The Dixie Book Of Days, by Matthew Page Andrews

Founding the First Permanent English Colony in America at James Towne, Virginia, 1607

PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS
PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A.

Preface

In the preparation of this volume of quotations illustrative of the history and literature of the South, the editor wishes to acknowledge the kindness of publishers in granting permission to make selections. He desires especially to express his appreciation of the courtesy of the following firms: D. Appleton & Co.; Bobbs-Merrill Co.; The Century Co.; Doubleday, Page & Co.; Harper & Brothers; Houghton, Mifflin & Co.; B. F. Johnson Publishing Co.; P. J. Kenedy & Sons; J. B. Lippincott Co.; Longmans, Green & Co.; Lothrop, Lee, and Shepard Co.; The Macmillan Co.; Martin & Hoyt Co.; The Neale Publishing Co.; G. P. Putnam’s Sons; Charles Scribner’s Sons; Southern Historical Publication Society; Alfred M. Slocomb Co.; Small, Maynard & Co.; Stewart & Kidd Co.; F. A. Stokes Co.; State Company; Stone & Barringer Co.; and the Whitehall Publishing Co.

Introduction

This volume of brief selections from a wide range of Southern expression in prose and verse leads into fields of American history and literature which, perhaps, are not well known to the general public. The reader is not offered stacks of straw to thresh over; on the contrary, it has been the aim of the compiler, in a most congenial and delightful task, to afford others easy access to grain that he has already garnered. Generally speaking, the genius of literary production in the Old South did not aspire to an outlet in the field of professional endeavor. There were, however, many gifted writers who regarded production in prose and verse as a pleasant recreation rather than an end, or as an accomplishment common to cultured minds, to be called forth as occasion offered, or when some emotion prompted expression.

By way of illustration, William Henry Timrod may be regarded as potentially a greater poet than his better-known son. Yet he was one of the occasional poets of the old régime. John Laurens composed a sonnet as he lay[Pg 8] dying of wounds and fever incurred in defence of his country; and Stuart, in a later struggle, wrote verses while engaged in riding around McClellan’s army. These and many others like them never seriously considered revising or publishing their work. They sang from time to time because to them “singing itself is so sweet.” This peculiar diffidence is a relic of the past; and at the present time, one need but review the list of leading American novelists to find that a remarkably large proportion have come from the South and write on Southern themes.

Thus, while the very nature of the South lends itself to sentiment and romance, her history is yet to be written. This little volume attempts, therefore, with particular care, to treat of historical events as their anniversaries bring them to mind. Comparatively few are the enduring works of Southern historians; and yet from the beginning of colonization the South has thrilled with the record of daring achievement. In the work of her soldiers and statesmen, the South led in shaping the Republic out of rebellion, revolution, and jarring elements. During and after the struggle with the mother country, Jefferson, Henry, Clark, and Virginia gave to the Nation the great[Pg 9] States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. It was Jefferson who secured to the Republic peaceful possession of the vast original tract of Louisiana; and it was he, with Lewis and Clark, who made good the claim to the Oregon territory. Furthermore, the mighty empire of Texas and the far Southwest was brought in under the initiative of the South and the leadership of Polk and Tyler.

So did the South mightily assist in making a common government great and strong; but she was likewise building up a power which later overwhelmed her. In truth, she forged the fetters that for forty years chafed her people under an increasingly oppressive legislation; since it was a son of Carolina who first brought forward a tariff for protection, not for Carolina, but for New England and the Nation; and it was Clay of Kentucky who fostered the system until it involved the thirteen agricultural States of the South in an indirect taxation more burdensome than any direct impost ever proposed by Great Britain for the thirteen Colonies. In vain the South protested. Opposing majorities grew against her. And when a solidly sectional party became the dominant power, the Lower South attempted to exercise the hitherto generally[Pg 10] conceded right of withdrawal, a right which had been particularly emphasized in New England when that section felt its interests to be in peril. The Upper South opposed coercion; and both prepared for the fight that followed. Such is the principle for which the South contended. She failed not in valor or in honor, but fell through exhaustion; yet glory stood beside her grief, and she endowed the Nation with the stainless names of Lee and Jackson.

With the failure of the South to establish her independence, there fell also, as an incident of the struggle, that which most made her a separate section, politically, economically, and socially—the tutelage, in the most beneficent form of servitude ever known, of a child-race. That race was largely thrust upon her; and yet she raised its people from cannibal savages to civilized beings, whose devotion and faithfulness became the marvel of invading armies. Rather than interpret such a record to her shame, as some would have us do, let it be proclaimed as an everlasting tribute to the lofty character of Anglo-Saxon Christianity.

The South, after fifty years, is more intimately a part of the Union than ever before. Her interests are national and her destiny great. In the youthful Bagley she was the[Pg 11] first to give her blood in the war with Spain, therewith cementing the tie that now, without fetters, binds in a steadily growing amity and understanding. To-day, a true Southerner has an abiding love and loyalty for the section that has seen tears and grief, as well as sunshine and flowers, beyond the measure of any country of modern times; but he is also doubly true to, and proud of, the mighty progress of a reunited Republic. Surely it is due to the South and due to the Nation that the story of the South be told. And the highest aim of the compiler of these selections is that he may contribute something to promote that steadily expanding knowledge of historical truth which alone can fully allay the spirit of sectional strife, and from which alone we may look for perfect amity and understanding to ensue.

January

They slander thee, Old Traveler,
Who say that thy delight
Is to scatter ruin, far and wide,
In thy wantonness of might:
For not a leaf that falleth
Before thy restless wings,
But in thy flight, thou changest it
To a thousand brighter things.
·····
’Tis true thy progress layeth
Full many a loved one low,
And for the brave and beautiful
Thou hast caused our tears to flow;
But always near the couch of death
Nor thou, nor we can stay;
And the breath of thy departing wings
Dries all our tears away!
William Henry Timrod

Some thunder on the heights of song, their race
Godlike in power, while others at their feet
Are breathing measures scarce less strong and sweet
Than those that peal from out that loftiest place;
Meantime, just midway on the mount, his face
Fairer than April heavens, when storms retreat,
And on their edges rain and sunshine meet,
Pipes the soft lyrist lays of tender grace,
But where the slopes of bright Parnassus sweep
Near to the common ground, a various throng
Chant lowlier measures—yet each tuneful strain
(The silvery minor of earth’s perfect song)
Blends with that music of the topmost steep,
O’er whose vast realm the master minstrels reign!
Paul Hamilton Hayne

O’er those who lost and those who won,
Death holds no parley which was right—
Jehovah judges Arlington.
James Ryder Randall

... In a word,
Mars and Minerva both in him concurred
For arts, for arms, whose pen and sword alike,
As Cato’s did, may admiration strike
Into his foes; while they confess withal
It was their guilt styled him a criminal....
From Epitaph by “His Man”

In this epitaph we have what is in all probability the single poem in any true sense—the single product of sustained poetic art—that was written in America for a hundred and fifty years after the settlement of Jamestown.

The only calendar
That marks my seasons,
Is that sweet face of hers,
Her moods and reasons,
Wherein no record is
Of winter seasons.
Madison Cawein

The strange and curious race madness of the American Republic will be a study for centuries to come. That madness took a child-race out of a warm cradle, threw it into the ocean of politics—the stormiest and most treacherous we have known—and bade it swim for its own and the life of the nation!

What the cloud doeth
The Lord knoweth,
The cloud knoweth not
What the artist doeth,
The Lord knoweth;
Knoweth the artist not?
Sidney Lanier

Few have equaled the old time negro at repartee, and a true Southerner heartily relished a clever rejoinder to his good natured raillery. The rejoinder was frequently overwhelming, always respectful, and generally worth an immediate acknowledgment in cash or old clothes.

“Is that you, Peter?” called an old Confederate to his former body-servant on the road.

“Well, well!” laughed the other. “I see that all the old fools are not dead yet.”

“Dat’s so, Mars’ Tom.” Peter pulled his grizzly forelock appreciatively. “I’s monsus glad to see dat you’s in such good health, suh.”

Full well she knew the seriousness of life. Over and over the cares and responsibilities of her station as the mother of so many children, the mistress of so many servants and the hostess of so many guests, had utterly overwhelmed her. * * * * * Into how many negro cabins had she not gone, when the night was far spent and the lamp of life flickered low in the breast of the dying slave! How often she ministered to him with her own hands! * * * * Nay, had she not knelt by his lowly bed and poured out her heart to God as his soul winged its flight, and closed his glazed and staring eyes as the day was dawning? Yet the morning meal found her at her accustomed seat, tranquil and helpful, and no one but her husband the wiser for her night’s ministrations.

Jackson’s line, extending about half a mile from the river to the swamp, was defended by a water-filled ditch and by a parapet of varying height and thickness. The idea that it was built of cotton bales is an absurd fiction that brings back the inspiring picture in Peter Parley’s old history of our childhood days....

“What stopped you?” General Pakenham asked of a regiment of Scotch Highlanders. To which their colonel replied: “Bullets, mon! bullets! Auld Julius Caesar himself wouldn’t have charged those devils.”

The “Hunting Shirt Men” of the South versus Wellington’s Peninsular veterans in the Battle of New Orleans, 1815; General Pakenham, brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington killed

Consider the lark! How he rises on wing,
And mounts to the sky through ethereal air!
He sings as he soars; ’tis his nature to sing,
To warble his notes though no listener be near.
I seek not for fortune, I sigh not for fame,
I follow my Muse into forest or street;
In sorrow, in gladness, I sing all the same,
I sing because singing itself is so sweet.

[These lines, typifying so much of the poetical expression of the old South, were written by former Surgeon H. M. Clarkson, C. S. A., who, on January 9, 1861, as a corporal of artillery, fired a single shot from Fort Moultrie to challenge the Star of the West in its attempt to reinforce Fort Sumter. On the same occasion two other shots were fired by the State cadets stationed on Morris Island, driving the transport from the harbor. It is not improbable, therefore, that, as the challenger of the hostile steamer, the writer of these verses fired the first shot of the war between the States. Corporal Clarkson was in charge of gun No. 13.—Editor]

The United States transport “Star of the West” attempts to reinforce Fort Sumter, 1861

A State, finding herself in the condition in which Mississippi has judged she is—in which her safety requires that she should provide for the maintenance of her rights out of the Union—surrenders all the benefits (and they are known to be many), deprives herself of the advantages (and they are known to be great), severs all the ties of affection (and they are close and enduring), which have bound her to the Union; and thus divesting herself of every benefit—taking upon herself every burden—she claims to be exempt from any power to execute the laws of the United States within her limits.

Whenever it shall appear that these causes are radical and permanent, a separation by equitable arrangement will be preferable to an alliance by constraint, among nominal friends, but real enemies, inflamed by mutual hatred and jealousy, and inviting, by intestine divisions, contempt and aggression from abroad.

The States of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee were engaged in practical movements for the gradual emancipation of their slaves. This movement continued until it was arrested by the aggressions of the Abolitionists.

And if the secrets of all hearts could have been revealed, our enemies would have been astounded to see how many thousands and tens of thousands in the Southern States felt the crushing burden and the awful responsibility of the institution which we were supposed to be defending with the melodramatic fury of pirate kings. We were born to this social order, we had to do our duty in it according to our lights, and this duty was made indefinitely more difficult by the interference of those who, as we thought, could not understand the conditions of the problem, and who did not have to bear the expense of the experiments they proposed.

Thomas Jefferson Randolph’s resolutions on the abolition of slavery introduced for extended debate in the Virginia Assembly, 1832

We are a band of brothers, and native to the soil,
Fighting for our liberty, with treasure, blood, and toil.
And when our rights were threatened, the cry rose near and far:
Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star!
Harry McCarthy

In case of direct and insoluble issue between Sovereign State and Sovereign Nation, every man was not only free to decide, but had to decide the question of ultimate allegiance for himself; and whichever way he decided he was right.

After a little while
The cross will glisten and the thistles wave
Above my grave;
And planets smile.
Sweet Lord, then pillowed on thy gentle breast,
I fain would rest,
After a little while.
James Ryder Randall

A Northerner, who had purchased an estate in Virginia, noticed that smoke always emanated from the chimney of a cabin near his woods where an old negro lived. One day, on meeting the old colored man, he asked: “Where do you get your wood, Uncle?”

The latter eyed him with an expression of great reproach and replied: “My pa was coachman at the Gret House, and he pa, and he pa; ‘whar I git my wood?’ That ain’t no question for one gen’l’man to ax an’er!”

When wintry days are dark and drear
And all the forest ways grow still,
When gray snow-laden clouds appear
Along the bleak horizon hill,
When cattle all are snugly penned
And sheep go huddling close together,
When steady streams of smoke ascend
From farm-house chimneys—in such weather
Give me old Carolina’s own,
A great log house, a great hearthstone,
A cheering pipe of cob or briar
And a red, leaping light’ood fire.
John Henry Boner
(The Light’ood Fire)

Forcible resistance to British Stamp Act under Colonel Hugh Waddell, of Wilmington, N. C., 1766

Starvation, literal starvation, was doing its deadly work. So depleted and poisoned was the blood of many of Lee’s men from insufficient and unsound food that a slight wound which would probably not have been reported at the beginning of the war would often cause blood-poison, gangrene, and death. Yet the spirits of these brave men seemed to rise as their condition grew more desperate.... It was a harrowing but not uncommon sight to see those hungry men gather the wasted corn from under the feet of half-fed horses, and wash and parch and eat it to satisfy in some measure their craving for food.

While the Confederate soldiers were in the trenches, the ingenuity of the Southern women was taxed to the utmost to supply their household needs. Medicine had been declared contraband of war by the Federal Government, and salt works were made a special object for attack. Remedies were improvised from herbs of all kinds; the dirt floor of the meat house was boiled for the salt it contained; soap was made from china-berries and lye; candles out of resin or waxed rope wound around a corncob; thorns were used for pins; shoes were fashioned out of canvas, and supplied with wooden soles; buttons were made from persimmon seed; tumblers out of glass bottles; tea out of berry leaves; and coffee was made from sweet potatoes and dandelion seed.

Lee—One of the greatest, if not the greatest, of all the generals who have spoken the English tongue.

Poe—How can so strange and fine a genius and so sad a life be expressed and compressed in one line?

No truth is lost for which the true are weeping,
Nor dead for which they died.
Francis O. Ticknor

The following lines are remarkable in that they represent a boy’s estimate of Stonewall Jackson before the war between the States. They were written by William Fitzhugh Lee when a cadet under Jackson at the Virginia Military Institute:—

Like some rough brute that roams the forest wild,
So rude, uncouth, so purely Nature’s child,
Is “Hickory,” and yet methinks I see
The stamp of genius on his brow; and he,
With his mild glance and keen, but quiet eye,
Can draw forth from the secret recess where they lie
Those thoughts and feelings of the human heart
Most virtuous, good, and free from guilty art.
There’s something in his very mode of life
So accurate, steady, void of care and strife,
That fills my heart with love for him who bears
His honors meekly and who wears
The laurels of a hero! This is a fact,
So here’s a heart and hand for “Jack!”

Wherein, then, lay his strength, and what was the secret of his influence over all this land? I answer in one word—character. And what is meant by character? Courage? Yes; courage of his opinions, and physical courage as well; for he had a Briton’s faith in pluck. Pride of race? In a limited sense, yes. Honesty? The question is almost an insult. Love of truth? Yes, undying love of it.

I reckon hit’s well we wuz all set free,
I s’pose dat’s de way folks wuz meant ter be,
But I kain’t see w’y dey’s no manners lef’
Jes’ kase dey happens ter own deyse’f.
I dunno rightly how ol’ I is,
Hit mought be eighty, I reckon ’tis,
Yit I nuver gone now’ers, I tells you true,
But I tucken my manners an’ breedin’, too.
Anne Virginia Culbertson

Dem sassy young niggers, dey plum’ disgrace
De res’ uv de’ ’spectable cullud race.
Dey got dey books, dey kin read an’ write,
But dey dunno ’nough fer to be perlite.
I kain’t see how dey gwine git erlong,
Hit seem lak sump’n have done gone wrong.
I gits wo’ out wid’em, dat’s de fac’,
But I orter mek ’lowance fer how dey ac’,
’Kase de times an’ de doin’s is changed a lot,
An’ dey ain’ had de raisin’ dat I done got.
Dar’s nuffin lef’ me but lookin’ on
Twel me an’ de ol’-time ways is gone.
Anne Virginia Culbertson

Ah, only from his golden throne,
Upon his golden lute,
He touched the magic note; then Poe was known,
And so was quelled dispute.
Open thy portal, Fame! Let soar
That sombre bird, whose song is heard forevermore.
Daniel Bedinger Lucas
(Referring to first publication of Poe’s Raven, 1845)

Resolved, that the annexation of Louisiana to the Union transcends the Constitutional power of the Government of the United States. It formed a New Confederacy to which the States united by the former compact are not bound to adhere.

If this bill passes, it is my deliberate opinion that it is virtually a dissolution of this Union, that it will free the States from their moral obligations, and as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, definitely to prepare for a separation, amicably if they can, violently if they must.

Josiah Quincy
(Representative from Massachusetts in Congress, opposing statehood for Louisiana Territory, 1811)

The rights of Louisiana as a sovereign State are those of Virginia; no more, no less. Let those who deny her right to resume delegated powers successfully refute the claim of Virginia to the same right, in spite of her expressed reservation made and notified to her sister States when she consented to enter the Union.... For two-thirds of a century this right has been known by many of the States to be, at all times, within their power.

It was Lee who suggested the capture of Stony Point, and it was a band of North Carolinians who formed Wayne’s head of column in the assault upon that fortress. Three hundred Virginians followed Lee in his successful dash against Paulus Hook on the Jersey coast, August, 1779.

“Dey’s a mighty zooin’ gwine on in dar, en I dunner whe’er Mars John tryin’ ter scramble out, er whe’er he des tryin’ fer ter make hisself comfertuble in dar.”

“He up en low’d dat one un us wus a vilyun but dey wuz such a buzzin’ gwine on in dar dat I couldn’t ’zactly ketch the rights un it.”

