THE SOUTH-WEST, ALABAMA AND MISSISSIPPI.
_Mobile._—I left Savannah for the West, by the Macon road; the train
started punctually to a second, at its advertised time; the speed
was not great, but regular, and less time was lost unnecessarily, at
way-stations, than usually on our Northern roads.
I have travelled more than five hundred miles on the Georgia roads,
and I am glad to say that all of them seem to be exceedingly well
managed. The speed upon them is not generally more than from fifteen to
twenty miles an hour; but it is made, as advertised, with considerable
punctuality. The roads are admirably engineered and constructed, and
their equipment will compare favourably with that of any other roads
on the continent. There are now upwards of twelve hundred miles of
railroad in the State, and more building. The Savannah and Macon
line—the first built—was commenced in 1834. The increased commerce
of the city of Savannah, which followed its completion, stimulated
many other railroad enterprises, not only within the State, but
elsewhere at the South, particularly in South Carolina. Many of these
were rashly pushed forward by men of no experience, and but little
commercial judgment; the roads were injudiciously laid out, and have
been badly managed, and, of course, have occasioned disastrous losses.
The Savannah and Macon road has, however, been very successful. The
receipts are now over $1,000,000 annually; the road is well stocked, is
out of debt, and its business is constantly increasing; the stock is
above par, and the stockholders are receiving eight per cent dividends,
with a handsome surplus on hand. It has been always, in a great degree,
under the management of Northern men—was engineered, and is still
worked chiefly by Northern men, and a large amount of its stock is
owned at the North. I am told that most of the mechanics, and of the
successful merchants and tradesmen of Savannah came originally from the
North, or are the sons of Northern men.
Partly by rail and partly by rapid stage-coaching (the coaches,
horses, and drivers again from the North), I crossed the State in
about twenty-four hours. The railroad is since entirely completed
from Savannah to Montgomery, in Alabama, and is being extended slowly
towards the Mississippi; of course with the expectation that it will
eventually reach the Pacific, and thus make Savannah “the gate to the
commerce of the world.” Ship-masters will hope that, when either it or
its rival in South Carolina has secured that honour, they will succeed,
better than they yet have done, in removing the bars, physical and
legal, by which commerce is now annoyed in its endeavours to serve them.
At Columbus, I spent several days. It is the largest manufacturing
town, south of Richmond, in the Slave States. It is situated at the
Falls, and the head of steamboat navigation of the Chatahooche, the
western boundary of Georgia. The water-power is sufficient to drive two
hundred thousand spindles, with a proportionate number of looms. There
are, probably, at present from fifteen to twenty thousand spindles
running. The operatives in the cotton-mills are said to be mainly
“Cracker girls” (poor whites from the country), who earn, in good
times, by piece-work, from $8 to $12 a month. There are, besides the
cotton-mills, one woollen-mill, one paper-mill, a foundry, a cotton-gin
factory, a machine-shop, etc. The labourers in all these are mainly
whites, and they are in such a condition that, if temporarily thrown
out of employment, great numbers of them are at once reduced to a state
of destitution, and are dependent upon credit or charity for their
daily food. Public entertainments were being held at the time of my
visit, the profits to be applied to the relief of operatives in mills
which had been stopped by the effects of a late flood of the river. Yet
Slavery is constantly boasted to be a perfect safeguard against such
distress.
I had seen in no place, since I left Washington, so much gambling,
intoxication, and cruel treatment of servants in public, as in
Columbus. This, possibly, was accidental; but I must caution persons,
travelling for health or pleasure, to avoid stopping in the town. The
hotel in which I lodged was disgustingly dirty; the table revolting;
the waiters stupid, inattentive, and annoying. It was the stage-house;
but I was informed that the other public-house was no better. There are
very good inns at Macon, and at Montgomery, Alabama; and it will be
best for an invalid proceeding from Savannah westward, if possible, not
to spend a night between these towns.
