Talks with the Citizens, White and Black.
One morning we were interrupted at lunch by a message that Mr. Durant
had called with the party for whom he had made the engagement yesterday.
Remembering that Mr. Durant had promised to bring around some of the
“ancient freedmen,” as they were called—that, is the free negroes of
French descent—I went out a few moments afterward to witness the
interview. A group of gentlemen stood about Mr. Chase in the library,
and one, a bald-headed, gray-bearded, vivacious, youngish-old man was
making an animated little address.
I felt sure that here was a mistake. Imagining that some other party had
got into the library by accident—some delegation of Rebel lawyers,
perhaps, to remonstrate against the test oath—I turned into the parlors
to hunt up Mr. Durant and his French negroes. But they were nowhere to
be found; and returning to the library, I saw in the furthest corner Mr.
Durant himself, listening to the talk of the bald-headed old spokesman.
Even then it was hard to realize that these quiet, well-bred gentlemen,
scarcely one darker than Mr. Durant himself—many of them several shades
whiter—were negroes, to be seen walking with whom on the streets of New
Orleans was social disgrace. Before their call was concluded, old Mr.
Jacob Barker was shown into the parlor. The eminently respectable and
conservative old banker looked more like a negro, in point of
complexion, than any one out of the twelve or fifteen in Mr. Durant’s
party.
Every man of them was well educated. All spoke French fluently; the
English of all was passable, of some perfect. Some of them were
comparatively wealthy, and all were in easy circumstances. They simply
asked the Chief Justice to represent to the President, in their behalf,
that they paid heavy taxes to support schools for the whites, and could
get none for themselves; that they paid heavy taxes to support city and
State governments, and were without voice in either; and that they
desired to ask whether this accorded with Mr. Johnson’s well-known ideas
of genuine democracy? They had been citizens of an Empire; when the
Republic bought Louisiana they were disfranchised. Now that the Republic
was beginning a new life, could it longer refuse them such rights as the
Empire had accorded? What answer can legislators give who profess to
believe the Declaration of Independence, and who cheerfully confirm a
full-blooded Indian in a conspicuous position on the staff of their
Lieutenant General?
One pleasant afternoon, when the June sun was a little less fervid than
usual, and a moist breeze blew across the lake, we drove up the levee,
past elegant country places, embowered in shrubbery and half concealed
from the road by luxuriant hedges of Cherokee rose, to the residence of
Mr. Roselius, to keep an engagement for dinner. Our genial old host came
running out to greet us, hurrying like a boy down the high steps, which,
after the prevailing fashion in this moist climate, lead directly from
the paved walk to the second-story veranda. A dozen or more gentlemen
were in the parlor. Among them I remember two or three noted New Orleans
lawyers, one or two sugar-planters who had been absent in Europe during
the war, and a Spanish officer, fresh from some one of the perpetually
recurring South American revolutions. One noticed here, as at most of
the formal dinner parties given during our stay, and at my subsequent
visits to the city, the absence of all ladies save those of the host’s
household. Indeed, except in peculiar cases like this, the prevailing
idea of a dinner in New Orleans seems to have for its leading feature
copious libations of a great many kinds of the choicest wines—to be
licensed by the earliest possible retiracy of the hostess.
Among Mr. Roselius’s guests that evening was a modest-looking little
gentleman, of retiring manners, and with apparently very little to say;
though the keen eyes and well-shaped head sufficiently showed the
silence to be no mask for poverty of intellect. It was Mr. Paul Morphy,
the foremost chess-player of the world, now a lawyer, but, alas! by no
means the foremost young lawyer of this his native city. “If he were
only as good in his profession as he is at chess-playing!” said one of
the legal gentlemen, with a shrug of his shoulders, as he spoke in an
undertone of the abilities of the elder Morphy, and the hopes that had
long been cherished of the son. They evidently looked upon the young
chess-player as a prosperous banker does upon his only boy, who persists
in neglecting his desk in the bank parlor and becoming a vagabond
artist.
