Montgomery—The Lowest Phase of Negro Character—Politics and Business.
From Atlanta I took the railway for Montgomery, Alabama. We had been
traveling, thus far, in third-class passenger cars. Now we came down to
box freight cars, around the sides of which a board bench was placed for
the accommodation of such passengers as cared to sit down.
* * * * *
“’Ere’s your Cincinnati and Nashville papers, Gazette, Commercial,
Press, and Times! All about the execution of Champ Ferguson!”
“Yes, and I wish it was all about the execution of the scoundrels that
tried him.”
The scene was a box-car on the West Point (Georgia) Railroad; the
speaker an Alabama planter, on his way home from Atlanta.
I have been seeking to exhibit, as fairly as I could, the actual talk
and temper, not of the office-holders or office-seekers, who are, of
course, all things to all men, but of the people one meets on the cars,
in the hotels, at the wayside, and on the plantations. The expression
above quoted, about Champ Ferguson, is but a specimen of what was often
heard among men proverbially outspoken, and, then, more than ever
disposed, in the bitterness of their defeat, to let out all the gall
that was in them. The Tennessee guerrilla had far more friends and
sympathizers throughout this region than had the men who convicted him.
The unjust detention of Mr. Jefferson Davis was everywhere deplored. “By
—,” exclaimed an Alabamian to me to-day, with a horrible oath, “are you
going to hang Jeff. Davis? That’s what I want to know. You might as well
hang all the honorable men in the South, for he was only their trusty
agent.” Even Wirz was covered with the broad mantle of Southern charity.
It was universally thought that his trial had been grossly unfair; that
Government gave him no opportunity to get witnesses, and that he was
entirely innocent.[54] The report of his execution had just arrived, and
while some refused to believe it, others took great delight in repeating
the words of the dispatch, as sweetened to suit the prevailing taste, by
some Southern news agent: “He died bravely, protesting his innocence.”
I do not mean that these people are nursing a new rebellion. For many
years they will be the hardest people in the civilized world to persuade
into insurrection. But they nurse the embers of the old one, and cherish
its ashes. They are all Union men, in the sense that they submit, (since
they can’t help themselves,) and want to make all they can out of their
submission. But to talk of any genuine Union sentiment, any affection
for the Union, any intention to go one step further out of the old paths
that led to the rebellion, than they are forced out is preposterous.
They admit that they are whipped; but the honest ones make no pretense
of loving the power that whipped them.
It has been currently supposed at the North, that the desolation wrought
by the war, would lead to an intense hatred of the leaders who brought
it on. But this hatred has taken another turn. Instead of hating their
own leaders they hate ours. They do not realize that such men as Mason,
Yancey, Davis, and Toombs led them, for selfish purposes, into this sea
of blood; they followed these leaders willingly, believe in them still,
and insist that the North brought on the war by illegal encroachments,
which they were bound in honor to resist. Such were the expressions I
heard everywhere around me, and, however little might be said for their
loyalty, their honesty and candor could not be doubted. The men to
suspect of dishonesty are not these who frankly, admit that they are
defeated and bound to submit, but still insist that they were right in
the start of the quarrel. The men who make haste to adjure all the
principles they fought for, and to acknowledge their dead brothers and
sons to have been traitors, _they_ are the ones whose new-born “loyalty”
is sown upon the sand. When the nutriment of the offices is withdrawn,
look out for a withering.
* * * * *
One or two plantations between Atlanta and West Point showed gangs of
negroes at work clearing off the lands, and preparing for a cotton crop;
but by far the greater number seemed still abandoned. Since leaving East
Tennessee, I had not seen one white man at work. The negroes, who were
breaking up the cotton lands, did it with little “bull-tongues,” such as
Northern farmers use to cultivate their corn. A good, moldboard plow
seemed unheard of.
At West Point, a village of cheap frame houses, where we stopped for
dinner, large piles of cotton bales filled the public square. Even the
primitive cultivation we had seen, seemed to produce fair crops. Half a
bale to the acre was above the average yield. There were few large
plantations; and the population seemed mainly composed of small farmers,
cultivating from one to four or five hundred acres.
