The sun was setting, and the sexton had other duties. As I left the church, he said: "Come round, sir, some afternoon, and I will take you up to the steeple, so that you can get a sight of the city, and may be you play the organ. I love to hear music, sir."
How strangely this will read fifty years hence! The words slave,—master,—sold,—hunted down, will make this present time seem an impossibility to those who live after us. This sexton—a slave—heard the minister preach of the loosing of the bonds of the oppressed, and of doing unto others as they would be done by, yet he found in his own experience such a Gospel a lie. His bonds were not loosened; and the boys of the Sunday school, the petted sons of Savannah, went out from their aristocratic homes to perpetuate that lie. At last through war came deliverance; and yet there was so much gentleness in the heart of this man, that in the day of calamity which came to his master, when his sons one by one were killed in their endeavors to sustain that lie; when his property disappeared like dew before the morning sun; when his pride was humiliated; when his daughters, who were expectants of immense fortunes, were compelled to do menial service,—this servant, though a free man, could not find it in his heart to leave them, and take the liberty he loved! It may have been an exceptional case; but it shows an interesting feature of Southern life. The words of this sexton of Savannah will adorn the historic page. "I reckon, sir, that it is the Lord's doing, and that it will be a blessing to us in the end."
Society in the South, and especially in Savannah, had undergone a great change. The extremes of social life were very wide apart before the war; they were no nearer the night before Sherman marched into the city; but the morning after there was a convulsion, an upheaval, a shaking up and a settling down of all the discordant elements. The tread of that army of the West, as it moved in solid column through the streets, was like a moral earthquake, overturning aristocratic pride, privilege, and power.
Old houses, with foundations laid deep and strong in the centuries, fortified by wealth, name, and influence, went down beneath the shock. The general disruption of the former relations of master and slave, and forced submission to the Union arms, produced a common level. A reversal of the poles of the earth would hardly have produced a greater physical convulsion than this sudden and unexpected change in the social condition of the people of the city.
On the night before Sherman entered the place there were citizens who could enumerate their wealth by millions; at sunrise the next morning they were worth scarcely a dime. Their property had been in cotton, negroes, houses, land, Confederate bonds and currency, railroad and bank stocks. Government had seized their cotton; the negroes had possession of their lands; their slaves had become freemen; their houses were occupied by troops; Confederate bonds were waste paper; their railroads were destroyed; their banks insolvent. They had not only lost wealth, but they had lost their cause. And there were some who were willing to confess that they had been fighting for a system of iniquity.
One could not ask for more courteous treatment than I received during my stay in Savannah. I am indebted to many ladies and gentlemen of that city for kind invitations to pass an evening with them. There was no concealment of opinion on either side, but with the utmost good feeling full expression was given to our differing sentiments.
"We went into the war in good faith; we thought we were right; we confidently expected to establish our independence; but we are whipped, and have got to make the best of it," was the frank acknowledgment of several gentlemen.
"I hate you of the North," said a young lady. It came squarely, and the tone indicated a little irritation.
"I am very sorry for it. I can hardly think that you really hate us. You don't hate me individually?"
"O no. You come here as a gentleman. I should indeed be rude and unladylike to say that I hated you; but I mean the Yankees in general. We never can live together in peace again. For one, I hope to leave the country."