"Vignettes"
of the Civil War
By
Francis McRae Ward (1902 – 1963)
CONTENTS
NOTE:
Francis Ward was born on Crescent Plantation in 1902, son of Thomas
Francis Ward and Margaret Peterkin Ward. He was a
lifelong resident of Tallulah and Madison Parish and during his time was
considered to be the top authority on local history. He died only two years
after this article was finished.
“Vignettes”
of the Civil War was written in 1961 and
has never been published. It was graciously made available by Frances (Boo) Bettis Eiland of Tallulah. The
original manuscript was scanned and converted to computer-sensible text by OCR
(Optical Character Recognition) software. Although the text of the manuscript
was unaltered, there have been several punctuation changes, and the “notes” he
scattered throughout the article have been removed from the body of the article
and converted to footnotes. Many photos have been added and more may be added
in the future. The article is presented here in HTML format so that clicking on
any chapter name will take you to the chapter itself – the “Contents” being the
keystone section. In addition the footnotes may be accessed by clicking on
them. To return to the original position in the article click
again on the footnote. This makes the footnotes readily available to
those who want them and clears out the main body of the article for those who
don’t.
Please
understand that in 1961 practically all of the white population of Madison
Parish was to some extent “segregationist.” As you will see this particularly
applies to Francis Ward and his Introduction-writer, Vicksburg historian V.
Blaine Russell. The atrocities committed during the Civil War, especially
during Reconstruction, were still fresh in their minds even though they were
both too young to have experienced them. If Francis and Mr. Russell were alive
today I am sure their attitudes would be quite different. Interestingly enough,
Francis Ward’s grandfather, Patrick Ward, fought for the Union during the Civil
War.
Richard P. Sevier January 2003 dicksevier@gmail.com
The Warfare Of The Border Transferred To The Louisiana Delta Cotton
Fields
Little Known But
Genuine Hero Of The Confederate States Navy
Fear And Gloom
Covers The Land. Grant's Move From Milliken's Bend To
Vicksburg
General John C.
Pemberton. The Surrender. The Aftermath
Along The Western
Shore Of The River
The Despots Rule In Louisiana And Mississippi
They Killing Of
Colonel Crane, Military Mayor Of Jackson, Mississippi
Captain Cole
Younger
Captain Jason W.
James
Captain Joseph
Calloway Lea
The
closer something has hit to a person's heart and home--be it justice or
injustice--the more tenderly or the more poignantly he feels it, as the
respective case may be. Tenderly he is apt to feel the justice; poignantly he
will feel the injustice. And, we of the South have known the poignancy of
injustice almost steadily since the Civil War, and are today feeling it more
poignantly than ever, as forced upon this, the last frontier of the Anglo-Saxon
race, by the misinformed and sometimes prejudiced majority in the North-most of
whom have seen the true South only in a book or fleetingly out a car window.
Transplant those very Northerners in the South for three years and they become
far more rabid segregationists and truer Southerners than many of our native
Southerners.
When the author of
this book, Francis M. Ward, was born in the stately antebellum home, Crescent,
in northeast Louisiana near Tallulah, it had seen better days and worse days.
Gradually, as a boy on the place for fifteen years, young Ward learned much of
the happier or more poignant years through which his birthplace had gone. Then
through the years as a resident of Tallulah, the parish-seat near by, he continued to learn. The history of his home and
region in the South is only a repetition of many hundreds of such cases, many
of them far more tragic than the case of Crescent Plantation, which was at
least spared the torch by the ruthless invaders in the 1860's.
Crescent
Plantation House
I have ridden down
the bayou road with Mr. Ward to his birthplace. Though in
other hands today, the plantation-house still looks out with quiet dignity
across Brushy Bayou. Negroes sing no longer in the fields; for, with all
their artificial uplift, no person ever of that once-happy race is as truly
happy as he used to be. They have had too much hatred put into their minds by a
second growth carpetbaggery whose main idea is for personal political gain;
they have had too much teaching that the government is their bank, their wages,
and their free grocery-store--leaving them nothing to do but hold out their
hands for it.
Instead of songs
in the fields today, perhaps one hears the drone of a cotton duster plane or a
tractor to which the plantation-owner had to turn when his labor was driven
from him by the second-growth carpetbaggery. Or perhaps instead of songs in the
field may be heard the clank of a rattletrap automobile taking the government's
idle children to the nearest town to enjoy themselves.
It was an honor
and trust to me to be allowed to read Mr. Ward's manuscript for his book before
it went to press. It is all well-authenticated history, as proven by the
author's many footnotes and references, the data having been gathered by him
through long years of study, retrospect, and observation of current events. Mr.
Ward knows the Negro second to none, and, as all
fair-minded Southerners know: It is not and never has been any hatred for the
Negro race that that has caused the South to stay segregated, but the simple
fact that that is the only way to maintain the white race and prevent it from
becoming a mongrel breed. Races have been known to bodily migrate as a whole
from their native places to far countries simply to preserve their heritages
and ways of life--the Biblical races, for instance, as cited in the Scriptures.
The Anglo Saxon remnants of the South today have as much love for their
heritage, and certainly have as much desire and right to preserve it.
V. BLAINE RUSSELL
Vicksburg,
January 1961