Scenes in Mobile—The Cotton Swindles.
Spring had ripened into fervid summer, as, after days of exquisite
sailing on the Gulf, we steamed past the forts where Farragut added the
latest laurels to our navy. Our pilot proposed taking us directly up the
river, but presently the Wayanda’s keel plowed deep into the oozy mud of
the channel, and admonished us that Mobile is an inland city, to which
ocean-going vessels may not always venture to ascend.
A boat’s crew was sent forward, and even it had a perilous passage among
the torpedoes which still lined the channel. Meantime we surveyed the
greenish mud of the river from all its possible aspects, and through the
long hours of a hot morning were taught the force of those early hopes
which, in 1861, led the Mobilians to believe that their torrid weather
and abounding mosquitoes would surely prevent the Yankees from making
any successful movement against the forts.
Here, through all that braggart spring, from day to day, resounded the
boasts of the young soldiers, who still thought war a sport like
horse-racing or dueling.[26]
The first volunteer companies, eager for Yankee scalps, and carrying
pine coffins among their camp equipage, in which, they had told their
wives and sweethearts, when they started, that they meant to bring back
the corpses of Lincoln and his Cabinet, were hurried here to possess the
forts, before “old Harvey Brown” should send over some of his regulars
from Fort Pickens. Here Colonel Hardee experienced the difficulty of
making gallant Southerners conform to his own tactics; and here, amid
their champagne, the brave fellows murmured at being kept ditch-digging,
when they wanted to be led at once against the cowardly Yankees. Here
John Forsyth, at once Peace Commissioner and professional inflamer of
the Southern heart, (now desirous of renewing his old vocation,[27])
took Dr. Russell and other foreign visitors to show them model
fortifications and model soldiers. By and by there was need for more
serious work to the northward, and the young volunteers, their champagne
and _patés_ ruthlessly thrown out of the wagons, were taught on Virginia
fields the beginnings of real war.
At last a light side-wheeler came steaming down the river for us, and
presently we were joined by General Gordon Granger, and the whole array
of city officials, representing the Yankee Government in the city. Among
them was a keen-looking, suspiciously-elegant cotton agent, shirt and
fingers ablaze with diamonds, and face wreathed in smiles, to meet the
gentlemen whom he supposed all-powerful at the Treasury Department. He
was enamored of the South; thought it would be best now not to irritate
her, and especially that there should be no more offensive abolitionism
than was absolutely necessary. He doubted very much the policy of
talking about negro suffrage, and was sure he could do better for the
Government in cotton by conciliating the Southern character. Besides,
the negroes ought to be under some rigid control any way. If left to
absolute freedom, they would not work, and the country would be ruined.
Secretary McCulloch once said: “I am sure I sent _some_ honest cotton
agents South; but it sometimes seems very doubtful whether any of them
remained honest very long.” This man, who greeted us with such bright
smiles and smooth-spoken talk, has since been fined two hundred thousand
dollars and sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment for cotton stealing!
With attention about equally divided between the dangers of our
tortuous, torpedo-lined passage, and the “thunders” of the salute to the
Chief-Justice, we finally reached the tumble-down wharves. Planks had
been torn up for squares along the levee to make fire-wood, and the bare
sleepers were rotting from exposure; elsewhere the decayed planks
rattled ominously under carriage-wheels, and disclosed here and there
ugly holes that might prove dangerous to unwary walkers. Half the
warehouses and shops along the levee seemed closed; a few transports
only lay at the landing, and anchored off in the stream were portions of
Farragut’s famous fleet; but of the commerce that once made Mobilians
dream of rivaling New Orleans, scarcely an indication remained.
When one entered the city, however, save in the universal torpor of
business, and the presence of soldiers at every corner, few traces of
the war were to be seen. The shrubbery was as glorious as ever—a little
more luxuriant indeed, since the pruning-shears had perforce been idle
for a year or two. Lovely country villas still lined the shell-road,
which was once the glory of Mobile. There were hedges of Cherokee rose,
and arbors of Scuppernong grapes, groves of orange-trees, and everywhere
the glossy leaves of the magnolia, gleaming and shimmering in the
sunlight, as the wind stirred them. A better hint that the war had
wrought its changes was to be gathered when one came to pay the bill for
an hour’s drive. The craziest, ricketty vehicle, with a single seat,
cost ten dollars.
