New Year Echoes Have Auld Lang Chime

 Memories of '64, '98, '19 and Intervening Years
Have Familiar Notes in Welcomes

By Edmond Brill

Three days from now Richmond will join the nation and the rest of the world in the celebration of a new year--1936--a year that finds millions out of the Slough of Despond, looking confidently toward more health, more happiness than they have enjoyed since the gay days of synthetic prosperity.

When the infant arrives at the stroke of 12 Tuesday night, amid the blare of trumpets, the shriek of whistles, the yells of multitudes, he will find that depression is but an unpleasant memory--licked by the no decrepit hero, 1935, in 12 strenuous rounds.

There have been lean years, many of them far worse than the period through which we have passed, old timers agree. There have been fat years when politicians and citizens shook hands and agreed that prosperity would remain forever.

Now that the time has arrived for comparative figures--1935 with '34 and '33--let's go back and see Richmond in bygone days when people moaned "the end has come" or drank from golden globlets to another great year.

1864 Dawned With Little Gala Prospect

Hunger and cold were the prospects for most residents with the coming of dawn, January 1, 1864.

J. B. Jones, clerk in the war department of the Confederate States Government, wrote in his "A Rebel War Clerk's Diary":

"Flour is now held at $150 per barrel. Captain Warner has just sold me two bushels of meal at $5 per bushel; the price in market is $16 a bushel. I did not go to any of the receptions today, but remained at home, transplanting lettuce plants, which have so far withstood the frost, and a couple of fig bushes I bought yesterday. I am also breaking up some warm beds for early vegetables, preparing for the siege and famine looked for in May and June, when the enemy encompasses the city. I bought some tripe and liver in the market for the low price of $1 per pound."

The fall of the Confederacy was 15 months away, however, so a cheerful note was found in the Daily Richmond Examiner.

"The New Year's dinner at the hospitals yesterday partook of the nature of a feast in the abundance of the contributions and the daintiness of the viands," it read. "At Camp Lee the returned paroled prisoners were entertained with a bountiful dinner, served at the hands of some of the first ladies of the city. At Chimborazo, Camp Winder and Camp Jackson excellent donation dinner were spread."

The end of another year of war brought the South to its knees--bleeding, hungry and tired.

An entry in "A Rebel War Clerk's Diary" for December 31, 1864 said:

"The last day of the year. Snowing and wet. General H. Cobb writes that the existing Conscription Bureau is a failure so far as Georgia, Alabama, etc. are concerned, and can never put new men in the field. Tomorrow General Lee's army is to feast with turkeys, etc., contributed by the country, if the enemy will permit them to dine without molestation. The enemy are kept fully informed of everything transpiring here, thanks to the vigilance of the Provost Marshall, detectives, etc. General Lee writes that Grant is concentrating (probably for an attack on Richmond) bringing another corps from the Valley; and if the local troops are brought in, he does not know how to replace them. His army diminishes, rather than increases. It is a dark and dreary hour, when Lee is so despondent!"

Sunday, January 1, 1865--"Snow a few inches in depth during the night--clear and cool this morning. The proposition to organize an army of Negroes gains friends. The Armies must be replenished, or else the slaves will certainly be lost.

"Thus we begin the new year--Heaven only knows how we shall end it! I trust we may be in a better condition then. The President was at St. Paul's today, with a knit woolen cap on his head. Dr. Minnegerode preached a sermon against the croakers. His son has been appointed a midshipman by the President."

"Gay and festive" was the heading of a bitter item appearing in the Richmond Whig and Public Advertiser on January 3, 1865:

"In this dreary winter time, when there are thousands of hearths in this city without a cheerful spark and thousands of women and children who have almost forgotten the taste and flavor of meat, 'uppertendome' is as gay as though peace and plenty blessed the land, as though violent death, sorrow and cruel want were but empty sounds and had no being in our midst. There is one continued round of balls and parties and great suppers, and almost everynight is made hideous by serenades from braying, brazen bands. Nero fiddled while Rome was burning. There is much fiddling in Richmond, while battle and famine encompass us on every hand."

Editors Hailed '99 as Year of Prophecy

Even at that critical moment, the editor of that newspaper tried to hold up the head of a dying Confederacy. "Our cause is far stronger today than it was on December 31, 1863," he said, and scoffed at the suggestion of contemporaries who thought it better to return as colonists to Great Britain than to submit to the Yankees.

"The Confederate States alone have the courage to face the whole power of Yankeedome." he asserted. "It seems more as though England should one day become our colony, than we should ever become hers."

