Social relations in our southern states

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Preface

In one of his letters to Pum Hoam, First President of the Ceremonial Academy at Pekin, in China, Lien Chi Altangi, the Discontented Wanderer, gives us an amusing and graphic account of his introduction, by the Man in Black, to a certain bookseller in London. This bookseller was named Fudge, and being asked by the Man in Black whether he had recently published any thing new ? —

"Excuse me, sir," says he, "it is not the season; books have their time as well as cucumbers. I would no more bring out a new book in summer, than I would sell pork in the dog-days. Nothing in my way goes off in summer except very light goods indeed. A review, a magazine, or a sessions' paper, may amuse a summer _ reader ; but all our stock of value we reserve for a spring and winter trade."

" I must confess," says Lien Chi Altangi, "a curiosity to know what 3'ou call a valuable stock, which can only bear a winter perusal."

" Sir," replied the bookseller, "it is not my way to cry up my own goods ; but, without exaggeration, I will venture to show with any of the trade. My books at least have the peculiar advantage of being always new ; and it is my way to clear off my old to the trunk-makers every season. I have ten new title-pages now about me, which only want books to be added to make them the finest things in nature. Others may pretend to direct the vulgar ; hut that is not my way ; I always let the vulgar direct me; wherever 'popular clamor arises I always echo the million. For instance, should the people in general say that such a man is a rogue, I instantly give orders to set him down, in print y

VI PREFACE.

a villain ; thus every man bui/s the boot; not to leant new sendmeats, but to hart the pleasure qf teeing his oicn reflected?

Sagacious Fudge ! Neither is the race yet extinct I dare Bay the Fudge family is as numerous now as it was in the days of Goldsmith. And we have our popular writers, too — the Fudge beam ideal of a great genius — who worthily, even when handling the gravest themes, follow the precedent furnished by the inimitable author of the Infernal Guide. " Ah ! sir, that was a piece touched off by the hand of a master ; tilled with good things from one end to the other. The author had nothing but the jest in view; no dull, moral lurking beneath, nor ill-natured satire to sour the reader's good humor; he wisely considered that moral and humor at the same time were quite overdoing the business.' 1

But, my readers, this I would have you to understand at the very commencement of our acquaintance ; you will assuredly find the writer of the following pages no Fudge, nor in the least ambitious to touch off such a master-piece of wit as that same In fecal Guide. I have endeavored to speak my sentiments plainly, to narrate facts impartially, and to treat a grave theme in a manner becoming its gravity and great importance. Read for yourselves, and determine. For, however faulty these papers may be thought in other respects, I have endeavored to portray, truthfully at least, what has been presented to my own mind, from my present stand-point. Others, I know, gazing it may be, from a higher point of observation, have professed to see the same object- in a different light; and they may possibly be right and I wrong; for, fully conscious of the imperfect ness and general obliquity of all men's vision, I am not so fool-hardy as to swear that the shield whose legend I read so plainly, bears the same device upon its other side. At the same time, however, permit me to suggest to those who may not view the matter in dispute the same as I do, that a peep at both sides will do no harm ; since otherwise, they might be induced to wage a Quixotic war in defense of what may prove (when it is too late, alas !) of no greater merit or importance than that same senseless cause of quarrel which resulted in the untimely death of both the foolish one-idead knights of the old days of chivalry.

Jan. 1st, 1SG0. The Author.

OUR SOUTHERN STATES.

Chapter I. The Southern Gentleman

"He is a noble gentleman ; withal Happy in's endeavors : the gen'ral voice Sounds him for courtesy, behavior, language, And every fair demeanor, an example : Titles of honor add not to his worth ; "Who is himself an honor to his title."

John Ford.

