Sixty thousand of us witnessed the destruction of Atlanta, while our post band and that of the Thirty-third Massachusetts played martial airs and operatic selections.
Capt. Daniel Oakey, U. S. A.
Sherman enters Atlanta, 1864
September Third
On this point, however, all parties in the South were agreed, and the vast majority of the people of the North—before the war. The Abolitionist proper was considered not so much a friend of the negro as the enemy of society. As the war went on, and the Abolitionist saw the “glory of the Lord” revealed in a way he had never hoped for, he saw at the same time, or rather ought to have seen, that the order he had lived to destroy could not have been a system of hellish wrong and fiendish cruelty; else the prophetic vision of the liberators would have been fulfilled, and the horrors of San Domingo would have polluted this fair land. For the negro race does not deserve undivided praise for its conduct during the war. Let some small part of the credit be given to the masters, not all to the finer qualities of their “brothers in black.” The school in which the training was given is closed, and who wishes to open it? Its methods were old-fashioned and were sadly behind the times, but the old schoolmasters turned out scholars who, in certain branches of moral philosophy, were not inferior to the graduates of the new university.
Basil L. Gildersleeve
(On Slavery)
September Fourth
TOAST OF MORGAN’S MEN