INDUSTRY OF LADIES IN CLOTHING THE SOLDIERS, AND ZEAL IN URGING THEIR BEAUX TO GO TO THE WAR.
“Yet the people of Richmond are not what they were five years ago,” said General S——, who knew them well, being himself a Virginian. “Their faces have changed. They have a dazed look, like owls in a sudden light. To any one who used to see them in the old days of their pride and spirit, this is very striking. There never was such a downfall, and they have not yet recovered from the shock. They seem to be groping about, as if they had lost something, or were waiting for something. Whatever may be said of them, or whatever they may say of themselves, they feel that they are a conquered people.”
“They were a conquered people,” said the radical Union men. “There never was a rebellious class more thoroughly subdued. They expected no mercy from the government, for they deserved none. They were prepared to submit to everything, even to negro suffrage; for they supposed nothing less would be required of them. But the more lenient the government, the more arrogant they become.”
Of Confederate patriotism I did not hear very favorable accounts. It burst forth in a beautiful tall flame at the beginning of the war. There were soldiers’ aid societies, patronized by ladies whose hands were never before soiled by labor. Stockings were knit, shirts cut and sewed, and carpets converted into blankets, by these lovely hands. If a fine fellow appeared among them, more inclined to gallantry in the parlor than to gallantry in the field, these same lovely hands thrust him out, and he was told that “only ‘the brave deserve the fair.’” But Southern heat is flashy and intense; it does not hold out like the slow, deep fire of the north. The soldiers’ aid societies soon grew to be an old story, and the lovely ones contented themselves with cheering and waving their handkerchiefs when the “noble defenders of the south” marched through the streets.
The “noble defenders of the south” did not, I regret to say, appreciate the cheers and the handkerchiefs as they did the shirts and the blankets.
“Many a time,” said Mrs. H——, “I have heard them yell back at the ladies who cheered them, ‘Go to ——! If you care for us, come out of your fine clothes and help us!’ After the people stopped giving, the soldiers began to help themselves. I’ve seen them rush into stores as they passed, snatch whatever they wanted, and march on again, hooting, with loaves of bread and pieces of meat stuck on the points of their bayonets.”
The sons and brothers of influential families were kept out of the war by an ingenious system of details. Every man was conscripted; but, while the poor and friendless were hurried away to fight the battles of slavery, the favored aristocrat would get “detailed” to fill some “bomb-proof” situation, as it was called.
“These ‘bomb-proofs’ finally got to be a very great nuisance. Men were ‘detailed’ to fill every comfortable berth the government, directly or indirectly, had anything to do with; and as the government usurped, in one way or another, nearly all kinds of business, it soon became difficult for an old or infirm person to get any sort of light employment. A friend of mine, whom the war had ruined, came down from the country, thinking he could get something to do here. He saw able-bodied young men oiling the wheels of the cars. He was old and lame, but he felt himself well able to do that kind of work. So he applied for a situation, and found that the young men he saw were ‘detailed’ from the army. Others were ‘detailed’ to carry lanterns for them when they had occasion to oil the car-wheels at night. It was so with every situation the poor man could have filled.”
This was the testimony of a candid old gentleman, himself an aristocrat, at whose house I passed an evening.
I took an early opportunity to make the acquaintance of Governor Pierpoint, whom I found to be a plain, somewhat burly, exceedingly good-humored and sociable person. The executive mansion occupies pleasant grounds, enclosed from a corner of Capitol Square; and as it was not more than three minutes’ walk from my hotel, I found it often very agreeable to go over and spend a leisure hour or two in his library.