After the War: A Southern Tour. May 1, 1865 to May 1, 1866 — Context and Discussion

CHAPTER I. Why, and How the Trip was Made. 9

CHAPTER II. A School of Unadulterated Negroes—An Ancient Virginia Town under the Dispensation of Sutlers. 13

CHAPTER III. “Beauties of the Sea”—First Views of Cracker Unionism. 21

CHAPTER IV. Newbern and Beaufort—Black and White. 28

CHAPTER V. Fort Fisher. 37

CHAPTER VI. Wilmington—Unionism—Blockade Running—Destitution—Negro Talk—Land Sales. 42

CHAPTER VII. Charleston Harbor—Could Sumter have been Stormed—Negroes and Poor Whites. 57

CHAPTER VIII. Charleston, Now and Four Years Ago. 65

CHAPTER IX. “Unionism”—Black and White, in Charleston and Through South Carolina. 75

CHAPTER X. Port Royal and Beaufort. 87

CHAPTER XI. Among the Sea Islanders. 94

CHAPTER XII. Business, Speculation and Progress Among the Sea Island Negroes. 122

CHAPTER XIII. Pulaski—Savannah—Bonaventure. 131

CHAPTER XIV. White and Black Georgians—The Savannah Standard of Unionism. 142

CHAPTER XV. Florida Towns and Country—A Florida Senator. 158

CHAPTER XVI. Orange Groves and an Ancient Village—The Oldest Town and Fort in the United States—Northern Speculations. 168

CHAPTER XVII. Dungeness, and the “Greatest of the Lees”—Cultivation of the Olive—Criminations of the Officers. 174

CHAPTER XVIII. The Southern “Ultima Thule” of the United States. 180

CHAPTER XIX. A Remarkable Negro Story—One of the Strange Possibilities of Slavery. 189

CHAPTER XX. Among the Cubans—The Impending Downfall of Cuban Slavery. 194

CHAPTER XXI. Scenes in Mobile—The Cotton Swindles. 202

CHAPTER XXII. Mobile Loyalists and Reconstructionists—Black and White. 217

CHAPTER XXIII. New Orleans and New Orleans Notabilities. 227

CHAPTER XXIV. The Beginning Reaction—Northern Emigrants and New Orleans Natives. 236

CHAPTER XXV. Among the Negro Schools. 246

CHAPTER XXVI. Talks with the Citizens, White and Black. 259

CHAPTER XXVII. A Free-labor Sugar Plantation. 268

CHAPTER XXVIII. The “Jeff. Davis Cotton Plantation”. 279

CHAPTER XXIX. Vicksburg to Louisville. 288

CHAPTER XXX. General Aspects of the South at the Close of the War. 295

CHAPTER XXXI. Mid-summer at the Capitol. 304

CHAPTER XXXII. Richmond, after Six Months of Yankee Rule. 315

CHAPTER XXXIII. Lynchburg—The Interior of Virginia. 328

CHAPTER XXXIV. Knoxville and the Mountaineers—Glimpses of Southern Ideas. 339

CHAPTER XXXV. Atlanta—Georgia Phases of Rebel and Union Talk. 355

CHAPTER XXXVI. Montgomery—The Lowest Phase of Negro Character—Politics and Business. 365

CHAPTER XXXVII. Selma—Government Armories—Talks among the Negroes. 380

CHAPTER XXXVIII. Mississippi Tavern Talks on National Politics—Scenes in the Interior. 390

CHAPTER XXXIX. Mobile Temper and Trade—Inducements of Alabama to Emigrants. 400

CHAPTER XL. Phases of Public Sentiment in New Orleans before Congress met. 407

CHAPTER XLI. Cotton Speculations—Temper of the Mississippians. 414

CHAPTER XLII. Memphis—Out from the Reconstructed. 425

CHAPTER XLIII. Congress takes Charge of Reconstruction. 429

CHAPTER XLIV. Southern Feeling after the Meeting of Congress. 439

CHAPTER XLV. Political and Business Complications in the South-West. 448

CHAPTER XLVI. The Sugar and Rice Culture in Louisiana—Profits and Obstacles. 457

CHAPTER XLVII. A Cotton Plantation—Work, Workmen, Wages, Expenses, and Returns. 475

CHAPTER XLVIII. Among the Cotton Plantations—Rations and Ways of Work. 492

CHAPTER XLIX. Plantation Negroes—Incidents and Characteristics. 503

CHAPTER L. Further Illustrations of Plantation Negro Character. 525

CHAPTER LI. Payments, Strikes, and other Illustrations of Plantation Negro Character. 546

CHAPTER LII. Labor Experiments and Prospects. 558

CHAPTER LIII. Concluding Suggestions. 574

Why, and How the Trip was Made.

