politely whenever they were spoken to.
The young German on entering the yard stooped and pulled a rose which he
gaily pinned on his coat. “See,” said one of the girls at the window,
“that mean Yankee is taking our flowers!” “It is a good sign,” I replied,
“that he will never do us any greater harm. He has a kind expression on
his blond young face and in his honest blue eyes;” and this fair-faced
boy proved a valuable protector on many occasions. He had learned his
English in the army and to our horror was terribly addicted to profanity.
Instead of the ordinary response to one of our remarks he would come out
with “The hell, you say!” even when spoken to by one of the girls.
Nevertheless when at last these faithful enemy-friends took up their line
of march, we were friendly enemies, and regretfully saw them depart.




CHAPTER V.

MY DAUGHTER LAURA’S DIARY.


From my daughter Laura’s diary, May 21st, 1863, let me quote: “The Yankees
have been passing this house all day, regiment after regiment on their way
to attack Port Hudson. Two transports have also gone by on the river
crowded with soldiers. Heaven protect our beleaguered men--so few against
so many! A Lieutenant Francis was perfectly radiant this morning because a
boat was waiting to take his regiment (the 6th New York) North, as their
time is out. He was very cordial, perhaps because he has a brother in the
Confederate army.

“A Dutch cavalry sergeant lingered, and for half an hour stood guard, with
his drawn sword keeping away many of the vandals. He claimed to belong to
the regular United States army and said his time would be up in four
months when he should return ‘to de faderland,’ but he thought they would
‘vip’ us at Port Hudson. When a negro and a white man came together
through the backyard for water from the cistern, with horrible oaths and
imprecations he drew his sword and with the back of it struck the negro
and ordered them both to leave. ‘You nigger,’ said he, ‘you hab no peesnis
to enter de blantation! ve don’ vant you! you steals eberyting!’ I am
sorry for the poor deluded negroes who flock after this army.

“We were all in the parlor this evening when five Yankee quartermasters
came in out of the rain. ‘Old Specs,’ as we call him, was among the
number. They introduced each other and then very pressingly requested me
to play the ‘Bonnie Blue Flag.’ At last I complied and began to sing,
though it nearly kills me to be polite to the Yanks:

  “‘As long as the union was faithful to her trust,
  Like friends and like brothers we were kind, we were just,
  But now that Northern treachery----’

“Here I broke down, and bursting into tears, left the room with my
handkerchief to my eyes. They then expressed sorrow that my feelings
should have been so disturbed and sent Clara to ask me to come back. She
begged so, I dried my tears and returned. Two of them engaged in a
discussion with me. One said: ‘The secession vote in Louisiana was
controlled and indicated nothing.’ ‘In all true republican governments,’ I
answered, ‘the voice of the people is the voice of God; we do not live
under an aristocracy or a monarchy.’ ‘But,’ said the man, ‘two-thirds of
the people were not permitted to vote; your negroes did not go to the
polls.’ ‘They are not freemen,’ I replied--‘but being a woman I know
nothing’--and again the tears rushed to my eyes. Thereupon, one of them,
Capt. Ives, joined in, saying: ‘The masters voted for the negroes of
course, and,’ he continued, ‘it is not fair--two gentlemen against one
lady. I take the lady’s part.’ Then in a lower tone, but a perfectly
audible one, he said: ‘For God’s sake talk of something else besides the
Union and the Confederacy. I’m sick of both.’

“Mrs. Phillips, with Mrs. French, our neighbor, went down to headquarters
to ask Gen. Banks for a guard. She reports that he said he would give her
none, for it was the women who had brought on and now encouraged the war.
Mrs. French said she only wished to be protected from insult, and from
hearing such frightful profanity. ‘Madam,’ said he, ‘this war is enough to
make any man swear. I swear myself.’ ‘But,’ said she, ‘I wish to spare my
Christian mother, who is aged and infirm.’ ‘Well,’ said Gen. Banks, ‘I
can’t make her young.’ When she told us about it I replied: ‘Banks is
nearly as much of a brute as Butler himself.’

“Tues. May 22, 1863.--Capt. Callender of Weitzel’s staff and Capt. Hall of
Emory’s came last night to inquire if the soldiers troubled us. They were
very polite and spoke so kindly that they reminded us of Southerners. It
is a pity to see such perfect gentlemen in such an army. They offered us a
guard which I declined, telling them we were Southerners, so not afraid;
for it galls me to be obliged to have Yankee protection. Mother has been
so worried since, and Clara reproached me so severely for refusing the
guard that I have wished I had done differently, and I was glad when the
overseer’s big dog came and lay down before our door. I thought it was a
special providence. We have always heard Gen. Weitzel well spoken of; he
evidently has men like himself on his staff.

“Monday, May 25, 1863.--Saturday evening our hopes of Gen. Kirby Smith
being able to detain Gen. Weitzel were dashed to the ground. Two Yankees
said they were all safe at Simmsport except two hundred cavalry captured
by our boys; but their rear had been much worried. One of these Yankees
was sick and asked permission to lie on our front gallery. Mother brought
him some cold mint-tea which he at first declined, but when he saw her
taste it he changed his mind and drank it. The man said afterward he was
afraid she wanted to poison him till he saw her take a spoonful. Then she
brought out a big arm-chair and pillows and made him as comfortable as she
could. He was grateful, and stated that he was only doing his duty
fighting for the old flag.

“One afternoon Sallie Miller rode past, with a Yankee officer. Shame on
her! Two young lady guests on their way to Bayou Goula saw her and were
indignant with any Southern girl who would ride with a Yankee in the
presence of their army.

“Yesterday a quartermaster drove into the lot, breaking the gate which was
locked, and going to the corn-crib. At the instance of the Missouri
Yankee, propped up in the rocking-chair, we all ran out to the lot, and
mother talked so to him, Clara and I assisting volubly, that he agreed to
take only two wagon loads of the corn. He seemed actually ashamed for
breaking our fence, and we were just in time to save the crib door by
giving him the key.

“We saw some soldiers driving our cattle and milch cows and calves from a
field. ‘What a shame!’ said I. A chaplain I suppose, dressed in a fine
black suit, who had come in to get water, replied: ‘Our object, miss, is
to starve you out so that your brothers, husbands and sons will quit
fighting and come home to provide bread for you. On what ground can you
expect protection?’ he asked my mother. ‘Is your husband a Union man?’
‘No, indeed!’ I struck in, ‘he is a true Southerner.’ He saw a spur
hanging up, and remarked that there was a man about. Clara answered: ‘It
belongs to my brother.’ Then the man said: ‘I won’t ask where he is, for
you might be afraid to tell.’ ‘I am not afraid,’ replied Clara. ‘You may
know as well as I that he is not here. He is in Virginia.’

“Mother remonstrated about her cows being driven off to be slaughtered;
but seeing that it was useless exclaimed at last, ‘Well, take them all!’
This was too much for Asa Peabody, who seemed to be a friend to our sick
soldier; he informed the lieutenant in command that he was on guard by
Gen. Weitzel’s orders, and intended nothing should be taken off the place;
and he turned two of our best cows back into our front yard.

“The men came continually to the cistern for drinking water. Mother said:
‘Let the water be free, I am glad to have protection for some things, but
the heavens will send down more rain if the last drop is used.’ One of
them observing some of the girls at the window, drained his cup and taking
off his cap to them shouted: ‘Success to our cause!’ ‘To ours!’ I called
back. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I drink to the Union. I hope to get to Port Hudson
before it falls!’ One impertinent fellow asked: ‘Will you answer me one
question, miss! Who have destroyed most of your property, Yankees or
Rebels?’ ‘The Yankees, of course,’ I said. ‘Well, yours is an exceptional
case,’ he retorted. Oh! I never saw so many soldiers and so many cannon!

“Asa Peabody was reproved by our Missourian for using profane language in
the presence of ladies. He answered very contritely, ‘I’ll be damned if I
will do so any more! You are right.’ He was a brave, good man. We heard of
his kindness to many women along the march, and I hope our guerillas whom
he so dreaded--as anybody in the world would--did not get him, for he
vowed he should ‘keep his eyes peeled’ for them.

“In a recent bombardment at Port Hudson--when the spectacle was
sublime--an old negro woman said she knew the world was coming to an end
‘becaze de white folks dun got so dey kin make lightnin’.’

“May 26, 1863.--A Yankee officer called yesterday evening; said he
belonged to the famous (infamous, I say) Billy Wilson Zouaves, whose bad
character is now wholly undeserved. We were still in the parlor when Col.
Irwin, Asst.-Ad.-Gen., called, another officer with him. We tried to be
civil, but I deeply feel the humiliation of enforced association with this
invading enemy. However, Gen. Grover has been very considerate since he
knew we are a household of women. Two wagon-masters came for corn and took
what they wanted, breaking open the crib. A chaplain, Mr. Whiteman, very
kindly took a note from mother to Gen. Grover, and promised to intercede
for her. The General came immediately, and said nothing more should be
taken unless it was paid for. Mother declared she would beg her bread
before she would buy it with their money; but I told her she had begged
the bread of the family, which already belonged to us, by prayers and
intercessions and tears enough to make it very bitter food. Some of the
quartermasters have since given her statements of what has been taken from
Myrtle Grove. ‘Corn we must have,’ said one man, ‘but I will leave this
untouched if you will tell me where I can procure more on some other
plantation.’ Mother then directed him to Tanglewood where father had an
immense quantity stored, and from which place the hands had all been moved
into the interior, after the large crop of cotton had been burned by our
own people. When this cotton on Tanglewood was burning the negroes stood
around crying bitterly; and father and mother both call it ‘suicidal
policy of the Confederates’ to destroy the only ‘sinew of the war’ we have
which will bring outside cash to purchase arms and other military
supplies.”

It should be related that when we heard of General Banks’ being at
Simmsport my daughter Clara thought we ought to send or go at once to his
headquarters and ask for protection. I find the following copy of a letter
which partly explains the safety accorded us by the Federal army during
the period recounted.

    “To Major General Banks, in Command of U. S. Troops at Simmsport, La.

    “DEAR SIR:

    “I reside near the head of the Atchafalaya where it first flows out of
    Old River, and our male friends are all absent. We are all natives of
    Louisiana, and, though we cannot bid you welcome, we hope and trust we
    may confide in your protection and in the generosity and honor which
    belongs to United States officers.

    “We have no valuable information to give, nor do we think you would
    ask or require us to betray our own people if we had it in our power.
    But we can promise to act fairly and honorably, and to do nothing
    unworthy the high character of Judge Merrick, who is the head of this
    family. Therefore, we expect to prove ourselves worthy of any generous
    forbearance you may find it in your power to extend toward defenseless
    women and children, who appeal thus to your sympathy and manhood; for

        “‘No ceremony that to great one ’longs,
        Not the King’s crown, nor the deputed sword,
        The marshal’s truncheon, nor the judge’s robe,
        Become them with one-half so good a grace
        As mercy does.’

    “Very respectfully,
    “CAROLINE E. MERRICK.”

The result of this letter, which I presented in person, was the following
pass:

    “Headquarters, Department of the Gulf,
    19th Army Corps,
    Simmes’ Plantation, May 19, 1863.

    “Guards and Patriots:

    “Pass Mr. Chalfant, Mrs. Merrick, and party, with their carriages and
    drivers, to their homes, near the head of the Atchafalaya.

    “RICHD. B. IRWIN,
    “A. A. General.”

“Camp Clara, Jackson, Miss., May 31, 1863.--We have good water and our men
are improving, but many are ill with typhoid fever”--thus my brother
wrote. “The sickness enlists my deepest sympathy. The number of soldiers’
graves is astonishing. From morning until night negroes are constantly
digging them for instant use. General Lovell inspected our battery the
other day and said he wanted it down on the river; so just as soon as our
horses arrive we are to go to work. The men are well drilled, but we lack
horses and ammunition. I hear David’s regiment is at Petersburg, Va.”

       *       *       *       *       *

In Confederate times the people were patient under the sickness in camp,
and never a complaint was sent to Richmond about poor food and bad water
which caused as many fatalities as powder and ball. Increased knowledge
and improved methods of camp sanitation seem almost to justify the
indignant protests against embalmed beef and typhoid-breeding water that
have been heaped upon Congress and officers of the War Department in the
late Spanish-American war. One out of the four of my father’s
great-grandsons who enlisted for the Spanish-American struggle lost his
life in an unhealthy Florida camp before he could be sent to Cuba. It is
plain to every fair-minded investigator that many of these fatalities were
due to a lack of those essentials in which every housekeeping woman, by
nature and training, is especially qualified. It was a relief to the minds
of the mothers of the nation to learn that near the close of the late
Cuban conflict a woman had been appointed on the National Military Medical
Commission. It is a woman’s proper vocation to care for the sick. Men who
would exclude women from the ballot-box on the plea that they only who
fight ought to vote, should remember Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale
who have served armies so effectually.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning said: “The nursing movement is a revival of old
virtues. Since the siege of Troy and earlier we have had princesses
binding wounds with their hands. It is strictly the woman’s part, and men
understand it so. Every man is on his knees before ladies carrying lint;
whereas if they stir an inch as thinkers or artists from the beaten line
(involving more good to general humanity than is involved in lint), the
very same men would condemn the audacity of the very same women.”

A young naval officer, at my dinner table, once dissented from such views
which I had expressed, and of which Bishop Warren of the M. E. Church had
heartily approved. “Until women,” said this young officer, “furnish this
government for its defense with soldiers and sailors from their own ranks
they should be prohibited from voting.” “Dear sir,” I replied, “how many
soldiers and sailors does this country now possess in its active service
whom the women have not already furnished from their own ranks?”

The young man yielded but was not convinced, even when an eminent
physician remarked that he had heard many a young mother say that she
would rather march up to the cannon’s mouth than to lie down to meet her
peculiar trial. He further stated that when their hour came they were
always full of courage, and, in his opinion, their maternity ought to
count for something to them of great value in the government.

All men in an army do not fight. No more important branch of the military
service existed during the civil war than that which the women of the
Confederacy controlled. They planted and gathered and shipped the crops
which fed the children and slaves at home and the armies in the field;
they raised the wool and cotton that clothed the soldiers and the hogs and
cattle that made their meat; they spun and wove the crude product into
cloth for the home and the army; their knitting needles clicked until the
great surrender, manufacturing all the socks and “sweaters” and comforters
which the Confederate soldier-boys possessed--our nearly naked boys toward
the last, so often on the march called “Ragged Rebels.”




