The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-05-05
By VIII T. Sheehan
Illl Il M Il

|
 A ball. room reminiscence, casually
 produced from a store Alabama memo
 ries, by a friend who was fortunate
 enough to spend his youth in a Black Belt town, where life is always worth
 living. brought up suddenly as sim gle incident sometimes will recall an
 epoch and an order in one thought. The story he told revealed the social
 life of the South in Reconstruction days. In its political aspect Recon I struction has had always thought and
 consideration. Nor is it likely that we will forget 1t so long as there Is a
 stump speaker left to frame a phrase
 CT stump for him to speak 1t from.
 It was a black and terrible chapter. this Reconstruction. Never before
 was such a chapter lived out under
 the flag of a republic and never again
 in the wisdom of Providence will lib-
 erty be so perverted or prostituted.
 No government. no snatter how power | full, would have worn the responsibility
 of such a crime except 1t had been led 1 by revengeful Hate and Hate itself i would be unable to lead a second time
 to a wrong so monumental and an error
 so sgregious. But the stump speaker has exhausted
 his vocabulary in denouncing its in- 1 justice and It's honor. His oratorical | preserves will not be trespassed upon l here. A view, brief and suggestive
 rather than comprehensive view is to | be had here of the South in its social
 life, when Want succeeded Wealth, and when Privation ruled where Prosperity
 had held sway.
 War with a red hand. Joshua like | held still at his command the Sun of | Progress in the South for full thirty years. The South in the lean years EnI y1I I.A T | province, where Pride comforted Pow
 erty, and Hope only held at bay hun gry Despair What the Saxon felt | when the Norman took his heritage. what the Scotch nobles endured when Culioden had been fought, the suffer | ings the Royalists endured when Cromwell conquered, what the French aristocracy felt when Napoleon reigned, rewarded and punished--that in A prop | CT and proportionate degree--the slave | holding Southern endured when war rendered its cruelest verdict. ee Southerners in Brazil.
 somewhat pathetic story. sent from
 Brazil last year by the correspondents | who accompanied Secretary Elihu Root on his trip through South America de- | scribed a meeting between MT Root
 and a delegation ot self exiled South erners who left their country rather
 than live among the ruins of its old time civilization. For nearly forty years they had lived in interior Brazil, where they went with their slaves. They heard of the coming of the American statesman and they travelled | many miles through the country to see and talk with him--to talk with a
 man who could tell them something
 of their own country and of their own people. The correspondents described
 the appearance of the older men who had left their homes in the South nearly forty years ago--described them
 as they hung upon every word the Sec l retary had to say.
 The correspondents felt the pathetic
 eagerness of the question the older
 men asked--wouid the Secretary advise 1 them to move back to their old homes
 in the South? MT. Root thoughtfully
 considered the question-thought of
 what had gone before, of what the | men had been and of what changes
 had been wrought in the country they | had left. He advised the exiles to re- main in Brazil and among the scenes 1 in which they had founded their new | homes. They could not find that which l they had left The life and the scenes l which memory guarded 50 jealously
 no longer . had an existence. They
 were as much a memory in the South | ern States as they were in Brazil. It | were best for those who had left to
 remain In the comfort and prosperity | they had built in Brazil rather than
 return to hunt in vain for the old | life and the old friends. So the train 1 pulled away and left the Americans.
 expatriated. by war, wistfully watch | ing.
 | In the exiles that left the South to | go to Brazil and to escape the horrors | of wars aftermath there were some
 Alabamians. and among the Alabam- | ians there were some Montgomerians | Not all remained Some came back. | Slavery prevailed in Brazil and they | who went were those whose life had been lived in that order, of which slav cry was the basis. with those patriarchaf I features which has characterized al ways the Hystem.
 moving story can be written of
 "The Expatriates'' who went to Bra | gil. Some of who went and returned yet live in Middle Alabama. The story will be written.
 One of the returned expatriates until | a few years ago lived in a Middle Ala l bama home. He was there when Col H. Clay Armstrong, lately returned from serving as consul at Rio Janeiro under the Cleveland administration.
 came to the town and lectured on
 Brazil. Tn speaking of the marvellous vegetation or that country III d nuHlor- ous vein Colonel Armstrong said: why there is a tree in Brazil. which when its inner bark Is pierced. flows with a delightful drink that can hardly
 be distinguished from an excellent article of Bourbon. Now, if you don't
 believe that ask my old friend. Captain M, over there who went to Brazil
 right after the war and lived in the
 country a number of years"
 As the crowd was leaving the lec- ture room a friend asked Captain M:
 "what about that Bourbon tree? Is
 that story true?"
 Captain M slowly stroked his
 mustache as he made reply:
 DO you suppose I'd have come back l to Alabama. if there were trees in
 Brazil that flowed with BoHrbonT Son of an Alabama Governor. But we have wandered far a1eId
 from our friend and his story which.
 witch like. called from the "vasty deep" of the past the spirits of olden'
 things. But like Brazil and it's ex-
 patriates 1t suggests the poverty. the
 dead hopes. the fiction and the suffer ings of the Southern slave owner, when the war had passed and when he was no
 richer and less fortunate, than the ne-
 gro who had but yesterday been his slave, for the negro at least. had his vote.
 The young man who plays the i'm portant part in the story was the son of a Governor of Alabama and bore his fathers name. For utilitarian pur- poses the name is written here as AL
 ston Evans, because there never was