Political and Business Complications in the South-west.
New Orleans in January was a very different city from New Orleans in
November. Trade had swelled to its old volume; the city was crowded
beyond its capacity; balls, theaters, the opera, crowded upon one
another, and all were insufficient to satisfy the wants of this
amusement-loving community.
But these changes were nothing, compared with that in the tone of
political affairs. Governor Wells had accomplished another revolution on
his axis. Lifted into power by the Banks _régime_, he had congenially
betrayed it, in order to make interest with the returning Rebels; had
appointed them to office by scores; had turned out the Unionists that
elected him wherever he could find Rebels to take their places; had made
over himself and his power without reserve. They used him, and threw him
aside; the betrayer was in turn betrayed, and had nobody to pity him.
The Legislature had passed a bill authorizing a new election for city
officers in New Orleans, avowedly to get rid of the Union appointees,
and elect “men who were the choice of the great majority of the
people”—that is, undisguised Rebels. The Governor, seeing that the
movement boded him no good, had broken with the Rebels and vetoed the
bill; and they had promptly passed it over his head.[65] The leader in
this movement was Mr. Kenner, an old Rebel politician, and member of the
Confederate Senate at Richmond, recently pardoned by Mr. Johnson. Such
was the return he was making for the forgiveness for his treason which
he had begged and received.
Nevertheless, the general feeling was much less defiant than in
November. Then they had been sailing, with favoring winds and under full
headway, straight into their old power in Congress and control of the
country’s legislation. The check had been sudden, and they were not
fully recovered from the shock. Business interests, too, had come into
play. Trade always softens away angularities of prejudice, and too often
of principle also. Northerners having money to invest in the South, men
were very willing to forego manifestations of Rebel spite toward them
for the sake of furthering their chances of a good bargain.
* * * * *
I was frequently a guest at the “Varieties Club,” an organization
composed almost exclusively of former Rebels, and sharing with the
“Boston” the favor of what was considered the _crême de la crême_ of New
Orleans. The “Varieties” differs from every other club in this country,
in the fact that it is the owner of the favorite theater of the city, in
which the best boxes and orchestra chairs are always reserved for the
use of the members and their friends, free of charge.
One evening I happened to enter just as some scene was being enacted in
which the hero is suddenly pounced upon and disarmed by a couple of
ruffians. As he stood helpless between them, he interpolated a sentence
to suit the latitude, exclaiming, “Let me go, let me go; _I’ll take the
oath_!” The whole audience burst out into uproarious laughter and
cheering, which for some little time delayed the action of the play. It
was manifest that they had a very clear apprehension of the average
value of oaths of loyalty.
The first night I was there, a Union Major General was also one of the
guests. Sitting at the same table with him, drinking his whisky—if there
are any places in the country more remarkable for hard drinking than the
Varieties Club of New Orleans, I have never seen them—and hob-nobbing in
the most companionable way, was an officer of the Rebel army who had
surrendered to him in Texas. A number of other Rebel officers, some of
high grades, members of the Rebel Legislature, registered alien enemies,
and a crowd of resident Rebels, were passing through the room. Nothing
could exceed their genial courtesy, or the “hospitality” (so called in
the South) with which they pressed their whisky.
The next day, I heard that, in the organization of a new club, expressly
intended to be established on a loyal basis, the word “Union” had been
stricken out of the title by an overwhelming vote. “Do you know,” said a
resident Northerner, “I was very much in favor of that myself? I am
determined that I will have nothing to do, down here, with any social
organization into which politics are permitted to enter!” In his mind
the use of the word “Union” as part of the title of a club was the
introduction of an offensive political distinction! A few days later, in
the reading-room of this new club, I noticed, conspicuously hung on the
walls, side by side, five portraits of General Sheridan (the commander
of the department), and of General Robert E. Lee.
Mr. Flanders was very bitter in his denunciations of what he called
Northern toadyism. “With the Northern men and the Northern capital we
have here, we could absolutely control this city. But we can’t make use
of our power, because of these miserable toadies. They imagine it is
necessary to truckle to Southern men in order to get trade and acquire
influence. Poor fools! Can’t they see that the moment Southern men get
power, they’ll kick them all aside? Even now they despise them.”
“Give us a couple of hundred Northern men, with money and brains, who
were not flunkies, and their honest, straightforward talk would do
wonders,” he continued. “But the traders are nearly all flunkies. Those
who have gone on plantations are more manly, but they are in positions
where they have less influence.” It was the old, old story.
He insisted that the abatement of Rebel violence, then visible
everywhere, was only a torpor, not a radical change. They were
discouraged now about their chances. Let them get in again, and they
would be up and hissing at once.
Others made the same complaints about the tendency to conciliate
Southern prejudices. Begun in the praiseworthy desire to exhibit the
most generous consideration to the vanquished, it had degenerated, they
said, into the very flunkyism of which Mr. Flanders complained. “Here is
General Herron,” exclaimed one. “A better or manlier fellow we didn’t
have in our army. He has settled down as a commission merchant here; has
plenty of capital, and ought to do well. But, do you know that he can’t
get as many favors, soldier though he is, at the Quartermasters’ and
Commissaries’ headquarters here, in the way of legitimate business, as
can any resident Rebel? Why? Because it’s the thing to display
distinguished consideration to these fellows, in order to convince them
that we’re willing to forget the past, if they’ll only be good enough to
do the same. Of course, then, it’s all smooth sailing in business
intercourse; but, in the bottom of their hearts, how they must despise
us!”