A day’s journey took me from Columbus, through a hilly wilderness, with
a few dreary villages, and many isolated cotton farms, with comfortless
habitations for black and white upon them, to Montgomery, the capital
of Alabama.
Montgomery is a prosperous town, with pleasant suburbs, and a
remarkably enterprising population, among which there is a considerable
proportion of Northern and foreign-born business-men and mechanics.
I spent a week here, and then left for Mobile, on the steamboat
Fashion, a clean and well-ordered boat, with polite and obliging
officers. We were two days and a half making the passage, the boat
stopping at almost every bluff and landing to take on cotton, until
she had a freight of nineteen hundred bales, which was built up on
the guards, seven or eight tiers in height, and until it reached the
hurricane deck. The boat was thus brought so deep that her guards were
in the water, and the ripple of the river constantly washed over them.
There are two hundred landings on the Alabama river, and three hundred
on the Bigby (Tombeckbee of the geographers), at which the boats
advertise to call, if required, for passengers or freight. This, of
course, makes the passage exceedingly tedious. The so-called landings,
however, have not in many cases the slightest artificial accommodations
for the purpose of a landing. The boat’s hawser, if used, is made fast
to a living tree; there is not a sign of a wharf, often no house in
sight, and sometimes no distinct road.
The principal town at which we landed was Selma, a pleasant village,
in one corner of which I came upon a tall, ill-proportioned,
broken-windowed brick barrack; it had no grounds about it, was close
upon the highway, was in every way dirty, neglected, and forlorn in
expression. I inquired what it was, and was answered, the “Young
Ladies’ College.” There were a number of pretty private gardens in the
town, in which I noticed several evergreen oaks, the first I had seen
since leaving Savannah.
At Claiborne, another village upon the river, we landed at nine
o’clock on a Sunday night. It is situated upon a bluff, a hundred and
fifty feet high, with a nearly perpendicular bank, upon the river. The
boat came to the shore at the foot of a plank slide-way, down which
cotton was sent to it, from a warehouse at the top.
There was something truly Western in the direct, reckless way in which
the boat was loaded. A strong gang-plank being placed at right angles
to the slide-way, a bale of cotton was let slide from the top, and,
coming down with fearful velocity, on striking the gang-plank, it
would rebound up and out on to the boat, against a barricade of bales
previously arranged to receive it. The moment it struck this barricade,
it would be dashed at by two or three men, and jerked out of the way,
and others would roll it to its place for the voyage, on the tiers aft.
The mate, standing near the bottom of the slide, as soon as the men
had removed one bale to what he thought a safe distance, would shout
to those aloft, and down would come another. Not unfrequently, a bale
would not strike fairly on its end, and would rebound off, diagonally,
overboard; or would be thrown up with such force as to go over the
barricade, breaking stanchions and railings, and scattering the
passengers on the berth deck. Negro hands were sent to the top of the
bank, to roll the bales to the side, and Irishmen were kept below to
remove them, and stow them. On asking the mate (with some surmisings)
the reason of this arrangement, he said—
“The niggers are worth too much to be risked here; if the Paddies are
knocked overboard, or get their backs broke, nobody loses anything!”
There were about one hundred passengers on the Fashion, besides
a number of poor people and negroes on the lower deck. They were,
generally, cotton-planters, going to Mobile on business, or emigrants
bound to Texas or Arkansas. They were usually well dressed, but were a
rough, coarse style of people, drinking a great deal, and most of the
time under a little alcoholic excitement. Not sociable, except when the
topics of cotton, land, and negroes, were started; interested, however,
in talk about theatres and the turf; very profane; often showing the
handles of concealed weapons about their persons, but not quarrelsome,
avoiding disputes and altercations, and respectful to one another in
forms of words; very ill-informed, except on plantation business;
their language ungrammatical, idiomatic, and extravagant. Their grand
characteristics—simplicity of motives, vague, shallow, and purely
objective habits of thought; and bold, self-reliant movement.
