Mobile Loyalists and Reconstructionists—Black and White.
The political situation in Mobile, in the early days of June, might be
briefly summed up. They were anxious for a re-establishment of civil
government that would release them from suspense about confiscation.
They expected severe punishment for their rebellion, as far as civil
rights were concerned, but were disposed to put the best face possible
upon affairs, ask for a good deal, and take whatever they could get.
One day the Mayor called, together with his city council—a group of
fine-looking gentlemen, several of them past middle age. The Mayor
himself was a Northern man, who, years ago, had removed to Alabama and
identified himself with her interests. Of course, therefore, he joined
in the war against the Yankees, and professed no love for them now; but,
say what he might, he couldn’t help looking like the shrewd Yankee he
was. They were all “ready to accept the new order of things.” That is,
they knew they had to submit, and they preferred, by putting a good face
on it, to continue in their offices. That anybody wanted “acceptance of
the new order of things” to have a wider significance, I failed to
discover. The negroes were free; but to expect them to work, or even to
behave themselves, without coercive measures, was preposterous. Slavery
being destroyed, the Mobilians awaited the lead of the United States in
discovering some new mode of constraining service. The idea of service
without constraint never entered their heads.
Among the callers was a fine, courteous, florid-faced old gentleman,
with gray locks carefully collected behind into an antique queue, who
began his talk about “this unfortunate class of our population,” by
going back to the foundations of things. “You know they are the
descendants of Ham, sir, and that service in some form is their
heritage. It would be flying in the face of Providence to attempt
changing that. Now, sir, there are foolish fellows among them, who,
since they have been made free, want to rise from that sphere to which
they have been appointed. Of course, they’ll fail; we have no uneasiness
on that score; but we are the friends of these people, and we are sorry
to see them expose themselves to so much misery in making attempts that
we know from the outset must be abortive. Isn’t it better to have the
laws in some way take the matter out of their hands and make them work?”
I told the old gentleman of what we had seen at St. Helena. He utterly
refused to believe that free negroes could be self-supporting. General
Saxton had helped them, and stood in the place of a master to them. No
negroes were going to work steadily and successfully without the aid of
Anglo-Saxon organization and direction.
Negro suffrage seemed to all the most revolting of possibilities. They
were not willing to think their conquerors could mean to inflict such
degradation upon a gallant people. In fact, they wouldn’t—no, they
didn’t really think their population _could_ he brought to endure it!
Herein was observable a marked change of tone since our visit to the
cities on the Atlantic coast. There they were just as vehement in their
protestations against negro suffrage, but they ended in entreaties that
the conquerors would spare the infliction of such disgrace. Here came
threats. Everywhere else it was manifest that if the restoration of
civil authority depended on negro suffrage, then negro suffrage would be
accepted. Here, for the first time, we were told the people would not
stand it! The explanation is simple. They were just beginning to get a
knowledge of the North Carolina proclamation, and to imagine that the
President was willing to concede to them more power than they had dared
to hope. It was the old maxim illustrated once more. They had been
offered an inch; they were soon to be seen clamorous for ells.
A “reconstruction meeting” was called for the evening on which we left,
and men were busy consulting on plans to be pursued. The upshot of the
whole matter was that they meant to resist negro suffrage just as far as
they dared, and to seek a reconstruction that should let them back with
as few changes as possible.
All this was natural. It required small statesmanship at Washington, or
anywhere else, to comprehend it. They were powerless; they wanted to
make the best arrangement they could, but were sure to take, because
they must take, any they were offered. Down to the time when the terms
of the North Carolina proclamation came to be understood, we had found
the South like clay. The Washington potters could mold it to their
liking; it was only to be hoped they knew of what fashion republican
vessels should be shaped. But the moment they heard of that
proclamation, the late Rebels began to take courage on the question of
suffrage, and to suspect that they were not so helpless as they had
imagined. Even yet, however, the golden moment was not wholly past.
Less bitterness was observed than might have been expected. The most
heated manifestations were those of the returning Rebel soldiers against
some who had tempted them into the ranks. Here and there one heard of a
case in which returned soldiers had attacked or even hung citizens for
failures to keep their promises about supporting the families of those
who had volunteered. Northerners in Mobile had an idea that the presence
of our soldiers alone prevented such scenes in the city itself, and they
professed, on what authority I scarcely know, to enumerate at least
twenty cases of the kind in adjoining counties. But proofs were not
wanting of the spirit in which, to the very last, the conflict against
the Government had been waged. One of our officers, whose duty led him
to search for a quantity of Rebel manuscripts, by lucky accident
discovered in time a torpedo planted among them, and so arranged that
his movement of the papers would have been sure to explode it. The
spirit of unconquerable hate, after the battle was fought and lost,
could hardly go further.
