PEOPLE AND POLITICS.
One day I dined at the house of a Union man of a different stamp from
the twenty-one I have mentioned. He was one of the wealthy citizens of
Richmond,—a man of timid disposition and conservative views, who had
managed admirably to conceal his Union sentiments during the war. He had
been on excellent terms with Jeff Davis and members of his cabinet; and
he was now on excellent terms with the United States authorities. A
prudent citizen, not wanting in kindness of heart; yet he could say of
the Emancipation Act,—
“It will prove a good thing for the slave-owners; for it will be quite
as cheap to hire our labor as to own it, _and we shall now be rid of
supporting the old and decrepit servants, such as were formerly left to
die on our hands_.”
On being asked if he considered that he owed nothing to those aged
servants, he smoothed his chin, and looked thoughtful, but made no
reply.
An anecdote will show of what stuff the Unionism of this class is
composed. His name happened to be the same as that of one of our
generals. During the war, a Confederate officer, visiting his house,
said to him,—“I am told you are a near relative of General ——, of the
Federal army.”
“It’s a slander!” was the indignant reply. “He is no kin of mine, and I
would disown him if he was.”
After the occupation by our troops, Union officers were welcomed at his
house; one of whom said to him,—
“Are you related to our famous General ——?”
“Very likely, very likely,” was the complacent answer; “the ——’s are all
connected.”
Next to the uncompromising Union men, the most sincerely loyal
Virginians I saw in Richmond, or elsewhere, were those who had been
lately fighting against us. Only now and then a Confederate soldier had
much of the spirit of the Rebellion left in him.
“The truth is,” said Colonel D——, “we have had the devil whipped out of
us. It is only those who kept out of the fight that are in favor of
continuing it. I fought you with all my might until we got whipped; then
I gave it up as a bad job; and now there’s not a more loyal man in the
United States than I am.” He had become thoroughly converted from the
heresy of secession. “No nation can live that tolerates such a doctrine;
and, if we had succeeded, the first thing we should have done would have
been to repudiate it.”
I became acquainted with several officers of this class, who inspired me
with confidence and sympathy. Yet when one of them told me he had been
awarded a government place, with four thousand a year, I could not help
saying,—
“What right have you to such a place? How many capable and worthy men,
who have been all the while fighting _for_ the government you have been
fighting _against_, would be thankful for a situation with one half or
one quarter the salary!”
The animus of the secessionists who kept out of the war, and especially
of the women, still manifested itself spitefully on occasions.
“It is amusing,” said Mrs. W——, “to see the pains some of them take to
avoid walking under the flag we keep flying over our door.”
Two female teachers of the freed people had, after much trouble,
obtained board and lodgings in a private family, where the treatment
they received was such as no sensitive person could endure. They were
obliged to leave, and accept quarters in a Confederate government
building not much better than a barn. Many Richmond families were glad
enough to board army officers for their money; but few were prepared to
receive and treat decently “nigger teachers,” at any price.
[Illustration: INDUSTRY OF LADIES IN CLOTHING THE SOLDIERS, AND ZEAL IN
URGING THEIR BEAUX TO GO TO THE WAR.]
“Yet the people of Richmond are not what they were five years ago,” said
General S——, who knew them well, being himself a Virginian. “Their faces
have changed. They have a dazed look, like owls in a sudden light. To
any one who used to see them in the old days of their pride and spirit,
this is very striking. There never was such a downfall, and they have
not yet recovered from the shock. They seem to be groping about, as if
they had lost something, or were waiting for something. Whatever may be
said of them, or whatever they may say of themselves, they feel that
they are a conquered people.”
“They _were_ a conquered people,” said the radical Union men. “There
never was a rebellious class more thoroughly subdued. They expected no
mercy from the government, for they deserved none. They were prepared to
submit to everything, even to negro suffrage; for they supposed nothing
less would be required of them. But the more lenient the government, the
more arrogant they become.”
Of Confederate patriotism I did not hear very favorable accounts. It
burst forth in a beautiful tall flame at the beginning of the war. There
were soldiers’ aid societies, patronized by ladies whose hands were
never before soiled by labor. Stockings were knit, shirts cut and sewed,
and carpets converted into blankets, by these lovely hands. If a fine
fellow appeared among them, more inclined to gallantry in the parlor
than to gallantry in the field, these same lovely hands thrust him out,
and he was told that “only ‘the brave deserve the fair.’” But Southern
heat is flashy and intense; it does not hold out like the slow, deep
fire of the north. The soldiers’ aid societies soon grew to be an old
story, and the lovely ones contented themselves with cheering and waving
their handkerchiefs when the “noble defenders of the south” marched
through the streets.
