FROM CORINTH TO MEMPHIS.
At daylight we were running through the level lower counties of West
Tennessee. This is by far the most fertile division of the State. Its
soil is a rich black mould, adapted to the culture of cotton, tobacco,
and grains, which are produced in great abundance.
Occasionally in the dim dawn, and later in the forenoon, we passed
out-door fires about which homeless negroes had passed the night, and
around which they still sat or stood, in wretched plight, but
picturesque and cheerful,—old men and women, young children, and tall
girls in tattered frocks, warming their hands, and watching with vacant
curiosity the train as it shot by.
“That’s freedom! that’s what the Yankees have done for ’em!” was the
frequent exclamation that fell from the lips of Southern ladies and
gentlemen looking out on these miserable groups from the car windows.
“They’ll all be dead before spring.”
“Niggers can’t take care of themselves.”
“The Southern people were always their best friends. How I pity them!
don’t you?”
“Oh, yes, of course I pity them! How much better off they were when they
were slaves!”
With scarcely one exception there was to be detected in these
expressions a grim exultation. The slave-owners, having foretold that
freedom would prove fatal to the bondman, experienced a satisfaction in
seeing their predictions come true. The usual words of sympathy his
condition suggested had all the hardness and hollowness of cant. Those
who really felt commiseration for his sufferings spoke of them in very
different tones of voice.
But there was another side to the picture. At every stopping-place,
throngs of well-dressed blacks crowded upon the train. They were going
to Memphis to “buy Christmas,”—as the purchase of gifts for that gay
season is termed. Happier faces I have never seen. There was not a
drunken or disorderly person among them,—which would have been a
remarkable circumstance had the occasion been St. Patrick’s day, or the
Fourth of July, and had these been Irish or white American laborers.
They were all comfortably clad,—many of them elegantly,—in clothes they
had purchased with money earned out of bondage. They paid with pride the
full fares exacted of free people, instead of the half fares formerly
demanded for slaves. They had still left in their purses ample means to
“buy Christmas” for their friends and relatives left at home. They
occupied cars by themselves which they filled with the noise of cheerful
conversation and laughter. And nobody said of _them_, “That is freedom!
That is what the Yankees have done for them!”
Past cotton-fields and handsome mansions in the pleasant suburbs, we ran
into Memphis,—a city which surprised me by its beautiful situation and
commercial activity.
Memphis stands on a high bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. It is
the emporium of West Tennessee, Eastern Arkansas, and Northern
Mississippi, and is the most important town between New Orleans and St.
Louis. Its growth has been rapid. Laid out in 1820, its population in
1840 was 8,839; in 1850, 16,000; in 1860, 50,000. Its present population
is not known; but it has immensely increased since the last census, and
is still increasing. I was told that, at the time of my visit, the
building of nineteen hundred new houses had been contracted for, and
that only labor was wanted to complete them.
In the year ending September 1st, 1860, 400,000 bales of cotton were
shipped from this port. During seven months of the year 1864,—May to
November inclusive,—the shipments amounted to only 34,316 bales. In
1865, from May, the month when the cotton released by the fall of the
Confederacy began to pour in, to December 22d, the date of my visit, the
shipments were 138,615 bales. These last figures, furnished me by the
government assessors, do not include the government cotton, which passed
untaxed, and a considerable quantity which came to Memphis after being
taxed in interior districts.[14]
The view of the commerce of Memphis from the esplanade overlooking the
landing is one of the most animated imaginable. You stand on the brow of
the bluff, with the city behind you, and the river below,—its broad,
sweeping current severing the States. From the foot of the bluff
projects an extensive shelving bank, with an understratum of sandstone;
forming a natural landing, commonly called a “levee,” although no levee
is here,—the celebrated levee at New Orleans having impressed its name
upon all landings of any importance up the river. You look down upon a
superb array of steamers, lying along the shore; their elegantly
ornamented pilot-houses and lofty tiers of decks supported by slender
pillars fully entitling them to be named floating palaces. From the
tower-like pipes issue black clouds of smoke, with here and there rising
white puffs of steam. The levee is crowded with casks and cotton bales,
covering acres of ground. Up and down the steep way cut through the brow
of the bluff, affording access to the landing from the town, a stream of
drays is passing and repassing. Freights are going aboard, or coming
ashore. Drays are loading and unloading. Bales of cotton and hay, casks,
boxes, sacks of grain, lumber, household furniture, supplies for
plantations, mules, ploughs, wagons, are tumbled, rolled, carried,
tossed, driven, pushed, and dragged, by an army of laborers, from the
levee along the broad wooden stages to the steamers’ decks. The
movement, the seeming confusion, the rattling of drays, the ringing of
boats’ bells, the horrible snort of the steam-whistle, the singing calls
of the deck hands heaving at a rope or lifting some heavy weight, the
multitudinous shouts, and wild, fantastic gesticulations of gangs of
negroes driving on board a drove of frightened mules, the voices of the
teamsters, the arriving and departing packets, drift-wood going down
stream, and skiffs paddling up,—the whole forms an astonishing and
amusing scene. Then over the immense brown sand-bar of the Arkansas
shore, and behind its interminable line of dark forest boundaries, the
sun goes down in a tranquil sea of fire, reflected in the river,—a
wonderfully contrasting picture. Here all is life and animation; there
all is softness and peace.
Evening comes, and adds picturesque effect to the scene. The levee is
lighted by great smoking and flaring flambeaux. A grate swinging in a
socket on the end of a pole is filled with bituminous coal and wood, the
blaze of which is enlivened by flakes of oil-soaked cotton, resembling
fat, laid on from a bucket. The far-illuminating flame shoots up in the
night, while the ignited oil from the grate falls in little streams of
dripping blue fire into the river. Until late at night, and often all
night, amid darkness and fog and rain, the loading of freight goes on by
this lurid illumination. The laborers are chiefly negroes whose ebon,
dusky, sallow and tawny faces, lithe attitudes, and sublime carelessness
of attire, heighten the pictorial effect of the scene. Bale after bale
is tumbled from the drays, and rolled down the levee,—a negro at each
end of it holding and guiding it with cotton-hooks. At the foot of the
landing it is seized by two other negroes, who roll it along the plank
to its place on the deck of the upward-bound boat. Here are fifty men
rolling barrels aboard, each at the other’s heels; and yonder is a long
straggling file of blacks crossing the stage from the levee to the
steamer, each carrying a box on his shoulder.
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Footnote 14:
Since March 15th, 1864, the government tax on cotton had been two
cents a pound. The average weight of a bale, which was latterly 460 or
465 pounds, is now 500 pounds. The tax on a bale was accordingly about
ten dollars. There were in Memphis at that time 30,000 bales.