CHAPTER XIX. Reconstruction, 1865 to 1870. The last chapter brought the record down to AppoIt is interesting now to recall the memories of the three or four ensuing years. The soldiers came back home, if home had been left them, and, settling down to peaceful pursuits, began their struggle with poverty. There was not seed in the County sufficient to pitch a crop, nor money wherewith to buy. So great was the rebound from the field of battle to the serenity of domestic life, that even the old veterans, their bodies racked with many wounds, set to work with their own hands and with good heart to make the best of the situation. The Freedmen's Bureau was constituted by the conquerors, and satraps with shoulder straps and brass buttons were sent to every county to look after the late slaves; the "wards of the nation" as they were then called. The negroes were organized into "Union leagues," and depraved white men, some of them citizens, many of them a low type of northern newcomers, "scalawags" and "carpet-baggers," they were called respectively, did what they could to inflame them to tumult and riot. To the credit of the negroes be it said that many of them, notwithstanding the wiles of their charmers, accepting their freedom as a great boon, continued to |