I wish I was in the land of cotton,
Cinnamon seed and sandy bottom;
Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.
Her scenes shall fade from my memory never;
For Dixie’s land hurrah forever!
Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.

Chorus:
I wish I was in Dixie;
Away, away;
In Dixie’s land I’ll take my stand,
And live and die in Dixie.
Away, away,
Away down South in Dixie.
Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.
Marie Louise Eve
(Version of “Dixie”)

February

The robin laughed in the orange-tree:
“Ho, windy North, a fig for thee:
While breasts are red and wings are bold
And green trees wave us globes of gold,
Time’s scythe shall reap but bliss for me—
Sunlight, song, and the orange-tree....

“I’ll south with the sun, and keep my clime;
My wing is king of the summer-time;
My breast to the sun his torch shall hold;
And I’ll call down through the green and gold
Time, take thy scythe, reap bliss for me,
Bestir thee under the orange-tree.”
Sidney Lanier

The Emperor of France made him Commander of the Legion of Honor; The Emperor of Russia, Knight of the Order of St. Ann; the King of Denmark, Knight of the Dannebrog; the King of Portugal, Knight of the Tower and Sword; the King of Belgium, Knight of the Order of St. Leopold; simultaneously with Tennyson, he was awarded an LL.D. by the University of Cambridge, England; he received honorary membership from a score of the world’s leading societies of science and scholarship; the Pope conferred upon him a noteworthy testimonial; the Emperor of Mexico gave him a decoration; and Prussia, Austria, Sweden, Holland, Sardinia, Bremen, and France struck medals in his honor as the greatest scientist of the New World, and the peer of any in the Old.

The government of his own country, says Professor Francis H. Smith, has “carefully omitted his name in official records of the departments he created”; nor is it even given a place among the many inscribed in the mighty mosaic of our National Library.

“Home—bear me home, at last,” he said,
“And lay me where my dead are lying,
But not while skies are overspread,
And mournful wintry winds are sighing.

“When the sky, the air, the grass,
Sweet Nature all, is glad and tender,
Then bear me through ‘The Goshen Pass’
Amid its flush of May-day splendor.”
Margaret J. Preston

Snow! Snow! Snow!
Do thy worst, Winter, but know, but know
That, when the Spring cometh, a blossom shall blow
From the heart of the Poet that sleeps below,
And his name to the ends of the earth shall go,
In spite of the snow!
John B. Tabb

(In welcoming “The Forthcoming Volume” of the poems of his fellow soldier, fellow patriot, and fellow artist, SIDNEY LANIER)

What a beneficent provision of the Creator it was, to roll our little planet but one side at a time next the sun, that while one half of the world fretted and stormed and sinned, the other half might repent and sleep.

The stars had secrets for him; seas
Revealed the depths their waves were screening;
The winds gave up their mysteries;
The tidal flows confessed their meaning.

Of ocean paths, the tangled clew
He taught the nations to unravel;
And showed the track where safely through
The lightning-footed thought might travel.
Margaret J. Preston

Patriot, soldier, statesman,
Prince of the race of men;
Cypress and rue for his passing,
Laurel for sword and pen.

Dust for the hand that wrought;
But for the lessons taught
Life without end.
Ida Slocomb Matthews

And there’s Joe—my bully Joe—wouldn’t I walk ten miles of a rainy night to see them hazel eyes, and feel the grip of his soldier hand? Didn’t my rooster always clap his wings and crow whenever he passed our quarters? “Instinct told him that he was the true prince,” and it would make anybody brave to be nigh him.

Hath not the morning dawned with added light?
And shall not the evening call another star
Out of the infinite regions of the night,
To mark this day in Heaven? At last, we are
A nation among nations; and the world
Shall soon behold in many a distant port
Another flag unfurled!
Henry Timrod
(Ethnogenesis)

Southern Confederacy begins to assume definite form in a league of seven Southern States, 1861

The great change wrought by the States in resuming their sovereignty, and in forming the Confederate States Government, was attended by no anarchy, no rebellion, no suspension of authority, no social disorders, no lawless disturbances. Sovereignty was not, for one moment, in suspension. Conservatism marked every proceeding and public act. The object was to do what was necessary and no more; and to do that with the utmost temperance and prudence.

You say we shall submit to your construction. We shall do it, if you can make us; but not otherwise, or in any other manner. That is settled. You may call it secession, or you may call it revolution; but there is a big fact standing before you, ready to oppose you. That fact is freemen with arms in their hands. The cry of the Union will not disperse them; we have passed that point. They demand equal rights; you had better heed the demand.

Equality does not exist between blacks and whites. The one race is inferior in many respects, physically and mentally, to the other. This should be received as a fixed invincible fact in all dealings with the subject.

I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.

Those who would shiver into fragments the Union of these States, tear to tatters its now venerated constitution, and even burn the last copy of the Bible, rather than slavery should continue a single hour, together with all their more halting sympathizers, have received, and are receiving their just execration; and the name and opinion and influence of Mr. Clay are fully and, as I trust, effectually and enduringly arrayed against them.

The abolitionists were always the fiercest opponents of colonization. The practical improvement of the negro, in his native country, did not suit them so well as the impracticable idea of equalizing black men with white in a strange land.

Thou wouldst be loved? then let thy heart
From its present pathway part not;
Being everything which now thou art,
Be nothing which thou art not.
So with the world thy gentle ways,
Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
Shall be an endless theme of praise,
And love a simple duty.
Edgar Allan Poe

As a matter of comparison we have lately read that from William and Mary College, Virginia, thirty-two out of thirty-five professors and instructors abandoned the college work and joined the army in the field. Harvard College sent one professor from its large corps of professors and instructors.

“As I say, this young man spends his entire time in his room, where he is, I believe, engaged in writing a book.”

A chicken that had done duty at a previous repast was set before the Rev. Scervant Jones, the first Baptist preacher of Williamsburg, Virginia, at the tavern of a Mr. Howl. Upon which the Reverend gentleman pronounced the following blessing:

“Good Lord of love
Look down from above,
And bless the ’Owl
Who ate this fowl
And left these bones
For Scervant Jones.”

* * * It was the most monstrous barbarity of the barbarous march. There is no reason to think that General Sherman knew anything of the purpose to burn the city, which had been freely talked about among the soldiers through the afternoon. But there is reason to think that he knew well enough who did it, that he never rebuked it, and made no effort to punish it.

We have changed the constituent parts, but not the system of our government. The Constitution formed by our fathers is that of the Confederate States, in their exposition of it; and, in the judicial construction it has received, we have a light which reveals its true meaning.

Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,
Ye spread and span like the catholic man who has mightily won
God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain
And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.
Sidney Lanier

After the passage of the Anti-Ku Klux Statute by the State of Tennessee, several instances occurred of parties being arrested in Ku Klux disguises; but in every case they proved to be either negroes or “radical” Brownlow Republicans. This occurred so often that the statute was allowed by the party in power to become a dead letter before its repeal. It bore too hard on the “loyal” men when enforced.

As the young German patriots of 1812 organized their struggle for liberty under the noses of the garrisons of Napoleon, so these daring men, girt by thousands of bayonets, discussed and adopted under the cover of darkness the ritual of “The Invisible Empire.”

Governor Brownlow of Tennessee calls out the militia to suppress the Ku Klux Klan, 1869

The Ku Klux Klan was a great Law and Order League of mounted night cavalrymen called into action by the intolerable conditions of a reign of terror.... It was the old answer of organized manhood to organized crime masquerading under the forms of government.... Women and children had eyes and saw not, ears and heard not. Over four hundred thousand disguises for men and horses were made by the women of the South, and not one secret ever passed their lips!

The Ku Klux Order was a daring conception for a conquered people. Only a race of warlike instincts and regal pride could have conceived or executed it. Men, women, and children must have, and be worthy of, implicit mutual trust. They must be trusted with the secrets of life and death without reserve and without fear.

First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen, he was second to none in the humble and endearing scenes of private life; pious, just, humane, temperate, and sincere; uniform, dignified, and commanding, his example was as edifying to all around him, as were the effects of that example lasting.

Won in the Name of Virginia; Governor Patrick Henry to Colonel George Rogers Clark:

“You are to retain the Command of the troops now at the several posts in the county of Illinois and on the Wabash, which fall within the limits of the County now erected and called Illinois County.... You are also to take the Command of five other Companies, raised under the act of Assembly which I send herewith, and which if completed, as I hope they will be speedily, will have orders to join you without loss of time, and are likewise to be under your command.... The honor and interest of the State are deeply concerned in this.”

The importance of this brilliant exploit was destined to be far greater than even Clark foresaw, for when the treaty of peace was being negotiated at Paris in 1782, our allies, France and Spain, were both more than willing to sacrifice our interests in order to keep us out of the Mississippi Valley, and the western boundary of the United States would undoubtedly have been fixed at the Alleghanies instead of the Mississippi, but for the fact that this western region was actually occupied by Virginians.

The vast Northwest had been thus won by a heroic band of volunteers, led by one of the most dauntless warriors that ever risked life for country.

George Rogers Clark stipulates to Governor Hamilton the terms of surrender of the Northwestern territory, 1779

From Inscription on tablet in St. Michael’s Church, Charleston, South Carolina.

“As a Statesman
he bequeathed to his country the sentiment,
‘Millions for defence
not a cent for tribute.’”

Winter poured down its snows and its sleets upon Lee’s shelterless men in the trenches. Some of them burrowed into the earth. Most of them shivered over the feeble fires, kept burning along the lines. Scanty and thin were the garments of these heroes. Most of them were clad in mere rags. Gaunt famine oppressed them every hour. One quarter of a pound of bacon and a little meal was the daily portion assigned to each man by the rules of the War Department. But even this allowance failed when the railroads broke down and left the bacon and the flour piled up beside the tracks in Georgia and the Carolinas. One sixth of this daily ration was the allotment for a considerable time, and very often the supply of bacon failed entirely....

We follow where the Swamp Fox guides,
We leave the swamp and cypress-tree,
Our spurs are in our coursers’ sides,
And ready for the strife are we.
The Tory camp is now in sight,
And there he cowers within his den;
He hears our shouts, he dreads the fight,
He fears, and flies from Marion’s men.
William Gilmore Simms

The war began, the war went on—this politicians’ conspiracy, this slaveholders’ rebellion, as it was variously called by those who sought its source, now in the disappointed ambition of the Southern leaders, now in the desperate determination of a slaveholding oligarchy to perpetuate their power, and to secure forever their proprietorship in their “human chattels.” On this theory the mass of the Southern people were but puppets in the hands of political wirepullers, or blind followers of hectoring “patricians.” To those who know the Southern people nothing can be more absurd; to those who know their personal independence, to those who know the deep interest which they have always taken in politics, the keen intelligence with which they have always followed the questions of the day.

Fair were our nation’s visions, and as grand
As ever floated out of fancy-land;
Children were we in simple faith,
But god-like children, whom nor death,
Nor threat of danger drove from honor’s path—
In the land where we were dreaming!
········
A figure came among us as we slept—
At first he knelt, then slowly rose and wept;
Then gathering up a thousand spears,
He swept across the fields of Mars,
Then bowed farewell, and walked behind the stars,
From the land where we were dreaming!
········
As wakes the soldier when the alarum calls—
As wakes the mother when her infant falls—
As starts the traveler when around
His sleepy couch the fire-bells sound—
So woke our nation with a single bound—
In the land where we were dreaming!
Daniel Bedinger Lucas

March

I hear the bluebird’s quaint soliloquy,—
A hesitating note upon the breeze,
Blown faintly from the tops of distant trees,
As though he were not sure that Spring is nigh,
But fed his hopes with bursts of melody.
I would I had a spirit-harp to seize
The bolder tenor of his rhapsodies
When apple-blossoms swing against the sky.
On every dark or blust’ring wintry day
That airy harp the bluebird’s lilt should play;
And as I held my sighs and paused to hear,
The wand’ring message, with its full-fed cheer
And ripe contentment, to my life should bring
The essence and fruition of the Spring.
Danske Dandridge

In the deep heart of every forest tree
The blood is all aglee,
And there’s a look about the leafless bowers
As if they dreamed of flowers.
Henry Timrod

At a garden party in Washington not long ago a Justice of the Supreme Court said in response to some question I put: “It would take the pen of a Zola to describe reconstruction in Louisiana. It is so dark a chapter in our national history. I do not like to think of it. A Zola might base a great novel on that life and death struggle between politicians and races in the land of cotton and sugar plantations, the swamps and bayous of the mighty Mississippi, where the Carpet-Bag Government had a standing army, of blacks, chiefly, and a navy of warships going up and down waterways.”

Women, the most refined, the noblest and best cultured in the land, left their homes, took up their residences adjacent to hospitals and became Florence Nightingales, daughters of the Red Cross, for all who needed care or comfort. It is reproachfully said by alien writers that the Southern women are more “unreconstructed rebels” than the men. It is certainly true that they did as much as the men in winning the battles, and they are now foremost in building monuments and preserving the records of immortal deeds.

First general convention of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, at Nashville, 1895

Stephens’ bodily infirmity did not sour his temper. On the contrary, it developed his capacity for human sympathy and strengthened his desire to help others to reach the happiness he seemed unable to secure for himself. After prosperity came to him, his works of philanthropy were constant and countless. He was lavish of hospitality and gave to all who asked such pity and sympathy as only a tried and travailing spirit could feel.

From childhood I have nursed a faith
In bluebirds’ songs and winds of Spring;
They tell me after frost and death
There comes a time of blossoming;
And after snow and cutting sleet,
The cold, stern mood of Nature yields
To tender warmth, when bare pink feet
Of children press her greening fields.
James Maurice Thompson

It is the spirit of the Alamo that moved above the Texas soldiers as they charged like demigods through a thousand battlefields, and it is the spirit of the Alamo that whispers from their graves held in every State of the Union, ennobling their dust, their soil, that was crimson with their blood.

The opening of the University of Virginia was an event of prime importance for the higher education in the whole country, and really marks a new era. In the South this university completely dominated the situation down to the war and for some time afterwards, being the model for most that was best in the colleges everywhere, setting the standards to which they aspired, and being the source of constant stimulus and inspiration.

... The Virginia, that iron diadem of the South, whose thunders in Hampton Roads consumed the Cumberland, overcame the Congress, put to flight the Federal Navy, and achieved a victory, the novelty and grandeur of which convulsed the maritime nations of the world.

Confederate Tribute to the Commander and Men of the Cumberland: “No ship was ever better handled, or more bravely fought.”

Confusion, death, and pitiable suffering reigned supreme; and the horrors of war quenched the passion and enmity of months.

Confederate Tribute to the Commanders of the Minnesota, St. Lawrence, and Roanoke, which vessels ran aground in flight from the terrible Virginia:

I take occasion to say that their character as officers of skill, experience, and bravery was well established at the time, and suffered no diminution then or thereafter.

Battle between the “Virginia” (“Merrimac”) and Federal men-of-war, 1862

The men who manned the Monitor made a grand fight, and her commander upheld the best traditions of the American navy; but history must bear witness to the fact that, if not overmatched or defeated, she at least withdrew to shallow water, where the Virginia could not follow her; and later, under the guns of Ft. Monroe, she declined the subsequent battle challenges of the refitted Virginia.

All honor to Capt. Worden and the Virginia-inspired invention of the Swede; but “America’s glory for Americans.” Let all Americans honor the name of JOHN MERCER BROOKE, the inventor and designer of the first armored war vessel of the world.—Ed.

“Say, Judge, ain’t you the same man that told us before the war that we could whip the Yankees with pop-guns?”

“Yes,” replied the stump-orator, with great presence of mind, “and we could, but, confound ’em, they wouldn’t fight us that way.”

(The latter is taken from a witty parody on the original poem. Presented to a Virginia girl, it was indignantly tossed into the wastebasket. Later, however, she copied it and sent it around for the amusement of many—in the family!)

I. The days are never quite so long
As in Virginia;
Nor quite so filled with happy song
As in Virginia;
And when my time has come to die
Just take me back and let me lie
Close where the James goes rolling by,
Down in Virginia.

II. Nowhere such storms obscure the sun
As in Virginia;
Nowhere so slow the railroads run,
As in Virginia;
And when my time has come to go
Just take me there, because, you know,
I’ll longer live, I’ll die so slow,
Down in Virginia.

For the native Bostonian there are three paths to glory. If his name be Quincy or Adams, nothing more is expected of him. His blue blood carries him through life with glory, and straight to heaven when he dies. Failing in the happy accident of birth, the candidate for Beacon Hill honors must write a book. This is easy. The man who can breathe Boston air and not write a book is either a fool or a phenomenon. One course remains to him should he miss fame in these lines. He must be a reformer.

Your gracious acceptance of the first fruits of my travels ... hath actuated both Will and Power to the finishing of this Peece: ... We had hoped, ere many years had turned about, to have presented you with a rich and wel-peopled Kingdom; from whence now, with my selfe, I onely bring this Composure, ... bred in the New-World, of the rudeness whereof it cannot but participate; especially having Warres and Tumults to bring it to light in stead of the Muses....

From Dedication of Ovids’s Metamorphoses, “English by George Sandys” at Henrico College, Virginia, 1621-1625. “Imprinted at London, 1626.”

Content to miss the prize of fame,
If he some true heart’s praise can claim,
He lives in his own world of rhyme,
The great world’s ways forsaking;
Cares not Parnassian heights to climb,
But valley bypaths taking,
Where even the daises in the sod,
Like stars, show him the living God.
Charles W. Hubner
(The Minor Poet)

Abhorrence of debt, public and private; dislike of banks, and love of hard money—love of justice and love of country, were ruling passions with Jackson; and of these he gave constant evidence in all the situations of his life.

Through Mr. Justice Campbell of the Supreme Court, Secretary Seward promises the Confederate Commissioners that Fort Sumter would be speedily evacuated, 1861

The great mind of Madison was one of the first to entertain distinctly the noble conception of two kinds of government, operating at one and the same time, upon the same individuals, harmonious with each other, but each supreme in its own sphere. Such is the fundamental conception of our partly Federal, partly National Government, which appears throughout the Virginia plan, as well as in the Constitution which grew out of it.

