Rulers who came under just condemnation as "military satraps" governing in a democracy in time of peace by the bayonet, when divorced from the exercise of their office, won praise as men. Thus, General Meade's rule in Georgia is open to severest criticism, yet Ellen Meade Clarke, who saw him as the man and not as the oppressor, says: "I had just married and gone to Atlanta when Sherman ordered the citizens out, which order I hastily obeyed, leaving everything in my Peachtree cottage home. Was among the first to return. Knew all the generals in command; they were all neighbors; General Meade, who was sent to see me by some one bearing our name, proved a good and faithful friend and, on his death-bed, left me his prayer-book." [Illustration: MISS MARY MEADE, OF PETERSBURG, VA. She was known far and wide for her loveliness of person and character, her intellectual gifts and social graces.] LOVERS AND PRAYERS CHAPTER XI BUTTONS, LOVERS, OATHS, WAR LORDS, AND PRAYERS FOR PRESIDENTS Some military orders were very irritating. The "Button Order" prohibited our men from wearing Confederate buttons. Many possessed no others and had not money wherewith to buy. "Buttons were scarce as hens' teeth." The Confederacy had been reduced to all sorts of makeshifts for buttons. Thorns from thornbushes had furnished country folks with such fastenings as pins usually supply, and served convenience on milady's toilette-table when she went to do up her hair. One clause in that monstrous order delighted feminine hearts! It provided as thoughtful concession to all too glaring poverty that: "When plain buttons cannot be procured, those formerly used can be covered with cloth." Richmond ladies looked up all the bits of crape and bombazine they had, and next morning their men appeared on the streets with buttons in mourning! "I would never have gotten Uncle out of the front door if he had realized what I was up to," Matoaca relates. "Not that he was not mournful enough, but he did not want to mourn that way." Somehow, nobody thought about Sam's button; he was a boy, only fifteen. He happened to go out near Camp Grant in his old gray jacket, the only coat he had; one of his brothers had given it to him months before. It was held together over his breast by a single button, his only button. A Yankee sergeant cut it off with his sword. The jacket fell apart, exposing bepatched and thread-bare underwear. His mother and sisters could not help crying when the boy came in, holding his jacket together with his hand, his face suffused, his eyes full of tears of rage and mortification.