VOICES FROM THE PAST

Eyewitness Writings of Antebellum Times

Excerpt from "Two Wars"
By Samuel G. French


    Major General Samuel Gibbs French was a native of New Jersey, but some years prior to the War Between the States he purchased a plantation in Mississippi and relocated there. When the time came, he readily espoused "The Cause" and commanded a division in the Confederate army for most of the war.  A most learned and articulate individual, he wrote an excellent autobiography in his latter years. The following excerpt from this work, referring to a time in his youth, paints a picture of a lifestyle very different from what we know today.

    " The superabundance of the necessaries of life at that period can scarcely be realized now, and every one fared sumptuously, and nearly all alike. Under the house were four cellars. As winter approached, perhaps forty cords of oak and hickory wood, four feet in length, were hauled to the woodpile. Some twenty or more fat hogs were killed, the hams and shoulders sugar-cured and smoked in a large stone smokehouse. The sides, etc., were salted down in great cedar tanks. The beeves were killed, the rounds dried, not smoked, and the rest "corned." Minced meat and sausage, in linked chains by the hundreds of pounds, cider boiled down in great copper kettles, and apple butter and pear sauce made without stint. Shad from the fishery were brought for salting down for six dollars per hundred. Oysters by the wagon load were in winter put in the cellar and kept fat by sprinkling them with brine and corn meal. In bins the choice apples were stored, each variety by itself, for daily use, while large quantities buried in the earthen pits for spring. On the swinging shelves was the product of the dairy, cheese and butter. Four hogsheads were kept full of cider vinegar; and "apple jack" (apple brandy) in barrels in a row, according to age; great old-fashioned demijohns were kept full of cherries, wild and cultivated, covered with brandy. Apples, peaches, pears, huckleberries, currants, plums, etc., were dried on scaffolds in the sun for pies and other purposes: and the children forgot not their ample supply of chestnuts, shellbarks, hazelnuts, etc. Turkeys, geese, and barnyard fowls were raised largely, but they were considered produce for sale. There was no stint to these superabundant supplies, and they were yearly consumed. Rabbits, pheasants, partridges, and woodcock were abundant, and often were secured by trapping; and the ponds and streams were filled with fish…
 



The superabundance of the necessaries of life at that period can scarcely be realized now, and every one fared sumptuously, and nearly all alike.
I have given these minute details of the manner in which the people lived in New Jersey and adjoining States in the olden times, "when the richest were poor and the poorest had abundance," to show you how well they lived, how comfortably clad, and how content they were in the days when trusts, combines, and protective tariffs were unknown, and no great corporations existed. To-day (1895) these great combines have destroyed individual competition, and impoverished more than half the entire population of the country and reduced it to rigidity of hours and the slavery of wages. They control legislation, corrupt the courts, subsidize the press, maintain advocates in the pulpits, and this will estrange the poor from the rich more widely than the peasant from the prince…"·

Tip of the Day

Mosquitoes don't like catnip. Plant some by your front and back doors to keep them out of the house. Rub the leaves on your exposed skin and they will stay off of you. And your cats will love you.