Just as the Spring came laughing through the strife,
With all its gorgeous cheer;
In the bright April of historic life,
Fell the great cannoneer....

We gazed and gazed upon that beauteous face,
While round the lips and eyes,
Couched in their marble slumber, flashed the grace
Of a divine surprise.
James Ryder Randall

He had the basis, the indispensable basis, of all high character, and that was unspotted integrity—unimpeached honor and character. If he had aspirations, they were high and honorable and noble. There was nothing grovelling or low, or meanly selfish that came near the head or the heart of Mr. Calhoun.

Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to Him,
The little gray leaves were kind to Him:
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him
When into the woods He came.
Sidney Lanier
(A Ballad of Trees and the Master)

Out of the woods my Master went,
And He was well content.
Out of the woods my Master came,
Content with death and shame.
When Death and Shame would woo Him last,
From under the trees they drew Him last:
’Twas on a tree they slew Him—last,
When out of the woods He came.
Sidney Lanier
(A Ballad of Trees and the Master)

Those who dominated were intelligent, masterful, patriotic, loving home, kindred, state and country, dispensing a prodigal hospitality, limited only by the respectability and behavior of guests. Among girls, refinement, culture, modesty, purity and a becoming behavior were the characteristic traits; among boys, courtesy, courage, chivalry, respect to age, devotion to the weaker sex, scorning meanness, regarding dishonor and cowardice as ineffaceable stains.

Father Tabb’s discernment was clear and touched by the purest fragrance of the muses. To Shelley, Coleridge, and Keats he was devoted. Poe he regarded as without a peer in modern literature, and was his uncompromising, inflexible champion.

Come, Texas! send forth your brave Rangers,
The heroes of battles untold—
Accustomed to trials and dangers,
Come stand by your rights as of old;
The deeds of your chivalrous daring
Are writ on the Alamo’s wall,
A record which ruin is sparing—
Come forth to your country’s loud call!
V. E. W. Vernon

Adams, Giddings, and other Congressmen issued a public address, in March, 1843, declaring that the annexation of Texas would be “so injurious to the interests of the Northern States as not only inevitably to result in a dissolution of the Union, but fully to justify it.”

Nor had Calvert planted English institutions in Maryland simply as he found them. He went back to a better time for freedom of action, and looked forward to a better time for freedom of thought. While as yet there was no spot in Christendom where religious belief was free, and when even the Commons of England had openly declared against toleration, he founded a community wherein no man was to be molested for his faith.

Dear God! what segment of the earth
Can match the region of our birth!
Though ice-beleaguered, rill on rill,
Though scorched to deserts, hill on hill—
It is our native country still.
Our native country, what a sound
To make heart, brain, and blood rebound!
James Ryder Randall

Jamestown and St. Mary’s are both within the segment of a circle of comparatively small radius whose center is at the mouth of the Chesapeake. In this strategic region, the Jamestown experiment succeeded, after Raleigh’s head had fallen on the block; the Revolution was fired by the eloquence of Patrick Henry, and was consummated at Yorktown; the War of 1812 was settled by the victories of North Point and McHenry; the crisis of the Civil War occurred; and seven Presidents of the United States were born.

Nor less resplendent is the light
Of him, old South Carolina’s star,
Whose fiery soul was made by God
To blaze amid the storms of war....
Orion T. Dozier

A great event of this [Tyler’s] administration was the Ashburton Treaty. This settled our northeast boundary for 200 miles and warded off the long impending war with England. In most histories the whole credit for this treaty is given to Daniel Webster. Of course this great man should not be robbed of any of his well-earned laurels; but the President is entitled to a share of the honor. Webster himself said: “It proceeded from step to step under the President’s own immediate eye and correction.” Moreover, it may be added that at one stage in the proceedings Lord Ashburton was about to give up and return to England; but President Tyler by his courtesy and suavity, conciliated him and induced him to go on with the negotiation.

In discussing the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, Senator Hale warned Senator Toombs that the North would fight. The Georgian answered: “I believe nobody ever doubted that any portion of the United States would fight on a proper occasion.... There are courageous and honest men enough in both sections to fight. There is no question of courage involved. The people of both sections of the Union have illustrated their courage on too many battlefields to be questioned. They have shown their fighting qualities shoulder to shoulder whenever their country has called upon them; but that they may never come in contact with each other in a fratricidal war should be the ardent wish and earnest desire of every true man and honest patriot.”

At the peace of 1815 the Government was $120,000,000 in debt; its revenues were small; its credit not great, and the effort to raise money by direct taxation brought it in conflict with the States.... Mr. Calhoun came forward and devised a tariff, which not only gave large revenues to the Government, but gave great protection to manufacturers. Mr. Calhoun received unmeasured abuse for his pains from the North, where the interests were then navigation, and Daniel Webster was the great apostle of free trade.... Under Mr. Calhoun’s tariff the New England manufacturers prospered rapidly.... Success stimulated cupidity, and the “black tariff” of 1828 marked the growth of abuse.... It was then that Mr. Calhoun again stepped forth. He stated that the South had cheerfully paid the enormous burden of duties on imports when Northern manufactures were young and the Government weak; the manufacturers had become rich, and the Government strong—so strong that State rights were being merged into its overshadowing power; he therefore demanded a recognition of State rights, and an amelioration of those burdens that the South had so long borne.

April

The birds that sing in the leafy Spring,
With the light of love on each glancing wing,
Have lessons to last you the whole year through;
For what is “Coo! coo! te weet tu whu!”
But, properly rendered, “The wit to woo!”
A wit that brings worship and wisdom too!
Coo! coo! te weet tu whu—
The wit to woo—te weet tu whu!

The verb “to love,” in the tongue of the dove,
Heard noon and night in the cedar grove,
Is very soon taught where the heart is true:
For the wit to woo, and the wisdom too,
Lie in the one sweet syllable, “Coo!”
But echo me well, and you learn to woo—
Coo! coo! te weet tu whu—
The wit to woo—te weet tu whu!
William Gilmore Simms

Hidden no longer
In moss-covered ledges,
Starring the wayside,
Under the hedges,
Violet, Pimpernel,
Flashing with dew,
Daisy and Asphodel
Blossom anew.

Down in the bosky dells
Everywhere,
Faintly their fairy bells
Chime in the air.
Thanks to the sunshine!
Thanks to the showers!
They come again, bloom again,
Beautiful flowers!
Theophilus Hunter Hill
(Author of the first book published under copyright of the Confederate Government)

At the critical moment A. P. Hill was always strongest. No wonder that both Lee and Jackson, when in the delirium of their last moments on earth, stood again to battle, and saw the fiery form of A. P. Hill leading his columns on.

French blood stained with glory the Lilies,
While centuries marched to their grave;
And over bold Scot and gay Irish
The Thistle and Shamrock yet wave:
Ours, ours be the noble Magnolia,
That only on Southern soil grows,
The Symbol of life everlasting:—
Dear to us as to England the Rose.
Albert Pike
(“Born in Boston; but an adopted and devoted son of Dixie”)

We are His witnesses; out of the dim
Dark region of Death we have risen with Him.
Back from our sepulchre rolleth the stone,
And Spring, the bright Angel, sits smiling thereon.
John B. Tabb
(“Easter Flowers”)

We are His witnesses. See, where He lay
The snow that late bound us is folded away;
And April, fair Magdalen, weeping anon,
Stands flooded with light of the new-risen Sun!
John B. Tabb
(“Easter Flowers”)

His character was lofty and pure, his presence and demeanor dignified and courteous, with the simplicity of a child; and he at once inspired the respect and gained the confidence of cultivated gentlemen and rugged frontiersmen.

History tears down statues and monuments to attributes and deeds, unless those attributes have been devoted to some noble end, and those deeds done in a righteous cause.

Because they fought in perfect faith, believing
The cause they fought for was the just, the true;
And had small hope of glittering gain receiving,
While following, with standard high in view,
Where led their single-hearted, dauntless chief:
Therefore doth Glory stand beside our grief!
Victoria Elizabeth Gittings

Telegram from Secretary Seward confirming promise (March 15) as to Sumter, 1861

An angel’s heart, an angel’s mouth,
Not Homer’s, could alone for me
Hymn forth the great Confederate South,
Virginia first, then Lee.

Oh, realm of tears! But let her bear
This blazon to the end of time:
No nation rose so white and fair,
None fell so pure of crime.
P. S. Worsley
(England)

[From lines written on the fly-leaf of a translation of the Iliad, presented to General Lee by the Oxford scholar in 1866]

Furl that Banner, for ’tis weary;
Round its staff ’tis drooping dreary;
Furl it, fold it, it is best;
For there’s not a man to wave it,
And there’s not a sword to save it,
And there’s not one left to lave it
In the blood which heroes gave it;
And its foes now scorn and brave it;
Furl it, hide it, let it rest!

Furl that Banner! True, ’tis gory,
Yet ’tis wreathed around with glory,
And ’twill live in song and story,
Though its folds are in the dust:
For its fame on brightest pages,
Penned by poets and by sages,
Shall go sounding down the ages,—
Furl its folds though now we must.
Abraham J. Ryan
(The Conquered Banner)

Man is so constituted—the immutable laws of our being are such—that to stifle the sentiment and extinguish the hallowed memories of a people is to destroy their manhood.

We had, I was satisfied, sacred principles to maintain and rights to defend for which we were in duty bound to do our best, even if we perished in the endeavor.

We must forevermore consecrate in our hearts our old battle flag of the Southern Cross—not now as a political symbol, but as the consecrated emblem of an heroic epoch. The people that forgets its heroic dead is already dying at the heart, and we believe we shall be truer and better citizens of the United States if we are true to our past.

From this time a clear-cut issue was formulated and presented to the States and the people. The “firing upon the flag of the nation” was made the immediate pretext for aggressive measures against the Lower South. As so heralded, it served to inflame the hearts of thousands who, it seems, had not noticed or who had forgotten, as it is forgotten to-day, that this was not the first firing upon the Stars and Stripes. The flag had been fired upon from the coast of South Carolina as early as January 9, 1861, for the same reason as that which provoked attack upon it on April 12.

North Carolina instructs her delegates to the Continental Congress to declare for independence, 1776

The history of the world presents no parallel to the manner in which he wrote himself upon his own age, and subsequent ages, with his pen. He was no teacher like Plato; he was not a professional litterateur like Voltaire; he was not a mere maker of books like Carlyle; and yet he put his stamp indelibly upon the minds and hearts of English-speaking people during his own day and for all time to come.

The fact is, the boys around here want watching, or they’ll take something. A few days ago I heard they surrounded two of our best citizens because they were named Fort and Sumter. Most of them are so hot that they fairly siz when you pour water on them, and that’s the way they make up their military companies here now—when a man applies to join the volunteers they sprinkle him, and if he sizzes they take him, and if he don’t they don’t!

There was but one exception to the general grief too remarkable to be passed over in silence. Among the extreme Radicals in Congress, Mr. Lincoln’s determined clemency and liberality towards the Southern people had made an impression so unfavorable that, though they were shocked at his murder, they did not, among themselves, conceal gratification that he was no longer in their way.

The Union League of America was organized in Cleveland, Ohio, during the war by friends of Thaddeus Stevens, the Radical leader of Congress. Its prime object was the confiscation of the property of the South. The chief obstacle to this program was Abraham Lincoln. Hence the first work of the League was to form a conspiracy against Lincoln and prevent his renomination for a second term.

I have only to say that the militia will not be furnished to the powers at Washington for any such use or purpose as they have in view. Your object is to subjugate the Southern States, and a requisition made upon me for such an object—an object, in my judgment, not within the purview of the constitution or the act of 1795—will not be complied with. You have chosen to inaugurate civil war, and having done so, we will meet it in a spirit as determined as the administration has exhibited towards the South.

The scene [in the Virginia State Convention] is described as both solemn and affecting. One delegate, while speaking against the ordinance, broke down in incoherent sobs; another, who voted for it, wept like a child. The sentiment of the people had run ahead of their leaders.

It may be safely asserted that but for the adoption by the Federal Government of the policy of coercion towards the Cotton States, Virginia would not have seceded.... She simply in the hour of danger and sacrifice held faithful to the principles which she had ofttimes declared and which have ever found sturdy defenders in every part of the Republic.

Tennessee will not furnish a single man for coercion, but 50,000 if necessary for the defense of our rights or those of our Southern brothers.

I say emphatically that Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister States.

Hark to an exiled son’s appeal,
Maryland!
My mother State! to thee I kneel,
Maryland!
For life and death, for woe and weal,
Thy peerless chivalry reveal,
And gird thy beauteous limbs with steel,
Maryland! My Maryland!

Thou wilt not cower in the dust,
Maryland!
Thy beaming sword shall never rust,
Maryland!
Remember Carroll’s sacred trust,
Remember Howard’s warlike thrust,—
And all thy slumberers with the just,
Maryland! My Maryland!
James Ryder Randall

Citizens of Baltimore, objecting to coercion of the seceded States, oppose the passing of the Sixth Massachusetts, their action resulting in the first bloodshed of the War, 1861

The tempting prize offered Lee in the shape of supreme command of the Army of the Union did not swerve him from his integrity for an instant. It was currently reported at the time that Gen. Winfield Scott implored him, “For God’s sake, don’t resign!” Every argument that power, luxury, limitless resources, and the untrammeled control of the situation could devise was brought to bear upon him.

From the date of its settlement, Maryland became the Land of Sanctuary—the only spot in the known world where the persecuted of all lands were at liberty to worship God according to the dictates of their own hearts. Freedom of conscience was offered by Lord Baltimore to the oppressed of the Old World, thus carrying into effect the original motive of Sir George Calvert’s colonization scheme when seeking a charter from King Charles I.

Passage of the “Act Concerning Religion” by the Maryland Assembly, 1649, endorsing the principles of religious toleration promulgated by Cecilius Calvert in 1634

The dusk of the South is tender
As the touch of a soft, soft hand;
It comes between splendor and splendor,
The sweetest of service to render,
And gathers the cares of the land.

Above it the soft sky blushes
And pales like an April rose;
Within it the South wind hushes,
And the Jessamine’s heart outgushes,
And earth like an emerald glows.
John P. Sjolander

In seeds of laurel in the earth
The blossom of your fame is blown;
And somewhere, waiting for its birth,
The shaft is in the stone!
Henry Timrod

Apropos of this last, let me confess, Mr. President—before the praise of New England has died on my lips—that I believe the best product of her present life is the procession of 17,000 Vermont Democrats that for twenty-two years, undiminished by death, unrecruited by birth or conversion, have marched over their rugged hills, cast their Democratic ballots, and gone back home to pray for their unregenerate neighbors, and awoke to read the record of 26,000 Republican majority! May the God of the helpless and heroic help them!

Her lot may be hard, her skies may darken;
To Dixie’s voice we’ll ever hearken;
Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.
The coward may shirk, the wretch go whining,
But we’ll be true till the sun stops shining,
Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.

Chorus:
I wish I was in Dixie;
Away, away;
In Dixie’s land I’ll take my stand,
And live and die in Dixie.
Away, away,
Away down South in Dixie.
Marie Louise Eve

Homes without the means of support were no longer homes. With barns and mills and implements for tilling the soil all gone, with cattle, sheep, and every animal that furnished food to the helpless inmates carried off, they were dismal abodes of hunger, of hopelessness, and of almost measureless woe.

The twilight hours, like birds, flew by,
As lightly and as free;
Ten thousand stars were in the sky,
Ten thousand in the sea;
For every wave, with dimpled face,
That leaped into the air,
Had caught a star in its embrace
And held it trembling there.
Amelia B. Welby

Too much roseate nonsense has been indulged about life on the plantation or in the city in the ante-bellum days. Neither the planter nor the factor nor the lawyer led a life of idle ease and pleasure; they were workers, whose energy built up the State; they lived often rather in rude profusion than in luxury.

To Jefferson’s initiative and farsightedness we owe it that we secured without bloodshed, for a trifling sum of money, a territory which doubled our republic, assured its expansion to the Gulf of Mexico and to the Pacific, and thus lifted us, by a stroke of genius, into a world power of the first class.

May

The dead had rest; the Dove of Peace
Brooded o’er both with equal wings;
To both had come that great surcease.
The last omnipotent release
From all the world’s delirious stings.
To bugle deaf and signal-gun,
They slept, like heroes of old Greece,
Beneath the glebe at Arlington.

And in the Spring’s benignant reign,
The sweet May woke her harp of pines;
Teaching her choir a thrilling strain
Of jubilee to land and main.
She danced in emerald down the lines;
Denying largesse bright to none,
She saw no difference in the signs
That told who slept at Arlington.

She gave her grasses and her showers
To all alike who dreamed in dust;
Her song-birds wove their dainty bowers
Amid the jasmine buds and flowers,
And piped with an impartial trust—
Waifs of the air and liberal sun,
Their guileless glees were kind and just
To friend and foe at Arlington.
James Ryder Randall

The linnet, the lark, and oriel
Were chanting the loves they chant so well;
It was blue all above, below all green,
With the radiant glow of noon between.
Joseph Salyards
(Idothea; Idyl III)

A strange fatality attended us! Jackson killed in the zenith of his successful career; Longstreet wounded when in the act of striking a blow that would have rivalled Jackson’s at Chancellorsville in its results; and in each case the fire was from our own men! A blunder! Call it so; the old deacon would say that God willed it thus.

Chancellorsville, where 130,000 men were defeated by 60,000, is up to a certain point as much the tactical masterpiece of the nineteenth century as was Leuthen of the eighteenth.

The productions of nature soon became my playmates. I felt that an intimacy with them not consisting of friendship merely, but bordering on frenzy, must accompany my steps through life.