At Opelika we reached the ultimate in the matter of railroad traveling.
The Macon train pushed out with a couple of box cars, containing no
seats, into which were loaded passengers, baggage, freight, and fuel.
The locomotive bore only the battered remnants of what had been a
smoke-stack; the machinery was rusty; the head-light was gone, and even
the bell was broken. On the Montgomery train we congratulated ourselves
on better fortune. We had ordinary box freight cars, into which we
climbed, ladies and gentlemen alike, through the sliding doors at the
side; but in each car half-a-dozen pine board benches had been arranged,
across which the ladies scrambled to a corner, free at once from dust,
light, and ventilation, and over which every one trampled in getting
into or out of the car.
With less fear of dust, and more love for fresh air than my fellow
travelers, I established myself in the door. While we waited for the
engine, a plantation negro, who seemed to belong to the lowest possible
grade, approached us. He was not idiotic, but he seemed hopelessly and
inconceivably stupid. No such existence as his would be possible on a
large plantation. It is only where the attrition of social intercourse
is almost wholly removed that a human being can possibly grow to manhood
with so little advancement beyond the condition of the brutes around
him.
He was clad in the coarsest negro cloth, ragged, dirty, ill-fitting.
Head and feet were bare. I asked him if he knew he was free.
“Ya-a-a-s, sah.”
“Well, are you ready to live with some good man, and go to work to earn
your living?”
“I reckon.”
“How much do you think you ought to have per month?”
“Dunno.” And the stupid stare was broken by a puzzled expression, as if
this seemed a very hard and a very serious question.
“Do you know how to raise cotton?”
“Ya-a-a-s, sah, I kin make cotton well’s any man.”
“How much can you make to the acre, on your place?”
“Dunno.”
“How much did you make altogether this year?”
“’Bout bay an’ half, dis yeah; but we’s done hab ’bout eight bays over
from las’ yeah.”
“What do you think of Andie Johnson?” interjected an amused auditor of
the conversation.
“Who him?”
“He’s President of the United States. Do you know what that is?”
“Who him?”
“Who?”
“Why, Pres’den’?”
Evidently he was not strong on politics; so we reverted to something he
might be expected to be more familiar with.
“Did you ever see a bigger town than this?”
“N-n-no.”
“This is the biggest town in the world, isn’t it?”
“No; I’s heern dat C’lumbus is heap sight bigger.”
“Columbus is the biggest town you ever heard of, is it?”
He scratched his head for some time at the unwonted exercise it was
getting, but finally concluded as how he’d heern tell dat Mobile was
bigger still.
“How much do you suppose you’d sell for?” This was asked, because it was
said in some places that the ignorant negroes didn’t know they were
free, and even had no knowledge of the meaning of the word.
“I’s free. Ain’t wuf nuffin.”
“How much were you worth before the war?”
“Wen old massah died, him praisement said I wuf fifteen hunder dollah.”
“When did your master die?”
“Dunno.”
“Was it a year ago?”
“Spec it was a yeah.”
“What did he die of?”
“He’m drunk and fell off him hoss.”
The public sentiment of the listening crowd seemed to decide that
inquiries had been pressed far enough in that direction. I next fell
back on something they were all interested in.
“Would you work for five dollars a month?”
He seemed a little puzzled, but thought he wouldn’t, “harly.”
“Would you work for ten?”
“Spec I would, sah.”
“Would you stick at it, if a man hired you?”
“Ya-a-a-s. Ef I once ’mence, and git money, I’s wuck on. Jis git me
money an’ I wucks.”
I wrote this conversation down carefully at the time. The negro may
fairly be taken as a sample of the most ignorant plantation hands, in
the interior of the poorest cotton-growing districts, and the
conversation may therefore have a certain value, as showing the lowest
degree of intelligence among the class on whom it is proposed to confer
the right of suffrage.
