I ran the blockade this morning, and am now thirty-seven miles from Albany and my friends of knives and pistols and horsewhips.
It appeared to me that if I was in such danger as my advisers represented, I might be waited upon at the depot about the time of leaving the city. Having already fallen back once, it did not seem advisable to get into further trouble at the last moment. Wherefore, I concluded to take the advice of the hotel-clerk and give my friends the slip, by taking the freight train at half-past five instead of the mail train at half-past seven.
While I walked on the platform of the depot in the breaking morning, laughing at the ridiculous position in which I found myself, one of the train hands spoke to one of the station hands: "Jest be 'round when the mail goes out, an' I reckon you 'll see fun." "Why?" said the other. "O, wa'al I do' know, but there 's a Yankee he 's got in trouble with some o' our folks, an' they 's comin' down to see him off this mornin'."
"Thank you, good friends," said I, to myself, "but I shall not be here when you come down." We made the run hither in about four hours, stopping half an hour for breakfast.
An hour and a half after my arrival the passenger train came along up. Finding that one of the men who stopped here was from Albany, I engaged him in conversation; and finally, telling him I had heard something about a fuss down there, led him along to give me the whole story.
He had n't seen the Yankee, he said, but genlemen told him that he seemed a civil enough sort of fellow. He 'lowed the Yankee might ha' interfered on the nigger's side if thar 'd been any 'casion to do so; but gentlemen told him he 'd only told the nigger to go 'long home and mind his business and not get up a row with the soldiers. He did n't know for certain where the Yankee slept last night; some
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said he went off with the Federal captain, and some said he cum up to next station horseback, and some said the landlord had hid him away; and for his part he could n't tell nothin' about it 'cept that he did n't stay at the hotel. He knew about that; the men they went up to his room and got some newspapers he left, some Yankee papers; and then they kinder sarched the house all over like, but they could n't find nothin' of him.
"I don't know," he continued, "whar he stayed, sir. The Yankees is right smart, and I reckon he knew what he was about, like, all the time. Some on 'em reckoned as how they'd find him at the depo' this mornin', but somebody else said he'd gone off on the freight train, and they did n't come down. I ha'n't got no feelin' agin the Yankees, but some o' our folks has, and they don't like them interferin' so much with the niggers."
From another source I have also learned that there was much noise and excitement about the hotel till midnight; that there were twenty or more half-drunken men around there for a long time; that some of the rooms were searched for the offending Yankee. So many of the leading men were in the spree that very little could be done to put down the row, which exceeded any that had occurred there for a dozen years.
Thinking of the affair now and at this distance, it still seems as if everybody had conspired to exaggerate its proportions to me. Three days ago I should have deemed it utterly impossible for anything I could say or do to produce such an exhibition of feeling. While the result indicates the under-current of passion, I cannot believe that any sober citizen of Albany sanctions the work of his townsmen on yesterday.
A GENTLEMAN who came down from Macon this morning tells me that a private telegram to Major-General Wilson announces the hanging of Wirz on Friday last. The man seems to have no friends even in the little village where he lived so long. In that he has passed beyond the praise and blame of men is new hope for the Republic and new source for confidence in the sovereign people. Let me without harsh words and with plain phrases paint you the Andersonville of to-day, -- draw it for you as it stood on the day when he died who made its name a worldwide synonyme of cruel barbarity.
I sat in the cars talking with an ex-Rebel major, formerly on the staff of Howell Cobb when he had command of the Georgia Reserves. Suddenly he broke into something I was saying with, "There's where Captain Wirz lived," pointing to the right of the track as we came southward. I looked and saw a large unpainted wooden house, two stories high in the ridge, and scarcely one in the eaves, -- a plain Southern dwelling of the average country sort, with negro-quarters in the rear and a turnip-patch on the left. A sallow-faced white woman looked from the window, and a large-eyed negro child stood on the doorsteps.
"We are near Andersonville, then?" said I. "Yes, Anderson is only a mile and a half distant," he responded. I learned afterwards that the place is generally called Anderson hereabouts, the affix ville being of recent origin. Years ago it was simply Station Number Eight, and received its
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present name, I am told, in honor of General Robert Anderson of Sumter fame.
Five minutes more and there flashed upon us through the trees the white line of the cemetery fence, and in another instant we caught a glimpse of the long rows of white headboards standing brightly in the noonday sunshine and within the retired circlet of lofty trees. It was but a glance, and then the high bank of the railroad-cut shut out the view. In a moment more, however, we rolled out to the level, and a score of persons rose to look through the windows and see the famous stockade of dreadful memory.
Before the war Anderson numbered the following houses: first, a small white church without steeple; second, Dyke's house, with its adjoining saw-mill and grist-mill; third, a small white depot building; fourth, a small, square, unpainted building of one room, in which the post-office was kept; and fifth, a two-room log-cabin. This is all there was of the village, though there were half a dozen houses not over a mile away, of which the Widow Turner's was in sight. These six buildings yet remain, but the old post-office and the Turner house are unoccupied.
