But God is good, and His mercy is over all His works. He had already put it into the heart of one of His servants to begin an enterprise that would by His blessing bring help from a distance to the needy people, more than a few of whom were ready to perish. At that date war had wrought its ravages for more than three and a-half years. For a large part of that period, in some regions of the land, it had stayed the hand of the husbandman from industrious toil and prevented the fruits of the earth. In many instances the farmers’ barns were no longer, as formerly, filled with plenty, for the words of Joel, so ominously read in churches on the Sunday after the Baltimore fight in April 1861, had proved truly predictive, and plough-shares had been turned into swords. Multitudes of hearts everywhere from Maine to the Gulf, and from the Atlantic to the far West, were now yearning for peace. Had not enough blood been shed, enough human life sacrificed upon the altar of Mars? Might not Americans cease now from destroying each other and brethren be reconciled? Perhaps the night of desolation and sorrow was well-nigh spent and the day of peace about to dawn! And so it was, but men did not know it. Soon kindly hands came in and healed where they could the wounds war had inflicted. They fed the hungry and clothed the naked, until by their industry they could feed and clothe themselves. It was a Christ-like work in which any man might be thankful to be engaged. CHAPTER XVIII. DEPLORABLE CONDITION OF EAST TENNESSEE--WATAUGA SCENERY--LANDON C. HAYNES AT A DINNER PARTY--NATHANIEL G. TAYLOR--HIS WRONGS--HIS FEARS FOR THE PEOPLE--HIS MISSION TO THE NORTH AND WORK AT PHILADELPHIA--EDWARD EVERETT’S SPEECH AT FANEUIL HALL. “Alas, poor country; Almost afraid to know thyself! It cannot Be call’d our mother, but our grave; where nothing But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile.” MACBETH. An intelligent observer of the condition of East Tennessee in the spring of 1863, did not need any supernatural gift of prescience to enable him to see that a dangerous scarcity of food would befall its people at no very distant day. This evil especially impended over counties where love for the Union was relatively strongest, and from which means of sustenance for Confederate troops had been more largely drawn. Twelve months had elapsed since Gen. E. Kirby Smith, in chief command at Knoxville, had the sagacity to foresee the ills that threatened the whole region because of the withdrawal of nearly all its able-bodied men from agricultural pursuits, and had thought it advisable to proclaim his promise that he would suspend the operation of the conscript law until men should cultivate their fields another season and raise crops of farm products.