A Belle of the Fifties Memoirs of Mrs. Clay of Alabama, covering social and political life in Washington and the South, 1853-1866. Put into narrative form by Ada Sterling

CHAPTER XXII. RECONSTRUCTION DAYS BEGIN.

Chapter 2279 wordsPublic domain

I Arrive in Macon After Various Discomforts—My Baggage Is “Examined” by General Baker—A Curious Oversight of the Government’s Agents—I Am Rescued from a Dilemma by John A. Wyeth, Knight-Errant—I Recover My Letters from the War Department, but with Difficulty—A Stricken Patriarch and a Spartan Mother—Huntsville Metamorphosed—“Reconstruction” Signs Appear—A Slave Emulates His New Masters—He, too, in Time, Is Metamorphosed—The Freedman’s Bureau versus “Ole Missus’s”—Southern Ladies and Camomile Flowers 278