The village now contains about fifty buildings, great and small; the great ones being two or three houses built for the chief officers of the post and prison, and the buildings put up for the commissary and quartermaster departments, and the small ones being those erected for the soldiers and minor officers of the guard. All were cheaply built, none are painted, and the general appearance of the place is squalid and forbidding. The various buildings are scattered about on a tract of over a hundred acres, which has a general slope from the northwest toward the southeast. The whole village lies west of the railroad.
The great stockade was the central feature of the famous Andersonville prison, technically known to the Rebels as "Camp Sumter." Connected with this were the cook-house,
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the bake-house, the numerous forts, the officers' stockade, the hospital stockade, the dispensary, the vegetable garden, the Confederate hospital, the general cemetery, the pest-house, and the small-pox cemetery. The great cemetery is nearly north of the large stockade; and the hospital stockade, with its accessories of dispensary and vegetable garden, is nearly south thereof. The whole prison lies east of the railroad.
One hundred and twenty rods nearly due east of the little depot building is the southwest corner of the main stockade. It originally contained fifteen acres, about five acres of which were swamp. Eleven acres were afterward added to the northern end, so that it now exists as a parallelogram, rather less than twice as long north and south as it is wide east and west. Some seven or eight acres are south of the little stream which crosses it. The swamp is mostly in that part north of the brook. The extreme southern end is eighteen or twenty feet above the level of the water, and the slope down to it is quite gradual. The bank north of the stream is very steep, and the farther end of the stockade is at least forty-five or fifty feet above the water level.
The stockade has a double wall, the outer one being about one hundred and sixty feet from the inner one, and each being built of logs ten or twelve inches in diameter, set five feet in the earth, and standing twenty feet above the surface. The logs are mostly pine. Those of the outer wall retain the bark. Those of the inner wall are all peeled, and those of the original stockade are also hewn. As if this double wall were not sufficient to guard against escape, a deep ditch was dug along the southern and eastern sides, outside the outer wall of course; and for a part of the distance on the northern and eastern sides there is even a third wall of logs.
The sentry-boxes, built just below the top of the inner wall, are mere frames, covered with a board roof, and reached by rude ladders. The boxes were forty-four in number, -- thirteen on each side, seven on each end, and one at each
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corner. These all remain as though they were but yesterday occupied, except one on the western side near the northern end. Much use has broken some of the ladders, but the greater part still stand beneath the sentry-boxes.
There is but one gate in the outer wall. It is in the western side, not far from the southern end. In the inner wall are two gates, one on each side of the brook. They are strong and heavy, and turn harshly on their hinges. In the right-hand fold of each is cut a small door for single passage. The staples and bars remain, but some one has carried away the locks.
Within the stockade proper there is, as compared with Florence, scarcely nothing to see. In the days when it was packed with from thirty to thirty-five thousand men, the whole surface was covered with tents and mud-and-stick cabins. Of these not more than fifty remain, and they are all south of the brook.
In the northern end there are only the five long sheds originally built as barracks for men not sick enough to be sent to hospital. They are simply roofed frames, without either siding or flooring. Each is thirty by one hundred and twenty feet in size. There is nothing about them to indicate their latter-day use. The famous caves were in the bank north of the brook and swamp, but the rains have so cut away the bank that not more than a dozen of them can be found, and of these only small sections remain. Here, too, were the equally famous springs, but the washing down of the bank has also ruined them. Little brooklets find their way out from the red earth and mottled clay; but where "Love's Delight" and "Jacob's Well" and "Heart's Ease," and all the other comforting springs were, can never more be shown. Just in the brow of the bank were the wells; one can find a dozen or more of them, cut trimly down into the firm red earth for thirty or thirty-five feet, but now waterless and liable to engulf unwary wanderers.
In the southern end were gathered the last prisoners, and here, accordingly, are abundant evidences of life. Though not more than fifty of the huts remain, there are fragments and ruins of at least a couple of hundred more. The gate on this side the brook was the main gate. Just inside it, on the left, is a small, square log-cabin, whose use is suggested by the counters and platform scales within. On the right of the gate are five open sheds, running north and south. Each is twenty by one hundred feet in size, and the slope of the ground makes them about four feet high in the eaves in the end toward the wall, and about nine feet in the end toward the brook. The rear of each is scarcely four feet distant from the dead-line. Far down in front of the gate, almost over to the eastern wall, is another shed of the same general character as those nearer the gate. Under these six sheds is the record of an heroic struggle for existence. Here is gathered everything all these prisoners had for house-building, -- three or four wagon-loads of bits of board and split slabs. As the number in prison decreased, those who remained brought hither what the departed had left, choosing to build their rough bunks under a roof out of sun and rain. Nothing in the whole prison is more touching than this palpable evidence that these sons of the nation were so eager to get even the covering of these miserable roofs. Some of their bunks and benches remain intact; but, generally, the little all that constituted everything is scattered at random. Complete as is the general destruction, the ruins are of wonderful suggestiveness. You find half a stool, a broken knife, the handle of a huge wooden spoon, a split checker-board, an old pipe, a wooden hook, a bit of cunning carving on a beam, and, finally, -- is it a barber's chair? -- for, improbable as the presence of such a luxury seems, this combination of a seat and legs and braces and sloping back could hardly have been anything else than a veritable barber's chair.
