The Sequel of Appomattox, A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States | Page 4

classes of the population. The accumulated
capital of the South had disappeared in worthless Confederate stocks,
bonds, and currency. The banks had failed early in the war. Two billion
dollars invested in slaves had been wiped out. Factories, which had
been running before the war or were developed after 1861 in order to
supply the blockaded country, had been destroyed by Federal raiders or
seized and sold or dismantled because they had furnished supplies to
the Confederacy. Mining industries were paralyzed. Public buildings
which had been used for war purposes were destroyed or confiscated
for the uses of the army or for the new freedmen's schools. It was
months before courthouses, state capitols, school and college buildings
were again made available for normal uses. The military school
buildings had been destroyed by the Federal forces. Among the schools
which suffered were the Virginia Military Institute, the University of
Alabama, the Louisiana State Seminary, and many smaller institutions.
Nearly all these had been used in some way for war purposes and were
therefore subject to destruction or confiscation.
The farmers and planters found themselves "land poor." The soil
remained, but there was a prevalent lack of labor, of agricultural
equipment, of farm stock, of seeds, and of money with which to make
good the deficiency. As a result, a man with hundreds of acres might be
as poor as a Negro refugee. The desolation is thus described by a
Virginia farmer:
"From Harper's Ferry to New Market, which is about eighty miles . . .
the country was almost a desert . . . . We had no cattle, hogs, sheep, or
horse or anything else. The fences were all gone. Some of the orchards
were very much injured, but the fruit trees had not been destroyed. The
barns were all burned; chimneys standing without houses, and houses
standing without roof, or door, or window."
Much land was thrown on the market at low prices--three to five dollars
an acre for land worth fifty dollars. The poorer lands could not be sold
at all, and thousands of farms were deserted by their owners.
Everywhere recovery from this agricultural depression was slow. Five

years after the war Robert Somers, an English traveler, said of the
Tennessee Valley:
"It consists for the most part of plantations in a state of semi- ruin and
plantations of which the ruin is for the present total and complete . . . .
The trail of war is visible throughout the valley in burnt-up gin-houses,
ruined bridges, mills, and factories . . . and in large tracts of once
cultivated land stripped of every vestige of fencing. The roads, long
neglected, are in disorder, and having in many places become
impassable, new tracks have been made through the woods and fields
without much respect to boundaries."
Similar conditions existed wherever the armies had passed, and not in
the country districts alone. Many of the cities, such as Richmond,
Charleston, Columbia, Jackson, Atlanta, and Mobile had suffered from
fire or bombardment.
There were few stocks of merchandise in the South when the war ended,
and Northern creditors had lost so heavily through the failure of
Southern merchants that they were cautious about extending credit
again. Long before 1865 all coin had been sent out in contraband trade
through the blockade. That there was a great need of supplies from the
outside world is shown by the following statement of General Boynton:
"Window-glass has given way to thin boards, in railway coaches and in
the cities. Furniture is marred and broken, and none has been replaced
for four years. Dishes are cemented in various styles, and half the
pitchers have tin handles. A complete set of crockery is never seen, and
in very few families is there enough to set a table .... A set of forks with
whole tines is a curiosity. Clocks and watches have nearly all
stopped . . . . Hairbrushes and toothbrushes have all worn out; combs
are broken . . . . Pins, needles, and thread, and a thousand such articles,
which seem indispensable to housekeeping, are very scarce. Even in
weaving on the looms, corncobs have been substituted for spindles.
Few have pocketknives. In fact, everything that has heretofore been an
article of sale in the South is wanting now. At the tables of those who
were once esteemed luxurious providers you will find neither tea,
coffee, sugar, nor spices of any kind. Even candles, in some cases, have
been replaced by a cup of grease in which a piece of cloth is plunged
for a wick."
This poverty was prolonged and rendered more acute by the lack of

transportation. Horses, mules, wagons, and carriages were scarce, the
country roads were nearly impassable, and bridges were in bad repair
or had been burned or