Page 146 - Arkansas Confederate Women
P. 146
REMINISCENCES OF THE OLD SOUTH.
By Mrs. Elmira F. Snodgmss, of Little Rock.
In the strong light of the twentieth century, it is sometimes
difficult to bring from the sleeping past, facts that are imprint-
ed not only upon marble tablets or on history's page, but upon
the fleshy human heart as well. To some of us these remem-
brances are as undying, as what occurred is beyond recall.
The decade reaching from 1850 to 1860 as time is comput-
ed, holds in its grasp a living picture that extends from the
outer boundary of the Southland %o its magnificent unmarred
center. No language is so full of poetry or so fragrant with the
flowers of Rhetoric as to graphically describe the "Old South,"
as we, the silver-haired devotees, remember it. The country
itself was a resplendent setting, planned and completed by
creative power for the courtly, cultured, magnanimous men,
and the refined, modest, virtuous women who composed
her loyal citizenship. Like one of the fixed stars in midnight
firmament which glows on forever unsullied, so the old South
pre-eminently adorns the picture gallery of memory. Fleet-
winged time marked the receding days; with the early sixties
there appeared upon the political horizon of our country a
cloud, perhaps no larger than a man's hand, but which event-
'ually proved to be a beacon of destruction to the aggrandize-
ment and accumulation of years, as well as the destroyer of ideal
homes, the crushing of women's hearts and the bringing of our
dearest ones to coffinless graves. For many hours we could deal
in generalities, yet, not exhausting the terrorizing truths that
burn like a blazing censor upon the historic scroll of '61 to '65.
Personally, it seemed at first that the war was far off ; we heard
the bugle call, saw our gallant young men arrayed in handsome
grey uniforms, march away at officer's command, but no picture
of things that awaited us had been outlined on our mental sky.
In January, 1862, the fertile plains of what is known as
the tobacco belt of west Kentucky, first reverberated with the