* * * * *
At the residence of a friend, I met, one evening, Mr. J. Ad. Rozier, a
lawyer of considerable prominence, whose record during the war might, I
was informed, be described as that of a conservative Rebel. He was
greatly delighted with the recent election of Alexander H. Stephens to
the Senate by the Legislature of Georgia, because he “believed in
brains.” There was no abler or fairer man, he thought, in the whole
South than Mr. Stephens. He would be, as he had been before, an honor to
the South in the Senate of the Union.
I couldn’t help suggesting that, according to the appearances then,
there wasn’t much chance for his doing a great deal very soon either to
honor or dishonor the South in the Senate.
“Oh, he must get in soon. It won’t be possible to refuse admission to
such men. The position of the Republicans is so utterly untenable that
they must soon find it out.”
The Republican party, he insisted, was not at all an Administration
party. “It is only coquetting with Mr. Johnson. Pretty soon it will turn
against him openly.”
I suggested that, as it had control of both houses, in any event it made
very little difference whether Mr. Johnson agreed with it or not, so far
as the present question, the immediate admission of the Southern
Representatives, was concerned.
“Ah, but the present Congress doesn’t reflect the real views of the
Northern people. It was elected under a war pressure, and it is proving
itself utterly unfit to deal with the issues which the peace has brought
forward. You may be right about the admission of Southern members now;
but the next Congress will soon fix things.”
Nothing, he thought, could exceed the indignity with which Congress had
treated honorable Southern gentlemen elected to it in good faith by
Southern constituencies, in refusing them the empty privilege of seats
on the floor. That was an extraordinary way to meet the returning
loyalty of the South. Perhaps it was honest in thinking them not
entitled to membership; but the refusal of seats to men bearing
certificates of election was a gross and studied discourtesy which could
not be forgotten or forgiven.
Among men of Mr. Rozier’s class I found a general disposition to
restrict rather than extend the suffrage. Negro suffrage, they argued,
would only be another step in a path which had already led to most of
our existing troubles. Too many voted now, instead of too few. What
business had any man to cast a vote for the imposition of taxes who had
no taxes to pay? What right had any man to a share in shaping the
legislation of the country who had no settled interest in the country?
Or what sort of government could be expected from the votes of men too
ignorant to know anything about government? In short, no man ought to
vote unless he had landed property and was educated. The gentlemen of
the country should be the ruling class of the country.
But this was only the talk of the clubs and the dinner-tables. The mob
who made up the Rebel vote and the Rebel army, and who now furnish the
substratum for the universal Rebel feeling, heard nothing of such
sentiments. The discussion of them—like their principles
themselves—belonged exclusively to the “natural governing classes,” and
in a special degree to the late slaveholders.
Still, no evils of republican institutions were likely now to drive them
out of the country. They had heard enough from their Mexican explorers.
Bad as the nigger equality was here, they had discovered it to be much
worse there and in Brazil. But their whole hearts were with the
Imperialist party in Mexico. Part of this came from the French
sympathies of a large portion of the population; another part was due to
a general preference for monarchical institutions. The Monroe doctrine
had come to be considered a Yankee notion. The impression common at the
North, that war with France would help heal the wounds of our own
strife, was manifestly untrue, as to Louisiana. It would there be
regarded as another Yankee crusade. It would probably meet no open
resistance; but it would unquestionably find no support, unless of the
coldest.
* * * * *
The great rush of Northerners seeking plantations was already over.
Along the Mississippi, and in other favorable localities for
cotton-planting, prices had gone up so largely that men who had only
been tempted South by the hope of ruinously low bargains, took Northern
exchange for their money and went home again. Others, who had made
investments in the interior of Alabama and Mississippi, were greatly
discouraged by the temper of the people and by the scarcity of laborers.
Lands were being leased on the Mississippi, from Natchez to Lake
Providence, at rents ranging from eight to as high as twenty-two dollars
an acre. The lessees, after paying these enormous prices, had still in
most cases to stock the places with everything, erect fences, contend
with a two to four years’ growth of Caco and Bermuda grass, and pay
fifteen dollars a month, with rations and medical attendance, for
laborers. And then, after incurring the expenses, they had to take the
risk of overflow, and face the prospect of a steadily declining cotton
market. With a good year and good fortune, they were certain, after all
these outlays, of a large profit remaining; but the contingences were so
numerous and the risks so great, that an investment in Mississippi
bottom cotton plantations seemed to many business men very much like an
investment (heretofore very well known on the Mississippi), on the
chances of turning up sevens or holding aces.
The city was full of negroes. They felt their new power, of which it was
impossible that they should be ignorant while the demands for their
services were so pressing; and they were very slow about making
contracts except on terms entirely satisfactory to themselves. They had
no doubt of their safety in the cities; but they feared to trust
themselves in the old Rebel communities in the country.
For even the limited number of plantations which were being worked, the
supply of labor was wholly inadequate; nor would all the idle negroes in
the cities have made it up. There seemed no reason to doubt that during
the war there had been an actual and very great disappearance of
negroes. A few had gone North; some, the rumor had it, were being
carried to Cuba; but disease and privation accounted for the most. Their
new-found freedom had soon liberated them, in very many cases, from all
services on earth.
-----
Footnote 65:
Under authority of this bill they at once proceeded to elect the old
Rebel Mayor of the city, whom Butler had been compelled to imprison
for his outrageously rebellious conduct. The Union offices were also
filled, almost without an exception, by returned Rebels. The
significance of such an election could not be misunderstood, save by
the willfully blind. In effect it gave the Rebels absolute control of
the political machinery of the State.