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Transcriber’s note:
Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
Superscripts are denoted by a carat before a single superscript
character or a series of superscripted characters enclosed in
curly braces, e.g. M^r. or M^{ister}.
[Illustration]
AFTER THE WAR: A SOUTHERN TOUR
MAY 1, 1865, TO MAY 1, 1866.
by
WHITELAW REID.
[Illustration: Decoration]
Publishers:
Moore, Wilstach & Baldwin,
25 West Fourth Street, Cincinnati.
New York, 60 Walker Street.
London:
Sampson Low, Son & Co.
1866.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by
Moore, Wilstach & Baldwin,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Southern District of Ohio.
PREFACE.
With the exception of the unhealthy summer months, I spent the greater
part of the year following the close of the Rebellion, in traveling
through the late Rebel States, passing first around their entire coast
line; and, on subsequent trips, crossing by various routes through the
interior.
I have sought, in the following pages, to show something of the
condition in which the war left the South, the feelings of the late
insurgents, the situation and capacities of the liberated slaves, and
the openings offered, under the changed condition of affairs, to capital
and industry from without.
A couple of months, this spring, spent on the great cotton plantations
of the Mississippi Valley, enabled me to make a closer study of the
character of the average plantation negro than tourists have ordinarily
found practicable; and the concluding chapters are mainly devoted to
these observations.
* * * * *
A further word of explanation may be needed as to the part of the volume
describing the journey of Mr. Chief-Justice Chase. After the
inauguration of President Johnson, Mr. Chase determined to visit the
Southern cities, to learn as much as possible, from actual observation,
of the true condition of the country. The Secretary of the Treasury was
then about to send a revenue cutter to the New Orleans station, and on
board of her a special agent, charged with the duty of examining the
agencies, and carrying into effect the directions of the Department in
the several South Atlantic and Gulf ports. He tendered the use of this
vessel to the Chief-Justice, and orders were issued by the President and
the Secretaries of War and of the Navy, to the officers in the naval,
military, and civil services to afford him all facilities that their
respective duties would allow.
It was under these circumstances that the Chief-Justice made his
Southern journey. He had the best opportunities of information, and
communicated his views, from time to time, to the President. As a member
of the party on board the cutter, I thus enjoyed considerable, though,
in some respects, more limited opportunities of observation.
* * * * *
A small portion of the material in the following pages has previously
appeared in the journal with which I was connected, but it has all been
rewritten.
W. R.
LIBRARY OF THE HOUSE, }
Washington, May, 1866. }
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
PREFACE. iii
CHAPTER I.
Why, and How the Trip was Made. 9
CHAPTER II.
A School of Unadulterated Negroes—An Ancient Virginia Town under
the Dispensation of Sutlers. 13
CHAPTER III.
“Beauties of the Sea”—First Views of Cracker Unionism. 21
CHAPTER IV.
Newbern and Beaufort—Black and White. 28
CHAPTER V.
Fort Fisher. 37
CHAPTER VI.
Wilmington—Unionism—Blockade Running—Destitution—Negro Talk—Land
Sales. 42
CHAPTER VII.
Charleston Harbor—Could Sumter have been Stormed—Negroes and Poor
Whites. 57
CHAPTER VIII.
Charleston, Now and Four Years Ago. 65
CHAPTER IX.
“Unionism”—Black and White, in Charleston and Through South
Carolina. 75
CHAPTER X.
Port Royal and Beaufort. 87
CHAPTER XI.
Among the Sea Islanders. 94
CHAPTER XII.
Business, Speculation and Progress Among the Sea Island Negroes. 122
CHAPTER XIII.
Pulaski—Savannah—Bonaventure. 131
CHAPTER XIV.
White and Black Georgians—The Savannah Standard of Unionism. 142
CHAPTER XV.
Florida Towns and Country—A Florida Senator. 158
CHAPTER XVI.
Orange Groves and an Ancient Village—The Oldest Town and Fort in
the United States—Northern Speculations. 168
CHAPTER XVII.
