Scenes from Savannah 1862
A large crowd assembles in the Masonic Hall in Savannah, Georgia to hear the reading of an essay written by local hero and popular orator George Anderson Gordon, a colonel in the 63rd Georgia Regiment. Gordon’s regiment is charged with defending the Georgia and South Carolina coasts, whose waterways are now largely blockaded by the Union Navy, a situation that makes white citizens of Savannah ever apprehensive.
Assembled in the crowd are many Baptists of this important Confederate city. The essay was read previously in Savannah on October 27, but Savannah citizens requested this second reading of the piece that focuses on the future of the Confederate States, following victory over the United States.
A portion of today’s presentation is as follows:
Three years ago, in this very hall, an unnumbered multitude were assembled. Not only the seats, now occupied by you, but the stairways, the balconies, the streets themselves, were crowded with an array so vast that every house and cabin within the boundaries of the city, must have furnished its representatives. Upon this stage were seated orators, statesmen, priests, gazing upon the sea of upturned faces, which awaited patiently the issue. No uproar marked the presence of so multitudinous a throng, for, like the majesty of ocean, its emotions were too deep for foam or ripple. In prayer they initiated their solemn proceedings, for it was fitting, at this sacred season, when about to tear to pieces the political ties of a century and to launch the ship of State upon an unknown sea, that they should invoke upon the birth of their conception the favor of Deity. They felt their responsibilities, this multitude.
A few weeks before, they had unfurled the flag of State independence and sounded the first tocsin of resistance to the iron despotism which fanaticism had forged for their subjection. It behooved, therefore, that in the city, where a revolution was begun, their voice should be no dubious sound, and that in commissioning deputies to a convention of the people in their primary capacity, calmness should characterize their proceedings and certainty their instructions.
Calmly and dispassionately were their grievances recited by the orators of that evening, with no frenzied appeal to their passions, but with the solemnity of soberness and truth. The chivalrous Bartow, the orator by nature, whose language was ever wont to gush forth even too tardily for the teeming thought of his luxuriant mind, now tempered and chastened by the awful responsibility of the hour, poured forth in measured tones and studied language the history of our wrongs. Forty years of patient suffering, the history of the decay and downfall of the once mighty Republic, were summoned from the grave of the past to justify the action which all felt must be inevitable. Encroachments on the one side. Too considerate concessions on the other. Fanaticism growing with the growth of the one section; ineffectual protest, solemn warning from the weaker. A one idead leprosy, eating, like a canker, into the thoughts and writings and acts of the one side, hardening and defacing the surface with a gangrened crust of hypocrisy, impervious to the touch of entreaty of the other. Literature; statesmanship, religion, prostituted to the advancement of an infidel radicalism, the press, the forum, the pulpit of the South ringing out impassioned but disregarded appeals to be permitted, under the guarantee of inalienable rights, to weave for herself her destiny.
Nor yet alone with calmness and gravity were these proceedings characterized. Sadness, too, tinged the thoughts of many of the most determined. The name, won by the sacred blood of their forefathers and which had been their passport through the limits of the civilized world, was for them to be effaced forever! The flag, beneath which themselves had fought, as the inestimable emblem of universal liberty, was to be resigned to the oppressor and severed from their grasp eternally. The illusions of a life-time, hallowed by the attainations of the past and knit into the very fibres of their hearts, were to be blotted out forever. A new name, a new flag, a new leaf for the chapter of history, were to be the heritage that they were to transmit to posterity. Yet, despite the sadness interwoven with the sacrifice, no trace of doubt, no sign of faltering, no eve turned back, were to be found amidst that assemblage of patriots Rights trampled upon, wrongs repeated, the Constitution a mockery, yea, the Holy Bible in the mouths of their foes a ribald jest, they felt, that multitude, that their times were not in their hands, and that, where God and duty called, there, with solemn deliberation and calm resolve, they must go.
And the set countenance and fixed lips of that people betokened that most of them had counted the cost of the venture.They knew–for so spake the orators of that day in this hall that night–that a continent must be convulsed, by their action, that not only was eternal vigilance the price of liberty, but that the precious gift was not to be attained save over the ruins of homes, the desolation of hearts, sufferings indescribable. War — war to the teeth must be expected, war such as the world had rarely before witnessed; for, though none foresaw its weary duration, all history proved that it must be bloody.
And yet, despite, all this, despite the disruption of the ties of generations, despite the sacrifice of objects once so hallowed, despite the privations and sufferings which they and their children must endure, they faltered not, but, with an unanimous aye, deputed their delegates to bear to the capitol of Georgia the inflexible voice of an united people that, so far as this city and her people were concerned, they demanded, as the only cure for the disease, disunion!
