Part 6

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

The Union had a treasury and a navy: the Confederacy had neither. The North could renew supplies from abroad. The Southern ports were blockaded and many necessaries of life were shut off. The Confederacy set to work to make arms, ammunitions, blankets, saddles, harness, and other necessities. Bells from churches and halls, dinner bells, plantation and fire bells, along with stray pieces of metal, were melted and cast into cannon. Old nails were saved and blacksmiths made of them clumsy needles, pins and scissors.

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

The women and girls helped in every possible manner. Silk dresses were made into banners, woolen dresses and shawls into soldiers' shirts--carpets into blankets--curtains, sheets, and all linens, were made into lint and bandages for the wounded. Soft white fingers knitted socks, shirts and gloves, to keep the cold from the men in the trenches. Calico was $10 per yard quite early in the strife. Homespun was made upon the old colonial wheels and looms that had been kept as souvenirs and curios. Buttons were obtained from persimmon seeds with holes pierced for eyes. Women plaited their hats from straw or palmetto leaf, and used feathers from barnyard fowls.

One mourning dress would be loaned from house to house as disaster came. Shoes were made of wood, or carriage curtains, buggy tops, saddle tops or any thing like leather. There were thin iron soles like horse shoes. They were patched with bits of old silk dresses. For little children shoes were made from old morocco pocket-books. Flour was $250 per barrel; meal, $50 a bushel; corn, $40 a bushel; oats, $25; black-eyed peas, $45; brown sugar, $10; coffee, $12; tea, $35 a pound; French merino or mohair sold at $800 to $1,000 a yard; cloth cloak, $1000 and $1500; Balmoral boots, $250 the pair; French gloves, $125 and $150. The stores came to be opened only on occasions.

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

Newspapers were printed on coarse half-sheets. Every scrap of blank paper in old note books, letters or waste was utilized. Wall paper and pictures were turned for envelopes. Glue from the peach tree gum served to seal the covers. Poke berries, oak balls, and green persimmons, furnished ink.

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

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

The memory of those hardships cannot die until all the survivors are dead. Fertile fields and pleasant villages were destroyed by great armies. Two billions of dollars in slaves were swept away. Cotton, the chief staple, was burned, or captured. Wealth placed in Confederate bonds, was lost forever. Of the 1,000,000 men in the southern army, three fourths were killed; 400,000 were crippled; and no estimate was made of the wounded who recovered. The cost of the war was $8,000,000. Men and horses perished of starvation and disease. The Southern Confederacy died, not for lack of the will and of the spirit to fight on--for not even Washington's ragged troops at Valley Forge endured greater sufferings or displayed greater heroism. The Confederacy died of exhaustion.

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

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

Sometimes months of silence elapsed. Oftener the letters were lost. In many cases they straggled in after two, or three years.

Forty-four years have dragged their slow lengths since the last roll-call. We, the survivors and descendants, have buckled on the armor of faithfulness and are honoring the memory of our martyred heroes. We are rearing monuments to perpetuate their deeds of valor. We are cleaning their revered names from aspersion. We are striving to educate the generations to come in the true history of their marvelous struggle for the inalienable rights of every free-born American. How sublime that struggle! How undaunted their attitude! How unsurpassed their fortitude amid the upheaval of their colossal ruin! The conquered banner's tattered folds hang on the wall her standard-bearer lies in the dust--the sod is green above the heads of her valiant leaders--her rank and file sleep in many an unknown grave. We are in the cooling valleys of peace, where refreshing lies, and above us waves the flag of the old, old Union our people once loved so well. So mote it be. We were loyal to the powers that were; we are loyal to the powers that be. Good citizenship is now, as ever, the watchword of the South. We do not forget our martyrs. Upon our devoted heads rests this sacred duty of consecration. Let us cling together in a cause so noble. Let us merge all thought of self in the glorious work that lies before us.

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

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

May advancing wealth rebuild her mansions and fill her coffers, and fittingly crown the efforts of her ambition, and of her genius. May she never lose the aspirations that have made her people through sunshine and storm, a lofty and noble race.

E.D. POTTS.