Destitution and Suffering at the South.
Two things we unmistakably read, in the well-authenticated accounts of the terrible state of things now existing at the South: first, the righteous retribution of a just God on the foul sin of slavery which they have so long persistently cherished; and second, the fulfillment of certain predictions of calamities to come upon them, given through the spirit of prophecy at an early stage of the war. In Testimony No. 7, p. 16, we read, "God is punishing this nation for the high crime of slavery. He has the destiny of the nation in his hand. He will punish the South for the sin of slavery, and the North for so long suffering in overreaching and overbearing influences." For its complicity with this great crime the North has had to endure the terrible pressure of this bloody struggle for four weary years; but the most direful results of the war seem to be falling upon the South for the sin of slavery itself. Again we read in Testimony No. 9, p. 12, in regard to the South, "Their foot shall slide in due time." And again on p. 4: "God is not with the South, and he will punish them dreadfully in the end." The late events of the war, afford a sufficient commentary on these points. The following items gathered from the latest papers are only a few additional particulars. The following description we find in the New York Express: 'AN APPALING PICTURE OF SOUTHERN DESTITUTION.
'A late prominent Southern leader, not many days ago, said to a company of Northern gentlemen at Richmond: “ ‘We are defeated; yes, if you please, we are conquered. Look at our condition. Our rich have become poor, and our poor, beggars. Our soil has been desolated by contending armies, till there are no crops in the ground, few houses fit to live in, no fences, and no timber to make any; no cattle, no horses, no railroads, no locomotives or rolling stock, no steamboats, no flour mills, no cotton, no tobacco, and no food that is available, save as we get it from your commissariat. In a single night our currency perished in our hands, losing even its pitiful price of five cents on a dollar. I know families—yes families heretofore comfortable, and even rich—who would thank you for a supper of corn meal.’ ” “Another account from a Union soldier, says: “ ‘Let free passes be given to all in the North who doubt the prevalence of the direst poverty and distress among the people of the South, and there will be a new field open for your Sanitary Commission.’ ” Rev. H. M. Gallaher, on a recent visit to Charleston, S. C., writes to the N. Y. Independent: “Our first sight of Charleston was a disappointment. We did not expect to see such terrible desolation, and we wondered how the rebel newspapers could have kept back a knowledge of their sufferings. “One-third of the city, and perhaps the best third, is utterly destroyed. If New York city extended only to Canal street, and a fire, three blocks wide, should burn its way from Fulton Ferry to the foot of Barclay street, it would be something like what has befallen Charleston. “Then, what is untouched by the fire is pierced and torn and shattered by our shells. Every second building, at least, is injured by them. The Mills House, an imposing structure resembling the Sherman House in Chicago, was hit eighteen times. We gathered some blooming white clover from the grass that grew thickly at its closed doorway.” The Detroit Tribune has the following: “ ‘Dispatches from Richmond show a terrible state of impoverishment which the people of Virginia are now found to be in, and to which they have been reduced by the drafts of the rebel military establishment on their resources of all kinds. Thousands of the inhabitants of Richmond, Petersburg and the surrounding country are preserved from starvation only by the supplies of food which the United States Commissaries issue them.’ ” The New York Tribune gives a picture of present and prospective Southern desolation as follows: “The Southern Rebellion is dead, after having caused the death of a large share of the Southern people. Persons who have recently passed through the accessible portions of the Atlantic Slave States report a frightful scarcity of able-bodied males. A few old men, a few cripples; not many boys able to shoulder a musket, with a sad abundance of widows and orphans, ill clad, coarsely and scantily fed, woe-begone, hopeless—such is the wreck left behind by the fugitive chiefs of the Slaveholders’ Confederacy. Since the capture of Jerusalem by Titus, there has been no such utter ruin. In many places, a dumb stupor appears to have full way over what are left of the Whites, so that they seem to have no thought and no care for the future. “Of course, there is much bitterness and vengeful hate still cherished by the dupes of Secession; many believing that the North made causeless war on the South and crushed it by brute strength in the wantonness of conscious power. But, though hate remains, and may impel to isolated acts of crime, there is no thought of further warfare. The subjugation is felt to be complete. “The Government will soon, we trust, be ready to speak comforting, reassuring words to the great body of the Southern people; but meantime the planting season is swiftly passing unimproved. The negroes, with a justifiable fear of guerrillas and of re-enslavement, desert the plantations and rush into the idle, famishing cities, leaving tillage unattempted; for the Whites have little force, less heart, small aptitude for labor, and are destitute of seed, implements, animals—in short, everything. And there is great danger that the season of vegetation will pass mainly unimproved, and leave large sections of the South exposed next Winter to the horrors of actual famine.”