Lord of Hosts, that beholds us in battle, defending
The homes of our sires ’gainst the hosts of the foe,
Send us help on the wings of thy angels descending,
And shield from his terrors and baffle his blow.
Warm the faith of our sons, till they flame as the iron,
Red glowing from the fire-forge, kindled by zeal;
Make them forward to grapple the hordes that environ,
In the storm-rush of battle, through forests of steel!
From the Charleston Mercury

Battle of the Wilderness; Lee, with 60,000 men, attacks Grant with 140,000, 1864

It depends on the State itself, to retain or abolish the principle of representation, because it depends on itself whether it will continue a member of the Union. To deny this right would be inconsistent with the principle on which all our political systems are founded, which is, that the people have, in all cases, a right to determine how they will be governed.

(Rawle’s text-book on the Constitution, taught at West Point before the War between the States)

Who is the man, save this one, of whom it can be said that he held conspicuous leadership at the bar of two countries?

The slaves who ran away from their masters were set to work at once by General Butler and made to keep at it, much to their annoyance. One of these, having been put to it rather strong, said: “Golly, Massa Butler, dis nigger nebber had to work so hard befo’; dis chile gwine secede once moah.”

Having completed our repairs on May 8th, and while returning to our old anchorage, we heard heavy firing, and, going down the harbor, found the Monitor, with the iron-clads Galena, Naugatuck, and a number of heavy ships, shelling our batteries at Sewell’s Point. We stood directly for the Monitor, but as we approached they all ceased firing and retreated below the forts.

Because I feel that, in the Heavens above
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of “Mother.”
Edgar Allan Poe

Fearless and strong, self-dependent and ambitious, he had within him the making of a Napoleon, and yet his name is without spot or blemish.

... Ask the world—
The world has heard his story—
If all its annals can unfold
A prouder tale of glory?
If ever merely human life
Hath taught diviner moral—
If ever round a worthier brow
Was twined a purer laurel?
Margaret J. Preston

The Spanish legend tells us of the Cid,
That after death he rode erect, sedately
Along his lines, even as in life he did,
In presence yet more stately.

And thus our Stuart at this moment seems
To ride out of our dark and troubled story
Into the region of romance and dreams,
A realm of light and glory.
John R. Thompson

I do wish somebody would tell me where my place is on the field of battle! Wherever I go to look after the fight, I am told, “This is no place for you; you must go away.”

Lee, with 50,000 men, repulses Grant with 100,000, at Spottsylvania Court House; Lee “ordered” to the rear, 1864

Good is the Saxon speech! clear, short, and strong,
Its clean-cut words, fit both for prayer and song;
Good is this tongue for all the needs of life;
Good for sweet words with friend, or child, or wife.
········
’Tis good for laws; for vows of youth and maid;
Good for the preacher; or shrewd folk in trade;
Good for sea-calls when loud the rush of spray;
Good for war-cries where men meet hilt to hilt,
And man’s best blood like new-trod wine is spilt,—
Good for all times, and good for what thou wilt!
James Barron Hope

Texas troops, C. S. A., defeat Federals in last battle of the War, at Palmito Ranch, 1865, the victors learning from their prisoners that the Confederacy had fallen (Chas. Wm. Ramsdell)

[This exploration] was undertaken at the instance of President Jefferson, and together with the voyage which Captain Gray of Boston had made to the Columbia, in 1792, gave the United States a claim to all the territory covered by the States of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

Throughout the events that led up to the Revolution, it seemed ordained that Massachusetts was to suffer and Virginia to sympathize. Until the outbreak of actual hostilities scarcely anything of moment occurred on the soil of Virginia to incite her sons to champion the cause of freedom. Indeed, from the beginning of the controversy between the colonies and the mother country, the British Ministry seemed to have avoided any special cause of irritation to the people of the Old Dominion. The part, therefore, which Virginia took in the events of those days must be attributed to her devotion to the principles of liberty, to her interest in the common cause of the colonies, and particularly to her sympathy with Massachusetts in the suffering which that province was called upon to endure. If we lose sight of these motives as the springs of Virginia’s conduct in that struggle, we shall be unable to appreciate either the nobility of her spirit or the wisdom and energy which marked her initiative.

I refuse to make any acknowledgments for what I have done. My blood will be as seed sown in good ground, which will produce a hundred fold.

He came into military and political life like some blazing meteor, with exceeding brilliance and splendor speeding across the horizon of history. His activities in politics and war covered only a brief span of seventeen years, 1848 to 1865, and in so short a period but few men ever received more, maintained their parts better, were the recipients of greater honors, or bore themselves with nobler dignity, greater skill or more superb courage either in victory or defeat.

Hushed is the roll of the rebel drum,
The sabres are sheathed and the cannon are dumb;
And Fate, with pitiless hand, has furled
The flag that once challenged the gaze of the world.
John R. Thompson
(From “Lee to the Rear”)

But the fame of the Wilderness fight abides,
And down into history grandly rides
Calm and unmoved as in battle he sat,
The gray-bearded man in the black slouch hat.
John R. Thompson
(From “Lee to the Rear”)

The Dixie girls wear homespun cotton,
But their winning smiles I’ve not forgotten;
Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.
They’ve won my heart and naught surpasses
My love for the bright-eyed Dixie lasses;
Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.

Chorus:
I’ll give my life for Dixie;
Away, away;
In Dixie’s land I’ll take my stand,
And live and die for Dixie.
Away, away,
Away down South in Dixie.
Marie Louise Eve

How brilliant is the morning star;
The evening star how tender;
The light of both is in her eyes,—
Their softness and their splendor;
But for the lash that shades their sight,
They were too dazzling for the light,
And when she shuts them all is night,—
The daughter of Mendoza.
Mirabeau B. Lamar

Great Chieftain of our choice,
Albeit that people’s voice
No comfort speaks in thy lone granite keep;
Through those harsh iron bars
There come back from the stars
Low echoes of the prayers they nightly weep.
William Munford

Yet to all Americans it must be a regrettable chapter in our history when it is remembered that this man was no common felon, but a prisoner of state, a distinguished Indian fighter, a Mexican veteran, a man who had held a seat in Congress, who had been Secretary of War of the United States, and who for four years had stood at the head of the Confederate States.

A rich and well-stored mind is the only true philosopher’s stone, extracting pure gold from all the base material around. It can create its own beauty, wealth, power, happiness. It has no dreary solitudes. The past ages are its possession, and the long line of the illustrious dead are all its friends.

Cease firing! There are here no foes to fight!
Grim war is o’er and smiling peace now reigns;
Cease useless strife—no matter who was right—
True magnanimity from hate abstains.
Cease firing!
Major William Meade Pegram

The last Confederate army, under General Kirby Smith, surrenders at Baton Rouge, 1865

Representing nothing on God’s earth now,
And naught in the water below it,
As a pledge of a nation that’s dead and gone,
Keep it, dear Captain, and show it.
Show it to those who will lend an ear
To the tale this paper can tell
Of liberty born, of the patriot’s dream,
Of a storm-cradled nation that fell.

Too poor to possess the precious ores,
And too much of a stranger to borrow,
We issued to-day our promise to pay,
And hoped to repay on the morrow.
Major S. A. Jonas
(From “Lines on the back of a Confederate note”)

Old time negroes intuitively knew who “belonged” to them and who did not. The following incident is told of Senator Sumner’s visit to friends at Gallatin, Tennessee, some years before the war; the colloquy is between the Senator and “Old Virginia Jeff:”

“Jeff, I hear you call all the white folks down here ‘Marse’—‘Marse Henry,’ ‘Marse John’ or what not, isn’t that true?”

“And you always call me ‘Mister Sumner.’ Now, Jeff, here’s a quarter. During the rest of my visit you call me Marse Charles, you hear?”

If we wish to be free—if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending—if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained—we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!

Those who oppose slavery in Kansas do not base their opposition upon any philanthropic principles, or any sympathy for the African race. For, in their so-called Constitution, framed at Topeka, they deem that entire race so inferior and degraded as to exclude them all forever from Kansas, whether they be bond or free.

... All down the hills of Habersham,
All through the valleys of Hall,
The rushes cried Abide, abide,
The wilful waterweeds held me thrall,
The laving laurel turned my tide,
The ferns and the fondling grass said Stay.
The dewberry dipped for to work delay,
And the little reeds sighed Abide, abide,
Here in the hills of Habersham,
Here in the valleys of Hall.
Sidney Lanier

June

At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog above its breast,
The ruin moulders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
Edgar Allan Poe

... The year,
And all the gentle daughters in her train,
March in our ranks, and in our service wield
Long spears of golden grain!
A yellow blossom as her fairy shield,
June flings her azure banner to the wind,
While in the order of their birth
Her sisters pass, and many an ample field
Grows white beneath their steps, till now, behold,
Its endless sheets unfold
The snow of Southern summers!
Henry Timrod
(Ethnogenesis)

In regard to African Slavery, which has played so important a part in our political history, Randolph was an Emancipationist, as distinguished from an Abolitionist. This distinction was a very broad one; as broad as that between Algernon Sidney and Jack Cade; or between Charlemagne and Peter the Hermit—in fact, it was the difference between Reason and Fanaticism. On this subject Randolph and Clay concurred; both were Emancipationists, and both denounced the Abolitionists; as did also Webster, and all the best, wisest, and purest men of that day.

Other leaders have had their triumphs. Conquerors have won crowns, and honors have been piled on the victors of earth’s great battles, but never, sir, came man to more loving people.

In the hallowed stillness of your bridal eve, ere the guests have all assembled, lift up to yours the pale face, love’s perfect image, and you shall see that vision to which God our Father vouchsafes no equal this side the jasper throne—you shall see the ineffable eyes of innocence entrusting to you, unworthy, oh! so unworthy, her destiny through time and eternity. Inhale the perfume of her breath and hair, that puts the violets of the wood to shame; press your first kiss (for now she is all your own), your first kiss upon the trembling petals of her lips, and you shall hear, with ears you knew not that you had, the silver chiming of your wedding bells far, far up in heaven.

Instead of superficial adornments and supine action, the intellectual sympathies and interests of these women were large, and they undertook with wise and just guidance, the management of households and farms and servants, leaving the men free for war and civil government. These noble and resolute women were the mothers of the Gracchi, of the men who built up the greatness of the Union and accomplished the unexampled achievements of the Confederacy.

To the brave all homage render,
Weep ye skies of June!
With a radiance pure and tender,
Shine, oh saddened moon!
Dead upon the field of glory,
Hero fit for song and story,
Lies our bold dragoon.
John R. Thompson

Peace to the dead! though peace is not
In the regal dome or the pauper cot;
Peace to the dead! there’s peace, we trust,
With the pale dreamers in the dust.
James Ryder Randall

Monument created, 1910, to the memory of Confederate officers who perished from starvation and exposure at Johnson’s Island

Aurora faints in the fulgent fire
Of the Monarch of Morning’s bright embrace
And the summer day climbs higher and higher
Up the cerulean space;
The pearl-tints fade from the radiant grain,
And the sportive breeze of the ocean dies,
And soon in the noontide’s soundless rain
The fields seem graced by a million eyes;
Each grain with a glance from its lidded fold
As bright as a gnome’s in his mine of gold,
While the slumb’rous glamour of beam and heat
Glides over and under the windless wheat.
Paul Hamilton Hayne

He sleeps—what need to question now
If he were wrong or right?
He knows ere this whose cause was just
In God the Father’s sight.
He wields no warlike weapons now,
Returns no foeman’s thrust,—
Who but a coward would revile
An honest soldier’s dust?

Roll, Shenandoah, proudly roll,
Adown thy rocky glen,
Above thee lies the grave of one
Of Stonewall Jackson’s men.
Mary Ashley Townsend

The indomitable courage, the patient endurance of privations, the supreme devotion of the Southern soldiers, will stand on the pages of history, as engraven on a monument more enduring than brass.

Battle of Bethel, Va., the first regular engagement of the War between the States, 1861

We believed that it was most desirable that the North should win; we believed in the principle that the Union is indissoluble; but we equally believed that those who stood against us held just as sacred convictions that were the opposite of ours, and we respected them, as every man with a heart must respect those who gave all for their belief.

The band preceding the coffin smote on their ears with poignant loud lamenting, then carried its sorrow to die moaning on the night. As the shadowy cortege filed by—men bearing lanterns on either side the hearse—a horse, riderless, with boots empty in the stirrups, following—a few soldiers carrying arms reversed—a single carriage with mourners—the effect was infinitely sad. So common the spectacle during the Battle Summer, it did not occur to them to even wonder which of our martyrs was thus journeying to his last home.

A little bird there was once, with golden wings;
In the stars she would build her nest;
And so, with a twig in her beak, at eventide
When Hesperus sank to rest,
Away to the starry deep she flew;—for said she,
“In the Pleiades shall my nesting be!”
Ah, little bird! There are heights far, far too high
For the reach of those tiny wings!
Down here by this thicket of haw let us rest, you and I,
And list what the brooklet sings!
Allen Kerr Bond

A flash from the edge of a hostile trench,
A puff of smoke, a roar
Whose echo shall roll from the Kenesaw Hills
To the farthermost Christian shore,
Proclaims to the world that the warrior priest
Will battle for right no more.
Henry Lynden Flash

O, Art, high gift of Heaven! how oft defamed
When seeming praised! To most a craft that fits,
By dead, prescriptive Rule, the scattered bits
Of gathered knowledge; even so misnamed
By some who would invoke thee.
Washington Allston

W’en banjer git ter talkin’
You better hol’ yo’ tongue,
Hit mek you think youse gre’t an’ gran’
An’ rich an’ strong an’ young,
An’ ev’rything whar scrumpshus
Right at yo’ feet is flung.

Oh, my soul gits up an’ humps hisse’f
An’ goes outside an’ walks,
W’en a picker gits ter pickin’
An’ de
banjer
talks!
Anne Virginia Culbertson

Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia never sustained defeat. Finally succumbing to exhaustion, to the end they were not overthrown in fight.

Now, Ham, de only nigger whut wuz runnin’ on der packet,
Got lonesome in de barber-shop, an’ c’u’dn’t stan’ de racket;
An’ so, fur to amuse hese’f, he steamed some wood an’ bent it,
An’ soon he had a banjo made—de fust dat wuz invented.

De ’possum had as fine a tail as dis dat I’s a-singin’;
De ha’r’s so long an’ thick an’ strong,—des fit fur banjo-stringin’;
Dat nigger shaved ’em off as short as washday-dinner graces;
An’ sorted ob’ em by de size, f’om little E’s to basses.
Irwin Russell
(Origin of the Banjo on Board the Ark)

By Captain Winslow’s account, the Kearsarge was struck twenty-eight times; but his ship being armored, my shot and shell fell harmless into the sea. The Alabama was not mortally wounded until after the Kearsarge had been firing at her an hour and ten minutes. In the meantime, in spite of the armor of the Kearsarge, I lodged a rifled percussion shell near her stern post—where there were no chains—which failed to explode because of the defect of the cap. On so slight an incident—the defect of a percussion-cap—did the battle hinge.

Jamestown and St. Mary’s are both within the segment of a circle of comparatively small radius whose centre is at the mouth of the Chesapeake. In this strategic region, the key of America, Raleigh chose the base from which he would colonize the new empire; here the Jamestown experiment succeeded, after Raleigh’s head had fallen on the block; the Revolution was fired by the eloquence of Patrick Henry, and was consummated at Yorktown; the War of 1812 was settled by the victories of North Point and Fort McHenry; the crisis of the Civil War occurred; and seven Presidents of the United States were born.

The first Lord Baltimore obtains from the Crown a grant of the territory lying between the Potomac and the 40th parallel, 1632

Secession of West Virginia from Virginia sustained by the Federal Government, 1863

“Virginia, who had given to all the States in common five great commonwealths of the northwest and the county of Kentucky, was now bereft of half of what remained to her”

What care I if Cyrus McCormick was born in Rockbridge County? These new-fangled “contraptions” are to the old system what the little, dirty, black steam-tug is to the three-decker, with its cloud of snowy canvas towering to the skies—the grandest and most beautiful sight in the world. I wouldn’t give Uncle Isham’s picked man, “long Billy Carter,” leading the field, with one good drink of whisky in him—I wouldn’t give one swing of his cradle and one “ketch” of his straw for all the mowers and reapers in creation.

If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.
Edgar Allan Poe

It is the mountain to the sea
That makes a messenger of me:
And, lest I loiter on the way
And lose what I am sent to say,
He sets his reverie to song
And bids me sing it all day long.
John B. Tabb

I have here a small volume entitled, “John Randolph, by Henry Adams.” It is one of a series called “American Statesmen,” and emanates from the thin air of Boston. The series is edited by Mr. J. T. Morse, Jr. By what law of selection he has been governed in allotting to particular authors the preparation of respective biographies it is impossible to divine. It is quite clear, however, that he has not followed any rule of qualification or congeniality hitherto recognized by men or angels. For example, a foreigner, Dr. Von Holtz, who, in an emphatically European and un-American treatise on the Federal Constitution, had already denounced Calhoun as a kind of Lucifer, is appointed his biographer; Henry Clay, the father of Protection (as it is called), is assigned to Carl Schurz, who, I understand, is an ardent advocate of Free Trade; while John Randolph is turned over to the tender mercies of a descendant of the first Vice-President, and the grandson of John Quincy Adams!

Had this unique law of selection prevailed hitherto, we might have had a biography of Luther by Leo the Tenth; a life of St. Thomas Aquinas by Thomas Payne; while Pontius Pilate, or more likely the devil himself, would have been selected to chronicle the divine career of Jesus Christ.

But far away another line is stretching dark and long,
Another flag is floating free where armed legions throng;
Another war-cry’s on the air, as wakes the martial drum,
And onward still, in serried ranks, the Southern soldiers come.
George Herbert Sass

The close of the Civil War found the conquering States so nearly equally divided between the Radical and Conservative parties, that if the South should be restored to her relative might in the Union, the balance would be thrown at once in favor of the Conservatives. The problem therefore assumed a mathematical form, and demanded that the South should not reinforce the Conservatives of the North. This could be prevented only in two ways, viz.; either by keeping the South out of the Union entirely or by placing the political power there in the hands of a minority. To adopt one or the other of these expedients was a party necessity. This is the whole key to Reconstruction; and fifty years hence no man living will be found to deny it.

The duties exacted of us by civilization and Christianity are not less obligatory in the country of our enemy than in our own.

