Southern Cross

“ He has no desire to be tracked out by the Brothers of the Southern Cross, and he knows too much of their deathless hatred and hound-like pertinacity, their numbers, and the ramifications of their organization, already encroaching on southern Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, to carelessly take the slightest risk of anything of the kind. ”

“ As the Death-angel flitted by, and call’d his soul away!
[Pg 107]
“The hero-boy lay dying.”
[Pg 108]
THE SOUTHERN BANNER. By Col. W. S. Hawkins, C. S. A., Camp Chase, Ohio.
Sing-ho! for the Southerner’s meteor flag
As ’tis flung in its pride to the breeze,
From the happy glen and the beetling crag,
’Tis the pride of the land and the seas.
Hurrah! for the scintillant Cross of Red,
As it waves and glances in light,
Beneath it our brothers grandly tread,
To battle for God and right. ”

“ That never more the Southern cross must rear its stately head;”— We Come! We Come! Dedicated to the Crescent Regiment, of New Orleans, Col. M. J. Smith. By Millie Mayfield. (R. R.)
“We come! we come, for Death or life,
For the Grave, or Victory!”— We Conquer or Die: Composed by James Pierpont. (J. M. S.)
“The war drum is beating, prepare for the fight,
The stern bigot Northmen exalts in his light,”— Weep, Weep: By Refugee, May, 1865. (E. V. M.)
“Weep! ”

“ Every thing working smooth and nothing to stop, it is a beautyfull night and the Southern Cross looms up with more beauty than I ever seen befor. But the ships bum Boat is all right too, she loomed up with a big ketle of hot Steaming cocoa, Just the thing a man wants when he has the mid watch. the wether is very cold down hear. a few of the men is going ashore to morrow. I dont think I will be able to go as I will have the afternoon watch, any way I dont care much as I am use to the ship now. ”

“ They need sympathy and encouragement, and nothing would give them more of it than the consciousness of not standing alone,—of being a link in a great chain. I consider the movement so happily begun in the South as extremely important. If disturbances are repressed and a healthy influence is exercised upon public opinion there by Southern men themselves, it will not only have a most salutary effect on the spot, but it will relieve us all over the country of some of the greatest difficulties we have to contend with. ”

“ Fair has risen to her feet. She comes slowly forward. She sees Winthrop, and for a second a wild flash of joy crosses her face. She starts forward, but stops herself suddenly, her hands before her eyes. She stands for a moment, very white and quiet; when she speaks, her voice is low and very tired. ”

“ Thousands and thousands of Northern men, who but recently had been roaming over that country with sword and bayonet, and on that occasion had made the discovery of the South, will invade it again with spade and plough, and machinery, and capital, and knowledge, and a spirit of progressive improvement. These invaders will be the peaceable neighbors of the invaded, and each one will work for the other in working for himself; and all will be one people. Thus the Southern people will be reorganized, regenerated by the emancipation of the large majority from the rule of a powerful few. ”

“ NEW ORLEANS, May 24, 1861.
It is impossible to resist the conviction that the Southern Confederacy can only be conquered by means as irresistible as those by which Poland was subjugated. The South will fall, if at all, as a nation prostrate at the feet of a victorious enemy. There is no doubt of the unanimity of the people. If words mean any thing, they are animated by only one sentiment, and they will resist the North as long as they can command a man or a dollar. There is nothing of a sectional character in this disposition of the South. In every state there is only one voice audible. ”

“ Hurrah for the South, the gallant South, with her great heart proudly beating;
She takes her stand at Freedom’s hand, and dreams not of retreating;
Oh! Southern boys, for fireside joys, with their hearts so brave and tender,
Will relentlessly fight, and to death’s dark night alone will they surrender.
Chorus.
No Northern band shall rule this land—to the breeze give Freedom’s banner,
As its glowing folds o’er our land unroll, from mountain and savannah;
[Pg 115] O’er river and lake the sound shall break, and swell with thundering glory;
Hurrah for the South! the noble South! ”