* * * * *
All the trains on which I had traveled for some days, had contained
numbers of Northerners going down to look at the cotton lands. Many went
prepared to buy; all went either to buy or lease, if they found the
prospects as encouraging as they hoped. To all these, the central belt
of Alabama seemed a promising field. Its lands are the richest east of
Louisiana and west of the South Carolina and Georgia Sea Islands; and
the country is entirely healthy, which is more than can be said of
either of the other regions. A bale to the acre could be made on the
first-class lands, and the Alabama bale means a hundred pounds more than
that of Louisiana or the west. Nearly all the lands could, with careful
culture, be made to average half a bale. Then, within easy railroad
connection, is Mobile on the south, while on the north, a twelve hours’
ride carries the debilitated planter to the bracing breezes of the
mountains.
In September and October these lands were selling at five dollars an
acre. In November I imagine that the average was very nearly ten, and it
was constantly rising. The papers were full of advertisements of
plantations for rent or sale. The great rush was from men of small means
at the North, who wanted from four hundred to a thousand acres; but a
few were looking for heavier investments. Here are a couple of specimens
of the kind of lands offering:
“FOR SALE OR RENT.—A plantation on the Alabama River, containing
fourteen hundred acres, one thousand of which are cleared, under
good fence and in fine order for a crop. It has a three-story brick
gin-house, a large brick stable and corn-crib, a new, well-finished
dwelling with four rooms on the floor, all covered with tin roofs
and built in the most substantial manner; nine double tenement
framed negro houses, with piazzas in front; a large kitchen and
smoke-house, a good blacksmith-shop, two never-failing wells of
excellent water, some seven or eight miles of Osage-orange hedge. No
plantation on the Alabama River lies better or is probably more
healthy. The quality of land about the average of Alabama River. I
think I risk nothing in saying it is the best improved plantation in
the State of Alabama.”
“FOR SALE OR RENT.—My plantation, one mile above Montgomery,
immediately on the river, containing about 2,000 acres, 1,300 in
cultivation. There is a steam grist-mill, which propels two gins, on
the place, and every other improvement which constitutes a complete
plantation. I will rent for a share in the crop. This is well known
as one of the very best cotton farms in the State.”
When these plantations were rented, the owners asked three to five
dollars rent, payable 1st of January, 1867; or, if he furnished all the
mules, corn, bacon, and everything else except the labor, he would
require one-half the crop.
The old planters seemed utterly despondent about raising cotton by free
negro labor. A few thought of watching the Yankees and imitating their
policy; but the most of those who did not propose flying to Brazil, were
dreaming of imported white labor. The following was one of their fine
schemes:
“WHITE LABOR AGENCY.—Rates of Hire of White Laborers:
Men, per year $150 00
Women, per year 100 00
Children, of 12 or 14 years of age, per year 50 00
House Servants, per month 15 00
Payable at the end of the year.
They contract for one year, to do the same work as the negro; live
in the same cabins, and on the same rations; clothe themselves and
pay their own doctor’s bills. Time lost by sickness deducted from
wages.
One in every six of Germans agree to speak English. Cost of
transportation, $15 per head, to accompany orders, but to be
deducted from wages.
An order will be forwarded to New York on Saturday, the 11th
instant.”
A “Planters’ Convention” was to be held in a couple of weeks, to agree
upon a policy for making the negroes work. But they had no faith in it,
unless they could have power to seize upon every idle negro they found,
put a hoe in his hand, and vigorously apply the lash. The local papers
were calling out lustily to “checkmate the Freedmen’s League.” This
association, it seemed, had “taken upon itself to fix the wages of
freedmen at ten dollars per month,” a rate higher than had been
heretofore ruling. “Teach the darkies,” urged one of the papers, “that
this leaguing is a game that two can play at. If they assume to dictate,
we will oust them; and supply their places with better laborers, whom we
can import from the North;” and it greatly encouraged itself herein, by
its interpretation of a recent speech by the President: “President
Johnson, in his speech to the negroes, plainly intimated that the
Lincolnian idea of everything for the negro, and everything by the
negro, had no receptacle in his brain.”
