The Brothers' War Part 18

And she tells this of his inauguration as president of the permanent government:

"Mr. Davis came in from an early visit to his office and went into his room, where I found him an hour afterwards on his knees in earnest prayer 'for the divine support I need so sorely' [as he said].... 'The inauguration took place at twelve o'clock.' [The anterior proceedings having been described, the contemporary account she quotes goes on thus:]

"The president-elect then delivered his inaugural address. It was characterized by great dignity, united with much feeling and grace, especially the closing sentence. Throwing up his eyes and hands to heaven he said, 'With humble grat.i.tude and adoration, acknowledging the providence which has so visibly protected the confederacy during its brief but eventful career, to Thee, O G.o.d, I trustingly commit myself, and prayerfully invoke Thy blessing on my country and its cause.'"

Then she adds:

"Thus Mr. Davis entered on his martyrdom. As he stood pale and emaciated, dedicating himself to the service of the confederacy, evidently forgetful of everything but his sacred oath, he seemed to me a willing victim going to his funeral pyre; and the idea so affected me that, making some excuse, I regained my carriage and went home."[135]

So did this thrice-n.o.ble man sacrifice his dearest wishes and with superhuman resolution step into the arena at the command of the fates, to be the target of their wrath against his people.

He was like Hamlet upon whom destiny had imposed a high task far beyond his powers. We can believe that to the end of his presidency Davis sorely sighed more and more often:

"The time is out of joint: O cursed spite That ever I was born to set it right."

His official career from beginning to end was full of fatal mistakes. But in every one of these he did the right--to use Lincoln's grand word--as G.o.d gave him to see it. This will more and more through all the future turn his failure to glory. He will be like Hector, who draws the admiration of the world a thousand-fold more than Achilles, his vanquisher.[136]

At the last, when the sword of Grant had beaten down the sword of Lee, and all of us, it seemed to me, knew that it was the highest duty of patriotism to yield our arms, he was for fighting on. Casabianca would not go with those who were leaving the burning s.h.i.+p until his dead father bade him go. Davis would not abandon the cause of his nation without its command; and it could give none; for it was dead and he did not know it.

He was trying his hardest to reach the west, intent upon prosecuting the war from a new base, when he was taken.

His capture was accepted by the southern people as the fall of the blue cross. Every man, woman, and child old enough to think, in the late confederacy became sick and faint. Sorrow after sorrow, and grief after grief tore their hearts. The first was the thought, for all the blood we have poured out during four years of such effort on the battlefield as the world never knew before we have lost; we have been beaten, and we are subjugated. The next thought that pierced was, the property that made our homes the sweetest and most comfortable on earth has all been destroyed, and for the rest of their lives our dear ones must pine in hards.h.i.+p and misery. O how this pang actually killed many old men and women! It seems to me that heart failure commenced in the south with the great harvest it gathered in the first five years succeeding the war. But the agony of agonies was that the negroes were put over us. Those five years--particularly the last three of them--are the one ugly dream of my life. To pay his debts, which would have been a small thing to him had he kept his slaves, but which were now monsters, my father overworked himself, while trying to make a cotton crop with freedmen. I did not learn of his imprudence until I had been summoned to see him die. There was something like this in every family. A night of impoverishment, misery, contumely, and insult descended upon us, and the sun would not rise. I kept the stoutest heart that I could. Now and then it was a comforting day dream to imagine how well it would have been for me if I had fallen in the front of my men on the second day of Gettysburg, when I was trying my utmost to make them do the impossibility of charging across the narrow bog staying us, and mixing with the men in blue lining the other side. Had that happened to me I should never have known, in the flesh, of our decisive defeats, nor of the trials of my people after they laid down arms; and even if my grave could not have been found, there would have been at a place here and there for some years honorable mention of me with tears on Memorial Day, to gladden my spirit taking note. This would sometimes be my thought, and thousands of others had like thoughts.