In the whole stockade there is not a single tree. The
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ground was originally well-wooded, but Winder cut away everything. In the northwestern corner, near the outer wall, he left a single tall pine, whose grateful shade could never fall within the stockade proper, -- left it as if to tantalize the weary and fevered prisoners through the blazing summer days.
How dared any one ever deny the existence of a dead-line here? It is twenty feet inside the inner wall. For a part of the distance it was a palpable thing, -- four inch strips of twenty feet siding, nailed on the top of posts three feet high. For another portion of the distance it was, however, marked only by these little posts twenty feet apart. That men in such a packed prison should not crowd beyond this undefined line between these posts was simply an impossibility. Hellish malignity could not have devised a surer way to lead half-crazed men to swift destruction than was found in thus establishing this unmarked line. A small portion of the finished line remains intact; elsewhere the posts still stand, but the strips of board have been torn off. That much of the line has disappeared for a memorial of the place scarcely needs to be said.
The stocks was an institution much in use during the earlier days of the prison, but discontinued after some months. The instruments were in the extreme southwestern corner, between the inner and the outer walls of the stockade. Nothing now remains of it but a couple of log sheds in a tumble-down condition.
The bake-house stands on the south bank of the brook, between the inner and the outer walls of the stockade. It is thirty by eighty feet in size, with two rooms below and a garret above. It contained two ovens, each twelve feet square. One of them remains in pretty fair condition, but the other is ruined. Some of the shelves and cases can still be seen. The bunks in the loft yet retain the straw on which the workmen lay. The well at the corner of the
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building is partly filled with rubbish; and of the dozen little slab cabins near by only four or five are in condition for inspection.
The enclosure for sick call was also between the inner and outer walls. It was a long pen at the right of the main gate of the inner wall, discontinued before the closing days of the prison. No trace of its existence remains.
The bridges were two in number, one on the eastern side and the other on the western side of the stockade proper. The one on the east is in good order, as is the corduroy road up the northern bank of the stream. That on the west is passable, but needs much repair, or would need it if there were use therefor.
Connected also directly with the stockade, though not within it, is the cook-house, a building standing forty or fifty rods north of the northwestern corner of the stockade walls, near the road to the cemetery. It is a roofed frame, forty by one hundred and twenty feet in size. In it were twelve great iron kettles, which the military authorities took away some time ago. It is now an empty shed, around which are many whitened bones.
The officers' stockade exists merely as a pen two hundred feet long by one hundred and fifteen feet wide, situated about twenty-five rods from the depot, and half that distance from the railroad track. In it were one or two barrack buildings, which were burned at the time of the evacuation. This stockade was not much used, the captured officers being generally confined in Macon.
The hospital stockade, sixty or seventy rods directly south of the general stockade, is an enclosure of eight acres, its length east and west being about double its width north and south. It is built with logs, only ten feet high, which, considering that no one went to the hospital till he was past walking, seems a needless waste of good lumber that might have been given to the boys in the general stockade for firewood in the
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winter time. Posts were set within this enclosure for twenty-two buildings, each twenty by one hundred and fifteen feet in size. Seven of these appear to have been finished; that is, roofed and sided. Nine more were roofed, but not sided. The remaining six never got further than the corner-posts. Twelve of the whole number now exist as mere sheds. None of them ever had any floor but the earth, and eight never were sided. Of these twelve only nine have chimneys, -- mere piles of sticks and clay, with a huge fireplace facing either end of the building. A score of broken bunks are scattered about, but the beds seem mostly to have been spread on the earth. The other four buildings, wholly or partly completed, have been torn down, mainly to use the lumber in building the cemetery fence. There are three deep wells in the stockade, and a small kitchen or cookhouse just without the single gate.