A pioneer company of planters, disgusted with “free niggers,” the United
States Government, the defeat, and everything connected with the
country, were about to sail for Brazil, taking with them farming
utensils and provisions for six months. “The present destination of the
colony,” it was laconically explained by the managers, “is the city of
Para, on the Amazon; its ultimate location on a tributary of that river,
between five and ten degrees south latitude. Length of voyage two
thousand miles; sailing time about three weeks.”
Others were proposing to send agents North from every county, to secure
white emigrants. Public sentiment was against the sale of lands to the
Yankees; “Get white laborers,” they urged, “and in a year you’ll make
enough to be able to hold on to your lands.”
* * * * *
Montgomery was the first capital of the Confederacy. It has none of the
characteristics of a capital, no collections of able men, mainly
occupied, officially or unofficially, in public affairs; no tone of
government and of the world; it is simply a beautiful and well preserved
little inland Southern city; well built; sandy, of course, like all
Southern towns; regularly laid out, and, for a wonder, well drained. The
Southern taste for huge columns and tawdry architectural display, is
conspicuous; but many of the private residences are elegant. The
residence of the President of the Confederacy, (at the time when
Montgomery was the capital,) is a large, substantially built and
commodious house; less pretentious in style than the most; and in every
way more desirable than the one subsequently presented to the
Confederate Government, with such a flourish of trumpets, by the city of
Richmond, for Mr. Davis’ occupancy.
Business seemed quite brisk; and very heavy stocks of goods—far too
heavy, one would think, for the impoverished country—had been sent down
on credit by New York merchants.
Cotton filled the warehouses, and drays loaded with it, crowded the
streets, and the river bank, where it was shipped for Mobile. Some of it
was Government cotton; more had belonged to the Rebel Government, and
had been stolen by private individuals. Such were the results of the
policy of meddling with this cotton at all by Government agents.
Infinite scandal and no profits accrued. Thieves of Rebel cotton had
been paying seventy-five dollars a bale to have the cotton carried by
steamer to Mobile! There the gauntlet was to be run again; but if
successfully passed, the net profits on each bale were still over a
hundred dollars.
The newspapers found it difficult to realize that free speech and a free
press were at last established. The Montgomery Mail thought these
correspondents from the North ought to be kept in their own section—they
did nothing but misrepresent and slander. Similar suggestions occurred
every day. The temper which used to display itself in lynching gentlemen
whose writings were not satisfactory, now found this safer outlet.
But they all indorsed President Johnson; the despot of Tennessee, the
tory who had deserted his section and attempted to grind down his
people; the drunken tailor and demagogue, had suddenly become the
pattern of all statesmanlike virtues. A new associate editor, making his
bow in the Montgomery Ledger, found it necessary to say: “I believe him
a true friend of the ill-fated South, and lifting himself above the mad
waves of Black Republican fanaticisms, that are dashing and breaking
themselves around his elevated position, I think that he is endeavoring
to rise to the patriotic duty of leading his country, out from its
distracted condition, into the calm sunshine of national repose and
prosperity.”
* * * * *
It was a curious exemplification of popular tastes, that the newspapers
surrendered their editorial columns to elaborate disquisitions on the
circus. The citizens talked of it as people in the similar pretensions
at the North would of the opera; and for days before its advent it
seemed as if everybody was preparing for its coming. But why not? Did
not the leading journal announce in double leaded type, in its leading
column, that “The circus has always been a favorite amusement with the
South, and the Southern taste upon the subject has ever been so
fastidious and demanded so much, that it is a well known fact, that as
the term goes, a circus that would go down well on the European
continent and elsewhere, would be criticised and ignored in the South?”
And did it not gratefully announce that “we have the pleasure to hail,
as an evidence of returning peace and prosperity, the advent of a real
circus, one of the old time establishments; with all its concomitants to
allure, please, and give satisfaction?”