The “noble defenders of the south” did not, I regret to say, appreciate
the cheers and the handkerchiefs as they did the shirts and the
blankets.
“Many a time,” said Mrs. H——, “I have heard them yell back at the ladies
who cheered them, ‘Go to ——! If you care for us, come out of your fine
clothes and help us!’ After the people stopped giving, the soldiers
began to help themselves. I’ve seen them rush into stores as they
passed, snatch whatever they wanted, and march on again, hooting, with
loaves of bread and pieces of meat stuck on the points of their
bayonets.”
The sons and brothers of influential families were kept out of the war
by an ingenious system of details. Every man was conscripted; but, while
the poor and friendless were hurried away to fight the battles of
slavery, the favored aristocrat would get “detailed” to fill some
“bomb-proof” situation, as it was called.
“These ‘bomb-proofs’ finally got to be a very great nuisance. Men were
‘detailed’ to fill every comfortable berth the government, directly or
indirectly, had anything to do with; and as the government usurped, in
one way or another, nearly all kinds of business, it soon became
difficult for an old or infirm person to get any sort of light
employment. A friend of mine, whom the war had ruined, came down from
the country, thinking he could get something to do here. He saw
able-bodied young men oiling the wheels of the cars. He was old and
lame, but he felt himself well able to do that kind of work. So he
applied for a situation, and found that the young men he saw were
‘detailed’ from the army. Others were ‘detailed’ to carry lanterns for
them when they had occasion to oil the car-wheels at night. It was so
with every situation the poor man could have filled.”
This was the testimony of a candid old gentleman, himself an aristocrat,
at whose house I passed an evening.
I took an early opportunity to make the acquaintance of Governor
Pierpoint, whom I found to be a plain, somewhat burly, exceedingly
good-humored and sociable person. The executive mansion occupies
pleasant grounds, enclosed from a corner of Capitol Square; and as it
was not more than three minutes’ walk from my hotel, I found it often
very agreeable to go over and spend a leisure hour or two in his
library.
Once I remarked to him: “What Virginia needs is an influx of Northern
ideas, Northern energy, Northern capital; what other way of salvation is
open to her?”
“None; and she knows it. It is a mistake to suppose that Northern men
and Northern capital are not welcome here. They are most heartily
welcome; they are invited. Look at this.”
He showed me a beautiful piece of white clay, and a handsome pitcher
made from it.
“Within eighty miles of Richmond, by railroad, there are beds of this
clay from which might be manufactured pottery and porcelain sufficient
to supply the entire South. Yet they have never been worked; and
Virginia has imported all her fine crockery-ware. Now Northern energy
will come in and coin fortunes out of that clay. Under the old labor
system, Virginia never had any enterprise; and now she has no money. The
advantages she offers to active business men were never surpassed.
Richmond is surrounded with iron mines and coal-fields, wood-lands and
farm-lands of excellent quality; and is destined from its very position,
under the new order of things, to run up a population of two or three
hundred thousand, within not many years.”
I inquired about the state finances.
“The Rebel State debt will, of course, never be paid. The old State
debt, amounting to forty millions, will eventually be paid, although the
present is a dark day for it. There is no live stock to eat the grass;
the mills are destroyed; business is at a stand-still; there is no
bank-stock to tax,—nothing to tax, I might almost say, but the bare
land. We shall pay no interest on the debt this year; and it will
probably be three years before the back interest is paid. We have
twenty-two millions invested in railroads, and these will all be put in
a living condition in a short time. Then I count upon the development of
our natural resources. In mineral wealth and agricultural advantages
Virginia is inconceivably rich, as a few years will amply testify.”
As an illustration of native enterprise, he told me that there was but
one village containing fifty inhabitants on the canal between Richmond
and Lynchburg, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles; and land lying
upon it was worth no more to-day than it was before the canal was
constructed. “Neither is there a village of any size on the James River,
between Richmond and Norfolk. How long would it be before brick villages
and manufacturing towns would spring up on such a canal and river in one
of the free States? Wasn’t it about time,” he added, “for the old
machine to break to pieces?”