* * * * *
“Where do you come from?” one of the party happened to ask a negro who
had been employed for some trifling service. “From Charleston, sah. I
b’longed to Massa Legree, uncle to the great lawyer.” Massa Legree had
proved worthy of the name which an Abolition pen has made immortal. He
had sold this man into Alabama fifteen years ago, and the gray-wooled
fellow said that since then he had neither seen nor heard from wife or
child. “But I’s much ’bliged to all the good gemmen and ladies as has
helped us to freedom. We’ll all s’port oursel’s now, and I’s hope soon
to hab money enough to go back and look for my old ’oman and babies.”
The poor man seemed to have no comprehension of the fact that his babies
of fifteen years ago were scarcely to be considered babies now.
He was right about their supporting themselves. During the preceding
month the military authorities had issued rations to the destitute
Mobilians, white and black alike. To the master race no less than
fifty-nine thousand rations had been given away by the Government they
had been trying to subvert. Among the negroes only eleven thousand and
eighty (or less than one-fifth as many,) had been needed. In June the
number of destitute negroes had decreased till they were drawing only
one-tenth as many rations daily as were required by the whites. A
stranger might have concluded that it was the white race that was going
to prove unable to take care of itself, instead of the emancipated
slaves, over whose future, unless brightened by some vision of
compulsory labor, their late loving masters grew so sad.
The explanation was a simple one. The negroes had gone to work: it was
the only way they knew for getting bread, except when the morals of
slavery had taught them to steal, and for that there was now small
chance. The whites had nobody left to go to work for them, and that was
the only way to get bread _they_ knew.
Throughout the city the negroes found plenty of employments. In the
country they were already talking of clubbing together and working
plantations. But I heard of no movement of this kind that promised
success. They had been accustomed to obey a common master; relieved from
his control, each one now wanted to set up for master on his own
account, and “boss” the rest. There was little doubt that they would
make enough to keep from starving; but there was no prospect of their
doing much more. Large cotton crops were not to be expected from any
plantation which negroes controlled.
An evidence or two appeared of the “war of races” which the mourners
over dead Slavery were predicting. Some negroes were heard of, at
Montgomery, who had come into the city with their ears cut off by their
former masters, in punishment for their assertion of their freedom. Of
course, such things were far from general; but the fact that they ever
occurred gave point to the occasional croakings about negro
insurrections. “Negro insurrections,” forsooth! We need new dictionaries
to help us understand one another, when knocking a man down for trying
the playful liberty of cutting your ears off becomes “insurrection!”
* * * * *
Mobile houses showed the straits to which the people had been reduced.
The pianos all jangled, and the legs of the parlor-chairs were out of
tune quite as badly. Sofas had grown dangerous places for any but the
most slow-motioned and sedate. Missing bits of veneering from the
furniture illustrated the absence of Yankee prepared glue. The glories
of fine window-curtains had departed. Carpets had in many cases gone for
army blankets.
We saw curious rough earthen mugs, that looked as if they had been dug
out of Pompeii, where they had been badly glazed by the heat of the
lava. These were specimens of home manufacture, to take the place of
broken glasses, and had been sold at several dollars apiece, Confederate
money. “It didn’t make much difference what they asked; it was about as
easy to pay ten dollars of that stuff as one. But look out that your own
greenbacks don’t soon get in the same fix.” A Rebel songster was a rare
prize, presented by a Mobile lady to one of our party. Its cover was of
wall paper, over which the title was printed; and the paper for the body
of the book was scarcely whiter.
Dinners were a sad trial to the old hospitable and luxurious
entertainers. They had fine wines left, but champagne must be taken in
plain tumblers, and enough to go around the table of one size or shape
could hardly be mustered, even with energetic borrowing. Sets of
dishes—whatever, in fact, was breakable—had undergone like disasters.
