Reminiscences of the Civil War, 1861-1865

by Preston Lafayette Ledford

Federal Officers.—The rulers or representatives of the general government could have immortalize themselves and their names would have gone down in history as benefactors, but instead they took a different view of the situation and apparently actuated by a revengeful spirit heaped up burdens that made the suffering people cry out in agony “How long will this state of affairs exist.”

Conduct of Yankee Soldiers.—Early in the Spring of 1865 the war was rapidly coming to a close and the Yankee soldiers were invading every nook and corner. Some of them acted very gentlemanly and did what they could to protect private property, but others committed depredations, terrified the people and stole or impressed, as they called it, the most of the good horses, sometimes leaving worn out old scrubby plugs for farmers to make their crops with, and then other gangs would come along and take these leaving farmers without horses. In the Summer the army horses were corralled at different places, sold at auction to the highest bidder and brought from one to fifty dollars a piece. In this way they got about all the money the citizens had managed to get hold of.

Looters Follow Yankee Army.—In the rear of the Yankee army there followed a motley gang of looters that were ignorant, vicious and some of them penitentiary convicts. This despicable class, that would not have been invited into the homes of respectable people where they lived, set themselves up as leaders to plunder, steal and overawe the good citizens of the desolated country.

Provisional Government.—The Southern people soon learned to their sorrow that if a state did not have a right to secede that the states which were in rebellion were not considered in the union. Provisional Governments were forced upon the Southern States and in North Carolina W. W. Holden, who perhaps had done more to bring about, foster and encourage the secession of the state than any other man within her borders, was made governor of the state, and a reign of terror, misrule and tyranny began. A governor with a retinue of ignorant, vicious, dishonest followers, willing and anxious to humiliate and punish the leading and best citizens of the state, caused a distressing state of affairs to exist.

The Negro Enfranchised.—To still further humiliate the Southern people an amendment was added to the constitution which placed the ballot in the hands of every negro man in the South twenty-one years old, and not satisfied with this leading citizens of the South were disfranchised. Thousands of the most prominent and influential citizens of the State of North Carolina were disfranchised. An election was ordered and held but everything was one way, and many of the poll holders were big “buck niggers” that would not have known the Constitution of the United States from the Ten Commandments.

Carpetbaggers.—The carpetbaggers and low down thieves, thugs and bums that were tacked on to the tail end of the Yankee army and left to torture, torment and terrorize the peaceable, law-abiding citizens of the South were now busy with their fiendish work. They had already done effective preparatory work by visiting and mingling freely with an element congenial to their degraded and vitiated tastes. They had frequented negro cabins which were thickly scattered over the country. These ignorant, confiding negroes were easily prevailed upon to meet in old fields, woods, or old houses located in obscure places where they organized and instructed them.

The Negro Politicians.—The negro politician loomed up and these self-constituted bosses pictured to them in glowing colors the beauty and grandeur of a position they would occupy where their former owners and other leading white citizens would have to bow the knee and acknowledge their royal authority. They were informed that the lands owned by Southern white people would be confiscated and divided out among them. Some of them in obedience to instructions went so far as to stake off forty acres of land where they wanted it, with the assurance that it would be given them. They were also promised with the forty acres of land and a mule, and were happy in anticipation in the near future of being in possession of immense wealth. Their political aspirations were if possible more extravagant. Offices not wanted by these designing political robbers were parcelled out to negroes that they could use to do their bidding.

Election a Farce.—An election was held that was worse than a farce. The negroes marched up to the polls like droves of sheep and deposited a piece of paper in a box that they could not have told by looking at it whether it was a ballot or ticket for passage on a railroad or admission into a theatre. In North Carolina the ballot boxes were sent to Charleston, S. C., for the ballots to be counted by a military commander. To the legislature were elected a few good citizens and a host of carpetbaggers, scalawags, and negroes, the last three named having overwhelming majorities.

Legislature.—The legislature met composed of this motley crew to enact laws for the government of the people of our loved State. In the legislature were a few representative members mixed in with the disreputable carpetbaggers, scalawags and ignorant negroes, and an organization effected by a few sharp unprincipled alien adventurers who at once began to plan a system of robbery bold, insolent and disgraceful, and their corrupt ignorant tools were ready to do anything dictated by them. The legislature remained in session an entire year, the members voting themselves seven dollars per day, and some of them computing their mileage over a roundabout way to give them an excuse to augment their mileage accounts. The public school fund that had been sacredly preserved through the four years vicissitudes of war was taken to pay the per diem of the members of the mob that had convened under the name of legislature. State bonds were voted and issued for millions of dollars ostensibly to build railroads, but the proceeds of the bonds were gobbled up by money sharks and no railroads built. Many of these bonds were later repudiated by the state as fraudulent. A system of state, county and municipal government prevailed that was oppressive, and the good people of the state were humiliated and felt outraged without having any chance to remedy the evil existing.

County Officers.—In the legislature were several negroes and in some counties were negro sheriffs, registers of deeds, county commissioners, magistrates and school committees. While such a state of affairs was humiliating, perhaps the carpetbaggers and some of the homemade scalawags who forgetting and forsaking their race and color, acting with them were, if possible, a worse curse to the state than the negro himself. White people were arrested upon warrants issued by negro magistrates who tried their cases and gloated over an opportunity to punish them. Extortionate taxes were levied and collected and in some counties claims were held by officers and people were obliged to sell them at a tremendous discount and the officers and their pet partners would buy them in and pay themselves full value from the county fund. Their outrageous extravagance disgusted all decent white people and their methods were universally condemned. The negro as a politician became aggressive and the bosses were obliged to put their names on the ticket because in many places they furnished the voting population. Negroes became offensive and entirely ignored their former owners and other white friends who were disposed to treat them fairly, and accepted as their advisers these low down carpetbaggers and if possible lower scalawags. The negro depended almost entirely for his living upon the better class of white people and notwithstanding all his prejudice and bitterness, acknowledged this fact, but a dirty thief or a dirty, no account white man of the class used to do their dirty work would tell them if they voted with the old secession crowd, as they called them, they would be put back in slavery, but if they voted as they suggested they would surely get the forty acres of land and a mule, and what was still more pleasing to them would place themselves in a position to wreak revenge on this now despised class. Some of the hireling serfs were willing to sell their birthright for less than a miserable mess of potage, and went so far as to advise the poor, ignorant, confiding negro, in case he was refused work by this class of white people, to steal such as he needed from the corn cribs, wheat houses, smoke houses and if that would not suffice to burn their barns or to burn them out of house and home.