The Brandon news. (Brandon, Miss.) 1892-1961, 1903-06-25
in 13 Letters.

Ao6 ii"HuS, Uec hives ana the green
corn, fruit and vegetables to be found,
III fact everything a man could eat,
wear or ride. Many of them fell
sick by the wayside from overeating
and fatigue. We took them into our
homes and cared for them the best we
could, some of them recovered, and
some died; there are now in the old
Cato graveyard a long row of soldiers
graves, marking the last resting place
OF some sweet boy, husband, or broth
er. We laid them away as tenderly
as we could and dropped tear of
sympathy, hoping that some loving
hand, and heart, was doing the same
sad, but kind service, for our poor
boys who were finding graves among
strangers. They left canteens, cloth
ing, boxes, old shoes, old hats { p and
everything you could think of on the
roadside. We boys would pilot them
from house to house to find milk and
other things to quench their burning
thirst, sand satisfy their pinching hun
ger. One man eat so much roasting
ears that he died from the effects of it
= poor fellow, he was hungry enough
to have eaten bundle of green fod-
der too. The army was some days pas
ing, struggling soldiers came on for
days after the main army had passed;
they had side tracked to find some
thing to eat, or had been sick. So
things grew worse and worse for the
rebels till the confederacy collapsed at
Appomattox in @aVirginia in 1866.
Some of the soldiers got home in time
to make a late corn crop, potatoes, etc.
The farms had become dilapidated,
the bitches filled up, fences down, the
briars had four years the start, and
things all out of gear generally.
Thousands of men who had four years
before, filled our homes and churches
were missing; hundreds of widows
and orhpans left, some of the widows
married again, most of them remained
single and fought the wolf as best they
could with their children to help, and
waited to meet their 'first love'' in
the far beyond and most of them have
met. There was a few instances
where the wife waited for the hus-
band a long time, and gave him up as
dead, and married again, and of course
when he did come home he was left,
and all concerned found themselves in
kind of double trouble, the wife not
knowing whether to take the old hus-
band or live with the new. However
that was not often the case, and u.s.
ually among the ''baser sort -
We commenced anew to build the
waist places" of our southern zion,
and in few years we had things
looking up again. One of the great
est drawbacks in those days was the
impudent, worthless negro; he had
been armed with the ballot and was
ready tool for carpetbaggers, who
put all kinds of devilment into his
woody pate, and made him believe if
the darky would vote for him he
would receive for his support, mule
and 40 acres of land from the govern
ment for his kindness. I have seen
Yankee soldiers on the streets of Jack
son with their arms around the waists
OF negro women, and they have not
quit hugging them yet, the last ex-
ample was Roosevelt squeezing Book
er. One Yank, it was said, brought a
ship load of striped poles to the
south, and sold them out as fast as a
Jew would lot of ten cent spectacIes,
to the negroes, telling them if they
would place a stob, or pole, at each
corner of forty Of their old mas
ter's land, that the old gentleman
would heed the ominous sign, and re-
linquish his claim to his former slave,
etc.
The Yanks would sometimes give
them bogus deed to 40 of the old
DooO ANLu. LlCAO ID q OJCCl1nOA
Yank gave a negro. He wrote some
thing on a slip of paper and told
Cuffee to set up his poles and present
his deed to the boss, and the land was
his. Mr.. Yank, of course, charged
$40, but as Cuffee had but SIS he
kindly agreed to indulge him for the.
remaining $4. SO Cuffee took the pa
per and poles and asked his old master
to read his claim to 40 of his best
land. His old master did so, and here
is the reading of Cuffee's deed:
AS Moses lifted up the serpent in
the wilderness, even SO have lifted
this d-n fool negro out of six dol
lars.
Of course Cuffea had his deed recon-
ded-in his mind hundreds Of the
poor foolish things were thus treated
till they found that Mr.. Yankee car
petbagger was not their friend at nll,
] but a pack Of thieves, and poor Mig,