Early in this time of sorrow and suffering the women of the south inst.i.tuted Memorial Day. Each year when it comes they do rites of remembrance to the fallen soldiers of the confederacy. These soldiers lie in every graveyard from the Ohio and Potomac to the Rio Grande. When the day comes these women in their unforgetting love a.s.semble the people, have praises and lamentations of their dead darlings fitly spoken; and then they deck their graves with the fairest flowers of spring. It is an annual holiday, sacred to grief for our heroes who died in vain. It is the fairest, tenderest, and sweetest testimonial of love ever given--love from those who have nothing else to bestow, lavished upon those who can make no return; and it is further the most splendid and glorious, being the co-operative demonstration of a whole people of "true lovers."[137]

I cannot say where and when the observance of Memorial Day began. Perhaps Miss Davidson correctly a.s.serts that it was in Petersburg, Virginia, in 1866.[138] It had reached its height at Charleston, South Carolina, in the spring of 1867, when as prelude to decorating the graves in Magnolia cemetery, Timrod's hymn, containing this oft-quoted pa.s.sage, was sung:

"Behold! your sisters bring their tears, And these memorial blooms.

"Small tributes! but your shades shall smile More proudly on these wreaths to-day, Than when some cannon-moulded pile Shall overlook this bay.

"Stoop, angels, hither from the skies!

There is no holier spot of ground Than where defeated valor lies, By mourning beauty crowned."

The "true lovers" could no more forget their living leader in prison than they could forget their soldiers in the grave. "Out of sight, out of mind"

could not be said of Davis during his two years' confinement. The concern of his people mounted steadily. They made all his sufferings their own, lamenting and praying for him as a loved father. When he was about to be released on bond the news gave the south a wilder joy than did the unexpected victory of First Mana.s.sas. He was brought in custody to Richmond by a James river steamboat. Mrs. Davis thus describes how he was received:

"A great concourse of people had a.s.sembled. From the wharf to the Spottswood Hotel there was a sea of heads--room had to be made by the mounted police for the carriages. The windows were crowded, and even on to the roofs people had climbed. Every head was bared. The ladies were shedding tears.... When Mr. Davis reached the Spottswood Hotel, where rooms had been provided for us, the crowd opened and the beloved prisoner walked through; the people stood uncovered for at least a mile up and down Main street. As he pa.s.sed, one and another put out a hand and lightly touched his coat. As I left the carriage a low voice said: 'Hats off, Virginians,' and again every head was bared. This n.o.ble sympathy and clinging affection repaid us for many moments of bitter anguish.

When Mr. Davis was released, one gentleman jumped upon the box and drove the carriage which brought him back to the hotel, and other gentlemen ran after him and shouted themselves hoa.r.s.e. Our people poured into the hotel in a steady stream to congratulate, and many embraced him."

Bear in mind the people, and where it was, and when it was, from whom this show of respect so great, so earnest and unfeigned, spontaneously came.

They were of that part of the south which had lost more in blood, property, and devastation than any other, and who, one might think, were too embittered against their defeated leader to show him anything but disapproval. They were also of a State which had not been readmitted into the union. The axe was suspended over their necks by a party seeking excuses for letting it fall; by a party to whom Davis was the most hated of men. Surely these Virginians who thus risked their fortunes were the truest of lovers.

No reader of mine, though he search history and encyclopedias through and through for years, can find anything like the Southern Memorial Day and the honors given Davis in Richmond as we have just told. They unmistakably mark an ascent of humanity. But it is not my purpose to emphasize them as specially signalizing the south. Their great lesson is not learned if it is not understood that they are glories of federal government. Under any other form of government such demonstrations would be suppressed as disloyal and treasonable.

