Dixie After the War An Exposition of Social Conditions Existing in the South, During the Twelve Years Succeeding the Fall of Richmond

Peculiar interest attaches to the inauguration of Memorial Day in Richmond, in 1866, when Northerners, watching Southerners cover the graves of their dead with flowers, went aft...

South Carolina's first Governor under her second reconstruction was General R. K. Scott, of Ohio, ex-Freedmen's Bureau Chief. His successor was Franklin J. Moses, Jr., scalawag,...

"Had slavery lasted a few years longer," I have heard my mother say, "it would have killed Julia, my head-woman, and me. Our burden of work and responsibility was simply stagger...

From Richmond, Mr. Davis went to Danville. Major Sutherlin, the Commandant, met him at the station and carried him and members of his Cabinet to the Sutherlin Mansion, which the...

Parent of all was the Union or Loyal League, whose history may be briefly summarised: Organisation for dignified ends in Philadelphia and New York in 1862-3; extension into the...

"Abraham Lincoln came unheralded. No bells rang, no guns boomed in salute. He held no levee. There was no formal jubilee. He must have been heartless as Nero to have chosen that...

The test-oath was invitation to the carpet-bagger. The statements of Generals Schofield and Stoneman show how difficult it was to find in the South men capable of filling office...

There was small interchange of civilities between Northern and Southern ladies. The new-comers were in much evidence; Southerners saw them riding and driving in rich attire and...

The "Button Order" prohibited our men from wearing Confederate buttons. Many possessed no others and had not money wherewith to buy. "Buttons were scarce as hens' teeth." The Co...

As late as 1890, Senator Ingalls said: "The use of the torch and dagger is advised. I deplore it, but as God is my judge, I say that no people on this earth have ever submitted...

Free negroes could vote in North Carolina until 1835, when a Constitutional Convention, not without division of sentiment, abolished negroid franchise on the ground that it was...

The ante-bellum planter kept a tutor or governess or both for his children; his neighbours' children sometimes attended the school which he maintained for his own. Thus, were so...

The rapist is a product of the reconstruction period. In the beginning he commanded observation North less by reason of what he did than by reason of what was done unto him. His...

Many good people came down to do good to us and the negroes; we were not always so nice to these as we ought to have been. But very good people can try other very good people so...

The Army of the Union entered Richmond with almost the solemnity of a processional entering church. It was occasion for solemn procession, that entrance into our burning city wh...

Between the plantation where harmony and industry still prevailed and that in which was complete upheaval of the old order, were thousands showing its disintegration in intermed...

We did anything and everything we could to make a living. Prominent citizens became pie-sellers. Colonel Cary, of General Magruder's Staff, came home to find his family desperat...

It would seem that times were too hard and life too bitter for merry-making. Not so. With less than half a chance to be glad, the Southerner will laugh and dance and sing--and m...

The mad act of crazy Wilkes Booth set the whole country crazy. The South was aghast, natural recoil intensified by apprehension. The North, convulsed with anguish, was newly inf...

In Matoaca's little devotional note-book, I read: "Good Friday, 1865. This is the saddest Good Friday I ever knew. I have spent the whole day praying for our stricken people, ou...

The Black and Tan Convention met December 3, 1867, in our venerable and historic Capitol to frame a new constitution for the Old Dominion. In this body were members from New Yor...

Varied instructions were given to bring order out of chaos. "Freedmen that will use any disrespectful language to their former masters will be severely punished," is part of a u...

An extract from a letter by Mrs. Robert E. Lee to Miss Mason, from Derwent, September 10, 1865, may interest my readers: "I have just received, dear Miss Em, a long letter from...

On a beautiful May afternoon, two years after Mr. Davis' capture, the "John Sylvester" swung to the wharf at Rocketts and the prisoner walked forth, smiling quietly upon the peo...

"A few days after the occupation, some drunken soldiers were heard talking in the back yard to our negroes, and it was gathered from what they said that the Federals were afraid...

Northern visitors, drawn to Richmond in the Spring of 1867, to the Davis trial, came upon the heels of a riot if not squarely into the midst of one. Friday, May 10, began with a...

"I will never forget how queer we thought the dress of the Northern ladies. A great many came to Richmond, and Military Headquarters was very gay. Band answered band in the neig...

As illustrations of embarrassments we had to face, I have chiefly chosen incidents showing a kindly and forbearing spirit on the part of Federal commanders, because I desire to...

The average master and mistress of the old South were missionaries without the name. Religious instruction was a feature of the negro quarters on the Southern plantation--the so...

"When this cruel war is over" was the name of one of our war songs. So many things we planned to do when the war should be over. With the fall of the Southern Capital the war wa...

Strange and unreal seem those days. One President a fugitive, journeying slowly southward; the other dead, journeying slowly north and west. Aye, the hand of God was heavy on bo...

With the Confederate Army gone and Richmond open to the Federal Army, her people remembered New Orleans, Atlanta, Columbia. New Orleans, where "Beast Butler" issued orders givin...

Many who ought to have known Mr. Lincoln's mind, among these General Sherman, with whom Mr. Lincoln had conversed freely, believed it his purpose to recognise existing State Gov...