CHAPTER VI.

WAR-MEMORIES: HOW BECKY COLEMAN WASHED HESTER WHITEFIELD’S FACE.


Among the Federal vessels stationed at Red River Landing was the
Manhattan, commanded by Captain Grafton, a high-minded officer as the
following incident proves. A letter from Laura Ellen to her brother David,
dated at Myrtle Grove, records: “Stephen Brown, mother’s head manager on
this place, has been very sick. Dr. Archer, who was stopping with us all
night, went to see him, and after an examination, reported that he could
do nothing to relieve him without chloroform and surgical instruments,
both of which were inaccessible and out of the question; and he candidly
told mother Stephen could not live twenty-four hours without an operation.
Mother, heart-broken and in tears, begged the doctor to tell her to what
means she could resort to save so faithful a servant. The doctor said they
had everything needful on the Federal gunboats. Mother instantly
determined to go to Red River Landing and appeal for help; but she wished
Dr. Archer to go with her and explain the case. He objected, saying he had
never held any communication with the enemy, and he did not wish to spoil
his record with the Confederates. But mother finally induced him to
accompany her.

“It seemed to us a forlorn hope. When she started off with Dr. Archer,
mother enjoined it upon us to have the best dinner that we could prepare
for the officers who were to come back with her, which suggestion we took
the liberty of overlooking, as we did not dream she could succeed in such
an unheard-of undertaking. When she reached the Mississippi and waved her
handkerchief, a tug came from the gunboat to the shore and she asked to
see the commanding officer. The tug offered to take mother to the gunboat,
but at first objected to the doctor going with her. Finally both went, and
were received on the deck of the big warship. Captain Grafton said he
feared that any surgeon or officer might be captured, and that he must
have a written guarantee against that possibility before he could run such
a risk. Mother told him that Captain Collins and his scouts were thirty
miles distant; she could only assure him that none who came to her aid
would be molested. Dr. Archer supported her opinion; but the captain
declined the adventure; whereupon mother burst into tears. ‘Captain
Grafton,’ she said, ‘I did not come here to teach you your duty; but I
came to perform mine. Now if the negro’s life is not saved, his death will
lie at your door, not mine.’ Capt. Grafton replied: ‘Madam, I don’t like
you to put it that way!’ Moved by that view or her tears--he sent the tug
for the captains of two other gunboats, and the three held a council of
war, finally consenting that a surgeon with his assistants and the
necessary equipments should have leave to go provided he would himself
assume the responsibility for his absence from the boat, for the military
authorities would make no order about it. Thus Dr. Mitchell first came to
Myrtle Grove on an errand of mercy.

“None was more surprised than mother herself when Dr. H. W. Mitchell,
surgeon of the Manhattan, offered to go with her. It had been eight months
since these Federal naval attachés had set foot on land, and apparently
they greatly enjoyed the long drive with only a handkerchief for a flag of
truce floating from the carriage window. The doctor went to the ‘Quarters’
to see Stephen, and mother flew to the kitchen and dining-room to put
forth her rare culinary skill in compensation for our negligence. After
dinner we had music, and Dr. Mitchell sang us many new songs, and proved
to be very intelligent, entertaining and agreeable. I treated him well,
too, as I was bound to do after his kindness. At dinner I had on a
homespun dress trimmed with black velvet and Pelican buttons: when they
went away I even gave the doctor my hand, ’though always before I had
refused to shake hands with a single one of them. Not for anything on
earth ‘would I have done as much previously.’”

During the many months that the U. S. gunboat Manhattan remained at Red
River Landing, I saw the officers from time to time, and once a crevasse
detained Dr. Mitchell for three days in our home. The friendship thus
established has outlived the war and proved a source of great pleasure to
me; while the sympathy the doctor so kindly extended later, during the
bitter reconstruction days, was a solid satisfaction and comfort, for his
cultured and experienced mind comprehended both sides of the situation.
Devoted to the Union, he yet expressed no inordinate desire to exterminate
the South, and never said he would be glad to hang Jefferson Davis. He
writes July 30, 1865: “We are all Americans. We speak one language; our
flag is the same; we are citizens of the United States. It is the right
spirit to recognize no section. If all should uphold the Government
faithfully under which we enjoy so many blessings, internal strife in the
future will be impossible.”

“Mother says,” the diary continues, “let an army be friend or foe, it
takes everything it needs for its subsistence on the march, and starvation
is in its track. Brig.-Gen. Grover’s Division camped for two weeks on this
plantation, and the General’s own tent was pitched next to our side gate.
When some of his staff were here visiting, one of them took baby Edwin in
his arms and kissed him. After they had gone I scolded him for kissing a
Yankee, and said I was going to tell his ‘Marse Dadles!’ He began to cry
and sobbed out, ‘O Sissy, he was a good Yankee!’ They rob the corn-cribs,
so it is well they carry off the negroes too. Ours, however, will not go;
they have made no preparation to depart, and mother interviews them daily
on the subject, but leaves them to decide whether they will ‘silently
steal away,’ which is their method of disappearing. Mr. Barbre’s negroes
have all gone except two, and Mr. Chalfant’s and Mrs. French’s are
preparing to go, so our neighbors are generally upset.”

In a letter of an earlier date Laura Ellen gives an account of Mr.
Chalfant coming to me and asking advice as to how the slaves could be
prevented from following the army. I had wanted to know of my neighbor if
his negroes would take his word on the subject. If so, he might state to
them that they might be free just where they were--that it was not
necessary they should leave their homes, their little children, their
household effects, tools and other “belongings” which could not be carried
on the march (to say nothing of the hogs-head of sugar nearly all of them
had in their cabins), their poultry, dogs, cows and horses. If it were
candidly explained to them that their freedom was to be a certainty, and
that they might be hired to work by their old owners, doubtless many would
be convinced of the wisdom of remaining at home and taking their
chances--all would depend on the confidence the negro had in the
master--but they should, in all cases, be left to make their own
decision--whether to go or stay. Some of the people who could read should
be shown the newspapers, _left by the Yankees_, wherein it is urged upon
the government to put the black men into the army. This should be read to
them by one of their own color.

After hearing these views Mr. Chalfant was reported having said: “Mrs.
Merrick has more sense about managing the negroes than any man on the
river.”

However that may have been, our slaves remained on the place, and many of
them and their descendants are yet in the employ of the family. It was
considered by some persons to be treason to the Confederacy to speak of
the freedom of the slaves in their presence, as if refusal to acknowledge
the emancipation act would avert its going into effect.

This attitude towards their liberty destroyed all confidence in the
master’s advice, and so his negroes left him. It was several years before
the emancipation of the slave was universally effected, there being
secluded places into which the news of freedom percolated slowly, and
where slavery existed for some time uninterrupted. In following the army
parents often abandoned young children. These were given to anybody who
would burden themselves with their care. In many cases the natural
guardian never again appeared, and these abandoned ones were practically
bond-servants until they learned how to be free of themselves.

Careworn and anxious as we were waiting news of our loved ones in the
field and of the cause in which we had risked our all, we were too busy to
be sad. Telegraphic communication with the center of war was often cut off
for many days. During these agonizing, silent seasons the women drew
nearer together, and kept busy scraping lint for the hospitals and
converting every woolen dress and every yard of carpet left in the house
into shirts and bedding for our boys at the front. We varied the labor of
managing plantations with every species of bazaar, supper, candy-pulling
and tableaux that would raise a dollar for the army. Then we got all the
entertainment we could out of our daily domestic round, as I did out of
Becky Coleman, one of my old servants who occasionally relieved the
monotony of her “daily round” by coming “to ’nquire ’bout de white
folks.” It was October when she made one of these visits, but summer
reigned in earth and sky. A noble avenue of black walnuts completely
shaded one side of my Myrtle Grove house. The large green nuts were
beginning to ripen, for when a branch swayed in the wind one would drop
from time to time with such a resounding thump upon the ground that it was
a matter for satisfaction when Becky seated herself on the steps of the
porch without having encountered a thwack on her head from the
missile-dealing trees.

“I hear singing over in the woods,” said I to Becky. “Why are you not at
the meeting this evening?”

“Who? me? eh--eh--but may be yo don’ kno’ I dun got my satisfacshun down
dar a while ago. I’m better off at home. Hester done got me convinced.
Lemme tell you how ’twas. One Sunday ebenin’ I heard tell dar wurs gwine
to be er sort er ’sperience praar-meeting down to ole Unk Spencer’s house,
en es ’twan’t fer, I jes’ tuk my foot in my han’! I did, en I went dar.

“Well, ev’rything was gwine on reg’lar, en peaceable, widout no kin’ er
animosity, plum till dey riz up to sing de very las’ _hime_. De preacher
who wus er leadin’ got up den en tuk up de _hime_ book en gin out:

  “‘Ermazin’ grace how sweet de soun’
  In de beleever’s year!’

“Now, yo knows yo’sef dey ain’t nothin’ tall incitin’ ’bout dat ar’ chune:
you knows it; en as fer me, I was jes’ dar er stanin’ up wid de res’, wid
my mouf open, jes’ er singin’ fer dear life, never dreamin’ ’bout nothin’
happ’nin’, when heah cum Hester Whitfiel’--coming catter-corner ’cross
from de yuther side er de house, wid her han’ h’isted up in de aar, en I
’clar fo’ de Lawd, she hit me er clip rite in my lef’ eye, en mos’ busted
it clean outen my haid. It cum so onexpectedlike dat leetle mo’en I would
er drap in de flo’. I jes’ felt like I wus shot! Den she had er pa’cel er
big brass rings on her han’, en dey cut rite inter my meat!

“I tell yo’, ma’am, I was hurted, I jes’ seed stars, I did! so I up en
tole her: ‘’Oman, ef yo got ennything ’g’inst me, why don’t you come out
in de big road en gimme er fair fight? Fer Gawd-elmighty’s sake don’ go en
make ’ten’ like yo happy, en bus’ my eye open dis heah way.’ Says I,
‘’Ligion ain’t got nuthin’ ter do wid no sich ’havoir; I don’ see no Holy
Sperit ’bout it,’ says I. ‘’Twas jes’ de nachul ole saturn what mak’ yo’
do dat, en I jes knows it,’ says I. ‘’Ligion don’ make nobody hurt
nothin’,’ says I. Yo reads de Book, Miss Calline, en yo knows I’m speakin’
de salvashun trufe, now ain’t I?

“Den all de folks cum crowdin’ ’roun’ en gethered a holt uv us, en ef dey
hadn’t, I lay I woulder stretched her out dar in de flo’, fer I’m de bes’
’oman--er long ways--en I would er had _her_ convinced in no time. But dey
all tu’ned in en baig me ter look over it, bein’ es how it happen in
meetin’-time; but I tell yo, ma-am, I never look nowhars wid dat eye fer
mor’n free weeks. Why, it wus so swole up en sore, I jes’ had ter bandage
it wid sassyfras peth and wid slippery ellum poultices day en night, en my
eye wus dat red, en bloodshottened, dat I never ’spected to see daylight
outen it no mo’; en I clar’ fo’ de Lawd it ain’t, got rite na’chul till
yit!

“No longer’n dis very ebenin’ my ole man, Tom, says ter me: ‘I dun seed
nuff trouble wid yo, Beck. You needs dem big pop eyes er yone to patch my
close, en wuk wid, en I ain’t er gwine to hev no bline ’oman rown’ me,’
says he; ’en I let yo know frum dis out yo don’t go ter no mo’
praar-meetin’s, ’zaminashuns er what-cher-callums; dat’s de long en short
uv it!’ says he. ‘Ef you ain’ got sense nuff ter stay away frum dar,’ says
he, ‘I’ll insense yo wid my fis’.’ I knows de weight er dat han’ er hisen,
en I’m gwine min’ him _dis_ time, ennyhow;” and Becky pointed toward the
cabin from whence the sound of singing was wafted on the breeze, saying,
“Yes’um, I’m gwine stay away frum dar, fer er fac’!”

“Becky, is such an incident common at your prayer-meetings?” I inquired.

“Why, no, ma’am, nuthin’ like dat never happen to me befo’; yit, I
’members mighty well when Betsy Washin’ton cum thoo’--’fo’ she jined de
chu’ch. ’Twas in de meetin’-house, but yo couldn’t onerstan’ one single
wud de preacher wus er sayin’, fer she wus jes’ er shoutin’ es loud es she
could fer who las’ de longes’--en I onertuk, fool like, to hole her; fer
she wus in sich a swivit, we wus feared she’d brek loose en go inter a
reg’lar hard fit, so I jes’ grabbed good holt er de ’oman, ’roun’ de
wais’, es she wus er hollerin’, en er jumpin’; en when she felt de grip I
fotch on her, she tu’n ’roun’, she did, en gethered my sleeve in ’tween
her fingers (en she is jes’ es strong es enny mule), en shore’s yore
settin’ dar in dat air big cheer, en I’m er stannin’ heah, talkin’ ter
yer, she gin me one single jerk, en I ’clar ter Gawd, she tore my whole
sleeve outen de arm-hole, en ripped er big slit clean ’cross my coat body!
Why I jes’ thought de ’oman wus gwine ter strip me start naiked, rite dar
in de meetin’-house! I got dat shame I jes’ let er go, I did, en den went
perusin’ roun’ ’mongst de wimmin en borryd er shawl ter kiver me up; en
den I moved on todes home.

“But I mus’ let yo know de nex’ time I met up wid Betsy, I washed her face
good wid what she dun. I jes’ tole her de nex’ time she got ter shoutin’
’roun’ me she mout bre’k her neck--I wan’t gwine hole her, I wan’t gwine
tech her; ‘fer,’ says I, ‘yo done gone en ’stroyed de bes’ Sunday dress I
got, yo is dat,’ says I, ‘fer er fac’!’

