Galveston

“ In three or four years, or less, Galveston will be as great, if indeed not greater, than she was before the storm, if the people are true to themselves. It is surprising what can be done where willing and cheerful hearts go to work and work in the right way. Galveston citizens are not only hopeful but determined that the city shall be resurrected, as it were, and when that spirit animates us enough is said. ”

“ The man who has no property or relatives in Galveston is leaving for good. The future of Galveston depends upon whether or not the town can retain its shipping. If Galveston can keep her prestige as a port her revival is assured. All those who have helped to make Galveston what it was are certain that it will continue to be the great port of the Southwest. Not a man in town who has any property will desert the city. ”

“ In spite of any ambition of rival ports, in spite of the timidity of women and some men, the people of Galveston, patiently and soberly, with loyalty and courage, are determined to rebuild on the ruins of this once beautiful city a metropolis that shall prosper and endure. ”

“ While the catastrophe at Galveston is calling forth proofs of sympathy and a spirit of practical helpfulness on every hand, the people of Galveston themselves are giving the world an equally notable proof of courage and sturdy resolution. The situation as it has developed from day to day has afforded a striking evidence of their ability to pull themselves together and prepare to face the future. ”

“ We were lying at anchor off Galveston bar, and, after breakfast, the captain told us if we wished to land at Galveston we had better get all our trunks ready. I was in favor of our landing at Galveston. From the sea the city had a tropical and most attractive appearance. “It is a city in a garden,” I said to Robert, and he was equally pleased with its pretty white houses, and flowery beauty, for the perfume of its gardens was distinctly felt on the ship. ”

“ Dear Brethren—The greatest calamity that has ever visited any city in America visited Galveston on the 8th instant, leaving in its wake thousands of dead and helpless people of our race, together with the white race. It is our duty to help, as far as we are able, to relieve the suffering condition of the citizens of Galveston. ”

“ There was not a building in Galveston which was not either entirely destroyed or damaged, and the people of the city lived in the valley of the shadow of death, helpless and hopeless, deprived of all hope and ambition—merely waiting for the appearance of the official death roll. ”

“ Not one inhabitant of Galveston old enough to realize the situation had any idea other than that death was to be the fate of all before another day appeared, and when this long and weary suspense, to which was added the chill of the night and the growing pangs of hunger, was at last broken by the first gleams of the light of the Sabbath morn, the latter was not entirely welcome, for the face of the sun was hidden by morose and ugly clouds, from which dripped, at dreary intervals, cold and gusty showers. ”

“ At Galveston on that fatal Saturday night there were deaths far more horrible than any of which even a Sienkiewicz could conceive. Mothers and babes, fathers and husbands, were hurled headlong into the world beyond without a chance to make peace with their Maker, with a farewell kiss or a last fond embrace. Upon every hand the dead were piled up like driftwood cast up by the sea, even as they were at Waterloo and Gettysburg and behind Kitchener in the Soudan. ”

“ No man who has not been an eye-witness to the desolation which has swept over this city can have the faintest conception of what it means.
“Galveston lies on an island about a mile wide from north to south, the city covering about six miles of this east and west. Along the southern side for a distance of two to five blocks every house has been absolutely demolished. Such of these unfortunates as were not drowned are now penniless.” ”

“ Galveston is still home to the great majority. It was a city of fine local pride. It was one of the most beautiful of American cities, and with its surrounding of gulf and bay was a pleasant place to live in, [Pg 182] even in summer. Those who can stay and live here will do so.
“If the country responds to the needs in anything like the measure given to Johnstown, Chicago, Charleston and other stricken cities and sections, Galveston as a community will not only be restored but will enter upon a greater future than was expected before the storm. ”

“ It is touching to witness the sympathy of the nation with Galveston. As the means of communication are improved, the people here are getting a definite idea of what it means to stir the sympathies of mankind. It seems that the country has for the time forgotten its politics and its curious interest in the broad affairs of the world to weep over this stricken city. ”