For more than twenty-two years after this auspicious day the ex-president of the southern confederacy lived most of his time among his people. Their love for him steadily grew. He proved worthy of it. He would not accept the bounty they stood ready to shower upon him, and he was poor and without money-making faculty. When Mississippi wanted to make him United States senator again, he felt that he was too old and broken to serve the State efficiently, and he declined. It occurred to all of us that he sorely needed the salary of the place. He struggled on under the load of poverty and ill-health. All of us knew that the latter came from that cruel and inhuman imprisonment, and the more he suffered the closer our hearts drew to him. The cause of his section he justified to the last, and with all his energy. His book defending that cause was written under difficulty almost insurmountable by man. His character as one tried in every way and found true came out clearer and clearer. He showed more and more of spotless virtue, becoming all the while to us a stronger justification of the fight we had made under him for the lost cause. We thought to ourselves with pride that the world will some day learn what a good man he was, and that will be our complete vindication from the slanders now current.

Let me tell of some of the other demonstrations made over him. I witnessed that in Atlanta, in 1886. April 30, all the State of Georgia was there, as it seemed. Old and young, white and colored, waited impatiently for the railroad train bringing him from Montgomery. My wife, divining the rare sight thus to be gained, secured a station out of town where she could see the train pa.s.s without obstruction. As long as she lived afterwards, his car, prodigally and appropriately bedecked with the fairest May flowers of the sunny south, was her proverb for that which pleases too greatly for description.

When he had come out of his bower of flowers and we knew he was resting, we felt as if the angel of the Lord was here with tidings of great joy for all our people.

Who can describe the rejoicing of the next day that came forth everywhere as Mr. Davis showed himself to his people! I have seen popular outbursts of gladness, but nothing like this. It surpa.s.sed in profundity of feeling and sustained energy and flow that which seemed to come straight out of the ground when, in 1884, we knew at last that Cleveland was elected, and the south was convulsed with an ecstasy of happy surprise. The women and men who had tasted the war all crying; all pouring benedictions upon his gray hairs as they came in sight; "G.o.d bless him" displayed on every corner. I am utterly unable adequately to report this grand occasion. I will tell only a few things that I saw or heard of. He pa.s.sed by a long line of school-children in Peachtree street. They made the sincere and decided demonstrations of children whose pleasure is at its height. But what was especially noticeable to me here was the behavior in the section of colored children. Their delight seemed, if that were possible, to be somewhat wilder and more unrestrained than that of the white children. The occurrence has come back to me a thousand times. Is it to be explained by Mr. Davis's character as a master, to whom, as to all really typical masters, his slaves were but a little lower in his affections than his children? Or was it unconscious approval of the resistance by the south with all her might against the emanc.i.p.ation proclamation, the end of which may be the wholesale destruction of the black race in America, such approval being suggested by a cosmic influence as yet inexplicable?

When he was going through Mrs. Hill's yard to enter her house, little girls on each side of the walk threw bouquets before him, every one begging, "Mr. Davis, please step on my flowers." The feeble man tried to gratify all of them. The flowers that he did step on were eagerly caught up by the owners, to be treasured as the dearest of relics and keepsakes.

I was told that some old grayhead who met him during the day, gently raised Mr. Davis's hands to his lips, saying, "Let me kiss the hands that were manacled for me," and as he kissed his tears fell in a flood.

What we have just described occurred in Georgia--a State in which of all during the brothers' war the most formidable opposition to his administration was developed. This opposition was lead or upheld by Toombs, both the Stephenses, and Brown--the most influential of all the Georgians at that time. That for all this the State gave him this wonderful ovation shows how deep and strong is the southern sentiment that glorifies the lost cause. It was Henry Grady, a Georgian revering and treasuring the men I have just mentioned, who when Mr. Davis was in Atlanta, in 1886, called him the uncrowned king of our hearts, the words evoking plaudits from the entire south. And remember that Georgia voted for Greeley in 1872, although Toombs and the Stephenses opposed him. I think I was representative of the dominant public feeling at the time.

