Lanier reached Macon March 15, after a long and painful journey through the Carolinas. Immediately upon his arrival, losing the stimulus which had kept him going so long, he fell dangerously ill, and remained so for nearly two months. Early in May, just as he was convalescing, General Wilson captured Macon, and Jefferson Davis and Clement C. Clay were brought to the Lanier House, whence they were to start on their way as prisoners to Fortress Monroe. Clifford Lanier reached home May 19. He had, after the blockade was closed at Wilmington, gone to Cuba. From there he sailed to Galveston and walked thence to Macon. He arrived just in time to see his mother, who a few days after died of consumption. She had kept herself alive for months by "a strong conviction, which she expressed again and again, that God would bring both her boys to her before she died." Sidney spent the summer months with his father and his sister, ministering to them in their sorrow. In September he began to tutor on a large plantation nine miles from Macon. With thirty classes a day and failing health, he whose brain was "fairly teeming with beautiful things" was shut up to the horrible monotony of the "tear and tret" of the schoolroom. He spent the winter at Point Clear on Mobile Bay, where he was greatly invigorated by the sea breezes and the air of the pine forests.

After these months of sorrow and struggle he settled in Montgomery, Ala., as clerk in the Exchange Hotel, the property of his grandfather and his uncles. His first feeling as he faces the new conditions which he is trying to explain to Northrup, his Northern friend, is one of bewilderment, -- the immense distance between the beginning and the end of the war: --

"So wild and high are the big war-waves dashing between '61 and '66, as between two shores, that, looking across their `rude, imperious surge', I can scarcely discern any sight or sound of those old peaceful days that you and I passed on the `sacred soil' of M----. The sweet, half-pastoral tones that SHOULD come from out that golden time, float to me mixed with battle cries and groans. It was our glorious spring: but, my God, the flowers of it send up sulphurous odors, and their petals are dabbled with blood.

"These things being so, I thank you, more than I can well express, for your kind letter. It comes to me, like a welcome sail, from that old world to this new one, through the war-storms. It takes away the sulphur and the blood-flecks, and drowns out the harsh noises of battle. The two margins of the great gulf which has divided you from me seem approaching each other: I stretch out my hand across the narrowing fissure, to grasp yours on the other side. And I wish, with all my heart, that you and I could spend this ineffable May afternoon under that old oak at Whittaker's and `talk it all over'."*

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* This and the following letter were printed in `Lippincott's Magazine', March, 1905. A few changes are made to conform to the original copies.
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In another letter (June 29, 1866) he encloses a photograph and comments on the life in Montgomery: --

"The cadaverous enclosed is supposed to represent the face of your friend, together with a small portion of the Confederate gray coat in which enwrapped he did breast the big wars.

"I have one favor to entreat; and that is, that you will hold in consideration the very primitive state of the photographic art in this section, and believe that my mouth is not so large, by some inches, as this villainous artist portrays it.

"I despair of giving you any idea of the mortal stagnation which paralyzes all business here. On our streets, Monday is very like Sunday: they show no life, save late in the afternoon, when the girls come out, one by one, and shine and move, just as the stars do an hour later. I don't think there's a man in town who could be induced to go into his neighbor's store and ask him how's trade; for he would have to atone for such an insult with his life. Everything is dreamy, and drowsy, and drone-y. The trees stand like statues; and even when a breeze comes, the leaves flutter and dangle idly about, as if with a languid protest against all disturbance of their perfect rest. The mocking-birds absolutely refuse to sing before twelve o'clock at night, when the air is somewhat cooled: and the fireflies flicker more slowly than I ever saw them before. Our whole world here yawns, in a vast and sultry spell of laziness. An `exposition of sleep' is come over us, as over Sweet Bully Bottom; we won't wake till winter. Himmel, my dear Boy, you are all so alive up there, and we are all so dead down here! I begin to have serious thoughts of emigrating to your country, so that I may live a little. There's not enough attrition of mind on mind here, to bring out any sparks from a man."

Into this strange new world -- "the unfamiliar avenue of a new era" -- Lanier passed with unfaltering courage. He was to show that "fortitude is more manly than bravery, for noble and long endurance wins the shining love of God; whereas brilliant bravery is momentary, is easy to the enthusiastic, and only dazzles the admiration of the weak-eyed." Did any young man ever have to begin life under more disadvantageous circumstances? Cherishing in his heart the ideal long since formed of the scholar's or the artist's life, he looked around on the blankest world one could imagine. It is perhaps in a later letter to Bayard Taylor that Lanier came nearest to expressing the situation that confronted him at the end of the war. "Perhaps you know that with us of the younger generation of the South, since the war, pretty much the whole of life has been merely not dying."

Added to his own poverty and sickness, was that of his family. His grandfather had been compelled to leave his estate in East Tennessee in 1863, and was now in old age deprived of his negroes and much of his land and money. His father, weighed down with sorrow, had to take up the practice of law from the start. Some members of his family, "who used to roll in wealth, are every day," he writes, "with their own hands plowing the little patch of ground which the war has left them, while their wives do their cooking and washing."

Moreover, the entire South -- and to those who had shared the hopes of a Southern republic it was still the land they loved -- was in a state of despair. Middle Georgia had lost through Sherman's march to the sea $100,000,000.* In the wake of Sherman's armies Richard Malcom Johnston had lost his estate of $50,000, Maurice Thompson's home was in ashes, and Joel Chandler Harris, who had begun life on the old Turner plantation under such favorable auspices, was forced to seek an occupation in New Orleans. Only those who lived through that period or who have imaginatively reproduced it, can realize the truth of E. L. Godkin's statement: "I doubt much if any community in the modern world was ever so ruthlessly brought face to face with what is sternest and hardest in human life." It was not simply the material losses of the war, -- these have often been commented on and statistics given, -- it was the loss of libraries like those of Simms and Hayne, the burning of institutions of learning like the University of Alabama, the closing of colleges, like Lanier's own alma mater. It was the passing away of a civilization which, with all its faults, had many attractive qualities -- a loss all the more apparent at a time when a more democratic civilization had not yet taken its place. The South was

    Wandering between two worlds -- one dead,
    The other powerless to be born.

Even States like Georgia, which soon showed signs of recuperation and rejuvenation, suffered with their more unfortunate sisters, South Carolina and Louisiana, where the ravages of war were terrific. There was confusion in the public mind -- uncertainty as to the future. The memories of these days are suggested here, not for the purpose of awakening in any mind bitter memories, but that some idea may be given of the tremendous obstacles that confronted a young man like Lanier.