The gentlemen just returned from Europe expressed their astonishment at
the fortunes that had been accumulated by shrewd adventurers during
their absence. Men whom they had left the masters of Carondelet Street,
they found in a state of genteel beggary. New names had arisen, unknown
to their four-year old memories of the city. “By the way, Mr. Durant,”
said one, “how does it happen that you haven’t profited more by your
chances—become Governor, or Senator, say, if you didn’t care for any
more money?”
“I should have blushed if Cato’s house had stood secure
And flourished in a civil war,”
was the ready and only response.
Political subjects were scarcely alluded to; but, after the party had
rejoined the ladies, or strolled out among Mr. Roselius’s olive and
orange-trees, it was easy to see that the feeling of the Unionists was
by no means sanguine. Some insisted that the Rebels were certain to
resume control at the first election; others hoped for better things,
but frankly added that there was no security save in the interference of
Congress. “Let this election go on,” said Mr. Durant, “and a Legislature
will be chosen which wouldn’t hesitate at sending John Slidell and Judah
P. Benjamin to the Senate again! Perhaps policy would prevent the choice
of just those men; but the only change would be in the substitution of
persons with the same principles and less ability. If you don’t get
brilliant and artful Rebels, the lack of genius will be made up by
malignity.”
* * * * *
Remembering that this Legislature subsequently did elect Mr. Randall
Hunt, I have recalled with special interest the impressions left by the
conversation of that gentleman, one morning, when he came to breakfast
with the Chief Justice, to whom he is remotely related by his marriage
into the family of the late Justice McLean, of the Supreme Court.
Mr. Hunt is in the prime of life, though his constitution seems somewhat
broken, and his nervousness is extreme. He has been for years one of the
leading lawyers of New Orleans. The secessionists seem to regard him as
the foremost orator now left them. The Unionists concede that he is a
fine speaker, but describe him as given to painfully elaborate rhetoric
and ornate delivery. I have been told by Governor Hahn that Mr. Hunt was
once asked by General Banks to give up the Rebel cause, and unite in the
Free-State movement. It was intimated that, in return for his influence,
the Governorship of the State would await his acceptance. Mr. Hunt took
a day to consider the matter; then replied that he had supported the
Rebel side, was thoroughly committed to it, had near and dear relatives
by his advice then out in the armies fighting for it, and could not
think of abandoning them! Possibly a whisper of this bit of secret
history may have since helped in Mr. Hunt’s election as United States
Senator by the returned Rebels.
It was easy to see how earnest were his sympathies with the men who had
been fighting the Rebel battles. With him, as with most of the better
classes in the South, this feeling is wholly unaffected by the utter
defeat of all their hopes. To them the Rebel soldiers are still
patriots, defeated, but not disgraced, in an ineffectual struggle
against mercenary invaders; martyrs without the crown; heroes who have
hazarded everything for their native land, and who now deserve only
blessings from every true son of the State.
Reconstruction seemed to him an easy task. “We tried to leave the Union.
You have defeated us in our effort. What can there be, then, for us to
do but to return our Senators and Representatives to the Congress from
which we tried to withdraw forever? We acknowledge the defeat, and are
ready to send back our Congressmen. That is what you have been fighting
for; what more can the General Government have to do with the matter?”
The Amnesty Proclamation had just arrived. Like nearly all other men of
Southern sympathies, he thought the exceptions very unwise, and
needlessly irritating. “You’ve determined to keep us in the Union. Isn’t
it more statesmanlike, then, to avoid adding to our popular discontent?
Is it better to have us a conquered province, or an integral part of the
nation—better to have an Ireland on the Gulf, or a Scotland?”
The proposition for negro suffrage seemed to him utterly loathsome.
“Surely, sir,” said he to the Chief Justice, “you do not know the negro.
