After the War: a Southern Tour. May 1, 1865, to May 1, 1866

Preface

. With the exception of the unhealthy summer months, I spent the greater part of the year following the close of the Rebellion, in trav eling through the late Rebel States, passing first around their entire coast line ; and, on subsequent trips, crossing by various routes through the interior. I have sought, in the following pages, to show something of the condition in which the war left the South, the feelings of the late insurgents, the situation and capacities of the liberated slaves, and the openings offered, under the changed condition of affairs, to capital and industry from without. A couple of months, this spring, spent on the great cotton plant ations of the Mississippi Valley, enabled me to make a closer study of the character of the average plantation negro than tourists have ordinarily found practicable; and the concluding chapters are mainly devoted to these observations.

A further word of explanation may be needed as lo the part of the volume describing the journey of Mr. Chief-Justice Chase After the inauguration of President Johnson, Mr. Chase determined to visit the Southern cities, to learn as much as possible, from actual observation, of the true condition of the country. The Secretary of the Treasury was then about to send a revenue cut ter to the New Orleans station, and onboard of her a special agent, charged with the duty of examining the agencies, and carry-

PREFACE.

. ing into effect the directions of the Department in the several South Atlantic and Gulf ports. He tendered the use of this ves sel to the Chief-Justice, and orders were issued by the President and the Secretaries of War and of the Navy, to the officers in the naval, military, and civil services to afford him all facilities that their respective duties would allow. It was under these circumstances that the Chief-Justice made his Southern journey. He had the best opportunities of information, and communicated his views, from time to time, to the President. As a member of the party on board the cutter, I thus enjoyed con siderable, though, in some respects, more limited opportunities of observation. A small portion of the material in the following pages has previously appeared in the journal with which I was connected, but it has all been rewritten. W. R. Library op the House, ") Washington, May, 1866. J CONTENTS. PAGE. Preface 3

Chapter I

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. Sto ries 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 or ders, and social dignities — all this, as faithfully set down by the few who had opportunities to observe it, constitutes the strangest and most absorbing contribu tion to the literature of the Eebellion.

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. AFTER THE WAR: 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 see ing, under the most favorable circumstances, the South ern 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 Boyal, Savannah, Fer nandina, St. Augustine , Jacksonville, Key West, Mo bile, New Orleans, Baton Bouge, 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 Govern ment 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 "North erner" 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, Louisana, and return by sea or inland to Washing ton, 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 tho 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 gen eral, application was to be made, and the speculative gentry who mostly wanted such favors, stood in whole some 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! AFTER THE WAR: 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 injunc tions 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 maga zines, and even a fresh number of the old North Am.eri can were forthcoming ; while Napoleon's Cæsar, in all the glory of tinted paper and superb letter-press, formed the piece de risistance 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 I

Chapter II

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 "North erner " 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. Eebel 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 estab lished themselves at the Fortress. As we crossed the long, narrow isthmus, contracting at last to an atten uated 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 Eebels 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. E. 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 sur face, 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 Eebel 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 Eebels had fought. We found the school-house (a barn -like frame structure), a littlo 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 com plained 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 attend ance. The parents, he said, were themselves so uncer tain, and so little accustomed, as yet, to habits of regu larity, 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 unbear able. 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 profi ciency. Doubtless the teachers selected their best schol ars for the test — I think even Northern schools some times 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 Eeader ; but stranger to observe how intelligently scholars in the First Eeader 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 Eeader 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 Eeader. 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 slave holder ; 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, em ployed by the Government as laborers in the Quarter master'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 •> I 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 ne cessity 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 Yan kee scum.

Negro soldiers manned the lines the rebel engineer had traced ; but wild flowers covered the em bankments, 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 quar ter. Every hut exhibited the tender tokens of mourn ing 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 fea tures of the anti-slavery leader by his side.

Norfolk ought to do, and will do a fine business — whenever it has any country to do business for. It must always be the great shipping point for the Virginia and North Carolina coast; the heaviest vessels can lie by its wharves, and between it and Hampton Eoads is room for the navies of the world. But, thus far, there is scarcely any business, save what the army has brought, and what the impoverished inhabitants who remain are themselves able to support. Sutlers have sat in the high places until they have amassed fortunes ; but the merchants whose deserted store rooms they are occupying are paroled and ruined Eebel officers. No trade comes or can come from the interior. The people have no produce to spare, and no money with which to buy. And the very number of able-bodied men in the country has been sadly reduced.* Everything is controlled by the military authority : and while there may be a genuine Union sentiment that warranted the attempted elections of Congressmen, one may still be permitted a quiet suspicion of the independent and disinterested patriotism of the voters.

Just as we were pushing off, Mr. Chandler, a nervous, restless, black -haired Virginian, came hobbling out from his carriage. He was a claimant for a seat in the last House, which was refused ; and was the leader of the Virginia delegation to the Baltimore Convention, whose admission to that body his fluent and impassioned rhetoric secured. Naturally he is a warm supporter of the Pierpoint State Government, believes that "the loyal men of the State constitute the" State," and doesn't see why the fact that they are few in numbers should pre vent their exercising all the powers of the State. Just now he and the few really loyal men, like him, are very bitter against the Eebels, whom they wish to have excluded from any participation in the ready-made State Government, which they hope soon to have transferred from Alexandria to Eichmond, and extended over the State.

But they frankly admit themselves to be in a very small minority ; and it remains to be seen how long a minority, however lojjal, can govern, in a republican country. Calculations, seemingly accurate, have placed the number of dead and disabled Virginia soldiers at 105,000, or nearly one-tenth of the entire free population of the State.