“ The sacrifice thus made by the South, for the sake of the Union, will be more fully appreciated when we reflect that under the Constitution Southern gentlemen had as much right, and the same right to go into the Territories with their slaves, that the men of the North had to carry with them there their apprentices and servants. ”

“ But while the colored people of the South thus earned our admiration and gratitude, I ask you in all candor, could they be reasonably expected, when, just after having emerged from a condition of slavery, they were invested with political rights and privileges, to step into the political arena as men armed with the intelligence and experience necessary for the management of public affairs and for the solution of problems made doubly intricate by the disasters which had desolated the Southern country? ”

“ Is it not to produce on the popular mind at the South a conciliatory effect, to quicken the germs of good intentions, to encourage those who can exert a beneficial influence, to remove the pretexts of ill-feeling and animosity and to aid in securing to the Southern States the blessings of good and honest government? ”

“ To battle with the foe,
And we will lend a helping hand—
We love the South, you know.
Chorus.
Now Northern goods are out of date;
And since old Abe’s blockade,
We Southern girls can be content
With goods that’s Southern made.
We send our sweethearts to the war;
But, dear girls; never mind—
Your soldier-love will ne’er forget
The girl he left behind.
Chorus.
The soldier is the lad for me—
A brave heart I adore;
And when the sunny South is free,
And when fighting is no more,
I’ll choose me then a lover brave,
From out that gallant band. ”

“ I say it only surprises me as being done here; for I know full well, that it is, and has been, the settled policy of some persons in the South, for years, to represent the people of the North as disposed to interfere with them in their own exclusive and peculiar concerns. This is a delicate and sensitive point in Southern feeling; and of late years it has always been touched, and generally with effect, whenever the object has been to unite the whole South against Northern men or Northern measures. ”

“ I think it safe to affirm that to-day, twenty years after the close of the war, the Southern people are as loyal to the Union as the people of any part of the country, that they fully understand and profoundly feel the value of their being part of it, and that a disunion movement would find no more adherents in South Carolina than in Massachusetts. ”

“ I have packed haversacks with marching rations for forty-eight hours, a single corn-dodger split and with only a thin slice of bacon between the pieces. This was a Confederate sandwich. And on such food Southern soldiers marched incredible distances, fought desperate battles. The world will never cease to wonder at the unfailing devotion, the magnificent courage, the unparalleled achievements of the Southern armies. Scarcely less admirable is the heroic spirit in which they have accepted defeat ”

“ You find more sympathy and more of the spirit of co-operation among Southern people than you found ten years ago. I rejoice in this change of feeling in the South, and it is easy to understand it. Time, the healer, has done his blessed work. Grace has overcome, and the grave has buried much of bitter feeling on both sides. You have learned your work better, and we have learned more perfectly its value. ”

“ It is indeed a serious historical question whether, if that Southern notion of an absolute lack of fighting spirit in the North had not existed, the South would ever have ventured upon the risk of actual secession and the consequent Civil War. If, at the time in question, every Northern man challenged to a fight by a Southerner had excused himself on the ground of conscientious scruples, would not the cry have arisen in each instance: “You see, you can insult them, and kick and cuff them, and pull their noses, but they will not fight! ”

“ In that spirit, which will relentlessly pursue the lawless elements of society as the common enemy, there is salvation for the Southern people. Let that spirit prevail in the South, and no partisanship in the North will be strong enough to baffle the sympathy which their misfortunes deserve. ”

“ Though their plunder-paid hordes come to ravage our land,
Give our fields to the spoiler, our homes to the brand,
Our souls are all aglow,
To face the hireling foe.
Give the robbers to know that we never will yield,
While the arm of one Southron a weapon can wield.
Chorus.
From our far Southern shore now arises a prayer,
While the cry of our women fills with anguish the air.
O! list that pleading voice,
Each youth now make his choice ”