The dispensary is a plain two-story building, about twenty rods west of the hospital stockade. It has three rooms on the lower floor, and two on the upper floor, with a second floor piazza on the western front. Under the southern end is a cellar about fifteen feet square, in which is now collected considerable rubbish. The central lower room of the house was the shop. It is arranged with a counter through the middle, and shelves on either side and at the farther end. The medicines in use appear to have been principally such roots, seeds, and barks as could be found in the Confederacy. They were put up in packages about three inches square and six inches long, each bearing a label of the following character: "Pinckneya Pubens (Georgia Bark). Properties, Tonic and Anti-periodic. Directions, Infusion made with one ounce of the bark to one pint of boiling water; let it stand till cold, and then strain. Dose, From two to three fluid ounces. From the C. S. Medical Laboratory, Macon, Ga." There seem to have been two or three hundred of these packages in store when the dispensary was given up,
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every one of which has been broken open; and the floor of this small middle room is covered four or five inches deep with a mass of bark, seed, paper, sticks, and roots. I was able to find the labels of nine different preparations, to wit: prickly elder, pink root, sumach berries, queen's delight, poplar bark, worm seed, wild cherry bark, wild ginger, and Georgia bark. Each was made ready for use by steeping in water, and the dose was from one to three fluid ounces. That there were other medicines than these is evident enough from the fact that I found prescriptions for portions of quinine, camphor, and one or two other articles. In the mass of rubbish and medicine I also found several scraps of paper containing lists of men admitted on different days to the different divisions of the hospital. They give the name, the regiment, company, and rank, and number of the detachment to which they were assigned. I have part of the list of the fifth division for October 21, 1864, which also gives the diagnosis of the disease. The men were mostly from New England, New York, and Pennsylvania regiments, and of the aggregate number a fraction over three fourths were admitted for treatment of scurvy. Four were admitted from Massachusetts and two from Maine, and the bodies of these six were lying in the cemetery before the end of the month. Possibly the same mortality existed with respect to men from other States, but I have no means of comparison.
A somewhat diamond-shaped tract of ground just west of the dispensary is called the garden. It contains five or six acres, and is enclosed by two deep ditches, four feet apart, the earth removed being thrown up between them. Beyond digging these ditches and grubbing out a few stumps, nothing was ever done with the garden. If it was proposed to allow the scurvy prisoners to make use of the plat for vegetable raising, the scheme came to an early death.
They buried their dead, these prisoners of Andersonville, in the pleasantest field of all the section hereabouts. It is
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in the heart of the pines, and gives serene resting-ground for men worn down in the battle. All about the graves the wild-flowers of the country blossom, -- all around them most stately trees keep sturdy guard.
The cemetery covers forty-seven acres, and is nearly square in form. It occupies a tract somewhat larger than the old field, a portion of the timber on the north and the east having also been enclosed. The whitewashed picket fence is completed on three sides; on the eastern side is a rough board fence, which will soon, however, give way to a picket like that on the other sides. In direction, the cemetery is west of north from the stockade; in distance, it is about one third of a mile from the northern line thereof. The cemetery is laid out in four nearly equal sections, by cross-roads intersecting near the centre of the enclosure. The north and south road is partly graded; the east and west road is merely staked out, and is not likely to be soon finished. The entrance is by a plain gate about midway in the southern line-Inside the fence, on the right of the gate, on the transverse section of a cross, is the inscription: --
NATIONAL CEMETERY.
ANDERSONVILLE.
On the left of the gate, inscribed upon a similar neat white board, is this impressive and appropriate inscription: --
"On Fame's eternal camping-ground Their silent tents are spread, And Glory guards with solemn round The bivouac of the dead."
On the eastern side of the road from this gate, that is, in the southeastern quarter of the cemetery, are three sections of graves, separated by broad alleys running east and west. Each of these sections contains about fourteen hundred graves, in long rows of over a hundred each. On the western side of the road, that is, in the southwestern quarter, are
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two similar sections, separated also by an alley, and having about the same number of graves in the long rows. Where the first of these alleys crosses the main road, on the right and on the left, are these inscriptions: --
"Whether in the prison drear Or in the battle's van, The fittest place for man to die Is where he dies for man." "The hopes, the fears, the blood, the tears, That marked the battle strife, Are now all crowned by victory That saved the nation's life."
Where the second alley crosses are similarly set up, on the right and on the left, the following memorial passages: --
"A thousand battle-fields have drank The blood of warriors brave, And countless homes are dark and drear In the land they died to save." "Then shall the dust Return to the earth as it was; And the spirit shall return Unto God who gave it."
In the northwestern quarter, in the extreme corner of the cemetery, are the graves of the guard, one hundred and fifteen in number, from the 1st, 2d, 3d, and 4th Georgia Reserves. In the northeastern quarter is a solid section of over five thousand graves, in rows of about two hundred each; and here stands the following motto: --
"Through all Rebellion's horrors Bright shines our nation's fame: Our gallant soldiers, perishing, Have won a deathless name."
