The Project Gutenberg eBook, Dixie After the War, by Myrta Lockett Avary

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Dixie After the War

An Exposition of Social Conditions Existing in the South, During the Twelve Years Succeeding the Fall of Richmond

Author: Myrta Lockett Avary

Release Date: December 29, 2012 [eBook #41730]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DIXIE AFTER THE WAR***

E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive
(http://archive.org)

Dixie After the War

JEFFERSON DAVIS

After his prison life

Copyright 1867, by Anderson

Dixie After the War

An Exposition of Social Conditions Existing
in the South, During the Twelve Years
Succeeding the Fall of Richmond.

By
Myrta Lockett Avary
Author of “A Virginia Girl in the Civil War”

With an Introduction by
General Clement A. Evans

Illustrated from old paintings, daguerreotypes
and rare photographs

New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1906

Copyright, 1906, by Doubleday, Page & Company
Published September, 1906

All rights reserved,
including that of translation into foreign languages,
including the Scandinavian

To

THE MEMORY OF MY BROTHER,
PHILIP LOCKETT,

(First Lieutenant, Company G, 14th Virginia Infantry, Armistead’s Brigade,
Pickett’s Division, C. S. A.)

Entering the Confederate Army, when hardly more
than a lad, he followed General Robert E.
Lee for four years, surrendering at Appomattox.
He was in Pickett’s immortal
charge at Gettysburg, and with
Armistead when Armistead
fell on Cemetery Hill.

The faces I see before me are those of young men. Had you not been this I would not have appeared alone as the defender of my southland, but for love of her I break my silence and speak to you. Before you lies the future—a future full of golden promise, full of recompense for noble endeavor, full of national glory before which the world will stand amazed. Let me beseech you to lay aside all rancor, and all bitter sectional feeling, and take your place in the rank of those who will bring about a conciliation out of which will issue a reunited country.—From an address by Jefferson Davis in his last years, to the young men of the South

INTRODUCTION

This book may be called a revelation. It seems to me a body of discoveries that should not be kept from the public—discoveries which have origin in many sources but are here brought together in one book for the first time.

No book hitherto published portrays so fully and graphically the social conditions existing in the South for the twelve years following the fall of Richmond, none so vividly presents race problems. It is the kind of history a witness gives. The author received from observers and participants the larger part of the incidents and anecdotes which she employs. Those who lived during reconstruction are passing away so rapidly that data, unless gathered now, can never be had thus at first hand; every year increases the difficulty. Mrs. Avary’s experience as author, editor and journalist, her command of shorthand and her social connections have opened up opportunities not usually accessible to one person; added to this is the balance of sympathy which she is able to strike as a Southern woman who has sojourned much at the North. In these pages she renders a public service. She aids the American to better understanding of his country’s past and clearer concept of its present.

In connection with the book’s genesis, it may be said that the author grew up after the war on a large Virginia plantation where her parents kept open house in the true Southern fashion. Two public roads which united at their gates, were thoroughfares linking county-towns in Virginia and North Carolina, and were much traveled by jurists, lawyers and politicians on their way to and from various court sittings; these gentlemen often found it both convenient and pleasant to stop for supper and over night at Lombardy Grove, particularly as a son of the house was of their guild. Perhaps few of the company thus gathered realised what an earnest listener they had in the little girl, Myrta, who sat intent at her father’s or brother’s knee, drinking in eagerly the discussions and stories. To impressions and information so acquired much was added through family correspondence with relatives and friends in Petersburg, Richmond, Atlanta, the Carolinas; also, in experiences related by these friends and relatives when hospitalities were exchanged; interesting and eventful diaries, too, were at the author’s disposal. Such was her unconscious preparation for the writing of this book. Her conscious preparation was a tour of several Southern States recently undertaken for the purpose of collecting fresh data and substantiating information already possessed.

While engaged, for a season, in journalism in New York, she put out her first Southern book, “A Virginia Girl in the Civil War” (1903). This met with such warm welcome that she was promptly called upon for a second dealing with post-bellum life from a woman’s viewpoint. The result was the Southern journey mentioned, the accidental discovery and presentment (1905) of the war journal of Mrs. James Chestnut (“A Diary From Dixie”), and the writing of the present volume which, I think, exceeds her commission, inasmuch as it is not only what is known as a “woman’s book” but is a “man’s book” also, exhibiting a masculine grasp, explained by its origin, of political situations, and an intimate personal tone in dealing with the lighter social side of things, possible only to a woman’s pen. It is a very unusual book. All readers may not accept the author’s conclusions, but I think that all must be interested in what she says and impressed with her spirit of fairness and her painstaking effort to present a truthful picture of an extraordinary social and political period in our national life. Her work stimulates interest in Southern history. A safe prophecy is that this book will be the precursor of as many post-bellum memoirs of