Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War Part 3

=Order of Procession=.

Music.

Military Escort of Montgomery Fusileers, Capt. Schenssler; Montgomery Rifles, Capt. Farriss; Eufaula Rifles, Capt. Baker; Columbus (Ga.)Guard, Capt. Sims.

President-Elect, Vice President and Chaplain in an open carriage, drawn by six horses.

Congressional Committee on Ceremonies.

Various Committees.

Commissioners to the Government from States other than the States of the Confederacy.

Ministers of the Gospel, all in carriages.

Citizens in carriages and on foot.

The Department of State, of Justice, the Treasury, War, Navy, Post-office the various military corps, with officers and attaches--all in short, that it takes to form and conduct a government, was ordered from the best picked material. A Const.i.tution was framed like that of the United States, in the main; but the unsatisfactory clauses that had wrought such havoc in the halls of Congress, were changed for the better.

There were in the Confederate service one commander-in-chief, seven generals, nineteen lieutenant-generals, eighty-four major-generals and three hundred and thirteen brigadier-generals. The roster of the Union greatly exceeded these numbers.

When all the departments were organized ready for the administration of the new republic, commissioners were sent to President Lincoln at Was.h.i.+ngton to negotiate for an equitable transfer of southern forts, and for terms of an amicable separation. They were refused audience.

Every method known to national and international arbitration was attempted without success; so when the strife was precipitated, the south had no resource left but to resist by arms, no matter how overwhelming the odds of the invading section.

On April 12, 1861, General Beauregard, learning that a fleet was forcing its way into Charlestown harbor to join Major Anderson at Sumter, opened fire upon the fort. The North charged the war was thus inaugurated by the South. The South believed its action was necessary for self-defence.

However that might be, it was the onset of battle--of the greatest Civil War the world has ever known. President Lincoln and President Davis both called for troops. Ma.s.s meetings were held in every part of the country North and South. The roll of the drum and the shrill fife of the march were heard in every direction. Muster rolls were drawn up, drills were in progress in hall and on the green. Every youth rush to take up arms.

After the great Confederate victory at Bull Run, some one wrote:

"They have met at last--as storm--clouds Meet in heaven; And the Northmen back and bleeding Have been driven.

And their thunders have been stilled, And their leaders, crushed or killed, And their ranks, with terror thrilled, Rent and riven."

They had indeed met. And they met and met again. Throughout the length and breadth of the prolific country where cotton was king, the honest achievements of a hundred years were ground into dust by the engines of destruction.

The North came on as invaders; the South stood firm as defenders; and in all the histories of the struggle this fact should be pre-eminent.

Of the hundred battles fought only that of Gettysburg was on Northern soil. The beautiful lands of the garden spot of earth, as I have said, were torn and pillaged and ruined, not alone by the fortunes of civilized warfare, but by the ghastly horrors of cruelty and needless vandalism. It is not the purpose of this paper to fight those battles over. The strife lasted four years. The population of the North was 22,000,000; that of the South 9,000,000, of whom three and one-half millions were slaves. The North was four times as great in numbers as the South.

The North had three times as many armies. The South could not get enough small arms for many months. All foundries for cannon, and all except two powder mills were in the North. The North had food and provisions in abundance. The South planted cotton and tobacco, but could not even in times of peace, raise enough food, but were accustomed to buy from the North and from Europe.

The Union had a treasury and a navy: the Confederacy had neither.

The North could renew supplies from abroad. The Southern ports were blockaded and many necessaries of life were shut off. The Confederacy set to work to make arms, ammunitions, blankets, saddles, harness, and other necessities. Bells from churches and halls, dinner bells, plantation and fire bells, along with stray pieces of metal, were melted and cast into cannon. Old nails were saved and blacksmiths made of them clumsy needles, pins and scissors.

For coffee was used burnt rye, okra, corn, bran, chickory and sweet potato peelings. For tea, raspberry leaves, corn fodder and sa.s.safras root. There was not enough bacon to be had to keep the soldiers alive.

Sorghum was used for sugar.

The women and girls helped in every possible manner. Silk dresses were made into banners, woolen dresses and shawls into soldiers'

s.h.i.+rts--carpets into blankets--curtains, sheets, and all linens, were made into lint and bandages for the wounded. Soft white fingers knitted socks, s.h.i.+rts and gloves, to keep the cold from the men in the trenches.

Calico was $10 per yard quite early in the strife. Homespun was made upon the old colonial wheels and looms that had been kept as souvenirs and curios. b.u.t.tons were obtained from persimmon seeds with holes pierced for eyes. Women plaited their hats from straw or palmetto leaf, and used feathers from barnyard fowls.

One mourning dress would be loaned from house to house as disaster came.

Shoes were made of wood, or carriage curtains, buggy tops, saddle tops or any thing like leather. There were thin iron soles like horse shoes.

They were patched with bits of old silk dresses. For little children shoes were made from old morocco pocket-books. Flour was $250 per barrel; meal, $50 a bushel; corn, $40 a bushel; oats, $25; black-eyed peas, $45; brown sugar, $10; coffee, $12; tea, $35 a pound; French merino or mohair sold at $800 to $1,000 a yard; cloth cloak, $1000 and $1500; Balmoral boots, $250 the pair; French gloves, $125 and $150.

The stores came to be opened only on occasions.

Salt was the most difficult of all the necessities. The earth from old smoke houses was dug up and boiled for the drippings of ham and bacon--these being crystallized by a primitive process.

