The picture which I am going to unfold before you will not be a pleasant one to behold. But in days like these when great and complicated problems are pressing for a solution, it is the duty of every good citizen not only to lift himself above traditional prejudice but to guard also against delusions unwarranted by fact. And I conceive no better service can be rendered to those who honestly mean to do right, than by giving them a clear view of the actual condition of things upon which to base their judgment. I shall speak only of what I saw and heard when travelling at the request of the President through the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana last summer, and I shall do this in the simplest language possible without indulging in any oratorical flourish or any reasoning outside of the facts.
Although my observations of men and their relations to each other may be of more interest to you than all else, yet let us first take a passing glance at the aspect of the country.
We land at Charleston. Right in the center of the bay we see a huge, shapeless reddish mass of brick and rubbish over which floats the flag of the United States. This is the great national monument called Fort Sumter; the great national monument which speaks of the foolish exultation of the people of the South who thought when the first gun was fired upon the American flag, that it required only a bold attempt to overthrow the Republic of the modern age and to bully the moral sense of mankind into acquiescence; which tells the sad and touching story of that deluded old Virginian, Mr. Ruffin, whose highest boast it was to have fired the first cannon on Fort Sumter, and who, with his last shot blew his own brains out; which tells of the inexhaustible energy and perseverance of the loyal people of the United States for whom no danger was too great, no sacrifice too costly in that grand war for the unity of the Republic and the leading ideas of the nineteenth century.
We approach the wharf. Although it is already seven o'clock in the morning, hardly a human being is visible. The steamer is fastened to a decayed pier constructed of palmetto logs. We enter the city. The warehouses on the wharf are completely deserted. There is no wall nor roof that does not bear the eloquent marks of the bombardment. The first street we enter is covered with a luxuriant growth of weeds. The grass seed which the seceders had intended for the streets of New York has accidentally fallen on the streets of Charleston, and the crop of grass growing there would perhaps be sufficient to keep alive for one season at least all the cows that Sherman left in South Carolina. We see a few of them enjoying themselves hugely upon a vacant lot. There is an old dilapidated U. S. cavalry horse marked “inspected and condemned” — the poor animal has, perhaps, passed through many a gallant fight — and is now quietly grazing on a Charleston sidewalk.
We pass higher up into the city. Suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of what is called the “burnt district”; hundreds and hundreds of houses in ruins; like a vast graveyard with blackened walls and lofty pillar-like chimneys for monuments overtopped by the majestic and picturesque ruins of the cathedral. We step into the Charleston hotel, once the resort of the gay and wealthy; as we sit down in the dining hall to breakfast, we notice large patches of fresh plaster on the walls and ceiling; they cover the holes through which Gillmore's impertinent missionaries passed in; on that long business street no building that does not bear the ugly gashes and scars of war. Such was Charleston in July last. Now we take the cars to Columbia, the capital of the Palmetto State. We must not be fastidious. We take seats in an old box-car hastily fitted up for passenger travel. That is the best the aristocratic State of South Carolina can do for us. We move on at the rate of seven miles an hour. That is the greatest speed the State of South Carolina can make after the war. We run slowly through a monotonous swampy stretch of country with sparse settlements, until at last we arrive at Orangeburg, a scattering village, where the railroad stops — for Sherman has burned the tiles and bent the rails. Now we get into a carriage and set out on a dreary ride over sandy roads across a desolated country. Now we are on the track of Sherman's army. Few human habitations, and far apart; large tracts, that once were cultivated, but now without fencing, and of course without crops; a goodly number of lonesome chimneys, however, marking the places where once houses had stood; a luxuriant vegetation everywhere overgrowing the vestiges of human industry. We arrive at Columbia, once a beautiful and populous town pleasantly situated on the banks of a magnificent stream. We stand in the center of the city, but as far as the eye reaches, North and South and East and West, nothing but crumbling walls and monumental chimneys. Only a thin circle of houses surrounds what was once the city of Columbia. Here and there among the ruins a man of more than ordinary enterprise has undertaken to pick out the bricks that can still be used and built up a structure such as [we] find used as stores in the far west, in the outskirts of civilization.
We turn back from the painful sight of Columbia and return to Charleston. From there the steamer carries us to Savannah, which, though touched by the war is still in good state of preservation, but dull and dreary, because deprived of its most important railroad communications. Ascending the Savannah river, we recognize the track of Sherman's army again by the monumental chimney and the black ruins under the magnificent roof of the live oak. So it goes on for miles and miles, nothing to relieve the monotonous dreariness of destruction. Only as we approach Augusta, we see on the banks of the river some wretched human habitations.
Augusta itself escaped the horrors of the war and it is not without some show of life and activity. But we set out for Atlanta, and we have not travelled many miles, when the monumental chimney greets us again, and accompanies us faithfully until at last we find ourselves in the business part of the city of Atlanta, where almost the only business now carried on consists in the picking out of bricks and pieces of iron that can still be used for some purpose, out of the confused heap of rubbish. Here and there enterprising individuals have already finished what they call their stores and saloons with praiseworthy energy and in a style of primitive simplicity.
We go on to Macon, where we find the track of Wilson's gallant but not overscrupulous troopers, and follow that track to Montgomery in Alabama and Selma, and so on across the breadth of Mississippi to Meridian, Jackson and Vicksburg where Sherman's and Grant's hosts have left their terrible marks.
We of the North think we have sad tales to tell of the sacrifices of blood and treasure we had to bring; we believe we know what war is, but the people of the South might tell us many things of the horrors of war, which we, fortunately, are still unacquainted with. Still, terrible as the destruction was which our armies as they swept over the country left behind them, I observed one thing more terrible still. Travelling across the cotton States from Savannah to Vicksburg, I frequently noticed immense tracts of land that bore the evidence of having once been under cultivation, but now were bearing nothing but small pine trees. It struck me that these broad acres must have been abandoned by the hand of industry long before the war. “Why was it,” I asked people with whom I travelled, “that these lands, if the soil was so poor as to run into pine, were ever cultivated?” The reply was significant: “These lands were once good and fertile, but the system of agriculture growing out of slavery, exhausted the soil in a certain number of years, and the land will no longer bear anything but a thin grass and pines.” Such undoubtedly was the truth, and I have seen with my own eyes, thousands and thousands of acres along the highways thus ruined, never to be restored to fertility and usefulness. And I do not hesitate to say, that whatever destruction the war may have inflicted upon the Southern country, it is nothing compared with the ruin and desolation with which slowly but surely slavery was covering its domains. It might without much difficulty be calculated in how much time this system of slavery would have succeeded in transforming the whole South into a barren waste. What criminal fools those were who attempted to found an empire upon the cornerstone of slavery! To found an empire upon the cornerstone of its own destruction.
Nothing was more natural than that the development of things with that kind of poetic justice which we frequently see in the history of human events should have turned a war for the idolized crime into a war against it, and that at last when the great destroyer was struck down, the real blessing which was concealed in that result, was taken by them as a curse. The war has only hastened in individual cases what slavery would have accomplished for all in the course of time; that is to say, the war has made most of those who were wealthy poor, and those that were poor, still poorer, but, in striking down slavery, it has saved from utter waste and exhaustion the soil out of which future wealth is to grow.
I shall now speak of the different classes of people inhabiting the South, whites and blacks, first of their general condition and then of their political sentiments and finally of their mutual relations.
