Part 9

November Twenty-Second

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

THOMAS NELSON PAGE

_Convention in Louisiana disfranchising ex-Confederates, 1867_

November Twenty-Third

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.

BILL ARP (_To Artemus Ward_)

November Twenty-Fourth

PROTEST AGAINST THE TARIFF, SOUTH CAROLINA, 1832

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.

GEORGE MCDUFFIE (_Address to the People of the United States_)

_Ordinance of Nullification passed by South Carolina, 1832_

_Battle of the Clouds, Lookout Mountain, 1863_

November Twenty-Fifth

PROTEST AGAINST THE WAR OF 1812, NEW ENGLAND

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.

HENRY A. WHITE

_Battle of Missionary Ridge, 1863_

November Twenty-Sixth

THE HOMESPUN DRESS

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.

November Twenty-Seventh

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

November Twenty-Eighth

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_

November Twenty-Ninth

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.

BILL ARP (_On Hampton's Election_)

November Thirtieth

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"_)

_General Patrick R. Cleburne killed at Franklin, Tenn., 1864_

December

ICICLES AT THE SOUTH

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

December First

THE FIRST SNOW-FALL

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

December Second

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.

PERCY GREG (England)

_John Brown hanged, 1859_

December Third

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.

MYRTA LOCKETT AVARY

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

December Fourth

A BIT OF RECONSTRUCTION ORATORY

"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."

HON. LEWIS LINDSAY (_From Stenographic Report_)

December Fifth

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.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

December Sixth

CLEMENCY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS

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.

ELIZABETH SELF (_Telegram which secured pardon for her father_)

_Jefferson Davis dies, 1889_

_The county of Kentucky formed from Virginia, 1776_

_Duncan Nathaniel Ingraham, "Hero of the Koszta Rescue," born, 1802_

December Seventh

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."

December Eighth

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

_Henry Timrod born, 1829_

_Joel Chandler Harris born, 1848_

December Ninth

JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS

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.

HENRY STILES BRADLEY

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

December Tenth

Mt. Vernon, 31 Jan. 1786

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....

GEORGE WASHINGTON (_Letter to James Rumsey_)

_Mississippi admitted to the Union, 1817_

December Eleventh

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.

(_Virginian Gazette and Winchester Advertiser, Jan. 11, 1788_)

_Second trip of Rumsey's steamboat at Shepherdstown, Va., in boat designed after model of 1784_

December Twelfth

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_)

December Thirteenth

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.

HENRY E. SHEPHERD

_Burnside repulsed at Fredericksburg, 1862_

December Fourteenth

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.

JAMES BRYCE (England)

_George Washington dies, 1799_

December Fifteenth

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?

JAMES LANE ALLEN

December Sixteenth

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_")

December Seventeenth

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_")

December Eighteenth

... 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_")

_Francis O. Ticknor dies, 1874_

December Nineteenth

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

_Crittenden's compromise opposed by dominant party in Congress, 1860_

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.

Z. CHANDLER (_Senator from Michigan_)

December Twentieth

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.

(_From Editorial Article in Charleston "Courier," 1861_)

_South Carolina secedes, 1860_

December Twenty-First

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.

(_Resolutions of Massachusetts Legislature, 1845. Nullification?_)

_President Tyler urges annexation of Texas, 1844_

December Twenty-Second

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

_Sherman enters Savannah, 1864_

_Reconstruction Act put in effect in Georgia, 1869_

December Twenty-Third

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

(_President of Congress, to General Washington_)

_Washington resigns his commission as Commander-in-Chief, Annapolis, 1783_

December Twenty-Fourth

CHRISTMAS EVE

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

December Twenty-Fifth

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_)

December Twenty-Sixth

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_)

December Twenty-Seventh

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

December Twenty-Eighth

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

December Twenty-Ninth

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

_Texas admitted to the Union, 1845_

December Thirtieth

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

December Thirty-First

'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

_Battle of Murfreesboro, Tenn., 1862_

Index

PAGE

_Alabama_, the, fight with the _Kearsarge_. June 19 140

Alamance Creek, Battle of. May 16 118

Alamo, the. Mch. 6 65

Antietam, Battle of. Sept. 17 212

_Arkansas_, the, destroyed. Aug. 6 180

Ashby, Gen. Turner. June 6 131

Assembly, first legislative in America. July 30 172

Atlanta, evacuation of. Sept. 1, 2 200

Audubon, John James. May 4 109

Bacon, Nathaniel, epitaph. Jan. 2 15

Bagby, George W. Aug. 13 185

Baltimore, in first bloodshed of the War. April 19 97

Benjamin, Judah P. May 6 111

_Bonnie Blue Flag_, the. Jan. 10, 12 21, 23

Boston, A Southern view. Mch. 12 69

Breckinridge, John C. May 17; Aug. 10 118, 183

Brooke, John Mercer, constructor of the first ironclad. Mch. 9 67

Brown, John, execution. Dec. 2 268 Raid at Harper's Ferry. Oct. 16, 17 230, 231

Calhoun, John C. Mch. 18 74 Nationalism of. Mch. 31 81

Carroll, Charles of Carrollton. Nov. 14 255

Charleston "Courier" on Secession. Dec. 20 280

Chickamauga, Battle of. Sept. 20 215

Clark, George Rogers. Feb. 23, 24 53, 54

Clark and Lewis, Northwestern expedition. May 14 116

Clay, Henry. June 29 148

Coercion, opposed by border States. Apr. 16, 17, 18; May 20 94, 95, 96, 119

Confederacy, fall of. Apr. 8, 9, 10, 11 87, 88, 89, 90 Surrender of last army. May 26 122

Cornwallis, surrender of. Oct. 19 233

Crittenden, compromise of. Dec. 19 279

Crockett, Col. David. Aug. 17 188

Custis, Hon. John, epitaph. July 11 158

Davis, Jefferson. June 3; Dec. 6 129, 271 Imprisonment. May 23, 24 121

Democrats, negro view of. Dec. 7 272

Dixie, new version. Jan. 31; April 25; May 21 36, 102, 120

Easter, selections for. April 4, 5 86