While my companions and I avowed the fullest confidence in Greeley's integrity and statesmans.h.i.+p, we each said we were in haste to honor with our votes the northern man who got Mr. Davis bailed and became one of his sureties. And Georgia is among the States which has made June 3 a legal holiday, because it is the anniversary of Mr. Davis's birth.

Some northern paper sympathetically described the reception given Mr.

Davis in Atlanta, in 1886, as the swan song of the southern confederacy.

And to me it has always been the funeral of the old south. But there were other obsequies and swan songs. When he died December 6, 1889, the south sorrowed as it never sorrowed before. We are pleased to quote from the memoir, the n.o.blest monument a true wife has ever given a dead husband--far n.o.bler, more splendid and immortal than that which Artemisia gave Mausolus. Mrs. Davis tells:

"Floral offerings came from all quarters of our country. The orphan asylum, the colleges, the societies, drew upon their little stores to deck his quiet resting-place. Many thousands pa.s.sed weeping by the bier where he lay in state, in his suit of confederate gray, guarded by the men who had fought for the cause he loved, and who revered his honest, self-denying, devoted life. His old comrades in arms came by thousands to mingle their tears with ours. The governors of nine states came to bear him to his rest. The clergy of all denominations came to pray that his rest be peaceful, and to testify their respect for and faith in him. Fifty thousand people lined the streets as the catafalque pa.s.sed. Few, if any, dry eyes looked their last upon him who had given them his life's service. The n.o.ble army of the West and that of Northern Virginia escorted him for the last time, and the Was.h.i.+ngton Artillery, now gray-haired men, were the guard of honor to his bier. The eloquent Bishops of Louisiana and Mississippi, and the clergy of all denominations, delivered short eulogies upon him to weeping thousands, and the strains of 'Rock of Ages,' once more bore up a great spirit in its flight to Him who gave, sustained, and took it again to himself."

These aptly chosen words come short of describing the general grief.

n.o.body can yet tell all of it. One but feebly expresses it by saying that when Jefferson Davis died, broken-hearted men, women, and children gathered in funeral a.s.semblies everywhere in that vast area from Mason and Dixon's line on the north to the Mexican border on the south, wept over his bier, and hung the air and heavens with black.

In 1893 his remains were carried to Richmond, the dead capital of the dead Confederate States, and there reinterred. The ceremonies were impressive, and thoroughly in keeping with those I have narrated in the foregoing.

And in 1896 the corner-stone of a monument to him was laid in Monroe Park.

On this occasion General Stephen D. Lee delivered an oration which, as a monument itself, will long outlast the stone one.

Thus has the overthrown and most evilly entreated president of the Confederate States become, by some marvel of fortune, far more than the proudest conqueror. The honors which every one who "can above himself erect himself" estimates as the very richest, Mr. Davis has had given him more prodigally than any other man. These honors that make everything else shabby in appearance and cheap, are the spontaneous offerings of sincere love from those who know us. Smiles, tender words, prayers for blessing, tears of joy, admiration, pity, and sympathy, flowers--how dear are any of these from a friend, brother, sister, father, mother, sweetheart, wife, child. For almost a generation all these tokens were given the ex-president by everybody in the south, and each year to his death they were given in greater profusion. And really the whole south mourned at his burial. Our wives, mothers, and other dear ones give us up, and we give, them up, to fight and perhaps die for the country. We are so made that we love the great brotherhood better than we do ourselves. And so an offering of regard from that brotherhood--to be made to feel that throughout the whole of it one is recognized as most worthy of love--the true man would prize this above every other. Before this time this great honor has been given only by happy ones to their victors--to such as Was.h.i.+ngton, Lincoln, Grant. But the south has begun a new era. In the misery and ruin of her subjugation she magnifies her deposed chief. Much of the applause heaped upon the victor is selfish and feigned, but the whole of that given the conquered hero comes direct and straight from the hearts of his countrymen. It seems, therefore, to me that this decoration of the conquered hero is the crown of crowns of this world. It is Davis's historical uniqueness that he has won this lone crown.