If you but understood as we understand the condition of these people,
their ignorance, their degradation, you would shrink back in horror from
your own proposition.” Mr. Hunt forgot that these once degraded
creatures had been rescued from their native barbarism, and, as he and
the other Southern orators have so often told us, had been elevated and
civilized by the Christianizing influences of the system of slavery! If
their degradation was now so horrifying, these gentlemen must have been
formerly mistaken in regarding slavery as such a Christian civilizer. If
they were mistaken then, it is among the possibilities that they may be
mistaken now.
It is a continual source of surprise to observe how these thorough-going
Southern gentlemen speak constantly of their knowledge of the negro, as
one might speak of the most recondite theorems of the differential
calculus. “If you only knew these negroes as we do—but, then, of course,
you can’t. Why, we were born among them!” To credit such persons, one
must regard the negro’s nature as something requiring very profound
study and long-protracted investigation. I happened to mention to Mr.
Hunt the story of “Old Sandie” of Key West. He considered it a very
surprising story, “if credible.” “But then, if you understood, from a
lifetime’s experience, the character and debasement of the negro, you
would not be misled by such exceptional cases.” I mentioned the
prosperity of the Sea Islanders, and their beginnings of
self-government. “You saw only the one side of the picture. If you had
been born among those people, you would have talked in a very different
way.”
Nothing short of this “being born among negroes” is accepted as
qualification for comprehending their nature. And I have observed that
the most strenuous in insisting upon it are able editors, eloquent
lawyers, and successful business men, who were born in the North, but
have lived so long South that they suppose their origin to be unknown.
Mr. Chase’s reply to the address of a negro delegation appeared in the
papers before we left the city.[34] It very briefly expressed his own
desire for negro suffrage, and his trust that the conduct of the negroes
themselves would be such that, sooner or later, it would be found
impossible longer to refuse it. The letter closed with a significant
sentence, looking apparently in the direction of the proposed policy
which Mr. Horace Greeley afterward condensed into the terse phrase,
“Universal amnesty and universal suffrage.” Not more than half the
nominal Louisiana Unionists, who had during the previous winter made up
the two or three factions of the Free-State party, would publicly
approve it. They thought negro suffrage might become a necessity; but
they still hoped something less offensive would offer safety, and
preferred to trust in Congress and wait for something to turn up. Only
those who followed Mr. Durant accepted the naked issue. They looked to
it as the only salvation of the Union cause; the only means for securing
the rights of the negro, or for protecting the credit of the Government.
The Rebels, meanwhile, considered Mr. Johnson’s North Carolina
proclamation as settling the question in their favor, and already began
to talk, in tones subdued only by the presence of the military
authorities, about soon putting an end to the career of nigger agitators
in Louisiana.
* * * * *
It was noticeable that General Banks, who had just been relieved, seemed
to have gained no popularity by his relaxation of Butler’s iron rule.
The returning Rebels appeared in no way grateful for any of the
concessions he was charged with having made to their prejudices. The
Unionists were in no way grateful for his late conversion to negro
suffrage. All described his administration as vacillating. When Butler
said a thing, they knew precisely what to expect. He might be severe,
but they always knew where to find him. Banks, they complained, had done
too little for the radical Unionists to command their confidence, and
too little for the reconstructing Rebels to command theirs. Possibly a
General who should have pleased any one of these parties would have
disobeyed his instructions; certainly he would have displeased the rest.
But, at the end, the man who marked out his own policy, and inflexibly
pursued it, was found commanding a certain sort of respect. All classes,
Rebel or Union, expressed it for General Butler. General Banks was less
fortunate.
The General was still occupying, with his hospitable family, the elegant
residence of an absent Rebel, in the Garden District. General Sheridan
was not less comfortably quartered; and one who had heard of Sheridan
and his bold riders only from the newspapers, would have been surprised
at being led over velvet carpets, through spacious saloons, to find
them. “I’d a great deal rather be allowed to take a good cavalry brigade
and cross the Rio Grande,” said the uneasy soldier. “I’d ride, with such
a force as that, from Matamoras to Mexico.”
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Footnote 34:
See Appendix, note C.