In the centre of the enclosure, at the crossing of the roads, is the forty-feet pine flag-staff, erected in July, by the burial party which came out from Washington with Miss Clara Barton, of Massachusetts. Nearer to this than any other
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are the graves of the six prisoners hung July 11, 1864, by their companions, for rascalities within the stockade. [1]
These 12,882 soldiers' and sailors' graves are each marked with a plain white head-board thirty inches high and ten inches wide, inscribed on the inside with name, regiment, company, rank, and date of death. At first the bodies were buried so far apart that there is often more than a foot of space between the edges of the head-boards; but in the large section in the northeastern corner, where those who died last winter and spring are buried, the space is never more than four inches and in many cases is scarcely two. The first recorded death was February 27, 1864, the last April 28, 1865, giving an average of about nine hundred and twenty deaths per month for fourteen months. In the months of August and September, 1864, the average of deaths appears, however, to have been nearly five hundred per week; and there were many occasions when the number exceeded one hundred per day.
Across the Sweet Water Creek, in the oaks, about a hundred rods distant, and south of east in direction from the hospital stockade, was the pest-house. It simply consisted of three log cabins, each about ten by fifteen feet in size. One of the number has been torn down, but the other two remain, and one of them is occupied by a "cracker" family.
The bodies of those who died of small-pox are buried in an old field about thirty rods northeast of the pest-house. There are sixty-four graves, a large proportion of them being of members of Tennessee regiments. The white head-boards show that the first death from this disease took place March 12, 1864, within a month after the occupation of the stockade, and the last on July 19, 1864. The graves will be enclosed in a little cemetery five rods square.
The troops on duty here were, as I have already indicated, the 1st, 2d, 3d, and 4th Georgia Reserves. They occupied
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a collection of log-cabins near the depot, and another collection west of the hospital stockade, say one hundred in the aggregate, some of which are now vacant, while others are occupied by the negroes. For the use of their sick two comfortable buildings were erected near the railroad, seventy-five rods from the depot, each two stories in height and twenty by one hundred feet in size. They are now occupied for the hotel.
There were but two storehouses. They are close by the depot, one on either side the railroad track. The quarter-masters' building is thirty by one hundred and five feet in size, and eight feet high in the eaves; the commissary building is of the same height, and forty-five by two hundred and sixty feet in size. It can very readily be seen that the Rebels were utterly unable to keep a week's full rations on hand, even when the stockade contained no more than twenty thousand prisoners. These buildings now furnish a temporary home for various persons, and contain the freight rooms, a shoemaker's shop, a groggery, and the commissary supplies for the negroes at work in the cemetery.
The forts are nine in number. The largest is at the southwestern corner of the stockade. It mounted twelve guns, had three magazines, and enclosed the house and yard of the Widow Turner. At the southeastern corner is a double fort, or perhaps I should say two single forts, one fronting south and the other fronting east, and each mounting three guns. Midway on the eastern side, not far from the wall, is a small fort mounting three guns; and far out in front of that, on the hill, the beginning of a larger one, which never was finished, though two guns were mounted there. At the northeastern corner is a fort of five guns, and another of the same size is at the northwestern corner, while between the two is a smaller one of three guns. On the western side is a long line of rifle-pits, and a square fort of five guns. Here, then, were forty-one guns, so mounted that nearly every acre of
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the stockade could be swept with grape and canister. The forts remain with walls and ditches and platforms and magazines intact, but the cannon have been removed by the military authorities.
The head-quarters of Captain Wirz were at first in the house already mentioned as near the railroad above the village. They were afterwards in the log-house of the Widow Turner, enclosed in the large fort. It has two rooms and is now a gaping skeleton. Finally they were in a large frame building erected for that purpose over in the village, not far from the church. A piazza has recently been added to it, and it is now occupied by a white family.
In the northern part of the slope on which the village is built are springs whose outflow forms a little stream running off to the southeast. Just south of the village are other springs, which make a little stream flowing off to the northeast. These two form a junction in the marsh just west of the bake-house, and thence flow eastwardly through the stockade, giving a sluggish stream with an average depth of ten or twelve inches and a width of four or five feet. It appears much larger in the stockade, because the partial damming of it by the eastern wall gives it a back-flow. If I add that five thousand men would have found it scantily sufficient for their uses, the condition of thirty thousand men compelled to find it sufficient will be very readily apparent.
"We had it pretty tough sometimes at Camp Chase," said a young fellow who had been a Rebel soldier, and with whom I talked at Fort Valley the other evening; "we had to tote our wood nigh onto half a mile in the winter time." Before I could answer, another young fellow, sitting on the opposite side of the fireplace, responded, "Well, s'pose you'd been in Andersonville, as my father was, where you did n't have to tote it at all; where you could see a thousand acres within a quarter of a mile, and was n't allowed to have a stick of it!" There seemed no occasion for me to speak to that point.
