THE SOUTH.
The political forecasts and opinions which were given me upon
plantations were, in a great measure, those indicated in my talk with
the Norfolk “loafers.” On the history of the commencement of the
rebellion there was singular unanimity. “Virginia never meant to quit
the Union; we were cheated by those rascals of the South. When we did go
out, we were left to do all the fighting. Why, sir, I‘ve seen a
Mississippian division run away from a single Yankee regiment.”
As I heard much the same story from the North Carolinians that I met, it
would seem as though there was little union among the seceding States.
The legend upon the first of all the secession flags that were hoisted
was typical of this devotion to the fortunes of the State: “Death to
abolitionists; South Carolina goes it alone;” and during the whole war
it was not the rebel colors, but the palmetto emblem, or other State
devices, that the ladies wore.
About the war itself but little is said, though here and there I met a
man who would tell camp stories in the Northern style. One planter, who
had been “out” himself, went so far as to say to me: “Our officers were
good, but considering that our rank and file were just ‘white trash,’
and that they had to fight regiments of New England Yankee volunteers,
with all their best blood in the ranks, and Western sharpshooters
together, it‘s only wonderful how we weren‘t whipped sooner.”
As for the future, the planter‘s policy is a simple one: “Reckon we‘re
whipped, so we go in now for the old flag; only those Yankee rogues must
give us the control of our own people.” The one result of the war has
been, as they believe, the abolition of slavery; otherwise the situation
is unchanged. The war is over, the doctrine of secession is allowed to
fall into the background, and the ex-rebels claim to step once more into
their former place, if, indeed, they admit that they ever left it.
Every day that you are in the South you come more and more to see that
the “mean whites” are the controlling power. The landowners are not only
few in number, but their apathy during the present crisis is surprising.
The men who demand their readmission to the government of eleven States
are unkempt, fierce-eyed fellows, not one whit better than the brancos
of Brazil; the very men, strangely enough, who themselves, in their
“Leavenworth constitution,” first began disfranchisement, declaring that
the qualification for electors in the new State of Kansas should be the
taking oath to uphold the infamous Fugitive Slave Law.
These “mean whites” were the men who brought about secession. The
planters are guiltless of everything but criminal indifference to the
deeds that were committed in their name. Secession was the act of a pack
of noisy demagogues; but a false idea of honor brought round a majority
of the Southern people, and the infection of enthusiasm carried over
the remainder.
When the war sprang up, the old Southern contempt for the Yankees broke
out into a fierce burst of joy, that the day had come for paying off old
scores. “We hate them, sir,” said an old planter to me. “I wish to God
that the _Mayflower_ had sunk with all hands in Plymouth Bay.”
Along with this violence of language, there is a singular kind of
cringing to the conquerors. Time after time I heard the complaint, “The
Yanks treat us shamefully, I reckon. We come back to the Union, and give
in on every point; we renounce slavery; we consent to forget the past;
and yet they won‘t restore us to our rights.” Whenever I came to ask
what they meant by “rights,” I found the same haziness that everywhere
surrounds that word. The Southerners seem to think that men may rebel
and fight to the death against their country, and then, being beaten,
lay down their arms and walk quietly to the polls along with law-abiding
citizens, secure in the protection of the Constitution which for years
they have fought to subvert.
At Richmond I had a conversation which may serve as a specimen of what
one hears each moment from the planters. An old gentleman with whom I
was talking politics opened at me suddenly: “The Radicals are going to
give the ballot to our niggers to strengthen their party, but they know
better than to give it to their Northern niggers.”
_D_.--“But surely there‘s a difference in the cases.”
_The Planter_.--“You‘re right--there is; but not your way. The
difference is, that the Northern niggers can read and write, and even
lie with consistency, and ours can‘t.”
_D_.--“But there‘s the wider difference, that negro suffrage down here
is a necessity, unless you are to rule the country that‘s just beaten
you.”
_The Planter_.--“Well, there of course we differ. We rebs say we fought
to take our State out of the Union. The Yanks beat us; so our States
must still be in the Union. If so, why shouldn‘t our representatives be
unconditionally admitted?”
