Lanier, writing about a position in the University of Alabama which
he very much desired, said: "The trustees, who are appointees of the State,
are so hampered by the expected change of State government
that nothing can be certainly predicated as to their action."
Lanier felt the effect of reconstruction at every point, --
he was baptized with the baptism of the Southern people.
The weight of that sad time bore heavily upon him. As he had
during the war touched the experience of his people at every point,
so now he went down with them into the Valley of Humiliation.
Under these circumstances his friend Northrup wrote him,
inviting him to go to Germany with him. He replied:
"Indeed, indeed, y'r trip-to-Europe invitation finds me all THIRSTY
to go with you; but, alas, how little do you know of our wretched
poverties and distresses here, -- that you ask me such a thing. . . .
It spoils our dreams of Germany, ruthlessly. I've been presiding
over eighty-six scholars, in a large Academy at Prattville, Ala.,
having two assistants under me; 't is terrible work,
and the labor difficulties, with the recent poor price of cotton,
conspire to make the pay very slim. I think y'r people
can have no idea of the slow terrors with which this winter
has invested our life in the South. Some time I'm going to give you
a few simple details, which you must publish in your paper."
Prattville, where he spent the winter of 1867-68, was a small
manufacturing town, with all the crudeness of a new industrial order
and without any of the refinement to which Lanier had been accustomed
in Macon and elsewhere.
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