Chapter III

"Beauties of the Sea" — First Views of Cracker Unionism. On our return to the Fortress, the " Wayanda " was ready ; there was a hurried transhipment in the dark ; not a little dismay at the straitened proportions of the cabin ; an assignment of state-rooms, which gave me the D. D. of the party as chum ; and so — amid the Doctor's loud groans and lamentations over confining a rational human being in a straight jac ket of a bed like that — to sleep. There was a very hasty toilette next morning, and a very undignified rush for the fresh air on deck. We had started in the night, were well out on the ocean, a pretty heavy sea was running, and the mettlesome little "Wayanda" was giving us a taste of her qualities. Nothing could exceed the beauty of her plunges fore and aft, and lurches from port to starboard ; but the party were sadly lacking in enthusiasm.

Presently breakfast was announced, and we all went below very bravely and ranged ourselves about the table. Before the meal was half over, the Captain and the Doctor' s were left in solitary state to finish it alone. For myself — although seasoned, as I had vainly imagined, by some experiences in tolerably heavy storms — I freely confess to the double enjoyment of the single cup of tea I managed to swallow. "For," said the Dominie, argu mentatively, "you have the pleasure of enjoying it first as it goes down, and then a second time as it comes up." To keep one another in countenance as we held our uncertain positions on the rolling and plunging deck, we combined to rehearse all the old jokes about sea sickness. One gave a definition of it, which, like many another indifferent thing, has been unwarrantably fathered on the late President.

" Sea sickness is a dis order which for the first hour makes you afraid you'll die, but by the second hour makes you afraid you won't!" Another recited Artemus Ward's groaning lamentation over Point Judith, to the effect that he "never before saw a place where it was so hard to keep inside one's clothes and outside one's breakfast !" "Sure, it isn't say sick yez are," pleasantly suggested an Irish engineer, among the officers, who looked pro vokingly happy amid all the pitching — "it isn't say sick yez are ; but yez mighty sick of the say !" " O si sic omnes !" punned the Chief Justice. How the rest stood it I don't know ; but that was the last straw, and drove one unfortunate of the party to his state-room, and a basin and towel. Toward evening the sea calmed down, and one after another emerged on deck.

The air was delightfully bracing; the moon sent its broad streams of light, shaking across the waters ; the revolving light of Hat teras shone out — guide and safeguard to a hundred eyes besides our own — and so with calmest weather, and a delicious beauty of scene that no words need be vainly employed in efforts to describe, we spent half the night in watching the passage of the ship by the most dan gerous part of the Atlantic coast. Next morning, at breakfast, we were steaming under the guns of Fort Macon into the harbor where Butler and Porter ren dezvoused for Fort Fisher. As a boat's crew slowly pulled some of our party through the tortuous channel by which even the light est gigs have to approach the single landing of Beaufort, the guns of the naval force began to thunder out a salute for the Chief Justice.

" How many guns does a Chief Justice receive?" inquired one, as he counted the successive discharges. " You'd a great deal better ask," reprovingly hinted the Doctor, "how many guns a Baptist minister receives !'* "Well, how many, Doctor !" " Oh, just count these up, and then you'll know !" With which church-militant suggestion, we rounded to at a crazy old wharf, climbed up a pair of rickety steps that gave the Doctor premonitions of more immersion than even he had bargained for, and stood in the town of Beaufort, North Carolina. In front of us was the Cus tom House — a square, one-story frame building, perched upon six or eight posts — occupied now by a Deputy Treasury Agent. A narrow strip of sand, plowed up by a few cart wheels, and flanked by shabby-looking old frame houses, extended along the water front, and constituted the main business street of a place that, however dilapidated and insignificant, must live in the history of the struggle just ended.

Near the water's edge was a small turpentine distillery, the only manu facturing establishment of the place. The landing of a boat's crew, with an officer in charge and a flag fluttering at the stern, seemed to be an event in Beaufort, and we were soon surrounded by the nota bilities. A large, heavily and coarsely-built man, of un mistakable North Carolina origin, with the inevitable bilious look, ragged clothes and dirty shirt, was intro duced, with no little eclat, as "the Senator from this District." " Of what Senate ?" some one inquired. " The North Caroliner Senate, Sir," " Umph, Eebel Senate of North Carolina," growled the Captain, sotto voce ; " you make a devil of a fuss about your dignity ! North Caro lina Eebel Senate be hanged ! A New York constable outranks you." But the Senator didn't hear; and his manner showed plainly enough that no doubts of his importance ever disturbed the serene workings of his own mind.

The Clerk of the Court, the Postmaster, the doctor, the preacher and other functionaries were speedily added to the group that gathered in the sand bank called a pavement. "How are your people feeling?" some one asked. "Oh, well, sir; we all went out unwillingly, you know," responded the legislator fresh from the meetings of the Eebel Senate at Ealeigh, "and most of us are very glad to getback." "Have you no violent Eebels yet?" "Yes, quite a good many, among the young bloods ; but even they all feel as if they had been badly whipped, and want to give in." "Then they really feel themselves whipped?" "Yes, you 've subjugated us at last," with a smile which showed that the politician thought it not the worst kind of a joke after all. "And, of course, then you have only to submit to any terms the conquerors may impose?"

"No, sir— oh, ah — yes, any terms that could be honorably offered to a proud, high-minded people!" The rest of the dignita ries nodded their heads approvingly at this becoming intimation of the terms the "subjugated" State could be induced to accept. It was easy to see that the old politi cal tricks were not forgotten, and that the first inch of wrong concession would be expected to lead the way to many an ell. "What terms do you think would be right?" The County Clerk, a functionary of near thirty years' service, took up the conversation, and promptly replied, "Let Governor Vance call together the North Carolines Leg islates We only lacked a few votes of a Union ma jority in it before, and we'd be sure to have enough now." "What then?" "Why, the Legislater would, of course, repeal the ordinance of secession, and order a convention to amend the Constitution.