Life in Dixie during the War Part 1

Life in Dixie during the War.

by Mary A. H. Gay.

INTRODUCTION.

I am asked to write a few words of introduction to these reminiscences of a lady who, in the pleasant afternoon of a life devoted to deeds of mercy and charity, turns fondly and sympathetically to the past. But there is nothing to be said. What word of mine could add to the interest that inheres in this unpretentious record of a troubled and b.l.o.o.d.y period? The chronicle speaks for itself, especially to those who remember something of those wonderful days of war. It has the charm and the distinction of absolute verity, a quality for which we may look in vain in more elaborate and ambitious publications. Here indeed, is one of the sources from which history must get its supplies, and it is informed with a simplicity which history can never hope to attain.

We have here reproduced in these records, with a faithfulness that is amazing, the spirit of those dark days that are no more. Tragedy shakes hands with what seems to be trivial, and the commonplaces of every-day life seem to move forward with the gray battalions that went forth to war.

It is a gentle, a faithful and a tender hand that guides the pen--a soul nerved to sacrifice that tells the tale. For the rest, let the records speak for themselves.

JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS.

PREFACE.

By way of preface to "Life in Dixie During the War," I scarcely know what to say. I have long felt that it was the duty of the South to bequeath to posterity the traditions of that period; for if we do it not ourselves they will be swallowed up in oblivion. Entertaining this opinion, I have essayed the task of an individual effort, and hope that others may follow my example.

No woman who has seen what I have seen, and felt what I have felt, would be apt to write with less asperity; and yet, now that we have come back to the United States, and mean to stay in it, let the provocation to depart be what it may, I would not put into practice an iota of the war-time feeling. In thus expressing myself, I am sure I represent every Christian in my own beautiful Southland.

There was one for whom these sketches would have had a special interest.

An inspiring motive for writing them was that they would be read by my nephew, Thomas H. Stokes, of Atlanta, the only child of the brother so often mentioned. But, ere he had had more than a glimpse of them, he was called away by an Inscrutable Providence, in his pure and beautiful young manhood, as we trust to a Land of Peace more in keeping with his n.o.ble, true, and tender heart, than earth with its sin and strife. "Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see G.o.d."

MARY A. H. GAY.

Decatur, Georgia.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

THE TOCSIN OF WAR.

The tocsin of war has resounded from Mason and Dixon's line to the Gulf of Mexico, from the snow-crested billows of the Atlantic to the tranquil waves of the Pacific.

War! War! War! is the battle cry of a people, who, long suffering and patient, but now, goaded to desperation and thoroughly exasperated, are determined, at all hazards, to protect the rights for which their forefathers fought, bled and died; and which their own Thomas Jefferson embodied in an instrument of writing which, for beauty of diction and wisdom of thought, will go sounding down the corridors of time, so long as time itself shall last--unequaled, unparalleled; and which was adopted without a dissenting voice by the ablest convocation of men ever a.s.sembled in national councils as their declaration of human rights and liberties.

Thus, under auspices favorable to the happy and speedy development of a new and glorious country, commenced the government of the freest and happiest people on earth, under the administration of George Was.h.i.+ngton--an administration which caught the eye of the world and called forth its admiration; and which the most censorious never had the temerity to attack; an administration which secured for the country the alluring t.i.tle, "The land of the free and the home of the brave." And its fame went abroad in story and in song, and every nation on earth sought its blessings and advantages, and it grew to be a mighty country.

Coeval with the settlement of this beautiful continent by the white man, there came, or rather, there was brought, a race of people which needed the fostering care as well as the strong arm of slavery to kindle the latent spark of intellectual fire which had smoldered for centuries, in, as President Cleveland would say, "innocuous desuetude."

This race of people came not as pioneers in the building up of this great nation, but as a menial race, sold into bondage by their own kith and kin, and not to be endowed with elective franchise nor representation in its councils. It was held in bondage alike in Ma.s.sachusetts and in South Carolina. Under the auspices of slavery, it became a powerful factor in the building up of the staple industries of the country--the Southern portion of it directly, the Northern portion indirectly, and it received in return more than any other people in bondage has ever received--as a usual thing, good wholesome food, comfortable homes and raiment, and tender treatment in sickness. When they failed to receive these benefits, their masters were improvident and careless alike of the comfort of their own wives and children, and they, too, showed hard usage and neglect. This is not said by way of apology for any treatment received at the hands of Southern slaveholders by this va.s.sal race. I repeat that no people held in bondage ever received so many benefits.

Slavery, as all other inst.i.tutions, had its evils, and those evils were far greater to the slaveholder than to the slaves. Climatic and other considerations rendered the system of slavery unprofitable in the Northern States of this great and growing republic, and the men at the helm of their respective governments agitated the subject of emanc.i.p.ation.

Having given themselves time to bring the greater number of their slaves South and sell them, they nominally freed the others by legislative enactment; and by this great and magnanimous action, there were so few left that to this day, as attested by Northern tourists, a "darkey," or a "colored person," is an object of curiosity and great interest.

The country, North and South, was too prosperous. The agitators could stand it no longer. Discord and strife took the place of harmony and peace in the halls of congress, and in the senate chamber of the United States.

Men who could in no other way acquire prominence, became conspicuous as champions of an "oppressed and down trodden race," and were swift to slander the white people of the South. Our slaves were taught that murder, rapine, arson, and every species of wickedness known in the catalogue of crime which, in any way, could weaken, yea, destroy the South, was service most acceptable.

