spacious. One has entered the rayon of Southern steel and coal. Its
many factory chimneys and its sooty sky testify to considerable
industrialism. As in its sister city of Birmingham, Alabama, there
are many non-union shops. A great steel strike was in progress in the
United States, but while the workers in the North stood their ground
in a long and bitter struggle, there was scarcely the semblance of
a walkout in places like Chattanooga and Birmingham. Northern labor
trouble seemed to mean Southern capitalistic prosperity.
One reason why Southern labor remains to a great extent unorganized is
the Negro difficulty. Unions are not ready to accept Negro membership.
Therefore the Negro can always be brought in to do the white man’s
work if the latter goes on strike. Whether union or non-union, the
wages seem fairly high. I talked with a Negro moulder who earned on
an average six dollars a day. That is over eighteen hundred dollars
American, and about five hundred pounds British money a year. A
non-union unskilled man would, however, earn little more than two
dollars a day—which, with the cost of food so high, is very little.
I noticed a difference in the attitude of the colored population in
Chattanooga. It was much more depressed than that of Knoxville or the
Virginian cities. Nothing terrible had occurred in Chattanooga, but
there was said to be a bad mob, and what had happened at Knoxville
had frightened them. The newspapers contained intimidating news
paragraphs. On September 26th, at Omaha, Nebraska, the mob had burned
down the courthouse, lynched a Negro, and tried to lynch also the
mayor, E. P. Smith, who was twice hoisted to a lamp-post because he
refused to hand over a prisoner to the mob. “As I stood under that
lamp-post with the mob’s rope necktie circling my neck and listened
to the yells ‘Lynch him,’ I took the same course any true American
would have taken,” said the mayor. In the face of death he refused to
yield his authority to Judge Lynch. That was at Omaha, in the West. On
September 29th two Negroes were lynched by twenty-five masked men at
Montgomery, Alabama, for alleged assault of a white woman. On October
1st the terrifying color riot broke out at Elaine, Arkansas, on a
dispute over cotton prices. On October 6th two Negroes were burned
at the stake and three were shot to death at Washington, Georgia,
for supposed complicity in the murder of a deputy sheriff. Next day,
at Macon, Eugene Hamilton was lynched for attempted murder, and so
on. Since the Civil War one could scarcely find a more bloody and
terrible period. And the poor Whites of Chattanooga kept hinting that
Chattanooga’s turn would soon come. I was told Negroes did not care
to stray far from their homes in the suburbs after dark. They were
tormented and mauled on their way home from church. The Jim Crow
portion of the trolley car was invaded by roughs trying to start
trouble. In some cities in the South the Negroes have all-black motor
omnibuses and jitneys running. These would obviate much of the danger
of the trolley car which has only a straw screen between the races.
But Negro enterprise has not risen to motor omnibuses in depressed
Chattanooga. From a white point of view, the city might be improved by
more light. It is a dark and extensive place. The great companies do
not want to lose their Negroes and might do more to keep them. I found
the Negroes scared, and many were ready to seize the first opportunity
to go northward. Mr. T—— said, “They might kill us all.” Mrs. W——
said: “All who have children want to go away. There’ll be no chance for
our children here. Before the war it was much better, but they seem to
dislike us more now. Perhaps it would have been better if none of our
men had gone to the war.” I endeavored to reassure most of those with
whom I talked, for they had an exaggerated idea of their danger.
At Chattanooga there was no library for the colored people. There
seemed to be little Negro business. I was at once introduced to the
druggist and the undertaker. Undertaking and drug-selling, which
includes ice-cream-soda dispensing, seem the most popular business
enterprises among the Negroes. Wherever three or four polite Negroes
were gathered together and I was talking to them someone would say,
“Permit me to introduce Undertaker So-and-So,” and the latter would
smile blandly and offer his brown hand. At Chattanooga I visited a
swell establishment and looked over a show-room of elegant coffins, and
I was shown into the parlor and the embalming room, where on a stone
slab the bodies were prepared. This undertaker had started originally
with one coffin, and had now become, as I saw, one of the rich men
of the city. Funerals cost between a hundred and a hundred and fifty
dollars, and were usually defrayed by the insurance companies.