The war, I say, has made most of them poor. There are indeed some individuals who as army contractors, the shoddy breed which flourished in the South as well as in the North, and blockade runners have gained fortunes during and by the war. But such cases are necessarily rare. The impoverishment of the masses is necessarily great. I have seen planters' families, formerly wealthy, still living in sumptuously furnished apartments, still wearing diamonds and silks that once were beautiful, but living on army rations furnished by the commissary, or on a scanty supply of cornmeal, salt bacon and coffee. When riding through the suburbs of Natchez and admiring the elegant country houses built in lovely parks of live oak, maple and walnut, I notice in several places that the trees, which evidently had served for ornamental purposes, were being cut down. And to my inquiry what this cutting down of shade trees meant, the answer was returned; you see the family resident in that elegant mansion have nothing to live on, and they cut down the trees for the purpose of selling the wood. I have heard of hundreds of plantations encumbered with mortgages which in a short time will inevitably pass into new hands, leaving their owners not only pennyless, but also homeless. What has become of all the wealth that was once spent with such princely magnificence by the proud planter at his mansion and in the city? The ready means he had were invested in Confederate bonds, the little he had made out of his crops during the war was swept away with a valueless currency, and the cotton or sugar still left to him may have been either destroyed by fire or taken possession of by the Government. If such is the condition of those who are wealthy, it is not difficult to imagine what must be the condition of those that were poor.
But this is not the worst feature of it yet. We see that in other countries the damage inflicted by the ravages of war is repaired with wonderful rapidity by the people who suffered it. But how is it in the South? The same system of slavery which brought all this destruction upon the people, had at the same time made the people thriftless. And here is the consequence: You enter one of their little towns and see a gathering of men on the steps of a tavern or drinking saloon — for that is the place where they are most apt to congregate. We see there not only people living in the town but also planters from the neighborhood. They are looking grave and are talking seemingly with great earnestness. They are talking of their losses; they are swearing at the government which they hold responsible for their hopes; they are discussing the question how they are going to live and how they can “make the niggers work” — but I will venture to say there is not one man in that gathering of people to whom it has occurred how capital an idea it would be if he would work himself. And so it happened that in a country which contained over eight millions of whites and not quite four millions of blacks, the eight millions are gravely discussing the problem how they can make the four millions work so as to keep the eight millions from starving.
In one of the most fertile districts on the face of the globe, the Teche country in Louisiana, where I spent several days, I discussed the matter with some planters who formerly had been wealthy and were in possession of very valuable plantations. What were they doing? Nothing. Why not? Well, said one, most of his fences had been burnt by the army, and he didn't know how to replace them. Would it not be possible to use the fencing material still there and fence in a small field so as to produce at least something? Well, he didn't know that it would pay. Another: What was he doing? Nothing: why not? Well he knew how to drive a slave but he didn't know how to work a free nigger, and niggers were getting mighty sassy. The Government must do something to make the niggers work, or the country would go to the dogs, whites and niggers and all. — And so one after another. And so they sat there gravely chewing tobacco and folding their arms and complaining that the war and emancipation had made them poor; there was now nobody to work for them, and they were getting poorer every day.
At new Iberia, in the same Teche country, I found a gentleman of Northern birth and with something of the Northern spirit of enterprise, who had been living there many years. While conversing with him he pointed out to me a knot of men standing on the sidewalk, or leaning against the railings of a verandah. “Do you see these men?” said he. “They are all planters and not one of them has yet raised a hand to work his place.” “Well,” said I, “what are they going to do?” “They are going to mope and die,” said he contemptuously.
It almost appears as if the inveterate habit of being worked for, had rendered them incapable of working for themselves. The question uppermost in their minds is not: How shall I help myself? — but it is How shall I get somebody else to help me? Now this singular lassitude, this helplessness, this want of resources in an emergency, which, with our Northern people would call out the highest display of energy, is indeed not universal; there are exceptions, some in the country and more in the city — and such exceptions are apt to attract the attention of superficial observers, — but these exceptions are not numerous enough to affect the rule. And this rule prevails not only among the planters, but even in the other walks of life. The virus of slavery seems not only to have corrupted the heart and brain but to have affected the nerves and muscles of the whole social body.
We in the North know well that the civilization, the moral tone and the material prosperity of a people depend upon the soundness of the lower orders of society, and that the average intelligence and education, the average morality, the average industry of the people forms the true standard by which to judge of the intelligence, morality and thriftiness of the whole. What do we find when applying the standard to Southern society? Many of you may have seen Southern people as they in former days appeared at the New York hotel, at Saratoga and Newport; the wealthy planter who spent his money with the same ease with which it was earned; the chivalrous young man, who knew so well how to ride a horse and to drive a span; and the flashing young belle who displayed her diamonds as well as her social accomplishments to so much advantage; it may have struck you that these people displayed a certain ease of manners and a social finish which seemed to give them a sort of superiority over our busy Northern people. It is true that varnish was frequently not thick enough to wholly conceal the coarse substratum of plantation manners. But how far did such persons represent the masses of the Southern people?
Let us begin at the bottom. I do not speak here of the negro, but of that class which is generally designated as the poor whites. At the risk of appearing egotistical I will say that I have somewhat carefully studied all the elements composing Northern society, but have found nothing north of Mason and Dixon's line that would in any way correspond with the poor whites of the South, — the sandhillers, the clay eaters, the crackers, the rosin heels, and the swamp angels, — and I will say here that I shall find it difficult to describe them so as to give you an adequate conception of their peculiarities. Imagine a class of people living in dirty hovels on the outskirts of the large plantations or in the barren and valueless districts of the country; owning little or nothing; working just so much as is absolutely necessary to keep them from starving and no more; sometimes living on the proceeds of an illegitimate trade they carry on with the negroes, a trade based upon theft; their minds moving in a cloud of ignorance, which for civilized people it is almost impossible to realize; so ignorant indeed that you might tell them that the shortest route from Charleston to New York leads by way of Australia, or the moon, if you please — and they would believe it; their general conduct guided by the very crudest ideas of morality; their mental horizon confined by the objects which most immediately surround them; so ignorant and degraded indeed as to be even without one ambition or desire to raise themselves and their children above the miserable condition of their existence; not only mentally and morally diseased, but even physically degenerated, for most of them you will at once know by their transparent yellow skins, their vacant looks and the looseness with which their limbs seem to hang on their bodies — imagine all this and you have the low class of poor whites of the South. If I could believe that any human being is incapable of improvement I could be more easily induced to believe it of the lowest order of poor whites than of the negroes. Such are the sandhillers, the clay eaters, the crackers, the rosin heels, the swamp angels of the South. A degree or two above them we find the small farmer and the lower orders of the population in the cities and towns, still poor, still stuck fast in the thickest and darkest ignorance, still remarkably, sometimes shockingly deficient in their moral notions, still thriftless and accordingly still helpless. We are still far from having reached that degree of intelligence and desire for improvement which we are accustomed to find even among the lower orders of our agricultural population in the North.
Now comes that numerous body which ought to correspond with our middle classes. The owners of small plantations, the tradespeople of the towns, the material out of which country lawyers and the lower class of country physicians are made, with a large admixture of that element which furnishes the loafer of pretended gentility. That this class contains many people of respectability, and moral worth, is undeniable, although in intelligence, in progressive improvement, in thrift and industry and in spirit of enterprise it still remains far below the corresponding class in the North. Although people of this class did not own any, or only a few slaves, yet it is characteristic and of great significance that their dependence on the planting interest and the continual contact with slavery, had made them not only violent proslavery men but had rendered them even more extreme in their views than the wealthy slaveholders themselves.
Lastly comes the class of well educated people, partly wealthy, partly connected with people of wealth, — a class which might be subdivided again, but where no longer any lines of distinction can be drawn with accuracy. You will have noticed that the distance between the highest and the lowest is immense, that there is one class which together with its dependencies, possesses not only all the wealth but all the intelligence — and that in such an organization of society one class must be the natural leader and the others are the natural followers. That was the characteristic feature of Southern society before the war; it was so during the war, and by the force of tradition and habit it is so even now. Of the indolence and helplessness of these people in a practical emergency, such as the necessities of their present situation presents, I have already spoken. But there is one thing in which they are formidable, and that is political discussion. While I was in the South I read an article in a Southern paper which was very characteristic in this respect. The writer, evidently a thoroughbred Southerner, drew a comparison between the Northern and the Southern people. “It is true,” said he, “the people of the North are well skilled in mechanics and the exact sciences. They can build up great cities, construct immense railroads and gigantic factories, and there are some branches of literature in which they appear quite successful. But there is one thing in which they are sadly inefficient and in which the Southern people have established and maintained an immense superiority; and that is the science and art of government.” Now, that such a statement could be seriously made when the South had come very near governing the Union to death, had decidedly succeeded in governing the Confederacy to death, and has to be governed a little while by the General Government for the purpose of preventing it from governing us all to death, — if such a statement, I say, is made at such a moment, it shows at all events how sincere their conviction of their own capacity must be.