Perhaps it would be altogether superfluous to remind our readers, that the fashion has been for several years,' at least since the unlooked-for success of Uncle Torres Cabin, to write books about the South. Englishmen, Frenchmen, Down-Eastern men, the Bloomer style of men, as well as countless numbers of female scribblers, have not ceased to drum upon the public tympanum (almost to deafness, indeed) in praise or blame — generally the latter — of Southern peculiarities, social habits, manners, customs, observances, and domestic institutions. And jet we dare to presume, the untravelled reader who has never crossed the line which separates the North from the South, possesses but a very confused, and, in the main, erroneous opinion, touching the veritable and distinguishing characteristics of his much-abused fellow-citizens of the Slave States. Indeed, we are morally certain, if he have derived his information from no other sources than intemperate newspapers and exaggerated romances of the Uncle Tom school, he remains to this day in as profound ignorance of the Summer Land, as was poor John Brown when he made his foolish raid into Virginia at the head of his three and twenty fanatical followers. In truth, the Quixotic enterprise of these madmen is mainly due to the persistent misrepresentation of the South by the rancorous journals and unscrupulous demagogues of the Free States. Certainly, it is no easy matter for an entire stranger, let him be ever so capable and unbiased, impartially to delineate the peculiarities of any people whatever. But when a writer's perception is rendered crooked by reason of prejudice, while his love of the almighty dollar and the plaudits of the rabble, urges him to cater to the tastes of his readers, who clamor unceasingly for senseless detraction and bloody murder — what are we to think of his productions ? Certes, that they are to be credited by no manner of means ; and whoever looks to such a source for any useful information, might just as reasonably expect to gather lilies off a bramble-bush, or to find the age of a maiden aunt in the family register.

And yet, if this can be truly said of all peoples — ■ that one not to the manor born is incompetent fairly to discuss their social relations — of the South it can be said most truly and pertinently. Spreading over a vast area of country, and boasting but few large cities or great commercial centres, the different phases presented by Southern society are almost as various as the extent of her territory is diversified ; and while it must not be denied that she sometimes does shock our humaner sensibilities with brutal displays of one sort or another ; still these, happily, are the exceptions to the generally pleasing character of the landscape — the shadows, if you will, whose very darkness only serves to render more conspicuous those heights of moraj. grandeur, and more gratefully pleasing those broad savannahs of genial hospitality, which stretch all the way from Little Delaware to the cactus-clad banks of the Eio Grande. If the South has her Big Cypress, Okefenoke, and Dismal Swamps, she can also point to her noble Blue Ridge, her graceful Cumberland and other mountain ranges, as well as to many a lovely river embowered in forests of magnolia, beech wood, hemlock, the wide-branching cedar, and the stately pine.

It must not be forgotten, either, who were the early pioneers in the settlement of the Slave States. New- England was settled mainly by persons in the humbler walks of life, and who were essentially possessed of the same habits of thought and modes of speech ; whereas the early pioneers in the occupancy of the South possessed no such homogeneal characteristics, but differed, on the contrary, widely in every particular — the two 1* extremes being, on the one hand, the high-bred English courtier of aristocratic mien and faultless manners, and on the other, the thick-lipped African, fresh from the jungles of Congo and still reeking with the bloody stains of cannibalism ; while between these were some half-dozen other classes, possessing different degrees of culture and refinement — all of whom yet have their descendants in the South, changed in many particulars from their original and aboriginal ancestors, but for all that, distinctly the representatives of the several classes whence they derive their origin.

Now,, as the reader is aware, this very important fact has been persistently ignored by all those outside enemies of the South who are ever " harping on my daughter," and seeking to engender strife and all uncharitableness between the two sections of our common country. We know a few of the " unco pious" do occasionally condescend in their pulpits, and through the medium of quasi-religious newspapers, to refer in wellset phrase to the Convict Fathers of the South ; but, as a general thing, the honey -tongued libellers of the Southern half of our Confederacy, appear to be totally unconscious that her citizens were ever divided into other than three classes — Cavaliers, Poor Whites, and Slaves. Can it be ignorance which prompts this discreet silence in regard to a solemn truth of history — a fact so essential to a proper understanding of the true relations of society in our Southern States ? And yet if it be not ignorance, what are we to conclude ? Why, that the accusers of the South fear to face the subject squarely, and hence are constrained to resort (with malice prepense) to base and unmanly subterfuges, in the hope of still longer bamboozling their poor dupes and trusting disciples ; thus proving to the world how exceedingly nice is their sense of honor :

" Like dastard curres, that Laving at a bay The noble stag embost in wearie chase, Dare not adventure on the stubborn prey, Ne byte before, but rome from place to place, To steal a snatch when turned is his face !"