“Den Betsy ’lowed she didn’t keer, en dat she didn’t know what she wus er
doin’, but I tuk mighty good notice she never made no motion to grab onter
Aunt Sally Brown’s co’se homespun gown when _she_ tuk er tu’n er hol’in uv
her. But uv co’se, I heap ruther hev my close tore dan to hev my eye
busted out. But dey ain’t no need er airy one bein’ done; en I tole her
so, I did dat. ‘Sholey Christians,’ say I, ‘kin ’joy dersef widout hurtin’
nobody, neither tarin’ der close!’ I up en axed her ef she eber knowed de
white folks in de big house karyin’ on datterway, en ef she eber seed Miss
Marthy er Miss Reeny er cuttin’ up like dat in de white folks’
meetin’-house? Well, she jes’ bust out er laffiin’ in my face at dat, en
she ’lowed niggahs wan’t like white folks nohow.

“‘I knows better’n dat,’ says I. ‘Fer Gawd made us all outen de dus’ er de
groun’, bofe de white en de black;’ en, Miss Calline, yo’ ma uster tell me
ef I ’haved mysef, en kep’ mysef clean, en never tole no lies, ner ’sturb
yuther folks’ things, I wus good es ennybody, en I b’lieves it till yit;
dat’s de salvashun trufe, I’m tellin’, white ’oman, it sholey is!

“But _den_ Betsy got mad, she did, en gin me er push,--we wus walkin’
’long de top er de levee--en I wus so aggervated dat I cum back at ’er wid
er knock dat made her roll down smack inter de gully. Den she hollered so
de men fishin’ unner de river bank cum er runnin’. She had don’ sprain her
wris’, en ef her arm had been broke she cudn’t er made no mo’ fuss. Lemme
tell yo de trufe! de very nex’ Sunday dey tu’ned us bofe outen de chu’ch
case we fit, en I cayn’t go to praar-meetin’ tell I done jine ergin.”

“Well, Becky, you’ve made me forget there is a war and Yankee raids, and I
reckon I’ll have to give you a cup of store-coffee for doing it.”

“Thanky, Miss Calline! I’ll be powerful ’bliged ter yo’; en I mus’ be er
movin’, en pa’ch dis heah coffee fer my ole mammy’s supper, fer she’s
gittin’ monshus tired of tea off dem tater chips what we has ter drink
dese days.”




CHAPTER VII.

WAR MEMORIES: THE STORY OF PATSY’S GARDEN.


Our vision of the outside world of human affairs was very narrow and
circumscribed in those war-times, and my seminary of five young girls was
often a victim to _ennui_. No weekly mail, no books, no music, no new
gowns from one year’s end to another.

The only vital question was: “What is the war news?” There were also no
coffee, no loaf-sugar, no lemons in the house. However, with plenty of
milk, eggs and butter, fresh fruit and vegetables, to say nothing of fowls
galore, we survived. The girls made cake and candy, so with the abundance
of open-kettle brown sugar, we diversified our daily _menu_ with many
sweet compounds.

The one unfailing source of pleasure was the garden. True, the army at
Morganza would send out a raid every fortnight, when fences were broken
down and destroyed: then the cows and other cattle would get in and
partake of our lettuce and cabbages. But we never gave up; the negroes
would drive the marauding cattle out and rebuild the fences every time
they were destroyed. On one of these occasions I heard Miss Emma Chalfant
say to Uncle Primus: “I shall tell on you when your people come back here;
I heard you curse and swear at Mrs. Merrick’s cows this morning--and you
call yourself a preacher, too!” “Dese cows and dese Yankees is ’nuff to
make ennybody cuss, Miss Emma,” said the negro, as he went along snapping
his long whip as he drove the poor animals away from the garden.

Here I am tempted to give the true story of Martha Benton. This girl
became positively exhilarated under the influence of perfume and flowers.
The delectable odor of Sweet Olive--a mingled essence of peach, pineapple,
and orange-flower--produced in her a frenzy of delight. She had been
introduced to the exotic floral world by the proprietor of a fine garden
where she frequently visited.

Her father could not understand his daughter’s delight in the
contemplation of Nature’s beauty; for, as far as these things were
concerned, he was afflicted with a total blindness worse than a loss of
actual sight. Mr. Benton was fond of fruit but he never noticed or admired
the flowers from which the fruit was formed. Nevertheless, he seemed
pleased that his neighbor, Mr. Thornton, should be interested in his
daughter, and take pleasure in talking with her about his rare plants.

“Miss Patsy,” said Mr. Thornton, “it requires tact and perseverance to
grow a perfect lily.”

“I could do it if I had the bulbs,” said the girl.

At the close of the interview, a dozen bulbs and an extensive package of
plants were put in the carriage for the young lady to take home, as a
compliment to her interest in his favorite pursuit.

Mr. Benton’s front door-yard was given over to his horses, and sometimes
the calves were allowed to share in the rich pasturage it furnished.
Several ancient cedar trees, ragged and untrimmed, and two thrifty oaks
stood on what should have been a lawn, and a straggling row of
pomegranates grew along the line of fence on one side, apparently in
defiance of cattle and all other exterminating influences.

On her return home, Patsy displayed her treasures to her mother, and was
enthusiastic over her floral prospects.

“Papa,” said she, “you must give me space in the vegetable garden for the
present, and Tom must prepare the ground.”

“It is perfect foolishness,” said Mr. Benton. “Old Thornton is such a
stuck-up old goose that I hated to make him mad, otherwise I should not
have brought these things home with me. The truth is I would not swap a
row of cotton-plants in my field for everything that old man has got in
all his grounds and greenhouses put together.”

“O father, everything he has is so beautiful!” said Patsy. “The
summer-houses are like fairy-land, all covered over with roses and vines.”

“You keep cool, Pat, and don’t set your head on having a flower-garden.
Your mother was just like you when I married her. The first thing she did
was to set out some rose bushes in the front yard. Soon after she took
sick and they all died, and she herself came mighty near doing the same
thing; so she gave up the whole business, like a sensible woman. Tom is
hoeing potatoes just now, and you must not call him from his work to
plant this truck, which is of no account anyway. You’d better fling it all
in the river. It would be far better than to go out on the damp ground
wasting your time and labor.”

“No, indeed,” said Patsy, who had the dauntless energy of a true gardener;
“I shall plant them myself--every one!”

She did so, and her treasures made themselves at home in the rich, mellow
soil, and throve wonderfully in response to her careful tending. In a
short time she gathered roses and violets, and her golden-banded lilies
shot up several tall stems crowned with slender, shapely buds, which were
watched with great solicitude. Every morning Patsy would say: “They will
bloom to-morrow.”

Mr. Benton refused to “consider the lilies” of his daughter except in the
light of a nuisance. Only the evening before, he had seen her standing in
the bean-arbor with Walter Jones, who seemed lost in his admiration of the
girl while she devoured the beauty of the flowers; and Mr. Benton was not
happy at the sight.

“It just beats the devil,” he said to himself, “how there is always a
serpent getting into a man’s garden to beguile a foolish girl. It ain’t no
suitable place anyhow for girls to be dodging around in with their beaux.
My mind’s made up,” said he, striking his closed right hand into the open
palm of the left. “I’ll wipe out that flower-bed.”

Early the next morning, before the family had risen, Mr. Benton marched
into the garden armed with a hoe. He went to the lily-bed and began the
work of destruction. Aunt Cindy, the cook, was surprised as she took a
view from the kitchen window.

“I ’clar to gracious, de boss is a-workin’ Miss Patsy’s garden!” said she
to the housemaid.

“He’s workin’ nuthin’. He’s jes’ a-cuttin’ an’ choppin’ up everything,”
said the more observant girl.

“Ef dat ole vilyun is spilen’ dat chile’s gyardin’,” said the cook, “when
she fines it out, little Patsy’ll tar up de whole plantation. You listen
out when she gits up en comes down-stairs. He ain’t done no payin’ job dis
time, I let you know he ain’t dat. Great Gawd,” said she, “Patsy’ll be
mad!--eh--eh!”

Jeff Davis, Patsy’s little brother, who was out at the front gate, spied
Walter Jones riding past, and called out at the top of his voice, “Come
in, old fellow, and take breakfast. Sissy’s asleep yet, but we have killed
a chicken, and churned, and opened a keg of nails, and there are three
fine cantaloupes in the ice-box.”

Walter could not resist this invitation. He dismounted and joined Mr.
Benton on the porch, where that gentleman was sipping a cup of black
morning coffee after his labor in the garden.

The dense fog was clearing away, and the sun began to show in the eastern
horizon. Patsy came down, and was working up the golden butter, printing
it with her prettiest molds. She knew Walter was there. She set on the
breakfast table a vase filled with water, and ran out into the garden to
get the lilies for a center-piece of beauty and color--for they had
actually opened at last.

In a moment everybody was electrified by a terrific scream. The whole
family rushed out to see what was the matter. Patsy was wringing her hands
and crying. She pointed to the ruined flower-beds, sobbing: “Some wretch
has cut up and destroyed all my beautiful flowers!”

“Well,” said Jeff Davis, “it won’t do any good to bellow over it like
that, Sis. Breakfast is ready, I tell you. Come to breakfast.”

But Patsy continued weeping and bewailing her loss, regardless of
entreaties. She called down some anathemas on the perpetrator of the
outrage, which were not pleasant to Mr. Benton’s ears.

“Dry up this minute!” said he. “_I_ cut out those confounded things, and
don’t let me hear any more about it. Dry up,” said he, sternly, “and eat
your breakfast.”

Neither Patsy nor her mother ate anything, however. They looked through
their tears at each other, and were silent, while rebellious indignation
filled their hearts. Mr. Benton was angry.

“It is beyond all reason,” said he, “for you to act so because I did as I
pleased with my own. Anyhow, I would not give one boy,” looking at Jeff,
“for a whole cow-pen full of girls like you,” glancing at Patsy.

Walter was an indignant spectator of this scene, and he wished he could
take his sweetheart and fly away with her forever. He took a hasty leave,
and Mr. Benton went earlier than usual on his daily round of plantation
business.

Her mother soothed Patsy’s feelings as well as she could and counseled
patience.

“I hate him, if he _is_ my father,” said the girl.

The mother reminded her of the filial respect due the author of her being.

“I wish I had no father,” she answered perversely.

Mr. Benton rode back of the fields to the woods where the “hands” were
cutting timber to complete a fence around the peach orchard. Tom had
started in the spring wagon to go three miles down the river for some
young trees. Jeff sat on the seat beside Tom. When Mr. Benton returned to
go with them to select the trees at the nursery, the horses were
apparently restive and rather unmanageable.

“Get down, Jeff,” said Mr. Benton, “and ride my horse, while I show Tom
how to drive these horses.”

A moment after, Jeff and his father had exchanged places, and before Mr.
Benton had fully grasped the reins, the ponies took fright and ran out of
the road. Coming suddenly to a tree which had fallen, they bounded over
it, and the vehicle was upset, and Tom and Mr. Benton were violently
thrown out. Tom escaped with a few bruises, but Mr. Benton was seriously
injured, his arm being dislocated and his leg broken. Jeff went off for
the doctor, and Mr. Benton was carried home insensible.

When Patsy saw the men bringing him into the house in this condition, she
thought he had been killed, and was filled with heart-breaking grief and
remorse. “Poor father!” she cried, “this is my punishment for wishing I
had no father this morning. O Lord, forgive me!”

Mr. Benton, however, was not dead. After his injured limbs were set to
rights by the surgeon, he was soon in a fair way to recovery. In the
meanwhile, Patsy and her mother devoted themselves wholly to ministering
to his wants and ameliorating the tedium of his confinement to the house.

“Pat,” said he one day, “you have been a great trouble and expense to me,
but when a man is suffering with a lame arm and a broken leg, women are
certainly useful to have in the house. You and your mother have waited on
me and taken good care of me for many weeks.” He glanced at his spliced
leg and his swollen arm, and continued: “I could not do much cutting up
things in the garden at this time, Pat, could I? I wish I had let your
flower-beds alone. Great Cæsar! didn’t you make a fuss over those lilies,
and your mother, too! You both actually cried over that morning’s work.”

“Never mind, father,” said Patsy, reassuringly, “we don’t care now,” and
she smiled sweetly and lovingly upon the hard-featured invalid.

He was almost well when he said to her: “You are a good child, and let me
tell you, my doctor has fallen in love with you. He told me so. Yes, Pat,
he is mashed on you, and intends to ask you to marry him, and you had
better give up any foolish notion you may have taken to Walter Jones, and
take the doctor. He is the best chance you will ever have. He is doing
well in his profession, and besides having a good home to take you to, he
belongs to an influential family. All I ask of you is to promise me you
won’t refuse the doctor. You would be a fool to reject such a man.”

“O father!” said the girl, “don’t ask me to promise anything.”

“I am going to be obeyed in my own house,” said Mr. Benton, flying into a
rage, “and if you don’t mind me, I will put you out of doors.”

Patsy was struck with consternation.

The invalid was now able to move around without assistance. Patsy’s heart
was full of fear and trembling.

The next morning she did not come down to print the butter or bring her
father his early morning coffee. The girl had eloped with Walter Jones.

“This is worse than breaking my leg,” said Mr. Benton, after his first
indignation had subsided.

When he could speak calmly about his trouble to his wife, he wondered what
made Patsy so thoughtless and undutiful, when she was an only daughter and
had everything she wanted.

“She is very much like her father,” said Mrs. Benton, “and she thought
marriage would set her free--emancipate her.”

“That’s pure folly,” said Mr. Benton, “for all females are and ought to be
always controlled by their male relations. Nothing on God’s earth can
emancipate a woman. She only changes masters when she marries and leaves
her father’s house.”

“Patsy, then, has changed masters,” said his wife, “and she seems to be
very happy--in her own little home.”

“Old woman, don’t get saucy, and I will tell you something,” said he. “I
have sent to the city for some flower-garden truck, and Maitre has sent me
up fifty dollars’ worth of what he calls first-class stuff on the last
boat, and I am going over to give it to Pat to plant. Tom shall do the
work for her, too. To tell you the real downright truth, you all made me
feel cheap about chopping up her things, and I am going to replace them.”

“Oh, I am so glad!” said Mrs. Benton.

“Yes,” said Mr. Benton, “I am perfectly willing to restore forty times as
much as I destroyed. Pat’s a trump, anyhow, and I shall never go back on
her for anything she has ever done. You can rely on that for a fact.”

