Mobile Temper and Trade—Inducements of Alabama to Emigrants.
Between Meridian and Mobile, the railroad passes only very small tracts
of land that appear at all inviting to Northern eyes. Much of the
country is grown up in pine. Possibly lumbermen might find it a good
location, but planters are likely to keep away from it.
All in all, however, Alabama offers better inducements to the Northern
emigrant than almost any of the other Southern States. The feeling
against Northerners is not so bitter as through most of the South. The
climate of the northern half of the State is delightful, and throughout
the State it is more healthy than at any point in the same latitude to
the westward. Northern, and a portion of Central Alabama, are well
adapted to the growth of Northern crops, wheat, corn, oats, hay, or
flax. Cotton can be grown anywhere in the State; although the only
first-class cotton lands lie in the central belt. The mountain regions
are admirably adapted for stock-raising. Apples may be well grown in the
same localities. In the southern sections, all the semi-tropical fruits
flourish in the greatest luxuriance. Worn-out and abandoned lands,
within easy distance of Mobile, may be bought for trifling prices,[59]
on which oranges, figs, bananas, peaches, apricots, plums, pears,
strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, and melons can be grown in
perfection, and with comparatively little labor. Fruit-growing has
hitherto been much neglected in Alabama, but no branch of industry gives
permanent offer of better rewards. Off the coast the fisheries are
almost as productive as those of Newfoundland, and they abound in rare
and valuable fishes not now known to any considerable extent in
commerce.
It would be much better for Northern men, who seek to avail themselves
of these advantages, to go in small colonies. They should not be too
large, lest they grow unwieldy. Half-a-dozen families, purchasing farms
of one or two hundred acres apiece, adjacent to each other, may thus
make up a little neighborhood of their own, which can sustain its own
school, and which will be sure to form the nucleus for further
accretions from the North. A farm of a hundred acres can thus be bought,
in many localities, for five or six hundred dollars, half or more of it
on long credits. No emigrant should be without half as much more, to put
at once into improvements for his family.
* * * * *
The Mobile and Ohio Railroad, down which I went from Meridian to Mobile,
seemed to be in better condition at that time than any of the other
Southern railroads, and the cars ran heavily loaded. Even then they were
making the trip between the mouth of the Ohio River and Mobile, in
forty-eight hours. The mails here, as elsewhere on the entire trip from
Washington, were carried with a degree of carelessness that showed how
little the gratuity of keeping up a mail service for them was yet
appreciated by the Southerners themselves. Often no one was at the
station to receive the mail. Sometimes it was handed to any chance negro
boy, with instructions to deliver it to the postmaster. Occasionally it
was thrown out on the ground. The route-agents, on the other hand, were
not free from fault. Often, especially at night, they went to sleep,
carried mails past a dozen stations before they waked again. But they
were not always to be blamed. One route-agent told me he had to make the
entire trip from Columbus to Mobile, two days and two nights, without
sleep! Enough agents had not yet been appointed; and the few on duty
were making an effort to do the work of the full force.
The greatest embarrassment, however, was for lack of postmasters.
“’Twill be a long time ’fo’ you get any postmaste’ heah, ’less you
’bolish that lyin’ oath,” said a strapping fellow who received the mail
at one place. “He was not appointed postmaste’, but he tuck pape’s and
lette’s to ’commodate ’em. You mout git wimmen for postmaste’s or
niggahs; but you can’t git no white men; cause they all went with their
State. An’ mo’—ef you fetch any d——d tories heah, that went agin their
State, and so kin take the oath, I tell ye, ’twill soon be too hot to
hold ’em. We haint got no use for sich.”
* * * * *
In the Spring of 1865, when I had last seen Mobile, it was a city of
ruins; warehouses ruined by “the great explosion,” merchants ruined by
the war, politicians ruined by the abject defeat, women bankrupt in
heart and hope. Emerging from the chaotic interior, in November, one
rubbed his eyes, as he was whirled through the bustling streets, to be
assured that he was not deceived by an unsubstantial vision. Warehouses
were rising, torpedoes had been removed from the harbor, and a fleet of
sail and steam vessels lined the repaired wharves. The main
thoroughfares resounded with the rush of business. The hotels were
overflowing. The “new blood of the South” was, of a truth, leaping in
right riotous pulsations through the veins of the last captured city of
the coast.