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Andersonville was a good place for the prison. There is plenty of wood and plenty of water, and the section is generally healthful. I have spoken of the water privilege that was occupied; the one that was rejected can be seen by the most unobservant tourist. The little stream that runs through the stockade forms a junction, half a mile or less from the eastern wall, with the Sweet Water Creek. On this creek, a short mile above this junction, a merciful man might have located the stockade. The site is as good as that chosen by Winder; the labor of preparing it would not have been materially greater; the end of it might have adjoined the railroad track; its gate could not have been over half a mile from the station; there would have been half a dozen springs; and, best of all, there would have been the fish-fruitful and rapidly flowing current of the Sweet Water, a stream at least twenty feet wide and sixteen inches deep.
In a small book recently published, entitled "Nineteen Months a Prisoner of War: by Lieutenant G. E. Sabre, Second Rhode Island Cavalry," I find the following interesting account by an eyewitness of that most remarkable and significant affair, -- the trial and execution within the stockade of the six base creatures on whose graves is the record, "Hung July 11, 1864": --
"A preliminary examination drew from the arrested man an acknowledgment of his crime; and at the same time the names of a number of others implicated in the same acts were elicited. The entire party was arrested, and a trial called.
On the next morning the sergeants of the different messes were assembled, and out of this number twelve were chosen to act as a jury. Several officers were brought down from Macon to witness the trial. Those of the sufferers by the depredations of the `raiders,' who were able to attend, were summoned to appear as witnesses, and the accused were permitted to choose their own counsel and witnesses.
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The trial of the `raiders' was conducted with the strictest impartiality. After hearing all the evidence, the respective cases were argued with considerable ability. The verdict given was for the leading `raiders' to be hanged by the neck until dead, and the remainder to suffer such other punishments as the extent of their crimes deserved.
The following were the names of the men condemned to death: --
William Collins, 88th Pennsylvania Volunteers.
Patrick Delany, 83d Pennsylvania Volunteers.
Andrew Meever, United States Navy.
Terrence Sullivan, 72d New York Volunteers.
John Sarsfield, 140th New York Volunteers.
Charles Curtis, 5th Rhode Island Artillery.
On Monday, July 11th, 1864, a rude gallows was erected by our own men on a rising ground at the southwestern portion of the stockade. The gallows was a rude piece of workmanship, built out of material which the Rebel officials, but too willingly in this case, provided. It was composed of two heavy, forked logs, which were fixed perpendicularly in the earth, with a strong cross-beam resting in the forks at the top. A platform, about six feet from the ground, was built and supported upon props, which, at the final moment, were to be cut away, and the unfortunate men launched between heaven and earth. Six men from the camp were designated to adjust the ropes about the necks of the condemned, and a seventh was detailed to execute the dropping of the platform.
At five o'clock in the afternoon the southwestern gate was thrown open, and the prisoners were marched in under guard of Rebel soldiers, commanded by Captain Wirz, accompanied by the colonel commanding the post. The solemn procession moved in front of the gallows and halted. By this time several thousand prisoners had assembled to witness the execution.
When the culprits were formed in line, the Rebel captain stepped forward, and, as near as I could note them after the affair was over, made the following remarks to those in charge: --
`Prisoners, -- I now hand over to you, in the same manner I received them, the men whom you have condemned to death on the gallows.'
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Then turning to the culprits he said: --
`You have been arrested and condemned by your own comrades; I now turn you over to them, and leave them to carry out the sentence or do as they may see fit.'
After this, the colonel, captain, and guards immediately left the enclosure.
The condemned now received the consolations of religion, administered by a Catholic priest, who was permitted by the Rebel authorities to visit the stockade on different occasions. The priest accompanied the culprits to the foot of the gallows, and engaged in prayer. In the midst of these holy offices, Curtis took occasion to make an attempt at escape. He succeeded in breaking through the crowd, but was immediately pursued and returned.
The prayer being finished, the six criminals, each accompanied by the persons appointed to execute the sentence, stepped upon the platform. The criminals each said a few words, which were scarcely audible, proclaiming their innocence and begging for mercy.
When they had concluded what they had to say, the ropes having been previously adjusted, a sack was drawn over their heads, and the six men who accompanied them descended.
At a given signal the platform was cut away, and five of the unfortunate men were struggling in mid-air. The rope, however, of the sixth broke, and the culprit fell to the earth. He begged piteously to be released, but his comrades were inexorable. Another rope was secured, and, when the five bodies were removed, he was hanged alone.
The bodies of the six men were removed from the stockade, and buried in a separate part of the graveyard, distinct from those who died in camp.
During the execution, I observed outside of the enclosure the whole of the Rebel troops on duty at Camp Sumter drawn up facing the gallows. This was, as I understood afterwards, a precautionary measure, supposing some treachery on the part of the prisoners."