This leads us then, to an examination of the political ideas prevailing at the South at the present moment, and especially of those which have a direct bearing upon our federal relations.
We see it frequently stated in a certain class of newspapers that the Southern people are accepting the situation in good faith, that all they want is to return to their position in the Union and to be restored to the control of their home affairs. Now this is true in so far as they accept the present situation of things as they understand it. The difficulty is they do not understand it as we do. We understand it in this wise that the restoration of their rights must necessarily depend upon the performance of their obligations. The way they understand it is, that they must first and above all be restored to the enjoyment of their rights and power, and that, as to the performance of their obligations, they will see about that afterward.
There was, indeed a time when they, with great alacrity, would have accepted and complied with any conditions that we might have imposed upon them. That was immediately after the final victory of our armies when they were still in painful uncertainty whether or not a good many of their leading men would be tried for treason and hung, and whether [or] not all their property would be confiscated. But that period is now gone by and forgotten; no sooner had the President issued his first proclamation indicating his reconstruction policy, when all the things which formerly they would have thankfully received as acts of grace, were claimed by them as rights which we were in duty bound to confer upon them.
It is said that the people of the South are loyal citizens again. If loyalty to the government consists in not fighting against the government, then indeed they are loyal. The fighting ceased when they were forced to lay down their arms. It is certain that they did not drop their arms voluntarily and only in obedience to their sentiments of loyalty; and I do not see why they should claim any particular credit for having laid down their arms when it had become obviously impossible to hold them up any longer. Still, we will give them all the benefit of their submission. It is true, that negative kind of loyalty which consists in no longer fighting against the Government exists.
Nor do I think that there is any immediate danger of a renewal of hostilities. It is true the doctrine that a State has the right to secede, is yet believed in by most of those who formerly entertained it, and while there, I heard many a Southerner argue the point with great warmth and emphasis. But their attempt to carry the theory into practical realization, has drawn upon them blows so heavy, that the present generation will not be apt to forget the lesson. So I do not look for much danger in that respect — unless we become involved in wars with foreign powers. In that case it would perhaps be unsafe to place too great a reliance upon a sort of loyalty which consists merely in forced submission to stubborn necessity.
But there are positive duties which their loyalty to the Union would seem to impose upon them, and the performance of which no truly loyal man will think of avoiding. Here is one of them: The war has encumbered us with a great national debt; a debt the payment of which will require the cheerful co-operation of all of our social forces. Are the people of the South already so loyal as to be willing to co-operate with us in the discharge of our national obligations? This would seem to be a test. While I was in the South I neglected no opportunity to inquire into the feelings of the people with regard to this matter, and I may say that in no one instance did I receive a satisfactory response. The more intelligent who thought it would not do to say straight out, that they would rather have nothing to do with the payment of our national debt, gave evasive answers: the people were so poor, they had suffered so much; they had debts of their own which they were unable to pay; the matter ought not to be urged until the country would be in a state of prosperity again — and so on. Others would find it rather ludicrous that we should expect the Southern people to help paying a debt which the Northern people had contracted for the purpose of subjugating them, paying, as they expressed it, the expenses of the whipping they had received. Still others would insist that since we had robbed them of their slaves we ought to be satisfied, that in fact we owed them money for their slaves and a grave legislator in the Mississippi convention argued that the Southern people ought to be exempt from federal taxation for years to come in consideration of the money the General Government owed them for the emancipated negroes. Such were the ideas expressed by intelligent people.
The masses looked upon the national debt as a thing in which they had no concern at all; “you see,” they would say, “it was your government that contracted it, not ours.” I can represent their sentiments in no more striking way than by quoting a conversation a friend of mine had recently with a Southern man. My friend spoke to the Southerner sympathizingly about the distressed condition of the Southern people. “Yes,” replied the Southerner, “we are in a bad fix. But in one respect we are better off than the people of the North. You see nobody expects us to pay the debts we have contracted during the war. But you have that big national debt of yours — everybody expects you to pay that — and upon my soul, I do not see how you can do it.” This may appear laughable and amusing; but it is a very serious matter. I state here as my deliberate conscientious convictions that this is the prevailing sentiment of the Southern people, only the comparatively few Unionists excepted; and the prevalence of this aspect will at once assume a threatening aspect as soon as the representatives of the Southern people who at the same time are the representatives of this sentiment, are re-admitted to their places of power and influence in the councils of the nation.
There is another idea which I found to have taken possession of the Southern mind, and to gain in strength every day; I have already mentioned it. It is that they are entitled to compensation for their emancipated slaves. Indeed, while I was in the South, almost all their newspapers advocated it, candidates for Congress pledged themselves in cards and public speeches that they would use all their influence to effect it, and I have hardly found a single former slave owner who did not insist that it was the bounden duty of the Government to grant it.
And now I will further state as my deliberate and conscientious conviction, that, if under present circumstances the delegations from the rebel States should be admitted, they would soon be found, with a very few exceptions, a unit upon two points: first they will endeavor to throw every possible impediment into the way of the provisions to be made for the payment of the national debt and the interest thereon; and secondly they will try under whatever pretext it may be to relieve the South of the burden of taxation and to obtain compensation for their emancipated slaves, the destroyed levees on the Mississippi and other damages done by our armies during the war. These things may at first appear chimerical, and in the present Congress with its glorious majority, the danger would not be great; but considering what combinations may be formed between a united South and those elements in the North which during the war have shown a lack of patriotism and a depravity capable of anything that is detestable, it may well be said that the re-admission of the rebel states, such as they are now, to influence and power, would be the most dangerous blow that could be struck at our national credit, and if I were the purchaser of a large quantity of U. S. securities, which, I am extremely sorry to say, I am not, I should feel the danger still more keenly than I do now.
The same order of sentiment which renders the Southern people unwilling to assume their share of the national debt, would seem to predispose them in favor of the obligations they themselves have contracted during the war. I do, indeed, not believe that the people down South seriously think of paying anything they owe abroad. That would require a passionate fondness for paying debts which they do not possess. But there are a great many persons in the Southern States who invested all their available means in confederate and State securities issued during the war; and these persons, although by no means anxious to see the foreign creditors of the Confederacy satisfied, are indeed very anxious to have something for the money they themselves advanced for war purposes; — and inasmuch as the number of such persons is very large and comprises almost all the influential men and families of the South, the natural leaders of the people, a united effort of this class of creditors to have their claims assumed by the States, might indeed become formidable. While in the South I had frequent opportunities to discuss the subject, and I found that the hope of seeing such an assumption effected, was very extensively entertained. You may be aware that down to this very day the Legislature of South Carolina has not yet repudiated her rebel debt, and as to the expectation of having the debt provided for in other States I may tell you an incident which may serve as an illustration. In September last, an acquaintance of mine, a lawyer at New Orleans, visited Mobile where he heard the matter of the assumption of the rebel debt extensively talked of. For the purpose of testing the matter he requested a broker to buy for him $500,000 in Confederate currency and State bonds. After some time he was informed that he could have $125,000 in Confederate currency at 3½ to 4%, but State bonds at no less than 15 to 20%.
Now it is evident that such paper would have no price if there were not some demand for it, and that there would be no demand for it were it not expected that some provision would be made to give it value; and it is evident also that all those who desire provision to be made for any rebel debt and also want to have the people taxed for that purpose, do not want to have the people, poor as they are, taxed for the purpose of discharging our national obligations. All these things tend to intensify that hostility to our national debt which I stated to be prevalent among the Southern people, and which may assume a dangerous character as soon as such people return again to power and influence.
