NOTES ON ALABAMA.
Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, and originally the capital of the
Confederacy, is a town of broad streets and pleasant prospects, built on
the rolling summits of high bluffs, on the left bank of the Alabama, one
hundred miles above Selma. Before the war it had ten thousand
inhabitants.
Walking up the long slope of the principal street, I came to the
Capitol, a sightly edifice on a fine eminence. On a near view, the
walls, which are probably of brick, disguised to imitate granite, had a
cheap look; and the interior, especially the Chamber of Representatives
in which the Confederate egg was hatched, appeared mean and shabby. This
was a plain room, with semicircular rows of old desks covered with green
baize exceedingly worn and foul. The floor carpet was faded and ragged.
The glaring whitewashed walls were offensive to the eye. The Corinthian
pillars supporting the gallery were a cheap imitation of bronze. Over
the Speaker’s chair hung a sad-looking portrait of George Washington,
whose solemn eyes could not, I suppose, forget the scenes which Treason
and Folly had enacted there.
I remained two days at Montgomery; saw General Swayne and other officers
of the Bureau; visited plantations in the vicinity; and conversed with
prominent men of the surrounding counties. Both there, and on my
subsequent journey through the eastern part of the State, I took copious
notes, which I shall here compress within as small a space as possible.
I have already sketched the class of planters one meets on steamboats
and railroads. These are generally men who mix with the world, read the
newspapers, and feel the current of progressive ideas. Off the main
routes of travel, you meet with a different class,—men who have never
emerged from their obscurity, who do not read the newspapers, and who
have not yet learned that the world moves. Many of them were
anti-secessionists; which fact renders them often the most troublesome
people our officers now have to deal with. Claiming to be Union men,
they cannot understand why their losses, whether of slaves or other
property, which the war occasioned, should not be immediately made up to
them by the government.
As in Mississippi and Tennessee, the small farmers in the Alabama
legislature were the bitterest negro-haters in that body; while the more
liberal-minded and enlightened members were too frequently controlled by
a back-country constituency, whom they feared to offend by voting for
measures which ignorance and obstinacy were sure to disapprove.
In Alabama, as in all the Southern States, the original secessionists
were generally Democrats and the Union men Old Line Whigs. The latter
opposed the revolution until it swept them away; when they often went
into the war with a zeal which shamed the shirking policy of many who
were very hot in bringing it on, and very cool in keeping out of it. I
found them now the most hopeful men of the South. If a planter said to
me, “I’m going to raise a big crop of cotton this year,—my negroes are
working finely,”—I needed no other test that he belonged to this class.
Concerning the loyalty of the people I shall give the testimony of a
very intelligent young man of Chambers County,—whose story will in other
respects prove instructive.
“I enlisted in the Confederate Army for one year; and before my time was
up I was conscripted for two years; then, before these expired, I was
conscripted for two more. I was made prisoner at Forest Hill, in
Virginia, and taken to Harrisburg, in Pennsylvania. At the end of the
war I was paroled. I knew that my people were ruined, and all my
property gone. That consisted in twelve slaves; their labor supported me
before the war, but now I had nothing but my own hands to depend upon. I
made up my mind to stay where I was and go to work. I hired out to a
farmer for six dollars a month. I had never done a stroke of labor in my
life, and it came hard to me at first. But I soon got used to it.
“One day a merchant of Harrisburg was riding by, and he asked me some
questions which I answered. A few days after he came that way again, got
into conversation with me, and proposed to me to go into his store. He
offered me eighteen dollars a month. I said to him, ‘You are very kind,
sir, but you probably do not know who I am, or you would not want me: I
am a Rebel soldier, just out of prison.’ He said he believed I was an
honest fellow, and would like to try me. I went into his store, and
after the first month he raised my wages to thirty dollars. After the
second month, he gave me forty, and after the third month he gave me
fifty. I had been a wild boy before the war; I had plenty of money with
no restrictions upon my spending it. But I tell you I was never so happy
in my life as when I was at work for my living in that store. My
employer liked me, and trusted me, and I liked the people.
“I have now come home on a visit. My relations and neighbors are very
much incensed against me because I tell them plainly what I think of the
Yankees. I know now that we were all in the wrong, and that the North
was right, about the war; and I tell them so. I have met with the most
insulting treatment on this account. They feel the bitterest animosity
against the government, and denounce and abuse the Yankees, and call me
a Yankee, as the worst name they can give me. To you, a Northern man, I
suppose they won’t say much; but they talk among themselves and to me.”
“How large a proportion of your people express such sentiments?”