The battle holds a conspicuous place in the history of the Revolution. It was our first clear victory over the British, and won over one of England’s most distinguished naval officers.

North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana readmitted to the Union, 1868

His trumpet-tones re-echoed like
Evangels to the free,
Where Chimborazo views the world
Mosaic’d in the sea;
And his proud form shall stand erect
In that triumphal car
Which bears to the Valhalla gates
Heroic Bolivar!
James Ryder Randall

Yes, there’s a charm about the name of Mary
Which haunts me like some old enchanter’s spell,
Or rather like the voice of some sweet fairy,
Singing low love-songs in a lonely dell.
It hath a music that can never weary,
A strain that seems of love and grief to tell,
The echoes of an anthem from the shrine
Of peace, and bliss, and rest, and love divine.
William Woodson Hendree

Robert E. Lee marries Mary Page Custis, great-granddaughter of Martha Washington, 1831

July

Meanwhile, unreluctant,
Earth like Danae lies;
Listen! is it fancy,
That beneath us sighs,
As that warm lap receives the largesse of the skies?

Jove, it is, descendeth
In those crystal rills;
And this world-wide tremor
Is a pulse that thrills
To a god’s life infused through veins of velvet hills.

Wait, thou jealous sunshine,
Break not on their bliss;
Earth will blush in roses
Many a day for this,
And bend a brighter brow beneath thy burning kiss.
Henry Timrod

To the Union commander, General George Gordon Meade, history will accord the honor of having handled his army at Gettysburg with unquestioned ability. The record and the results of the battle entitle him to a high place among Union leaders. To him and to his able subordinates and heroic men is due the credit of having successfully met and repelled the Army of Northern Virginia in the meridian of its hope and confidence and power.

General Lee distinctly ordered Longstreet to attack early the morning of the second day, and if he had done so, two of the largest corps of Meade’s army would not have been in the fight; but Longstreet delayed the attack until four o’clock in the afternoon, and thus lost his opportunity of occupying Little Round Top, the key to the position, which he might have done in the morning without firing a shot or losing a man.

General Lee ordered Longstreet to attack at daybreak on the morning of the third day.... He did not attack until two or three o’clock in the afternoon, the artillery opening at one.... Nothing that occurred at Gettysburg, nor anything that has been written since of that battle, has lessened the conviction that, had Lee’s orders been promptly and cordially executed, Meade’s centre on the third day would have been penetrated and the Union Army overwhelmingly defeated.

General Lee, according to the testimony of Colonel Walter H. Taylor, Colonel C. S. Venable, and General A. L. Long, who were present when the order was given, ordered Longstreet to make the attack on the last day, with the three divisions of his corps, and two divisions of A. P. Hill’s corps, and that instead of doing so he sent fourteen thousand men to assail Meade’s army in his strong position, and heavily intrenched.

Opinion, let me alone: I am not thine.
Prim creed, with categoric point, forbear
To feature me my Lord by rule and line.
Thou canst not measure Mistress Nature’s hair,
Not one sweet inch: nay, if thy sight is sharp,
Wouldst count the strings upon an angel’s harp?
Forbear, forbear.
Sidney Lanier

A golden pallor of voluptuous light
Filled the warm Southern night;
The moon, clear orbed, above the sylvan scene
Moved like a stately queen,
So rife with conscious beauty all the while,
What could she do but smile
At her perfect loveliness below,
Glassed in the tranquil flow
Of crystal fountains
And unruffled streams?
Paul Hamilton Hayne

Do orioles from verdant Chesapeake,
And crested cardinal,
With linnets from the Severn, come to seek,
Obedient to thy call,
If they can give thee one new music-thought,
Who ev’ry note from ev’ry land hast caught?
E. G. Lee
(The Mocking Bird)

Sweet bird! that from yon dancing spray
Dost warble forth thy varied lay,
From early morn to close of day
Melodious changes singing,
Sure thine must be the magic art
That bids my drowsy fancy start,
While from the furrows of my heart,
Hope’s fairy flowers are springing.
Charles William Hubner
(The Mocking Bird)

And to defenders and besiegers it is alike unjust to say, even though it has been said by the highest authority, that Port Hudson surrendered only because Vicksburg had fallen. The simple truth is that Port Hudson surrendered because its hour had come. The garrison was literally starving. With less than 3000 famished men in line, powerful mines beneath the salients, and a last assault about to be delivered at 10 places, what else was left to do?

We heard Mammy say “Hello—H’llo!
(What meks you rattle de handle so?)
Is dat you, Miss?—wants Main twenty-free!
(I ain’t gwine to have you foolin’ wid me!)
I say, Main twenty——what’s ailin’ you?
‘Bizzy!’ I guess I’se bizzy, too!
You gim-me dat number twenty-free,
I’se bizzier ’n you ever dared ter be!”
Mary Johnson Blackburn

The Old World had its Xantippe; but——the facts have not been fully established in the New!

“Under This Marble Tomb Lies The Body
Of The HON. JOHN CUSTIS, Esq.,
Of The City Of Williamsburg,
And Parish of Bruton,
Formerly Of Hungar’s Parish, On The
Eastern Shore
Of Virginia, And County Of Northampton,
Age 71 Years, And Yet Lived But Seven,
Which Was The Space Of Time He Kept
A Bachelor’s Home At Arlington,
On The Eastern Shore Of Virginia.”

Jackson’s genius for war, Lee’s resistless magnetism, were not vouchsafed to Hill; but in those characteristics in which he excelled: invincible tenacity, absolute unconsciousness of fear, a courage never to submit or yield, no one has risen above him, not even in the annals of the Army of Northern Virginia. He was the very “Ironsides” of the South—Cromwell in some of his essential characteristics coming again in the person and genius of D. H. Hill.

Though the Grey were outnumbered, he counted no odd,
But fought like a demon and struck like a god,
Disclaiming defeat on the blood-curdled sod,
As he pledged to the South that he loved.
Virginia Frazer Boyle

Pleasant and wonderfully fair,
Like one that knows her own domain,
Magnolia-flowers in her hair,
And orange-blossoms rare,
Let her not knock in vain!
Lift up your equal heads to her,
Of all your courts contain, co-heir,
For lo! she claims her own again!
Daniel B. Lucas
(The South Shall Claim Her Own Again)

For four years the Northern States fought to keep their Southern sisters in the Federal family; then having soundly thrashed these sisters in order to keep them at home, they suddenly shut the door and kicked them down the steps! The “erring sisters” are now fully restored to the family circle; but they had a longer and more painful struggle in the effort to get back than in the attempt to get away. More briefly, for four years the Federal government, led by Lincoln, maintained that all of the Southern States were in the Union and could not get out; and then for five years, under the rule of the Radicals, it argued that some of these States were out of the Union and could not get in!

Reconstruction ended and the Union restored by the readmission of Georgia, 1870

A visitor in the Old Chapel Graveyard, in Clarke County, Virginia, asked the aged negro sexton if he knew the whereabouts of a certain grave, adding that the deceased was her relative.

“Ole Mis’ Anne? Why ob cose I knows whar my ole mistis is! She your gran’ma! Jus’ to think now, if you hadn’t spoke we never would have knowed we was related!”

Uncle Remus was quite a fogy in his idea of negro education. One day a number of negro children, on their way home from school, were impudent to the old man, and he was giving them an untempered piece of his mind, when a gentleman apologized for them by saying: “Oh well, they are school children. You know how they are.”

“Dat’s what make I say what I duz,” said Uncle Remus. “Dey better be at home pickin’ up chips. What a nigger gwineter learn outen books? I kin take a bar’l stave and fling mo’ sense inter a nigger in one minnit dan all de school houses betwixt dis en de New Nited States en Midgigin. Don’t talk, honey! wid one bar’l stave I kin fairly lif de vail er ignunce.”

What was my offense? My husband was absent—an exile. He had never been a politician or in any way engaged in the struggle now going on, his age preventing. The house was built by my father, a Revolutionary soldier, who served the whole seven years for your independence.... Was it for this that you turned me, my young daughter and little son out upon the world without a shelter? Or was it because my husband was the grandson of the Revolutionary patriot and “rebel,” Richard Henry Lee, and the near kinsman of the noblest of Christian warriors, the greatest of generals, Robert E. Lee?... Your name will stand on history’s page as the Hunter of weak women and innocent children; the Hunter to destroy defenseless villages and refined and beautiful homes—to torture afresh the agonized hearts of widows; the Hunter of Africa’s poor sons and daughters, to lure them on to ruin and death of soul and body; the Hunter with the relentless heart of a wild beast, the face of a fiend and the form of a man.

[Extract from letter to General Hunter, often referred to as the best example of excoriating rebuke in American literature. Mrs. Lee’s home was burned July 19, 1864]

The muffled drum’s sad roll has beat
The soldier’s last tattoo;
No more on life’s parade shall meet
The brave and fallen few.
On Fame’s eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And Glory guards, with solemn round,
The bivouac of the dead.
Theodore O’Hara

We thought they slept!—the sons who kept
The names of noble sires,
And slumbered while the darkness crept
Around their vigil fires!
But, aye, the “Golden Horseshoe” knights
Their Old Dominion keep,
Whose foes have found enchanted ground,
But not a knight asleep.
Francis O. Ticknor

In the darksome depths of the fathomless mine
My tireless arm doth play,
Where the rocks never saw the sun’s decline,
Or the dawn of the glorious day.
·······
I blow the bellows, I forge the steel,
In all the shops of trade;
I hammer the ore and turn the wheel
Where my arms of strength are made;
I manage the furnace, the mill, the mint,
I carry, I spin, I weave,
And all my doings I put in print
On every Saturday eve.
George W. Cutter
(The Song of Steam)

... The rush, the tumult, and the fear
Of this our modern age
Have only widened out the poet’s sphere,
Have given him a broader stage
On which to act his part.
The spiritual world of godlike aspirations,
The kingdom of the sympathetic heart,
The fair domain of high imaginations,
Lie open to the poet as of old.
Wrong still is wrong, and right is right,
·······
And to declare that poetry must go,
Is to do God a wrong.
William P. Trent
(The Age and the Poet)

Ante-bellum Master: “Julius, you rascal, if this happens again we’ll have to part.”

The nights are full of love;
The stars and moon take up the golden tale
Of the sunk sun, and passionate and pale,
Mixing their fires above,
Grow eloquent thereof.
Madison Cawein

“Hush, Mary Van,” commanded Willis; “you can’t crow, you’ve got to cackle.”

“I haven’t neether; I can crow just as good as you. Can’t I, Mammy Phyllis?”

“Well,” solemnly answered Phyllis, “it soun’ mo’ ladylike ter hear er hen cackle dan ter crow, but dem wimmen fokes whut wants ter heah dersefs crow is got de right ter do it,” shaking her head in resignation but disapproval, “but I allus notice dat de roosters keeps mo’ comp’ny wid hens whut cackles dan dem whut crows. G’long now an’ cackle like er nice lit’le hen.”

’Tis night! calm, lovely, silent, cloudless night!
Unnumbered stars on Heaven’s blue ocean-stream,
Ships of Eternity! shed silver light,
Pure as an infant’s or an angel’s dream;
And still exhaustless, glorious, ever-bright,
Such as Creation’s dawn beheld them beam,
In changeless orbits hold their ceaseless race
For endless ages over boundless space!
Richard Henry Wilde

When he first set down he ’peared to keer mighty little ’bout playin’, and wished he hadn’t come. He tweedle-leedled a little on the trible, and twoodle-oodle-oodled some on the base—just foolin’ and boxin’ the thing’s jaws for bein’ in his way. And I says to a man settin’ next to me, s’I “what sort of fool play’n is that?... He thinks he’s a doing of it; but he ain’t got no idee, no plan of nuthin’. If he’d play me up a tune of some kind or other, I’d——”

... He fetcht up his right wing, he fetcht up his left wing, he fetcht up his centre, he fetcht up his reserves. He fired by file, he fired by platoons, by company, by regiments and by brigades. He opened his cannon, siege guns down thar, Napoleons here, twelve-pounders yonder, big guns, little guns, middle-size guns, round shot, shell, shrapnel, grape, canister, mortars, mines and magazines, every livin’ battery and bomb a’goin’ at the same time. The house trembled, the lights danced, the walls shuk, the floor came up, the ceilin’ come down, the sky spilt, the ground rockt—heavens and earth, creation, sweet potatoes, Moses, nine-pences, glory, ten-penny nails, my Mary Ann, hallelujah, Samson in a ’simmon tree, Jeroosal’m, Tump Tompson in a tumbler-cart, roodle—oodle—oodle—oodle—ruddle—uddle—uddle—uddle—raddle—addle—addle—addle—addle—riddle—iddle—iddle—iddle—reetle—eetle—eetle—eetle—eetle—p-r-r-r-r-r-land! per lang! per lang! p-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-lang! Bang!... When I come to....

Let me also recall the fact that on July 30, 1619, eighteen months before the Pilgrims set foot on American soil, the vine of liberty had so deeply taken root in the colony of Virginia that there was assembled in the church at Jamestown a free representative body (the first on American soil)—the House of Burgesses—to deliberate for the welfare of the people.

It was probably the most remarkable evidence on record of the resourcefulness of the Anglo-Saxon race, and its ability and determination to dominate. Driven to desperation by conditions that threatened to destroy their civilization, the citizens of the South, through this organization, turned upon their enemies, overwhelmed them, and became again masters of their own soil ... and its proper use must be commended by all good men everywhere, for by it was preserved the purest Anglo-Saxon civilization of this nation.

August

A trembling haze hangs over all the fields—
The panting cattle in the river stand
Seeking the coolness which its wave scarce yields.
It seems a Sabbath thro’ the drowsy land:
So hush’d is all beneath the Summer’s spell,
I pause and listen for some faint church bell.

The leaves are motionless—the song-bird’s mute—
The very air seems somnolent and sick:
The spreading branches with o’er-ripened fruit
Show in the sunshine all their clusters thick,
While now and then a mellow apple falls
With a dull sound within the orchard’s walls.

The sky has but one solitary cloud,
Like a dark island in a sea of light;
The parching furrows ’twixt the corn-rows plough’d
Seem fairly dancing in my dazzled sight,
While over yonder road a dusty haze
Grows reddish purple in the sultry blaze.
James Barron Hope

The Southampton Insurrection, which occurred in August, 1831, was one of those untoward incidents which so often marked the history of slavery. Under the leadership of one Nat Turner, a negro preacher of some education, who felt that he had been called of God to deliver his race from bondage, the negroes attacked the whites at night, and before the assault could be suppressed, fifty-seven whites, principally women and children, had been killed. This deplorable event assumed an even more portentous aspect when it was realized that the leader was a slave to whom the privilege of education had been accorded, and that one of his lieutenants was a free negro. In addition, there existed a wide-spread belief among the whites that influences and instigations from without the State were responsible for the insurrection.

But in addition to the Southampton Massacre, and the failure of the Legislature to enact any effective legislation, the contemporary rise of the Abolitionists in the North came as an even more powerful factor to embarrass the efforts of the Virginia emancipators. Unlike the anti-slavery men of former years, this new school not only attacked the institution of slavery, but the morality of the slaveholders and their sympathizers. In their fierce arraignment, not only were the humane and considerate linked in infamy with the cruel and intolerant, but the whole population of the slave-holding States, their civilization and their morals were the object of unrelenting and incessant assaults.

Resolved, “That secession from the United States Government is the duty of every Abolitionist, since no one can take office or deposit his vote under the Constitution without violating his anti-slavery principles, and rendering himself an abettor of the slave-holder in his sin.”

His last campaign alone, even ending as it did in defeat, would have sufficed to fix him forever as a star of the first magnitude in the constellation of great captains. Though he succumbed at last to the “policy of attrition,” pursued by his patient and able antagonist, it was not until Grant had lost in the campaign over 124,000 men, better armed and equipped—two men for every one that Lee had had in his army from the beginning of the campaign.

By the recognized universal public law of all the earth, war dissolves all political compacts. Our forefathers gave as one of their grounds for asserting their independence that the King of Great Britain had “abdicated government here by declaring us out of his protection and waging war upon us.” The people and the Government of the Northern States of the late Union have acted in the same manner toward Missouri, and have dissolved, by war, the connection heretofore existing between her and them.

Very soon after, the Essex was seen approaching under full steam. Stevens, as humane as he was true and brave, finding that he could not bring a single gun to bear upon the coming foe, sent all his people over the bows ashore, remaining alone to set fire to his vessel; this he did so effectually that he had to jump from the stern into the river and save himself by swimming; and with colors flying, the gallant Arkansas, whose decks had never been pressed by the foot of an enemy, was blown into the air.

Oh, de cabin at de quarter in de old plantation days,
Wid de garden patch behin’ it an’ de gode-vine by de do’,
An’ de do’-yard sot wid roses, whar de chillun runs and plays,
An’ de streak o’ sunshine, yaller lak, er-slantin’ on de flo’!

But ole Mars’ wuz killed at Shiloh, an’ young Mars’ at Wilderness;
Ole Mis’ is in de graveyard, wid young Mis’ by her side,
An’ all er we-all’s fambly is scattered eas’ an’ wes’,
An’ de gode-vine by de cabin do’ an’ de roses all has died!
Mary Evelyn Moore Davis

Here Carolina comes, her brave cheeks warm
And wet with tears, to take in charge this dust,
And brings her daughters to receive in form
Virginia’s sacred trust.
James Barron Hope

Monument erected to Anne Carter Lee, Warren County, N. C., said to be the first monument erected by Southern women, 1866

“All quiet along the Potomac,” they say,
“Except now and then a stray picket
Is shot, as he walks on his beat, to and fro,
By a rifleman hid in the thicket.
’Tis nothing—a private or two, now and then,
Will not count in the news of the battle;
Not an officer lost—only one of the men,
Moaning out, all alone, the death-rattle.”
From “All Quiet Along the Potomac To-night”

[This poem has been claimed by a Mississippian. It has also been claimed on behalf of a New York writer; but it now seems probable that the verses were originally written in camp by Thaddeus Oliver, of Georgia, in August, 1861.—Editor]

To defend your birthright and mine, which is more precious than domestic ease, or property, or life, I exchange, with proud satisfaction, a term of six years in the Senate of the United States for the musket of a soldier.