Everywhere the Rebel soldiers clustered on the corners, or mingled in
the throngs about the bar-rooms and hotels. They still wore their
uniforms, for the best of reasons—they had no other clothes to wear; but
nothing could have been more unexceptionable than their general conduct.
“I tell you, sir,” exclaimed one of our Generals, in a burst of
enthusiasm, “I tell you, they are behaving splendidly. In fact, sir,
these Rebel soldiers are an honor to the American name.”
“You’ve whipped us,” said one of their officers, with whom I had been
carrying on a desultory conversation, “and you did the work thoroughly.
I think too much of the bravery of our army and of my own honor to admit
that we would have surrendered if we had _not_ been thoroughly whipped.
Of course, then, we’ve had enough of it. If we hadn’t, we’d have fought
on. As we had, we mean to d——n politics, try and get some clothes, and go
to making money.”
Nearly all the old inhabitants of Mobile were in the city when it fell,
and very few had yet procured the means, even if they had the desire, to
leave. Stores that had been closed for months, or even years, were being
reopened, in the hope that the antiquated stocks of goods might bring in
some trifle in a currency no longer worthless, to supply the wants of
the family. A large furniture store was pointed out, where the owner had
sold enough to supply himself with the immediate necessaries of life,
and had then closed again, declaring that he wouldn’t sell another
article till fall. His explanation gives a curious glimpse into the
condition of the people. Everybody, he said, wanted to buy, and nobody
had any money. When they began to sell their lands or their cotton, and
get money, he was ready to resume business; but till then, it would ruin
him to have his store open. If he refused credit, he would make all his
old customers enemies; if he gave credit, he would soon be bankrupt. To
save himself from destruction, there was absolutely no way but to bolt
his doors and put up his window-shutters!
* * * * *
Cotton was beginning to come out, but the enormous frauds which have
since made the very name of cotton agent odious were then only in their
infancy, and there is no reason to suspect that at that time the Mobile
agent already referred to, who subsequently gained such a disgraceful
notoriety, contemplated any other rascality than a swindle of the “Rebel
holders,” that should still seem technically honest in the showings to
the Government.
But the germ of all the difficulties had already made its appearance.
There were, as the officials believed, in Mobile itself, six thousand
bales, and in the adjacent country not less than one hundred and twenty
thousand, which captured records showed to be the property of the Rebel
Government. Much of this was soon in the hands of private parties, who
professed to have bought it from the Rebel authorities in good faith, to
have given adequate compensation for it, and therefore to be now its
legitimate owners. What was to be done in such a case? Or again:
Planters had subscribed large amounts of cotton to the Rebel loan, under
the same species of coercion by public sentiment which filled the Rebel
ranks with men who had sturdily voted against secession in all its
stages. The authorities had never removed the cotton; the former owners
had been compelled to take care of it; they had steadily kept possession
of it all the time, and they now claimed this possession to constitute
ownership, arguing, plausibly enough, that their compulsory contracts
(by subscription) with the Rebel Government had never been carried out,
and that now it ill became the United States Government to undertake
their enforcement. In other ways, and by all manner of side issues, the
subject had become so inextricably complicated that the immediate
representative of the Treasury Department in our party was at his wits’
ends.
Naturally, Mr. Chase’s opinion had great weight, and it was freely
given. He thought it wiser and better for the department over which he
had presided, and which was now administered by one of his own most
trusted appointees, to wash its hands of the whole business. Here was a
quantity of cotton promised under compulsion to the Rebel Government.
They never came to take it; in most cases it was never actually in their
possession; it was now in the hands of its old owners. It would better
comport with the dignity of a great and successful nation to leave it
among this impoverished people, rather than enter into a confused
scramble against ready swearers and men who felt that they were being
cheated out of their all, in order to gather up and auction off the
beggarly effects of the bankrupt Confederacy. In any event, the
Government would be apt to realize very little from the effort, and it
would lose far more in a wasted opportunity for diffusing good feeling
and promoting the revival of industry than it would gain in cotton.