“Well, sir, there are fifteen hundred voting men in the county; and all
but about a hundred and eighty feel and talk the way I tell you. They
can’t be reconciled to living under the old government, and those who
are able are preparing to emigrate. A fund has already been raised to
send agents to select lands for them in Mexico.”
“Did you find in the North any such animosity existing towards the
people of the South?”
“Very little; and there was this difference: In the North it is only a
few ignorant people, of the poorer class, who hate the South: I believe
the mass of the Northern people, while they hate treason and rebellion,
have only kind feelings towards the Southern people. But with us it is
the wealthy and influential class that hates the North, while only the
poor whites and negroes have any loyalty at heart. I wish,” he added,
“that for every Northern man now settling in the South, a Southern man
would go into business at the North, and see for himself, as I have
done, just what sort of people and institutions we have all our lives
been taught to misunderstand and slander.”
The editors of the southern half of the State were nearly all disloyal,
judged by their prints. The same may be said of the ministers of the
aristocratic churches, judged by their words and works.
There is a wide difference between the people of Northern and Southern
Alabama. The inhabitants of many of the upper counties were as loyal as
those of East Tennessee. In some it was necessary for the Davis
government to maintain a cavalry force in order to keep the people in
subjection. Such a county was Randolph, whose inhabitants were as
strongly opposed to secession, as those of Chambers County, its next
neighbor on the South, were in favor of it.
“The commanders discriminated in their foraging against the Union
people. The fact that a man was absent in the service of the United
States, or was opposed to the rebellion, was deemed a sufficient warrant
to take the last piece of meat from his smoke-house, and the last ear of
corn and bundle of fodder from his barns, leaving his family to starve.
Randolph alone furnished nearly five hundred men who actually took up
arms in the service of the United States, enlisting in whatever
organization they found convenient as they made their escape from the
Rebel conscripting officers into our lines. Their graves are upon every
battle-field, attesting their bravery, their patriotism, and their
sacrifices.”
Thus wrote, in a private letter to General Swayne, Lieutenant R. T.
Smith, himself a loyal Alabamian who served in the Union army. The
county was impoverished by the absence of its men in both armies, and by
the troopers who preyed upon it. There was still great suffering at the
time of my visit.
“Much destitution also exists,” said the lieutenant, “among the families
of the late Rebels; for the soldiery, who had come in the beginning
partly at their instance, consumed their substance when the means of the
Union people were exhausted. Like Actæon, they were eaten by their own
dogs.”
“It is a common, an every-day sight in Randolph County, to see women and
children, most of whom were formerly in good circumstances, begging for
bread from door to door. They must have immediate help, or perish.
Fifteen hundred families, embracing five thousand persons, are in need
of immediate aid.” This was in January, 1866.
The destitution here described was not confined to a portion of the
country, nor was it a new thing. In 1863, the shortness of the crops,
the depreciation of the currency, and the consequent high prices of
provisions, produced a famine among the poorer classes. The families of
soldiers, fighting the battles of a confederacy which paid them in
worthless paper, were left to suffer the extremes of want, while many,
who helped to bring on the war, were growing rich by speculating upon
the misery it occasioned. In Mobile there were insurrections of women,
driven by starvation to acts of public violence. The State was finally
awakened to the necessity of ameliorating these sufferings; and during
the last year of the war it fed with meal and salt one hundred and forty
thousand white paupers.
This charity, inherited, in a manner, by the government which feeds the
enemy it subjugates, was continued, after the war had closed, with the
aid of the United States Commissary Department. At the same time the
emancipation of four hundred and fifty thousand slaves,—nearly half the
population of the State,—threw a large number of black paupers upon the
community.
In these circumstances, the Freedmen’s Bureau proved an instrument of
inestimable good. Its mediatory and organizing influence prevented
outbreaks, and saved thousands from perishing. It assumed the care of
homeless blacks and of white refugees. It colonized the former upon
abandoned lands, and thence supplied many plantations with labor.
In the month of August, 1865, there were at one of these colonies
thirty-four hundred freedmen. “I have been sending paupers to it ever
since,” said General Swayne; “and there are now but one hundred and
fifty persons there.” This was in January. At that time the Bureau was
feeding less than twenty-five hundred blacks, and the number was rapidly
diminishing.