General Lyon killed and his army defeated by General Ben. McCulloch at Wilson Creek, Mo., 1861

Against the night, a champion bright,
The glow-worm, lifts a spear of light;
And, undismayed, the slenderest shade
Against the noonday bares a blade.
John B. Tabb
(Heroes)

I will say that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor inter-marry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And, inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior; and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

The Mississippi Constitutional Convention meets in Jackson, 1890, principally for the purpose of restricting suffrage

Virginia, mother of States and statesmen, as she used to be called, has contributed many men of worth to the multitude that America can number. All her sons have loved her well, while many have reflected great honor on her. But of them all, none has known how to draw her portrait like that one who years ago, under the mild voice and quiet exterior of State Librarian and occasional contributor to the Periodical Press, hid the soul of a man of letters and an artist.

Look, out of line one tall corn-captain stands
Advanced beyond the foremost of his bands,
And waves his blades upon the very edge
And hottest thicket of the battling hedge.
Thou lustrous stalk, that ne’er may walk nor talk,
Still shalt thou type the poet-soul sublime
That leads the vanward of his timid time
And sings up cowards with commanding rhyme.
Sidney Lanier
(Corn)

In the hush of the valley of silence
I dream all the songs that I sing;
And the music floats down the dim Valley
Till each finds a word for a wing,
That to hearts, like the Dove of the Deluge,
A message of Peace they may bring.
Abram J. Ryan

Freighted with fruits, aflush with flowers,—
Oblations to offended powers,—
What fairy-like flotillas gleam
At night on Brahma’s sacred stream.
······
Around each consecrated bark
That sailed into the outer dark
What lambent light those lanterns gave!
What opalescent mazes played
Reduplicated on the wave,
While, to and fro, like censers swayed,
They made it luminous to glass
Their fleeting splendors ere they pass!
Theophilus Hunter Hill
(A Ganges Dream)

My judgments were never appealed from, and if they had been, they would have stuck like wax, as I gave my decisions on the principles of common justice and honesty between man and man, and relied not on law learning; for I have never read a page in a law book in my life.

Like a mist of the sea at morn it comes,
Gliding among the fisher-homes—
The vision of a woman fair;
And every eye beholds her there
Above the topmost dune,
With fluttering robe and streaming hair,
Seaward gazing in dumb despair,
Like one who begs of the waves a boon.
Benjamin Sledd
(The Wraith of Roanoke)

... Hast thou perchance repented, Saracen Sun?
Wilt warm the world with peace and love-desire?
Or wilt thou, ere this very day be done,
Blaze Saladin still, with unforgiving fire?
Sidney Lanier
(A Sunrise Song)

“Well,” says Uncle Remus, “de ’oman make ’umble ’pology ter de boy, but howsomever he can’t keep from rubbin’ hisse’f in de naberhood er de coat tails, whar she spank ’im. I bin livin’ ’round here a mighty long time, but I ain’t never see no polergy what wuz poultice er plaster nuff to swage er swellin’ or kore a bruise. Now you jes keep dat in min’ en git sorry fo’ you hurt anybody.”

The radicals and negroes had, in the summer of 1867, refused to “co-operate” with the representative white citizens in restoring political and social order. The election of delegates to the constitutional convention was held in October, 1867. About 94,000 negroes voted. The radical majority included five foreign born, twenty-five negroes, twenty-eight Northerners, and fourteen Virginians. Never before in the history of the State had negroes sat in a law-making body. The former political leaders were absent. The State had been revolutionized.

The moon has climbed her starry dome,
That taper gleams no more:
Delicious visions wait me home,
Delicious dreams of yore.
Old waves of thought voluptuous swell,
And rainbows spread amid the spell
Arcades of love and light.
Oh! what were slumber’s drowsy kiss,
To golden visions such as this,
Through all the wakeful night?
Joseph Salyards
(Idothea; Idyll III)

Out of the dark a shadow,
Then, a spark;
Out of the cloud a silence,
Then, a lark;
Out of the heart a rapture,
Then, a pain;
Out of the dead, cold ashes,
Life again.
John B. Tabb

I have led the young men of the South in battle; I have seen many of them fall under my standard. I shall devote my life now to training young men to do their duty in life.

After the sun, the shade,
Beatitude of shadow,
Dim aisles for memory made,—
And Thought;
After the sun, the shade.

After the heat, the dew,
The tender touch of twilight;
The unfolding of the few
Calm Stars;
After the heat, the dew.
Virginia Woodward Cloud

I have come to you from the West, where we have always seen the backs of our enemies—from an army whose business it has been to seek the adversary, and beat him when found, whose policy has been attack and not defense. I presume that I have been called here to pursue the same system.... It is my purpose to do so, and that speedily.... Meanwhile, I desire you to dismiss from your minds certain phrases, which I am sorry to find much in vogue amongst you. I hear constantly of taking strong positions and holding them—of lines of retreat and of bases of supplies. Let us discard such ideas.... Let us study the probable line of our opponents, and leave our own to take care of themselves.

Although a youth of only twenty-six years, he achieved, by his consummate tact and extraordinary abilities, what the powerful influence of Franklin failed to effect.

I knew him well, and he had not a fault that I could discover, unless it were an intrepidity bordering on rashness.

Weak and haggard from their diet of green corn and apples, one can well imagine with what surprise their eyes opened upon the contents of the sutler’s stores, containing an amount and variety of property such as they had never conceived. Then came a storming charge of men rushing in a tumultuous mob over each other’s heads, under each other’s feet, anywhere, everywhere to satisfy a craving stronger than a yearning for fame. There were no laggards in that charge.... Men ragged and famished clutched tenaciously at whatever came in their way, and whether of clothing or food, of luxury or necessity. A long yellow-haired, bare-footed son of the South claimed as prizes a tooth-brush, a box of candles, a barrel of coffee. From piles of new clothing the Southerners arrayed themselves in the blue uniforms of the Federals. The naked were clad, the barefooted were shod, and the sick provided with luxuries to which they had long been strangers.

Doctor McGuire, fresh from the ghastly spectacle of the silent battle-field said: “General, this day has been won by nothing but stark and stern fighting.”

“No,” replied Jackson very quietly, “it has been won by nothing but the blessing and protection of Providence.”

In the rapidity with which the opportunity was seized, in the combination of the three arms, and in the vigor of the blow, Manassas is in no way inferior to Austerlitz or Salamanca. That the result was less decisive was due to the greater difficulties of the battle-field, to the stubborn resistance of the enemy, to the obstacles in the way of rapid and connected movement, and to the inexperience of the troops.

My deep wound burns, my pale lips quake in death,
I feel my fainting heart resign its strife,
And reaching now the limit of my life.
Lord, to thy will I yield my parting breath,
Yet many a dream hath charmed my youthful eye;
And must life’s visions all depart?
Oh, surely no! for all that fired my heart
To rapture here shall live with me on high;
And that fair form that won my earliest vow,
That my young spirit prized all else above,
And now adored as Freedom, now as Love,
Stands in seraphic guise before me now;
And as my failing senses fade away
It beckons me on high, to realms of endless day.

[Sonnet composed by John Laurens as he lay dying of wounds and fever incurred in a campaign against the British in South Carolina.—Editor]

September

My Life is but a leaf upon the tree—
A growth upon the stem that feedeth all.
A touch of frost—and suddenly I fall,
To follow where my sister-blossoms be.

The selfsame sun, the shadow, and the rain
That brought the budding verdure to the bough,
Shall strip the fading foliage as now,
And leave the limb in nakedness again.

My life is but a leaf upon the tree;
The winds of birth and death upon it blow;
But whence it came and whither it shall go,
Is mystery of mysteries to me.
John B. Tabb

Around me blight, where all before was bloom!
And so much lost! alas! and nothing won;
Save this—that I can lean on wreck and tomb,
And weep—and weeping pray—Thy will be done.
Abram J. Ryan
(The Prayer of the South)

Sixty thousand of us witnessed the destruction of Atlanta, while our post band and that of the Thirty-third Massachusetts played martial airs and operatic selections.

On this point, however, all parties in the South were agreed, and the vast majority of the people of the North—before the war. The Abolitionist proper was considered not so much a friend of the negro as the enemy of society. As the war went on, and the Abolitionist saw the “glory of the Lord” revealed in a way he had never hoped for, he saw at the same time, or rather ought to have seen, that the order he had lived to destroy could not have been a system of hellish wrong and fiendish cruelty; else the prophetic vision of the liberators would have been fulfilled, and the horrors of San Domingo would have polluted this fair land. For the negro race does not deserve undivided praise for its conduct during the war. Let some small part of the credit be given to the masters, not all to the finer qualities of their “brothers in black.” The school in which the training was given is closed, and who wishes to open it? Its methods were old-fashioned and were sadly behind the times, but the old schoolmasters turned out scholars who, in certain branches of moral philosophy, were not inferior to the graduates of the new university.

Unclaimed by the land that bore us,
Lost in the land we find,
The brave have gone before us,
Cowards are left behind!
Then stand to your glasses, steady,
Here’s health to those we prize,
Here’s a toast to the dead already,
And here’s to the next who dies.

If slavery were an unutterably evil institution, with no alleviating features, how are we to account for the fact that when the Confederate soldiers were at the front fighting, as they thought, for their independence, the negroes on the plantations took care of the women and children and old people, and nothing like an act of violence was ever known among them?... Is it not perfectly evident that there was a great rebellion, but that the rebels were the Northerners and that those who defended the Constitution as it was were the Southerners; but they defended State rights and slavery, which were distinctly intrenched within the Constitution?

In regard to Barbara Frietchie a word may be said: An old woman by that now immortal name did live in Frederick in those days, but she was 84 years of age and bed-ridden. She never saw General Jackson, and he never saw her. I was with him every minute of the time he was in Frederick, and nothing like the scene so graphically described by the poet ever happened.

I have seen the model of Mr. Rumsey’s boat, constructed to work against the stream, examined the powers upon which it acts, been the eye witness to an actual experiment in running water of some rapidity, and give it as my opinion (although I had little faith before) that he has discovered the art of working boats by mechanism and small manual assistance against rapid currents; that the discovery is of vast importance; may be of the greatest usefulness in our inland navigation, and if it succeeds (of which I have no doubt) that the value of it is greatly enhanced by the simplicity of the works; which, when seen and explained, may be executed by the most common mechanic.

Given under my hand at the Town of Bath, County of Berkeley, in the State of Virginia, this 7th day of September, 1784.

Ere Time’s horizon-line was set,
Somewhere in space our spirits met,
Then o’er the starry parapet
Came wandering here.
And now, that thou art gone again
Beyond the verge, I haste amain
(Lost echo of a loftier strain)
To greet thee there.
John B. Tabb
(Ave: Sidney Lanier)

Their conduct indeed was exemplary. They had been warned that pillage and depredations would be severely dealt with, and all requisitions, even fence-rails, were paid for on the spot.

My life is like the autumn leaf
That trembles in the moon’s pale ray;
Its hold is frail, its date is brief,
Restless, and soon to pass away!
Yet ere that leaf shall fall and fade,
The parent tree will mourn its shade,
The winds bewail the leafless tree;
But none shall breathe a sigh for me!
Richard Henry Wilde

Long and close association with the white race had its civilizing effect upon the negroes, and it was not long before the two races became warmly attached, both alike manifesting a keen interest in the other’s welfare. Thus as economic interests had fixed the system in the laws of the people, the domestication of the race fixed it in their hearts. The abolitionist was right in his position on the ethics of slavery, but more than benighted in his conception of its condition in the South.

In conclusion, the Battle of North Point saved Baltimore from a pre-determined fate; it encouraged the rest of the country; it, with Plattsburg, caused the English Ministry to suggest that the Duke of Wellington should take command in America, and it influenced the terms of the treaty of Ghent in favor of the United States.

That he did not reap the full fruits of this wonderful generalship was due to one of those strange events which, so insignificant in itself, yet is fateful to decide the issues of nations....

It will be seen that Lee had no doubt whatever of the success of his undertaking. Both he and Jackson knew Harper’s Ferry and the surrounding country, and his plan, so simple and yet so complete, was laid out with a precision as absolute as if formed on the ground instead of on the march in a new country. It was this order showing the dispersion of his army over twenty-odd miles of country, with a river flowing between its widely scattered parts, that by a strange fate fell in McClellan’s hands.

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream;
’Tis the star-spangled banner; O long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Francis Scott Key

No more sacred spot in New Orleans, a city famous for its historic memories, can be pointed out than Liberty Place, where these martyrs fell; and no more memorable day can be found in the calendar of Louisiana’s history than Sept. 14, 1874.

Henry Edward Chambers
(Referring to the rout of General Longstreet and the Carpet-bagger police by citizens, eleven of whom were killed)

General Jackson, after a brief dispatch to General Lee announcing the capitulation, rode up to Bolivar and down into Harper’s Ferry. The curiosity of the Union Army to see him was so great that the soldiers lined the sides of the road. Many of them uncovered as he passed, and he invariably returned the salute. One man had an echo of response all about him when he said aloud: “Boys, he’s not much for looks, but if we’d had him we wouldn’t have been caught in this trap.”

Mr. Lincoln, sir, have you any late news from Mr. Harper’s Ferry? I heard that Stone W. Jackson kept the parole for a few days, and that about fourteen thousand crossed over in twenty-four hours. He is a smart ferryman, sure. Do your folks know how to make it pay? It is a bad crossing, but I suppose it is a heap safer than Ball’s Bluff or Shepherdstown.

The moon, rising above the mountains, revealed the long lines of men and guns, stretching far across hill and valley, waiting for the dawn to shoot each other down, and between the armies their dead lay in such numbers as civilised war has seldom seen. So fearful had been the carnage, and comprised within such narrow limits, that a Federal patrol, it is related, passing into the corn-field, where the fighting had been fiercest, believed that they had surprised a whole Confederate brigade. There, in the shadow of the woods, lay the skirmishers, their muskets beside them; and there, in regular ranks, lay the line of battle, sleeping, as it seemed, the profound sleep of utter exhaustion. But the first man that was touched was cold and lifeless, and the next, and the next; it was the bivouac of the dead.

He’s in the saddle now. Fall in,
Steady the whole brigade!
Hill’s at the ford, cut off; we’ll win
His way out, ball and blade.
What matter if our shoes are worn?
What matter if our feet are torn?
Quick step! We’re with him before morn—
That’s Stonewall Jackson’s way.
John Williamson Palmer

[From lines written within the sound of Jackson’s guns at Antietam, 1862. Although then a correspondent of the New York Tribune, Dr. Palmer was a Southerner by birth and residence.—Editor]

As a deputation from New England was one day leaving the White House, a delegate turned round and said: “Mr. President, I should much like to know what you reckon to be the number the rebels have in arms against us?”

Without a moment’s hesitation Mr. Lincoln replied: “Sir, I have the best possible reason for knowing the number to be one million of men, for whenever one of our generals engages a rebel army he reports that he has encountered a force twice his strength. I know we have half a million soldiers, so I am bound to believe that the rebels have twice that number.”

Judged by percentage in killed and wounded, Chickamauga nearly doubled the sanguinary records of Marengo and Austerlitz; was two and a half times heavier than that sustained by the Duke of Marlborough at Malplaquet; more than double that suffered by the army under Henry of Navarre in the terrific slaughter at Coutras; nearly three times as heavy as the percentage of loss at Solferino and Magenta; five times greater than that of Napoleon at Wagram, and about ten times as heavy as that of Marshall Saxe at Bloody Raucoux.... Or, if we take the average percentage of loss in a number of the world’s great battles—Waterloo, Wagram, Valmy, Magenta, Solferino, Zurich, and Lodi—we shall find by comparison that Chickamauga’s record of blood surpassed them nearly three for one.

God bless the forlorn and ragged remnants of a race now passing away. God bless the old black hand that rocked our infant cradles, smoothed the pillow of our infant sleep, and fanned the fever from our cheeks. God bless the old tongue that immortalized the nursery rhyme, the old eyes that guided our truant feet, and the old heart that laughed at our childish freaks.

If I could preserve the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it; if I could preserve the Union by freeing all the slaves, I would do it. What I do about the colored race, I do because I think it helps to save the Union.

President Lincoln issues an emancipation proclamation to take effect January 1, 1863, unless the Confederate States should return to the Union by that date

The name thou wearest does thee grievous wrong.
No mimic thou! That voice is thine alone!
The poets sing but strains of Shakespeare’s song;
The birds, but notes of thine imperial own!
Henry Jerome Stockard

No other man did half so much either to develop the Constitution by expounding it, or to secure for the judiciary its rightful place in the Government as the living voice of the Constitution.... The admiration and respect which he and his colleagues won for the court remain its bulwark: the traditions which were formed under him and them have continued in general to guide the action and elevate the sentiments of their successors.

We are gathered here a feeble few
Of those who wore the gray—
The larger and the better part
Have mingled with the clay:
Yet not so lost, but now and then
Through dimming mist we see
The deadly calm of Stonewall’s face,
The lion-front of Lee.
Henry Lynden Flash

Summer is dead, ay me! Sweet summer’s dead!
The sunset clouds have built his funeral pyre,
Through which, e’en now, runs subterranean fire:
While from the East, as from a garden-bed,
Mist-vined, the Dusk lifts her broad moon—like some
Great golden melon—saying, “Fall has come.”
Madison Cawein

All America will soon treasure alike both Federal and Confederate exploits, in the greatest of wars, as a priceless national heritage. Then Semmes and the Alabama will shine beside John Paul Jones and the Bonhomme Richard, Decatur and the Philadelphia, Lawrence and the Chesapeake, and be ever lauded with the victories of Old Ironsides, the intrepid deed of Farragut sailing over the mines in the channel of Mobile Bay, that of Dewey entering Manila Harbor, and of Hobson bringing the Merrimac under the fire of the forts at Santiago.