Mr. Benton was a good neighbor of ours and assumed some authority over my
household. He never failed to come over immediately whenever we had a
visit from one of the gunboats, and to reprove me sharply for having any
friendly interviews or even civilities with our “kidney-footed enemies,”
as he called them, yet at the same time he would seize upon all the
newspapers which these gentlemanly officers had given us, and carry them
off for his own delectation, regardless of all objections and
expostulations.




CHAPTER VIII.

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.”




CHAPTER IX.

MISS VINE’S DINNER PARTY AND ITS ABRUPT CONCLUSION.


War is demoralizing, and ever since “our army swore terribly in Flanders,”
profanity has been a military sin. In my neighborhood it extended to the
women and children who had never before violated the third commandment. I
knew a little girl who, having seen a regiment of Federal soldiers
marching along the public highway, ran to her mother crying, “The damned
Yankees are coming!” She was exempt from reproof on account of the
exciting nature of the news. She had doubtless heard the obnoxious word so
often in this connection that she deemed it a correct term.

I tried to preserve my own household “pure and peaceable and of good
report,” and I plead with my five girls to avoid all looseness of
expression. But Fannie Little asked: “Mrs. Merrick, may I not even tell
Rose to ‘go to the devil’ when she puts my nightgown where I can’t find
it, and makes me wait so long for hot water?”

“No, indeed, my child! Only Christian ministers can speak with propriety
of the devil, and use his name on common occasions.”

As a social side-light on these disordered secession war-times the
following sketch is a true picture. The characters and incidents are real,
but the names are assumed. The endeavor to embalm the events in words
diverted me in the midst of graver experience during those chaotic days.

       *       *       *       *       *

Beechwood plantation has a frontage of two miles on the banks of a
navigable river. The tall dwelling-house was so surrounded by other
buildings, all well constructed and painted white, that the first glance
suggested the idea of a village embowered in trees. The proprietorship of
a noble estate implies a certain distinction, and in fact the owner of
this property had for many years represented his district in Congress. In
past as well as present times people manifest a disposition to bestow
political honors upon men of prosperity and affluence.

Mr. Templeton, notwithstanding the fact that he possessed an uncommonly
large amount of property in land and slaves, was not a giant either in
body or in mind. He surely had spoken once in the national Capitol, for
was he not known to have sent a printed copy of a speech to every one of
the Democratic constituents in the State? In this pamphlet were set forth
eloquent and powerful arguments against the unjust discrimination of the
specific duties on silk, which he thought operated to the disadvantage and
serious injustice of the poor man. He asserted confidently that the poor
people would purchase only the heavy, serviceable silken goods, while the
rich preferred the lighter and flimsier fabrics, thus paying
proportionately a much smaller revenue to the Government. This proved
conclusively that Mr. Templeton never consulted his wife, whose rich
dresses were always paid for as the tariff was arranged--ad valorem. His
patriotic soul was harrowed and filled with sympathy and sorrow on account
of the injustice and hardship thus dealt out to his needy and indigent
constituents. We cannot follow this interesting man’s public career, and
probably it is customary for great statesmen “to study the people’s
welfare” and to have the good of the poor men who vote for them very much
upon their disinterested minds.

The Templeton family came originally from that State which furnished to
the South, in the hour of trial, some brave soldiers and a good
song--“Maryland, my Maryland.” Lavinia, Mr. Templeton’s only daughter, had
been educated at the Convent in Emmetsburg, and had returned home after
Fort Sumter was fired upon and other disturbances were anticipated. This
slender, delicate, little creature was very graceful and pretty, timid as
a fawn, and frisky as a young colt. At first she could not be induced to
sit at table if there was a young man in the dining-room. She said she
preferred to wait, and when she came in afterward for her dinner her
brother Frank testified that she always ate an extra quantity to make up
for the delay.

Old Miss Eliza thought Vine so lovely and good that she always allowed her
to do as she pleased, only enjoining on her to “be a lady.” Miss Eliza was
an old-maid cousin who lived in the family, shared the cares and anxieties
of the parents, and was greatly respected by everybody. She was not a
particularly religious person--there not being a church within ten
miles--but she was kind, courteous and gentle, and exhibited a great deal
of deportment of the very finest quality--as might have been expected from
her refined Virginia antecedents. She could not abide that the servants
should call Lavinia Templeton “Miss Vine,” but they called her so all the
same.

Beaux far and near contended for Lavinia’s regard, and in less than six
months after leaving the convent she was married to a young captain newly
enlisted in the artillery of the Confederate service. A grand wedding came
off where many noteworthy men assembled. While the band played and the
giddy dance went on, groups of these consulted about the portentous war
clouds. One great man said: “There will be no war; I will promise to drink
every drop of blood shed in this quarrel!”

But soon there was a military uprising everywhere. As men enlisted they
went into a camp situated less than an hour’s drive from Beechwood. Vine
and her lover-husband refused to be separated, so she virtually lived in
the encampment. The spotless new tents, with bright flags flying, the
young men thronging around the carriages which brought their mothers and
sisters as daily visitors, made this camp in the woods a bewitching spot.

Every luxury the country afforded was poured out with lavish hands.
Friends, neighbors and loved ones at home skimmed the richest cream of the
land for the delectation and refreshment of their dear soldier boys. A
young schoolboy, who dined with his brother in camp on barbecued mutton
and roast wild turkey with all the accompaniments, wrote to his father
that he too was ready to enlist, having now had a perfect insight into
soldier life. As this gallant veteran to-day looks at his empty, dangling
coat-sleeve and is shown his boyish letter, he smiles a grim smile and
says: “Yes, I _was_ a fool in those days.” Vine’s husband had a noble
figure and was a picture of manly beauty in his new uniform with scarlet
facings. To the horror of her woman friends the devoted little wife cut up
a costly black velvet gown, and made it into a fatigue jacket for him to
wear in camp.

Meanwhile the unexpected happened and we were in the midst of a real,
terrible war. Federal military operations extended over the whole country;
then appeared a gunboat with its formidable armament, striking a panic
into all the white inhabitants. Soldiers advanced to the front, while
citizens precipitately retreated to the rear. In trepidation and hot haste
planters gathered up their possessions for departure. Slaves, always
dearer and more precious to the average Southern heart than either silver
or gold, were first collected and assembled with the owners and their
families, and then formed large companies of refugees who went forth to
look for a temporary home in some less exposed part of the country.

After much deliberation Mr. and Mrs. Templeton, with the little boys and
their cumbrous retinue of wagons, horses and slaves, went to Texas,
leaving their daughter Vine, Miss Eliza and two faithful servants as sole
tenants of Beechwood. The expected advance of Federal forces in the spring
seemed to justify the reduction of the place to such slender equipment.
Meanwhile, Captain Paul had been through a campaign in Virginia. On the
very day of the battle of Bethel, Vine clasped a new-born daughter in her
arms, and the father requested that its name should be Bethel in
commemoration of that engagement. This child was a year old before he saw
its face. The time came when Louisiana soil was to be plowed up with
military trenches and fortifications, and Captain Paul was ordered to Port
Hudson. The siege of that place soon followed.

In the evenings Miss Eliza sat on the gallery holding Bethel in her arms,
while Vine rocked little Dan, the baby of seven months, and they would all
listen in wistful silence to the volleys of heavy guns sounding regularly
and dolefully far down the river. The regular boom of the thundering
volleys kept on day and night. The two servants, Becky and Monroe, would
occasionally join the group; “Never mind, Miss Vine, don’t you fret,” they
would say; “sure, Captain Paul’s all right.” After many weeks of painful
suspense and anxiety the shocking news came that Captain Paul had been
killed by the explosion of a shell. Vine’s grief was wild. She wept and
raved by turn, until Miss Eliza feared she would die. Becky with womanly
instinct brought her the children and reminded her that she still had
these. “Take them away,” cried Vine, “I loved them only for his sake;
children are nothing! Take them out of my sight! Oh! Lord,” she cried,
“let us all die and be buried together! Why does anybody live when Paul is
dead?--dead, dead, forever!”

Vine put on no mourning in her widowhood, for such a thing as crepe was
unattainable in those days. The girls in the neighborhood came and stayed
with her by turns, and did all they could to divert her mind from her
loss.

In a short time even punctilious Miss Eliza rejoiced to perceive some
return of Vine’s former cheerfulness. She said it was sad enough and bad
enough to have a horrible war raging and ravaging over the country,
without insisting that a delicate young thing like Lavinia should go on
forever moping herself to death in unavailing grief. There was no need of
anything of the kind. While wishing her niece to avoid “getting herself
talked about,” Miss Eliza yet thought it needful, right and proper that
she should take some diversion and some healthy amusement. So it came to
pass after awhile that one day all the officers and soldiers who were
temporarily at home, and all the young ladies living on the river, were
invited to dine together at Beechwood.

The day was cool and delightful, with just a tinge of winter in the air.
Extensive fields, where hundreds of bales of cotton and thousands of
barrels of corn had been grown annually, were now given up to weeds,
briars and snakes. Here and there in protected nooks and corners clusters
of tall golden-rod or blue and purple wild asters waved their heads. Only
one small patch of ripened corn near the dwelling indicated that the
inhabitants had not entirely forgotten seed-time and might possibly have
hope of even a tiny harvest later on.

It was eleven o’clock before Vine had finished the work of decorating her
parlors. She felt weary from the unusual exertion, but remembering her
duties to her expected guests, she ran to the window overlooking the
kitchen and called, “Becky, Becky, you know who are to be here; now do
have everything all right for dinner; and, Becky, please keep the children
quiet, for I should like to take a nap before I dress.”

“Y’as’m,” said the woman, while a shade of care came into her honest face,
as she regarded the two children playing in the corner of the kitchen. “I
’clar to Gawd, dat’s jes’ like Miss Vine, she’s done got in de bed dis
minit and lef’ me wid bofe dese chillun on my han’s, en she knows, mitey
well, dat um got a heap to tend ter, dis day. She tole me dat she wus
gwine to he’p me, she did, en it’s de Gawd’s trufe dat she ain’t done er
spec of er blessed thing ceppin gether dem bushes and flowers, en Captain
Prince he hope her at dat. Now, ef she had put her han’ to de vegables,
dat would er ben sumpin. Flowers will do for purty and niceness, but you
cayent eat ’em, en you cayent drink ’em. Dey’re des here to-day and gone
all to pieces to-morrow; whut good is dey anyhow? a whole kyart load of um
don’t mount ter er hill er beans. Well,” she continued, “I jes’ won’t
blame de young creetur, but Gawd ermitey only knows when all dem white
folks will set down ter dat ar dinner Miss Vine done ’vited ’em ter come
here en eat! Here, Beth,” said she kindly to the little girl, “clam up on
dis stool, honey, by dis table; um gwine ter fix yo a nice roas’ tater in
a minit. Yo, Dan,” she called out sharply to the boy, “yo jes’ stop
mashin’ dat cat’s tail wid dat cheer ’fo’ he scratch yo to deff! Min’, I
tell yer! It jes’ looks like Miss Vine wouldn’t keer ef I bust my brains
er wukin’; but I ain’t er gwine to do dat fer nobody. Well, not fer
_strange_ white folks, anyhow.”

Here Beth with a mouthful of sweet potato asked for water. Becky promptly
dipped a gourd full and held it to her lips grumbling all the while, “Lamb
O’ Gawd, how in de name er goodness is I gwine ter wait on dese chillun,
wash up dese dishes, put on dinner, en fetch all de wood from de wood
pile?” As she stood contemplating her manifold duties, she heard the clock
in the house striking the hour. “Lord, Gawd,” said she, “ef it ain’t
twelve o’clock er ’ready, en shore nuff here comes all dem white folks
jes’ a gallopin’ up de big road. Eh--eh--eh--well, dey’ll wait twell em
ready fur ’em, dat’s all. But I does wish Miss Vine was mo’ like her mar.
Ole Mis’ wouldn’t never dremped ’bout ’viten a whole pasel er folks here,
widout havin’ pigs, and po’try, pies and cakes, en sich, all ready, de day
befo’. She had plenty on all sides an’ plenty ter do de work too. Now
here’s Miss Vine she’s after havin’ her own fun. Well, she’s right, you
hear me, niggahs!”

“You ain’t talkin’ to me, Aunt Becky,” said Beth; “I ain’t no nigger.” The
woman laughed, dropped her dishcloth on the unswept floor, grasped the
child and tossed her up several times over her head. “Gawd bless dis
smart chile! no, dat yo ain’t! yo is a sweet, little, white angel outen
heaben, you is dat, you purty little white pig!”

In the height of this performance Monroe came to the door and thrust in an
enormous turkey just killed. Seeing what was going on he exclaimed: “Why,
Aunt Becky, yo better stop playing wid dat white chile en pick dis turkey
’fo’ Miss Eliza happen ’long here en ketch yer.”

“Shet yo mouf, en git out o’ dis kitchen, boy; you cayent skeer me; I can
give you as good es you can sen’ any day. De white folks knows I ain’t got
but two han’s and can’t do a hundred things in a minit.” She put the child
down, however, and resumed her dish washing.

The girls in the meantime had retouched their disheveled curls and joined
the young men in the parlor, where for a time music, songs and dances made
the hours fly. Let us play “Straw,” said Nelly Jones.

“No, let Captain Prince lead and choose the game,” said Arabella.

So the captain seated the company in line. “Now,” said he, “not one of you
must crack a smile on pain of forfeit, and when I say prepare to pucker,
you must all do so,”--drawing out as he spoke the extraordinary aperture
in his own good-natured face, extending his lips into an automatic,
gigantic, wooden smirk reaching almost from ear to ear. Everybody giggled
of course, but he went on: “I shall call out ‘Pucker,’ and you must
instantly face about with your mouths fixed this way”--and he drew up his
wonderful feature small enough to dine with the stork out of a jar. The
company shouted, but the game was never played, for reproof and entreaty,
joined to the captain’s word of command, failed to get them beyond a
preparatory attempt which ended always in screams of laughter.

The sun was getting low in the west when another want began to appeal to
the inner consciousness of these young persons. Some of them had ridden
for miles in the morning air; since then they had sung and danced and
laughed in unlimited fashion. Now they began to think of some other
refreshment. Arabella ventured to request that Captain Prince be sent to
the kitchen to reconnoiter and bring in a report from the commissary
department. The captain responded amiably, and said she was a sensible
young lady. “Vine, ain’t you hungry?” asked Arabella. “Oh, I took some
luncheon before you came,” replied she; “if you will go up-stairs and look
in the basket under my dressing table, you will find some sandwiches, but
not enough for all.” The girl flew up-stairs.