No freedmen’s courts had been established by the Bureau in Alabama. “We
had not officers enough to establish more than ten courts,” General
Swayne told me. “And when those were withdrawn, the negro would have
been left defenceless. I therefore preferred to educate the civil courts
to do the freedmen justice.” He had displayed considerable diplomatic
skill in securing the coöperation of the Convention, and getting an
ordinance passed by it, which authorized civil officers to try
freedmen’s cases and receive negro testimony. If an officer failed of
his duty towards the blacks, his commission as an agent of the Bureau
was revoked. General Swayne thought the system was working well; but he
confessed that these officers required close watching; and some of his
special agents, who came more directly in contact with the people, and
with the actual crude state of affairs, while he saw them too much
perhaps through the atmosphere of influential State officials, assured
me that the justice obtained by the freedmen from these courts was but
scanty. “At the outset,” said one, “they meet with obstacles. If they
enter a complaint, they must give bail to appear as witnesses, or be
lodged in jail. As no white man will give bail for a negro to appear as
a witness against a white man, and as they don’t fancy lying perhaps
weeks in jail in order to be heard, they prefer to suffer wrong rather
than seek redress.”
There were but two freedmen’s schools in the State, one at Montgomery,
and another at Mobile, with an aggregate of fifteen teachers and nine
hundred pupils.
Everywhere I heard complaints of the demoralization of the people
occasioned by the war. There were throughout the South organized bands
of thieves. In Alabama, cotton-stealing had become a safe and profitable
business. I was told of men, formerly respectable, and who still held
their heads high in society, who were known to have made large fortunes
by it. These men employ negroes to do the work, because negroes cannot
give legal evidence against a white man. During the last three months of
1865, it was estimated that, on the line of the Mobile and Ohio
Railroad, ten thousand bales of cotton had been stolen.
Crimes of every description, especially upon the property and persons of
the freedmen, were very common. General Swayne told me that he stood
greatly in need of a force of cavalry, without which it was almost
impossible to arrest the offenders.
There was every prospect of a good cotton crop the present year. Since
the invention of the spinning-jenny by Arkwright, and of the gin by
Whitney, the culture of this great staple has received no such impulse
as the recent high prices have given it. The planters were taking
courage, the freedmen were at work, and a large amount of Northern
capital was finding investment in the State. Even the poor whites, who
never before would consent to degrade themselves by industrious labor in
the field, seemed inspired by the general activity, and many of them,
for the first time in their lives, were preparing to raise a few bales
of cotton. Labor was not abundant. “Our best young men went off with the
Yankee army; and our best girls followed the officers.” Men of sense and
reputation had not much difficulty, however, in securing laborers. “When
I got all ready to hire,” said one, “I just turned about four hundred
hogs into a field near the road. Every freedman that came that way
stopped; and in a week I had as many as I wanted. They all like to hire
out where there is plenty of pork.” Others, to fill their quota of
hands, were paying the fines of stout negroes on the chain-gangs, and
bailing those who were lying in jail.
All sorts of contracts were entered into; and various devices were used
to stimulate the energies of the freedmen. Some paid wages; some gave a
share in the crop; and I heard of planters who defrayed all expenses,
and gave five cents a pound for the cotton raised on their lands. One
man, who hired sixty freedmen at moderate wages, divided them into six
gangs of ten each, and offered a premium of three hundred dollars to the
gang which should produce the greatest number of bales.
General Swayne estimated that there were five thousand Northern men in
the State, engaged in planting and trading. Many of them were late
army-officers. Business in the principal towns had been paying large
profits; and Northern merchants, who purchased their goods at the North,
were, notwithstanding the popular prejudice against them, enabled to
compete with, and undersell, native traders who bought in smaller
quantities and at second hand.
The hilly northern part of Alabama falls off gradually through the
rolling prairies and alluvial bottoms of the central, to the low, flat
southern portion of the State. Much of this latter region is sandy and
barren, producing little besides poor whites and sweet potatoes. There
are fertile bottom lands, however, adapted to the sugar-cane; and rice
has also been successfully cultivated near the coast.
All through the lower half of the State, the long tree-moss grows with
great luxuriance. It flourishes in a warm, moist climate; and the
forests of the entire Southern country, below thirty-three degrees, are
festooned by it. It likes the dank and heavy shade of swamps, which it
darkens still more with its pendant shrouds. In favorable localities it
grows to a great length, till its long-fibred masses appear dripping
from the trees. One can imagine the effect when the great winds move
through the woods, and to their solemn roaring is added the weird,
unearthly aspect of a myriad gloomy banners, waving and beckoning from
every limb.
Gathered by means of hooks attached to long poles, and seasoned by a
simple process, this moss becomes a valuable article of merchandise,
being principally used in the manufacture of mattresses. I saw many
bales of it going down the rivers to New Orleans, Mobile, and Savannah.