This hostility may to a certain extent be considered a matter of interest; there are other things standing in the way of the development of true loyalty which belong to the province of feeling. Upon all these things, although they are important in themselves we ought to put a charitable construction.
That the mere fact of a defeat should not have transformed the hatred of the Southern people against the Yankee and the Yankee Government into friendship and affection, is, perhaps natural. That dislike is still too sincere and intense to refrain from offensive manifestations. Conversing with Southerners you will hear the terms “our government,” “your government,” “our country,” “your country,” used as often as occasion for that distinction occurs; there is absolutely no love for the common country, no sensitiveness of nationality there; — and my experience is that the feeling that we belong together has not yet had time to spring up from the decisions of the battlefield. I found here and there old men of advanced age who still clung to the reminiscences and traditions of the old Union, but the young generation, those who at present constitute the active element of society, see in their renewed connection with us nothing but the bitter necessity to submit to what they cannot avoid. Of course, I except from this statement the Union men of the South, who, however, in the States I visited, form but a comparatively insignificant proportion of the whole population. And it is natural that the situation of these Union men should be very seriously affected by the general sentiment of Southern society.
The Southern Union man is in his own home still looked upon and stigmatized as a traitor to the cause of his country; and in many localities he is even surrounded by threatening dangers. I discovered more than once and in more than one place, that noted Union men and their families, I mean those who during the war had identified themselves with the national cause, were still living in a sort of social ostracism. Their neighbors avoided them like tainted beings and treated them as unworthy of friendly association. The women, what they call high-toned Southern ladies, would sweep their crinolines out of the way when they met them on the street, so as to avoid the contact.
It is easy to imagine what effect this must have upon the political action of the people. There was hardly a district in the States I visited where a notorious Union man would have had the least chance to be elected even to the smallest offices of honor or influence. The surest title to popular favor consisted in identification to some extent with the rebel cause, and wherever the political action of the people was not restrained by considerations of expediency, such as what effect the election of this or that man would produce at Washington, the man who had been the most active in the rebellion was sure to be preferred to another whose zeal had been less conspicuous. The Southern papers are at present very lavish in their praise of President Johnson because they think the President protects them against the designs of the radicals. But I feel warranted in saying that Andrew Johnson, the Union leader of East Tennessee, if he were not President of the United States, could not be elected constable in Charleston or Savannah. There is not a decent rebel sergeant or corporal still wearing the grey uniform that would not have a better chance than he.
This ostracism is by no means confined to the political world, it affects all the relations of private, and especially of business life. A young man seeks employment. He enters the counting house of a Southern merchant and asks for a place as clerk or porter. “Did you take the oath of allegiance previous to the surrender?” is the question addressed to him. If he replies “before the surrender,” his fate is sealed. “There is no place open for you sir,” and there is the end of it. But a few days ago a Union man from New Orleans, who before the war had held the office of judge, told me that he would have to send his son North; his son, a very able young man had been in the Union army, and it was impossible for him to obtain a situation.
While this exclusion of the staunchest Union men from all political influence and preferment is a melancholy fact, yet it is not the worst feature of the present situation of that class of people. I stated in my official report that Unionists and Northern men found it so dangerous to live in several localities, that they were seriously thinking of removing themselves and their families out of harm's way. What I then predicted, is already coming true. A few days ago I was visited in Washington by Unionists and Northern men coming from Louisiana and Alabama who informed me that they were rapidly settling their business affairs in the South for the purpose of emigrating Northward, and that many of their friends were making preparations for doing the same. Since the Government had announced its determination to gradually withdraw the troops from the South, they considered neither their lives nor their property safe without the protection of the federal bayonets. Certain it is that under present circumstances, a free expression of opinion contrary to Southern tastes is in many localities but little less dangerous than it was before the war. But recently two gentlemen in Louisiana were actually arrested and indicted by a Grand Jury for having expressed themselves in favor of giving the negroes the right to vote.
Nothing is more singular than that under such circumstances the Southern people should hope for a numerous immigration from the North and from Europe. Southern society is still very far from being in such a condition as to invite the immigration of peaceable and industrious citizens. I will give you one of its characteristic features. On a very hot day when travelling on a railroad in Georgia, the passengers, to make themselves more comfortable, pulled off their coats. And I saw to my great surprise that in a crowded railway car there were but two men who did not carry revolvers on their bodies, and those two were myself and a young officer who was travelling with me. Now, I should think a country where everybody carries a loaded revolver on his person, is not very inviting to decent people who want to lead quiet lives and to indulge in the pursuit of their happiness in peace.
The fact is, that all those traits of character which before the war we looked upon as characteristic of the Southern people, their boisterousness, their violence, their supercilious arrogance, their intolerance of opinions different from their own, their pugnacious prejudices, are still there in full force. It is true, these traits are mixed with other more pleasant ingredients, but what they lack most is just the thing that under present circumstances they would seem to need most — common sense. They have indeed no appreciation of their situation and its exigencies. Of all men they are the least mindful of the changes that have taken place, and all they dream of is, that at some early day the Government of their States will be completely turned over to them, that the Yankee soldiers will leave their country, and that they will have it all again their own way. And in anticipation of that auspicious event, they lustily cheer — and I have heard that with my own ears — they lustily cheer in the same breath for Jefferson Davis and Andrew Johnson.
And what will they do when they again have it all their own way in their own country? Here I open a new chapter in which the negro will play a great part.
Those of you who took an interest in the political discussions preceding the war, will remember that by the proslavery party the emancipation of the slaves was represented as a most horrible idea. Among the fearful things which were predicted as certain to follow an attempt at emancipation, “all the horrors of St. Domingo” played a very conspicuous part. We were told in glowing language that indiscriminate carnage of men, women and children, the firing of dwellings, the devastation of the country, and a general carnival of crime and canibalism would be the immediate and inevitable result.
Emancipation came, sudden and unprepared; it came amidst the passionate excitement of war; it came surrounded with the most unfavorable circumstances. It came, not a boon tendered by the master to the slave, but forced upon the master by the victorious arms of the Union, arms borne in part by the slave himself. It was a victory of the slave over the master; the slave stood face to face with his master as a conqueror stands face to face with his conquered enemy.
If ever a long enslaved and suddenly liberated race had an opportunity to take revenge for the burning wrongs of more than two centuries, it was then and there. And what do we behold? On my travels through the cotton states of the South I saw much, but the horrors of St. Domingo I did not see. No carnage, no burning dwellings, no act of revenge, no deed of blood. I saw the late slaves acting as if they had never been wronged by their late masters; I saw the late masters acting as if they had been terribly wronged [by] their late slaves. I saw the black husband or father who had seen his wife or child whipped and tortured by that white man bow before him. Did he avail himself of his own liberty or of the white man's defeat to cut the white man's throat? No, he simply asked the white man for wages, or, may be, he walked quietly away. I saw the white man who had extorted from the helpless slave a whole life of unrequited labor; did he show his appreciation of the slave's forbearance when that slave claimed no settlement of past accounts, but simply asked for a freeman's dues for the future? No, he cursed the nigger who refused to work henceforth for nothing.
The emancipation of the slaves in the South was one of the most singular spectacles the world ever witnessed; and when some future day all the facts connected with that great event are fully known, the negroes of the South will stand in history as the most good natured, the most forbearing, the most confiding, the kindest hearted of human beings. No race long held in cruel servitude, and then suddenly set free, ever acted as they did. And in this respect no race can claim an honorable distinction equal to theirs.
