I left my New Orleans home furnished with every comfort, but have never since seen it in that perfect condition. Under General Ben Butler, a public sale was made of the contents of the dwelling, stables and outhouses for the benefit of the United States. Mrs. J. Q. A. Fellows told me she counted thirteen wagon loads of furniture taken out, and had she known me then as she afterwards did, she would have saved many valuable things for me. I owned an excellent miscellaneous library, a new piano, valuable carriages, pictures, china and cut glass—the acquisition of twenty-five years, belonging to me personally who had done nothing to bring on the hostilities between the sections. I was informed that my carriage was appropriated by a Federal officer for his own use.
It was not long before the predictions of my husband were realized by General Banks’ invading our retreat with the purpose of investing Port Hudson in the rear, Farragut meanwhile was trying to force a passage past its guns on the Mississippi river. While Gen. Banks’ command was in transit we were in daily and hourly contact with the troops. When Brig.-Gen. Grover ascertained that my household consisted of women alone, he had his tent pitched very near the dwelling, informing me himself that he did this to secure our safety, and assuring me that we should be unmolested inside the enclosure of our dooryard and the lawn bordering in front on the Atchafalaya river. To this end three men were detailed to act as a guard. I had then a family consisting of two daughters, Laura and Clara, their baby brother Edwin and the two Misses Chalfant and Miss Little, who were my guests for a long time.
We were abundantly furnished with the necessaries of life, and had a bountiful supply of vegetables besides the products of our dairy and poultry yard. Lacking new books to read and mail to bring us letters, newspapers or magazines, there yet came into our lives an intenser interest in what was before us so constantly—this war between the North and the South; and in one way or another everybody, white and black, man, woman and child, took a more or less active part in carrying it on.
A letter from Mrs. Mary Wall gives the following: “I hear my son Benjamin has gone to the war, Willie too, and Bowman has joined the ‘Hunter Rifles.’ There is nothing talked of here but war. God help me, but it is hard! I nursed these boys and they are part of myself; life would be utterly barren without them. But I cannot keep them, nor say a word to stay them from defending their country; but I think it will kill me. I should be better off without children in this extremity.
“What do you think the North intends? Is it to be a war of extermination? Have you read Helper’s book? He says, ‘Go out of the Union to-day and we will scourge you back to-morrow, and make the banks of the Mississippi one vast sepulchre, but you shall give up your slaves.’
“Christians ought to pray constantly that the great Omnipotent may help us. We cannot fathom God’s plans. I am ready to let my negroes go if the way opens, but I do not see that it is my duty to set them free right here and now, though the time may be approaching for them to emerge from their captivity. God’s will is just and good. Oh for perfect reliance on His promises to all who love and serve Him!”
Those who were a part of ante-bellum affairs will remember how earnestly serious-minded and conscientious slaveholders discussed the possibility of gradual emancipation as advocated by Henry Clay. The negroes were in their possession by inheritance and by the customs and laws of the land in which they were born. The slaves were not only a property which had come to them as a birthright, but also a responsibility which could not be laid aside except in a manner that would secure the future good of the slave, with proper consideration for what was justly due the master and his posterity in the settlement of the great question. If politicians on both sides, who cared more for party control and for the money value of a negro than for the nation’s good, could have been ordered to the rear, there is little doubt but that slaveholder and abolitionist and the great American people could have been brought to weigh the subject together on its own merits, and slavery might have been abolished to the satisfaction of North and South by law instead of in a cataclysm of blood.
Those were anxious days when families were left without their male protectors and we women had only ourselves and our young children in our disquieted homes. Yet we were cheerful and marvelously comforted, drawing nearer day by day to the Almighty Father, and sleeping the sleep of the just, though often awakened by the sound of guns and to the sight of Federal blue-coats drawn up in battle-line with gleaming bayonets. There was fasting and prayer everywhere during all the long struggle. The most pathetic sight was thousands of women, children and slaves, with the few non-combatant men the army had spared, on their knees in daily union prayer-meetings, at sunrise or sunset, before the God of Battles.
Each of us sympathized with the words of Lizzie Dowdell, writing in May, 1861: “I do believe the Lord is on our side. If we fail, God have mercy on the world—for the semblance of human liberty will have fled. The enemy has men, money, horses and chariots; they are strong and boastful. Our sins may be flagrant, and we may need to be scourged with scorpions; but will God permit us to be overwhelmed?” Both sides referred their case to the Court of Heaven—as the assaulted Boers are doing to-day. If they sink beneath the unlimited resources of the British, will the triumph of might now be the triumph of right and of human liberties? Three and one-half decades have softened the shadow of prejudice and the high lights of self-interest. It is well for the whole nation that slavery has been abolished and the Union preserved. How much loss will be revealed by time in the sacrifices of the rights of States against Federal encroachment, is a problem for future statesmanship. But it is certain to-day that the moral loss to the United States by the civil war will not be recovered in fifty years; while the baneful corruption of public sentiment and the ruling Administration, by reason of the late Spanish-American conflict, is sufficiently apparent to send every Christian to his knees, or to the ballot-box—the only worldly corrector of political wrongs.
We set a second table for our guard. One middle-aged man named Peter, a very young German and another—all foreigners—made up the trio. I had every delicacy within my reach provided for them, and insisted that my young ladies should see that the table was arranged tastefully, enjoining it on them that they should respond politely whenever they were spoken to. The young German on entering the yard stooped and pulled a rose which he gaily pinned on his coat. “See,” said one of the girls at the window, “that mean Yankee is taking our flowers!” “It is a good sign,” I replied, “that he will never do us any greater harm. He has a kind expression on his blond young face and in his honest blue eyes;” and this fair-faced boy proved a valuable protector on many occasions. He had learned his English in the army and to our horror was terribly addicted to profanity. Instead of the ordinary response to one of our remarks he would come out with “The hell, you say!” even when spoken to by one of the girls. Nevertheless when at last these faithful enemy-friends took up their line of march, we were friendly enemies, and regretfully saw them depart.