Its color on the boughs is a dull greenish gray; but when prepared for
market, it resembles black crinkled horse-hair. A gentleman of
Charleston told me that just before the war he tried the experiment of
sending a bale of it to France, where it was not permitted to pass the
custom-house until his factor had obtained from him a properly attested
certificate, showing that it was to be taxed, not as hair, but as a
vegetable substance. The French called it “vegetable horse-hair.”
The best cotton lands of Alabama lie between the Alabama and Tombigbee
rivers, where a bale to the acre is the usual yield. The valleys of the
Black Warrior and some lesser streams are scarcely inferior.
The general fertility of the great central portion of the State is
offset by two or three disadvantages. One is the mud of the “black lime
land,” which, in the rainy season, is often of such depth and tenacity
that travel on the roads by means of wheeled vehicles is impracticable.
A greater inconvenience is the scarcity of wells. In the northern
portion of the State good water is abundant; but in other parts
plantations are supplied only by means of house and field cisterns. In
some towns excellent Artesian wells have been constructed; a few
reaching a depth of a thousand feet, and throwing water in sufficient
volume and force to carry machinery. At Selma there were lately two very
good flowing wells, but on an attempt being made to bore a third, a rock
was split, which injured materially the condition of the two first. In
the large public square at Montgomery, the broad circular basin of the
Artesian well, surrounded by an iron railing on a stone curb, visited by
throngs of citizens, descending the steps, dipping up the water, or
catching it as it gushes from the spout, and filling their pails and
casks, forms an interesting feature of the place.
In the northern part of Alabama there are beautiful and fertile valleys
adapted to the culture of both cotton and grain. On the other hand,
there are hills unfit for cultivation. Between these two extremes there
are upland tracts of moderate fertility, capable of producing a third or
a quarter of a bale to the acre. This is the region of small farms and
few negroes.
The climate throughout the elevated portions of the State is healthy and
delightful. On the low river bottoms there is much suffering from fevers
and mosquitoes.
The common-school system of Alabama is very imperfect. The wealthy
planters send their children to private schools, and object to taxation
for the education of the children of the poor. The poor, on the other
hand, take no interest in schools, to which they will not send their
children as long as money is to be paid for tuition, or as long as there
is cotton to pick and wood to cut at home. The isolation of the
inhabitants on plantations, or in widely scattered log-cabins, and the
presence of an uneducated race forming nearly one half the population,
have been great obstacles in the way of popular education.
Alabama has a common-school fund, derived principally from lands,
comprising the sixteenth section in each township, given for educational
purposes by the United States. This fund has never been consolidated,
but each township enjoys the income, by sale or rent, of its own
allotted portion. The system works badly. The sixteenth section is
valueless in many of the townships where both the land and the
inhabitants are poor, and where there is consequently most need of
educational assistance; while in townships occupied by planters who have
grown rich on the richness of the soil, and who need no such assistance,
it has generally proved very valuable. Mr. Taylor, the State
Superintendent of Schools, told me that in one of these wealthier
townships, in Montgomery County, there was for some years but a single
child to whose education the sixteenth-section fund could be properly
applied. She was a girl; and the independent planters performed their
duty faithfully in her case. They sent her to a boarding-school, where
she received a fashionable education; and, when she came to marry,
furnished her wedding-outfit, and presented her with a piano.
Alabama is comparatively a new State. Admitted into the Union in 1819,
her rise in importance has kept pace steadily with the progress of
modern cotton cultivation. It sounds strange to hear planters still
young refer to their experiences in the early days of cotton in regions
which are now celebrated for its production. “I came to Montgomery
County in 1834,” said one. “I raised my first cotton crop in 1836. I had
nine negroes, and I made a bale to the hand. They didn’t know how to
pick it. So I hired thirty Indian girls to pick,—as handsome young
creatures as ever you saw. Cotton was then eighteen cents a pound. The
Indian war disturbed us some; but I and a dozen more settlers went out
and killed more Indians than all Scott’s army. I have now two large
plantations; this year I work a hundred and ten hands, and fifty-five
mules and horses, on thirteen hundred acres of cotton and five hundred
of corn; and I intend to make more money than ever before.”
The principal railroads of the State were all in running condition;
although the rolling stock was generally shabby and scarce. The
Montgomery and West Point Road, which Wilson’s raiders damaged to the
amount of several millions, had been temporarily repaired. Depots were
never plenty in the South, and where our forces had passed, not one was
left;—a great inconvenience, especially to single gentlemen, going to
take the train at two or three o’clock in the morning, finding the cars
locked and guarded until the ladies should all be seated, and compelled
to wait perhaps an hour, in the cold, for them to be opened.