Nearer to a conclusion we of course did not come, he declaring that no
man ought to vote who had not education enough to understand the
Constitution, I, that this was good _prima facie_ evidence against
letting him vote, but that it might be rebutted by the proof of a higher
necessity for his voting. As a planter said to me, “The Southerners
prefer soldier rule to nigger rule;” but it is not a question of what
they prefer, but of what course is necessary for the safety of the Union
which they fought to destroy.
Nowhere in the Southern States did I find any expectation of a fresh
rebellion. It is only Englishmen who ask whether “the South” will not
fight “once more.” The South is dead and gone; there can never be a
“South” again, but only so many Southern States. “The South” meant
simply the slave country; and slavery being dead, it is dead. Slavery
gave us but two classes besides the negroes--planters and “mean whites.”
The great planters were but a few thousand in number; they are gone to
Canada, England, Jamaica, California, Colorado, Texas. The “mean
whites”--the true South--are impossible in the face of free labor: they
must work or starve. If they work, they will no longer be “mean whites,”
but essentially Northerners--that is, citizens of a democratic republic,
and not oligarchists.
As the Southerners admit that there can be no further war, it would be
better even for themselves that they should allow the sad record of
their rising to fade away. Their speeches, their newspapers continue to
make use of language which nothing could excuse, and which, in the face
of the magnanimity of the conquerors, is disgraceful. In a Mobile paper
I have seen a leader which describes with hideous minuteness Lincoln,
Lane, John Brown, and Dostie playing whist in hell. A Texas cutting
which I have is less blasphemous, but not less vile: “The English
language no longer affords terms in which to curse a sniveling,
weazen-faced piece of humanity generally denominated a Yankee. We see
some about here sometimes, but they skulk around, like sheep-killing
dogs, and associate mostly with niggers. They whine and prate, and talk
about the judgment of God, as if God had anything to do with them.” The
Southerners have not even the wit or grace to admit that the men who
beat them were good soldiers; “blackguards and braggarts,” “cravens and
thieves,” are common names for the men of the Union army. I have in my
possession an Alabama paper in which General Sheridan, at that time the
commander of the military division which included the State, is styled
“a short-tailed slimy tadpole of the later spawn, the blathering
disgrace of an honest father, an everlasting libel on his Irish blood,
the synonym of infamy, and scorn of all brave men.” While I was in
Virginia, one of the Richmond papers said: “This thing of ‘loyalty’ will
not do for the Southern man.”
The very day that I landed in the South a dinner was given at Richmond
by the “Grays,” a volunteer corps which had fought through the
rebellion. After the roll of honor, or list of men killed in battle, had
been read, there were given as toasts by rebel officers: “Jeff.
Davis--the caged eagle; the bars confine his person, but his great
spirit soars;” and “The conquered banner, may its resurrection at last
be as bright and as glorious as theirs--the dead.”
It is in the face of such words as these that Mr. Johnson, the most
unteachable of mortals, asks men who have sacrificed their sons to
restore the Union to admit the ex-rebels to a considerable share in the
government of the nation, even if they are not to monopolize it, as they
did before the war. His conduct seems to need the Western editor‘s
defense: “He must be kinder honest-like, he aire sich a tarnation
foolish critter.”
It is clear, from the occurrence of such dinners, the publication of
such paragraphs and leaders as those of which I have spoken, that there
is no military tyranny existing in the South. The country is indeed
administered by military commanders, but it is not ruled by troops.
Before we can give ear to the stories that are afloat in Europe of the
“government of major-generals,” we must believe that five millions of
Englishmen, inhabiting a country as large as Europe, are crushed down by
some ten thousand other men--about as many as are needed to keep order
in the single town of Warsaw. The Southerners are allowed to rule
themselves; the question now at issue is merely whether they shall also
rule their former slaves, the negroes.
I hardly felt myself out of the reach of slavery and rebellion till,
steaming up the Potomac from Aquia Creek by the gray dawn, I caught
sight of a grand pile towering over a city from a magnificent situation
on the brow of a long, rolling hill. Just at the moment, the sun,
invisible as yet to us below, struck the marble dome and cupola, and
threw the bright gilding into a golden blaze, till the Greek shape
stood out upon the blue sky, glowing like a second sun. The city was
Washington; the palace with the burnished cupola the Capitol; and within
two hours I was present at the “hot-weather sitting” of the 39th
Congress of the United States.