Dungeness, and the “Greatest of the Lees”—Cultivation of the
Olive—Criminations of the Officers. 174
CHAPTER XVIII.
The Southern “Ultima Thule” of the United States. 180
CHAPTER XIX.
A Remarkable Negro Story—One of the Strange Possibilities of
Slavery. 189
CHAPTER XX.
Among the Cubans—The Impending Downfall of Cuban Slavery. 194
CHAPTER XXI.
Scenes in Mobile—The Cotton Swindles. 202
CHAPTER XXII.
Mobile Loyalists and Reconstructionists—Black and White. 217
CHAPTER XXIII.
New Orleans and New Orleans Notabilities. 227
CHAPTER XXIV.
The Beginning Reaction—Northern Emigrants and New Orleans
Natives. 236
CHAPTER XXV.
Among the Negro Schools. 246
CHAPTER XXVI.
Talks with the Citizens, White and Black. 259
CHAPTER XXVII.
A Free-labor Sugar Plantation. 268
CHAPTER XXVIII.
The “Jeff. Davis Cotton Plantation”. 279
CHAPTER XXIX.
Vicksburg to Louisville. 288
CHAPTER XXX.
General Aspects of the South at the Close of the War. 295
CHAPTER XXXI.
Mid-summer at the Capitol. 304
CHAPTER XXXII.
Richmond, after Six Months of Yankee Rule. 315
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Lynchburg—The Interior of Virginia. 328
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Knoxville and the Mountaineers—Glimpses of Southern Ideas. 339
CHAPTER XXXV.
Atlanta—Georgia Phases of Rebel and Union Talk. 355
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Montgomery—The Lowest Phase of Negro Character—Politics and
Business. 365
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Selma—Government Armories—Talks among the Negroes. 380
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Mississippi Tavern Talks on National Politics—Scenes in the
Interior. 390
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Mobile Temper and Trade—Inducements of Alabama to Emigrants. 400
CHAPTER XL.
Phases of Public Sentiment in New Orleans before Congress met. 407
CHAPTER XLI.
Cotton Speculations—Temper of the Mississippians. 414
CHAPTER XLII.
Memphis—Out from the Reconstructed. 425
CHAPTER XLIII.
Congress takes Charge of Reconstruction. 429
CHAPTER XLIV.
Southern Feeling after the Meeting of Congress. 439
CHAPTER XLV.
Political and Business Complications in the South-West. 448
CHAPTER XLVI.
The Sugar and Rice Culture in Louisiana—Profits and Obstacles. 457
CHAPTER XLVII.
A Cotton Plantation—Work, Workmen, Wages, Expenses, and Returns. 475
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Among the Cotton Plantations—Rations and Ways of Work. 492
CHAPTER XLIX.
Plantation Negroes—Incidents and Characteristics. 503
CHAPTER L.
Further Illustrations of Plantation Negro Character. 525
CHAPTER LI.
Payments, Strikes, and other Illustrations of Plantation Negro
Character. 546
CHAPTER LII.
Labor Experiments and Prospects. 558
CHAPTER LIII.
Concluding Suggestions. 574
Appendix. 581
AFTER THE WAR.
CHAPTER I.
Why, and How the Trip was Made.
The most interesting records of the great revolution just ending have
seemed to me to be those portraying the spirit and bearing of the people
throughout the South, just before and at the outbreak of the war.
Stories of battles, and sieges, and retreats, are kaleidoscopic
repetitions of deeds with which all history is crowded; but with what
temper great communities plunged into this war, which has overwhelmed
them, for what fancied causes, to what end, in what boundless
self-confidence and overwhelming contempt of their antagonists, with
what exuberance of frenzied joy at the prospect of bloodshed, with what
wild dreams of conquest, and assurance of ill-defined but very grand
honors, and orders, and social dignities—all this, as faithfully set
down by the few who had opportunities to observe it, constitutes the
strangest and most absorbing contribution to the literature of the
Rebellion.