When Captain Prince returned the girls rushed forward and overpowered him
with questions. He threw up his hands deprecatingly and waved off his
noisy assailants. “Stop, stop, young ladies, I will make my report. I went
round to the kitchen and found Aunt Becky behind the chimney ripping off
the feathers of a turkey so big” (holding his hands nearly a yard apart).
“I got a coal o’ fire to light my pipe, then I made a memorandum.” Here he
pulled out an old empty pocketbook and pretended to read--“Item 1st,
‘Fowl picking at three o’clock,’ that means dinner at six. Can you wait
that long?”

“Never!” cried the girls.

“Well, we must then go into an election for a new housekeeper who will go
in person or send a strong committee who will whoop up the cook and
expedite the meal which is to refresh these fair ladies and brave
men,”--and he began to count them.

“Don’t number me in your impolite crowd,” said Arabella, “for I am content
to wait until dinner is ready.” Vine gave her a meaning smile and went up
pleadingly to the captain, rolling her fine eyes in the innocent, sweet
way characteristic of some of the most fascinating of her sex, and begging
him to continue to be the life and soul of her party, as he always was
everywhere he went: she said if he would “start something diverting,” she
would go and stir Becky up and have dinner right off--she would, “honest
Indian.”

These girls were not sufficiently polite to keep up a pleased appearance
when bored. Such little artificialities of society belonged to the days of
peace. They flatly refused to dance, saying they were tired. One avowed
that she was sorry she had persuaded her mother to let her come to such a
poky affair, and another declared that she had never been anywhere in her
whole lifetime before where there was not cake, fruit, candy, popcorn,
pindars, or something handed round when dinner was as late as this. “Oh,”
said Nelly Jones, “I wish I had a good stalk of sugar-cane.” In fact a
cloud seemed to settle down in the parlors like smoke in murky weather.

Captain Prince stroked his blond goatee affectionately and looked serious,
but brightening up in a moment he crossed the wide hall and entered the
library where Major Bee was writing. He captured the major, brought him
and introduced him to the ladies, and then seated him in a capacious
arm-chair, while he held a whispering conference with Nelly Jones. Nelly’s
wardrobe was the envy and admiration of all the girls on the river. Being
the daughter of a cotton speculator, she wore that rare article, a new
dress. Unlike Arabella, whose jacket was cut from the best part of an old
piano cover, she was arrayed in fine purple cashmere trimmed with velvet
and gold buttons, and was otherwise ornamented with a heavy gold chain and
a little watch set with diamonds. Nelly took the captain’s arm and made a
low bow to Major Bee, and the girls were once more on the _qui vive_ when
they heard the captain say in slow and measured tones, “I have come with
the free and full consent of this young lady to ask you to join us for
life in the bonds of matrimony.” The amiable old major seemed ready to
take part in this dangerous pastime, for gentle dulness ever loves a joke.
“Bring me a prayer book,” said he, “if you please.”

“I lent my mother’s prayer book,” said Vine, “to old Mrs. Simpson two
years ago, and she never returned it--the mean old thing!”

The major next asked for a broom which he held down before the couple
saying, “Jump over.”

“Hold it lower,” said Nelly, and they stepped over in a business-like
manner.

“Now,” said Major Bee, “I solemnly pronounce you husband and wife, and I
hope and trust that you will dwell together lovingly and peacefully until
you die. I have at your request tied this matrimonial knot as tight as I
possibly could, under the circumstances, and I hope you will neither of
you ever cause me to regret that I have had the pleasure of taking part in
this highly dignified and honorable ceremony.”

Then the old major kissed the bride, whom he had always petted from
childhood, and shook hands with Captain Prince, whom Nelly refused the
privilege accorded the major, for said she, “there was no kissing in the
bargain.” The company crowded around with noisy congratulations; a sofa
was drawn forward, and the mock bridal couple sat in state and entertained
their guests.

“My dear,” remarked the bride, “I expected to make a tour when I was
married.”

“Yes, miss,”--he corrected himself quickly,--“yes, madam, I think as there
are no steamboats that we may take a little journey up the river on a
raft.”

“What kind of a raft, Captain?” asked Nelly.

“My love, I mean a steam raft. I will take the steam along in a jug.”

Nelly made a terrible grimace of disgust and was silent for a moment, her
mind still dwelling on the bridal tour. “Captain, you know we must have
money for traveling expenses,” said she.

“Yes, darling, it takes that very thing, so I will spout your fine watch
and chain, and then we can find ourselves on wheels.”

Nelly drew down the corners of her pretty mouth, pouted her lips and
looked more disgusted than ever. To them it was all very funny.

“My dearest, I fear when your mother hears the news she will say ‘Poor
Nelly, she has thrown herself away!’” and the captain actually blushed at
this vision of Mrs. Jones’s disapprobation.

“Keep the ball rolling, Captain,” said Billy Morris, “this sport is
splendid.”

The captain fixed his keen eye on Billy’s large, standing collar and
asked, “Did you ever see a small dog trotting along in high oats?
Well,”--surveying his person--“I have.”

“Come now, Captain,” replied Billy, “I’ll allow you some privileges, being
just married, but you must pass your wit around. I’ve had enough. Don’t
compare your single unmarried friend to a dog.”

Dinner was then announced and the party were soon seated at table. That
king of edible birds, the turkey savory and brown, was placed at one end,
and a fresh stuffed ham stood at the other, while the vegetables filled up
the intervening space. A large bunch of zinnias and amaranthus set in a
broken pitcher formed a gay center-piece. The dessert was egg-nogg, and
Confederate pound-cake made from bolted cornmeal. The dinner was concluded
with a cup of genuine coffee. Notwithstanding the late meal, never had
there been a merrier day at old Beechwood. Healths to the absent ones were
drunk from the single silver goblet of egg-nogg allowed for each guest.
The girls did not relish this mixture made of crude and fiery Louisiana
rum, but the soldiers were not so fastidious; they said they often had
occasion to repeat the remark of the Governor of North Carolina to the
Governor of South Carolina that “it was a long time between drinks.”

Monroe removed the dishes and retired to the kitchen while the guests
lingered over the dessert. The cook sat and looked down the river. The
window commanded a view for two miles. Her work was done and she
manifested her relief by breaking into singing these words:

  “John saw, J-o-h-n saw,
  John saw de holy number
  Settin’ roun de golden altar.
  Golden chariot come fer me, come fer me,
  Golden chariot come fer me,
  Childun didn’t he rise?”

She had commenced the second verse, “John saw,” when suddenly her jaws
fell, and springing up she exclaimed: “Jesus marster! what’s dat? Look!
Everybody! Here comes er gunboat, en Riley’s house is er fire. Don’t yer
see it bu’nin! Run, boy, run, en call Miss Vine! Tell Mis Lizer! Go dis
minit an’ let ’em all know, I tell yer!” “Set right down, set down, Aunt
Becky! ’tain’t none er my business to tell nuthin’. Set right down, ’oman,
en let dem white folks ’lone,” and the man seized her and pushed her with
all his force towards the chair.

The woman turned fiercely upon him and planted a blow on the side of his
head which sent him headlong on the floor. “Look er-heah, boy, who is you
foolin’ wid, anyhow? You think yerself a man, does yer when yous er born
fool! I let you know it tuck de tightest overseer ole marster ever had on
dis plantashun to rule me. No nigger like you better try ter tackle Becky.
I’ll double you up an fling you outer dis winder in no time. You neenter
tell nuthin. I’ll go tell ’em--I’ll go ef Gawd spars me to git dar. I
nussed Miss Vine; dat gal used to suck dese yere”--and Becky eloquently
placed her hands on her round ebony bosom, as she broke into a full run
from the kitchen door. She entered the dining-room crying out in
breathless, agitated tones, “Look heah, people, thar’s a big gunboat er
comin’ up de river en Riley’s house is er-fire!”

In an instant confusion and utter consternation reigned. “Good God!”
exclaimed Vine, “and here’s all mother’s silver! Like a fool I dug it up
out of the garden this morning. Here, Aunt Becky, help me gather it up.”
The woman soon rattled a pile of spoons and forks into a dishpan. “No,
no,” screamed Vine, “don’t wash them, let me hide them, quick, somewhere!”

The officers and soldiers had disappeared, and in ten minutes the only
male creatures to be seen on the place were Monroe and the baby. The man
was in fine spirits while engaged in assisting the young ladies to mount
their horses. “Take kere, Miss Em’ly, dis is a skittish little creole
pony, and you rides wid too loose a rein.” To another he said, “’Fore
Gawd, Miss Jinnie, I hates to see a white lady like you a-riden’ uv er
mule, I does dat, en er man’s saddle too! Eh, eh!” “You never mind,” the
girl replied; “my pony and both our side-saddles were carried off by the
last raid from Morganza, and I had no choice but to use my brother’s
saddle and this mule or stay at home. Cut me a good stick, Monroe, and I
shall get along.” “Well, you’ll need a stick,” said Monroe, “wid dat lazy
ole mule, ef you ’spects to see home dis night.”

One of the horses jerked away every time he was led up to the steps, but
the man was patient with him, only remarking, “Dis hoss been brutalized
’bout de head by somebody ’twel he’s a plum fool. Jump quick, Miss Nelly,
while um er holdin’ him fer ye.” The girl sprang to her saddle, adjusted
her dress, and directed the man to spread a folded shawl for her sister to
ride behind. “Well, well,” said he, “dis beats de bugs, to see white
ladies what’s used to rollin’ ’long in der carriages a-ridin’ double like
dis!” “We don’t care,” said they, as the party started off gaily down the
road.

After the last departure Monroe went to talk over the eventful day with
Becky. No allusion was made to such a small matter as a passing blow, and
the man sat down by the fire grinning with real enjoyment.

“Didn’t dem white folks scatter quick? I tell yer, Aunt Becky, it done me
good all over to see ’em so flustrated,” and he burst into a loud guffaw.
“When sumpin don’ go to suit de Templetons, dey’ll paw dirt, dey’ll do it,
every time, frum ole marster down to de baby one. Whut did Miss Vine say
about it?”

“Well,” said Becky, “lemme tell yer ’bout Miss Vine; de fust thing she
done arter I bounced in en tole de news--she gathered up de spoons en
forks, en dem silver tumblers, en sich, belonging to ole Mis’, en den she
look ’roun’ en seed de men wus all gone; den she clinched her teeth, en
des doubled up her fis’, she did, en shuck it t’wards dat big ole boat es
she come puffin’ en blowin’ up de river, wid de great big cannons
a-sticken outen her sides, en des a-swarmin’ all over wid de blue-coats,
en says she: ‘Dern you infernal black souls! I wish to Gawd every one of
you was drownded in de bottom of de river.’”

“Lord!” said Monroe, catching his breath, “now didn’t she cuss?”

“Yes, sirree! she did dat; en so would you, en me,” said Becky.

“But she’s white,” said the man. “I don’t keer ef she is; ain’t white
folks got feelin’s same as we is?” asked Becky. “No,” said Monroe, “dey
ain’t; some of um is mighty mean, yes, a heap of ’em.”

“Yo cayn’t set down here and ’buse Miss Vine,” said Becky, “we’re ’bleeged
to gib her de praise. Ef its ’fo’ her face or ’hine her back, um boun’ to
say it; she’s de feelin’est creetur, de free-heartedest, de most
corndescendin’est young white ’oman, I ever seed in all my life,--fer a
fac’. But when she done _so_”--here Becky shook her fist in imitation of
Vine’s passionate outbreak, en said dat I done tole yer, Miss Eliza put in
en spoke up she did, en says she, ‘Laviney, yo must certinly forgit yo is
er lady!’ Whew! Miss Vine never heerd her. ’Twan’t no use fer nobody to
say nuthin’. I tell you dat white gal rared en pitched untwel she bust
into be bitteres’ cry yo ever heerd in yo life. She said dem devils warn’t
satisfied wid killin’ her Paul, en makin’ her a lonesome widder, but here
dey comes agin, jes’ as she were joyin’ herse’f, jes’ es she were takin’
a little plesyure, here dey comes a knockin’ uv it all in de haid, en
spillin’ de fat in de fire.

“I was sorry for de chile, fer it was de Gawd’s trufe she spoke, so I
comes back in heah, I did, en got some of dat strong coffee I dun saved
for yo en me, en I het a cupful an brung it to her. ‘Here, honey,’ says I,
‘drink dis fer yo Becky, en d-o-n’t cry no mo’, dat’s my good baby!’ She
wipe up her eyes, en stop cryin’, she did, en drunk de coffee. Dar I was,
down on my knees, jes’ facin’ of her, and she handed back de cup. ’Twas
one er ole Mis’ fine chaney cups. ‘Dat’s yo, honey,’ says I, ‘you musn’t
grieve!’ en I was er pattin’ of her on de lap, when she tuck a sudden
freak, en I let yo know she ups wid dem little foots wid de silver shoes
on, en she kicked me spang over, broadcast, on de flo’.

“Den ole Miss Lizer, she wall her eyes at Miss Vine, en say, ‘Laviney, um
’stonished to see yo ax so.’ She mout as well er hilt her mouf--fer it
didn’t do dat much good,” said Becky, snapping her fingers. “Den arter er
while, Miss Vine seed me layin’ dar on de floor en she jumped up she did,
en gin me her two han’s to pull me up. I des knowed I was too heavy for
her to lif, but I tuck a holt of her, en drug her down in my lap en hugged
her in my arms, pore young thing! Den I jes’ put her down e-a-s-y on de
hath-rug, ’fo’ de fire, en kiver her up wid a shawl. Den I run up-sta’rs
en fotch a piller, en right dar on de foot of de bed she had done laid out
dat spangly tawlton dress, en I des knowed she wus gwine to put it on, en
dance de Highlan’ fling dis very ebenin’. Can’t she out-dance de whole
river anyhow?” said Becky.

“Oh!” said Monroe, “I don’t ’spute dat. I love to see her in her brother
Frank’s close a-jumpin’ up to my fiddle! den she bangs a circus--dat she
do!”