“ From what I had seen and heard, the resources of the South in men and means had all through the Civil War, been so enormously inferior to those of the North, that it was fairly amazing how the South could have sustained the desperate struggle four long years—a struggle full of heroic self-sacrifice, the prowess of which extorted admiration. ”

“ It flattered Southern pride to be told, as the Southern revolutionists constantly told their people, that one Southerner could whip half a dozen Northerners; that the Northern people generally had no fighting spirit whatever, and that the South need only put on a warlike attitude to bring the Northerners to their knees, and thus to extort from them any concession that might be desired. ”

“ Every Northern legislature had passed fierce resolutions insisting upon the Wilmot Proviso, and when Southern men then saw the North accept the compromise, which did not exclude slavery from the territories, in order to pacify the South, they concluded that the South might have obtained much more if it had threatened more, and that the North, for the purpose of preserving peace and of making money, would yield anything and everything if the South only put on a bolder front. ”

“ Nowhere as in the South do men so generally honor the house of God by their attendance and support. I make bold to say that upon any Sabbath day by count more men may be found in churches in Richmond and Atlanta than in Chicago and New York, though the combined population of the latter cities is ten times that of the former. These same churchgoing men of the South, following in the footsteps of their God-fearing fathers, are the members and supporters of Southern Churches, and are quick to resent innovation or disturbance of the old order. ”

“ The one-sided and arrogant statements of the Vardamans, the Dixons, the Graveses, and the Tillmans have no right to call themselves the voice of the South, in the face of the appeals to common justice and American principles of fair play that flow from the pens of the Bassetts, the Murphys, the Mitchells, the Flemings, and the Percys. It is a happy omen that the South is divided upon its own question; for it means that the taboo has been taken off discussion; that Southern men may honestly differ on the question of the rights and the character of the Negro. ”

“ Their appeal to the justice of the Nation, to the Constitution and the laws can be made invincible, but it will be well to keep in touch with the sympathy of the North and with the conscience of the South, for in spite of all the wrongs inflicted on the colored people in the South, we believe there is a large and growing number of Southern people who look upon this whole question conscientiously, and although perplexed desire that the right shall be done. ”

“ Side by side with this force is the spirit of humanity, of practical Christianity, which forbids that millions of people shall be cut off from the agencies of evangelization. The South is behind no other part of the country in a sense of the greatness of moral forces.
From every point of view, the obvious thing for the South is to make the best of its condition and not the worst, to give opportunities of uplift to all those who can appropriate them, to raise the negro race to as high a point as it is capable of occupying. ”

“ Haven't you been talking for years of the rights of the South? Are you not doing [Pg 95] everything possible to take Kentucky out of the Union? Haven't you encouraged the enlistment of soldiers for the South? Then why not I? Why am I better than others? Father, I don't want to quarrel with you as Fred has with his father, but I am going into the Southern army, and I hope with your blessing. ”

“ No man is so reverent and courteous toward men [Pg 70] of the cloth as the men of the South, and wherever a minister of the gospel walks down the street of a Southern city or village, if worthy to wear the cloth of his sacred calling, he is the foremost man of his community in standing and influence.
Why this relative respect to the minister and the Church, and this clinging to religious forms and traditions, those of us who came up out of the Old South understand. Any reverent spirit of the New South in matters of religion is another of the heritages from the Old South. ”

“ The Southern states are reconstructed and back now in their place in the Union, and will not be much longer represented by Northern adventurers, or men of little ability and less character, but very soon by genuine Southern men, who, while strictly loyal to the Union, will speak the genuine sentiments of the Southern people. ”

“ Yet New England is reproached with cowardice and ingratitude to her Southern benefactors! If one man were to knock another down with a broad axe, in the attempt to brush a fly from his face, and then blame him for not being sufficiently thankful, it would exactly illustrate the relation between the North and the South on this subject. ”