Old Times in Dixie Land Part 5

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 a.s.serted 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 a.s.sociation 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 d.i.c.k 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 amus.e.m.e.nt and enthusiasm, by placing his hand on his heart and exclaiming with _empress.e.m.e.nt_: "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 gla.s.s, madam?"

"Look at my broken windows," I answered, "all over this house, and tell whether I can raise peas under gla.s.s when we can't keep ourselves under it!" With such as we had everybody kept open house while the war lasted.

n.o.body, 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 cla.s.s 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 acc.u.mulations 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 Ma.s.sachusetts. 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-a.s.sessor 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 Ma.s.sachusetts!

"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 inc.u.mbrances, 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 a.s.sa.s.sination 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 'pa.s.ses 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 b.u.t.ter given her for pastry and subst.i.tutes 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 antic.i.p.ate 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 d.a.m.ned 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 a.s.sumed. 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 n.o.ble 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 const.i.tuents 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 a.s.serted 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 const.i.tuents. 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 antic.i.p.ated. 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 quant.i.ty 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 a.s.sembled. 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.sembled 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 c.u.mbrous 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 sh.e.l.l. 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!"