to seal the covers. Poke berries, oak balls, and green persimmons,
furnished ink.

The devotion of the people was sublime, always dividing with their
neighbors; and the refugees were noted for heroic acts. The negroes were
faithful in guarding the families, all of whom were left unprotected,
and in working the plantations. Nowhere in the annals of nations has
such fidelity been known.

Two negro men belonging to an army officer's widow who lived with her
young daughters on an Arkansas plantation, conveyed $50,000 in gold in
the cushions of an ambulance to Houston, Texas--a place of safety from
marauding troops, who burned the house and cabins, and captured the
live stock. The Yankees would not molest escaping negroes. These were
faithful to their trust. Similar instances are legion. Leal and true,
always and everywhere.

The memory of those hardships cannot die until all the survivors are
dead. Fertile fields and pleasant villages were destroyed by great
armies. Two billions of dollars in slaves were swept away. Cotton, the
chief staple, was burned, or captured. Wealth placed in Confederate
bonds, was lost forever. Of the 1,000,000 men in the southern army,
three fourths were killed; 400,000 were crippled; and no estimate was
made of the wounded who recovered. The cost of the war was $8,000,000.
Men and horses perished of starvation and disease. The Southern
Confederacy died, not for lack of the will and of the spirit to fight
on--for not even Washington's ragged troops at Valley Forge endured
greater sufferings or displayed greater heroism. The Confederacy died
of exhaustion.