The country was in the clutches of an organized mob, determined to precipitate it into the jaws of dissolution. By way of confirming this statement the following resolutions are reproduced.

These resolutions were adopted by a large and representative body of men at Worcester, Ma.s.sachusetts, soon after Fremont's defeat in 1856, and long before Governor Gist of South Carolina, and other Southern leaders, began to take measures for a peaceable separation, rather than to be forcibly expelled:

"_Resolved_, That the meeting of a state disunion convention, attended by men of various parties and affinities, gives occasion for a new statement of principles and a new platform of action.

"_Resolved_, That the conflict between this principle of liberty and this fact of slavery has been the whole history of the nation for fifty years, while the only result of this conflict has thus far been to strengthen both parties, and prepare the way of a yet more desperate struggle.

"_Resolved_, That in this emergency we can expect little or nothing from the South itself, because it, too, is sinking deeper into barbarism every year. Nor from a supreme court which is always ready to invent new securities for slaveholders. Nor from a president elected almost solely by Southern votes. Nor from a senate which is permanently controlled by the slave power. Nor from a house of representatives which, in spite of our agitation, will be more proslavery than the present one, though the present one has at length granted all which slavery asked. Nor from political action as now conducted. For the Republican leaders and press freely admitted, in public and private, that the election of Fremont was, politically speaking, the last hope of freedom, and even could the North cast a united vote in 1860, the South has before it four years of annexation previous to that time.

"_Resolved_, That the fundamental difference between mere political agitation and the action we propose is this, it requires the acquiescence of the slave power, and the other only its opposite.

"_Resolved_, That the necessity for disunion is written in the whole existing character and condition of the two sections of the country--in social organizations, education, habits and laws--in the dangers of our white citizens of Kansas and of our colored ones in Boston, in the wounds of Charles Sumner and the laurels of his a.s.sailant--and no government on earth was ever strong enough to hold together such opposing forces.

"_Resolved_, That this movement does not seek merely disunion, but the more perfect union of the free States by the expulsion of the slave States from the confederation in which they have ever been an element of discord, danger and disgrace.

"_Resolved_, That it is not probable that the ultimate severance of the union will be an action of deliberation or discussion, but that a long period of deliberation and discussion must precede it, and this we meet to begin.

"_Resolved_, That henceforward, instead of regarding it as an objection to any system of policy that will lead to the separation of the States, we will proclaim that to be the highest of all recommendations and the grateful proof of statesmans.h.i.+p; and we will support politically and otherwise, such men and measures as appear to tend most to this result.

"_Resolved_, That by the repeated confession of Northern and Southern statesmen, the existence of the union is the chief guarantee of slavery, and that the despots of the whole world and the slaves of the whole world have everything to hope from its destruction and the rise of a free Northern republic.

"_Resolved_, That the sooner the separation takes place the more peaceable it will be; but that peace or war is a mere secondary consideration in view of our present perils. Slavery must be conquered; peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must."

To keep before the people of the United States, North and South, the hostility of the then controling spirit of the North towards the South, the above resolutions cannot be repeated too often. Nor were they an isolated example of party fanaticism. The stock and staple of the entire republican press was slander of the Southern people; and like noxious weeds it well nigh rooted out all that was elevating to man, and enn.o.bling to woman. The pulpit became a rostrum from which bitter invective of the South flowed in Niagaran torrents; and the beautiful fields of Poesy were made to yield an abundant crop of briar and bramble and deadly Upas.

The burden of every song, of every prayer, of every sermon, was the "poor down-trodden slave" of the South. What wonder that seed thus constantly and malignantly sown sprang up and bore a crop of discontent which nothing short of "separation" from the enemy could appease. We, too, felt that under the existing circ.u.mstances peace or war was a mere secondary consideration in view of our perils in the union, and took measures to withdraw from a sectional union of States that had ceased to respect State sovereignty outside of its own borders.

The insults and taunts and the encroachments of fifty years had welded the people of the South into a compact party organization, animated for all substantial purposes by one sentiment and one glorious principle of patriotism, and never was there a movement in the annals of nations that had a more unanimous support. And when the tocsin of war resounded from one end of the country to the other, and reverberated over hills and through valleys, the sons and sires in the beautiful Sunny South, from the high born and cultured gentleman in whose veins flowed the blue blood of the cavalier, to the humblest tiller of the soil and the shepherd on the mountain sides, buckled on the paraphernalia of warfare and reported for duty. To arms! To arms! was the patriotic appeal of a people who had no other redress; and I repeat with emphasis that never a people responded with more chivalrous alacrity or more earnestness of purpose.

I was too well versed in the politics of the country, too familiar with the underground workings of the enemy, to hesitate. I, too, enlisted in the struggle, and in the glorious efforts to establish "home rule and domestic felicity," not literally in the ranks of the soldier, but in the great army of women who were willing to toil and to suffer, and to die, if need be, for the cause of the South.

I had but one brother, a darling young half brother, Thomas J. Stokes, who had gone to Texas to practice his chosen profession. With all the intensity of my ardent nature I loved this brother, and would have died that he might live; and yet with all the perils involved, it was with a thrill of pride that I read his long letter breathing, pulsing, with the patriotism ill.u.s.trated by our ancestry in the revolutionary struggle for American Independence. And now this n.o.ble brother and myself, though widely separated, enlisted in aid of the same great cause; the perpetuity of const.i.tutional rights. He to serve on the battle-field, and I to care for the sick and wounded soldiers, or to labor in any capacity that would give greatest encouragement to our cause.

Life in Dixie During the War.