Now, as we conceive, the only proper method of arriving at any just conception of a nation's merits or demerits, as of an individual's, is, to study closely its antecedents — its past history, in a word. It would not be wise to judge of every individual man by the same standard ; wherein, then, consists the wisdom of judging of communities of individuals after the like fashion ? You say, that Jones is short, and Smith is tall, and Brown is corpulent. Because, sir, (being corpulent yourself, ah ! ha ?) you think a rotund beer-barrol to represent the highest style of man, physically speaking, clo you dare to laugh at Jones and Smith— to call the former a duck of a man and the latter a bean-pole ? Consider the misfortune of their birth ; how Jones* father was a dapper little gentleman of four feet six, while Smith's mother stood five feet eleven in her stockings. Consider, also, that while you are so enthusiastic in your admiration of Brown, Jones and Smith, on the other hand, feel for you and that jolly fat dog of a Brown, all the pity and commiseration which a profound sense of your unfortunate corpulency awakens in their friendly bosoms. So, too, when nations fall out and call one another hard names, they are only playing on a larger scale the petty parts of Messrs. Jones, Smith, and Brown. Thus have John Bull and Monsieur Jean Crapeaud lampooned each other for a thousand years ; and both these have united in discharging their limping pasquinades at Brother Jonathan, ever since that immortal Fourth of July, on which this last-named individual came of age and cut loose from his mother's apron-strings, to "set up on his own hook."

And it is in the same spirit that the Cavaliers of Virginia have never ceased to "poke fun" at the sharp-nosed inhabitants of New-England, while the latter have returned the compliment in kind, with all sorts of brobdignagian stories in regard to the outrages on human rights daily perpetrated in the Southern States. A Yankee who visits the South, rarely troubles himself to consider what sort of society he ought reasonably to expect, in view of the different characteristics and dissimilar natures of her early settlers ; but, having free access to the firesides of only one or two classes of her citizens, and ignorantly assuming those to be representations of all the rest, he very naturally blunders, often ludicrously, and always most egregiously, whenever he attempts to delineate the same. He reminds one of the sapient Englishman who went over to Boulogne, in France, tarried one night only, and returning home the next clay, reported that all the women in France possessed red heads ; and all because his hostess of Boulogne was blessed with such a flaming capillary ornament ! In illustration whereof, we may further observe, that all the gentlemen of Mrs. Stowc's novels are represented as being anti-slavery in sentiment, though slaveholders ; while every Southerner who entertains an honest conviction that slavery is right, is invariably made to appear as a brute, a bully, a hardened wretch — one who is to be looked upon as any thing else than a gentleman or a Christian. How false in fact such a presentation of the subject is, must be obvious to every unbiased mind ; and yet the fair authoress is not to be charged with having intended to convey a false impression In o more can the Hon. Miss Murray be accused of a similar intention, while presenting a diverse report in her Letters ; for this lady's associations led her to see a very different phase of Southern society from that presented to Mrs. Stowe, whose anti-slavery sentiments were well known, and w r ho, for that reason, would be very apt to affiliate with persons of kindred convictions. Viewing the matter in this light, we are willing to concede, that both these ladies, as well as all other reputable authors who have devoted their attention to the South, are equally honest, so far as intentions go : and this, too, whether they have written in praise or blame of Southern institutions.

Indubitably, there is much in the Slave States to call forth either unqualified approbation, or equally unqualified denunciation ; owing entirely to the nature of the individual's sympathies who so applauds or denounces. We will even go a step further, and declare in all good conscience, that there is much in the South to call forth honest praise from honest men, as well as much to grieve the spirit of themost rational and conservative of philanthropists. But we have }^et to stumble on that community, free or slave, of which the same remark can not be made with equal truth and pointedness.

