dinary mortals. Our people were much debauched by it. I write
advisedly, for during the last two and a half years of the war I
commanded in the State of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, the great
producing States. Out-post officers would violate the law, and trade. In
vain were they removed; the temptation was too strong, and their
successors did the same. The influence on the women was dreadful, and in
many cases their appeals were heartrending. Mothers with suffering
children, whose husbands were in the war or already fallen, would
beseech me for permits to take cotton through the lines. It was useless
to explain that it was against law and orders, and that I was without
authority to act. This did not give food and clothing to their children,
and they departed, believing me to be an unfeeling brute. In fact, the
instincts of humanity revolted against this folly.

It is with no pleasure that I have dwelt on the foregoing topics, but
the world can not properly estimate the fortitude of the Southern people
unless it understands and takes account of the difficulties under which
they labored. Yet, great as were their sufferings during the war, they
were as nothing compared to those inflicted upon them after its close.

Extinction of slavery was expected by all and regretted by none,
although loss of slaves destroyed the value of land. Existing since the
earliest colonization of the Southern States, the institution was
interwoven with the thoughts, habits, and daily lives of both races, and
both suffered by the sudden disruption of the accustomed tie. Bank
stocks, bonds, all personal property, all accumulated wealth, had
disappeared. Thousands of houses, farm-buildings, work-animals, flocks
and herds, had been wantonly burned, killed, or carried off. The land
was filled with widows and orphans crying for aid, which the universal
destitution prevented them from receiving. Humanitarians shuddered with
horror and wept with grief for the imaginary woes of Africans; but their
hearts were as adamant to people of their own race and blood. These had
committed the unpardonable sin, had wickedly rebelled against the Lord's
anointed, the majority. Blockaded during the war, and without journals
to guide opinion and correct error, we were unceasingly slandered by our
enemies, who held possession of every avenue to the world's ear.

Famine and pestilence have ever followed war, as if our Mother Earth
resented the defilement of her f