FROM FLAG TO FLAG.*

ALTHOUGH a quarter of a century has gone by since the close of the American Civil War, it still remains one of the most epoch- making episodes of this century, and books on the subject still

find a ready sale on both sides of the sea. And truly that war was one of the most memorable struggles of all time. It abolished slavery, regenerated the South, welded the American Common- wealth into a homogeneous whole, and strengthened free in- stitutions all the world over. It was one of the few great wars for which the generation that waged it was only remotely responsible, and which, though from first to last it wasted a million human lives, and cost untold treasure, has proved, even from a merely material point of view, a splendid investment, and is regarded as a blessing as well by the conquered as the conquerors.

Not very long ago, the present writer, while travelling in the Southern States, found himself in a mixed company of Northerners and Southerners, several of them veterans of the war. Said a Northerner : " It seems to me the war might have been avoided. It would have been a good deal cheaper to buy all the slaves up at the slaveholders' own price, and set them free. Why didn't we do it ?" " For a very good reason," answered a Southerner ; " if any had come South and proposed such a thing, we should have hanged him on the nearest tree."

"And now ?" asked another. " Well, I think if anybody were to come here now and seriously propose to set slavery up again, we should be very likely to hang him on the nearest tree."

Southerners have learnt that involuntary servitude was an economic mistake, less, however, from theory than from the fact that the South has made greater progress since Emancipation than she made for a hundred years before it. Yet they are still strongly Southern in sentiment, and do not find loyalty to the Union incompatible with fervent admiration for the heroes of the war. These sentiments are much more prevalent among the fair sex than the men ; and as the women of 1861 were the warmest advocates of rebellion, so the women of to-day are the warmest sympathisers with the Lost Cause. To mention the name of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe in a company of

* From Flag to Flag a Woman's Adventures and Experiences in the South during the War in Mexico and in Cuba. By Eliza )IoHatton.Bipley. New York; D. Appleton and Co.

Southern ladies, is like dropping a spark in a gunpowder magazine. Women are always keener partisans than men. During the war, Southern women endured hardships and

privations quite as great in their way as those endured by the men ; and Emancipation has undoubtedly made their lives much harder. Under the old regime, domestic slaves were

kindly treated, fairly efficient, and often devotedly attached to their owners. But the " uncles," the aunts," and the " mammies " of that time are as extinct as the dodo, and the coloured " helps " of the period have all the faults of their predecessors and very few of their virtues. Moreover, they cannot be bought, and often refuse to be hired. Let English housewives imagine, if they can, a cook who goes about her work with a short pipe in her mouth, or chews snuff ; who is so careless, that she requires continual watching ; so independent, that if you give her a wrong word she will " quit" without giving notice ; and so curious and dishonest, that when her mistress goes abroad, she finds it necessary to lock all the bedroom doors, and put the keys in her pocket !

The position of Southern ladies at the outbreak of the war, and their fate afterwards, are vividly set forth in the in- teresting book which forms the subject of the present notice. Mrs. McHatton-Ripley was the wife of a Louisiana planter, whose spacious mansion faced a broad lawn, "dotted here and there with live oak and pecan trees. An avenue, over which the pride-of-China trees cast their shade, and beside which the Cherokee rose grew with great luxuriance, led to the river- bank, and commanded a magnificent view of the Mississippi for miles above and below." It was a life of luxury, and of a happiness almost ideal :-

" In those spring days at Arlington the air was so pure and fragrant that its inhalation was a positive luxury. It was delightful to wander over the lawn, with its fresh carpet of green, and note the wonderful growth of vegetation on every side. The roses that arched the gateways, the honey-suckles and jasmine that climbed in profusion over the trellises, the delicate- foliaged crape myrtle, with its wealth of fairy pink blossoms, all contributed perfume to the breeze. And those grand autumnal days, when the smoke rolled from the tall chimney of the sugar house, and the air was redolent with the aroma of boiling cane- juice ; when the fields were dotted with groups of busy and con- tented slaves, and their cabins resounded with the merry voices of playing children ; when magnolia and oak trees were musical with the mocking-birds, whose throats poured forth melodies unknown to any other of the feathered tribe, and nimble squirrels gathered their winter stores in the pecan groves ;—oh, those grand autumnal days !"

And then came rumours of trouble, Secession, and the creation of a Confederacy ; and full of wild enthusiasm, the family at Arlington voted that the Southern banner should " unfold its brave States-right constellation " from a staff on the river front. This was done in the absence of Mr. Ripley, who was too politic and cautious to approve of the impetuous ardour of his household. But until the thunder of Fort Sumter's guns aroused them from their lives of indolent ease, few of the planter folks seem to have expected war in grim earnest ; then, men who had never saddled their own horses nor har- nessed their own teams, had to bestride any nag they could get, drive lumbering mule-teams, or, worse still, march to the front on foot ; while daintily nurtured women, who, in the abundance of service which slavery afforded, had scarce put on their own shoes, had to take to tailoring and make coats and trousers for those who were fighting in their cause.

