Belief 7 - Reading 13 of 13, The Reconstruction Convention

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Belief 7 - Reading 13 of 13

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AID FOR THE SOUTH

Harper's Weekly, December 16, 1865, page 786 (Editorial)

It is stated that in Alabama alone two hundred thousand persons are in danger of extreme suffering, if not of actual starvation, during the coming winter. It is a piteous and appalling prospect, and we trust that the same energy and humanity which originated and sustained the Sanitary and Christian Commissions during the war will feel that their work is not yet accomplished. The destitution at the South is not confined to any class or color. It is a general sorrow. Every body is familiar with individual instances of suffering, and there is no disposition in this part of the country to indulge any spirit of hostility or revenge. The same sympathy that eight or nine years ago hastened to relieve the sick at Norfolk now embraces all the stricken at the South. Nor ought the folly of conventions and legislatures to blind us to the actual necessities of the people.

The condition is exceptional, like civil war itself, and demands exceptional measures. According to the statement of Dr. Storrs at the meeting of the Union Aid Commission in Brooklyn there are three societies which aim at special relief: the Freedmen’s Aid, the Union Aid, and the Missionary Association. They are all voluntary associations, and devote themselves to the actual subsistence, and mental and moral education of the destitute Southern population. That population has no hope except in our prompt assistance. The fires of war have ravaged their homes and fields. The capital of their section is consumed. Agriculture and trade are paralyzed. As yet there is no civil government. There is a universal and withering reaction from the extraordinary tension of the last four years. The system of labor is radically changed. Tradition and habit are confounded. And meanwhile upon this wasted land there is a helpless population upon which winter is swiftly coming. The appeal is to our manhood, to our fraternal feeling, to our humanity; and it must not be disturbed by the sneers and anger which attend it.

Last winter we were accumulating guns, shells, ammunition; we were devising means to terrible destruction; we were moving in the great march of Sherman to save a nation by the sharpest surgery. This winter let the magazines we heap up be of corn and oil. Let our march be to heal, not to harry. Let the same unconquerable will that subdued now sustain. Let the national hand be as tender in friendship as it was terrible in hostility. Let that astonished part of the population of the South, who have long been utterly and fatally deceived as to their brethren in other parts of the country, be made to know and feel that there is no lingering spark of hatred or revenge in our hearts; and so the true bond of eternal union will gradually become plain to them in mutual intelligence, confidence, and charity.

Harper's Weekly, December 16, 1865, page 786 (Editorial)

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