Newspapers were printed on coa.r.s.e half-sheets. Every sc.r.a.p of blank paper in old note books, letters or waste was utilized. Wall paper and pictures were turned for envelopes. Glue from the peach tree gum served to seal the covers. Poke berries, oak b.a.l.l.s, and green persimmons, furnished ink.

The devotion of the people was sublime, always dividing with their neighbors; and the refugees were noted for heroic acts. The negroes were faithful in guarding the families, all of whom were left unprotected, and in working the plantations. Nowhere in the annals of nations has such fidelity been known.

Two negro men belonging to an army officer's widow who lived with her young daughters on an Arkansas plantation, conveyed $50,000 in gold in the cus.h.i.+ons of an ambulance to Houston, Texas--a place of safety from marauding troops, who burned the house and cabins, and captured the live stock. The Yankees would not molest escaping negroes. These were faithful to their trust. Similar instances are legion. Leal and true, always and everywhere.

The memory of those hards.h.i.+ps cannot die until all the survivors are dead. Fertile fields and pleasant villages were destroyed by great armies. Two billions of dollars in slaves were swept away. Cotton, the chief staple, was burned, or captured. Wealth placed in Confederate bonds, was lost forever. Of the 1,000,000 men in the southern army, three fourths were killed; 400,000 were crippled; and no estimate was made of the wounded who recovered. The cost of the war was $8,000,000.

Men and horses perished of starvation and disease. The Southern Confederacy died, not for lack of the will and of the spirit to fight on--for not even Was.h.i.+ngton's ragged troops at Valley Forge endured greater sufferings or displayed greater heroism. The Confederacy died of exhaustion.

I have said that the women of the South gave all their energies and ingenuities to the cause. They shared the burdens of conflict. They encouraged and stimulated the men by their sympathy and cheerful fort.i.tude. To their country they gave their dearest and best, and bore up bravely in defeat as well as in victory. With silent courage they faced privation and danger. They nursed the sick and wounded; took charge of farms and plantations. With wonderful resource they supplied the growing deficiencies in domestic affairs. They cared for and directed the thousands of negroes left dependent upon them. They never lost their trust in G.o.d, or in the righteousness of their cause though their loved ones languished in prison, or lay dead on the battle field. Their patriotism and womanly fidelity will be held in honor while the world lasts.

And the women refugees from the Border States suffered in addition, the cutting off of news from those they left behind them. Letters went by chance messengers through the lines, or around by Liverpool, England, and finally, by special indulgence, in one-page missives, unsealed, by flag-of truce, via Newport News and Norfolk, Va.

Sometimes months of silence elapsed. Oftener the letters were lost.

In many cases they straggled in after two, or three years.

Forty-four years have dragged their slow lengths since the last roll-call. We, the survivors and descendants, have buckled on the armor of faithfulness and are honoring the memory of our martyred heroes. We are rearing monuments to perpetuate their deeds of valor.

We are cleaning their revered names from aspersion. We are striving to educate the generations to come in the true history of their marvelous struggle for the inalienable rights of every free-born American. How sublime that struggle! How undaunted their att.i.tude! How unsurpa.s.sed their fort.i.tude amid the upheaval of their colossal ruin! The conquered banner's tattered folds hang on the wall her standard-bearer lies in the dust--the sod is green above the heads of her valiant leaders--her rank and file sleep in many an unknown grave. _We_ are in the cooling valleys of peace, where refres.h.i.+ng lies, and above us waves the flag of the old, old Union our people once loved so well. So mote it be. We were loyal to the powers that were; we are loyal to the powers that be. Good citizens.h.i.+p is now, as ever, the watchword of the South. We do not forget our martyrs. Upon our devoted heads rests this sacred duty of consecration. Let us cling together in a cause so n.o.ble. Let us merge all thought of self in the glorious work that lies before us.

And what of our beautiful, our historic southland about which the halo of poesy so lovingly lingers? Nature and man have wrought a mighty restoration. Through the grand old States of Virginia and South Carolina, whose annals contain names which will ever adorn the pages of history, down into the prosperous States of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, through Louisiana, unrivaled in fertility, on to the vast expanse of Texas, whose coming wealth and power may not be measured, there arise prophetic voices from field, forest, mine, and workshop, fortelling the grand stirring into life of extended commerce, enterprise, and capital. Her products have increased and multiplied in kind and in variety, till we hear in the Senate chamber of Congress an eloquent plea for the protection of her interests in the country's political economy. We hear from the lips of the Kentucky Senator a full recognition of our worth, our greatness and alas! the tardy acknowledgement of our _rights_.

These beautiful States are swept by the ocean and mountain winds, and nurtured by the glowing sun and gentle rains. The palmetto and the cypress and the lordly live oak, stand above the glowing orange grove and fragrant magnolia bloom, and the grey moss on the trees, wearing the uniform of the men in grey, wafts a solemn requiem above their narrow beds. The light of prosperity spreads transcendent radiance over the land. The throb of commercial triumph pulsates in the hum of the factory, in the smelting furnace, and ascends in the soft twilight from the rich furrows of her incomparable fields; while the salt sea billows, as they rock her s.h.i.+pping, and dash against pier and wharf, add their exultant voices in prophecy of still greater prosperity.

May advancing wealth rebuild her mansions and fill her coffers, and fittingly crown the efforts of her ambition, and of her genius. May she never lose the aspirations that have made her people through suns.h.i.+ne and storm, a lofty and n.o.ble race.

E.D. POTTS.