And this was only the beginning. The Federals captured New Orleans ; cotton was destroyed wherever it was found, in order to prevent it from being seized by the " hordes of hirelings," as Northern soldiers were then stigmatised in the South ; houses were dismantled, and bedding, blankets, carpets, and whatever else could be spared, sent to the armies of Tennessee and Virginia. Meanwhile, the Negroes, seeing the dawn of liberty, which at that time "meant plenty to eat and nothing to do, just like master," were becoming lazy and independent ; and one fine morning a fleet of Federal gunboats appeared on the river, " flags flying from every peak, their decks thronged with brilliantly uniforUied officers." A few days later, the Battle of Baton Rouge was fought, of which the authoress gives a vivid

description, as seen from the windows of her house :—

" Standing alone at my window, watching through the dim mist what seemed to be the ebb and flow of battle, hearing in the distance the booming, hissing, and rattling sounds of conflict, I never once thought of the homes of that besieged city, of the women and children, the old men and the sick,—never once thought of them, so swallowed up the destiny of the day every

other consideration. But when that struggling mass was revealed to me,—pouring, panting, rushing tumultuously down the hot, dusty road, hatless, bonnetless, some with stockings and no slippers, some with wrappers hastily thrown over nightgowns ; now and then a coatless man on a bare-backed horse, holding a helpless child before him, and a terrified woman holding on behind; men trundling children too young to run, in dirty wheelbarrows, while other little half-clad, barefooted ones ran beside, weary and crying; an old man who could scarcely totter along, bearing a baby in his trembling arms, while the distracted mother carried an older child

with wounded and bleeding feet Some ran, some stumbled along, others faltered and almost gave out ; but before I could hurry on my clothes they poured into our gates and invaded the house, a small army of them, about five hundred tired, exhausted, broken-down, sick, frightened, terrified human beings,—all roused from their beds by firing and fighting in the very streets."

At this time, Mrs. Ripley had a two-weeks-old baby, and shortly after the Battle of Baton Rouge, her husband, having removed some of his slaves in defiance of the orders of the Federal General, fled to avoid arrest, leaving his wife to follow him with a carriage, and a waggon carrying their belongings, a duty which proved both difficult and dangerous. Except her own women, the slaves were so restive that she had to threaten her coachman with a pistol before he would obey her orders ; long detours had to be made to avoid the Federal pickets ; and although her husband's hiding-place was only thirteen miles away, she was three days in getting there. Mr. Ripley being incapacitated for active service by a slight physical infirmity, they resolved to go on to Texas, where the Confederates still held their own. It was a long journey, and for women and young children one of hardship and trial. They slept in the fields ; and in the morning the ground was often covered with frost and their small tent too stiff to be folded into the waggon ; rivers were crossed by rope ferries worked by women whose husbands were at the war; some- times they were on short-commons, and occasionally, in rainy weather, they would find shelter at wretched farmhouses tenanted by unhappy women whose men-folks had " gone to fight Lincoln." At length they reached the Rio Grande, and settled for a season in San Antonio, at that time the centre of a large trade between Mexico and the Confederacy. Although, owing to its proximity to Mexico, Texas was better supplied with imported goods than many other districts, its people were often put to sore straits. The authoress spent weeks with a family who, not being able to procure salt, were reduced to the necessity of utilising the mud floor of their smoke-house, which was rich in saline properties, owing to the accumulation during a series of years of waste salt and drippings. As neither lamp-oil nor candles were obtainable, ladies had to become their own tallow-chandlers. A needle dropped or mislaid was looked after for hours; the breaking of one was a veritable calamity. Tooth-brushes were replaced by twigs of shrubs, " nicely peeled and the ends chewed into brushes." All the hair-brushes were worn out, and one comb had often to do duty for a whole family. Paper become so scarce, that many newspapers suspended publication altogether, while others, diminished to the size of pocket-handkerchiefs, were printed on brown paper, sometimes on wall-paper. Reports of battles, with long lists of killed and wounded, wretchedly printed on stuff of this sort, passed from hand to hand until worn to shreds.

The entire South, in fact, was blockaded and in a state of siege, and it speaks well for the courage and resolution of its people that they did not give up the contest until their last armies in the field were defeated and dispersed. It was a fiery ordeal, an ordeal 'which a less energetic people had never survived, but which, as we can now see, was absolutely necessary for the regeneration of the South. The Whites, deprived by a single stroke of the peculiar institution which they regarded as essential to their prosperity, if not to their existence, and thrown on their own resources, have risen to the occasion, and developed qualities which are fast raising them to the economic and industrial level of their Northern com- patriots. The abolition of slavery has, moreover, deprived Secession of its raison d'être, and while proud of the prowess which their fathers displayed in the great fight, the present generation freely acknowledge that no worse calamity could have befallen them than their own victory.

Says Mrs. Ripley, when telling of Lee's surrender :—" Thus failed the Confederacy. We prayed for victory—no people uttered more earnest prayers—and the God of Hosts gave us victory in defeat. We prayed for only that little strip, that Dixie Land, and the Lord gave us the whole country from

the Lakes to the Gulf, from ocean to ocean—all dividing-lines wiped out—a united country for ever and ever."

After the war, the Ripleys went to Cuba and engaged in sugar-planting ; and not the least interesting part of a highly interesting book is the account of their experiences in that beautiful yet unhappy island, which still languishes under the yoke of Spain.