1865.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

AFTER THE WAR.

NORTH CAROLINA had furnished to the armies of the Confederacy more than one hundred and fifty thousand men. This was more than one-fourth of all the forces raised by the eleven Southern States. She had lost over thirty thousand of these, the very flower of her young manhood. It was said that there was not a single regiment in the entire Confederate service in which could not be found some former students of our University. Our educated young men were the first to offer themselves in the cause, and were among the first to fall. And North Carolina, as usual, had contributed more than her share quietly and without parade.

Now the penalty was to be paid, and this too she endured with dignity and with no loss of self-respect. In common with all the conquered States, we were placed under military law; that is, no law could be administered, no justice was to be had, but such as the commanders of the various military posts in every district chose to allow. Everything was referred to them. We had no State government; we had no mails, no courts of law, no business of any sort going on; no schools. All was silence and

suspense.

General Schofield was left in charge by Sherman, and his first proclamation, dictated by Congress, gave immediate freedom to the slaves.

This of course we had expected, and were in some degree prepared for. But it meant such a revolution in the lives and fortunes of both masters and servants as this generation can hardly understand.

The banks and all other financial institutions and investments were now wrecked. All that had been invested in Confederate securities was of course lost. The commonschool fund, the funds of the University and other educational institutions, were all engulfed.

The Confederate government had gone down in debt to many North Carolina planters for their crops. With great difficulty one of them got an order in March for $6000 in Confederate notes. This sum he immediately exchanged for $57 in gold. But very many did not have even $1 in gold.

People who had never known a want were at once reduced to beggary. Families of women whose natural protectors, had died in the Southern cause were left with the children dependent on them, in direst poverty. The estates of orphans had vanished. Bankruptcy was almost universal. The devastation and general demoralization of the country wherever the armies had passed were incalculable. The towns and villages and farmhouses in their course had been plundered without remorse, though none had been wantonly burned as in South Carolina. The farm-produce and stock and fencing were all gone.

The inhabitants of these sections were so stripped of all means of living, and the country so drained of its resources in the presence of so many armies that spring, that very many people were compelled to become pensioners on the Northern government, and drew their rations regularly at the military posts.

The newly-freed slaves were at once helpless, and a vast expense to the United States government. Wherever they had been swept along with the armies they had to be fed. They assembled in the towns in great numbers, or wherever was a military post.

Thousands of them died from exposure and want and disease. These were chiefly the aged, and the idle and vicious.

Freedom, however, was joyfully hailed by them. There were indeed many cases where they refused to leave their old homes and the white families who had raised them and been kind to them. In North Carolina slavery had worn a much milder aspect than on the great cotton and rice plantations farther south, where a stricter police had been

necessary.

But slavery is a bitter draught under any circumstances. They were free now to go out and to come in as they liked. They could gather their families together, and be in no fear of separation any more. They might now choose their own homes, their own way of life. They might learn to read and aspire to education and all its benefits as freemen. It was certainly an astonishing change for them. But there was a wider prospect still unfolded.

Added to all the mourning caused by the war, the losses, the privations, and the humiliations of defeat, was the further trial for our people that the negroes but yesterday our slaves were now not only freemen, but were at once elevated to civil equality. They were to be not only voters, but, all unfit, must be magistrates, jurymen, legislators.

It was not to be expected that a high-spirited people would not protest against, and as far as possible resist, such violent changes. Every such resistance only made the government at Washington, and the Northern people generally, more sure that the South could not be trusted.

Every State and county official was removed from office. A "provisional governor" was appointed, for Governor Vance, so far from being trusted to take the reins again, was now in prison in Washington. His successor was W. W. Holden, who had for many years edited the most influential Democratic paper in the State, and had been Governor Vance's political opponent before and during the war.

He was a man of humble origin, but he had talent and energy, and was a keen and adroit political partisan. He had risen to be of very considerable importance in the political world of North Carolina, and his paper, The Standard, had been skilfully trimmed to suit various breezes. He was at first strongly against the war, but afterward became one of its most prominent promoters, and a signer of the ordinance of secession. Finally, he led the party that advocated making peace on any terms independently of the other Southern States.

This last change convinced the President that Mr. Holden was now the most suitable person to undertake the reconstruction of government here, and he gave him the best opportunity of his life to do his State good service and make himself a name. But men are never able to be more than they are. Governor Holden was nothing more than a partisan, and could not rise higher.

Instead of using his newly-acquired power and influence to soothe angry feelings and assist his State and people to regain their footing and re-establish their government, his object seemed rather to revenge himself on his old opponents, to hinder every man of former high standing, of experience in affairs, and of popularity with the people from receiving a pardon from the government at Washington and from holding any office of trust. Obstacles were thrown in their way, humiliating and exasperating conditions were imposed, and all the irritations of the time industriously aggravated.

President Johnson was much such a man as Governor Holden, and his idea was faithfully reflected here that treason to the Union must be made odious by punishing the traitor as severely as possible.

The old political divisions had pretty much disappeared for a time. The Republican party was triumphant at the North, and held the South with the strong hand of military rule. Several years passed before any regularly organized opposition could be made to it. The war had swept away so many old party themes, and had brought about so many new ones, that it was long before men could