Becky continued her narration: “I comes back en lif’s her head on de
piller, en pushed up the chunks to men’ de fire, en lef’ her dar sobbin’
herself down quiet.” Becky sighed and went on: “I tell yo, man, when dat
little creetur dar in de house takes a good start--yo cayn’t hole her,
nobody nee’n’ to try; you cayn’t phase her I tell you. En dar’s Beth,
she’s gwine be jes’ sich er nother--I loves dat chile too! She don’t
feature her mar neither, ’ceppen her curly head.

“But dis won’t do me. Less go up frum here, Monroe. Yo make up a light, en
less go to de hen-house en ketch a pasel of dem young chickens, en put ’em
in de coop. I wants to brile one soon in de mawnin’ en take it to Miss
Vine wid some hot co’n cakes. She’s used to eatin’ when she fust wakes up,
en um gwine to have sumpen ready fer her, fer I give you my word, dey
ain’t de fust Gawd’s bit er nuthin ’tall lef’ frum dat ar’ dinner party.”




CHAPTER X.

OUR FEDERAL FRIENDS AND THE COLORED BROTHER.


The bewilderment of the negroes in the great social upheaval that came
with peace was outdone by that of the white people. The conditions of the
war times had been peaceable and simple compared with the perplexities of
existence now precipitated upon us. The Confederacy’s 175,000 surrendered
soldiers--and these included the last fifteen-year-old boy--were scattered
through the South, thousands of them disabled for work by wounds, and
thousands more by ill-health and ignorance of any other profession than
that of arms. The Federal soldiers garrisoned all important places. A
travesty of justice was meted out by a semi-civil military authority.
Every community maintained an active skirmish-line against the daily
aggressions of the freedmen and the oppressions of the military arm. Large
sums were paid by citizens to recover property held by the enemy; and, for
a time, the people paid a per cent. out of every dollar to the revenue
office for a permit to spend that dollar at stores opened by Yankees--our
only source of supply.

Few persons had property readily convertible into greenbacks, and
Confederate money was being burned or used by the bale to paper rooms in
the home of its possessor. No man knew how to invest money that had
escaped the absorption of war, and when he did invest it he usually lost
it. For the next ten years what the sword had not devoured the “canker
worm” (cotton worm, with us) ate up.

The people were in favor of reorganizing the States in accord with the
Union. But the iniquities of carpet-bag governments and the diabolisms of
“black and tan” conventions for a long time kept respectable men out of
politics. It was indeed too “filthy a pool” to be entered. At a longer
perspective this seems to have been a mistake. If the best men of the
country had gone into the people’s service--as did General Longstreet with
most patriotic but futile purpose--they might have arrested incessant
lootings of the people’s hard-wrested tax-money and the nefarious
legislation that enriched the despised carpet-bagger and
scalawag--present, like the vultures, only for the prey after the battle.
So many men, however, had been disfranchised by reason of Confederate
service that it is doubtful if enough respectability was eligible for
office, to have had any purifying effect on public affairs.

In this crisis our Northern friends advised us after the following
fashion. Major A. L. Brewer, Mr. Merrick’s uncle, who had belonged to
Sherman’s army, sent me, in 1865, a letter from New Lisbon, Ohio:

    “MY DEAR CARRIE,--Your devotion to Edwin makes you very dear to me.
    You know my attachment to him and that I regard him as a son. He was
    always my favorite nephew. Since the war is over I trust that he will
    now take the oath of allegiance, and should he need any aid I can
    render it. The Secretary of War, Postmaster-General, Senators Nolle
    and Sherman of Ohio, and many others, are my staunch friends.

    “As far as suffering is concerned you have had your share; but I would
    gladly have endured it for you if I could have saved my dear boy
    Charlie, who fell in battle. He was noble and brave, and my heart is
    chilled with grief for his loss.

    “This was a foolish, unnatural war, and after four years of bloodshed
    and destruction I rejoice that it is over, and that discord will never
    again disturb the peace in our country. But the authors of the
    rebellion have paid dearly for their folly and wickedness. When I
    reflect upon the misery brought about by a few arch villains, I find
    it hard to control my feelings;--I should feel differently had they
    been the only sufferers. When I look upon the distress which has
    fallen upon the masses in the South, I have no sympathy for the
    instigators of the war.

    “But, my dear, you have fared better than many who came within my
    observation; as I followed Sherman, I have seen whole plantations
    utterly destroyed, houses burnt and women and children driven into the
    woods without warning. The torch was applied to everything. Sometimes
    the women would save a few things, but in most cases they went forth
    bareheaded to make the ground their bed and the sky their roof. The
    next day when the hungry children came prowling around our camps in
    search of something to eat, the Federal soldiers who left wives and
    children at home, and who had the hearts of men, were sorry for them.
    But such is the cruelty of war and military discipline.”

Captain Charles B. White, a West Point officer in the United States
service in New Orleans, wrote my daughter Clara, after his return to New
York, in this manner: “I find your experiences in the kitchen very
amusing. Our Northern ladies have an idea that you of the South know
nothing practically of housekeeping. Quite erroneous is it not? I have
been for some time in Boston and find the girls here prettier as a class,
than those of any other city I have visited, not excepting Baltimore. They
are so sensible and self-assisting. You see that army people look at the
practical side of life. As our salaries are not large it is essential that
our domestic establishments should be as good as possible with the least
outlay of cash. We are therefore compelled to think of our future life
companions in the light of these considerations.

“It is very agreeable to be here with those in full accord on social and
political subjects,--not that I am a politician; but since we are the
victors, I hold that we cannot ignore the principles for which we fought.
I think that it behooves Wade Hampton, Toombs, Cobb and Robert Ould to
hold their tongues, and to be thankful that they are not punished for
their evil deeds, rather than be so blatant of their own shame. I am sorry
to find you in favor of Mr. Seymour. He is from my own State, but he is a
blot upon it; personally he is a gentleman,--as far as a dough-face and a
copper-head can be one. A few Northern politicians may, for
self-interest, humble themselves and praise traitors, but the masses are
as much disposed as ever to make treason odious. The South ought not again
to fall into the error of 1860, and estrange their real friends, and
irritate the Northern masses. We have undisguised admiration for General
Longstreet and his class who became reconstructed and attend to business.

“I do not admire Mr. S. W. Conway nor other adventurers in Louisiana, but
their opponents are still more unreasonable and unprincipled. It will take
me some time to become convinced that plantation negroes will make good
legislators. I have not been in favor of negro suffrage, but now it seems
the only expedient left us for the reconstruction of the turbulent South.
All sorts of lies are trumped up by the Democrats about Grant and Colfax.
I always object to personal abuse in a political controversy.

“I see my services will be no longer required in Louisiana, and my leave
expires next month. I see with equal clearness that beyond my immediate
circle of friends I shall scarcely be missed. How humbling to a conceited
man, who thinks himself essential, to return and find the household going
on just as well without him!”

With such amenities of intercourse between the conquered and the
conquerors it may not seem to some observers extraordinary that
reconstruction progressed so slowly. Mr. Richard Grant White said in the
_North American Review_ respecting the great struggle of the Sections:
“The South had fought to maintain an inequality of personal rights and an
aristocratic form of society. The North had fought, not in a crusade for
equality and against aristocracy, but for _money_--after the first flush
of enthusiasm caused by ‘firing on the flag’ had subsided. The Federal
Government was victorious simply because it had the most men and the most
money. The Confederate cause failed simply because its men and its money
were exhausted; for no other reason. Inequality came to an end in the
South; equality was established throughout the Union; but the real victors
were the money-makers, merchants, bankers, manufacturers, railwaymen,
monopolists and speculators. It was their cause that had triumphed under
the banners of freedom.”

Words cannot give so strong a confirmation of the above as the fact of the
South’s pitiful 175,000 men against the 1,000,000 men of the North
mustered out of service after the surrender. But it is not my purpose to
enter upon the history of the civil war farther than it touched my own
life.

  “Write our story as you may,
  ----------------but even you,
  With your pen, could never write
  Half the story of our land----
  --------------
  “Warrior words--but even they
  Fail as failed our men in gray;----
  Fail to tell the story grand
  Of our cause and of our land.”

A pretty young creature said to her aged relative: “Why, money can never
make people happy!”

“No, my child,” replied the old lady, “but it can make them very
comfortable.” The South learned in the direst way--through the want of
it--the comfort of money. It has learned also through the aggressions of
trusts and monopolies how comfortable and dangerous a thing money may
prove to be to the liberties of a people. It was during the war and soon
after it that vast fortunes were made at the North.

The South has long ago accepted its destiny as an integral element of the
United States and the great American people. It has set its face
resolutely forward with historic purpose. It clings to its past only as
its traditions and practices safe-guarded constitutional rights and the
integrity of a true republic. Its simpler social structure has enabled it
to keep a clearer vision of the purposes of our forefathers in government
than the North, with its tremendous infiltration of foreigners ingrained
with monarchical antecedents, and with the complex interests of many
classes. Never, perhaps, so much as now has a “solid South” been needed to
help to keep alive the principles of true democracy. But “old, sore
cankering wounds that pierced and stung,--throb no longer.”

Money is comfort, but love is happiness. The love of one God and a common
country “has welded fast the links which war had broken.”

The negro question of the South has become the problem of the nation. This
is retributive justice; for the North introduced slavery into the colonial
provinces, and sold the slaves to the South when they had ceased to be
profitable in Massachusetts. The South found them renumerative and kept
them. This branch of the subject may be dismissed with the reflection that
it is a disposition common to humanity to use any sort of sophistry to
excuse or palliate bias of feeling and departures in conduct from the
right way. Everybody--North and South--is equally glad that slavery is now
abolished, notwithstanding differences of opinion as to the methods by
which it was accomplished.

Judge Tourgee, in his “Fool’s Errand,” said: “The negroes were brought
here against their will. They have learned in two hundred years the
rudiments of civilization, the alphabet of religion, law, mechanic arts,
husbandry. Freed without any great exertion upon their part, enfranchised
without any intelligent or independent cooperation--no wonder they deem
themselves the special pets of Providence.” Seven years ago when cotton
was selling for four cents a pound and starvation was staring in the face
alike the planter and the negro tenant, the owner of a large plantation
said to one of her old slaves: “Oh, these are dreadful times, Maria! How
are we to live through them! I’m distressed for the people on the place. I
fear they will suffer this winter!” “Lor, Miss Annie,” Maria replied, “I
ain’t ’sturbin’ my mine ’bout it. White folks dun tuk keer me all my life
an’ I spec’s they gwine ter keep on ter the eend!” The negro Providence is
“white folks.” If they seem a bit slow in doling out to their desire they
know how to help themselves, and it is well they do.

The sudden freedom of the black man as a war measure and his
enfranchisement as a political necessity of the Republican party was a
social earthquake for the South and a sort of moral cataclysm for the
North. The one was too stunned by the shock, the other too delirious with
success to be able to grasp the portent of such an event in the national
life. The North approached it with abolition, fanaticism, and expected the
liberated slave to be an ally of freedom of which he had no true
conception. The South was an instinctive and hereditary ruler, and the
freedman was overrunning its daily life and traditions. It is not
wonderful that the negro has suffered in this conflict of antagonistic
ideas.

The enfranchisement of the old slave has set back the development of the
South for a generation, because it has been compelled to gauge all its
movements on the race line. It has hindered the North for an equal time
because the political value of the colored brother to the Republican party
has seemed to overshadow every other phase of his development. But
schooling and training can remodel even the prejudices of intelligent
minds and sincere natures. Thirty-five years of mistakes have convinced
both North and South that the negro has been long enough sacrificed to
political interests.

Those only who have long lived where the negro equals or outnumbers the
white population can understand his character, and the grave problem now
confronting this nation.

The danger of enfranchising a large class uninstructed in the duties of
citizenship and totally ignorant of any principles of government, will
prove an experiment not in vain if it enforces on the people of the
United States the necessity to restrict suffrage to those who are trained
in the knowledge and spirit of American institutions. It should serve to
emphasize the unwisdom and injustice of denying the ballot because of sex
to one half of its American born citizens who, by education and
patriotism, are qualified for the highest citizenship. Our government will
never become truly democratic until it lives up to its own principles, “No
taxation without representation, no government without the consent of the
governed.” Suffrage should be the privilege of those only who have
acquired a right to it by educating themselves for its responsibilities. A
proper educational qualification for the ballot, without sex or color
lines, would actualize our vision of “a government for the people, of the
people and by the people,” and would eliminate the ignorant foreigner of
all nationalities and colors, as well as the white American who is too
indolent or unintelligent to fit himself for the duties of citizenship.

Happily the true friend of the Afro-Americans, North and South, begins to
distinguish between their accidental and their permanent well-being. The
negro himself is coming to realize that he must make the people with whom
he lives his best friends; that the conditions which are for the good of
the whites of his community are good for him; that his development must be
economic instead of political; that only as he learns to cope with the
Anglo-Saxon as a breadwinner will he become truly a freed man.

The African in the South is better off than any laboring class on earth.
His industrial conditions have less stress in them. He is seldom out of
work unless by his own choice or inefficiency. The climate is in his
favor. In the agricultural districts land is cheap for purchase or rent.
Gardens, stock, poultry and fruit are easily at his command. For little
effort he is well clothed and well fed. Fuel costs him only the gathering.
The soil responds freely to his careless cultivation. In the trades no
distinctions are made between the white and the colored mechanic as to
wages or opportunity. There is no economic prejudice against him; he is
freely employed by the whites even as a contractor. But the Southern white
will “ride alone”--even in a hearse--rather than ride with the negro
socially outside the electric cars. Otherwise his old master is the
negro’s best friend. A study of the State Report of Education will
convince the most skeptical that the public school fund is divided
proportionally with the colored schools, though the whites pay nearly the
whole tax. Besides, while Ohio, and perhaps other Northern States,
prohibit negro teachers in the public schools, the South, with a view to
rewarding as well as stimulating the ambition of the student, gives the
preference to colored teachers for their own schools.

Removed from the arena of politics the black man has no real enemy but
himself. It will not do to judge the masses by the few who have been able
to lift themselves above their fellows. Their religion is emotional, often
without moral standards. Some of them are indolent, improvident and
shiftless to a degree that largely affects white prosperity. But though
they have faults which do not even “lean to virtue’s side,” they are
good-natured, teachable, forgiving, loving and lovable.