The most interesting records of the great revolution just ending have seemed to me to be those portraying the spirit and bearing of the people throughout the South, just before and at the outbreak of the war. Stories of battles, and sieges, and retreats, are kaleidoscopic repetitions of deeds with which all history is crowded; but with what temper great communities plunged into this war, which has overwhelmed them, for what fancied causes, to what end, in what boundless self-confidence and overwhelming contempt of their antagonists, with what exuberance of frenzied joy at the prospect of bloodshed, with what wild dreams of conquest, and assurance of ill-defined but very grand honors, and orders, and social dignities—all this, as faithfully set down by the few who had opportunities to observe it, constitutes the strangest and most absorbing contribution to the literature of the Rebellion.

So I have thought that what men now most want to know, is something of the temper and condition in which these same communities come out from the struggle. By the side of the daguerreotypes of the South entering upon the war, even the hastiest pencil sketch of the South emerging from the war may possess an interest and attraction of its own.

Therefore, when early in the month of April I was invited to accompany a small party, bound on a voyage of official inspection and observation, from Fortress Monroe around the whole Atlantic and Gulf Coast to New Orleans, and thence up the Mississippi, I congratulated myself upon the opportunity thus afforded of seeing, under the most favorable circumstances, the Southern centers which had nursed and fed the rebellion. Means of communication through the interior of the South are so thoroughly destroyed, and Southern society is so completely disorganized, that it is only in the cities one can hope for any satisfactory view of the people. Even there the overshadowing military authority, and the absence of all accustomed or recognized modes of expressing public sentiment, as through the press, the bar, public meetings, the pulpit, or unrestrained social intercourse, combine to render the task of observation infinitely more difficult than at any previous period.

But all the more, on these accounts, the Southern cities are the places to which we must first look for any satisfactory idea of the Southern condition; and a trip which embraces visits to Norfolk, Newbern, Beaufort, Wilmington, Charleston, Port Royal, Savannah, Fernandina, St. Augustine, Jacksonville, Key West, Mobile, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Natchez, Vicksburg, and Memphis, with visits to plantations all along the route, and occasional trips into the interior, ought not to fail in furnishing a good view of the gradual beginnings to crystallize again out of the chaos to which the war had reduced one-third of the nation.

The trip would have been begun some weeks earlier, but for the deed of horror in Ford’s Theater. But, as Secretary McCulloch well said, the wheels of Government moved on without a perceptible jar; and the arrangements of President Lincoln were only temporarily delayed by the accession of President Johnson. An ocean-going revenue cutter was ordered around from New York to Fortress Monroe for the party, and early on the morning of the first of May, the cutter “Northerner” was announced as in readiness to convey us to the Fortress.

In the afternoon an officer was good enough to bring me the following:

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, May 1, 1865.

Permission is granted Whitelaw Reid, Esq., to proceed by sea to New Orleans, Louisiana, and return by sea or inland to Washington, District of Columbia, and to visit any port or place _en route_ in the lines of national military occupation.

[Signed,] ANDREW JOHNSON, President of the United States.

I had not supposed a pass necessary; but as the rest of the party went on official business, it had been thought best to cover my case with a document, about the scope and authority of which no question could be raised. At that time passes to visit many of the Southern points were still eagerly sought and procured with difficulty. The War Department was the place to which, in general, application was to be made, and the speculative gentry who mostly wanted such favors, stood in wholesome awe of the downright Secretary. A pass so nearly unlimited as mine was an unheard of rarity, and before the afternoon was over, two or three who had in some way found out that I had it, were anxious to know if “five hundred or even a thousand dollars would be any inducement” to me to part with it!

By nine in the evening the last of the little party had entered the cozy cabin of the “Northerner.” There were the usual good-byes to the friends who had driven down to the Navy Yard wharf to see us off; playful injunctions from young officers about laying in supplies of cigars at Havana, and from fair ladies about bringing back for them parrots and monkeys, pine apples and bananas; some consultations among the officials of the party; some final messages and instructions sent down at the last moment by the Government: then fresh good-byes; the plank was pulled in, and we steamed out into the darkness.