“ When Galveston’s chapter of horrors had reached its crisis, when the people were dazed, leaderless and almost helpless, so that they went about bewildered and did little more than gather a few hundred of the bodies which were in their way, a longshoreman became the hero of the hour. It was not until Monday that the brave leaders, who are usually not discovered in a community until some great emergency arises, began to forge in front. They were not men from one rank in point of wealth or intelligence. ”

“ Galveston was first settled in 1837. It is handsomely laid out upon ground elevated from 6 to 10 feet above ordinary tide level, has wide and straight streets, and has several public squares, parks, and gardens. The streets running parallel to West Bay are known as avenues, and are designated by the letters of the alphabet, beginning at the bay, while those at right angles to the water are numbered. Special names are assigned to some of the streets. Avenue A, parallel and next to the wharf or channel front, is mostly occupied by wholesale houses. ”

“ Humanity may think this is terrible and sentiment may revolt at this story, but that humanity and that sentiment is not to be found in Galveston. Here the people have thrown aside custom and formalities, all men are equal and that equality extends throughout the whole city. No custom of dress, no formality of appearance and no false modesty enters into one’s mind. ”

“ Chicago that has risen twice from ashes to finer and more secure architectural proportions, and Calcutta, whose existence has been marked by three beginnings, are all expressions of the same splendid pertinacity with which the people of Galveston are already animated and from which will certainly appear a new and grander Gulf city offering to the menaces of nature a richer challenge. ”

“ Husbands came to the gangplank and kissed their weeping wives good-by, turning back to the hard work of reconstruction which confronted them, with breaking hearts. Scores of women, overcome at the last moment, were cared for by strange hands, while those who loved them, bound to Galveston by necessity, could do no more than watch from afar and pray. ”

“ It is astonishing to note the spirit of the people of Galveston and the manner in which they go about the work of restoring the city. We have had no serious trouble either in having to impress men into service or in keeping the lawless element under control. ”

“ The conclusion is forced that there are to-day in Galveston 20,000 persons who must be fed and clothed. The proportion of those who were in fair circumstances and lost all is astonishing. Relief cannot be limited to those who formed the poor class before the storm.
“An intelligent man left Galveston to-day, taking his wife and children to relatives. ”

“ One of the most pathetic stories of suffering in Galveston was brought to light Friday morning when the Southern Pacific train arrived at New Orleans from Houston. Among the passengers were Mrs. Mary Quayle of Liverpool, England, and Mr. Jonathan Hale of Gloversville, N. Y. Mrs. Quayle came from New York to Galveston, arriving there on the Thursday before the storm, accompanied by her husband, Edward Quayle, a tabulater on the Liverpool Cotton Exchange. Mrs. Quayle and her husband took apartments in the Lucas Terrace, a fashionable place in the eastern end of Galveston Island. ”

“ A municipal census taken in 1876 made the population 35,000, which is believed to be too high. The past and estimated present population are given below:—
In the business of receiving and shipping cotton, the leading production of the Southern States, Galveston ranks third in importance among the ports of the United States, New Orleans and Savannah standing before it, and Charleston, Norfolk, and Mobile after it in the order named. ”

“ The loss in proportion to population and means is just as great and as keenly felt as the loss and destruction in Galveston, and they should not be forgotten by the generous public, which is responding with such noble promptness to Galveston’s cry for help. ”

“ Everybody who remains in Galveston is made to work, and the punishment for a refusal is about the same as that meted out to ghouls. I saw four colored men shot in one day. There were confined in the hold of a steamer in the harbor six colored men who were found by the soldiers with a flour sack almost filled with fingers and ears on which were jewels. ”