I found the large East Side drug store, kept by a young man who had
been in charge of the pneumonia ward of the 92nd Divisional Hospital
in France. He had as many white customers as colored. He did not sell
much patent medicine, as he said the attitude of the United States
Government to patent medicines had become most severe. He was a fully
qualified chemist. Doctors prescribed and he dispensed in the ordinary
way. Yes, many were surprised to find a Negro chemist in a position of
authority in a hospital, but that was due to white people’s ignorance
of the progress made by colored students of medicine.
I greatly enjoyed “Joseph’s Bondage,” a dramatic cantata sung by
a colored choir. Evidently the Negroes had composed the cantata
themselves, for the verbiage was very quaint and simple. In a packed
hall to be the only Whites was for myself and the lady who was with me
a curious position. It caused a whole row of seats to remain empty in
the midst of a crowded house. No Negro male dared sit down next to the
white woman for fear of what I might do. However, when I left my place
to talk to a Negro I knew in another part of the hall the empty line
filled up mechanically.
The production of the cantata was quite amusing. Potiphar’s guards were
the smartest possible, being ex-soldiers from Pershing’s army, upright
Negro boys in khaki. But Potiphar was in blue, and looked like a man in
charge of an elevator, and wore the slackest of pants. Leva, his wife,
pawed Joseph over and yowled: “I love you, I love you.” Pharaoh, with
glistening steel crown and steel slippers, was impressive. Joseph as a
slave was the Negro workingman in his shirt; as Vizier, however, with
the purple on him, he looked very grand, and the jubilee chorus which
he sang when at length Pharaoh stepped down and he sat in Pharaoh’s
seat, was very jolly, swaying to one side of the crowd around him and
singing to them, swaying to the other side and singing to them, and
then to all and God——
I did not leave the city without attending church, and I heard a little
black Boanerges give a brilliant address. He walked up and down his
rostrum with arms folded, and cooed and wheedled, but ever and anon
crouching and exploding, lifting his hand to strike, bawling, even
yelling to humanity and the Almighty. In dumb show he pulled the rope
of a poor fellow being lynched—_and sent straight to hell_. He spoke
of the race riots, and then suddenly becoming breathless, as if he were
a messenger just arrived with bad tidings, he flung both arms wide
apart, dilated his eyeballs, and cried in a terrorizing shriek—“_there
is riot and anarchy in the land_.”
He had chosen a fine combination of texts for his sermon: “Can the
Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? That which is born
of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.”
Though a complete stranger, I was singled out and brought to the front
to give the congregation a Christian greeting. I told them I had read
in a Negro paper that “the Negro church had failed. Prayer had been
tried for fifty years and had been proved to be no use.” And I said
what I firmly believe to be true, that only Christianity can save color.
The orator was much pleased and said to his congregation: “See what God
has sent us this Sunday morning,” and he invited me to give the address
in the evening. We had an amusing altercation on the platform. “I do
not know what to call him, or who he is; he may be anybody, a doctor,
a professor, a——” he looked at me inquiringly.
“Oh, plain Mr.,” said I.
He hung on, however, to “Professor” till I interrupted him again.
At the close of my address the deacons came out to assess the
congregation in the matter of collection. They looked it up and
down and decided that twenty-two dollars was the amount that could
be raised. So with their solemn faces they stared patiently at the
congregation while the plates went round. The collection was counted,
and was found to be considerably less. So the deacons addressed
themselves once more to the congregation, averring that some of the
young men were holding back. Then for five minutes individuals were
moved to come up singly and make additional offerings. Progress was
reported, and then more individuals came up till the assessment had
been realized.
Then the most touching thing occurred. The pastor turned to me and
offered to share the collection with me.
“Oh, no!” I whispered hurriedly, feeling, perhaps, rather shocked at
the idea.
“He says ‘Oh, no,’” said the pastor to the congregation.