With all their individual independence, I soon could perceive a very
great homogeneousness of character, by which they were distinguishable
from any other people with whom I had before been thrown in contact;
and I began to study it with interest, as the Anglo-Saxon development
of the South-west.
I found that, more than any people I had ever seen, they were
unrateable by dress, taste, forms, and expenditures. I was
perplexed by finding, apparently united in the same individual, the
self-possession, confidence, and the use of expressions of deference,
of the well-equipped gentleman, and the coarseness and low tastes
of the uncivilized boor—frankness and reserve, recklessness and
self-restraint, extravagance, and penuriousness.
There was one man, who “lived, when he was to home,” as he told me,
“in the Red River Country,” in the north-eastern part of Texas, having
emigrated thither from Alabama, some years before. He was a tall,
thin, awkward person, and wore a suit of clothes (probably bought
“ready-made”) which would have better suited a short, fat figure.
Under his waistcoat he carried a large knife, with the hilt generally
protruding at the breast. He had been with his family to his former
home, for a business purpose, and was now returning to his plantation.
His wife was a pale and harassed-looking woman; and he scarce ever paid
her the smallest attention, not even sitting near her at the public
table. Of his children, however, he seemed very fond; and they had a
negro servant in attendance upon them, whom he was constantly scolding
and threatening. Having been from home for six weeks, his impatience to
return was very great, and was constantly aggravated by the frequent
and long-continued stoppages of the boat. “Time’s money, time’s money!”
he would be constantly saying, while we were taking on cotton—“time’s
worth more’n money to me now; a hundred per cent. more, ’cause I left
my niggers all alone; not a dam white man within four mile on ’em.”
I asked how many negroes he had.
“I’ve got twenty on ’em to home, and thar they ar! and thar they ar!
and thar aint a dam soul of a white fellow within four mile on ’em.”
“They are picking cotton, I suppose?”
“No, I got through pickin ’fore I left.”
“What work have they to do, then, now?”
“I set ’em to clairin’, but they aint doin’ a dam thing—not a dam
thing, they aint; that’s wat they are doin’, that is—not a dam thing.
I know that, as well as you do. That’s the reason time’s an object.
I told the capting so, wen I came aboard: says I, ’capting,’ says I,
‘time is in the objective case with me.’ No, sir, they aint doin’ a
dam solitary thing; that’s what they are up to. I know that as well as
anybody; I do. But I’ll make it up, I’ll make it up, when I get thar,
now you’d better believe.”
Once, when a lot of cotton, baled with unusual neatness, was coming
on board, and some doubt had been expressed as to the economy of the
method of baling, he said very loudly:
“Well, now, I’d be willin’ to bet my salvation, that them thar’s the
heaviest bales that’s come on to this boat.”
“I’ll bet you a hundred dollars of it,” answered one.
“Well, if I was in the habit of bettin’, I’d do it. I aint a bettin’
man. But I am a cotton man, I am, and I don’t car who knows it. I know
cotton, I do. I’m dam if I know anythin’ but cotton. I ought to know
cotton, I had. I’ve been at it ever sin’ I was a chile.”
“Stranger,” he asked me once, “did you ever come up on the Leweezay?
She’s a right smart pretty boat, she is, the Leweezay; the best I
ever see on the Alabamy river. They wanted me to wait and come down
on her, but I told ’em time was in the objective case to me. She is a
right pretty boat, and her capting’s a high-tone gentleman; haint no
objections to find with him—he’s a high-tone gentleman, that’s what he
is. But the pilot—well, damn him! He run her right out of the river, up
into the woods—didn’t run her in the river, at all. When I go aboard
a steamboat, I like to keep in the river, somewar; but that pilot, he
took her right up into the woods. It was just clairin’ land. Clairin’
land, and playin’ hell ginerally, all night; not follering the river
at all. I believe he was drunk. He must have been drunk, for I could
keep a boat in the river myself. I’ll never go in a boat where the
pilot’s drunk all the time. I take a glass too much myself, sometimes;
but I don’t hold two hundred lives in the holler of my hand. I was
in my berth, and he run her straight out of the river, slap up into
the furest. It threw me clean out of my berth, out onter the floor; I
didn’t sleep any more while I was aboard. The Leweezay’s a right smart
pretty little boat, and her capting’s a high-tone gentleman. They hev
good livin’ aboard of her, too. Haan’t no objections on that score;
weddin’ fixins all the time; but I won’t go in a boat war the pilot’s
drunk. I set some vally on the life of two hundred souls. They wanted
to hev me come down on her, but I told ’em time was in the objective
case.”