“ The graveyard, which has held the sleeping citizens of Galveston for many, many years, was giving up its dead. We pulled up at a little wharf in the hush of the starlight; there were no lights anywhere in the city except a few scattered lamps shining from a few desolate, half-destroyed houses. We picked our way up the street. The ground was slimy with the debris of the sea.
“We climbed over wreckage and picked our way through heaps of rubbish. The terrible, sickening odor almost overcame us, and it was all that I could do to shut my teeth and get through the streets somehow. ”

“ The Strand, known to every business man of the State, was lined on both sides with crumbling walls and wrenched buildings, and the street was a mass of debris, such as metal roofs rolled up like a scroll, splintered timbers, iron pillars, broken stone and bricks; the same was true of Mechanic, and Market, and Tremont, and Twenty-first and Twenty-second, and every other street of the great business heart of Galveston. ”

“ From breaking hearts we must say, ‘Father in heaven, all is well, though faith and form are sundered in the night of fear.’ The lesson of selfhelp which this calamity teaches will not be lost. God intended man to conquer nature, to bind its forces, to ride triumphantly on its seemingly resistless energies. Galveston must not be blotted out. It must rise to newness of life. Like our own Chicago, it must be rebuilt on a higher level. It must rear its structures so that the angriest waves shall not dash them to pieces. ”

“ Farther along the coast is Galveston, the chief Texan seaport, built on the northeastern extremity of Galveston Island, which spreads for thirty miles in front of the spacious Galveston Bay, covering nearly five hundred miles surface. The entrance from the sea is obstructed by a bar through which the Government excavated at great expense a channel, flanked by stone jetties five miles long. It is a low-lying city with wide, straight streets, embowered in luxuriant tropical vegetation, while the equable winter temperature makes it a charming health-resort. ”

“ The appalling calamity that has befallen Galveston and the coast country has smitten hundreds of our comrades in the city, villages and on farms. In many instances, portions of whole families are lost; in a hundred others, houses are wrecked, live stock killed and crops destroyed. ”

“ The great wharves and warehouses along the bay front were a mass of splintered, broken timbers.
But the mighty energy of man worked wonders. Marvelous to say, under such conditions, a bridge 21⁄8 miles long was built across the bay within seven days and Galveston, which had been cut off from the world, was once more in active touch with all the marts of trade and commerce. An undaunted people strove as only an indomitable people can strive, to rehabilitate the city. ”

“ Five dollars a day is being offered to the mechanics who will come to Galveston, and, with the assurance from reputable physicians that there is no extraordinary danger of sickness, outside laborers will flock to Galveston and before many days a new city will rise on the storm-swept island. ”

“ Great suffering resulted. All afternoon they were becalmed, and, a slight breeze arising in the evening, at 9 o’clock at night the sailing craft which had left Galveston at noon began to dump their passengers upon the beach at Texas City. This place is now among the things that once were. There are no houses, no tents, no accommodations of any kind save a few passenger coaches standing upon the railroad track. These were speedily filled, and the rest of the women and children, all hungry and the latter crying for food, were compelled to remain on the beach. ”

“ The human heart can merely feel what language will never be able to express. And in the case of Galveston, the heart must break before it can begin to feel.
I struggled all day Tuesday to reach this isle of desolation. 361With Gen. McKibben, Gen. Scurry, Gen. Stoddard and several who had relatives here about whom they were anxious, I spent five hours on the bay in a row boat, kindly loaned by the captain of the “Kendel Castle,” a British steamship hopelessly stranded at Texas City, but finally we landed on the island just as the stars were coming out. ”

“ Yes, we’ll build Galveston up again, and, like Chicago, we’ll make it a better city than it was. We shall never forget the kindness of the people of Chicago in coming so generously to our relief, and we all thank them from the bottom of our hearts.”
A HELP IN GETTING RELIEF SUPPLIES TO THE NEEDY.
Arrangements were completed by the Santa Fe road September 17 whereby it established a barge line to Galveston from Virginia Point. This helped somewhat in getting relief supplies from the mainland. ”