GEORGIA REFUGEES
[Mrs. W. H. Felton, in Georgia Land and People, pages 404-405.]
From the time that Oglethorpe planted his colony upon Yamacraw Bluff, Georgia has never passed through such 285 an ordeal as the present. Nine-tenths of her sons were practically disfranchised because they had served the Southern Confederacy, and all the conditions of life were new; their servants were no longer subject to their control, and most of their property was scattered to the four winds of heaven. It tested the blood that had come down to them from Cavalier and Huguenot, from Scotch and Irish ancestry. The private life of many Georgians for the first few years after the war beggars description; but the women rose to the occasion.
The surrender found a gentle, shrinking Georgia woman on the Florida line, nearly four hundred miles from her luxurious home, from which she had fled in haste as Sherman “marched to the sea.” The husband was with General Lee in Virginia. The last tidings came from Petersburg—before Appomattox—and his fate was uncertain. Hiring a dusky driver, with his old army mule and wagon, she loaded the latter with the remnant of goods and chattels that were left to her, and, placing her four children on top, this brave woman trudged the entire distance on foot, cheering, guiding, and protecting the driver and her little ones in the tedious journey. Under an August sun through sand and dust she plodded along, footsore and anxious, until she reached the dismantled home and restored her little stock of earthly goods under their former shelter. When her soldier husband had walked from Virginia to Georgia, he found, besides his noble wife and precious children, the nucleus of a new start in life, glorified by woman’s courage and fidelity under a most trying ordeal. For a twelve-month the exigencies of their situation deprived her of a decent pair of shoes; still she toiled in the kitchen, the garden, and, perhaps, the open fields, without a repining word or complaining murmur. The same material is found in a steel rail as in the watch spring, and the only difference between the soldier and his wife was physical strength.
This was no exceptional case. The hardships of Georgia women were extreme and long-continued.
THE NEGROES AND NEW FREEDOM
[In Last Ninety Days of the War, pages 186-187.]
The negroes, however, behaved much better, on the whole, than Northern letter-writers represent them to have done. Indeed, I do not know a race more studiously misrepresented than they have been and are at this present time. They behaved well during the war; if they had not, it could not have lasted eighteen months. They showed a fidelity and a steadiness which speaks not only well for themselves but well for their training and the system under which they lived. And when their liberators arrived, there was no indecent excitement on receiving the gift of liberty, nor displays of impertinence to their masters. In one or two instances they gave “missus” to understand that they desired present payment for their services in gold and silver, but, in general, the tide of domestic life flowed on externally as smoothly as ever. In fact, though of course few at the North will believe me, I am sure that they felt for their masters, and secretly sympathized with their ruin. They knew that they were absolutely penniless and conquered; and though they were glad to be free, yet they did not turn round, as New England letter-writers have represented, to exult over their owners, nor exhibit the least trace of New England malignity. So the bread was baked in those latter days, the clothes were washed and ironed, and the baby was nursed as zealously as ever, though both parties understood at once that the service was voluntary. The Federal soldiers sat a good deal in the kitchens; but the division being chiefly composed of Northwestern men, who had little love for the negro, (indeed I heard some d——n him as the cause of the war, and say that they would much rather put a bullet through an Abolitionist than through a Confederate soldier,) there was probably very little incendiary talk and instructions going on. In all of which, compared with other localities we were much favored.