All human society, indeed, is faulty, more or less, and ever must remain so ; and it is, therefore, a grave error either to praise or to denounce unqualifiedly, any system of human government whatever, however good or bad. Nothing good can ever come of such a policy, dictated, as it of necessity ever must be, by a very circumscribed knowledge of man's imperfect nature, as well as by the most intolerant bigotry or the narrowest prejudice. Thus, in spite of fifty years' unceasing denunciation of her peculiar domestic relations, the South is stronger to-day than at any former period, and fiftyfold more prosperous than when the denunciation first began. This, the reader will probably remark, is hardly to be considered as an unfavorable result, and so it is not ; but there is an evil still, which has resulted from the indiscriminate blame of Southern institutions, and that is the indiscriminate praise of the same, indulged in to excess by the too intemperate and hot-headed advocates thereof; until, in consequence of the wild vagaries of the two extremes, so totally erroneous a public sentiment has been created-, that few persons, if any, whose opinions have of necessity to be based upon the testimony of others, possess as accurate information as they should touching the true state of society south of Mason's & Dixon's line.

While one portion of the Northern people inclines to believe, that the citizens of our Southern States are so many Chevalier Bayards, sans •peur et sans reproclie ; living upon their broad estates in all baronial splendor and hospitality, but being, nevertheless — like the slaveholding Catos and Brutuses of republican Borne, and the equally slaveholding Solons and Lconidases of democratic Greece— still true to the Constitution, the Commonwealth, and the Laws ; another portion of the same community (and for the honor of humanity, we pray Heaven this portion be not so large as we fear) entertains in regard to the same people opinions not quite so flattering, to say the least. What evil thing has not been laid to the charge of the poor Southerners, indeed, by the very Christian, refined, and amiable people, of whom this latter portion of the Northern community is composed, it were difficult for even the most experienced Tombs lawyer to suggest. Only think of an ex-minister of the Gospel, who publicly declares that the hanging of John Brown, horse-thief, traitor, and murderer, by the Virginia authorities, would make the gallows as glorio.us as the cross! Oh! for shame ! shame upon you, Massachusetts, when you can applaud to the echo such blasphemous utterances !

We hope our readers are not growing impatient, for we shall endeavor to get rid of this prosing style in a few more paragraphs ; when we shall proceed immediately to the discussion of more entertaining topics. But vre can not resist the temptation to prose just a little bit longer while we are in the vein.

And what we wish to impress upon the reader's mind, is this (and we have been drawn to the subject almost unawares) : The greatest villainies that were ever perpetrated, were perpetrated in the name of God and Justice. The bloody guillotine was erected to further the ends of justice. The Order of Jesus and the Holy Inquisition were instituted in behalf of God and justice. And alas ! even while the Rabbins and Pharisees hanged the King Immanuel upon the cursed tree, they loudly professed that they were doing the will of Jehovah ! Mark, however, had there been no public sentiment to justify the High Priest and Levites who consented to the death of Christ — a public sentiment which had been created and fostered by the false teachings and rabbinical traditions of the Levites themselves — such monstrous sacrilege never could have been consummated. Just so at the present time ; did not a lamentably false public sentiment sustain our modern Levites in their political crusade against men as righteous as themselves, they never would dare to speak as the Phillipses and Beecliers have spoken about John Brown, neither would they persuade themselves that to preach "Jesus Christ and him crucified" (which was the sole ambition of the noble Paul) consists in beating their drums ecclesiastic in a rage of fanatical zeal, or in actively consorting at primary political caucuses with every drunken vagabond who has a ballot, and who votes it according to their consciences.