ATLANTA is built on something less than a hundred hills; and, excepting Boston, is the most irregularly laid out city I ever saw. In fact, the greater portion of it seems never to have been laid out at all till Sherman's army came in here. That did the work pretty thoroughly, -- so thoroughly, indeed, as to prove remarkably destructive ability in his men.
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Coming here has dispelled two illusions under which I rested: first, that Atlanta was a small place; and second, that it was wholly destroyed. It was a city of about fourteen thousand inhabitants two years ago, and it was not more than half burned last fall. The entire business portion, excepting the Masonic Hall building and one block of six stores and a hotel, was laid in ruins, and not a few of the larger residences in all parts of the city were also burned. But the City Hall and the Medical College, and all the churches, and many of the handsomer and more stylish private dwellings, and nearly all the houses of the middling and poorer classes, were spared; and on the first of last June there was ample shelter here for at least six or eight thousand persons. Of course, however, when the entire business portion of the place had disappeared, the city had been practically put out of the way for the time being, even if nothing be said of the fact that it was depopulated by military orders.
The marks of the conflict are everywhere strikingly apparent. The ruin is not so massive and impressive as that of Columbia and Charleston; but as far as it extends it is more complete and of less value. The city always had a mushroom character, and the fire-king must have laughed in glee when it was given over into his keeping. There is yet abundant evidence of his energy, -- not so much in crumbling walls and solitary chimneys, as in thousands of masses of brick and mortar, thousands of pieces of charred timber, thousands of half-burned boards, thousands of scraps of tin roofing, thousands of car and engine bolts and bars, thousands of ruined articles of hardware, thousands upon thousands of tons of débris of all sorts and shapes. Moreover, there are plenty of cannon-balls and long shot lying about the streets, with not a few shell-struck houses in some sections; and from the court-house square can be seen a dozen or more forts, and many a hillside from which the timber
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was cut so that the enemy might not come upon the city unawares.
From all this ruin and devastation a new city is springing up with marvellous rapidity. The narrow and irregular and numerous streets are alive from morning till night with drays and carts and hand-barrows and wagons, -- with hauling teams and shouting men, -- with loads of lumber and loads of brick and loads of sand, -- with piles of furniture and hundreds of packed boxes, -- with mortar-makers and hod-carriers, -- with carpenters and masons, -- with rubbish removers and house-builders, -- with a never-ending throng of pushing and crowding and scrambling and eager and excited and enterprising men, all bent on building and trading and swift fortune-making.
Chicago in her busiest days could scarcely show such a sight as clamors for observation here. Every horse and mule and wagon is in active use. The four railroads centring here groan with the freight and passenger traffic, and yet are unable to meet the demand of the nervous and palpitating city. Men rush about the streets with little regard for comfort or pleasure, and yet find the days all too short and too few for the work in hand. The sound of the saw and plane and hammer rings out from daylight till dark, and yet master-builders are worried with offered contracts which they cannot take. Rents are so high that they would seem fabulous on Lake Street, and yet there is the most urgent cry for store-room and office-room. Four thousand mechanics are at work, and yet five thousand more could get immediate employment if brick and lumber were to be had at any price. There are already over two hundred stores, so called, and yet every day brings some trader who is restless and fretful till he secures a place in which to display another stock of goods.
Where all this eagerness and excitement will end no one seems to care to inquire. The one sole idea first in every
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man's mind is to make money. That this apparent prosperity is real no outsider can believe. That business is planted on sure foundations no merchant pretends. That there will come a pause and then a crash, a few prudent men prophesy.
Meantime Atlanta is doing more than Macon and Augusta combined. The railroad from here to Chattanooga clears over one hundred thousand dollars per month, and could add fifty thousand more to that enormous sum if it had plenty of engines and rolling stock. The trade of the city is already thirty per cent greater than it was before the war, and it is limited only by the accommodations afforded, and has even now spread its wings far out on streets heretofore sacred to the privacy of home.
Wonderful as is the new growth of the city, its original existence is still more wonderful. It is two hundred and fifty miles from the sea-coast, in the midst of a country but moderately productive, not in the vicinity of any navigable river, and without facilities of any kind for manufacturing purposes; yet it was founded less than twenty years ago, is now the fourth place in population in the State, and bids fair to be the second in less than five years.
It can never be a handsome city, but its surrounding hills and slopes offer beautiful sites for elegant residences. Many of the buildings now going up are of frail and fire-tempting character, but in several instances owners are putting in solid one or two-story brick blocks, -- intending at some future time to add two or three stories more. Few of the present merchants were here before the war, -- few of them are yet to be considered as permanent residents of the city. The streets never were either neat or tasty; now, what with the piles of building material and the greater piles of débris and rubbish, and the vast amount of teaming and hauling over them, they are simply horrible. The former residents are coming home, and in the private portions, as
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well as the business section, there is great activity of repair and refurnishing. The place has no decent hotel, -- no one has yet found time to build a large house. Of small and wretched fifth-rate hotels there are half a dozen; but better than any of these are several of the very numerous so-called private boarding-houses, which send their porters and runners to every train, receive all classes of transient guests, charge the usual four dollars per day, and are hotels in everything but name. The city handsomely supports two of the largest daily newspapers in the State, has five or six churches, a medical college, two or three select schools, and is talking about an academy.