There are people who talk of the natural hostility of the negro to the whites. I claim to have investigated the subject and I have found no trace of it. It is true, the negro, glad of his freedom, is not inclined to entrust his late master with the power to re-enslave him; he does not love those who persecute and ill treat him now — but is that hostility to the white race? While he instinctively distrusts a Southern man, he instinctively trust a Yankee — and he that has his confidence has his affection. And is not the Yankee also a white man? Instead of proofs of hostility to the white race, many instances of the most touching attachment of emancipated negroes to their late masters have come to my notice. While I was at Charleston, a planter who owned a large estate on one of the near islands set apart for the freedmen by Gen. Sherman's order, went to visit his old plantation. He was told to be careful; he might be looked upon as an intruder on the island and killed by the negroes. Formerly a wealthy man, the war had made him poor, almost pennyless. He went. Upon his plantation he found his former slaves. They greeted him with cordiality. “How are you, master, and how is the family?” He told them that he was poor, very poor and had nothing to live on. And the blacks? They got up a collection for him to which every one of them contributed from his or her earnings. They put their money into the hands of their old master and told him it was his. And he took it. Nay, after a time he came again and they contributed their mites top provide for his wants. And but a few days ago a gentleman from that region told me, that at this very day more than one former master lives on the contributions raised by his former slaves among themselves.
At New Orleans I visited a noted Union man who was a lawyer. He showed me his cook, an old negro woman, and told me the following story. The day before I visited his house, the old negro woman who had come down with the army from Mississippi, told my friend that she had a favor to ask of him. “There is a black boy, George, said she, came here yesterday who was with me on the old plantation. He says that he has heard from old master, and that old master has left Mississippi, and has gone to Augusta, in Georgia, and that old master is very poor and has but very little clothes and no stockings at all. And now I have gone into the town and bought stockings with the money you gave me, and wrapped them up in a paper, and here they are, and I would ask you to send the stockings to my old master at Augusta.” The unrequited labor, the whippings, the lacerated backs are forgotten, and only the good heart remains. A negro, methinks, is a man after all.
I am, however, while appreciating his good qualities, far from underrating his shortcomings, and I will state them as I observed them. Many of the complaints uttered by Southern men as to the present conduct of the negro are undoubtedly to some extent founded in fact, but it is another question whether the late master has a moral right to utter them. Like all other human beings, the negro is in a large measure the creature of circumstances, and in investigating the circumstances under which the negro lived, we shall find that the vices of the negro are the vices of the slave, and it would be unreasonable to expect of them that all the taints of slavery should have fallen off at the very moment when the decree of emancipation changed their condition. They are ignorant; they are improvident; many of them understand by freedom, idleness; they have no accurate conception of their duties; such are the complaints continually dinned into our ears by their late masters. Well, if they are ignorant, it may be remembered, that it was a penal offense to instruct them. If they are improvident, it must be admitted that the example of planters who spent two or three crops ahead and not unfrequently had to sell negroes to save their estates, was not calculated to teach them circumspection and wise economy. If by freedom many of them understand idleness, it ought not to be forgotten that many of them never saw a free man work. If they do not yet clearly understand the binding force of a contract, it ought to be considered that before their emancipation they never lived in relations based upon reciprocity and an equitable exchange of values. If they have no just conception of the sanctity of marriage, it may be remembered that the white men who debauched their women, and those who made money by breeding, did not contribute much to the refinement of their moral sensibilities. This is a world of compensations, and if the whites of the South had not kept the negroes so long in slavery, they would now have among them a better class of freemen.
But let us look at them such as they are. The cry that resounds from one end of the Southern States to the other, sometimes accompanied with a sigh, sometimes with a curse, is that “the niggers won't work.” This is true in some respects, or rather it is true in the Southern sense. The negro, will in the first place, not work without wages, and in the second place, he will not work like a slave. I found as a general thing — and this was confirmed by the statements I received even by the planters — that where the negro received a fair compensation, he did a fair share of work. This, I think is the general rule. There are, of course, many exceptions, and the exceptions must be particularly numerous during a period of transition, when the old order of things has given way and the new order has not yet clearly defined itself.
Look at the situation of the negro when emancipation came so suddenly upon him. His experience was confined to the narrow circle of things with which he was most immediately surrounded. He new what slavery was, but freedom was a thing he knew only from hearsay, and in observing the doings of the white man around him, he had formed some idea as to what a free man might do. He found himself suddenly a free man. Freedom in the first place had for him the meaning that he could walk away from his plantation without being whipped for it. And so, in spite of their local attachments, many of them did walk away, some in order to pay a visit to their friends the Yankees at the nearest military post or camp, some because they knew from experience that when white men wanted to enjoy themselves they went to town, and so they went to town also, to see what freedom in a town looked like; some walked away for the purpose of obtaining information about the true nature of their new status; because they wanted to see whether they could go where they pleased with impunity, and some because they feared to endanger their freedom by staying with their old masters.
Taking everything into consideration, it was by no means wonderful under such circumstances, that so many should have left their plantations and ventured into the wide world; it was, on the contrary, most wonderful, that so many of them resisted the temptation and stayed at home; and I many say without fear of contradiction — and the statistics of the Freedmens' Bureau will bear me out — that a large majority of them remained on their plantations and continued their work in the fields. It was natural that the accumulations which formed themselves in and around the towns and military posts, should have attracted more attention, than the far larger numbers which were scattered over the country quietly following their accustomed occupations; but the actual fact is that the negroes congregating in towns and military posts constituted but a small minority of the whole colored population.
But it is natural also that those who remained on the plantations should not have gone on working with the old dull steadiness characteristic of the system of slavery. The leap from slavery to freedom is rather an exciting event in a man's life; and it requires either the highest order of wisdom, or the lowest order of unfeeling stupidity, not to be somewhat disturbed by such an event in one's everyday habits. In this respect we have no right to demand that the negro should be wiser than a white man; and surely a white man long held in servitude and then suddenly set free, would not have worked like a slave the day after his deliverance.
Besides, this new condition threw new cares upon them. They ceased to live from day to day without thinking of the morrow, and the restlessness of mind springing from their new cares and responsibilities, their anxiety about their yet uncertain future, naturally interfered with the regularity of daily labor to which they and their master had formerly been accustomed. All these are things which are inseparably connected with a period of transition from one social condition to another, and so it was unavoidable that during the season immediately following emancipation, comparatively little labor should have been done, and nobody in particular is to blame for it.
No doubt there are among the negroes a good many individuals that prefer elegant leisure to hard work, — and, for ought I know there are a good many such individuals among the whites. Nay, I venture to say among the Southern whites elegant or even inelegant leisure is one of the most generally liked occupations. When I was told in the cotton states, by growling ex-rebels, that the negroes were all reaming about in idleness, I used to point to a cultivated field and to ask: “Who did the work on that field?” I never received the answer that a white man had done it. And that question can be put generally; “who is it that does the work that is being done in the South?” It is done by the negroes who, we are told, are reaming about in idleness. To tell the whole truth, while travelling through the South last summer, I did not see a single white man with a hoe in his hand in a cotton field, — unless indeed there was one who had not washed his face for so long a time that I could not tell him from a negro.
Now, the desire to work depends with almost everybody in a great measure, upon the encouragement given, and upon the example that is set. It is a matter of experience that if an officer wants his soldiers to fight well, he must not send them but lead them into the fight; and it is also a matter of experience that the farmer who works at the head of his laborers receives from them the largest share of work. And in the South far more work will be done when that order of society will have ceased to exist in which the black man is made to work with the white man standing around and looking on, making it their principal and favorite occupation to curse the black man because he does not work enough. It is one of the favorite arguments used by the proslavery men — and in fact but a few days ago I heard that argument uttered on the floor of the U. S. Senate by Mr. G. Davis of Kentucky, — that the negro is the lineal descendant of the monkey. Now, as everybody knows, the monkey is remarkable for his faculty of imitation, and so of course, must his grandson, the negro be. Suppose the Southern whites take advantage of that. Let them show the negro how to work; perhaps the negro true to his origin, will with alacrity imitate the performance.
Is it not a singular spectacle to see all the wise heads assembled in Southern Legislatures racking their brains to devise laws by which they can make the negro work, while not one of them seems to have been struck by the idea that it would also be well to pass laws to make the white men work and to set the blacks a good example. They are so exceedingly anxious to prevent the negro from losing his valuable time.
