Cotton Speculations—Temper of the Mississippians.
Western men, seeking Southern speculations, mainly centered in New
Orleans during the winter. Competition had already put up prices
enormously. An army officer had recently _leased_ a cotton plantation,
above Miliken’s Bend, for seven dollars an acre! A few months earlier he
might have bought such plantations at a similar figure; but in November
he was able to sell out his lease at an advance of three dollars an
acre! Within another month rents advanced to twelve and fourteen dollars
an acre, for good plantations, fronting on the Mississippi. From Memphis
down, wherever the river plantations were above overflow, they commanded
prices that, compared with those of three months before, seemed
extravagantly high, although they did not yet reach the average of
prosperous times. Two-thirds of these plantations were fairly roofed in
with mortgages, so that enforced sales were soon likely to become
abundant. Scores of planters were already announcing their anxiety to
borrow money on almost any conceivable terms, to carry on operations for
the next year. Many sought to borrow on the security of the consignment
of their crops. Others offered still higher inducements. Small planters
from the interior of Mississippi, proposed to a heavy capitalist, in
considerable numbers, to borrow severally ten to fifteen thousand
dollars, to mortgage their plantations as security for the loan, and
give the consignment of one-half the crop as interest for the year’s use
of the money. Manifestly all such men were making a desperate venture,
in the hope that a combination of good crops and high prices might
enable them to hold on to their lands, and escape bankruptcy.
Everybody was overrun with “estimates,” presented by sanguine planters,
as proof of their ability to repay the money they were borrowing. Here
is a specimen of this speculative figuring, made out by a Lake
Providence lessee, for his fifteen hundred acres of heavy, rich cotton
land:
Lease at $10 per acre $15,000
Cost of 100 mules, at $200, (best mules are required for 20,000
these heavy lands)
Wages of 150 negroes, at $15 per month 27,000
Cost of supporting them, say $7 per month 12,600
Cotton seed and incidentals 10,000
———————
Total expenditures $84,600
RECEIPTS.
1,500 bales, at 25c. per pound $150,000
Deduct expenditures 84,600
———————
Net receipts $65,400
With all deductions from such estimates, and all omissions, it was still
manifest that, giving the two essentials of a bale to the acre and
twenty-five cents per pound for it, and there could be little doubt
about the lucrative results to be reasonably expected from free-labor
cotton growing.
It was noticeable that planters from the Mississippi Valley, from the
Red River country, and from Texas, were all much more hopeful of free
negro labor than Georgians and Alabamians had been. Few apprehensions
were expressed as to the labor question, and the only want concerning
which much was said was the want of capital.
* * * * *
General Beauregard had become the President of the railroad connecting
New Orleans with the capital of the State of Mississippi. He may be an
admirable man for the post, but his road was a very bad one.
Between New Orleans and Jackson, one saw little to admire in the pine
flats that lined the railroad for nearly its whole length. “The rossum
heels live in thar,” a newsboy on the train informed me. Lands are
cheap, and dear at the cheap rates. There are but few places where a
Northern man in his senses would be disposed to make investments with a
view to cultivating cotton. For anything else the land is generally
regarded as worthless.
Scarcely a postmaster was yet to be found along the route. The mails
were handed out by the route-agents to any one who happened to be
standing about the station, and they were delivered or not, as was
convenient. Nobody could be got to take the offices, because nobody was
able to take the oath. It had been proposed, by some wise person, to
remedy the difficulty by appointing women. That would be “jumping from
the frying-pan into the fire,” indeed. Where the men were Rebels, after
the Mississippi pattern of earnestness, some new word must be discovered
to define the extent of the hatred the women bore to the Yankee
Government. Such mild titles as “Rebel,” failed to meet the case.
* * * * *
Of old, travelers in the South were perpetually regaled by the siren
song of the affection between the negro and his master. “Free them all
to-morrow, and it would make no difference. They know instinctively that
their masters are their best friends. You could no more make them fight
against us than you could make them fly.” On all hands one heard of this
bond of attachment between the races; was pointed to the devotion of
favorite servants; assured that no law was necessary to hold them;
reproached with the fanatical prejudices of the North against color.
With the downfall of the rebellion there came a change. He would be
blind and deaf, who, after a day’s stay anywhere in the interior of
Mississippi, failed to discern aright the drift of public opinion toward
the negro. The boasted confidence in the slave, and the generous
friendship for the helpless freedman were all gone. There were, of
course, many individual exceptions, but the prevailing sentiment with
which the negro was regarded, was one of blind, baffled, revengeful
hatred. “Now, that you’ve got them ruined, take the cursed scoundrels
out of the country.” “D——n their black souls, they’re the things that
caused the best blood of our sons to flow.” “The infernal sassy niggers
had better look out, or they’ll all get their throats cut yet.” “We can
drive the niggers out and import coolies that will work better, at less
expense, and relieve us from this cursed nigger impudence.” “Let a
nigger dare to come into _my_ office, without taking off his hat, and
he’ll get a club over it.” Such were the voices I heard on every hand—in
the hotels, on the cars, in steamboat cabins, among returned soldiers,
grave planters, outspoken members of the “Legislature,” from every
party, and from men of all ages and conditions. More or less, the same
feeling had been apparent in Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana;
but it was in Mississippi that I found its fullest and freest
expression. However these men may have regarded the negro slave, they
hated the negro freeman. However kind they may have been to negro
property, they were virulently vindictive against a property that
escaped from their control.
