Wilmington—Unionism—Blockade Running—Destitution—Negro Talk—Land Sales.
General Hawley, commanding at Wilmington, had come down to Fort Fisher,
on hearing of the arrival of our party, accompanied by General Abbott,
General Dodge, and a number of prominent citizens of North Carolina.
They were all transferred to our vessel, and, with the tide in her
favor, and under sail, the “Wayanda” astonished us all by steaming up
the river at the rate of fourteen knots an hour. Captain Merryman,
however, insisted she could do as much any time, only it wasn’t always
convenient to get her best speed out of her! And, of course, we were
bound to believe the Captain. Do we not make it a point of patriotic
duty to believe all the brilliant reports of the running capacity
displayed by our iron-clads and double-enders?
Blockade runners had been sunk for miles up the river, and in some
places the hulls and machinery still formed a partial obstruction to
navigation. Torpedoes, fished out by the navy, lay here and there along
the banks, and a few, it was said, were still in the channel, unless, as
was hoped, the tide had washed them away.
Among the North Carolinians accompanying General Hawley, were a couple
of gentlemen from Raleigh—Mr. Moore, a leading lawyer there, and Mr.
Pennington, the editor of the Raleigh _Progress_—who had come down to
Wilmington to see Chief Justice Chase. Another gentleman in the company,
introduced as “Mr.” Baker—a tall, slender man, of graceful manners, and
evident culture and experience—had been through nearly the whole war as
Colonel of a North Carolina Rebel regiment.
Strangely enough, Colonel Baker claimed to have been a Union man all the
time, from which some idea may be had of the different phases Unionism
in the South has assumed. His father had been a Unionist of unquestioned
firmness; but the son, returning from Europe in the midst of the
secession enthusiasm, found the social pressure of his circle too much
to withstand. “I was forced,” he naively said, “to raise a regiment in
order to retain my influence in the community!” And, with equal
_naïveté_, he added, that if he had not thus retained his influence, he
could now have been of no use in aiding to compose these difficulties!
He pointed out a fine rice plantation on the bank of the river, which he
had owned, but about his title to which, now, he seemed to have some
doubts. He claimed, and other Wilmingtonians agreed with him, that the
rice grown here is superior to that of South Carolina and Georgia, and
that its culture, in spite of the latitude, is quite as profitable.[7]
* * * * *
The gentlemen from Raleigh and Colonel Baker seemed each to be a
representative of a different phase of North Carolina Unionism. The
editor had always opposed secession till it was accomplished. Then he
was compelled to go with the current, but as soon as the first fury was
over, and the reaction began, he became openly anti-Davis, and as much
anti-war as he dared. He was an enthusiastic admirer of General Sherman;
thought the censure by the Northern press, of his arrangement with
Johnston, very unjust; was anxious now for the speediest possible
restoration of civil authority, and believed the people stood willing to
acquiesce in whatever basis of reorganization the President would
prescribe. If he had his way, he would have no negro suffrage; even that
would be preferable to remaining unorganized, and would be accepted by
the people, though it would cause great dissatisfaction.
The lawyer, on the other hand, insisted that none would revolt, with
more loathing, from the bare idea of negro suffrage, than the best Union
men in the State, who had suffered the most for their devotion to the
Government and opposition to the war. “It would not even be
satisfactory,” he insisted, “to leave the negroes, like other non-voting
classes, to take care of themselves. To leave them absolutely without
any control, save such as the law extends to white people, also, would
be unendurable. Either you must take pity,” he exclaimed, “on those of
us who, for four years, have endured everything for the sake of the old
flag, and send the negroes out of the country altogether, or you must
place them under the control of the Legislature.” “What policy toward
them would the Legislature be apt to adopt?” “It ought to provide
against vagrancy; adopt measures to require them to fulfill their
contracts for labor, and authorize their sale, for a term of years, for
breaches of order.[8] Either do that, and so protect us against an
intolerable nuisance, or colonize them out of the country.”
The Colonel was not so emphatic in favor of this virtual re-enslavement
of the negroes, nor so peremptory in his condemnation of negro suffrage;
but he thought it would be wise to conciliate as much as possible, and
to avoid deep-seated prejudices. It was easy to see that he was looking
to what would be the least unpopular with the people of North Carolina;
and, indeed, I heard later in the evening, that he was not unwilling to
ask them to send him to Congress.
