The Sequel of Appomattox, A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States | Page 7

their mouths for months. The drought

cut off what little crops they hoped to save, and they must have
immediate help or perish. By far the greater suffering exists among the
whites. Their scanty supplies have been exhausted, and now they look
to the Government alone for support. Some are without homes of any
description."
Where the armies had passed, few of the people, white or black,
remained; most of them had been forced as "refugees" within the Union
lines or into the interior of the Confederacy. Now, along with the
disbanded Confederate soldiers, they came straggling back to their
war-swept homes. It was estimated, in December 1865, that in the
states of Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, there were five hundred
thousand white people who were without the necessaries of life;
numbers died from lack of food. Within a few months, relief agencies
were at work. In the North, especially in the border states and in New
York, charitable organizations collected and forwarded great quantities
of supplies to the Negroes and to the whites in the hill and mountain
counties. The reorganized state and local governments sent food from
the unravaged portions of the Black Belt to the nearest white counties,
and the army commanders gave some aid. As soon as the Freedmen's
Bureau was organized, it fed to the limit of its supplies the needy
whites as well as the blacks.
The extent of the relief afforded by the charity of the North and by the
agencies of the United States Government is not now generally
remembered, probably on account of the later objectionable activities
of the Freedmen's Bureau, but it was at the time properly appreciated.
A Southern journalist, writing of what he saw in Georgia, remarked
that "it must be a matter of gratitude as well as surprise for our people
to see a Government which was lately fighting us with fire and sword
and shell, now generously feeding our poor and distressed. In the
immense crowds which throng the distributing house, I notice the
mothers and fathers, widows and orphans of our soldiers . . . . Again,
the Confederate soldier, with one leg or one arm, the crippled, maimed,
and broken, and the worn and destitute men, who fought bravely their
enemies then, their benefactors now, have their sacks filled and are
fed."
Acute distress continued until 1867; after that year there was no further
danger of starvation. Some of the poor whites, especially in the remote

districts, never again reached a comfortable standard of living; some
were demoralized by too much assistance; others were discouraged and
left the South for the West or the North. But the mass of the people
accepted the discipline of poverty and made the best of their situation.
The difficulties, however, that beset even the courageous and the
competent were enormous. The general paralysis of industry, the
breaking up of society, and poverty on all sides bore especially hard on
those who had not previously been manual laborers. Physicians could
get practice enough but no fees; lawyers who had supported the
Confederacy found it difficult to get back into the reorganized courts
because of the test oaths and the competition of "loyal" attorneys; and
for the teachers there were few schools. We read of officers high in the
Confederate service selling to Federal soldiers the pies and cakes
cooked by their wives, of others selling fish and oysters which they
themselves had caught, and of men and women hitching themselves to
plows when they had no horse or mule.
Such incidents must, from their nature, have been infrequent, but they
show to what straits some at least were reduced. Six years after the war,
James S. Pike, then in South Carolina, mentions cases which might be
duplicated in nearly every old Southern community: "In the vicinity,"
he says, "lived a gentleman whose income when the war broke out was
rated at $150,000 a year. Not a vestige of his whole vast estate remains
today. Not far distant were the estates of a large proprietor and a
well-known family, rich and distinguished for generations. The slaves
were gone. The family is gone. A single scion of the house remains,
and he peddles tea by the pound and molasses by the quart, on a corner
of the old homestead, to the former slaves of the family and thereby
earns his livelihood."
General Lee's good example influenced many. Commercial enterprises
were willing to pay for the use of his name and reputation, but he
wished to farm and could get no opportunity. "They are offering my
father everything," his daughter said, "except the only thing he will
accept, a place to earn honest bread while engaged in some useful
work." This remark led to an offer of the presidency of Washington
College, now Washington