Everywhere, in the throng of cotton buyers, around the reeking bars, at
the public tables, in the crowded places of amusement—two classes,
crowded and commingled—Northern speculators and Rebel soldiers. These
last come on you in every guise. Single rooms at the hotel were out of
the question, and I received a jolly fellow, who looked as if he might
be magnificent in a charge—on the breakfast table—as my room mate. He
turned out to have been chief of staff to a conspicuous Southern
General. I fell into a conversation with my neighbor at dinner, which
soon drifted from requests for the mustard into a discussion of the
claims of Southern “members” to seats in Congress. By and by he casually
admitted that he had been in the Rebel service, which might interfere
with his taking the test oath!
Nothing could exceed the general cordiality. Formerly a Southerner was
moody, and resentful of approaches from Yankee-speaking strangers,
unless they came properly introduced. Now he was as warm and
unrestrained without the introduction as he used to be after it. That
was about the most marked change one noticed on the social surface. But
there was no abatement in the old ambitious pretensions. The North, we
were told, must have the Southern trade; and with that trade it was to
be corrupted. The North would be politically a power divided against
itself; the South would be a unit, and it would rule again as it always
had ruled. “Which side will we take?” answered an adept in political
shuffling, whose presence graced many a caucus in Washington in the old
times, “Why, the side that bids the highest for us, of course. And you
need’nt be at any loss to know which side that is. You’ve been whipping
us right soundly. We acknowledge the whipping, but we don’t kiss the
hand that gave it—not by a d——d sight! We’ll unite with the opposition up
North, and between us we’ll make a majority. _Then_ we’ll show you who’s
going to govern this country.”
The theory of reorganization, which prevailed during the war, based
itself upon the belief in the existence of a Union party at the South.
But there was no such party. There were “reconstructionists” who
believed, from the day of the defeat at Gettysburg, that Southern
independence was hopeless, and therefore wished to end the struggle on
the best terms they could get; but these men loved not the Union more,
but Jeff. Davis less. Now, when we sought for Union men to re-organize
civil government there were none to be found. It was on precisely this
point that the North failed, prior to the meeting of Congress, to
comprehend the situation. Immediate reorganization meant restoration of
civil power to the defeated Rebels. No other reorganization was
possible. Many may say now that no other was desirable; that a community
must always of necessity be controlled by its leading men. But in
November the North thought differently. It was eager for reorganization,
but determined that it should be effected only by Union men. Such
reorganization would have meant merely that, instead of an honest
government representing the great majority of defeated Rebels, a handful
of aggrieved and vindictive refugees should be held up by aid from
without, to sway power in the forms of republicanism over a people who,
but for the bayonet, would submerge them in a week.
No such farce had been attempted in this region. In Alabama and
throughout the greater portion of the Gulf States, the men who were
taking the offices were the men who had just been relieved of duty under
their Rebel commissions. The men who were to legislate safely for the
Freedmen were the men from whom the national victory extorted freedom to
the slave. The men who were to legislate security to the national debt
were the men for whose subjugation that debt was created. Whether these
are or are not desirable things, I do not here and now argue. But _the
fact_ is of importance to men of all parties.
People innocently asked, What is the temper of these re-organizing
rebels? A remark quoted a moment ago, was the universal answer. They
wanted to make the best for themselves of a bad bargain. They wanted to
get the best terms they could. They still believed themselves the
aggrieved party; held that the Abolitionists began the war; thought
themselves fully justified in seceding; believed in the necessity of
compulsory labor, and would come just as near as we would let them
toward retaining it. There was the whole status in a nutshell.
* * * * *
Mobile talked, however, rather of plantations and cotton than of
politics. Dozens of Northern men were on the streets, buying cotton on
speculation. Every steamboat swelled the number of Yankees on the
look-out for plantations, and of planters anxious to sell or lease.
These planters were entirely honest in the idea which lies at the bottom
of their convulsive grasp on slavery. They did not believe the negro
would work without compulsion. Accordingly, they considered themselves
absolutely destitute of reliable labor, and were anxious to be rid of
their lands. The Yankees had faith in Sambo and propose to back their
faith with abundant capital. If they succeed, their cotton fields are
better than Nevada mines. If they fail—but a Yankee never fails in the
long run.
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Footnote 59:
Sometimes as low as two or three dollars per acre.