Clearly enough, few Union men in the South, who have political
aspirations, can be safely expected to advocate justice, much less
generosity, to the negro, or severity to the Rebels. The latter are sure
to be voters—many of them now, after carelessly taking oaths of
allegiance—all of them some day; and politicians are not likely to make
haste in doing that which they know to be odious to the men whose votes
they want.
At a dinner party at General Hawley’s, and subsequently at a little
party, later in the evening, we saw and heard a good deal of the
feelings of the people. The women are very polite to Yankee officers in
particular, but very bitter against Yankees in general. Negro troops are
their especial detestation; and for the monstrosity of attempting to
teach negroes to read and write, they could find no words to express
their scorn. A young officer told me that he had been “cut” by some
ladies, with whom he had previously been on very cordial terms, because
they had seen him going into one of the negro schools! The men of North
Carolina may be “subjugated,” but who shall subjugate the women?
Governor Vance has been very unpopular, and the people seem to take
kindly enough to the idea that his authority will not be recognized.
They say he was a Union man in feeling and conviction, but that Jeff.
Davis, alarmed by the dissatisfaction in North Carolina, sent for him
about the time of his last election, and persuaded him that he could be
the next President of the Confederacy! The Presidential idea was as
baneful in Rebeldom, as it has proved to so many Northern statesmen, and
Vance was destroyed.
* * * * *
Every Northern man in Wilmington lives in the very best style the place
affords, no matter how slender his visible resources. I was the guest of
a civil officer whose salary can not be over two thousand dollars. His
home was a spacious three-story double structure, that would have done
no discredit to Fifth Avenue. You approach it through a profusion of the
rarest shrubbery; it was in the most aristocratic quarter of the city,
was elegantly furnished, and filled with servants—all on two thousand
dollars a year, less the Government tax. But this is modest and
moderate. The officer at least made the one house serve all his
purposes. Another—a Colonel on duty here—is less easily satisfied. He
has no family, but he finds one of the largest and best-furnished double
houses in the town only sufficient for his bachelor wants, as a private
residence. Another house, equally spacious and eligible, is required for
the uses of his office! And, in general, our people seem to go upon the
theory that, having conquered the country, they are entitled to the best
it has, and in duty bound to use as much of it as possible.
These houses are generally such as were shut up by their rich Rebel
owners on the approach of our troops below the city. The proprietors
have retired to adjacent country places, to be out of harm’s way till
they see how Rebels are to be treated, and already they are making their
calculations about returning in the fall, with a coolness almost
disconcerting to their self-appointed tenants. Mrs. General Hawley tells
a piquant story of a visit from the wife of a runaway Rebel, whose showy
but uncomfortable house the General has seized for quarters and private
residence. The lady made herself as agreeable as possible, spoke of the
General’s occupancy and her own absence, much as people who had gone off
to the sea-shore for the summer might speak of renting their town house
till their return; intimating that she wouldn’t hurry the General
commanding for the world, and hoped that he would remain with his family
until it was entirely convenient to remove, but suggested that she and
her husband thought they would probably return in a couple or three
months, when, of course, they supposed their house would be ready for
them! Confiscation seemed to have no terrors for her; or, if it had,
they were dexterously concealed under an air of smiling and absolute
assurance.
The loosest ideas prevail as to the execution of the
“abandoned-property” act of the Thirty-seventh Congress. Deserted
houses, not absolutely needed for military purposes, can be rented for
handsome sums, and to whatever amounts can be thus realized the
Government has an equitable as well as legal claim. But here, and report
says everywhere throughout the South, are evidences of the old clashing
betwixt War and Treasury Department officials; and between them, the
revenue the Government ought to derive from the abandoned property, is
sadly reduced.
The practice of regarding everything left in the country as legitimate
prize to the first officer who discovers it, has led, in some cases, to
performances little creditable to the national uniform. What shall be
thought of the officer who, finding a fine law library, straightway
packed it up and sent it to his office in the North? Or what shall be
said of the taste of that other officer who, finding in an old country
residence a series of family portraits, imagined that they would form
very pretty parlor ornaments anywhere, and sent the entire set,
embracing the ancestors of the haughty old South Carolinian for
generations back, to look down from the walls of his Yankee residence?