Everybody compared supplies with everybody else; it was found that there were books enough in the party to set up a circulating library, and paper enough for writing a three-volume novel; the latest dates of newspapers had been laid in; the last issues of the magazines, and even a fresh number of the old _North American_ were forthcoming; while Napoleon’s _Cæsar_, in all the glory of tinted paper and superb letter-press, formed the _pièce de résistance_ that bade fair to master us all—as Horace Greeley used maliciously to say the old _National Intelligencer_ mastered him, when he couldn’t get asleep in any other way!

A School of Unadulterated Negroes—An Ancient Virginia Town under the Dispensation of Sutlers.

Our steamer for the voyage was to be the revenue cutter “Wayanda,” a trim, beautifully-modeled, ocean-going propeller, carrying six guns, and manned with a capital crew. While Captain Merryman was making his final preparation for a cruise, much longer than he had expected when the telegraph hurried his vessel around from New York, we retained the little “Northerner” for a trip up to Norfolk—only delaying long enough at the Fortress to drive out and see a great negro school, established by General Butler.

The wharves were crowded by the usual curious throng of idle spectators, laborers taking care of supplies, soldiers on duty, and a very sparse sprinkling of ladies. Rebel soldiers by scores were mixed in the groups, or could be seen trudging along the sidewalks toward the Commissary’s.

Everywhere were negroes—on the sidewalks—driving the wagons—in the huts that lined the road. All the slaves of the adjoining counties seem to have established themselves at the Fortress. As we crossed the long, narrow isthmus, contracting at last to an attenuated causeway, which separates the Fortress from the main land, and came out into the ancient village of Hampton, the negro huts thickened into swarms, and fairly covered the sites of the old aristocratic residences which the Rebels fired early in the war when compelled to evacuate the place. Bricks, two centuries old, imported by the early colonists from Great Britain, for the mansions of the first families, were built up into little outside chimneys for these cabins of the Freedmen; and here and there one noticed an antique Elizabethan chair, of like age and origin, converted to the uses of a portly negress.

To our right, down on the water’s edge, rose a high, narrow residence—the former home of John Tyler; near it was another, somewhat less pretentious, as well as less uncouth, which had formerly been occupied by S. R. Mallory. Both find loyal and benevolent uses now at the hands of the Government. Near them was a long colonnade, with spacious piazzas, fronting a many-windowed brick hospital, which one of our party was observed closely scrutinizing. “Upon my word,” he exclaimed, after a moment’s reflection, “that is the old Chesapeake Female College, of which I have been, from the foundation, one of the Trustees.” Pale-faced men in blue occupied the chambers of the boarding-school misses; and sentries, pacing to and fro, kept a stricter guard than strictest duenna of boarding-school ever achieved.

To our left extended a stretch of marshy meadows and half-cultivated fields. In their midst was one little field cultivated above all the rest. White boards, with a trifle of modest lettering on each, dotted its surface, and the grass grew greenest over long, carefully-smoothed hillocks. A file of slow-paced soldiers, with arms reversed, was entering the inclosure; behind them followed an army wagon, with five rude pine boxes piled upon it; beyond, quietly, and, as one loved to think, even sadly, regarding the scene, was a group of paroled Rebel soldiers; while, as we turned, in passing, to catch a last glimpse of the mourners in blue by the open graves, there was seen away behind us, rippling in the breeze above the fort, the old flag for which these dead had died, and against which these Rebels had fought.

We found the school-house (a barn-like frame structure), a little removed from the cluster of negro huts, and took the school fairly by surprise. Passing up a long hall, wide enough for double rows of desks, in the center, with seats for about ten or twelve boys in each, and an aisle on either side, with benches for the class recitations against the walls, we came to an elevated platform, from which led off, in opposite directions, two other precisely similar halls. The fourth, completing the cross, was designed for girls, and was yet unfinished. Down these three long halls were ranged row after row of cleanly-clad negro boys, from the ages of six and seven up to sixteen or seventeen.

All seemed attentive; and though the teachers complained that the sudden entrance of visitors always led to more confusion than usual, there was certainly no more than one would expect from any school of equal extent anywhere, or under any management. The rolls contained the names of three hundred and seventy-four pupils, of whom about two hundred were present. The Superintendent, who seemed an earnest, simple-minded man, enthusiastically convinced that he had a “mission” here, spoke of this as about the average attendance. The parents, he said, were themselves so uncertain, and so little accustomed, as yet, to habits of regularity, that they could not well bring up this average to a better point. It seemed to me surely not so far behind our ordinary public schools at the North as to suggest any unfavorable contrasts.

