Gray Visions

Chapter One: 1865

Peace had come at last. To war-weary Southerners of all races, the agreement negotiated between Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln in the autumn of 1864 could not have come too soon. The conflict between the North and South had raged for over three years and left Southerners facing devastation the likes of which no modern people had ever faced. From Virginia to Texas, from Florida to Kentucky, farms, plantations, towns and no few cities lay in ruins. With the arrival of peace and the abolition of slavery, Southern people, blacks and whites alike, turned their eyes toward an uncertain future.

True, the Confederate States had won their independence. Lee’s victory over Grant on the North Anna River in May of 1864 led to a string of Confederate victories, triggering a chain of events which led ultimately to negotiations and an end not only of the war, but of slavery as well. Lincoln had agreed to pay reparations to the newly independent Confederacy and the last of the Union troops were withdrawn from Southern soil. The first few weeks following the agreement were filled with joy. Euphoria swept across the land like a brush fire over the prairie, but as the weeks slipped by and winter approached this elation faded quickly. A stark reality loomed over the citizens of the Confederate States of America.

Problems abounded but solutions seemed all too few. The agricultural base of the South had been ravaged. Southern railroads had been left largely in tangled ruins. Only the fractured remains of a transportation system were available for use. What had once been the proud city of Atlanta was nothing but piles of smoldering ashes. One thing was painfully obvious as the people surveyed the scene of destruction which covered much of the South: reconstruction would prove far more a challenge than the war just concluded.

Compounding the crisis posed by rebuilding was a factor even more complex. Well over three million of the South’s people were experiencing freedom for the first time. Slavery was finished in North America. Most of the former slaves were illiterate – kept so by the laws of old. Would they be capable of handling the responsibilities which came hand in hand with freedom? Would the abolition of slavery trigger chaos in a land already drained by war? An answer to these questions was of necessity the first objective of the Confederate government as it entered the post-war period. Moreover, time would simply not allow the luxury of extended debate and hand-wringing over the problem; something would h