I remember how loudly my dear father tried to sing—though only a poor singer—just because Uncle Sol was going to preach; how Sol gave the verses out by couplets to be sung, as was the custom then in the country. All joined in singing that sacred song, and bowed the knee when Uncle Sol said, “Let us pray.” I am very sure I have never knelt with more humble devotion and reverence than on that Sabbath morning.
Roads and bridges having been made passable after the storm, I said the “Good-by” to the friends I had found in the pleasant country village, and resumed my journey.
It was a pleasing ride that balmy summer morning, ennobling to the soul, as nature’s great book unrolled its series of beautiful scenes. Far in the azure blue the great white banks of clouds seemed to lie at anchor, so slow of sail were they; the gloom of the dense forest, gently waving its boughs to the morning breeze, would greet the eye; the dulcet murmur of gurgling streams would break on the ear never so gently; quiet cottages, surrounded with flowers and fruits, seemed the abodes of peace and content. Grass-green marshes all flecked with flowers of varied tints, with here and there a tall pine or sombre cypress standing as sentinels of the blooming mead; song-birds caroling their sweet lays as they flitted from bough to bough, or lightly soaring in space; fields of deadened trees, all draped with the long gray Spanish moss, reminded one of the ancient Romans mantled with the toga, as they were silhouetted against the sky; groups of great oaks, with clusters of the mistletoe pendent, calling to mind the ancient Britons with their strange and terrible religion of the Druids, when they met together in their sacred groves for the celebration of mystical rites. Now an open field of corn, green of blade, gently billowed by the wind, an old gray-haired farmer plowing, seemingly oblivious to all surrounding objects, and singing, as if from the fullness of a glad soul, the refrain, “I have some friends in glory.” Ah, honest farmer, thought I, many of us will join that sad refrain ere this strife is ended! On, past a large plantation all in cotton, the clashing of the many hoes, in the hands of slaves, in unison with the merry songs that floated far on the gentle zephyrs. The lone country church gleaming white from a wilderness of foliage, with its grass green mounds, so quiet and still. At times the winds came floating past, laden with the resinous odor of myriad pines, and filled the surrounding atmosphere with a sweetness of perfume surpassing the far-famed incense of Arabia.
In the near distance the home of my generous employer rose to view, in every respect the characteristic Southern home, with its wide halls, long and broad colonnade, large and airy rooms, the yard a park in itself, fruits and flowers abounding. Here there was little or nothing to remind us of the impending conflict. We were far from the border States and remote from the seaboard. We had surmised that our sequestered vale must have been the spot where the Indian chief and his braves thrust their tomahawks deep down in the soil, with their “Alabama, here we rest!” But soon it came home to us, as the earnestness of the strife began to be realized, and when we found ourselves encompassed by the Federal blockade, that we had to depend altogether upon our own resources; and no sooner had the stern facts of the situation forced themselves upon us, than we joined with zealous determination to make the best of our position, and to aid the cause our convictions impressed on us as right and just. And if up to that time, in the South, many had engaged in work purely as a matter of choice, there were none, even the wealthiest, who had not been taught that labor was honorable, and who had very clear ideas of how work must be done; so when our misfortunes came, we were by no means found wanting in any of the qualities that were necessary for our changed circumstances.
Surely there was work enough to be done. Our soldiers had to be fed and clothed; our home ones had to be fed and clothed. All clothing and provisions for the slaves had to be produced and manufactured at home. Leather had to be of our own tanning; all munitions of war were to be manufactured inside the blockade. The huge bales of kerseys, osnaburgs, and boxes of heavy brogan-shoes, which had been shipped from the North to clothe and shoe the slaves, were things of the past. Up to the beginning of the war we had been dependent on the North for almost everything eaten and worn. Cotton was cultivated in the South almost universally before the war, it was marketed in the North, it was manufactured there, and then returned in various kinds of cloth-material to us.
II.
But now the giant emergency must be met, and it was not long ere all were in good training; and having put hands to the plow, there was no murmuring nor looking back. The first great pressing needs were food and clothing. Our government issued orders for all those engaged in agriculture to put only one tenth of their land in cotton, there being then no market for cotton. All agriculturists, large or small, were also required by our government to give for the support of our soldiers one tenth of all the provisions they could raise,—a requirement with which we were only too willing to comply.
In southern Alabama before the war the cultivation of cereals was quite rare. There Cotton was indeed king. I think this saying was true in all the Southern States. It applied to all the territory south of Virginia, Tennessee, and Missouri, at any rate.