Weeks, indeed, before this, while the party was at Key West, Mr. Chase
had foreseen, from the indications along the Atlantic coast, the
troubles in store, and had suggested what seemed to him the wisest
policy for avoiding them. He would have had the President issue a
proclamation setting forth substantially:
1st. That all present holders of cotton sold or subscribed to the
Confederate Government, but never delivered, should be recognized as its
lawful owners, on the ground that the consideration for the stipulated
transfer had failed.
2d. That a general amnesty should be accorded to all persons willing in
good faith to take the required oaths, and aid in the re-establishment
of civil government; and that the Executive influence should be given
for the repeal of all confiscation laws.
3d. That this (which should be done, in order to show the Rebels now
returning to their allegiance, that the Government was magnanimous, and
not mercenary, as well as to relieve the general distress, and aid in
the revival of industry and the return of prosperity,) must be
accompanied or preceded by the adoption of fundamental laws in the
States thus generously dealt with, which should permit no distinction of
rights based merely on color; that thus the principal source of trouble
in the future might be avoided.
Time will show—indeed, most men will agree that it has already shown—the
wisdom and statesmanlike sagacity of the views thus early presented to
the consideration of the President. That they would have been gladly
accepted by the South, every man who saw the temper of the Rebel States
in the May and June following the surrender is well assured. How much
political embarrassment and pecuniary corruption their adoption would
have saved can only be told by those who have probed to the depths the
festering corruption of the cotton agency system, and who can forecast
the issues of the present Congressional and Executive complications.
I speak advisedly in saying that every Rebel State would have promptly
reorganized under such conditions, and that the majority in Congress
would have as promptly admitted their representatives.
But, so far as the political points were concerned, they had already
been adversely decided at Washington. As to the question of cotton, Mr.
Mellen, in whose charge the entire matter was placed, without
controverting the views above suggested, was unable to accept and act
upon them. His instructions contemplated making the most out of the
captured cotton. To give it away would at once be denounced as a corrupt
waste of great sums of the public money. It was replied that this cotton
was not the same as public money or even public property now in hand;
that it was not actually captured; was scattered over hundreds of miles
of territory; was only known by uncertain records to have been
subscribed to the Rebel Government; could not be found without
protracted search, nor without protracted examinations in each case,
which opened up boundless opportunities for bribery and wholesale
frauds; in short, that no effort could be made to collect this cotton
which would not end with little profit and less credit to the
Government.
Mr. Mellen earnestly desired to do the right thing. Much abused as he
has been, I have never seen an official charged with such weighty
responsibilities, and so liable to slanderous accusations, whatever
course he should take, who seemed more earnestly and sincerely bent on
simply finding out his duty, and then doing it with his whole mind and
heart. But as to the general policy of making the most out of the
effects of the Rebel Government, whatever might be his own opinions, his
instructions left him no discretion.
The work of cotton seizure therefore began. Before these records of
Southern travel are finished, there will be ample opportunity to tell
how it ended.
* * * * *
Alabamians had as yet scarcely recovered from the shock of the
surrender, and few in the country adjacent to Mobile had formed any
definite plans for the future. Some thought of going to Brazil; some
wanted to plunge into Mexican broils; a few wanted to get away from the
“sassy free niggers” by going North. Scarcely any seemed to regard their
chance of cultivating their lands by free negro labor as hopeful, and
the most had a vague, uncertain idea that in some way or another they
would have to give up their lands. Still there were scarcely any sales,
and prices had found no settled standard. Some would take one-tenth of
what used to be considered the value of their estates; others would be
satisfied to sell their plantations for the cost of the buildings which
stood upon them. Nearly all were without faith in greenbacks. If they
sold at all, they must get something for their lands. They didn’t want
much, but what they did want must be in gold.
There was general uncertainty, however, as to whether they had any right
to sell, or whether the titles they might execute would be valid. They
were not willing to believe it possible that an attempt would be made to
enforce so absurd a piece of legislation as the Yankee confiscation law,
but still there was no telling!
