Volume 17 , Issue 46

Christmas In the Days of 1864

It was in The Farmer and Mechanic, Raleigh, North Carolina, dated 24 December 1907, Tuesday, page 6, we found this and many other Christmas stories: "In the Days of '64 (1864), The Last Christmas of the Southern Confederacy."

Found on Newspapers.com

"We had some memorable Christmas days in the South during the war," said Mrs. Zebulon B. Vance, wife of the late United States Senator from North Carolina. "That of 1861 was different from any that had preceded it, because we were in arms against the Federal government, and many of the male guests at Southern homes that day wore Confederate uniforms. Much of the talk at the Christmas dinner table was of sieges and battles and marches, but we were all full of hope and confidence.

"Christmas, 1862, found us but poorly prepared to celebrate it. Our supplies were few, and Confederate money was at a heavy discount. Then came the bitter year of 1863, with the fall of Vicksburg, and the defeat at Gettysburg. With sad faces, harmonizing well with their dresses of coarse black, stuff, the women of the South devoted themselves to picking lint and spinning and weaving for husbands, fathers, brothers and sweethearts in the field.

"Christmas, 1864 - the last Christmas of the war - dawned, and what a gloomy festival it was for the people of the South. Of manufactured products we had practically none. Out hairpins were made of long black thorns, with a ball of sealing wax on the end. We had made into dresses every scrap of available material, while our feet were encased in homemade cloth shoes. The slaves, having heard of 'de 'emancipation proclamation,' knew that they were free and had all scattered away. Desolation seemed to reign over everything. Of all the Christmas days I have known that last Christmas in the South in war time is the one of all others that I am most certain never to forget." - Pittsburg Dispatch.
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