* * * * *
One sees, at first, very little in the mere external appearance of
Wilmington to indicate the sufferings of war. The city is finely built
(for the South); the streets are lined with noble avenues of trees; many
of the residences are surrounded with elegant shrubbery; there is a
bewildering wealth of flowers; the streets are full, and many of the
stores are open. Sutlers, however, have taken the places of the old
dealers; and many of the inhabitants are inconceivably helpless and
destitute. While I was riding over the city with Captain Myers, a young
Ohio artillerist, a formerly wealthy citizen approached him to beg the
favor of some means of taking his family three or four miles into the
country. The officer could only offer the broken “Southron” a pair of
mules and an army wagon; and this shabby outfit, which four years ago he
would not have permitted his body servant to use, he gratefully accepted
for his wife and daughter!
Struggling through the waste of sand which constitutes the streets,
could be seen other and more striking illustrations of the workings of
the war: a crazy cart, with wheels on the eve of a general secession,
drawn generally by a single horse, to which a good meal of oats must
have been unknown for months, loaded with tables, chairs, a bedstead, a
stove and some frying-pans, and driven by a sallow, lank, long-haired,
wiry-bearded representative of the poor white trash, who had probably
perched a sun-bonneted, toothless wife, and a brace of tow-head children
among the furniture; or a group, too poor even for a cart, clothed in
rags, bearing bundles of rags, and, possibly, driving a half-starved
cow. These were refugees from the late theater of military operations.
They seemed hopeless, and, in some cases, scarcely knew where they
wanted to go.
Few of the old residents of Wilmington are believed to have profited by
the blockade running. It was always considered a disreputable business,
in which a high-minded Rebel would not care to be thought concerned; and
so it fell chiefly into the hands of foreigners, and particularly of
Jews. A few prominent Richmond people were believed to be deeply engaged
in it—Trenholm, Governor Smith, Benjamin and Jeff Davis are all
named—but wherever the profits went, they did not go to a general
diffusion of property among the Wilmingtonians themselves.
Jay Cooke was under the impression that there must be a great deal of
gold throughout the Southern cities, and especially in this center of
blockade running, that ought to be available for the 7.30 loan; but the
testimony here goes to show that the wealthy people have most of their
gold abroad, and that they do not have a great deal of it anywhere.
Undoubtedly nothing would more tend to tie these people to the Union
than such a cord as a United States bond, connecting their pockets with
national permanence and prosperity, but they seem now hard enough
pressed to buy the necessaries of life; and money for investments in
national securities, is not likely to flow northward, for the simple
reason that it is not in the country.
* * * * *
Negroes are already beginning to congregate here from the surrounding
country. They do not wish to trust their old masters on the plantations;
and, without any definite purpose or plan, they have a blind, but
touching instinct, that wherever the flag is floating it is a good place
for friendless negroes to go. Others are hunting up children or wives,
from whom they have long been separated. Quite a number have been
located on plantations, and these are working better than could be
expected; but the uncertainty of their tenure of the land, the constant
return of the old proprietors, and the general confusion and uncertainty
as to the ownership of real estate, under the confiscation and
abandoned-property laws, combine to unsettle both them and the
Superintendents of Freedmen, who are trying to care for them.
The native negroes of Wilmington, however, are doing well. They are of a
much higher order of intelligence than those from the country; are
generally in comfortable circumstances, and already find time to look
into politics. They have a Union League formed among themselves, the
object of which is to stimulate to industry and education, and to secure
combined effort for suffrage, without which they insist that they will
soon be practically enslaved again. A delegation of them waited on Mr.
Chase; and certainly looked as well and talked as lucidly as any of the
poor whites would have done. There are a very few of the whites who
encourage them; but, in general, the bitterest prejudice against these
black Unionists, is still among those who have been the only white
Unionists—the often-described poor white trash.
The Wilmington negroes have no faith in the ready assent to the
proposition that slavery is dead, which all the old slaveholders give.