Communication with the interior was still very difficult. They could
reach Selma and Montgomery by a week’s steamboating, and the Tombigbee
would take them to Demopolis, but trips were rare; and though Mobile was
the necessary political and business heart of the State, this heart’s
circulation was yet so impaired, that it neither strengthened nor was
strengthened thereby. What was said at Mobile, therefore, was not, as
formerly, the concentrated thought of the State, gathered there through
all its converging lines of approach, but rather the thought of those
who were accustomed to speak for the State, at a period when almost
completely isolated from their constituents.
Railroads were not in running order, nor likely to be for some months.
The war had destroyed their rolling stock. Some were left without cars;
nearly all without good locomotives. Bridges were burnt; rails were torn
up and twisted for miles and miles; the companies themselves were
utterly impoverished; and unless they could get unlooked-for aid, most
of them would have to go into liquidation.
* * * * *
To the courtesies of a serenade, drives, rides, dinners, and innumerable
calls, the officials added a review of the entire military force in and
about Mobile, in honor of the Chief Justice.
The Mobile men gathered about the corners, or sullenly contemplated the
pageant from their windows, but scarcely a lady could be seen. They had
neither smiles nor glances, just then, for the garrison of the
conqueror. One needed indeed to be sanguine, as he watched the scene,
and especially as he studied the bearing of the inhabitants, not to
think of Warsaw.
General Granger, a fine, soldierly-looking person, with face browned by
many a campaign, and a history through the war, from its very inception
down to his last action, at the head of the land forces co-operating
with Farragut in the attack on Mobile, that makes soldiers always ready
to follow where he leads, took his station, with the Chief Justice by
his side, and a showy staff surrounding them, at the crossing of the
principal streets. Regiment after regiment marched past, whose banners,
as they drooped low in salute, showed names of nearly every battle in
the war. One came up with swinging, steady tramp, but with ranks sadly
thinned, though often recruited. Its tattered and stained standards were
crowned with the name of the first great conflict of the West. In their
young, fresh beauty they had waved where Lyon fell.
Infantry, artillery, and cavalry streamed by, and then came the sight
which brought curses to the mouths of nearly all the onlookers. The
negro troops marched very handsomely, and made, perhaps, the best
appearance of any regiments in the column; but every citizen seemed to
consider their appearance as a personal insult to himself. That the
“miserable runaway niggers” behaved so handsomely only aggravated the
offense. “There’s my Tom,” muttered a plethoric old citizen, while the
natural red of his face inflamed to purple. “How I’d like to cut the
throat of the dirty, impudent good-for-nothing!”
But no such voices reached the party surrounded by the glittering staff.
The subjugation was as yet too fresh and real. One had to mingle with
them to find how sore they were at the degradation of being guarded by
these runaway slaves of theirs. To be conquered by the Yankees was
humiliating, but to have their own negroes armed and set over them they
felt to be cruel and wanton insult. Yet they scarcely dared still to
speak of it above whispers, and their combination of rage and
helplessness would have been ludicrous, but for its dark suggestions of
the future.
The review occurred early in the morning, and the heat did not seem
oppressive to us, quietly remaining about the hotel; but a portion of
our party who were out riding found it intense, and in the course of the
day there were several deaths in the suburbs, chiefly among Northern
men, from sun-stroke. But the general testimony of Northerners in Mobile
is to the effect that they find but little difference between people
from the different sections in their capacity for enduring the heat.
Only its long continuance, they say, and not its intensity, makes the
Southern summer dangerous to Northern men.
General Andrews, three or four years ago a briefless young lawyer in a
remote Minnesota village—such have been the rapid promotions the war has
offered—showed us through the portions of the city destroyed, only a
week or two before, by perhaps the most destructive explosion that ever
devastated any American city. How it originated will be forever a
mystery. Every one who might explain it perished. There were large
quantities of ammunition stored near the upper end of the landing, and
in the heart of the cotton warehouses. One of the concealed torpedoes
left by the Rebels may have been touched; Rebels may themselves have
stealthily arranged a system of wires to explode it; a percussion shell
may have been dropped; some reckless dare-devil may have been smoking a
cigar. However it occurred, there was a sudden roar in the midst of the
busy throng of workmen and soldiers, and one common, instantaneous
destruction overwhelmed them all.
