The story of my life ; or, The sunshine and shadow of seventy years / by Mary A. Livermore ... with hitherto unrecorded incidents and recollections of three years' experience as an army nurse in the great Civil War, and reminiscences of twenty-five years' experiences on the lecture platform ... to which is added six of her most popular lectures ... with portraits and one hundred and twenty engravings from designs by eminent artists ...

488

488 THE STORY OF MY LIFE.

Would they resume their former law-obeying, law-abiding
habits, and melt away into the peaceful haunts of industry?
Ill-concealed anxiety on this subject was present everywhere.
The South was utterly impoverished, stripped, peeled,
and ruined. It had lost everything for which it had flung
down the gage of battle,- its importance in the national
government,- its slaves,- its fortunes,- its cause,- and the
very flower of its young men. Disappointed and defiant, it
sat down in the ashes of its dead hopes, in despair. Four
millions of black slaves had been flung out of the depths
of an imbruting chattelism, and had become owners of
themselves. Overweighted with the ignorance and hereditary vices of slavery; trained to have no thought for the
morrow; without preparation for freedom or self-support;
without leadership, industrial aid, or a dollar of capital;
they were suddenly lifted to the level of self-supporting men
and women, and told to take care of themselves.
A vast debt of thousands of millions of dollars had been
incurred in defense of the nation. How was it to be paid?
The currency of the country was depreciated, and specie had
entirely disappeared from circulation. How was this to be
remedied? Hundreds of thousands of the disbanded soldiers
were physical wrecks, unfit for labor, and yet poor, without
homes, or with families dependent upon them for support. What must be done for them? The great President,
who had piloted the nation through the stormy sea of war
into the haven of peace, and who would have been the
leader in the work of -reconstruction, had been ruthlessly
assassinated. And the incapable and inconsequential man