It even grew eloquent on the history of the performers, thus:
“It is no small feature upon their escutcheon to know that the old
Southern favorite, gentleman and actor, Mr. S. P. Stickney, with his
charming daughter and talented son, are on the list of performers,
and eliciting vast applause whenever they appear. Some years ago a
little boy came here with a circus company, about whom nothing was
particularly noticeable, save vivacity and sprightliness of manner,
and a rather large amount of good looks; in fact, he was what the
ladies call a sweet little boy. That little boy is now the eminent
clown and original jester, Jimmy Reynolds, sharing the honors with
Dr. Thayer; and if we mistake not, Doctor, you must look to your
laurels, or Jimmy will snatch the chaplet from your brow. Jimmy is
well aware of the prejudices of the Southern people with regard to
expression, and will take good care they are not invaded.”
This opinion, it was to be understood, was one of weight and moment; for
the editor haughtily added:
“We claim to be sufficiently well acquainted with the principal
artists in the equestrian business to know those of merit, who have
visited the South, and whose names are a guarantee against any
aggression upon refinement and delicacy.”
And, finally, the timid were reassured on an important point:
“An admirable arrangement has been perfected by which Freedmen will
be comfortably accommodated in a section of the pavilion, fitted up
expressly for them, and entirely distinct from the rest of the
_audience_, with a separate entrance. By all the indications, we
have no fear but that this great company will achieve a success here
commensurate with its merits.”
The Mayor of Atlanta, the editors, and sundry other important
personages, published a card in the papers of that city about the
circus, “commending the establishment to public favor and generous
patronage in its tour throughout the State and the South.”
* * * * *
Mr. Gorsüch and other gentlemen who had been connected with the Rebel
“Bureau of Niter and Mining,” were busy with a great speculation by
which they all felt sure of retrieving their fortunes. They had
organized a monster oil company—on paper—and had already leased over a
quarter million acres of lands, in Central and Northern Alabama, and
adjacent parts of the neighboring States. Some Northern geologists, who
had been exploring this region, were inclined to laugh at them, but they
were full of dreams about spouting wells and flowing fortunes.
Some of them seemed, however, to imagine that the gold regions west of
the Coosa River, were likely to prove more profitable. Hitherto they had
paid but little; but there was much talk about what scientific work
would do for them.
Some very worthy people of Montgomery were much disposed to plume
themselves on their Southern blood. A Baptist preacher, who kept a
book-store, (and had once been known as editor of a series of school
books,) was a specimen. “I’ve got my pardon,” he began, warmed into
confidence by a trifling purchase, “and am all right for the future.
I’ve done well, too, by the war, and my profits were mainly invested
North. But I’m tired of this crowd of Yankees that is pouring down here.
The more I see of them, the more I am convinced that they are a totally
different class of people, and can never assimilate with us Southerners.
What a miserable picayune way of doing things by retail they have, to be
sure!” The worthy gentleman was asked where he was born. “Well,” he
admitted with a wry face, “I was born in New Jersey, but then I’ve been
in the South from childhood, and am completely identified with her!”
Precisely similar was the reluctant confession of a planter here, who
had been exalting the virtues of pure Southern blood, and complaining of
Yankee meanness. He was born in northern New York!
There was no indication whatever of the slightest disposition to foment
another war. “I’ve had enough of fighting to last me my lifetime,” said
a young man who was hoping to resume work on his plantation. “We’re all
glad it’s over,” said a business man. “Still we think we were right in
the outset. We believe in the right of secession as much as we ever did;
but what difference does that make? What’s the use of your right to do a
thing, if you know you’ll get soundly whipped if you attempt it?”
-----
Footnote 54:
About this time the New Orleans True Delta, (quite recently the organ
of General Banks,) spoke of “the gloating of the cold-blooded,
viperous, vindictive editor of the Chicago Republican, over the
hanging of Henry Wirz,” and “his atrocious wickedness and unparalleled
fiendish malignity, in endeavoring, to connect Jefferson Davis’ and
General Lee’s names with the alleged crimes of Wirz.” At the same time
the Epoque of the same city protested against the execution of Wirz,
and against brutal military commissions, complained that a Confederate
Major-General and Captain Petit were both held for similar sacrifice;
hoped that President Johnson would stay such merciless and exciting
proceedings, and asked, supposing them guilty of all alleged against
them, and such guilt was to be punished, why Butler still lives?