There were three young negroes, carried by another Texan, on the deck,
outside the cabin. I don’t know why they were not allowed to be with
the other emigrant slaves, carried on the lower deck, unless the owner
was afraid of their trying to get away, and had no handcuffs small
enough for them. They were boys; the oldest twelve or fourteen years
old, the youngest not more than seven. They had evidently been bought
lately by their present owner, and probably had just been taken from
their parents. They lay on the deck and slept, with no bed but the
passengers’ luggage, and no cover but a single blanket for each. Early
one morning, after a very stormy night, when they must have suffered
much from the driving rain and cold, I saw their owner with a glass of
spirits, giving each a few swallows from it. The older ones smacked
their lips, and said, “Tank ’ou massa;” but the little one couldn’t
drink it, and cried aloud, when he was forced to. The older ones were
very playful and quarrelsome, and continually teasing the younger,
who seemed very sad, or homesick and sulky. He would get very angry
at their mischievous fun, and sometimes strike them. He would then be
driven into a corner, where he would lie on his back, and kick at them
in a perfect frenzy of anger and grief. The two boys would continue
to laugh at him, and frequently the passengers would stand about, and
be amused by it. Once, when they had plagued him in this way for some
time, he jumped up on to the cotton-bales, and made as if he would have
plunged overboard. One of the older boys caught him by the ankle, and
held him till his master came and hauled him in, and gave him a severe
flogging with a rope’s end. A number of passengers collected about
them, and I heard several say, “That’s what he wants.” Red River said
to me, “I’ve been a watchin’ that ar boy, and I see what’s the matter
with him; he’s got the devil in him right bad, and he’ll hev to take a
right many of them warmins before it’ll be got out.”
The crew of the boat, as I have intimated, was composed partly of
Irishmen, and partly of negroes; the latter were slaves, and were
hired of their owners at $40 a month—the same wages paid to the
Irishmen. A dollar of their wages was given to the negroes themselves,
for each Sunday they were on the passage. So far as convenient, they
were kept at work separately from the white hands; they were also
messed separately. On Sunday I observed them dining in a group, on
the cotton-bales. The food which was given to them in tubs, from the
kitchen, was various and abundant, consisting of bean-porridge, bacon,
corn bread, ship’s biscuit, potatoes, duff (pudding), and gravy. There
was one knife used only, among ten of them; the bacon was cut and
torn into shares; splinters of the bone and of fire-wood were used
for forks; the porridge was passed from one to another, and drank
out of the tub; but though excessively dirty and beast-like in their
appearance and manners, they were good-natured and jocose as usual.
“Heah! you Bill,” said one to another, who was on a higher tier of
cotton, “pass down de dessart. You! up dar on de hill; de dessart!
Augh! don’t you know what de dessart be? De duff, you fool.”
“Does any of de gemmen want some o’ dese potatum?” asked another; and
no answer being given, he turned the tub full of potatoes overboard,
without any hesitation. It was evident he had never had to think on one
day how he should be able to live the next.
Whenever we landed at night or on Sunday, for wood or cotton, there
would be many negroes come on board from the neighbouring plantations,
to sell eggs to the steward.
Sunday was observed by the discontinuance of public gambling in the
cabin, and in no other way. At midnight gambling was resumed, and
during the whole passage was never at any other time discontinued,
night or day, so far as I saw. There were three men that seemed to
be professional sharpers, and who probably played into each other’s
hands. One young man lost all the money he had with him—several hundred
dollars.