The Alabama had been built in perfect good faith by the Lairds. When she was contracted for no question had been raised as to the right of a neutral to build and sell to a belligerent such a ship. The reader has seen that the Federal Secretary of the Navy himself had endeavored not only to build an Alabama, but ironclads in England.

When summer flowers are dying,
August past,
When Autumn’s breath is sighing
On the blast;
When the red leaves flutter down
To the sod,
Then the year kneels for its crown—
Goldenrod!
Virginia Lucas

Thistles send their missives white
To the sky;
Robins southward wing their flight,
(Sad goodbye!)
But where Summer, yellow-gowned,
Last has trod,
Thorn-torn fragments strew the ground—
Goldenrod!
Virginia Lucas

October

Thy glory flames in every blade and leaf
To blind the eyes of grief;
Thy vineyards and thine orchards bend with fruit
That sorrow may be mute;

A hectic splendor lights thy days to sleep,
Ere the gray dusk may creep
Sober and sad along thy dusty ways,
Like a lone nun, who prays;

High and faint-heard thy passing migrant calls;
Thy lazy lizard sprawls
On his gray stone, and many slow winds creep
About thy hedge, asleep;

The Sun swings farther toward his love, the South,
To kiss her glowing mouth;
And Death, who steals among thy purpling bowers,
Is deeply hid in flowers.
John Charles McNeill

Come on thy swaying feet,
Wild Spirit of the Fall!
With wind-blown skirts, loose hair of russet brown
Crowned with bright berries of the bitter sweet.
Trip a light measure with the hurrying leaf,
Straining thy few late roses to thy breast:
With laughter overgay, sweet eyes drooped down,
That none may guess thy grief:
Dare not to pause for rest
Lest the slow tears should gather to their fall.
Danske Dandridge

In all our associations; in all our agreements let us never lose sight of this fundamental maxim—that all power was originally lodged in, and consequently derived from, the people. We should wear it as a breastplate, and buckle it on as our armour.

What a brave splendour
Is in the October air! How rich and clear—
How life-full, and all joyous! We must render
Love to the Spring-time, with its sproutings tender,
As to a child quite dear—
But autumn is a noon, prolonged, of glory—
A manhood not yet hoary.
Philip Pendleton Cooke

At morn—at noon—at twilight dim—
Maria! thou hast heard my hymn!
In joy and woe—in good and ill—
Mother of God, be with me still!
When the Hours flew brightly by,
And not a cloud obscured the sky,
My soul, lest it should truant be,
Thy grace did guide to thine and thee!
Now, when storms of Fate o’ercast
Darkly my Present and my Past,
Let my future radiant shine
With sweet hopes of thee and thine!
Edgar Allan Poe

Tormented sorely by the chastening rod,
I muttered to myself: “There is no God!”
But faithful friend, I found your soul so true,
That God revealed Himself in giving you.
Walter Malone

Who said “false as dreams”? Not one who saw
Into the wild and wondrous world they sway;
No thinker who hath read their mystic law;
No Poet who hath weaved them in his lay.
Henry Timrod

It is no small achievement to have sung a few imperishable songs of bereaved love and illusive beauty. It is no small achievement to have produced individual and unexcelled strains of harmony which have since so rung in the ears of brother poets that echoes of them may be detected even in the work of such original and accomplished versemen as Rossetti and Swinburne. It is no small achievement to have pursued one’s ideal until one’s dying day, conscious the while that, great as one’s impediments have been from without, one’s chief obstacle has been one’s own self.

All who possess the divine element of pity will unite in feeling that his sufferings were his expiation.

And they came, these mountaineers of the South. Congress has not ordered them; it is a rally of volunteers.... They neither hesitate nor parley; they hitch their horses to the trees; like a girdle of steel they clasp the mountain; and up they go, at the enemy—rifles blazing as they advance, and the Southern yell ringing through the woods.

It was the joyful annunciation of that turn of the tide of success which terminated the Revolutionary War with the seal of our independence.

Soldiers! You are about to engage in an enterprise which, to insure success, imperatively demands at your hands coolness, decision, and bravery; implicit obedience to orders without a question or cavil; and the strictest order and sobriety on the march and in bivouac. The destination and extent of this expedition had better be kept to myself than known to you. Suffice it to say, that with the hearty cooperation of officers and men I have not a doubt of its success,—a success which will reflect credit in the highest degree upon your arms.

J. E. B. Stuart, with 1,800 men, begins his second circle around the Union Army, riding through Pennsylvania and Maryland, 1862

His firmness and perseverance yielded to nothing but impossibilities. A rigid disciplinarian, yet tender as a father to those committed to his charge; honest, disinterested, liberal, with a sound understanding and a scrupulous fidelity to truth.

He was a foe without hate, a friend without treachery, a soldier without cruelty, and a victim without murmuring. He was a public officer without vices, a private citizen without wrong, a neighbor without reproach, a Christian without hypocrisy, and a man without guile. He was Cæsar without his ambition, Frederick without his tyranny, Napoleon without his selfishness, and Washington without his reward. He was as obedient to authority as a true king. He was as gentle as a woman in life, pure and modest as a virgin in thought, watchful as a Roman vestal in duty, submissive to law as Socrates, and grand in battle as Achilles.

It was the conviction of his life that the Government under which we live was of limited powers, and that its constitution had been framed for war as well as peace. Though he died, therefore, he could not surrender that conviction at the call of the trumpet. He had plighted his troth to the liberty of the citizen and the supremacy of the laws, and no man could put them asunder.

He sent to the suffering private in the hospitals the delicacies contributed for his personal use from the meagre stores of those who were anxious about his health. If a handful of real coffee came to him, it went in the same direction, while he cheerfully drank from his tin cup the wretched substitute made from parched corn or beans.

Let the autumn hoarfrost gather,
Let the snows of winter drift,
For there blooms a fruit of valor that
The world may not forget.
Fold your faded gray coat closer, for
It was your country’s gift,
And it brings her holiest message—
There is glory in it yet.
Virginia Frazer Boyle

This button here upon my cuff is valueless, whether for use or for ornament, but you shall not tear it from me and spit in my face besides; no, not if it cost me my life. And if your time be passed in the attempt to so take it, then my time and my every thought shall be spent in preventing such outrage. Let alone, the Virginian would gladly have made an end of slavery, but, strange hap, malevolence and meddling bound it up with every interest that was dear to his heart.

Of course a transaction so flagitious with its attendant circumstances ... could but produce the profoundest impression upon the people of the South. Here was open and armed “aggression”; whether clearly understood and encouraged beforehand, certainly exulted in afterwards, by persons of a very different standing from that of the chief actor in this bloody incursion into a peaceful State.

“Saint John the Just” was the verdict of the Concord philosophers concerning John Brown. “The new Saint ... will make the gallows glorious like the Cross” was the sentiment of Emerson that drew applause from a vast assemblage in Boston.

I address you on this occasion with a profound admiration for the great consideration which caused you to honor me by your votes with a seat in the Senate of Georgy. For two momentus and inspirin’ weeks the Legislature has been in solemn session, one of whom I am proud to be which. For several days we were engaged as scouts, making a sorter reconysance to see whether Georgy were a State or a Injin territory, whether we were in the old Un-ion or out of it, whether me and my folks and you and your folks were somebody or no body, and lastly, but by no means leastly, whether our poor innocent children, born durin’ the war, were all illegal and had to be born over agin or not. This last pint are much unsettled, but our women are advised to be calm and serene.

Float out, oh flag, from Freedom’s burnished lance.
Float out, oh flag, in Red and White and Blue!
The Union’s colors and the hues of France
Commingled on the view!
James Barron Hope

Her right to it rested upon as firm a basis as the right of any other Commonwealth to her own domain, and if there was any question of the Virginia title by charter, she could assert her right by conquest. The region had been wrested from the British by a Virginian commanding Virginian troops; the people had taken “the oath of allegiance to the Commonwealth of Virginia”; and her title to the entire territory was thus indisputable....

These rights she now abandoned; and her action was the result of an enlarged patriotism and devotion to the cause of union.

Virginia cedes to the general government the territory north of the Ohio, 1783

When social relations were resumed between the North and South—they followed slowly the resumption of business relations—what we should call the color-blindness of the other side often manifested itself in a delicate reticence on the part of our Northern friends; and as the war had by no means constituted their lives as it had constituted ours for four long years, the success in avoiding the disagreeable topic would have been considerable, if it had not been for awkward allusions on the part of the Southerners, who, having been shut out for all that time from the study of literature and art and other elegant and uncompromising subjects, could hardly keep from speaking of this and that incident of the war. Whereupon a discreet, or rather an embarrassed silence, as if a pardoned convict had playfully referred to the arson or burglary, not to say worse, that had been the cause of his seclusion.

Oh, the rolling, rolling prairies, and the grasses waving, waving
Like green billows ’neath the gulf breeze in the perfumed purple gloam!
Oh, my heart is heavy, heavy, and my eyes are craving, craving
For the fertile plains and forests of my far-off Texas home.
Judd Mortimer Lewis
(Longing for Texas)

All the night of the 22d he rode up the peninsula, not a sound disturbing the silence of the darkness except the beat of his horse’s hoofs. Every three or four hours he would ride up to a lonely homestead, still and quiet and dark in the first slumbers of the night, and thunder on the door with his sword: “Cornwallis is taken: a fresh horse for the Congress!” Like an electric shock the house would flash with an instant light and echo with the pattering feet of women, and before a dozen greetings could be exchanged, and but a word given of the fate of the loved ones at York, Tilghman would vanish in the gloom, leaving a trail of glory and joy behind him.

Battles nor songs can from Oblivion save,
But Fame upon a white deed loves to build;
From out that cup of water Sidney gave,
Not one drop has been spilled.
Lizette Woodworth Reese

Supposing a disintegration of the Union, notwithstanding all efforts to prevent it, to be forced upon us by the obstinacy and impracticability of parties on each side—the case would still be far from hopeless. The Border States, in that event, would form, in self-defence, a Confederacy of their own, which would serve as a centre of reinforcement for the reconstruction of the Union.

John P. Kennedy
(In “The Border States—their Power and Duty in the Present Disordered Condition of the Country”)

Give us back the ties of Yorktown!
Perish all the modern hates!
Let us stand together, brothers,
In defiance of the Fates;
For the safety of the Union
Is the safety of the States!
James Barron Hope
(Centennial Ode)

The attempt made to establish a separate and independent confederation has failed, but the consciousness of having done your duty faithfully and to the end will in some measure repay for the hardships you have undergone. In bidding you farewell, rest assured that you carry with you my best wishes for your future welfare and happiness.... I now cheerfully and gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to the officers and men of my command, whose zeal, fidelity, and unflinching bravery have been the great source of my past success in arms. I have never on the field of battle sent you where I felt myself unwilling to pursue. You have been good soldiers, you can be good citizens. Obey the laws, preserve your honor, and the government to which you have surrendered can afford to be and will be magnanimous.

Whether in the thickest of the battle, where hundreds or thousands were rushing at each other in deadly combat, or on the lonely highway where he came face to face with a single adversary, or in the reconnoissance by day or night, when alone or attended by a single member of his staff he would ride into the enemy’s lines and even into their camps, he was with pistol or sabre ever ready to assert his physical prowess. It is known that he placed hors de combat thirty Federal officers or soldiers fighting hand-to-hand.

Swing, rustless blade, in the dauntless hand;
Ride, soul of a god, through the deathless band,
Through the low green mounds, or the breadth of the land,
Wherever your legions dwell!
Virginia Frazer Boyle

It will be difficult in all history to find a more varied career than his, a man who, from the greatest poverty, without any learning, and by sheer force of character alone became the great fighting leader of fighting men, a man in whom an extraordinary military instinct and sound common-sense supplied to a very large extent his unfortunate want of military education. His military career teaches us that the genius which makes men great soldiers is not art of war.

Rising from the position of a private soldier to wear the wreath and stars of a lieutenant-general, and that without education or influence to help him, wounded four times and having twenty-nine horses shot under him, capturing 31,000 prisoners, and cannon, flags, and stores of all kinds beyond computation, Nathan Bedford Forrest was a born genius for war, and his career is one of the most brilliant and romantic to be found in the pages of history.

November

Sad-hearted Spirit of the solitudes,
Who comest through the ruin-wedded woods!
Gray-gowned in fog, gold-girdled with the gloom
Of tawny sunsets; burdened with perfume
Of rain-wet uplands, chilly with the mist;
And all the beauty of the fire-kissed
Cold forests crimsoning thy indolent way,
Odorous of death and drowsy with decay.
I think of thee as seated ’mid the showers
Of languid leaves that cover up the flowers—
The little flower-sisterhoods, whom June
Once gave wild sweetness to, as to a tune
A singer gives her soul’s wild melody—
Watching the squirrel store his granary.
Or, ’mid old orchards, I have pictured thee:
Thy hair’s profusion blown about thy back;
One lovely shoulder bathed with gypsy black;
Upon thy palm one nestling cheek, and sweet
The rosy russets tumbled at thy feet.
Was it a voice lamenting for the flowers?
Or heart-sick bird that sang of happier hours?
A cricket dirging days that soon must die?
Or did the ghost of Summer wander by?
Madison Cawein

The white people owe a high duty to the negro. It was necessary to the safety of the State to base suffrage on the capacity to exercise it wisely. This results in excluding a great number of negroes from the ballot, but their right to life, liberty, property, and justice must be even more carefully safeguarded than ever. It is true that a superior race cannot submit to the rule of a weaker race without injury; it is also true in the long years of God that the strong cannot oppress the weak without destruction.

It becomes the duty of all States, and especially of those whose constitutions recognize the existence of domestic slavery, to look with watchfulness to the attempts which have been recently made to disturb the rights secured to them by the Constitution of the United States.

Man in marriage is said to repair his maimed side, and to regain his own rib. And the woman is then and thereby reduced to her first place.... From a rib to a helper was a happy change.

’Neath naked boughs, and sitting in the sun,
With idle hands, because her work is done,
I mark how smiles the lovely, fading year,
Crowned with chrysanthemums and berries bright,
And in her eyes the shimmer of a tear.
Danske Dandridge

It came to pass that I was one of the few who witnessed the last descending glory of this attempted Republic, projected by men who considered that the only true and natural foundation of society was “the wants and fears of individuals,” but which was decided adversely to their interpretation of that natural law, by the God of battles.

[Learning Aug. 2, 1865, in the course of her cruising in the Pacific, that the Confederate government no longer existed, and knowing that they had been rated as “pirates” by Federal officials, the captain and crew determined to surrender their flag and commission in a foreign port, setting out forthwith for Liverpool, England.—Editor]

The First Lieutenant stood ... gazing at the flag under which he had so long done battle, and then turned away with tears coursing down his bronzed cheeks.

He was not alone in this exhibition of weakness, if such it was, for more than one eye, unaccustomed to weep, turned aside to conceal the unwonted drops, as at a silent signal, the quartermaster hauled down the Stars and Bars, thereby surrendering the Shenandoah to the British authorities.

A very shy fellow was dusky Sam,
As slow of speech as the typical clam.
He couldn’t make love to his Angeline
Though his love grew like the Great Gourd Vine;
So he brought the telephone to his aid
To assist in wooing the chosen maid:
“Miss Angeline? Dat you?” called he.
“Yas.—Dis Angeline—Dis me—”
“I—des wanter say—dat I does—love you—
Miss Angeline—does you love me, too—?”
“Why—yas—Of course I loves my beau—
Say what’s de reason you wants to know?”
“Miss—hold de wire—Will you marry me? True—?”
“Yas. Course I will——Say. Who is you?”
Martha Young

History will record the events attending this capture as a most extraordinary lapse in the career of a civilized nation—an instance where statesmen and Jurisconsults betrayed their country to administer to the passions of a mob. Edward Everett ... wrote for the newspapers, vindicating on principles of public law, the act of Captain Wilkes.

The English Royal Mail steamer “Trent” held up by the Federal war-ship “San Jacinto” and the Confederate commissioners, Mason and Slidell, arrested, 1861

I also propose that these surgeons shall act as commissaries, with power to receive and distribute such contributions of money, food, clothing, and medicines as may be forwarded for the relief of prisoners. I further propose that these surgeons be selected by their own Governments, and they shall have full liberty at any and all times, through the agents of exchange, to make reports, not only of their own acts, but of any matters relating to the welfare of prisoners.

I need not state how much suffering would have been prevented if this offer had been met in the spirit in which it was dictated. In addition, the world would have had truthful accounts of the treatment of prisoners on both sides, by officers of character, and thus much of that misrepresentation which has flooded the country would never have been poured forth.... The acceptance of the proposition made by me, on behalf of the Confederate Government, would not only have furnished to the sick, medicines and physicians, but to the well an abundance of food and clothing from the ample stores of the United States.

The verdict has been found, said they, and no appeal will be permitted. “Besides,” said many, “why stir up these old matters? Let them be; they will be forgotten within a generation.” But there are some yet living, in both the South and the North, who prefer truth to falsehood, even though the attainment of the former costs some trouble.

“The report of Mr. Stanton, as Secretary of War, on the 19th of July, 1866, exhibits the fact that of the Federal prisoners in Confederate hands during the war, 22,576 died; while of the Confederate prisoners in Federal hands 26,436 died.”

[Since Dr. Stevenson wrote the above (1876), the figures on either side have been added to, but the proportion remains about the same. If nothing more, these figures of comparative mortality should be borne in mind in exoneration of Henry Wirz, and of those of greater responsibility who were accused with him, but who were neither executed nor even brought to trial. A number of gallant Federal officers, once prisoners at Andersonville, have in later years come forward to testify in book and monograph as to the true character of Major Wirz.—Editor]

When it was ascertained that exchanges could not be made, either on the basis of the cartel, or officer for officer and man for man, I was instructed by the Confederate authorities to offer the United States Government their sick and wounded, without requiring any equivalents. Accordingly, in the summer of 1864, I did offer to deliver from ten to fifteen thousand of the sick and wounded at the mouth of the Savannah River, without requiring any equivalents, assuring, at the same time, the Agent of the United States, General Mulford, that if the number for which he might send transportation could not readily be made up from sick and wounded, I would supply the difference with well men. Although this offer was made in the summer of 1864, transportation was not sent to the Savannah River until about the middle or last of November.