With coarser illustrations of the universal feeling the public prints
have been crowded—stories of ear cuttings and shootings, and the like.
Doubtless many of these stories were exaggerated; for even in
Mississippi murder is not practiced with as much safety as the other
fine arts; but no man could mingle in the community and not be convinced
that the feeling was there, and that only prudence restrained its
exercise. A railroad conductor was possessed with some delusion about my
ability to help to his appointment as post-office agent, and he
accordingly exhausted all his arts to entertain. The burden of his talk
was “the blasted, imperdent nigger.” “Just think, sah, down here, the
other day, at ——, a nigger sergeant ordered his men to shoot me. I never
heard of it till I’d got twenty miles away, or I’d a raised a little
speck of Jerusalem in that nigger camp. What did he want me shot for,
sah? Why this was the way of it. I was writin’ on a platform car, where
a d——d nigger guard was a trampin’ back and forrard, and says I, ‘Can’t
you keep still thar, you nigger; don’t you see you’re a shakin’ the
car?’ The black scoundrel never said a word, but kept on trampin’ his
beat. I spoke to him again, kinder sharp, but he didn’t mind me no more
nor if he’d never heerd me. Finally I couldn’t stand it no longer, and
broke out: ‘G—d d——n your black heart, you dirty Yankee nigger, I’d just
like to cut your throat from ear to ear for your infernal impudence.’ At
that he walked off to the sergeant and kept a whisperin’ till I got
ready to start. But I heerd afterward that the cowardly nigger sergeant
told him to stand his ground and shoot me if I interfered with him. Just
think of the nigger impudence we’ve got to bear, sah!”
In a crowded bar-room, among a group of cronies who evidently looked on
him as the oracle, swaggered a “hotel-keeper,” whose guests were taken
in and fleeced, at a point on the railroad between Jackson and New
Orleans. He was boasting of his success with the “cussed free niggers.”
“We’ve got a Provo’ in our town that settles their hash mighty quick.
He’s a downright high-toned man, that Provo’, if he is a Yankee. I sent
a nigger to him, the other day, who was sassy when he came into my
office, and said he wouldn’t work for me unless he pleased. He tucked
him up, guv him twenty lashes, and rubbed him down right smart with
salt, for having no visible means of support. That evening I saw Tom,
and asked him whether he’d rather come home. ‘Bress ye, yes, massa,’
says Tom. ‘But Tom,’ I told him, ‘I’ll take that old paddle of mine with
the holes in it, and paddle you soundly, if I think you deserve it.’
‘Bress you, massa, Tom likes dat all do time better dan dis.’ That’s a
downright high-toned officer, I tell ye, that Provo’ of our’n!”
“A nigger’s just as good as a white man now,” argumentatively observed a
bottle-nosed member of the Legislature, “but I give my Sam t’other day
to understand that he wasn’t a d——d bit better. He came into my room
without taking off his hat. ‘Take off your hat, you dirty black
scoundrel, or I’ll cut your throat,’ I yelled at him. D——n him, he had
the impudence to stand up and say he was free, and he wouldn’t do it
unless he pleased. I jumped at him with my knife, but he run. Bimeby he
came sneakin’ back, and said he was sorry. ‘Sam,’ says I, ‘you’ve got
just the same rights as a white man now, but not a bit better. And if
you come into my room without takin’ off your hat I’ll shoot you!’”
This Bowie-knife and pistol style of talk pervaded all the conversations
of these people about their late affectionate bondsmen. Nothing less
gunpowdery, it seemed, would serve to express their feelings. I fancy,
however, that, as with all such talkers, there was a great amount of
throat-cutting in words to a very small percentage of actual
performance.[61] Nor must it be forgotten that the provocations were not
wholly on one side. The negroes would be more than human, if suddenly
enfranchised, clothed in the army blue, and taught to use the muskets in
their hands, they should not strain the bounds of prudent freedom. They
were not always respectful in their bearing toward men who talked of
cutting their throats; and sometimes they had an indiscreet way of
pressing claims, which it had been wiser for them to waive. “Get out of
this car, you black puppy,” shouted a young blood, who evidently
bemoaned the loss of the right to larrup his own nigger, as a handsome
negro sergeant, fully equipped, modestly established himself in the
corner of a first class car. The negro stood his ground but made no
reply. Presently some one else ordered him to the negro car, quietly
explaining that no negroes were allowed in the ladies’ car. “Ise paid my
passage, same as de rest of ye. Ise goin’ on Government business, and
Ise got as good right to what I pays for as anybody else.” The logic
might have been hard to answer; but the conductor, who by this time had
been summoned, didn’t trouble himself with logic. “I expect you’re on
the Major General’s business, cuffee, but if you don’t get out of here
mighty quick, bag and baggage, I’ll have you pitched off the train.” As
there was but one against a train full of white men, he succumbed,
though with an exceedingly bad grace. I have heard of other cases, where
several soldiers were together, in which they stood their ground.