While I am far from asserting that the negroes of the South are generally working as well as they are capable of working, yet the hue and cry raised by their late masters about their idleness arises from a very particular cause. The negro's ideas of liberty coincide in one respect exactly with those expressed by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. He thinks that he has a right to the pursuit of his own happiness in his own way, and is no long obliged to pursue somebody else's happiness in somebody else's way; while it is the planter's idea of the negro's liberty, that the negro may make a poor living for himself and at the same time a very good living for him, the planter. And negroes who do not agree with him on that point, are called idle and worthless fellows — nuisances that ought to be abated.
To pursue one's own happiness with understanding and circumspection requires a certain amount of education which comparatively few Southern negroes have had an opportunity to enjoy. And yet, already last summer, I found many who pursued their own happiness with considerable success. I visited some of the plantations parcelled out among the freedmen where they worked on their own responsibility without being under the direction of white men. While some of those lots were in a poor condition, others were cultivated with great success and yielded surprisingly large profits. The Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau at New Orleans told me, that a negro had applied to him for a large plantation which he wanted to rent. And when asked whether he had capital enough to work the place, he replied that he had $15,000 in cash, made since the occupation of New Orleans by General Butler. I heard of similar although less brilliant instances of a successful pursuit of happiness by freedmen in South Carolina. At Vicksburg a coloured man was pointed out to me who was in the flour and provision line. He employed four white men to make purchases for him in the country — for there are planters in Mississippi who do not like to sell things to niggers — and he then disposed of the goods in his establishment in town. While travelling through that same State I was detained at a military post to wait for a railroad train. Not far from the station I found an old hospital tent with watermelons and peaches for sale, and a negro in charge of the establishment. An officer who was with me asked him to whom that tent belonged? “Belongs to me, sir.” “Where did you get it?” “Bought it from a sutler for $36.” “Where did you get the $36.?” “Made the money in my business, sir, and I pay $20. a month rent for the place where the tent stands.” Then he gave us his history. But a few weeks before he had left the plantation with nothing but a shirt, a pair of pantaloons and a pair of shoes. Made a dollar by doing a job for an officer. Bought peaches for that dollar and peddled them on the railroad train. Made $5.00 out of the peaches. Bought a new stock of peaches and watermelons and so turned his capital several times until he had about $50.00 in his possession. Then bought the sutler's tent and at the time when he told us his story, he had about $70. in cash, the rent and a considerable stock of fruit and other articles. By this time he must be a well to do tradesman unless he has been taken up by the State authorities of Mississippi and put in jail as an idler and a vagrant.
As to the general subject of negro labor, I have come to the conscientious conclusion that its success will mostly depend upon the manner in which the negro laborer is treated and paid. My experience was that a large majority of the late slaveholders would complain of the conduct of their free negro laborers, while Northern men engaged in planting, almost uniformly expressed to me their satisfaction. It is not difficult to discover a reason for this. The late slaveholder does not know what free labor is and the principle upon which it operates. He knows how to drive a slave — as many of them told me — but he does not know how to work a free man. The consequence is that he tried to drive a free man like a slave, to which the free man seriously objects. The laborer becomes discontented and restive, and the whole system results in a failure. Besides, the late slaveholders had in all probability invested his available funds in confederate securities which under present circumstances do not sell in the market, and he has no money to pay the wages of his laborers with. He hires them on shares in the crop which are always precarious and this year amounted to almost nothing. He has no money to buy provisions, and, therefore, the food of the laborers is hard and scanty. I found plantations on which the negroes received nothing but cornmeal — absolutely nothing but cornmeal. He has no money to buy clothing and therefore, the negroes walk about in filthy rags. Bad fare, no clothes and bad treatment combined are not apt to produce cheerfulness, and you know well a laborer that does not work cheerfully does not lift his hoe very high. Such is the condition of things on a majority of plantations run by former slaveholders.
The Northern man engaged in planting, work on a different system. In the first place they know what free labor is and how to treat a free laborer. So the negro's mind is not troubled as to any misgivings as to his condition as a free man. They mostly have ready capital enough to pay wages in money, and most of them pay them regularly. They contrive to keep their negroes well dressed, give them an opportunity to educate themselves and withhold from them no amusement which does not interfere with their work. All this is compatible with that discipline which on a plantation must exist. The first result is that the laborers have no reason to complain of their employer, and the second result is, that the employer has no reason to complain of his laborers.
What I have seen leads me to the conclusion that it rests with the white men of the South to make the system of free labor succeed; and if it should fail it will be because obstacles were thrown in its way, which would cripple the efficiency of any class of laborers. If you want a man to be a man you must above all give him a man's due.
One of the principal conditions upon which the success of free negro labor will depend, is that a general system of education be adopted to make the negro an intelligent laborer. He naturally issued from slavery an ignorant being. And how could it be otherwise, since education was by law and force withheld from him? Thanks to the efforts of the benevolent societies in the North — and their bright record will be inscribed in characters of light in the history of this momentous period — and thanks to the Freedmen's Bureau, much has been done to initiate a system of instruction for the protection of the blacks as far as the protecting arm of our military authority reaches. And no observing man can have traversed a Southern State without being struck by the alacrity and eagerness with which the negroes avail themselves of every opportunity to procure for themselves or to give their children the advantage of education. A negro soldier on guard with a spelling book in his hand is no uncommon sight; and wherever there is a numerous negro population protected by a garrison, you will find the crowded schoolhouse and perchance the Massachusetts schoolmarm sent there by a Christian society, quietly walking among the little black step-children of humanity, jeered and sneered at by scowling semi-reconstructed rebels, but covered by the flag of this Republic, by the blessings of all good men and by the very smiles of heaven.
Nor are such noble efforts without success. What degree of intellectual development the negro race can attain has so far not been tested; but one thing is certain: the negro masters the elementary branches of knowledge with remarkable facility. I visited several schools while in the South and can speak from personal observation. And I venture to say, that in many districts of the South it will take the negro but little time to outstrip the lower, nay, even the middle, classes of the whites in that respect. I have in my possession a paper, written by one of the assessors of the Parish of Assumption in Louisiana, which points that way. It runs as follows.
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A document like this shows two things: First, how thick in some places the ignorance of the whites is — not only of the lowest class of whites only, but of property holders — and secondly, what an educating influence military life has had upon the blacks, and in how short a time such surprising results can be obtained if proper measures be adopted.
It is true, on the plantations in the interior of the country, where the schoolmaster has not yet penetrated, the negro — and with him the poorer white — still lives in a state of primitive darkness, and it will require an immense and costly educational machinery to spread the blessings of civilization over those neglected regions. And mind you — we of the North shall have to do that. A Southerner, man or woman, or, as they style it there, a Southern gentlemen or a Southern lady, poor, wretched, degraded as they may be, stand far above the mean contemptible business of teaching niggers. And not only that: There is nothing more hateful in the eyes of the people of the rebel States than a negro school, and wherever the military protection of the United States is withdrawn, they at once break them up, driving away the teachers and scattering the scholars. I repeat: we of the North shall have to do that work and thank God, there are but few of us so mean as to be too proud to do something towards conferring a blessing upon our fellow creatures. True to their mission, the people of the North, after having carried into the South the torch of war, will be found ready to carry there the torch of light, knowledge, civilization.