V
MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA
Traveling from Chattanooga to Atlanta the mind inevitably reverts to
the American Civil War, for in 1863 the victory of the North marched
from Chattanooga and the famous battle of Lookout Mountain to the
taking of Atlanta and the discomfiture of Georgia. The glorious Stars
and Stripes came victoriously out of the Northern horizon, climbed
each hill, dipped and climbed again, with a clamorous, exultant
Northern soldiery behind it. General Sherman began to gather his great
fame, while General Lee, the adventuresome Southern leader, allowed
himself to be cut off in Virginia. The efforts of the South had been
very picturesque, like the play of a gambler with small resources and
enormous hopes, but the shades of ruin gathered about her and began
to negative the charm of her beginnings. Lincoln had proclaimed the
freedom of the slaves. The South pretended that in any case slavery
could not survive the war, and in token of this she enlisted Negro
soldiers, making them free men from the moment of enlistment. In
military extremity policy promises much which afterwards ingrate
security will not ratify. The Southern planter might have obtained some
measure of indemnification for the loss of his slaves had he come to
terms in time. But he hoped somehow he might win the right to manage
his Negroes as he wished without interference. There was the same
violent state of mind on the subject of the Negroes as slaves as there
is now on the subject of the Negroes as free men. All that was missing
was the white-woman talk. Though originally the colonists had been
generally opposed to the introduction of slavery, yet slavery had taken
captive and then poisoned most men’s minds. The South chose to fight to
the end rather than sacrifice the institution prematurely. There was a
pride, as of Lucifer, in the Southerner, too, a belief in himself that
foredoomed him to be hurled into outer darkness and to fall through
space for nine days. Sherman’s army, when it burned Atlanta and marched
through Georgia laying the country waste, was inspired with something
like the wrath of God.
In order to see the ex-slave and ex-master to-day, it is necessary to
dwell not only in cities but in the country, and I chose to walk across
the State of Georgia as the best way to ascertain what life in the
country was like. And I followed in the way Sherman had gone. There, if
anywhere, it seemed to me, the reactions of the war and of slavery must
be apparent to-day.
Sherman was something of a Prussian. He was a capable and scientific
soldier. From an enemy’s standpoint, he was not a humanitarian. War to
him was a trade of terror and blood, and he was logical. “You cannot
qualify war in harsher terms than I will,” said he. “War is cruelty,
and you cannot refine it.” And when he had captured Atlanta he ordered
the whole population to flee.
If they cared to go North, they would find their enemies not unkind. If
they thought there was safety in the South—then let them go further
south to whatever protection the beaten Southern Army could afford.
So North and South they fled, the people of Atlanta, but mostly South,
for they were bitter; and the roads filled with the pitiful array
of thousands of men and women and children with their old-fashioned
coaches, with their barrows, with their servants, with those faithful
Blacks who still heeded not the fact that “the day of liberation had
arrived.” All under safe-conduct to Hood’s army.
What complaints, what laments, as the proud Southern population took
the road. A lamentation that is heard till now! And when the people
had gone, the city of Atlanta was set on fire. Sherman had decided to
march to the sea, and he could not afford to leave an enemy population
in his rear, nor could he allow the chance that secret arsenals
might exist there after he had gone. It was a never to be forgotten
spectacle, “the heaven one expanse of lurid fire, the air filled
with flying, burning cinders.” “We were startled and awed,” says a
soldier who marched with the rest, “seeing vast waves and sheets of
flames thrusting themselves heavenward, rolling and tossing in mighty
billows—a gigantic sea of fire.” Small explosions arranged by the
engineers were punctuated by huge explosions when hidden stores of
ammunition were located, and while these added ruin to ruin in the
city they sounded as lugubrious and awful detonations to the soldiery
on the road. Depots, churches, shops, warehouses, homes flared from
every story and every window. Those who remained in the town were few,
but it was impossible not to be stirred if not appalled. A brigade of
New England soldiers was the last to leave, and marched out by Decatur
Street, led by the band of the 33rd Massachusetts regiment, playing
John Brown’s body lies a-mould’ring in his grave
His soul is marching on—
the lurid glare of the fire gleaming upon their bayonets and equipment,
inflaming their visages and their eyes which were already burning with
the war faith of the North.