The record of that night stands forth a monument of glory for every man whose voice swelled the majestic vote, and was responded to from mountain and from seaboard, from hilltop and from valley, through the length and breadth of the State, until Georgia stood forth, in her virgin freshness, endued anew with her original unimpaired and inestimable birthright — her sovereignty.
Three winters have passed since these scenes were enacted between the walls, in which we are gathered. Three years of suffering, of sorrow, of death ! The noble spirit, who then swayed the State, now sleeps the last sleep of the martyred dead. In the first battle of the gigantic struggle, foremost among the first, baptizing with his life blood the virgin banner of his regenerate country he fell, and
“Over the dead hero hang
Great gulfs of’ silence, blue and strewn with stars,
No sound, no motion, in the eternal depths.”And now methinks, from his bloody ashes, unavenged and unvindicated, in this hour, when valor, victory, endurance, all the records of the many campaigns, have demonstrated that we have carved for ourselves an historic name, I hear again that ever recurring question of human life, a question for nations no less than for individuals, moaning forth from the tomb of the loved and lamented, ” I have given freedom to my country — what will she do with if?”
Aye, what will she do with it ; with the liberty, purchased at the price of so much blood ; with the privileges, wrung from the ruin of so many hearthstones ; with the name, watered with so many tears and sanctified by so much suffering!
The question assumes an awful magnitude, as the circle of responsibility enlarges and it embraces in its circumference the nation at large. And yet it must be answered, answered by each and every citizen of the Confederate States, by each man and woman here assembled, units though we may be in the grand sum of national arithmetic.
For us and for our children have these sacrifices been made! For us, these widowed hearts, these orphaned children, these scenes of destitution and want. And, as we garner the priceless fruit and reap the rich harvest of blessings innumerable, let us not avoid the great question of the English novelist, but, stripping the mask from our own hearts, ask, each for himself, what will he do with it.
Following a lengthy look at examples of how white Southerners might answer his question, Gordon in his conclusion summarizes:
The time is approaching, my friends, when, either in this world or the next, we must, all, give an answer to the question of my essay. A few years, at farthest, computed by the grand arithmetic of history, and these days of tumult and suffering must find their close. Whether by foreign interposition, or internal convulsions among our foes or by the unaided might of our own right hand,
“Grim visaged war will smoothe his wrinkled front.”
peace will once more spread her wings over the land, and our tempest tossed ship of State shall be anchored securely on the sands of eternity.
Some of us, who are now assembled, may long ere then have been numbered among the victims of a ruthless war, and our voice and our influence shall be but a memory. Our wife, and our children may be among those, whose sad lot we have depicted to-night, and the tears of our loved ones may be watering our graves.
But some of us shall survive to hail the dawning of the star of peace. And each of these must be prepared to answer the solemn question. Have we, by melancholy foreboding and croaking complaint, palsied the energy and unnerved the arm of an infant government. Have we, at the expense of the myriad poor, who have been poverty stricken by the war, fattened by speculation in the necessaries of life? Have we contributed, directly or indirectly, to the disgusting act of depreciating the currency of a struggling nation? Have we joined in or encouraged the conversation of even a doubter, much less a reconstructionist?
Have we been faithful to the sublime trust reposed in us by the Lord God of nations?
My friends. For others, as much gold as they can cram into a thousand vaults, snatched from the sufferings of the myriad poor. For others, blocks of houses and acres of land, droves of oxen and abundance of all the fat things of the earth.
But for me and mine, rather would I. bury every dollar I own in the world, the inheritance of my fathers, the scanty accumulations of weary years, and commence life anew in the autumn of existence than garner millions unworthily during the war. Pure hands and undefiled, sullied by no stain of avarice, spotted by no blemish of selfishness, this is the heritage to be desired, this the lot to be craved ! And of such a man, blessed be the children, who can walk erect, with proud mien and unbending carriage, who, glorying in the liberty that has been won, and the sufferings that have won it, can point to the name of an illustrious, though poor sire, and boast what he has done with it.
In the weeks and months ahead, the essay will be read before crowds in Augusta, Milledgeville, Macon, Atlanta, Columbus and LaGrange. Gordon’s interpretation of the current and future status of the Confederate States mirrors that of prominent Southern Baptist newspaper editors of the South.
The popularity of Col. Gordon’s essay attests that at this dark time in the history of the young nation, many white Georgians of the Confederacy believe, or yet want to believe, that the tide of the war will turn and lead to ultimate victory for the South.
Sources: George Anderson Gordon, “What Will He do With it?”, delivered December 7, 1863, published Savannah, Ga.: George Nichols, 1863, pp. 5-8, 27 (link); George A. Gordon Letters, Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin (link); Speech of Hon. George A. Gordon, of Chatham, on the Constitutionality of the Conscription Laws, Passed by the Congress of the Confederate States, Delivered in the Senate of Georgia, on Tuesday, 9th of December, 1862 (link)