It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that even before the war the whole colored population of the South was in an ignorant and barbarous condition. A gentleman at Montgomery told me that on every plantation with 50 or 60 negroes, he could pick out from 10 to 15 who stood far above the average of the poor whites in knowledge and intellectual ability. Their number was comparatively larger, of course, in the cities; and to show what degree of refinement some people of color had attained, I will tell you an incident of my trip of last Summer. While at New Orleans I one day visited the law office of Gov. Hahn. An elderly gentleman was introduced to me, dressed with that simple elegance which denotes the man of taste; from his conversation I would have taken him for an accomplished lawyer or physician. He conversed with great ease and versatility on the most different subjects, displaying considerable knowledge and judgment. He spoke French and English equally well. The conversation turned upon the condition of the negroes in the South; I noticed that my new acquaintance grew warmer in his expression, and at last he thanked me for my sympathy with a race in whose welfare he had so great a personal interest. I did not quite understand the full meaning of his remark, when Gov. Hahn interposed and said: “I forgot to tell you, General, that Mr. Soulié is a man of color.” I at first hesitated to believe it, inasmuch as the gentleman I had before me was as white as any of us, but, true enough, he was one of that class known as the free colored people of Louisiana. He requested permission to introduce some of his friends to me, and we made an appointment for the next day. At the hour agreed upon he came with fifteen of his friends, all as white, all as elegantly dressed, all as refined in their manners and as intelligent in their conversation as he. There were among them doctors, brokers, merchants, planters. “Look at these gentlemen,” said one of them. “They are all well educated and wealthy. I am worth about $250,000. The free colored people of Louisiana represent a capital of over $13,000,000. We have all the obligations and duties of citizens, but none of their privileges. Society shuts us out. We pay taxes, and we are not represented. We contribute to the school funds, and the schools are closed to our children. If I want to have my sons and daughters educated I must send them to Europe, to France. Although industrious, peaceable and wealthy men, we are completely at the mercy of every white blackguard, and if the spirit of persecution against our unfortunate race continues to rise, I do not know whether our property and our lives will be safe.”
I advised them to send a delegation of such men as they were to Washington to appeal to the President and Congress, for I was sure they could make an impression even upon the most obdurate prejudice. They thought about it awhile and then one of them said: “What if we go to Washington and take rooms at one of the hotels — shall we not be ignominiously ejected as soon as it is discovered that we belong to the colored race? Will not the hotel keepers be afraid to see their dining rooms deserted if they allow men like us a table in them?” Alas! I could not say with certainty: “They will not.” They did not come to Washington.
But if I ever had been wavering in my convictions of right; if there ever had been any doubt in my soul as to the injustice, nay, the utter disgracefulness of a prejudice which makes one race put its ruthless heel upon the neck of another — the last lingering remnant of that doubt would have vanished when I saw the downtrodden people of the South in their unequal struggle with those that are strong and merciless. And if I never had formed the resolution before, I would then have formed it to devote whatever of mental ability and moral strength there is in me to the great cause of justice and equal rights before the laws of God and the laws of men.
And here I have to begin one of the saddest chapters of the mournful tale. It is that of the relations between the two races as they are at present.
There were undoubtedly before the war a good many planters in the South who treated their slaves with kindness. And there are now many who treat the freedmen in a spirit of good will, and in acknowledging this fact I desire it to be understood that what I am going to say does not apply to these honorable exceptions.
Unfortunately, that spirit of good will I did not find to be the general spirit animating the population of the States through which I travelled. I believe the individual prejudice against the negro has never been as strong in the South as it is in the North. But the general spirit against the negro race is far stronger; that is to say, a Southerner will much more freely associate with a negro — and with a negress also — than a Northern man. When a Southern man is really kind to a negro, he is apt to be kinder than a Northern man; but his kindness he looks upon as an act of grace and condescension and he acknowledges no right whatever in him even to whom he may be kind. The Northerner wants to have the negro race under his heel. This feeling is now as strong as it ever was.
There is another circumstance which has an important bearing upon this matter. The war with all its disasters and hopes and sufferings has necessarily kindled violent resentment in the hearts of the Southern people; and ignorant, unthinking and inconsiderate as they are, they cultivate the idea that the negro is the cause of all their misfortunes. And not only that; the negro, in taking up arms for the Union cause, has helped us in conquering the Southern people. And as brutal natures, when thwarted in a desire or subjected to unpleasant things, always seek somebody upon whom to vent their spleen, the most brutal element of Southern society — and unfortunately it is numerous enough — vent their spleen upon those who are least able to defend themselves, the negroes. But that is not all; before the war, the negro as a slave had a certain money value. The negro emancipated has none. To kill or maim a slave was to rob a white man. But to kill or maim a free negro is only to destroy or spoil a thing which — as they look upon it — was stolen from a white man. And to spoil or destroy a stolen thing is, in their opinion, a rather justifiable way of taking revenge for the robbery. All these brutal impulses are now active in Southern society, and as Southern society never was famous for its moral sensibilities, it is not difficult to imagine what results such brutal impulses will lead to. The natural tendency is to make the condition of the negro worse than it was before his emancipation.
From time to time we see in the newspapers tales of deeds of blood, of atrocities which fairly make us hold our breath, and we doubtingly ask ourselves whether indeed such things are possible. I will give you my own experience.
The planter — and here I beg you to understand that that class of planters you used to see at Saratoga and Newport was always in point of numbers very small, and that the common planter stands in education and intelligence considerably below our farmer — the planter I say, although he has become aware that the negro is no longer exactly his property, knows only one way how to work a negro, and that is to drive him in the old-fashioned way as a slave. According to his notions the whip is an indispensable implement of husbandry, and he applies it whenever he sees fit and is permitted to do so — and sometimes that hateful interloper the Freedmen's Bureau interferes, or the negro himself may raise objections. Negro whipping is therefore still going on on an extensive scale wherever the Bureau is not present to hold the protecting hand over the freedmen. I myself have seen in the hospitals women and girls with the bloody marks of the whip on their backs. Sometimes, I say, the negro himself may object, — and then, not quite unfrequently, the omnipresent revolver comes into play. I heard of many such cases and investigated some of them more closely. It is indeed amazing on how slight a provocation a negro may be killed without arousing the indignation of the community in the slightest degree. At Montgomery a so-called gentleman shot a negro dead on the street. What was the justification? The negro was on a mule; the gentleman, as he says, believing the mule to belong to a friend of his, ordered the negro to halt. The negro did not halt on the spot, and the gentleman pulled out his revolver and shot the negro dead. He was tried by a military commission and sentenced to ten years imprisonment. The gentry of Montgomery was dreadfully exercised about it, not because the man had killed the negro, but because, for merely killing a negro a gentleman was sentenced to ten years imprisonment. A petition for his pardon was at once made up and the Prov. Governor of Alabama sent it up to the President. And on what ground was that man's pardon asked for? Because he had believed the negro had stolen the mule and the killing of the negro was therefore justifiable homicide. Whether President Johnson pardoned him or not I do not know.
A similar instance I found at Vicksburg, and as I saw the papers in the case I became acquainted with all the particulars. A well known planter there shot a negro dead on the field. He also was tried by military commission. And what was his defense? That the negro had saucily talked back to him and was generally suspected by him of being a dangerous character. The testimony for the prosecution, however, proved that the negro was one of the quietest and orderliest men on the plantation. The military commission sentenced the gentleman-murderer to be hung, and again was the community in a blaze of sympathy. His pardon was at once petitioned for, and thereupon his execution suspended. Whether the President pardoned him I do not know; but I never heard of his having been hung. There were several such cases pending while I was in the South, and many more that occurred were never investigated.
But it is by no means the planter himself that is accountable for the savagest atrocities perpetrated. As before the war the non-slaveholding whites were the most violent pro-slavery men, so they are now the cruelest negro haters. While here in the North that class known as loafers and rowdies mostly congregate in the cities, it is characteristic of Southern society that that reckless and lawless element is scattered and distributed in dire profusion all over the country. It was this class which, when emancipation first took effect in those regions immediately after the close of the war, was most active in what they called “keeping the nigger where he belonged”; that is, in persecuting him with the utmost ferocity whenever he attempted to assert his rights as a freeman. They first endeavored to make it as difficult and dangerous as possible for freedmen to leave the plantations on which they had been held as slaves; and then to torment them generally as they fell into their hands. In order to show you how this was done, I will give you a few specimens taken from the official documents — mark you, not my own statements, but official documents accompanying my report:
It is impossible for me to indicate the spirit of the class of whites I am speaking of better than by giving the words of Col. Thomas, Com. of the Freedmen's Bureau. He says in a letter addressed to me: see p. 81. [No. 27]
But enough of this horrible tale of blood from which humanity turns away in disgust. It is certain that in the perpetration of such deeds only a minority of the Southern people are implicated, and they ought to be charged to the amount only of those who perpetrate them. But it is nevertheless a fact that the moral sensibility of Southern communities is at so low an ebb as to permit such revolting atrocities to go on, if not without a word of disapprobation or reproof, but at least without an effort to punish the offenders and to avenge the outraged dignity of human nature.