[Illustration: BECKY COLEMAN]

The nation should look with encouragement and gratitude to Booker T.
Washington as the real Moses who, by industrial education, proposes to
lead his people out of their real bondage. Only by making themselves
worthy will they be able to exist on kindly terms with the white race. The
same slow process of the ages which has wrought out Anglo Saxon
civilization will elevate this race. Nature’s law of growth for them, as
for white people, is struggle. The fittest will survive.




CHAPTER XI.

LAURA’S DEATH IN THE EPIDEMIC OF ’78.


The war fully ended and our city home recovered, we removed to New
Orleans. I devoted myself wholly to my family and to domestic affairs.
Friends gathered about us and some delightful people made our neighborhood
very pleasant. It was in my present home that my daughter Laura was
married to Louis J. Bright, and soon after, Clara was united to James B.
Guthrie; both young men were settled in New Orleans, so that I was spared
the pain of total separation. My son David established himself on his own
plantation in Point Coupe, and soon after married Miss Lula Dowdell of
Alabama. Our summers were spent alternately in Myrtle Grove and the North,
or the Virginia Springs.

Mothers are usually held responsible for the shortcomings of their
children. Sometimes this is just, but children often cruelly misrepresent
good parents. It should never be forgotten that mothers and children are
very human, and that the vocation upon which young people enter with least
training is parenthood. Children and parents get their training together.
It takes love and wisdom and proper environment to bring both to their
best; but sometimes evil hereditary and vicious social institutions prove
stronger than all of these combined forces of the home. The nation can
never know the power and beauty of the mother until it evolves a true
protective tenderness for the child, and encompasses it with safest
conditions for its development. It is a growing wonder that women have
borne so long in silence the existence of establishments which the State
fosters to the debasement of their sons. Only the habit of subjection--the
legacy of the ages--could have produced this pathetic stoicism. If a horse
knew his strength, no man could control him. When women realize their
God-given power, the community in which their children are born will not
tempt them to their death by the open saloon, the gambling den and the
haunt of shame. Until that happy time the inexhaustible supply of love and
sympathy which goes out from the mother-heart is the child’s chiefest
shelter. Obedience is what parents should exact from infants if they
expect it from grown children. The slaves of the severer masters stayed
with them during the war, when those of indulgent ones ran away. It is the
petted, spoiled darlings whose ultimate “ingratitude is sharper than the
serpent’s tooth.”

When friends were won by my daughters it was gratifying to me, for it
proved that the womanly accomplishment of making themselves beloved was a
lesson they had laid to heart--and they had learned it by their own
fireside where love ruled and reigned. I was glad in all my children, and
a devoted mother is sure of her ultimate reward. I was very proud when
Clara replied to a friend who expressed surprise that she should visit me
on my reception day: “I should be happy to claim a half-hour of my
mother’s society if she were not related to me.” I was very content with
my two daughters happily married and settled near me--doubly mine by the
tie of congenial tastes and pursuits.

In 1878 my household had gone North for the summer. On September 1st a
telegram reached me at Wilbraham, Mass., saying, “Laura died at 12
o’clock, M.” I had plead with her to leave New Orleans with me, but in her
self-sacrificing devotion to her husband, who was never willing that she
should be absent from him, she remained at home and fell a victim in the
great yellow fever epidemic.

Previous to her marriage she had spent all her summers in the country or
in travel, and was wholly unacclimated. Clara wrote thus to Captain S. M.
Thomas from Sewanee, Tenn., in September of that dreadful year: “The pity
of it, Uncle Milton! You will understand how it is with us at this time.
Mother is broken-hearted. You have ever been a large figure in Laura’s and
my girlhood recollections, and mother asks me to write to you. Laura
Ellen’s death was just as painful as it could be. Father and mother were
in Wilbraham, and every one of us gone but dear, good cousin Louise
Brewer, and Louis--her husband. Oh! he made a terrible mistake in
remaining in that doomed city. I have an added pang that I shall carry
with me till I too go away--that I was not with her in her supreme hour.

“The dear girl wrote daily to mother, David, and me, until death snatched
away her pen. ‘Fear not for me, dearest mother,’ was on her last postal
card. ‘My trust is in God.’ It were enough to make an angel weep if the
true history of this awful summer could be written. Our grief is without
any alleviation--unless in sister’s beautiful character and Christian
life. If I had been there I should have tried with superhuman efforts to
hold her back from death. It was Sunday--and Dr. Walker dismissed his
congregation at Felicity church to go, at her request, to her deathbed. He
has told us of her great faith, her willingness to go, the perfect
clearness of her mind, and the calm fortitude she manifested even when she
kissed her children good-by. Breathing softly she went to sleep and closed
her sweet blue eyes on this world--forever.

“Cousin Louise says Louis was nearly frantic. It is a terrible blow, and
he has the added pain of knowing it might have been different but for the
fatal mistake of judgment which brought such awful results. I have to
school myself, and fight every day a new battle for calmness and
resignation. I shall never grow accustomed to the hard fact that her
bright and heavenly presence must be forever wanting in her own home, and
shall never again grace mine. She died saying, ‘Jesus is with me!’ Well He
might be, for she died, as He, sacrificing herself for others.”

There was no one too old or too poor, or too uninteresting to receive
Laura’s attention. Sometimes this disposition annoyed me; but though I did
not always recognize it, she was always living out the divine altruism of
Christ. She was ever active in charities and a useful director of St.
Ann’s Asylum.

Among many others I gather the following expressions in letters from those
who had known her intimately: “Nobody feared her, everybody loved her. She
was an angel for forgiving. The brightness in her life came from the
angelic cheerfulness of her own soul, which would not yield to outward
conditions. She had an infinite capacity for getting joy out of barren
places.”--“I do not hope to know again a nature so blended in sweetness
and strength. It is no common chance that takes away a noble mind--so full
of meekness yet with so much to justify self-assertion. There was an
atmosphere of grace, mercy and peace floating about her, edifying and
delighting all who came near.”

Coming from a long line of tender, gentle, saintly women--the Brewers on
the Merrick side--she belonged to that type celebrated in story and
embalmed in song, of which nearly every generation of Brewers has produced
at least one representative human angel.

A more than full measure of days has convinced me that among our permanent
joys are the friends who have drifted with our own life current. In
addition to the pleasure of communion with lofty and sympathetic spirits
such friendships have the “tendency to bring the character into finer
life.” “A new friend,” says Emerson, “entering our house is an era in our
true history.” Our friends illustrate the course of our conduct. It is the
progress of our character that draws them about us. Among those friends
whom the struggling years after the war brought to me was Mrs. Anita
Waugh, a Boston woman; a sojourner in Europe while her father was U. S.
Minister to Greece, a long-time resident of Cuba, and, during the period
in which I made her acquaintance, a teacher in New Orleans. In an old
letter to one of my children I find: “Mrs. Waugh makes much of your
mother. She is happier for having known me. I have been helped by her to
some knowledge from the vast store-house which may never be taken account
of--still I here make the acknowledgment.”

Frances Willard said of her, “She is rarely gifted, and I enjoy her
thought--so different from my own practical life. She is a seer (see-er)!”

Her wide acquaintance with remarkable people invested her with rare
interest. In one of her many letters to me, dated in 1873, she says with
fine catholicity of spirit and exceptional insight: “I think the so-called
religious world lays too much stress on the infidelity of such men as
Tyndall and Huxley and Spencer. They have not reached the point in their
spiritual growth where knowledge opens the domain of real, pure worship;
they are in a transition period, are still groping about in a world of
effects, living in a world of results of which they have not yet found the
cause. Spencer has given the most masterly exposition of the nervous
system which has yet been made. The next step would have been into the
domain of the spiritual. Here he stopped, because his mind has not yet
reached the degree of development in which the utterances of truth
perceived becomes the highest duty. When he shall have rounded and brought
up all of his studies to a point equally advanced with his Psychology then
he will be obliged to say, ‘My God and my Lord!’ I hope he may soon, as
Longfellow said, ‘Touch God’s right hand in the darkness.’”

Science--and the Church--did not long have to wait for the Wallace and
Henry Drummond of Mrs. Waugh’s intuition.

During repeated visits to the Yellow Sulphur Springs in Virginia, Mr.
Merrick and I were seated at table with the famous Confederate Commanders,
General Jubal Early and General G. T. Beauregard, who had become
additionally conspicuous by their connection with the Louisiana lottery.
General Beauregard called frequently upon us, and I met him also at
Waukesha, in Wisconsin. He was very kind to me, and greatly enjoyed
hearing some of my nonsensical dialect readings. At the latter place the
women were much impressed by his handsome and distinguished appearance and
manners. When he called at my hotel many of them were eager in their
entreaties to be introduced; our gallant general would bow graciously, but
they were not to be satisfied unless he would also take them by the hand.

On February 24, 1893, General Beauregard was lying in state on his bier in
the City Hall of New Orleans, and I was holding a convention of the
Louisiana W. C. T. U. I could not help alluding to the death of this
beloved old soldier, and I asked the women to go and look upon his
handsome face for the last time. He was a perfect type of his
class--courtly, generous, chivalrous. He had been in the Mexican war, and
was the only general of the old Confederacy who belonged in New Orleans.
The hearts of the people were touched, and when the meeting adjourned
many groups of W. C. T. U. women were added to the crowds who went to look
their last upon the face of the dead. Miss Points was pleased to say in
the _New Orleans Picayune_: “It was a beautiful act on the part of our
women; and it acquired a new significance and beauty in that it was the
outgrowth of the strong friendship and appreciation of the wife of the
distinguished man who was our Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in the
days of the Confederacy.” This was a tribute which she reminded them to
offer to one of the dead heroes of our late war between the states!

“The great effort of courage I have made in my life was going in a skiff
in an overflow, with Stephen and Allen, two inexperienced negro rowers, to
Red River Landing in order to reach a steamboat for New Orleans, where, at
the close of the war, I wanted to get supplies for my family and for my
neighbors, who were in extremities by reason of the crevasse. That was an
act of bravery--hunger forced it--which astonished into exclamation the
captain of a Federal gunboat, Capt. Edward P. Lull, who made me take the
oath of allegiance before I could leave. You know how afraid I am of water
and of any _little_ boat; but give men or women a sufficiently powerful
motive and they can do anything.”




CHAPTER XII.

A FIRST SPEECH AND SOME NOTED WOMEN.


In those broken-hearted days Clara said with a pathetic earnestness: “Now
I must try to be two daughters to you. You have not lost all your
children--only your best child.” We drew nearer and more mutually
dependent as time passed, each trying to fill the awful void for the
other. How could I dream that the insatiable archer was only waiting, with
fatal dart in rest, to claim another victim? We made common joy as well as
sorrow, and tried to lead each other out into the sunlit places, the
simple pleasures of home and social life.

Early in the year 1897 a State Constitutional Convention was assembled in
New Orleans. The legal inequality of woman in Louisiana had already
challenged the notice of some women, and a recent incident was outraging
the hearts of a few who had the vision of seers. The Board of Control of
St. Ann’s Asylum--an institution in New Orleans for the relief of
destitute women and children--was composed entirely of women. A German
inmate on her deathbed revealed that she had $1,000 in bank, and by a
will, witnessed by members of the Board, she bequeathed it to the
institution which had sheltered her. On submission of the will to
probate, the ladies were informed that it was invalid, because a woman was
not a legal witness to a will. The bequest went to the State--and the
women went to thinking and agitating.

Mrs. Elizabeth L. Saxon urged that we should appear before the Convention
with our grievances. I did not feel equal to such an effort, but Mrs.
Saxon said: “Instead of grieving yourself to death for your daughter who
is gone, rise up out of the ashes and do something for the other women who
are left!” My husband insisted that, having always wanted to do something
for women, now was my opportunity. Mrs. Saxon and I drew up the following
petition:

“To the Honorable President and Members of the Convention of the State of
Louisiana, convened for the purpose of framing a new Constitution:

“Petition of the undersigned, citizens of the State of Louisiana,
respectfully represents:

“That up to the present time, all women, of whatever age or capacity, have
been debarred from the right of representation, notwithstanding the
burdensome taxes which they have paid.

“They have been excluded from holding office save in cases of special
tutorship in limited degree--or of administration only in specified cases.

“They have been debarred from being witnesses in wills or notarial acts,
even when executed by their own sex.

“They look upon this condition of things as a grievance proper to be
brought before your honorable body for consideration and relief.

“As a question of civilization, we look upon the enfranchisement of women
as an all important one. In Wyoming, where it has been tried for ten
years, the Lawmakers and Clergy unite in declaring that this influx of
women voters has done more to promote law, morality and order, than
thousands of armed men could have accomplished.

“Should the entire franchise seem too extended a privilege, we most
earnestly urge the adoption of a property qualification, and that women
may also be allowed a vote on school and educational matters, involving as
they do the interests of women and children in a great degree.

“So large a proportion of the taxes of Louisiana is paid by women, many of
them without male representatives, that in granting consideration and
relief for grievances herein complained of, the people will recognize
Justice and Equity; that to woman as well as man ‘taxation without
representation is tyranny,’ she being ‘a person, a citizen, a freeholder,
a taxpayer,’ the same as man, only the government has never held out the
same fostering, protecting hand to all alike, nor ever will, until women
are directly represented.

“Wherefore, we, your petitioners, pray that some suitable provision
remedying these evils be incorporated in the Constitution you are about to
frame.”

Four hundred influential names were secured to the petition, Mrs. Saxon,
almost unaided, having gained three hundred of them. It was sent to the
Convention and referred to the Committee on Suffrage, which on May 7
invited the ladies to a conference at the St. Charles Hotel. Mrs. Mollie
Moore Davis, Colonel and Mrs. John M. Sandige, Mr. and Mrs. Saxon were
present. Dr. Harriette C. Keating, a representative woman in professional
life, Mrs. Elizabeth L. Saxon, already a well-known and fearless reformer,
and Caroline E. Merrick, as the voice of home, were chosen to appear
before the Convention on the evening of June 16, 1879. Eighty-six members
of the Convention were present; a half hundred representatives of “lovely
woman” were there. Mrs. Myra Clark Gaines, the celebrated litigant, with a
few other notables, occupied the middle of the floor, and youth and beauty
retired into a corner. Mr. Poche, chairman of the Suffrage Committee, and
afterward a member of the Supreme Court of the State, asked me if I were
afraid. “Afraid,” I said, “is not the word. I’m scared almost to death!”
He tried to encourage me by recounting the terrors of many men similarly
placed.