In the summer of 1864, in consequence of certain information communicated to me by the Surgeon-general of the Confederate States as to the deficiency of medicines, I offered to make purchases of medicines from the United States authorities, to be used exclusively for the relief of Federal prisoners. I offered to pay gold, cotton, or tobacco for them, and even two or three prices, if required. At the same time I gave assurances that the medicines would be used exclusively in the treatment of Federal prisoners; and moreover agreed, on behalf of the Confederate States, if it was insisted on, that such medicines might be brought into the Confederate lines by the United States surgeons, and dispensed by them.

Were I to enter the Hall, at this remote period, and meet my associates who signed the instrument of our independence, I should know them all, from Hancock down to Stephen Hopkins.

Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, dies, 1832

In other words, a veteran of our civil strife, General Sherman advocated in an enemy’s country the sixteenth century practices of Tilly, described by Schiller, and the later devastation of the Palatinate policy of Louis XIV, commemorated by Goethe. In the twenty-first century, perhaps, partisan feeling as regards the Civil War performances having by that time ceased to exist, American investigators, no longer regardful of a victor’s self-complacency, may treat the episodes of our struggle with the same even-handed and out-spoken impartiality with which Englishmen now treat the revenges of the Restoration, or Frenchmen the dragonnades of the Grand Monarque. But when that time comes, the page relating to what occurred in 1864 in the Valley of the Shenandoah, in Georgia, and in the Carolinas,—a page which Mr. Rhodes somewhat lightly passes over—will probably be rewritten in characters of far more decided import.

On the evening before the day of the execution of Major Wirz a man visited me, on the part of a Cabinet officer, to inform me that Major Wirz would be pardoned if he would implicate Jefferson Davis in the cruelties at Andersonville....

When I visited Major Wirz the next morning he told me that the same proposal had been made to him.

Some parties came to the confessor of Wirz, Rev. Father Boyle, and also to me, one of them informing me that a high Cabinet officer wished to assure Wirz, that if he would implicate Jefferson Davis with the atrocities committed at Andersonville, his sentence would be commuted. He, the messenger, or whoever he was, requested me to inform Wirz of this.

Sad spirit, swathed in brief mortality,
Of Fate and fervid fantasies the prey,
Till the remorseless demon of dismay
O’erwhelmed thee—lo! thy doleful destiny
Is chanted in the requiem of the sea
And shadowed in the crumbling ruins gray
That beetle o’er the tarn. Here all the day
The Raven broods on solitude and thee:
Here gloats the moon at midnight, while the Bells
Tremble, but speak not lest thy Ulalume
Should startle from her slumbers, or Lenore
Hearken the love-forbidden tone that tells
The shrouded legend of thine early doom
And blast the bliss of heaven forevermore.
John B. Tabb

First American Monument erected to the memory of Edgar Allan Poe dedicated in Baltimore, 1875

POE—He is the nightingale of our Southern poets—singing at night, singing on nocturnal themes, but with all the passionate tenderness and infinite pathos of his own angel Israfel, “whose heart-strings are a lute.”

The election of 1873 was the culmination of the evil effects of reconstruction. The rule of the alien and the negro was complete, with the latter holding the lion’s share of the offices. The lieutenant-governor, secretary of state, superintendent of education, and commissioner of immigration and agriculture, all were negroes; both houses of the legislature had negro presiding officers; in the senate ten negroes held seats; of the seventy-seven Republicans in the house, fifty-five were negroes and fifteen were carpet-baggers; the majority of the county offices were filled by negroes, 90 per cent. of whom could neither read nor write.

Fleet on the tempest blown,
Far from the mountain dell,
Rose in their cloudy cone,
Elfin and Spell;
Woo’d by the spirit tone,
Trembling and chill,
Wandered a maiden lone,
On the bleak hill:
Mau-in-waun-du-me-nung,
Trembling and chill.
Joseph Salyards

Low in the moory dale,
Green mossy waters flow,
Under the drowsy gale,
Moaning and slow;
There in her snowy veil,
Bleeding and bound,
Lay the sweet damsel pale,
On the cold ground,
Mau-in-waun-du-me-nung,
On the cold ground.
Joseph Salyards

The history of that period, of the reconstruction period of the South, has never been fully told. It is only beginning to be written.

But talkin’ the way I see it, a big feller and a little feller, SO-CALLED, got into a fite, and they fout and fout a long time, and everybody all round kep’ hollerin’ hands off, but kep’ helpin’ the big feller, until finally the little feller caved in and hollered enuff. He made a bully fite, I tell you, Selah. Well, what did the big feller do? Take him by the hand and help him up and brush the dirt off his clothes? Nary time! No, sur! But he kicked him arter he was down, and throwed mud on him, and drug him about and rubbed sand in his eyes, and now he’s gwine about hunting up his poor little property. Wants to confiscate is, SO-CALLED. Blame my jacket if it ain’t enuff to make your head swim.

The majority in Congress, in imposing protecting duties, which are utterly destructive of the interests of South Carolina, not only impose no burthens, but actually confer enriching bounties upon their constituents, proportioned to the burthens they impose upon us. Under these circumstances, the principle of representative responsibility is perverted into a principle of representative despotism. It is this very tie, binding the majority of Congress to execute the will of their constituents, which makes them our inexorable oppressors. They dare not open their hearts to the sentiments of human justice, or to the feelings of human sympathy. They are tyrants by the very necessity of their position, however elevated may be their principles in their individual capacities.

The call of the Secretary of War for the militia of the States met blunt refusal from the Governors of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. The Assembly of the latter State sustained its Executive in a formal address which denounced the war and declared Connecticut to be a free, sovereign, and independent State, and that the United States was not a national but a confederated republic. President Madison was held up as an invader of the State’s authority over her militia.

Oh, yes! I am a Southern girl,
And glory in the name,
And boast it with far greater pride
Than glittering wealth or fame.
I envy not the Northern girls
Their robes of beauty rare,
Though diamonds grace their snowy necks
And pearls bedeck their hair.

Hurrah, hurrah!
For the sunny South so dear.
Three cheers for the homespun dress
The Southern ladies wear.

But know, ’twas mine the secret power
That waked thee at the midnight hour
In bleak November’s reign:
’Twas I the spell around thee cast,
When thou didst hear the hollow blast
In murmurs tell of pleasures past,
That ne’er would come again.
Washington Allston

The cruel fire that singed her robe died out in rainbow flashes,
And bright her silvery sandals shone above the hissing ashes!

Organization of Legislature in Carolina Hall after the election of General Hampton as Governor of South Carolina, 1876

My fellow-people, let me, in conclusion, congratulate you on having a Governor once more as is a Governor. Oh, there is life in the old land yet, and by and by we’ll transport them black Republicans into the African desert, and put ’em to teaching Hottentots the right of suffrage. Winter Davis could then find a field of labor sufficient for the miserable remnant of his declining years. He is the winter of our discontent, and we want to get rid of him.

Yon marble minstrel’s voiceless stone
In deathless song shall tell,
When many a vanquished age hath flown,
The story how ye fell;
Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter’s blight,
Nor Time’s remorseless doom,
Shall dim one ray of glory’s light
That gilds your deathless tomb.
Theodore O’Hara
(From “The Bivouac of the Dead”)

December

The rain on the trees has ceased to freeze;
(’Twas molded with quaint device)
The bent boughs lean, like cimeters keen,
In scabbards of shining ice.

’Neath frozen cloaks the pines and oaks
Are stooping like Druids old,—
And the cedars stand—an arctic band—
Held in the clutch of cold.

Through the outer gloom the japonicas bloom,
With the lustre of rubies bright—
Like blossoms blown from a tropic zone,—
A marvellous land of light!
William Hamilton Hayne

The Fir-tree felt it with a thrill
And murmur of content;
The last dead Leaf its cable slipt
And from its moorings went;

The selfsame silent messenger,
To one that shibboleth
Of Life imparting, and to one,
The countersign of Death.
John B. Tabb

The avengers whose lives he had attempted, whose wives and children he had devoted to the hideous brutality of insurgent Africans, spared him all indignities, even moral torture.

The Black and Tan Convention met December 3, 1867, in our venerable and historic capital to frame a new constitution for the Old Dominion. In this body were members from New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, Maryland, District of Columbia, Ireland, Scotland, Nova Scotia, Canada, England; scalawags, or turn-coats, by Southerners most hated of all; twenty-four negroes; and in the total of 105, thirty-five white Virginians, from counties of excess white population, who might be considered representative of the State’s culture and intelligence.

James Rumsey (1787) makes successful trial trip of the steamboat designed after the model of 1784, then witnessed by George Washington and others

“Mistah President, de real flatform, suh. I’ll sw’ar tuh high Heaven. Yas, I’ll sw’ar higher dan dat. I’ll go down an’ de uth shall crumble intuh dus’ befor’ dee shall amalgamise my rights. ’Bout dis question uh cyarpet-bags. Ef you cyarpet-baggers does go back on us, woes be unto you! You better take yo cyarpet-bags and quit, and de quicker you git up and git de better. I do not abdicate de supperstition tuh dese strange friens, lately so-called citizens uh Ferginny. Ef dee don’ gimme my rights, I’ll suffer dis country tuh be lak Sarah. I’ll suffer desterlation fus!”...

“I’se here tuh qualify my constituents. I’ll sing tuh Rome an’ tuh Englan’ an’ tuh de uttermos’ parts uh de uth.” (“You must address yourself to the chair,” said that functionary, ready to faint.) “All right, suh, I’ll not ’sire tuh maintain de House any longer.”

Religion is as necessary to reason as reason is to religion. The one cannot exist without the other. A reasoning being would lose his reason, in attempting to account for the great phenomena of nature, had he not a Supreme Being to refer to; and well has it been said that if there had been no God mankind would have been obliged to imagine one.

Honorable Jefferson Davis: My father, Harrison Self, is sentenced to hang at four o’clock this evening on a charge of bridge-burning. As he remains my earthly all, and all my hopes of happiness centre on him, I implore you to pardon him.

For years after the war, the Republican politicians in the South told the negroes that if the Democrats were elected, they would be put back into slavery. Consequently, after the first election of Cleveland, many of them began to make their arrangements to readapt themselves to the old regime. One old Virginia “aunty” living in Howard County, Maryland, announced that she was ready to return to Richmond; but declared most positively: “Deed, my ole Missus has got to send me my railroad ticket fust.”

Our one sweet singer breaks no more
The silence sad and long,
The land is hushed from shore to shore
It brooks no feebler song.
Carl McKinley

It would be difficult to estimate the good done by a man like Harris, who brings a sense of relaxation and a thrill of pleasure to countless readers round the world. Such a man becomes a public benefactor. To-day men are better citizens, life’s tasks are easier, the roads are lighter, and heaven is nearer to earth because of the cheerful, hopeful, mirthful stories of Uncle Remus.

Lord Dunmore defeated by Colonel Woodford at Battle of Great Bridge, Virginia, 1775

Sir:—If you have no cause to change your opinion respecting your mechanical boat, and reasons unknown to me do not exist to delay the exhibition of it, I would advise you to give it to the public as soon as it can be prepared conveniently.... Should a mechanical genius hit upon your plan, or something similar to it, I need not add that it would place you in an awkward situation and perhaps disconcert all your prospects concerning this useful discovery....

Mr. Rumsey’s steamboat, with more than half her loading (which was upwards of three ton) and a number of people on board, made a progress of four miles in one hour against the current of Potomac River, by the force of steam, without any external application whatsoever.

Second trip of Rumsey’s steamboat at Shepherdstown, Va., in boat designed after model of 1784

I have taken the greatest pains to perfect another kind of boat, upon the principles I mentioned to you at Richmond, in November last, and have the pleasure to inform you that I have brought it to a great perfection ... and I have quite convinced myself that boats of passage may be made to go against the current of the Mississippi or Ohio rivers, or in the Gulf Stream (from the Leeward to the Windward-Islands) from sixty to one hundred miles per day. I know this will appear strange and improbable to many persons, yet I am very certain it may be performed, besides, it is simple (when understood) and is also strictly philosophical.

James Rumsey
(In letter to George Washington after construction of steamboat model seen in action by the latter in 1784)

On part of the field the Union dead lay three deep. So fearful was the slaughter that our men at certain points on the line cried out to the advancing Federal forces, “Go back; we don’t want to kill you all!” Still they pressed forward in the face of despair, and they fell in the unshrinking station where they fought. In six months Lee had effaced Pope, checked McClellan, and crushed Burnside—June 25 to December 13, 1862.

Washington stands alone and unapproachable, like a snow-peak rising above its fellows into the clear air of morning, with a dignity, constancy and purity which have made him the ideal type of civic virtue to succeeding generations.

Of late I have opened a pawnbroker’s shop for my hard-pressed brethren in feathers, lending at a fearful rate of interest; for every borrowing Lazarus will have to pay me back in due time by monthly instalments of singing. I shall have mine own again with usury. But were a man never so usurious, would he not lend a winter seed for a summer song? Would he refuse to invest his stale crumbs in an orchestra of divine instruments and a choir of heavenly voices?

I fill this cup to one made up
Of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex
The seeming paragon;
To whom the better elements
And kindly stars have given
A form so fair, that, like the air,
’Tis less of earth than heaven.
Edward C. Pinkney
(“A Health”)

Her every tone is music’s own,
Like those of morning birds,
And something more than melody
Dwells ever in her words;
The coinage of her heart are they,
And from her lips each flows
As one may see the burdened bee
Forth issue from the rose.
Edward C. Pinkney
(“A Health”)

... Nay, more! in death’s despite
The crippled skeleton “learned to write.”
“Dear mother,” at first, of course; and then
“Dear Captain,” inquiring about the men.
Captain’s answer: “Of eighty-and-five,
Giffen and I are left alive.”
Francis O. Ticknor
(“Little Giffen”)

Word of gloom from the war, one day;
Johnston pressed at the front, they say.
Little Giffen was up and away;
A tear—his first—as he bade good-bye,
Dimmed the glint of his steel-blue eye.
“I’ll write, if spared!” There was news of the fight;
But none of Giffen.—He did not write.
Francis O. Ticknor

Some of the manufacturing states think that a fight would be awful. Without a little bloodletting this Union will not, in my estimation, be worth a rush.

The Convention of 1787 was composed of members, a majority of whom were elected to reject the Federal Constitution; and it was only after the clause declaring that “the power granted under the Constitution being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury and oppression, and that every power not granted thereby remains with them at their will,” was inserted in the ordinance of ratification, that six or more of the majority opposed to the measure consented to vote for it. Even with this accession of strength the Constitution was carried only by a vote of 89 to 79.

RESOLVED.... As the powers of legislation, granted in the Constitution of the United States to Congress, do not embrace a case of the admission of a foreign State or Territory, by legislation, into the Union, such an act of admission would have no binding force whatever on the people of Massachusetts.

Bowing her head to the dust of the earth,
Smitten and stricken is she;
Light after light gone out from her hearth,
Son after son from her knee.
Bowing her head to the dust at her feet,
Weeping her beautiful slain;
Silence! keep silence for aye in the street—
See! they are coming again!
Alethea S. Burroughs

The glory of your virtues will not terminate with your military command; it will continue to animate remote ages.

The moon is in a tranquil mood;
The silent skies are bland:
Only the spirits of the good
Go musing up the land:
The sea is wrapped in mist and rest;
It is the night that God hath blest.
Danske Dandridge

To the cradle-bough of a naked tree,
Benumbed with ice and snow,
A Christmas dream brought suddenly
A birth of mistletoe.

The shepherd stars from their fleecy cloud
Strode out on the night to see;
The Herod north-wind blustered loud
To rend it from the tree.

But the old year took it for a sign,
And blessed it in his heart:
“With prophecy of peace divine,
Let now my soul depart.”
John B. Tabb
(Mistletoe)

Now praise to God that ere his grace
Was scorned and he reviled
He looked into his mother’s face,
A little helpless child.
And praise to God that ere men strove
Above his tomb in war
One loved him with a mother’s love,
Nor knew a creed therefor.
John Charles McNeill
(A Christmas Hymn)

Hear the sledges with the bells—
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars, that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
Edgar Allan Poe

In the future some historian shall come forth both strong and wise,
With a love of the Republic, and the truth, before his eyes.
He will show the subtle causes of the war between the States,
He will go back in his studies far beyond our modern dates,
He will trace our hostile ideas as the miner does the lodes,
He will show the different habits born of different social codes,
He will show the Union riven, and the picture will deplore,
He will show it re-united and made stronger than before.
James Barron Hope

Slow and patient, fair and truthful must the coming teacher be
To show how the knife was sharpened that was ground to prune the tree.
He will hold the Scales of Justice, he will measure praise and blame,
And the South will stand the verdict, and will stand it without shame.
James Barron Hope

I changed my name when I got free
To “Mister” like the res’,
But now dat I am going Home,
I likes de ol’ name bes’.

Sweet voices callin’ “Uncle Rome”
Seem ringin’ in my ears;
An’ swearin’ sorter sociable,—
Ol’ Master’s voice I hears.
······
He’s passed Heaven’s River now, an’ soon
He’ll call across its foam:
“You, Rome, you damn ol’ nigger,
Loose your boat an’ come on Home!”
Howard Weeden

’Tis midnight’s holy hour—and silence now
Is brooding, like a gentle spirit, o’er
The still and pulseless world. Hark! on the winds,
The bells’ deep notes are swelling. ’Tis the knell
Of the departed year. No funeral train
Is sweeping past; yet on the stream and wood,
With melancholy light, the moonbeams rest
Like a pale, spotless shroud; the air is stirred,
As by a mourner’s sigh; and on yon cloud,
That floats so still and placidly through heaven,
The spirits of the seasons seem to stand—
Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn’s solemn form,
And Winter, with his aged locks—and breathe
In mournful cadences, that come abroad
Like the far wind harp’s wild and touching wail,
A melancholy dirge o’er the dead Year,
Gone from the earth forever.
George Denison Prentice

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Dixie Book of Days

The Dixie Book of Days