They say—and the negro refugees, all, and some of the whites bear them
out in it—that in the country slavery still practically exists. The
masters tell them that slavery is to be restored as soon as the army is
removed; that the Government is already mustering the army out of
service; that next year, when the State is reorganized, the State
authorities will control slavery. Meantime, the negroes are worked as
hard as ever—in some cases a little harder—and they have no more
protection from the cruelty of the whites than ever.[9]
“I tell you, sah” said a very intelligent negro, who had been reciting
the present troubles of his people, “we ain’t noways safe, ‘long as dem
people makes de laws we’s got to be governed by. We’s got to hab a voice
in de ‘pintin’ of de law-makers. Den we knows our frens, and whose hans
we’s safe in.”
The war, according to these negroes, had, in some respects, made slavery
harder for them than before. They were naturally trusted less, and
watched more. Then, when provisions became scarce, their rations, on the
large plantations, were reduced. On one, for example, the field hands
got no meat at all, and their allowance consisted of a peck of unsifted
corn-meal and a pint of molasses per week. On another, they got two
pounds of meat, a peck of meal, and a quart of molasses per week. Before
the war, they had double, as much meat, and a peck and a-half of meal.
Thus fed, they were expected to begin work in the fields at daybreak,
and continue, with only the intermission of half an hour at noon, till
dark.
In some cases the negroes, understanding that they are freed, have
refused to work without a contract for wages. Some of them have been
promised their board, and a quarter of the corn crop; others three
dollars for a season’s work; others a dollar and a-half or two dollars a
month. But the town negroes, especially those of the League, say they
have but little faith that the contracts will be kept.
* * * * *
Further conversation with the people led me to think that, in the main,
they might be divided into three classes. One, embracing, I think, a
majority of the people, is thoroughly cowed by the crushing defeat, has
the profoundest respect for the power that has whipped them so badly,
and, under the belief of its necessity, will submit to anything the
Government may require—negro suffrage, territorial pupilage—anything. A
smaller class are Union men, if they can have the Union their way—if the
negroes can be kept under, and themselves put foremost. And another
class are violent and malignant Rebels, enraged at their defeat, and
hardly yet willing to submit to the inevitable.
The loss of life has been frightful. Half the families are in mourning.
I hear of a Danville regiment, twelve hundred strong, of whom less than
fifty survive. Not less than eighty thousand arms-bearing men of the
State are believed to have been killed or disabled. This, and the
disorganization of the labor system, have naturally left thousands of
families through the State utterly destitute. Mr. Pennington, the editor
of the Raleigh _Progress_, predicts great distress next winter. In fact,
the Government is already issuing rations to thousands of destitute
whites.
As yet, notwithstanding their poverty and destitution, few of the large
landowners have put their estates in the market. No such feeling exists
here, however, as in Virginia, where the farmers are said to hold on
with a death grip to their lands, and to consider it discreditable to
sell to a Yankee. Many of the most violent Rebels here will sell at
exceedingly low rates, in order to get out of the country, where
everything reminds them of their mortifying defeat and disgrace. And of
those who remain, large numbers will be forced to sell part of their
lands, to get means for living comfortably on the remainder.[10] The new
blood, likely thus to be infused into North Carolina, will be its
salvation; and the capital which is now seeking openings for trade, will
presently find vastly more profitable returns from investments in lands.
General Hawley, General Abbott and their wives, the Collector, the
Treasury Agent, a party of staff officers and others, pursued us with
kindness till our vessel had absolutely pushed off from the almost
deserted wharf, which, four years ago, was crowded with the keels of a
thriving commerce, and even a year ago bustled with scores of
adventurous blockade runners. Trade, indeed, follows the flag; but for
trade you must have money; and of this there is far too little in the
exhausted country to bring back business into its old channels, as
speedily as Northern speculators are imagining.
Some of the officers and their wives came down with us in the river
steamer, to the bar, whither the “Wayanda” had returned to await us; and
kindly good-byes and fluttering handkerchiefs could still be heard and
seen after the vessels had each begun moving. At the North we think
little of loyalty; here loyal men, and especially those in the service
of the Government, seem drawn toward each other, as are men who serve
under the same flag in a foreign country.
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Footnote 7:
The farther north you can grow any grain, or other crop, and _mature
it_, the better it is—according to the theory of the North Carolina
planters. The rice crop is more profitable here, they claim, than on
the best plantations about Savannah.
