Birth

Date 12 Apr 1865
Place Monte Verdi Plantation, Rusk County, Texas, [Slave Trade Migration]
Description Word of the collapse of the Confederacy was received in Rusk County, Texas on April 12, 1865.

Narrative

Word concerning the collapse of the Confederacy was received in Rusk County on April 12, 1865, when Robert Bruce Richardson, a Henderson resident, wrote the following lines in his diary: "Oh, God, Lee has surrendered! We are lost." The following month, on May 29, Richardson noted the Confederate Army had disbanded, and "We are a conquered people."

Sarah sometimes heard from her old friend, Mr. M. A. Harcourt, who wrote on April 22, 1872, during the Reconstruction era:

"Spring Ridge
Caddo Parish (Louisiana)

Dear Friend,
Looking over my 'old letters,' I find one that I prized highly and had laid it with my other treasures, reading it over, it carried me back to our dear sunny-faced, blue-eyed friends whom I loved so well. Those were happy days before the hateful Yankees polluted our once happy homes. It seems since they came among us and have located themselves in our beautiful South, their stinking, poisonous breaths turn to ice and freeze everything it touches. This has been the most severe winter we have ever had in the South, and I attributed it to the sojourn of the Yankees among us. Oh, my friend, when I think of the degradation of the surrender of our country to the Yankees, I hate too much to think of despising them. To have to submit to Yankee domination is more than my proud Southern blood can bear at times. God only enable us to bear it with Christian fortitude, but I may be tiring you and will stop. My relatives are all on the other side of the question and often tell me I must stoop too and kiss the rod with which I'm beaten."