Over four-fifths of the entire storage of the city was destroyed. A
hundred mules were buried in a single corral. Days afterward corpses of
here and there a hapless soldier began to be dug out by those who cared
to risk exposure to the scattered shells still hourly exploding. Even
when we drove down into the ruins we heard now and again a dull, heavy
thud, like the stroke of some ponderous weight against the solid earth.
It was a shell buried far beneath the rubbish of fallen houses, and
fired by the heat that still smouldered across whole squares.
Long before we reached the scene of complete destruction, we came upon
houses shattered, bottom stories bereft of superstructure, door and
window-frames driven in, gable-ends standing up alone, without the roofs
they were raised to bear. The streets were filled with the rubbish. Here
was a little fragment of a wall, twenty bricks, perhaps, lying sidewise
as they fell, still fastened by the unbroken mortar; there the whole
outer course of a gable-end dropped flat, and paving the street. Other
walls would still be standing; but six or eight feet from the ground the
outer course of bricks had been abruptly started outward an inch or
more, and thence upward the wall imitated the direction—but by no means,
as we momentarily witnessed, the security—of the leaning towers of Pisa.
All this passed, we came to the scene of actual explosion. Here, for
eight or ten squares, was one waste of broken brick and mortar, still
smouldering and smoking, and still—horrible thought!—roasting beneath
this parched debris its human victims. Solid warehouses, chimneys,
cotton-presses, machinery, all had been flattened as a whirlwind might
flatten a house of card-boards.
It was a sickening sequel to such a scene to listen, as we afterward
did, to the descriptions by our surgeons in the old United States
hospital, of the condition in which the Rebels had left it, filthy to
the last degree, full of neglected sick men, destitute of medicines, or,
indeed, of the commonest hospital comforts. Several of the surviving
victims of the explosion had been brought here, who all seemed to
attribute it to Rebel torpedoes, fired by design.
Among the soldiers who filled the other wards, it was curious to watch
the recognition of the Chief Justice, by his likeness on the one-dollar
greenbacks. Finally he entered into conversation with a soldier in one
of the outer hospital tents, who told him he was from Ohio. “Ah, so am
I.” “Are you? from what part?” asked the soldier. “Don’t you know Mr.
Chase, your former Governor?” suggested General Andrews. “O yes; but,
Governor, you must remember we haven’t seen any of them greenbacks o’
your’n for so long, we’ve kinder forgot the look o’ your features!” It
seemed the paymaster had neglected him.
-----
Footnote 26:
One of the best private libraries I have ever seen in the South
belongs to a wealthy young Kentuckian, who has had a handsome
catalogue of it printed. The books are classified for enumeration
under subjects. Under the head of “Sports” were set down, first came
others on the laws and usages of dueling! I was assured that the
classification was intentional, and in accordance with Southern
ideas., some works on gunning, fishing, cock-fighting, etc. Among
these
Footnote 27:
He was subsequently permitted to renew it. Shortly afterward, copying
and indorsing the foolish falsehood that Chief-Justice Chase had given
it as his opinion, since his Southern tour, that the negro race would
speedily root out the whites throughout the Gulf States, he thought it
wise and in good taste to say:
“The Judge, before he made his recent tour through the South, believed
that every white man within these States was too lazy to work, and,
instead of going out in the morning to get the meat that was desired
for dinner, would seize a young negro and pitch it into the
dinner-pot, to be served up for the post-prandial meal. By diligent
inquiry he found out that this was not true; and so he agreed to make
a compromise between his prepossessions and the facts he discovered in
his journey. The result is announced in the telegraphic report which
we reprint above. We do not eat little negroes, as he believed, but we
are so lazy that he seems to be fearful that, as we do not eat them,
we are bound, from our demoralized condition, to be presently eaten by
them. Well, this is what he has been teaching for many years—the right
of the negro to eat the white man.
“But why should a sensible man deal with such folly? The expression of
it shows with how little wisdom the world is governed, and shows,
moreover, how little wisdom there is in the fanatical hosts of which
Judge Chase is the most conspicuous member; and yet this man was feted
and caressed in his travels through the South, by Southern men and
Southern women.”