At the hotel I used to meet a prosperous looking, liberal faced,
wide-awake person, whom I at once set down as a Yankee. On making his
acquaintance, I learned that he was at the head of a company of Northern
men who had recently purchased extensive coal-fields near the James
River, twelve miles above Richmond.
“The mines,” he said, “had been exhausted once, and abandoned, so we
bought them cheap. These Virginians would dig a little pit and take out
coal until water came in and interfered with their work; then they would
go somewhere else and dig another little pit. So they worked over the
surface of the fields, but left the great body of the coal undisturbed.
They baled with a mule. Now we have come in with a few steam-pumps which
will keep the shafts free from water as fast as we sink them; and we are
taking out cargoes of as good anthracite as ever you saw. Here is some
of it now,” pointing to a line of loaded carts coming up from the wharf,
where the coal was landed.
I asked what labor he employed.
“Negro labor. There is none better. I have worked negroes all my life,
and prefer them in my business to any other class of laborers. Treat a
negro like a man, and you make a man of him.”
I also made the acquaintance of a New Yorker, who was working a gold
mine in Orange County, Va., and whose testimony was the same with regard
to native methods and negro labor. In short, wherever I went, I became,
every day, more strongly convinced that the vast, beautiful, rich,
torpid state of Virginia was to owe her regeneration to Northern ideas
and free institutions.
Hearing loud laughter in the court-house one evening, I looked in, and
saw a round, ruddy, white-haired, hale old man making a humorous speech
to a mixed crowd of respectable citizens and rowdies. It was the
Honorable Mr. P——, bidding for their votes. A played-out politician, he
had disappeared from public view a quarter of a century before, but had
now come up again, thinking there was once more a chance for himself in
the paucity of able men, whom the barrier of the test-oath left eligible
to Congress.
“As for that oath,” said he, with a solemn countenance, “I confess it is
a bitter cup; and I have prayed that it might pass from me.”
Here he paused, and took a sip of brandy from a glass on the desk before
him. Evidently that cup wasn’t so bitter, for he smacked his lips, and
looked up with a decidedly refreshed expression.
“Fellow-citizens,” said he, “I am going to tell you a little
story,”—clapping his cane under his arm, and peering under his gray
eyebrows. “It will show you my position with regard to that abominable
oath. In the good old Revolutionary times, there lived somewhere on the
borders a pious Scotchman, whose farm was run over one day by the
red-coats, and the next by the Continentals; so that it required the
most delicate manœuvering on his part to keep so much as a pig or a
sheep (to say nothing of his own valuable neck) safe from the two
armies. Now what did this pious Scotchman do? In my opinion he did very
wisely. When the red-coats caught him, he took the oath of allegiance to
the Crown. The next day, when the Continentals picked him up, he took
the same oath to the Continental Congress. Now, being a deacon of the
Presbyterian Church, in good and regular standing, certain narrow-minded
brethren saw fit to remonstrate with him, asking how he could reconcile
his conscience to such a course.
“’My friends,’ said he, ‘I have thought over the matter, and I have
prayed over it; and I have concluded that it is safer to trust my soul
in the hands of a merciful God, than my property in the hands of those
thieving rascals.’
“Fellow-citizens,” resumed the candidate, after a storm of laughter on
the part of the crowd, and another a sip of the cup not bitter, on his
part, “I have thought over it, and prayed over it, and I have concluded
that I can conscientiously take that abominable test-oath; in other
words, that it is safer to trust my soul in the hands of a merciful God,
than my country in the hands of the Black Republicans.”
He then proceeded to malign the people of the North, and to misrepresent
their motives, in a spirit of buffoonery and shameless mendacity, which
amazed me. The more outrageous the lies he told, the louder the screams
of applause from his delighted audience. I could not have helped
laughing at the ludicrousness of his caricatures, had I not seen that
they passed for true pictures with a majority of his hearers; or had I
not remembered that it was such reckless political lying as this, which
had so lately misled to their ruin the ignorant masses of the South.
Having finished his speech and his brandy, he sat down; and a rival
candidate mounted the platform.
“B——! B——!” shrieked the ungrateful crowd, clapping and stamping as
frantically for the new speaker as for him who had labored so long for
their amusement. Thereupon, the Honorable Mr. P——, pitching his hat over
his eyes, and brandishing his cane, advanced upon his rival.
