The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1867-07-26
NATIONAL ENTERTAINMENT,
For the Benefit of the
LADIES' SOCIETY
Suffering and Destitute Poor Of The South,
Will take place
In Washington, D. G.. August l, '67.
In Aid Of tn,

NNHE. 'Ladies' Society in aid Of tho Suf-
Il fering and Destitute Poor of the South"
would respectfully an earnestly call the
attention of the gcner us Northern public
to the great distress and fearful suffering
now prevailing in the Southern States
Letters are daily received from the South,
from the Generals Commanding, Govern
ors, ministers and eminent citizens, fur
nlshing the most heart-rending details Of
the actual want, famine and starvation in
their immediate neighborhood. The fol-
LOWING few extracts from the very many
letters received by the Secretary and Ma
nagers OF the Society are respectfully re-
ferred to:
H'DoUARTERs, 4TH MILITARY DIST,
(MIssIssIPPI AND ARKANsAs,)
VIcKsBURG, MISS, May Is, 1867.
am glad TO see that the attention of the
gentle and humane ladies of the North is
being turned towards the sad and desolate
condition of this once happy land.
You, Madam, surrounded with the plenty
and comforts of wealthy city, can scarcely
appreciate the fact that, in many parts Of
the South, whole communities are, by a
failure in crops and the absence Of money
or its equivalent, left In want of the necos-
ssaries of life; and that poor women, with
large families of helpless children, so ac-
customcd to depend on the labor Of others,
that now, with no husband, brother or
servant to help, and no money, they do not
but are left in the solitudes of these South
ern forests, in rags and gaunt with hunger,
subsisting on what the mother or larger
children can shoot or pick up in the woods,
or on what tho few .neigh6ors, nearly as
poor as they are, can bring them.
Officers Of my acquaintance have met
with such mothers, long after dark, out in
the woods, with an old gun just fired, and
the coon or possum just killed; have gone
home with them and met the group of little
starvelings waiting patiently mothers re-
turn with some of the only sort of food
they had tasted for weeks; and women and
children have been found within sixty miles
of the capital of Southern State, during
the past year, who had starved to death in
their lonesome cabins. These cases of
great distress are rare in Southern cities,
for there, even the most delicately bred can
generally find some work which they can
do to keep the wolf from the door; but the
farms or plantations in the South are pc
culiarly secluded, with miles of forest or
swamp between them, poor roads, and the
stock and animals nearly all taken by the
war, the famine, the floods, or the thieves,
who IL such times infcst n country, and the
distressed families are often, by the time
necessity makes them want to leave, too
sick to travel on foot, and there is no other
way to go.
Your proposed entertainment, Madam,
should it produce only funds enough to re-
lieve small fraction of the destitution of
this country, will be good beginning, and
may be followed in other cities North by
similar appeals to people who have happily
never felt the desolation and the horrors
which follow in the tracks of great armies
of invasion. God speed your society in the
good work, is the wish of Madam, yours
truly, E. o. G. ORD,
Brcvet Major-Gencral.