Mrs. Keating was first introduced, and, at the Secretary’s desk, in a
clear voice, with dignified self-possession set forth the capabilities of
women for mastering political science sufficiently to vote intelligently
on questions of the day. Mrs. Saxon following, was greeted with an
outburst of welcome. She reviewed the customs of various nations to which
women were required to conform, and called attention to the fact that the
party which favored woman suffrage would poll twelve million votes. She
made clear that the fact of sex could not qualify or disqualify for an
intelligent vote: she mentioned that numbers of women had told her they
wanted to be present that night, but their husbands would not permit them
to come.

Mrs. Elizabeth Lyle Saxon is a woman possessed of fine intellect and an
uncommonly warm and generous nature. She was a pioneer in the Suffrage
Cause in the South, and has ably represented its interests in National
gatherings. She was sent as delegate from this State to the International
Suffrage Association of the World’s Auxiliary Congress in 1893. All along
the way she has given of her best with whole-hearted zeal to further the
cause of women, and should claim the undying gratitude of those for whom
she has helped to build the bridges of human equality.

Mr. Robertson, of St. Landry, then offered the resolution: “Resolved, That
the Committee on elective franchise be directed to embody in the articles
upon suffrage reported to this Convention, a provision giving the right of
suffrage to women upon the same terms as to men.”

Under the rules this resolution had to lie over.

Fearing that I could not be heard, I had proposed that Mr. Jas. B.
Guthrie, my son-in-law, should read my speech. But Mrs. Saxon said: “You
do not wish a man to represent you at the polls; represent yourself now,
if you only stand up and move your lips.” “I will,” I said. “You are
right.” The following is my address in part:

“Mr. President and Delegates of the Convention:

“When we remember the persistent and aggressive efforts which our
energetic sisters of the North have exerted for so many years in their
struggle before they could obtain a hearing from any legislative assembly,
we find ourselves lost in a pleasing astonishment at the graciousness
which beams upon us here from all quarters. Should we even now be remanded
to our places, and our petition meet with an utter refusal, we should be
grieved to the heart, we should be sorely disappointed, but we never could
cherish the least feeling of rebellious spite toward this convention of
men, who have shown themselves so respectful and considerate toward the
women of Louisiana.

“Perhaps some of the gentlemen thought we did not possess the moral
courage to venture even thus far from the retirement in which we have
always preferred to dwell. Be assured that a resolute and conscientious
woman can put aside her individual preferences at the call of duty, and
act unselfishly for the good of others.

“The ladies who have already addressed you have given you unanswerable
arguments, and in eloquent language have made their appeal, to which you
could not have been insensible or indifferent. It only remains for me to
give you some of my own individual views in the few words which are to
conclude this interview.

“The laws on the statute books permit us to own property and enjoy its
revenues, but do not permit us to say who shall collect the taxes. We are
thus compelled to assist in the support of the State in an enforced way,
when we ourselves would greatly prefer to do the same thing with our own
intelligent, free consent.

“We know this Republic has been lauded in the old times of the Fourth of
July orations as the freest, best government the world ever saw. If women,
the better half of humanity, were allowed a voice and influence in its
councils, I believe it would be restored to its purity and ancient glory;
and a nobler patriotism would be brought to life in the heart of this
nation.

“It seems to me that there ought to be a time, to which we may look
forward with satisfaction, when we shall cease to be minors, when the
sympathy and assistance we are so capable of furnishing in the domestic
relation, may in a smaller degree be available for the good and economical
management of public affairs. It really appears strange to us, after we
have brought up children and regulated our houses, where often we have the
entire responsibility, with money and valuables placed in our charge, that
a man can be found who would humiliate us by expressing an absolute fear
to trust us with the ballot.

“In many nations there is an army of earnest, thoughtful, large-hearted
women, working day and night to elevate their sex; for their higher
education; to open new avenues for their industrious hands; trying to make
women helpers to man, instead of millstones round his neck to sink him in
his life struggle.

“Ah, if we could only infuse into your souls the courage which we,
constitutionally timid as we are, now feel on this subject, you would not
only dare but hasten to perform this act of justice and inaugurate the
beginning of the end which all but the blind can see is surely and
steadily approaching. We are willing to accept anything. We have always
been in the position of beggars, as now, and cannot be choosers if we
wished. We shall gladly accept the franchise on any terms, provided they
be wholly and entirely honorable. If you should see proper to subject us
to an educational test, even of a high order, we would try to attain it;
if you require a considerable property qualification, we would not
complain. We would be only too grateful for any amelioration of our legal
disabilities. Allow me to ask, are we less prepared for the intelligent
exercise of the right of suffrage than were the freedmen when it was
suddenly conferred upon them?

“Perhaps you think only a few of us desire the ballot. Even if this were
true, we think it would not be any sufficient reason for withholding it.
In old times most of our slaves were happy and contented. Under the rule
of good and humane masters, they gave themselves no trouble to grasp after
the unattainable freedom which was beyond their reach. So it is with us
to-day. We are happy and kindly treated (as witness our reception
to-night), and in the enjoyment of the numerous privileges which our
chivalrous gentlemen are so ready to accord; many of us who feel a wish
for freedom do not venture even to whisper a single word about our rights.
For the last twenty-five years I have occasionally expressed a wish to
vote, and it was always received with surprise; but the sort of effect
produced was as different as the characters of the individuals with whom I
conversed. I cannot see how the simple act of voting can hurt or injure a
true and noble woman any more than it degrades the brave and honorable
man.

“Gentlemen of the Convention, we now leave our cause in your hands, and
commend it to your favorable consideration. We have pointed out to you the
signs of the dawning of a better day for woman, which are so plain before
our eyes, and implore you to reach out your hands and help us to establish
that free and equal companionship which God ordained in the beginning in
the Garden of Eden before the serpent came and curses fell.”

Mrs. Sarah A. Dorsey was prevented by illness, which terminated fatally,
from appearing personally, but sent a letter which was read before the
Convention by Col. John M. Sandige. She advanced, among others, the
following ideas: “Being left by the fiat of God entirely alone in the
world, with no man to represent me; having large interests in the State,
and no voice either in representation or taxation, while hundreds of my
negro lessees vote and control my life and property, I feel that I ought
to say one word that may aid many other women whom fate has left equally
destitute. I ask representation for taxation--for my sisters and for the
future race. We do not expect to do men’s work, we can never pass the
limits which nature herself has set. But we ask for justice; we ask for
the removal of unnatural restrictions that are contrary to the elemental
spirit of the civil law; we do not ask for rights, but for permission to
assume our natural responsibilities.”

Mrs. Dorsey was a native of Mississippi, and became widely conspicuous by
reason of the bequest of her home, Beauvoir, and other personal property,
to Mr. Jefferson Davis. She made this will because, as mentioned in the
document, “I do not intend to share in the ingratitude of my country
toward the man who is, in my eyes, the highest and noblest in existence.”
Mrs. Elisha Warfield, of Kentucky, was the aunt of Mrs. Dorsey, and the
author of the novel “Beauvoir,” from which the plantation was named, and
which estate Mrs. Dorsey devoted to the cultivation of oranges. She was a
rarely gifted woman. Besides the usual accomplishments of women of her
day, she possessed remarkable musical skill, and was a pupil of Bochsa,
owning the harp which he had taught her to handle as a master. She was a
writer of power and had studied law and book-keeping. A friend who was
present in her last illness wrote me: “She appeared to greater advantage
in her home than anywhere else. She was of those whom one comes to know
soon and to love; and is one of the many who have passed on, with whom the
meeting again is looked forward to with true delight.”

When the new Constitution was promulgated it contained but one little
concession to women: “Art. 232.--Women twenty-one years of age and upwards
shall be eligible to any office of control or management under the school
laws of the State.”

The women of Louisiana have realized no advantage from this law. Their
first demand was for a place on the school board of New Orleans, in 1885.
The governor fills by appointment all school offices. Gov. McEnery ruled
that Art. 232 of the Constitution was inoperative until there should be
legislation to enforce it, the existing statutes of Louisiana barring a
woman from acting independent of her husband, and would make the husband
of a married woman a co-appointee to any public office; that a repeal of
this _in solido_ statute was necessary before he could place a woman on
the school board.

Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s seventieth birthday was on Nov. 12 of this
year. In her honor a special reception was held by the Woman’s Club of New
Orleans. I here reviewed the action of the governor in a paper which set
forth the following points: First, that the Constitution is imperative;
that legislation for its self-acting and absolute provisions would be to
place the creature in control of the creator. Second, that the legislature
had no jurisdiction over the eligibility of women to appointment on school
boards, as the Constitution had explicitly declared that “women twenty-one
and upwards shall be eligible.” Third, if the governor’s objection against
married women were valid it had no force against unmarried women and
widows.

Protest, however, proved futile. No succeeding governor appointed a woman,
so no test case was ever made, and the Constitutional Convention of 1898
repealed this little shadow of justice to women, even in the face of the
fact that at the time the small concession was made one-half of the 80,000
children in the public schools of New Orleans were girls, and 368 out of
the 389 teachers were women.

       *       *       *       *       *

In 1880 I met General and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant, at a private reception
given at the home of Hon. Walker Fearn, in New Orleans. The General was a
handsome, soldierly man. I told him that we had mutual friends, and named
Bishop Simpson, whom, with his wife, I had entertained, and liked because
of his liberal views toward women. “That,” said General Grant, “is what I
object to.” “Oh, General,” I answered, “I hope that you would not be
unwilling that we should have the ballot?” “No, Mrs. Merrick, I should not
be unwilling that you and Mrs. Grant should vote, but I should seriously
object to confer that responsibility on Bridget, your cook.” I had always
heard that General Grant could not talk, and was surprised to find him so
genial and agreeable. Knowing me to be a Southern woman, he questioned me
keenly and intelligently about the people of my section. I had a half-hour
of delightful conversation with him, which he, equally with myself, seemed
to enjoy.

During the year 1881 Miss Genevieve Ward was filling an engagement at the
Grand Opera House in New Orleans. This winning actress was a descendant of
Jonathan Edwards, the renowned Puritan preacher, and at that time was in
her prime. At the request of her husband’s relatives in New York, my
daughter entertained this famous lady at a lunch party, where I was
present. We found her a dignified, modest woman, and, like Charlotte
Cushman, above reproach. She was an intimate friend of the great Ristori.
Among our twelve guests was Geo. W. Cable, already become famous. His last
book, with all of our autographs in it, was given to Miss Ward as a
souvenir of the occasion.

My daughter had known Mr. Cable in his early literary ventures. He
sometimes brought chapters of his manuscript to read to her. The South
realized at once that a new literary artist had arisen out of its sea of
ruin. That he wounded the feelings of some of his people is largely
attributable to the fact that he spoke inopportunely; his work was cast
upon the tolerance of public opinion when every nerve was bleeding and
every heart hypersensitive to suggestion or criticism. It was too early an
expression, and fell upon bristling points of indignant protest. But that
he deeply loved his own city and people the most prejudiced can scarcely
doubt, now that the perspective of three decades has softened the
asperities of judgment. Only a soul that had made it his own could picture
as he has done the silence, the weirdness, the majesty of the moss-draped
swamps of lower Louisiana, the crimson and purple of the sunsets mirrored
upon the glistening surface of her black, shallow bayous,--the sparse and
flitting presence of man and beast and bird across this still-life making
it but the more desolate. Cable was the first to see the rich types
afforded to literature in the character, condition and history of the
Creoles, and he has transformed them into immortals. Only love can create
“pictures of life so exquisitely clear, delicately tender or tragically
sorrowful” as he has made of the Latin-Americans. The South has already
forgiven his historical frankness in its pride in the artist who has
preserved for the future the romance, and color, and beauty of a race
that, like so much else lovable and poetic and inspiring in our early
history, by the end of another century will be blended indistinguishably
with the less picturesque but all-prevailing type that is determining an
American people.

I had been so impressed by his genius that I could not withhold from him
my word of appreciation, and received in 1879 the following reply to my
note: “I want to say to you that you are the first Southerner who has
expressed gratitude to the author of ‘Old Creole Days’ for telling the
truth. That has been my ambition, and to be recognized as having done it a
little more faithfully than most Southern writers is a source of as hearty
satisfaction as I have ever enjoyed. How full our South is of the richest
material for the story writer!

  “G. W. Cable.”

About this time Clara and the author of “Innocents Abroad” were guests
together in the same home in Buffalo, New York, from which place she wrote
me: “He is a wonderfully liberal yet clever talker. I think I shall be
able to d-r-a-w-l like him by two o’clock to-morrow, when he leaves. He
has written in my Emerson birthday book. When he found the selection for
November 30th to be that high and severely noble type of an ideal
gentleman, he laughed at its inappropriateness, and said: ‘With my
antecedents and associations it is impossible that I can be a gentleman,
as I often tell my wife--to her furious indignation;’--so he signs himself
‘S. L. Clemens, née Mark Twain,’ in allusion to his early career as a
pilot, and the name by which the world first knew him. I like him
immensely, and shall doubtless weary you some morning with a reproduction
of his numerous unfoldings.”

I also met Mr. Clemens socially at Mr. Cable’s house. Many years before,
I had seen Charlotte Cushman in the White Mountains. We were one day
together in the same stage. An opportunity offering, with much delight
Miss Cushman mounted to the top. She made her first appearance as Lady
Macbeth in New Orleans. She looked the “Meg Merrilies” she had re-created
for the world,--a vigorous woman in mind, body and character, and a gifted
talker; nobody else was listened to when she was present. She bore in her
face the earnestness of her spirit, the tragedy of her struggles, the
intensity of her sympathy and the calm strength of her success.

Not long before her death I met Mrs. Eliza Leslie in Philadelphia. I was
exceedingly glad of this opportunity, for she was one of the few premature
women who had a message to give, and who did give it, notwithstanding in
doing so she had to bear the disgrace of being a “blue-stoc

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