Dead silence. One could have heard a pin fall.
Wholesale confiscation of Greensboro was threatened because of Mr. Davis’ stop there. Major Sutherlin strove with tact and diligence to prevent it. He lost no opportunity to cultivate kindly relations with Northerners of influence, and to inaugurate a reign of good-will generally. Receiving a telegram saying that Colonel Buford, a Northern officer, and his party, would pass through Danville, the Major went to his wife and said: “I am going to invite those Yankees here. I want you to get up the finest dinner you can for them.” Feeling was high and sore; she did not smile. The day of their arrival he appeared in trepidation. “I have another telegram,” he said. “To my surprise, there are ladies in the party.”
This was too much for the honest “rebel” soul of her. Men she could avoid seeing except at table; but with ladies for her guests, more olive branches must be exchanged than genuine feeling between late enemies could possibly warrant. But her guests found her a perfect hostess, grave, sincere, hospitable.
There was a young married pair. When her faithful coloured man went up to their rooms to render service, they were afraid of him, were careful he should not enter, seemed to fear that of himself or as the instrument of his former owners he might do them injury.
Such queer, contradictory ideas Yankees had of us and our black people. A Northern girl visiting the niece of Alexander H. Stephens at a plantation where there were many negroes, asked: “Where are the blood-hounds?” “The blood-hounds! We haven’t any.” “How do you manage the negroes without them? I thought all Southerners kept blood-hounds—that only blood-hounds could keep negroes from running away.” “I never saw a blood-hound in my life,” Miss Stephens replied. “I don’t know what one is like. None of our friends keep blood-hounds.”
But to the Sutherlin Mansion. The bride asked: “Mrs. Sutherlin, what room did Mr. Davis occupy?”
“That in which you sleep.”
The bride was silent. Then: “It is a pleasant room. The mocking-birds are singing when we wake in the morning. Sometimes, I hear them in the night.”
A shadow fell on the hostess’ face. The words recalled the thought of Mr. Davis, now shut out from the sight of the sky and the voice of the birds.
It has been said of this or that place at which Mr. Davis, moving southward from Danville, stopped, that it was the “Last Capital of the Confederacy.” He held a Cabinet meeting in Colonel Wood’s house in Greensboro; was in Charlotte several days; held a Cabinet meeting or council of war in the Armistead Burt House, Abbeville, S. C.; and in the Old Bank, Washington, Ga. He said in council at Abbeville: “I will listen to no proposition for my safety. I appeal to you for our country.”