A Picture of the Desolated States, and the Work of Restoration. 1865-1868

by J. T. Trowbridge

“Did you find in the North any such animosity existing towards the people of the South?”

“Very little; and there was this difference: In the North it is only a few ignorant people, of the poorer class, who hate the South: I believe the mass of the Northern people, while they hate treason and rebellion, have only kind feelings towards the Southern people. But with us it is the wealthy and influential class that hates the North, while only the poor whites and negroes have any loyalty at heart. I wish,” he added, “that for every Northern man now settling in the South, a Southern man would go into business at the North, and see for himself, as I have done, just what sort of people and institutions we have all our lives been taught to misunderstand and slander.”

The editors of the southern half of the State were nearly all disloyal, judged by their prints. The same may be said of the ministers of the aristocratic churches, judged by their words and works.

There is a wide difference between the people of Northern and Southern Alabama. The inhabitants of many of the upper counties were as loyal as those of East Tennessee. In some it was necessary for the Davis government to maintain a cavalry force in order to keep the people in subjection. Such a county was Randolph, whose inhabitants were as strongly opposed to secession, as those of Chambers County, its next neighbor on the South, were in favor of it.

“The commanders discriminated in their foraging against the Union people. The fact that a man was absent in the service of the United States, or was opposed to the rebellion, was deemed a sufficient warrant to take the last piece of meat from his smoke-house, and the last ear of corn and bundle of fodder from his barns, leaving his family to starve. Randolph alone furnished nearly five hundred men who actually took up arms in the service of the United States, enlisting in whatever organization they found convenient as they made their escape from the Rebel conscripting officers into our lines. Their graves are upon every battle-field, attesting their bravery, their patriotism, and their sacrifices.”

Thus wrote, in a private letter to General Swayne, Lieutenant R. T. Smith, himself a loyal Alabamian who served in the Union army. The county was impoverished by the absence of its men in both armies, and by the troopers who preyed upon it. There was still great suffering at the time of my visit.

“Much destitution also exists,” said the lieutenant, “among the families of the late Rebels; for the soldiery, who had come in the beginning partly at their instance, consumed their substance when the means of the Union people were exhausted. Like Actæon, they were eaten by their own dogs.”

“It is a common, an every-day sight in Randolph County, to see women and children, most of whom were formerly in good circumstances, begging for bread from door to door. They must have immediate help, or perish. Fifteen hundred families, embracing five thousand persons, are in need of immediate aid.” This was in January, 1866.

The destitution here described was not confined to a portion of the country, nor was it a new thing. In 1863, the shortness of the crops, the depreciation of the currency, and the consequent high prices of provisions, produced a famine among the poorer classes. The families of soldiers, fighting the battles of a confederacy which paid them in worthless paper, were left to suffer the extremes of want, while many, who helped to bring on the war, were growing rich by speculating upon the misery it occasioned. In Mobile there were insurrections of women, driven by starvation to acts of public violence. The State was finally awakened to the necessity of ameliorating these sufferings; and during the last year of the war it fed with meal and salt one hundred and forty thousand white paupers.

This charity, inherited, in a manner, by the government which feeds the enemy it subjugates, was continued, after the war had closed, with the aid of the United States Commissary Department. At the same time the emancipation of four hundred and fifty thousand slaves,—nearly half the population of the State,—threw a large number of black paupers upon the community.