Mobile, in its central, business part, is very compactly built,
dirty, and noisy, with little elegance, or evidence of taste or
public spirit, in its people. A small, central, open square—the only
public ground that I saw—was used as a horse and hog pasture, and
clothes drying-yard. Out of the busier quarter, there is a good deal
of the appearance of a thriving New England village—almost all the
dwelling-houses having plots of ground enclosed around them, planted
with trees and shrubs. The finest trees are the magnolia and live oak;
and the most valuable shrub is the Cherokee rose, which is much used
for hedges and screens. It is evergreen, and its leaves are glossy
and beautiful at all seasons, and in March it blooms profusely. There
is an abundance, also, of the Cape jessamine. It is as beautiful as
a camelia; and, when in blossom, scents the whole air with a most
delicate and delicious fragrance. At a market-garden, near the town
which I visited, I found most of the best Northern and Belgian pears
fruiting well, and apparently healthy, and well suited in climate, on
quince-stocks. Figs are abundant, and bananas and oranges are said to
be grown with some care, and slight winter protection.
The Battle House, kept by Boston men, with Irish servants, I found an
excellent hotel; but with higher charge than I had ever paid before.
Prices, generally, in Mobile, range very high. There are large numbers
of foreign merchants in the population; but a great deficiency of
tradesmen and mechanics.
While I was at Montgomery, my hat was one day taken from the
dining-room, at dinner-time, by some one who left in its place for me
a very battered and greasy substitute, which I could not wear, if I
had chosen to. I asked the landlord what I should do. “Be before him,
to-morrow.” Following this cool advice, and, in the mean time, wearing
a cap, I obtained my hat the next day; but so ill used, that I should
not have known it, but for the maker’s name, stamped within it. Not
succeeding in fitting myself with a new hat, I desired to have my old
one pressed, when in Mobile; but I could not find a working hatter
in the place, though it has a population of thirty thousand souls.
Finally, a hat-dealer, a German Jew, I think he was, with whom I had
left it while looking further, returned it to me, with a charge of one
dollar, for brushing it—the benefit of which brushing I was unable, in
the least, to perceive. A friend informed me that he found it cheaper
to have all his furniture and clothing made for him, in New York, to
order, when he needed any, and sent on by express, than to get it in
Mobile.
The great abundance of the best timber for the purpose, in the United
States, growing in the vicinity of the town, has lately induced some
persons to attempt ship-building at Mobile. The mechanics employed are
all from the North.
The great business of the town is the transfer of cotton, from the
producer to the manufacturer, from the waggon and the steamboat to the
sea-going ship. Like all the other cotton-ports, Mobile labours under
the disadvantage of a shallow harbour. At the wharves, there were only
a few small craft and steamboats. All large sea-going vessels lie some
thirty miles below, and their freights are transhipped in lighters.
There appears to be a good deal of wealth and luxury, as well as
senseless extravagance in the town. English merchants affect the
character of the society, considerably; some very favourably—some, very
much otherwise. Many of them own slaves, and, probably, all employ
them; but Slavery seems to be of more value to them from the amusement
it affords, than in any other way. “So-and-so advertises ’a valuable
drayman, and a good blacksmith and horse-shoer, for sale, on reasonable
terms;’ an acclimated double-entry bookkeeper, kind in harness, is what
I want,” said one; “those Virginia patriarchs haven’t any enterprise,
or they’d send on a stock of such goods every spring, to be kept over
through the fever, so they could warrant them.”
“I don’t know where you’ll find one,” replied another; “but if you are
wanting a private chaplain, there’s one I have heard, in —— street,
several times, that could probably be bought for a fair price; and I
will warrant him sound enough in wind, if not in doctrine.”
“I wouldn’t care for his doctrine, if I bought him; I don’t care how
black he is; feed him right, and in a month he will be as orthodox as
an archbishop.”