Now, as every well-informed person knows, the fact is indisputable, and has often been boasted of by the infidel press, that anti-slavery sentiments were first propagated by the ultra socialists and communists — those miserable sans culottes, who, during the memorable French Revolution, raised the cry of Liber 'ie, Fraternite et Egalite, and in the madness of their drunken folly enthroned a nude harlot in the Temple of Justice as the goddess Reason, the object of their admiration and worship. At that time England and Massachusetts were virtuously engaged in supplying the slave-marts of the world with cargoes fresh from Guinea and Loango, and our Northern divines had not the least suspicion that the Bible condemned slavery. But, sansculotteism being quelled in France, soon found a foothold in Exeter Hall, and thence spread to the United States. For a long time the clergy resisted the storm of radical ideas, but being only men like the rest of us, and having an eye to benefices, calls, surprise-parties, and the like, as well as " itching ears" to catch the sweet voices of the rabble, they have at last almost surrendered in a body in the Free States, and now seek to lead in the nc\\ r crusade; yea, some of them have even gone so far as to doff the surplice to assume the uniform of a new master, and are now prominent political leaders : know how to pull the wires and the wool over the eyes of honest citizens, equal to the shrewdest ; can turn off a five-dollar whisky-skin as coolly as the bloodiest Blood Tub, and entertain for the frailer daughters of Eve a benevolent regard which is truly affecting.

In truth, in some sections of New-England, the clergy have made this thing of free ivool a part of their creeds — the great Open Sesame of their churches ; the real party or sectarian shibboleth : the only test of piety, or benevolence, or humanity, or civilization; until, and we declare it with shamefiicedness, in the transcendentally mystified atmosphere of that highly enlightened region, the substance of things is no longer regarded, only t"he name. Does the reader doubt our assertion ? Behold, then, the proof! We epiote a brief passage from the writings of one of the most popular of New- England authors :

" Bussia has sixty millions of people : who would not gladly swap her out of the world for glorious little Greece back again, and Plato, and yEschylus, and Epaminondas, still there ? Who would exchange Concord or Cambridge in Massachusetts for any hundred thousand square miles of slave-breeding dead-level ?"

Now, this is all good enough as high-sounding rhetoric, but it is also high-sounding nonsense as well. Is the writer ignorant that his " glorious little Greece, " the whole pocketful thereof, was only " slave-breeding dead-level," in its palmiest days ? Is he ignorant that " Plato, and iEschylus, and Epaminondas," and all the rest of the Grecian worthies, were slaveholders as much as George Washington, or Henry A. Wise, or Gov. Hammond? with this difference, that these are Christian slaveholders, while those were profane heathens, ignorantly worshipping gods of wood and stone ? And yet this amiable orthodox anti-slavery philosopher and dialectician of the "Modern Athens," would rejoice to see Christian Russia blotted out of existence, merely to have back again " glorious little Greece," with all her thirty thousand obscene gods and goddesses, and her slaveholding populace, whose morals were so bad, that Thucydides, after having driven in a car drawn by six nude Cyprians through the public thoroughfares of Athens, was by popular ballot elected to the highest office in the gift of his fellow-citizens ! Need we wonder the Old Bay State, while under the control and guidance of such perspicacious logicians, despite her acknowledged wealth and refinement, exerts no greater influence in the land than she does ? Verily, in the days of Cotton Mather, when her godly sons were sorely exercised about Quakers, Baptists, witches, hobgoblins, broomsticks — and the like precious theological matters, they were not more befogged and befooled, than are their descendants of to-day on the subject of "slave-breeding dead-level."

If, however, they will grant us a patient hearing, we hope to enlighten them somewhat in that regard, at least in so far as our own Slave States are concerned. Kussia must take care of herself- Of course, in order faithfully to perform the delicate task we have voluntarily undertaken, (for it is a delicate matter to presume to discuss the social relations of any community,) even if we were an author of well-established reputation, and long acquaintance with the public, it would behoove us to show some personal fitness for the work; but much more is this the case, when a young and unknown literary aspirant lays claim to a public audience. We trust the reader will pardon a seeming egotism, therefore, when we proceed first to state, that the writer has enjoyed more than ordinary opportunities for observing the different phases of Southern society. Born in the South, his education was chiefly acquired at Southern institutions of learning, in the States of Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia. 'Tis true he left the University of Virginia to conclude his professional studies at Harvard University, Massachusetts ; but this was because he had a strong desire to come in contact with the Northern people, and Northern prejudices, on their own soil ; to correct his own sectional prejudices, should these require correction, as well as to demonstrate to those with whom he might have occasion to associate, that not all slaveholders are such "outside barbarians," as the enemies of the South strive ,^o laboriously to make the Northern public believe. lie has, besides, travelled in nearly every State in the Union, and for four years has been a freeholder and housekeeper in a Free State. Indeed, his pecuniary interests in the North and South are about equal, so that there will not be a sufficient preponderance of selfish interests to bias his judgment one way or the other. We shall aim all the time at strict impartiality. And although we do not deny that we entertain very warm sympathies for all classes of persons in the Slave States — not excepting those who are there held as property and sold as chattels — we are }^et perfectly well aware, that many of them are in very bad odor with all honorable men, as they rightly deserve to be. When, therefore, we come to speak of such, while we shall take care to set nan glit clown in malice, we shall endeavor nevertheless to state the plain, unvarnished truth ; even if, as the great English novelist has suggested, it may occasionally scratch.