That was in the fall of 1864. Years have passed and healed many
wounds. Now it is Atlanta in the fall of 1919 and the crush of the
Fair time. All Georgia is at her capital city. The automobiles are
forced to a walking pace, there are so many of them, and they vent
their displeasure in a multiform chorus of barking, howling, and
hooting. So great is the prosperity of the land that the little farmer
and the workingman have their cars, not mere “Ford runabouts,” but
resplendently enameled, capacious, smooth-running, swift-starting
coaches where wife and family disport themselves more at home than at
home. Atlanta’s new life has grown from the old ruins and hidden them,
as a young forest springs through the charred stumps of a forest fire.
On each side Atlanta’s skyscrapers climb heavenward in severe lines,
and where heaven should be the sky signs twinkle. Every volt that can
be turned into light is being used. The shops and the stores and the
cinemas are dazzling to show what they are worth. The sidewalks are
thronged with Southern youth whose hilarious faces and gregarious
movements show a camaraderie one would hardly observe in the colder
North. Jaunty Negro boys mingle with the crowd and are mirthful among
themselves—as well dressed as the Whites, sharing in the “record
trade” and the boom of the price of cotton. They are not slaves
to-day, but are lifted high with racial pride and the consciousness
of universities and seminaries on Atlanta’s hills, and successes in
medicine, law, and business in the city. They roll along in the joyous
freedom of their bodies, and make the South more Southern than it is.
How pale and ghostlike the South would seem without its flocks of
colored children, without those many men and women with the sun shadows
in their faces!
“We love our niggers and understand them,” say the Whites, repeating
their formula, and you’d think there was no racial problem whatever
in the South, to see the great “Gate City” given over to merriment
unrestrained and many a Negro colliding with many a White youth and yet
never a fight—nothing on the crowded streets to exemplify the accepted
hostility of one to the other. One has the thought that perhaps Atlanta
did not burn in vain, and that the South as well as the North believes
in the immortality of the soul of John Brown.
The tobacco-chewing, smiling, guffawing crowds of the street, and
Peachtree Street jammed with people and cars! What a hubbub the four
jammed-up processions of automobiles are making—like choruses of
hoarse katydids crying only for repetition’s sake and the lust of
noise! But there is more noise and more joy still a-coming! Skirling
and shrieking, in strange contrast to the Negroes and to the clothed
Whites and to the color of night itself, comes the parade of college
youths all in their pajamas and nightshirts. Long queues of some
hundreds of lads in white shouting at the top of their voices—they
climb in and out of the electric cars, rush into shops and theatres in
a wild game of “Follow my leader.” _Rah, rah, rah_, they cry, _rah,
rah, rah_, and rush into hotels, circle the foyer, and plunge among the
amazed diners in the dining rooms, thread their way around tables and
up the hotel balustrade, invade bedrooms, go out at windows and down
fire escapes, and then once more file along the packed streets amidst
autos and cars, raving all the while with pleasure and excitement. It
is good humor and boisterousness and the jollity of the Fair time.
Up above all the flags and the bunting wave listlessly in the night
air. It seems impossible but that the firing of Atlanta is forgotten,
and the pitiful exodus of its humiliated people—forgotten also the
exultancy of the soldiers of the North singing while the city burned.
Sherman with 60,000 men and 2500 wagons but only 60 guns marched
out, and none knew what his destination was. A retreat from Atlanta
comparable only to Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow was about to
commence. The hostile farming population of Georgia and the Carolinas
should harass the Yankee army as the Russian peasants had done the
French in 1812. That was the Southern belief and the substance of
Southern propaganda at the time. Not so the Northern Army, which had
the consciousness of victory and a radiant belief in its cause and in
its general. “A feeling of exhilaration seemed to pervade all minds,
a feeling of something to come, vague and undefined, still full of
venture and intense interest. Even the common soldiers caught the
inspiration, and many a group called out: ‘Uncle Billy, I guess Grant
is waiting for us at Richmond.’ The general sentiment was that we were
marching for Richmond and that there we should end the war, but how and
when they seemed to care not, nor did they measure the distance, or
count the cost in life, or bother their brains about the great rivers
to be crossed and the food required for man and beast that had to be
gathered by the way.”[3]
Sherman himself had not decided on what point exactly he would march.