Footnote 8:
In other words, call them freedmen, but indirectly make them slaves
again. The same idea seems to pervade the State, and, indeed, the
entire South. Colonel Boynton, a very intelligent and trustworthy
officer, writing from Danville, North Carolina, on the 21st of June,
said:
“The belief is by no means general here, that slavery is dead, and a
hope that, in some undefined way, they will yet control the slaves, is
in many minds, amounting with some to a conviction. They look for its
restoration through State action—not yet comprehending that the
doctrine of State sovereignty has been somewhat shattered by the war.
Here, as in Richmond, the people, instead of grappling with the fact
that the war has liberated the slaves, are very busy proving the utter
worthlessness of the negroes, and treating them with additional
cruelty and contempt—neither offering them fair inducements to work,
or working themselves.”
Footnote 9:
Numerous instances were told, while I was at Wilmington, but the
following case, related by Colonel Boynton, occurred farther in the
interior:
“Here in Salisbury, two prominent men are on trial by a military
court, for killing a negro, and one of the wealthiest, most refined
and respectable young ladies in all this section, is under twenty
thousand dollars bonds to appear and answer for shooting a negro woman
with her own hands. Miss Temple Neeley is considered one of the belles
of the State. The family is very wealthy, aristocratic, and all that,
and stands at the very top in this section. Her mother was flogging a
little negro child, when the mother of the child interfered to protect
it. Miss Neeley stepped up, and, drawing a revolver from her pocket,
shot the negro woman dead, firing a second ball into the body. She was
arrested, and will be tried by a military court. The papers here are
defending her, and trying to stir up the old feeling toward the
slaves, and excusing her under the black laws of the State.”
Footnote 10:
On the 1st of August a single real estate firm in Raleigh advertised
no less than _sixty-three_ different tracts of North Carolina lands
for sale at low rates, and on easy terms. Here are a couple of
specimens:
“We offer for sale one of the finest rice plantations in the State of
North Carolina, known as ‘Lyrias,’ and situated on the north-west
branch of Cape Fear river, three and a-half miles above Wilmington.
This plantation contains 275 acres, 250 of which are cleared, and 25
are river swamp lands. There is also an upland settlement attached,
with a dwelling-house, all necessary outhouses, comfortable quarters
for fifty laborers, and an excellent well of water.
“The rice lands, with the exception of about 20 acres, are of a clay
soil, of unsurpassed and inexhaustible fertility, and capable of
producing rice, corn, wheat, oats, peas and hay.
“It is every way susceptible of being also made a good stock farm, for
cattle and hogs, and an excellent market garden.
“The entire plantation is in _good order_. It has on it two commodious
barns, 100 by 40 and 75 by 60 feet, respectively. Also, a steam engine
of ten-horse power, together with a powerful pump, or water elevator,
worked by the engine, which throws out _two thousand gallons_ of water
per minute. Also, a threshing machine, in a building 25 by 85 feet.”
“All that really baronial estate, known as William S. Pettigrew’s
‘Magnolia Plantation,’ for sale cheap.—1,000 acres improved!—Over 600
acres in a high state of cultivation!—50, or over, bushels of corn per
acre!—Rich alluvial soils, suitable for farms and vegetable
gardens!—Only ten hours from Norfolk!—Water transportation from the
barn.—The far-famed ‘Scuppernong’ grape is a native of this county,
and grows in a luxuriant abundance unsurpassed in any country. The
residence, barns, out-buildings, groves, etc., etc., are _very
superior_. Good well of water, etc., etc.
“This very large, and really magnificent estate, contains seven
thousand acres of those rich alluvial Scuppernong river lands; one
thousand acres already _drained_, and most of it in a high state of
cultivation, and the whole of the rest can be easily and effectually
drained; thus opening up large plantations scarcely surpassed in
fertility by the Mississippi bottoms, which they greatly exceed in
proximity to markets, having cheap and easy carriage, almost, if not
quite, from the barn door to Norfolk, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New
York, Boston and the whole world!
“Sea-going vessels can now come within a few miles of the barn door,
and by deepening one canal, this desirable result can be obtained.”