The achievement is so counter to common-sense that it is not yet credited nor understood. I cannot help believing that when all the fog raised by the brothers' war has cleared away, and our historians tell what brought and what followed that war with unclouded vision of cosmic agency, that Jefferson Davis will be permanently placed high in the American temple of fame. There he will be the world's contemplation, showing something like Hester Prynne. As what was at first to her the branding placard of guilt turned to a badge of the greatest righteousness, so has that which was unutterable obloquy and disgrace to him become unparalleled fortune and glory.

CHAPTER XIV

THE CURSE OF SLAVERY TO THE WHITE, AND ITS BLESSING TO THE NEGRO

The master got the curse and the negro the blessing of slavery.

We set out by mentioning how certain ants have been injured by becoming masters. Before this they were doubtless the equals of any non-slaveholding tribe in self-maintenance. Now they "are waited upon and fed by their slaves, and when the slaves are taken away the masters perish miserably."[139] It did not become so bad as this with human slaveholders; but the consequent disadvantage was very great, as we shall now exemplify with some detail. We shall throughout keep to the average and typical man and woman. And for brevity's sake, we shall not look beyond the domestic and agricultural spheres, because when the reader has learned what slavery did in these, he can of himself easily add the little required to make complete statement of its entire effect.

In non-slave communities baby is tended only by mother and near relatives.

Though petted and indulged, it is steadily constrained into more obedience to those who tend it. In due time the child is taking care of itself in many things, and is also doing light ch.o.r.es. Until the parental roof has been left he or she has every day something to do. What we may call the open-air home-work is done by the boys, and the inside by the girls. But in the old south baby commenced its life as a slaveholder with a nurse that it learned to command by inarticulate cries and signs before it could talk. And to the end, as grandfather or grandmother, self-service in many common things, as is usual with all other people, was never learned, but great expertness in getting these things done by slaves was learned instead.

I was only fifteen years old in 1851, when I entered the soph.o.m.ore cla.s.s in Princeton College, never having been out of the south before. Of course much of my time at first was consumed in observing and thinking over many sights very novel and strange to me. I came in August. Soon afterwards I saw them saving their Indian corn. In the south we "pulled" the fodder, and some weeks later we "pulled" the corn, leaving the stripped stalks standing. But the New Jersey farmers, without removing the blades or the ears, cut the stalks down, put them up in stacks, and after a while hauled them to the barn. This was such a wonder that I described it minutely in a letter to my mother. The next great surprise that I had was to note the lady of the family and her daughters doing everything in and about the house, which I used to see at home only the negroes do. They were marvellously more expert and neat in despatch than the negroes. Their easy and, as it seemed, effortless way of getting through their daily employment grew upon me steadily. What I intently observed in those times and reflected over much subsequently, I have had a recent experience to refresh and enforce. In the summer of 1902 two ladies from Pennsylvania took a house in Atlanta next to mine. They had never before been in the south. I found out these lonely strangers at once, and was soon seeing much of them. They kept no servant. The two did all the household tasks.

The younger washed the clothes. This is something which but few city southern ladies, except those whose ancestors were not slaveholders, have ever consented to do. The laundry of even the poorest families in our towns is nearly always the care of a negro washerwoman. Although their work was every day punctually done by my two new-found friends, and their house always the tidiest, like the New Jersey ladies of my boyhood at Princeton, they were never fl.u.s.tered nor worried, but were always pleasant and agreeable.

Plainly they lived in far more ease and comfort than the native housekeepers. There are two cla.s.ses of the latter. In one is the woman who is greatly plagued by the waste, dishonesty, and eye-service of her negro cook and housemaid, and always in craven fear that she will wake up some morning to know that they have taken French leave. In the other cla.s.s is the woman who often must, with the help only of her children, do everything at home. What a laborious, fatiguing botch they make of it!

Their day-dream all the year round is to find that needle in a haystack, a servant who will take no more than the established holidays and always come in time to get breakfast.