Apropos of this last, let me confess, Mr. President—before the praise of New England has died on my lips—that I believe the best product of her present life is the procession of 17,000 Vermont Democrats that for twenty-two years, undiminished by death, unrecruited by birth or conversion, have marched over their rugged hills, cast their Democratic ballots, and gone back home to pray for their unregenerate neighbors, and awoke to read the record of 26,000 Republican majority! May the God of the helpless and heroic help them!
Henry W. Grady
Henry W. Grady born, 1851
April Twenty-Fifth
Her lot may be hard, her skies may darken;
To Dixie’s voice we’ll ever hearken;
Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.
The coward may shirk, the wretch go whining,
But we’ll be true till the sun stops shining,
Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.
Chorus:
I wish I was in Dixie;
Away, away;
In Dixie’s land I’ll take my stand,
And live and die in Dixie.
Away, away,
Away down South in Dixie.
Marie Louise Eve
April Twenty-Sixth
Homes without the means of support were no longer homes. With barns and mills and implements for tilling the soil all gone, with cattle, sheep, and every animal that furnished food to the helpless inmates carried off, they were dismal abodes of hunger, of hopelessness, and of almost measureless woe.
General John B. Gordon