B——, a much younger and more slender man, quietly stripped up his
coat-sleeves, exposing his linen to the elbows, and showing himself
prepared for emergencies; whereat the yells became deafening. A few
words passed between the rival candidates; after which B—— folded his
arms and permitted P—— to make an explanation. It appeared from this
that P—— had written to B——, inviting him to become a candidate for
Congress. B—— had declined. Then P—— came forward as a candidate; and
then B——, changing his mind, said he would be a candidate too. Hence
their quarrel.
Calmly, with his sleeves still up, or ready to come up, for P—— was
continually advancing upon him with cane lifted and hat set fiercely on
his head,—B—— replied, giving his version of the misunderstanding. He
admitted that P—— had written him such a letter. “But his suggestion
with regard to my becoming a candidate was very feeble, while the
intimation which accompanied it, that he meant to run if I didn’t, was
very strong; reminding me of the boarder at the hotel-table, who coveted
a certain dish of cakes. ‘Here, waiter,’ said he, ‘see if any of the
gentlemen will have these cakes, for if they won’t, I will.’ Of course I
declined the cakes. But they have been passed to me by others in a very
different spirit, and now I mean to have them if I can get them,—with
all deference to the appetite of my venerable friend.”
The crowd hooted, shrieked, roared. “Venerable friend” grasped his glass
savagely, but, finding it empty, dashed it down again, and sprang to his
feet. Desperately puffed, red in the face, once more whirling his cane
aloft and knocking his hat over his brows, I thought, if he did not
first get a stroke of apoplexy, B—— would this time surely get a stroke
of the stick. But B—— grimly stood his ground; and, after glaring at him
a moment as if about to burst, P—— muttered, “Go to the devil, then!”
buttoned his coat, gave his hat another knock, and stalked out of the
house amid a tumult of merriment and derision.
Nearly always, on such occasions, the disputant who loses his temper,
loses his cause. B—— now had everything his own way; and a very good
speech he made. He was one of those original Union men who had at first
opposed secession, but afterwards yielded to the storm that swept over
the State. Sent to the Convention to oppose it there, he had ended by
voting for it, under instructions from his constituency. He had kept
aloof from war and politics during the Rebellion, and could take the
test oath; that was no such bitter cup to him. He spoke very feelingly
of the return of Virginia to her place in the Union; praised the
government for its clemency and moderation, and advocated a forbearing
policy towards the freedmen, whom the previous speaker wished to see
driven out of the State; seasoning his speech for the vulgar with timely
panegyrics on the heroism of the Confederate soldiers.
The election took place a few days later; and I thought it creditable to
the good sense of the district that the younger candidate was chosen.
Of the political views of the people, or of the real sentiments of the
speakers themselves, not much was to be learned at such a meeting. The
heart of the South was boiling with thoughts and emotions which did not
come openly to the surface. On the subject of the national debt, for
example. Public speakers and public prints were ominously silent about
it; and seldom could a discreet citizen be induced to speak of it with
any degree of frankness. I was plainly told, however, by a gentleman of
Richmond, that the question was often privately discussed, and that the
secessionists would never, if they could help it, submit to be taxed to
pay the expenses of their own subjugation.
“But how is it proposed to help it?”
“The first step is to resume their place in the Union. Until that is
accomplished, they will remain silent on this and some other delicate
subjects. They hope gradually to regain their old power in the nation,
when they will unite with the Democratic party of the North, and
repudiate the debt.”
If I could have been seriously alarmed by such a prospect, what I
witnessed at political meetings and elsewhere, would have done much to
dispel my apprehensions. I was strongly impressed by this important
fact. The old trained politicians,—whom a common interest, slavery,
banded together, and whom no consideration of reason or justice could
turn from their purpose,—that formidable phalanx had been broken: nearly
every man of them had taken an active part in the Rebellion, and could
not therefore, without shameful recreancy and voluntary humiliation on
the part of the North, be readmitted to the councils of the nation they
had attempted to destroy. In their place we may for some years hope to
see a very different class of men, whose youth, or modesty, or good
fortune, or good sense, before kept them aloof from political life; men
new to the Congressional arena, and therefore more susceptible to the
regenerating influence of national ideas and institutions.