Embittered feelings, of course, follow all such controversies. The negro
feels himself aggrieved by the petty spites of the men who can no longer
hold him enslaved; the master feels himself outraged that one over whom
his power had been so absolute should “go to putting on airs this way”
in his very face. Against the negro troops, who alone kept these
smouldering elements from breaking forth, the hatred of the community
was especially intense.[62] Some timorous souls had great fears of a
negro outbreak at Christmas, and even our officers believed that, in
some cases, the negroes were distributing arms, to be used to enforce
their claims to their masters’ lands. There was not a particle of
foundation for the fears. They got arms, indeed, but what of it? Was not
every man armed? Could you brush closely against any ragged neighbor
without being bruised by his concealed revolver? People had not got over
regarding negroes as something other than men; and when it appeared that
they were imitating the example of the whites, and preparing to protect
themselves, forsooth we had straightway cock and bull stories of
impending negro insurrections and a war of races!
The heel of the destroyer had been on Jackson too; and solitary chimneys
and shattered ruins attested the thoroughness with which the work was
done. The same recuperative power was not displayed, with which the
stranger was so impressed at Atlanta or Selma. The Mississippians seemed
more listless. In traveling several hundred miles in the State, I did
not see a white man at work in the fields, or very many at work anywhere
or anyway. Cotton, however, continued to come out—a satisfactory proof
that the “niggers” had still been able to do something. Piles of it were
stored near the railroad; and through the interior one noticed an
occasional wagon drawn by a couple of oxen, with, perhaps, a mule in
front, bringing a few bales to the nearest station.
The “Legislature,” in session in Jackson, seemed to me a body of more
than average ability. Leading Mississippians, however, even of the ultra
type, denounced it as impracticable. There could be no question of its
rebellious antecedents. Scarcely a dozen, probably not half so many of
its members, could be named who did not in some way actively countenance
or support the war. But they were all Union men now; that is, as one of
them tersely stated it, “we are whipped, can’t get out, and want now to
get back on the very best terms we can possibly make, and with the least
possible loss from our failure!”
The tone of the Mississippi papers, like the tone of the Mississippi
talk, was bitter. A Jackson journal soundly berated anybody who should
presume to insist that the President required the admission of negro
testimony in the courts. Mississippi, at any rate, should not be
crawling to the President’s feet to ask what she should do. She should
walk erect, assert her rights, and demand their recognition! And a
Vicksburg paper spoke its views thus:
“If any radical was ever black enough to suppose the people of
Mississippi would endow negro schools, for their ilk to teach the
rising eboshin hatred of his former master, but his best friend,
then such chaps had better take to marching on with John Brown’s
soul; they will hardly reach the object of their desires short of
the locality where John is kicking and waiting. The State has not
opened them, nor has she the slightest idea of doing anything of the
kind.”
-----
Footnote 61:
The following was, however, a well-authenticated, case:
* * * * *
“A physician and planter, near Greenville, Mississippi, called a
freedman in his employ to account for some work which he alleged he
had neglected to do as directed. The freedman said he had received no
such directions. The doctor told him if he dared to dispute his word
he would kill him on the spot. The negro replied that he never had
such directions. Thereupon the doctor, without any other provocation
being alleged, drew his revolver, and the negro ran. After some little
pursuit, and after discharging several shots, he killed the negro dead
in the field. The murdered man’s wife interposed to save his life,
when the doctor fired several shots at her, and was only prevented
from a double murder by the efforts of his own mother, who, with
difficulty, saved the poor woman’s life.
“Colonel Thomas, Superintendent of Freedmen, caused the arrest of the
murderer. He was taken to Vicksburg and placed in military custody.”
Footnote 62:
The official organ of the city of New Orleans thus editorially
explains this feeling:
“Our citizens, who had been accustomed to meet and treat the negroes
only as respectful servants, were mortified, pained, and shocked to
encounter them in towns and villages, and on the public roads, by
scores and hundreds and thousands, wearing Federal uniforms, and
bearing bright muskets and gleaming bayonets. They often recognized
among them those who had once been their own servants. They were
jostled from the sidewalks by dusky guards marching four abreast. They
were halted, in rude and sullen tones by negro sentinels, in strong
contrast with the kind and fraternal hail of the old sentinels in
threadbare gray or dilapidated homespun. The ladies of villages so
guarded, ceased to appear on the streets, and it was with much
reluctance that the citizens of the surrounding country went to the
towns on imperative errands. All felt the quartering of negro guards
among them to be a deliberate, wanton, cruel act of insult and
oppression. Their hearts sickened under what they deemed an outrageous
exercise of tyranny. They would have received white troops, not indeed
with rejoicing, but with kindness, satisfaction, and respect; but when
they saw their own slaves freed, armed, and put on guard over them,
they treated all hope of Federal magnanimity or justice as an idle
dream.”