“But we’re all poor alike,” said a sprightly young friend of Madame Le
Vert’s. “It makes no difference to us here. Nobody can do any better;
so, what is the use of being unhappy about it. I wear this palmetto hat,
for example, made in Mobile. It doesn’t look like the elegant straws of
the Northern milliner-shops; but everybody has to wear palmetto, and so
I’m in the fashion. This silk may be very old-fashioned, and I’m sure
the style in which it’s made is; but how were you going to do any better
in Mobile? These gloves are not Jouvin’s best, but find me any Mobile
lady that has them. And as for shoes, we’ve all learned not to despise
calf-skin, or even something a good deal stronger.” And the little foot
gave a stamp that certainly never came from a New York gaiter boot.[28]
A wretched officer, who had been listening, had the heartlessness to
add: “And when we came here, a dozen of you could sit in a church pew,
where it is now crowded with only four or five.” It was true; even
crinoline had been added to Mobile wardrobes in less than a month. Most
of the dresses still gave ludicrous evidence that they had been made
with reference to less expansive underclothing.
Madame Le Vert herself, with a few other Mobile ladies, made up a
pleasant party to accompany us down the river to the forts, under whose
guns the Wayanda was lying. The noted little lady seemed to have gone
bravely through the war; though at its close she was reduced to quite as
great straits as the rest. She steered discreetly clear of dangerous
complications; scrupulously said “Confederate” in place of “Rebel,” and
“Federal” in place of “Yankee,” and could hardly consider her literary
labors ended till she, too, had contributed her book about the war.
All were bitter about the sudden collapse of the Confederate currency.
It had gone down until a dollar was worth only four or five cents, but
still it was worth something, “and Heaven knows,” ejaculated a lively
young person, “there was enough of it, such as it was.” But there was no
time for such conversions as were possible. There were opportunities for
buying real estate with it; Jew brokers were ready to buy up currency
and give gold; provisions might at least have been secured with it. But
hundreds of widows and orphans still had nearly their whole possessions
in Confederate currency; while General Maury assured them they need not
be uneasy; that he could hold Mobile against a six-months’ siege from
the whole army and navy of the United States. Till the last week, and
almost to the last day, the confidence of the most was unshaken. Without
a word of warning came the surrender, and in an hour thousands were made
penniless.
“You ask,” said one, “why so many white people are drawing rations. You
have the reason. Negroes had nothing, and lost nothing. We had what
passed for money; your entrance turns it into waste paper in our purses.
Of course, therefore, we are destitute.”
All this was plain; but the good Mobilians saw only in part. The negroes
had gone to work; the whites too often were listlessly awaiting events,
and talking of selling their houses or lands to get bread. The fresh
tide of Northern enterprise will soon sweep rudely enough against these
broken remnants of the _ancien régime_, and wash them under. The “old
families” seem, in many cases, exhausted of force and energy. They had
enough originally to gain position; they have not enough left now to
retain it; and it waits the grasping hand of the coming parvenues. “New
men” will soon be the order of the day, in Mobile and in many another
center of Southern aristocracy.
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Footnote 28:
Colonel Boynton, writing of his experiences in the interior rural
districts of North Carolina, three months later, found, in spite of
Wilmington blockade-running, a destitution far beyond that of Mobile.
“Everything has been mended, and generally in the rudest style.
Window-glass has given way to thin boards, and these are in use in
railway coaches and in the cities. Furniture is marred and broken, and
none has been replaced for four years. Dishes are cemented in various
styles, and half the pitchers have tin handles. A complete set of
crockery is never seen, and in very few families is there enough left
to set a table in a manner approaching gentility. A set of forks with
whole tines is a curiosity. Clocks and watches have nearly all
stopped. Clothing, including hats, bonnets, and ladies’ and children’s
shoes, are nearly all homemade. Hair-brushes and tooth-brushes have
all worn out; combs are broken, and are not yet replaced; pins,
needles, thread, and a thousand such articles, which seem
indispensable to housekeeping, are very scarce. Even in weaving on the
looms, corn-cobs have been substituted for spindles. Few have
pocket-knives. In fact, everything that has heretofore been an article
of sale at the South is wanting now. At the tables of those who were
once esteemed luxurious providers, you will find neither tea, coffee,
sugar, nor spices of any kind. Even candles, in some cases, have been
replaced by a cup of grease, in which a piece of cloth is plunged for
a wick. The problem which the South had to solve has been, not how to
be comfortable during the war, but how to live at all.”