But he never intended to march against Lee at Richmond, though the
South and his own soldiers believed it. He always designed to reach the
sea and reopen maritime communication with the North, and kept in mind
Savannah, Port Royal, and even Pensacola in North Florida. So universal
was the belief that he was marching on Richmond by way of Augusta that
in all the country districts of Georgia where the left wing marched
they will tell you still that the enemy was marching on Augusta.
_You shall maintain discipline, patience, and courage_, said Sherman
to his army. _And I will lead you to achievements equal to any of the
past. We are commencing a long and difficult march to a new base, but
all the chances of war have been provided for. The habitual order of
march will be by four roads as nearly parallel as possible. The columns
will start habitually at 7 a. m. and make about 15 miles a day. The
army will forage liberally on the country during the march. Horses,
mules, and wagons belonging to the inhabitants may be appropriated by
the cavalry and artillery freely and without limit, discriminating,
however, between the rich, who are usually hostile, and the poor and
industrious, usually neutral or friendly. All foragers will refrain
from abusive or threatening language, and they will endeavor to
leave each family reasonable means of sustenance. Negroes who are
able-bodied and serviceable may be taken along if supplies permit. All
non-combatants and refugees should go to the rear and be discouraged
from encumbering us. Some ether time we may be able to provide for
the poor Whites and Blacks seeking to escape the bondage under which
they are now suffering. To corps commanders alone is entrusted the
power to destroy mills, houses, cotton gins, etc., but the measure of
the inhabitants’ hostility should be the measure of the ruin which
commanders should enforce._[4]
There was much more said in those very finely written and emphatic
orders, but the sentence that captured the imagination of the common
soldier was certainly “the army will forage liberally on the country”
which at once became a common gag among the men. For it spelt loot and
fun and treasure trove and souvenirs and everything else that stirs a
soldier’s mind. There is a human note throughout the whole of General
Sherman’s orders, but no softness, rather an inexorable sternness. He
had no patience with the cause of the Rebels nor with their ways of
fighting. He and his staff were not averse from the idea of reading
the population of Georgia and South Carolina a terrible lesson. While
the march was military it inevitably became punitive. The cotton was
destroyed, the farms pillaged, the slaves set free, the land laid
waste. It was over a comparatively narrow strip of country, but Sherman
was like the wrath of the Lord descending upon it.
So out marched the four divisions (14th, 15th, 17th, and 20th) joyously
singing as they went the soldiers’ songs of the war—
One and Free
and
He who first the Flag would lower
SHOOT HIM ON THE SPOT.
and all manner of variants of John Brown to the Glory Hallelujah chorus.
The way out from Atlanta is now a road of cheap shops and Jewish
pawnbrokers, Negro beauty parlors, bag shops, gaudy cinema and
vaudeville sheds, fruit stalls and booths of quack doctors and magic
healers, vendors of the Devil’s corn cure, fortune tellers, and what
not. A Negro skyscraper climbs upward. It is decidedly a “colored
neighborhood,” and rough crowds of Negro laborers and poor Whites
frolic through the litter of the street. Painfully the electric cars
sound their alarms and budge and stop, and budge again, threading their
way through the masses, glad to get clear after half a mile of it and
then plunge into the comparative spaciousness of villadom outside the
city.
It is not as it was of yore. Where the bloody July battle of Atlanta
raged a complete peace has now settled down amid the dignified
habitations of the rich. Trees hide the view, and children play upon
the lawns of pleasant houses while the older folk rock to and fro upon
the chairs of shady verandas.
Dignified Decatur dwells on its hill by the wayside, and has reared
its pale monument to the Confederate dead. On this white obelisk the
cause of the South is justified. Within sight of it rises an impressive
courthouse, which by its size and grandeur protests the strength of the
law in a county of Georgia.