Having premised the above, more to introduce the writer to the reader than his subject, we now proceed to introduce to him the latter. And, imprimis, we beg to make him acquainted with the Southern Gentleman. We know the usual practice with writers is, as with hod- carriers, to begin at the bottom-round of their argument and thence ascend to its topmost ; but we are pleased to reverse the usual order, and so beginning at the topmost, shall endeavor to descend as easily as possible until we reach the " mud-sills," known in the old-fashioned vernacular of the South as slaves.

In our description of the Southern Gentleman — his family and friends- — his negroes, horses, dogs, and estates — his manners, speech, opinions, excellencies, and faults — all indeed that appertains to him — we wish the reader to understand from the beginning, that we intend to confine onrself to such a gentleman as is peculiarly the outgrowth of the institutions of the Sonth. Of course there is at the South a conventional gentleman, as there is at the North, or in England, or on the continent of Europe ; but he is no more the South rn Gentleman, than was the Count D'Orsay such a gentleman. Although born in the Southern States, and never having been any where else, may be, he is yet simply a gentleman — the universally accredited gentleman of the civilized world. This conventional species of gentleman may be either an honest man or a knave — a blase libertine, a wine-bibber, a coxcomb ; or a hero as well, a Christian, and a sage. We know there are those who will cry out against this definition of the world's gentleman ; but let them bawl until their lungs are sore, yet they can not thereby change the facts. What was Beau Brummell, but a spendthrift, drunkard, and coxcomb ? What was my Lord Chesterfield, but a polished sepulchre, fair outside to look upon, within black and unsightly with every rank corrujDtion ? What was King George the Fourth — that most " perfect gentleman in all Europe" — but a base deceiver, a proud and selfish ruler, and a heartless hypocrite ? And coming down to these degenerate times, what shall we say of P.

Barton Key ? And do you presume, honest reader, that "the tower of Siloam," which fell upon him, crushed in his person all the polished, but false, Keys in the land, who are accustomed habitually to unlock the treasure-house of their bosom friend and steal thence his diamond without price ? What, too, shall we say of Bulwig, the learned novelist, the titled playwright, and minister of her Christian Majesty — Bulwig, who notoriously beats his wife, and shuts her up" in a mad-house without cause? Has not this same Bagwig, as Yellowplush blunderingly calls him, shot into the very centre and bull's-eye of fashion ? Is he not looked upon in all respects as being no less a gentleman than was our own immortal Washington, or is that purest of our statesmen and chastest of our orators, Edward Everett ? Certainly : and all because the learned Baronet has read Chesterfield with profit, and possesses a certain external polish — a certain suavity of manner and speech, soon mastered by such as frequent courts and the palaces of the great — as well as a complete knowledge of all those conventional laws of etiquette, which the artificial nature of our social intercourse has rendered almost indispensably necessary to the completion of a polite education. Neither are such mere ornamental accomplishments to be despised ; but whoever would lay too great store by them, let him not forget, that while blossoms and green leaves render the tree beautiful to look upon, still much more greatly to be prized are its black, misshapen roots, which, striking deep clown into the earth, hourly extract from the soil those juices which supply both leaf and floAver with all their fragrance and beauty.