These children had all been slaves, and nearly all had accompanied their parents on their escape from the plantations of the Peninsula, and of the upper counties of North Carolina, to the Fortress. The parents had generally been field hands, and one noticed among the children very few faces not of pure African descent. Such masses of little woolly heads, such rows of shining ivories, and flat noses and blubber lips, I had never seen collected before, unless in a state of filth utterly unbearable. The teachers were all convalescent soldiers from the hospitals, moving noiselessly about among the benches in their hospital slippers and cheap calico wrappers—as they themselves had often seen moving about among their hospital cots the angels of mercy from the North. Who shall say they were not doing as beneficent a work, or that the little negroes might not well follow them with as longing and affectionate a gaze?

Several classes were called up to exhibit their proficiency. Doubtless the teachers selected their best scholars for the test—I think even Northern schools sometimes do that—but there can be little opportunity for deception in the reading of an unlearned lesson in a book, or in answers to questions in mental arithmetic, propounded by the visitors themselves. It was strange to see boys of fourteen or fifteen reading in the First Reader; but stranger to observe how intelligently scholars in the First Reader went about their work, and with what comparative rapidity they learned. I passed among the forms and conversed with a good many of the soldier-teachers. They all united in saying that on an average the raw negro boys admitted to the school would learn their letters and be able to read well in the First Reader in three months; while some of them, who were originally bright, and who were kept in regular attendance, made considerably more rapid progress.

An advanced class, composed of the little negro “monitors” who had been longest in the school, was summoned to the platform to read a lesson in the Fourth Reader. One or two of them read very badly; one or two quite well, and with an evident understanding of what was said. The best reader in the class was the smallest boy, an ebony-faced urchin, whose head looked as a six-pound round shot, coated with curled hair from a mattress, might. The Superintendent exhibited his manner of calling out the classes through the whole school to recite, the military style in which the boys were required to march to their places at the word of command, and the general adherence to military forms, even in such minutiæ as distributing slates, removing the stools for the monitors, returning books to their places, and the like.

Then came a little address from the Dominie of our party, a former South Carolina lawyer and heavy slaveholder; and we finally took our leave, the little urchins eagerly handing up their slates, as we passed, to have us see their penmanship; and laboriously tracing out, in school-boy characters, their oddly-sounding names, to show us how readily they could write.

This school is kept up at little or no expense to the Government, save the original cost of erecting the rough board structure in which it is held. The parents of the children have been, to a considerable extent, employed by the Government as laborers in the Quartermaster’s Department; and, meantime, the convalescents from the hospitals have prepared the sons, in some measure, for the new order of things. Still there is more dependence on charity than could be desired, especially among the parents. Negroes need to be taught—just as slaves of any race or color would need to be taught—that liberty means, not idleness, but merely work for themselves instead of work for others; and that, in any event, it means always work. To teach them this, do not gather them in colonies at military posts, and feed them on Government rations; but throw them in the water and have them learn to swim by finding the necessity of swimming. For the present, these collections of negroes are an inevitable result of the war; and that would be a barbarous Government indeed which would not help in time of distress the men whose friendship to it has brought them into distress; but it must be the first care of the authorities to diminish the charity, and leave the negroes, just as it would leave the white men—to take care of themselves.

On arriving at Norfolk, we were met, at the shabby-looking old wharf, by General Gordon, commanding the post. Carriages were in waiting, and we were rapidly whirled past the tumble-down warehouses, through streets of stores from which every former proprietor had gone, by the old English brick church, whence the former pastor had departed, past elegant residences of prominent rebels, in whose parlors sat the wives of Yankee officers, and through whose superb gardens we were invited to wander, and pluck at will great bending bunches of flowers that, at Washington, were still scarce in the hot-houses.

From the gardens we turned toward the country to see the old line of fortifications (planned, curiously enough, by a nephew of one of our party), by which the Virginians, in the first months of the war, had been confident they could hold Norfolk forever against the Yankee scum. Negro soldiers manned the lines the rebel engineer had traced; but wild flowers covered the embankments, and we plucked azalias of exquisite fragrance from the crumbling embrasures. It was not less strange that another member of our party, then foremost in the Cabinet, had undertaken the search hereabouts for a landing for our troops, after the officers had given it up; and had actually chosen the point where they were safely debarked, and whence they had turned these long lines, and reduced Norfolk—“Merrimac” and all—without a blow.

The wild flowers filled the moist evening air with their perfume as we drove back through the negro quarter. Every hut exhibited the tender tokens of mourning for the good, dead President, which were missing on many aristocratic residences. There were no evidences of suffering or destitution among these people; and it was not from their windows that the lowering glances were turned upon the General, and the well-known features of the anti-slavery leader by his side.