It is to be expected, and I do indeed most sincerely trust that such proceedings are becoming less frequent every day as the Freedmen's Bureau, supported by the military arms, extends its agencies and operations. But even then, this is not the only question to be solved. There is another even more important one: What is to become of the colored population of the South when completely left under the control of their former masters? What is to become of them when the rebel States are invested again with the full powers of local government?
Here we touch the important point of prospective legislation. In a country like this legislation is always based upon the movements of public opinion, and if legislation in the Southern States be left exclusively to the whites, the opinions held by the Southern whites will control it and determine its character. And what are the opinions of the Southern whites concerning the negroes?
From one end of the rebel States to the other resounds the cry: The negro will not work without physical compulsion. They never know how to work a negro except upon the system of compulsion, and as they never know how to do it upon any other system they think and maintain that it cannot be done. But it is objected: “The negro is free!” “Well,” they reply, “then we must compel the free negro to work.” It is again objected: “you must introduce a system of free labor.” They again reply: “Then it must be free labor based upon compulsion. Our work must be done; there is at present nobody to do it but the negro; therefore, the negro must be compelled to do it.” This is their philosophy. And so you see all the ingenious heads of the South racking their brains to find a way not how to arouse the ambition of the negro by holding out to him fair inducements; not how to make the negro an intelligent laborer by a general system of education; not how to mind the interests of the employer and the laborer harmoniously together; not how to develop and secure the blessings of free labor, but how to avoid the introduction of free labor — in one word, how to make free labor compulsory.
And here it is no longer necessary to qualify and say, these are only isolated efforts. Here we have the clearest proof that such is the sense of the majority as represented in their Conventions and Legislatures. You need only look at the laws passed in late rebel States within the last three months. In investigating the character of Southern legislation during this period we can trace two sets of motives working in opposite directions: the one is the desire to be restored to power and influence as soon as possible, influence in our national affairs and uncontrolled power over their home concerns; and this desire prompts the Southern people, and especially their leaders, to do certain things for the sake of propitiating public sentiment in the North — and the other is to act upon the true impulses of the people and to introduce the element of compulsion into the new system of labor. These two motives are struggling with each other; their most prudent men endeavor to act upon the former but the masses are irresistibly carried away by the latter. And what is the result? The pro-slavery impulse is so strong as to override everything else, and the masses, yielding to that impulse, flatter themselves with the idea that, whatever they may do to offend the moral sentiments and the political notions of the Northern people, the President will be strong enough to carry the South back into influence and power in spite of what they call Northern radicalism.
Hence the new black codes which we see springing up in almost every State in the South; hence the laws depriving the negro of the right to hold property and thus to secure a home for himself and his children; hence the general opposition to the education of the colored people; hence the passage of vagrant and labor laws of so offensive a nature as to oblige even the President, who certainly is not disposed to interfere with such proceedings more than is absolutely necessary, to set them aside by military orders.
And what will be the consequences? It is my deliberate conviction, based upon a knowledge of facts diligently gathered and carefully considered, that the late rebel States, if restored to their position of influence and power in the Union and to the full control of their home affairs in their States to-day, would at once proceed to establish a system of servitude and compulsory labor as similar to the old form as possible without being actually slavery based upon property in man; but so far from being in any way similar to free labor and from being in harmony with the general spirit of our institutions, as to produce the same sectional divergencies which led to disloyalty in the South and to civil war in the United States.
I make this statement with so positive an assurance because I know it to be correct. It is in my opinion utterly absurd to expect anything else. I predicted in my official report to the President that all legislation in the rebel States with regard to the negro would have the tendency to make the negro who had ceased to be the individual property of a master, henceforth the property and slave of the community, and thus to build up a new peculiar institution. It seems the President thought I was not sanguine enough and that if we would only trust the Southern whites, the late masters would soon take their late slaves to their fraternal bosoms.
And what was the result? The Legislatures of the rebel States have meanwhile had time to speak, and there is hardly a State without its black code. Was my prediction wrong? You can see the President himself, through his military officers, busy issuing orders to set aside State laws which seem too offensive even to him.
But I ask you in all candor, if such offensive laws are passed while all prudent men in the South still think of the necessity of propitiating public sentiment in the North, what laws will they enact when such a consideration exists no longer?
I know time, and the slow but steady southward movement of a healthy public sentiment, will have a salutary influence and will gradually do away with many of the ills I have described. But, I repeat, you restore the rebel States, such as they now are, to influence and power in the Union and to unlimited control of their home affairs to-day or to-morrow, and you will witness a violent opposition to the fulfillment of our national obligations in concert with the disloyal elements in the North, and a most bloody reaction against the emancipation of the negro race in the South.
But I am asked are there no good men in the South striving to prevent such dire results? Yes, there are, a good many, even — and it may have seemed strange to some of you that in the course of my remarks I have made no allusion to them yet. Yes, there are such men, a good many, who honestly strive to disentangle themselves from their prejudices; who honestly endeavor to overcome the animosities and resentments of their neighbors; who honestly try to give the free negro laborers a fair chance; who honestly work to become good citizens and sincerely mean to do right. And why have I not spoken of them when describing the actual condition of things? Because that class of men is either not numerically strong enough, or not morally bold enough, to determine the general tone and character of Southern society. They are, in a great measure, the passive element. Where are they, when their neighbors elect the most offensive rebels they can find to offices of honor and influence? Where are they when their Legislatures pass black codes and vagrancy laws so offensive as to call for the interference of the military? Where are they when the most revolting atrocities are perpetrated upon the negro with impunity? Such men are very suitable for being exhibited to the North as pleasing specimens of Southern loyalty and good feeling, but the difficulty is that such prophets are not honored in their own country. It is the reckless spirit of the masses which rules it there, and which not only tramples under its heel the Unionist and the emancipated slave, but rides rough-shod even of the weak men with good intentions.
Such is the present condition of the rebel States through which I travelled. Alas, the picture is not a pleasant one for me to draw, and not a pleasing one for you to behold. Have I exaggerated anything? I wish I had, but I fear I have not. I know, for the report I rendered to the President, I have been much abused, but my conscience tells me that when the results of the investigation now instituted by Congress will be spread before the people, every fair minded man will discover that if I have erred at all, I have erred by being too mild in my statements and not by being too severe.
It has been said that we ought to be charitable in judging the Southern people; because they have, after all, done as well as we had a right to expect. This is true. We indeed no right to expect that after a fierce struggle of four years they would at once drop all their animosities and resentments; we had indeed no right to expect that after having jeopardized their all for slavery they would at once become devoted advocates of free labor and welcome the citizen in the former slave. But if we had no right to expect anything better of them then I declare any policy is worse than an absurdity, which is based upon the presumption that they actually will do better than we had any right to expect.
And what are the remedies for ills so violent and so dangerous? There are some measures which the necessities of the moment seem to demand.
Let the Government retain control of the rebel States until the passions engendered by the revolution and the general confusion of the transition period have subsided, and men in a cooler mood are more disposed to see that they cannot be just to themselves without being just to others.
In restoring power to those who so cruelly abused it, let us make haste slowly.
Let us, in shaping our general policy with regard to the rebel States, never lose sight of the following teachings of common sense:
And now, whatever disastrous acts may have been committed, let us hope it is not yet too late; for the spirit of the loyal people that gave victory to our arms has given us a Congress true to the cause of freedom. Let it be known and understood that the people and their representatives can count upon each other, and all may yet be well.