Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/287

Rh the farms gone to wreck. There was no money in circulation; the banks were generally broken; there was no credit system; most of the commercial agencies were inoperative or suspended. The work stock used in making crops had been mostly destroyed or carried away. Provisions were scarce, having been taken by the one or the other of the contending armies. The paroled soldiers returned to find their homes desolate, and they were disheartened and humiliated by failure. They had nothing at hand with which to begin life anew, except their land and the brave hearts which had carried them through four years of war, which ended in the defeat of a cause they deemed just and honorable.

They found at home 4,000,000 slaves suddenly emancipated as a result of the war. They realized that the greatest problem any people had ever had to solve on sudden notice faced them. The negroes, as was natural that it should be, were greatly demoralized, and had but a faint conception of the responsibility of the freedom that was theirs, and that they knew had been brought about by the defeat of the Southern armies. Large numbers of them thought that freedom meant a cessation of labor on their part, and that the great government which had freed them by force of arms would feed, clothe and provide for them. They generally left their work in the fields and went in crowds to the cities and towns, where they were fed and cared for at the expense of the United States government. All this added greatly to the chaos and confusion of the time.

Private debts that had been incurred in a period of great prosperity, prior to 1861, and were unpaid at the beginning of the war, were still unpaid, and the property, on which most of these debts were contracted, no longer existed. The railroads and other means of transportation were almost wrecked. All factories and other industries were generally destroyed. Agriculture, the main means of support in the South, was almost demoralized