ederal
officer to pray for the President said afterwards: "I prayed for the
President that the Lord would take out of him and his allies the hearts
of beasts and put into them the hearts of men or remove the cusses from
office." Sometimes members of a congregation showed their resentment
at the "loyal" prayers by leaving the church. But in spite of many
irritations, both sides frequently managed to get some amusement out
of the "loyal" services. The church situation was, however, a serious
matter during and after the reconstruction, and some of its later phases
will have to be discussed elsewhere.

The Unionist, or "Tory," of the lower and eastern South found himself,
in 1865, a man without a country. Few in number in any community, they
found themselves, upon their return from a harsh exile, the victims
of ostracism or open hostility. One of them, William H. Smith, later
Governor of Alabama, testified that the Southern people "manifest the
most perfect contempt for a man who is known to be an unequivocal Union
man; they call him a 'galvanized Yankee' and apply other terms and
epithets to him." General George H. Thomas, speaking of a region more
divided in sentiment than Alabama, remarked that "Middle Tennessee
is disturbed by animosities and hatreds, much more than it is by the
disloyalty of persons towards the Government of the United States.
Those personal animosities would break out and overawe the civil
authorities, but for the presence there of the troops of the United
States.... They are more unfriendly to Union men, natives of the State
of Tennessee, or of the South, who have been in the Union army, than
they are to men of Northern birth."

In the border states, society was sharply divided, and feeling was
bitter. In eastern Tennessee, eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, and parts
of Arkansas and Missouri, returning Confederates met harsher treatment
than did the Unionists in the lower South. Trowbridge says of east
Tennessee: "Returning rebels were robbed; and if one had stolen unawares
to his home, it was not safe for him to remain there. I saw in Virginia
one of these exiles, who told me how homesickly he pined for the hills
and meadows of east Tennessee, which he thought the most delightful
region in the world. But, there was a rope hanging from a tree for him
there, and he dared not go back. 'The bottom rails are on top,' said
he, 'that is the trouble.' The Union element, and the worst part of the
Union elem