So I have thought that what men now most want to know, is something of
the temper and condition in which these same communities come out from
the struggle. By the side of the daguerreotypes of the South entering
upon the war, even the hastiest pencil sketch of the South emerging from
the war may possess an interest and attraction of its own.
Therefore, when early in the month of April I was invited to accompany a
small party, bound on a voyage of official inspection and observation,
from Fortress Monroe around the whole Atlantic and Gulf Coast to New
Orleans, and thence up the Mississippi, I congratulated myself upon the
opportunity thus afforded of seeing, under the most favorable
circumstances, the Southern centers which had nursed and fed the
rebellion. Means of communication through the interior of the South are
so thoroughly destroyed, and Southern society is so completely
disorganized, that it is only in the cities one can hope for any
satisfactory view of the people. Even there the overshadowing military
authority, and the absence of all accustomed or recognized modes of
expressing public sentiment, as through the press, the bar, public
meetings, the pulpit, or unrestrained social intercourse, combine to
render the task of observation infinitely more difficult than at any
previous period.
But all the more, on these accounts, the Southern cities are the places
to which we must first look for any satisfactory idea of the Southern
condition; and a trip which embraces visits to Norfolk, Newbern,
Beaufort, Wilmington, Charleston, Port Royal, Savannah, Fernandina, St.
Augustine, Jacksonville, Key West, Mobile, New Orleans, Baton Rouge,
Natchez, Vicksburg, and Memphis, with visits to plantations all along
the route, and occasional trips into the interior, ought not to fail in
furnishing a good view of the gradual beginnings to crystallize again
out of the chaos to which the war had reduced one-third of the nation.
The trip would have been begun some weeks earlier, but for the deed of
horror in Ford’s Theater. But, as Secretary McCulloch well said, the
wheels of Government moved on without a perceptible jar; and the
arrangements of President Lincoln were only temporarily delayed by the
accession of President Johnson. An ocean-going revenue cutter was
ordered around from New York to Fortress Monroe for the party, and early
on the morning of the first of May, the cutter “Northerner” was
announced as in readiness to convey us to the Fortress.
In the afternoon an officer was good enough to bring me the following:
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, May 1, 1865.
Permission is granted Whitelaw Reid, Esq., to proceed by sea to New
Orleans, Louisiana, and return by sea or inland to Washington,
District of Columbia, and to visit any port or place _en route_ in
the lines of national military occupation.
[Signed,] ANDREW JOHNSON,
President of the United States.
I had not supposed a pass necessary; but as the rest of the party went
on official business, it had been thought best to cover my case with a
document, about the scope and authority of which no question could be
raised. At that time passes to visit many of the Southern points were
still eagerly sought and procured with difficulty. The War Department
was the place to which, in general, application was to be made, and the
speculative gentry who mostly wanted such favors, stood in wholesome awe
of the downright Secretary. A pass so nearly unlimited as mine was an
unheard of rarity, and before the afternoon was over, two or three who
had in some way found out that I had it, were anxious to know if “five
hundred or even a thousand dollars would be any inducement” to me to
part with it!
By nine in the evening the last of the little party had entered the cozy
cabin of the “Northerner.” There were the usual good-byes to the friends
who had driven down to the Navy Yard wharf to see us off; playful
injunctions from young officers about laying in supplies of cigars at
Havana, and from fair ladies about bringing back for them parrots and
monkeys, pine apples and bananas; some consultations among the officials
of the party; some final messages and instructions sent down at the last
moment by the Government: then fresh good-byes; the plank was pulled in,
and we steamed out into the darkness.
Everybody compared supplies with everybody else; it was found that there
were books enough in the party to set up a circulating library, and
paper enough for writing a three-volume novel; the latest dates of
newspapers had been laid in; the last issues of the magazines, and even
a fresh number of the old _North American_ were forthcoming; while
Napoleon’s _Cæsar_, in all the glory of tinted paper and superb
letter-press, formed the _pièce de résistance_ that bade fair to master
us all—as Horace Greeley used maliciously to say the old _National
Intelligencer_ mastered him, when he couldn’t get asleep in any other
way!