An editorial read:

"Yesterday was the first day of the year 1865, destined, as it is not very difficult to foresee, to be one of the most memorable in the annals of the human race. And we call upon our people to cast doubt and hesitation to the winds, to resume the cheerful mind and the gallant bearing which have borne us thus far forward successfully on our journey--to recollect that we have been in far worse straits than we now are. Like Macbeth, we are 'chained to the stake, and bear-like, we must fight.' Remember that especially. Remember we have gone so far that we cannot turn back if we would."

Only three months away, however, was the end of the war. A burned city. Fortunes and homes gone. Then came the assassination of Lincoln and the resulting "Tragic Era" of 1865-77.

But slowly, and with enormous effort, the South rehabilitated itself, and better days, long thought hopeless, finally arrived.

The year 1898 brought the war with Spain, a brief conflict that, by comparison with the War Between the States, consisted principally of the singing of patriotic songs and flag-waving. Peace was signed in Paris on December 10, and the New Year gave cause for much rejoicing.

"The year which has just passed into history justified the predictions that were made at its birth," a story in the Richmond Dispatch, January 1, 1899, read. "It was the offspring of a long period of depression, and the hopeful signs with which it was ushered in were welcomed with enthusiasm.

"The old year has dealt generously with Richmond; the new one starts out with a rich legacy of promise. The general conditions are better than they have been for years, and, with enterprise and individual effort, there is every reason why the tenderling should proved to be, as the Dispatch hopes it may be found by each one of its readers, a happy and prosperous New Year."

A stag party at the Jefferson Club was one of the many celebrations on that occasion. On the program were: John J. McIntire and Charles E. O'Hara, in Ragtime Opera; Tom Mitchell, popular tenor singer; Evan R. Chesterman, "Chalk Talk"; Henry C. Reuger, famous basso profundo; John M. Ryall, "Snap-Shots"; Lon Wilson, "Up-to-date Specialty"; Eugene Davis and his banjo; Captain F. W. Cunningham, tenor solo; Ethiopian Singers; Old Virginia Cake-Walk and Thilow's Orchestra.

Gay Parties Ushered in First Post-War Year

Another gay New Year was celebrated in 1919--the first to follow the close of the World War. There were parties at the Country Club of Virginia, Jefferson Hotel Auditorium, Gray's Armory, Army and Navy Club and the customary Westmoreland "stag." Distinguished guest at the ball at Bundy Hall, given by officers of the replacement camp at Camp Lee, included Major-General Omar Bundy, Camp Lee Commander; Brigidier-General Charles Hedken and Brigadier-General Hugh S. Johnson.

Prohibition had arrived, but Jupiter Pluvius took Bacchus' place and gave Richmond a "wet" celebration.

The old year has been put behind with mingled feelings of joy and sorrow," an editorial writer said in the Times-Dispatch, January 1, 1919, "It was a momentous year--a year more heavily fraught with fears and hopes than ever again will be experienced by any person now living . . . Richmond looks forward to vast prosperity. It will be, of course, a time of reconstruction and readjustment."

A few years later this city and the rest of the nation entered one of the greatest periods of prosperity of all time.

One of the evidences was a story published in the Times-Dispatch on January 1, 1925:

". . . Never before has the custom of giving the New Year a gay greeting been so generally observed here. Never before were hotels, clubs and other public places of entertainment so thronged with merry-makers."

The same was true of 1926, '27, '28, and '29.

On January 1, 1929, the Times-Dispatch published a symposium by leaders in Virginia on "What I Should Like to See 1929 Bring Virginia." They had various ideas, but none foresaw the crash that was a few months off. One of the writers expressed a desire to see the State "continue the remarkable industrial growth she enjoyed in 1928. I hope the people of this glorious Commonwealth will appreciate the fact that the phenomenal industrial growth is built on a sound economic tax system."

Then the depression came, and one writer expressed it admirably as follows: "Well-to-do people here, as everywhere else, saw their savings melt away in successive stock exchange smashes, millions of workers lost their jobs, and the extraordinary spectacle is present of half the world overloaded with goods which the other half would like to buy but cannot afford."

On January 1, 1932, Vice-President Curtis envisioned "unprecedented prosperity," but the year's end found A. Judson Evans writing in the Times-Dispatch that "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead You Rascal You" was Richmond's dirge over 1932, blared from many jazz bands just before more hopeful ballads welcomed the New Year.

"With the coming of 1933," an editorial writer stated, "an outstanding accomplishment (of 1932) was the recognition that social readjustment was needed in this country; that the 'forgotten man' must be remembered."

The arrival of 1934 found the old year limping across the brink of midnight into a New Year to the sound of far merrier tunes than ushered out its predecessor.

The predictions of last January have come true. Statistics from time to time will present the facts in cold figures. And what's more, the nation continues its climb to normalcy.