These northwestern counties were all strongly opposed to secession in 1860-61, and this Congressional district furnished several hundred soldiers to our armies. Its disposition toward the government is now, as a whole, probably better than that of any other district in the State. Its slaves constituted less than one fourth of its aggregate population before the war, and in general there is much less complaint here than elsewhere as to the disposition of the freedman. The people pretty generally quietly accept the decision of the sword, and the men who prate of State supremacy are far less in number than in the district below.
The social condition of affairs is deplorable in the extreme. It results mainly from the bitter feud between the two classes of people, -- those who "went with the State," and those who remained true to the Union. While the country was under the control of Johnston and Hood, the Union men suffered almost every conceivable wrong and outrage. Their families were turned out of doors, their wives were abused and insulted, their daughters were maltreated and ruined, their farms were pillaged and desolated, their houses were sacked and burned, and they themselves were imprisoned and tortured; nay, many of them were
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hunted down like wild beasts, and shot like dogs when at the point of death by starvation. That the Union men now seek to strike a balance for the indignities and barbarities of other days is only most natural. Whence a constant turmoil in all sections, which results in the sudden death of not a few persons and the arrest and imprisonment of large numbers. The leading delegate of this section went so far as to say, in the late State Convention, that three fifths of the men in all Cherokee Georgia are now under indictment. I hope this is an exaggeration; but my own observations convince me that the truth is at least so bad as to present a picture of civil commotion only less painful than the commotion of war itself.
The people of this section are generally hardy and industrious, and in many respects are so much unlike those of some other sections of the State, that "Cherokee Georgia" is a term of contempt and reproach with the aristocrats and land monopolists of the southern and southeastern parts. I found the delegates from this quarter lacking in something of the polish of those from the cities, but no class of men in the late Convention showed a wider range of general information. I find the common people no more ignorant than elsewhere in the State, and it is certainly to be said in their favor that they are not sitting in sullen indifference nor idling in helpless poverty. Poor they are, having little left but lean bodies and homespun garments; but I judge that the whites of these twenty counties in the northwest have done more work since the close of the war than the whites of any fifty counties below the middle line of the State.
I am very certain that the President's course in granting pardons so freely to leading Rebels in this State has not strengthened the faith nor upheld the hands nor encouraged the hearts of these mountain men who were always our friends. They should receive such favors as government has to give; but I am everywhere told that the golden apples
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are cast into the laps of men not yet cleansed of love for the Rebellion, while the original Unionists, who kept the faith unto the end, are generally cuffed and sent away empty-handed. As I have already said, hundreds of these men suffered every possible outrage at the hands of the Rebels. You need n't undertake to tell them who is to blame for their treatment, for they know that Joe Brown and Howell Cobb could have prevented it by a word.
Scores of women, whose husbands were abused or imprisoned, went to Brown or Cobb for protection or relief, only to be insulted or coldly turned away. Now when these men and women see Joe Brown put forward and accepted as Presidential adviser for this State, and see Howell Cobb restored to all his rights of person and property, is it any wonder that they manifest little love for the government, -- nay, any wonder that some of these men swear roundly, and exclaim, "D -- n your government, if it has no favors for anybody but black-hearted Rebels!" When I talked with one of them, he cut me short with, "Treason a crime? D -- n it, loyalty's the only crime, I think!"
AUGUSTA is a fine point for business; and when it is once more brought in connection with Charleston and Savannah by railroad, Atlanta, busy as she is now, and confident as she is of the future, will need to have sharper eyes and even yet more restless energy if she would not be distanced.
The close of the war found more cotton, probably, stored in and about this city than at any other point in the South. One feels justified, from all that is said, in estimating the amount at fully fifty thousand bales; and many dealers put the figure at sixty thousand, while a few even fix it as high as sixty-five thousand. Very little of this was burned, and most of it was in the hands of private parties. Consequently, there has been a large business here in the article all the fall, in which there is not yet very much abatement.
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In this Congressional District, the Fifth, the contest at the recent election was more animated than in any other district in the State, -- and one of the worst Rebels in the district carries the day.
Colonel James D. Matthews, of Oglethorpe County, is a lawyer by profession, and was a colonel in the Rebel army. He is the most uncompromising malcontent in the congressional delegation from this State, was by all odds the noisiest and bitterest Rebel in the late Convention, and is about as badly disposed toward the government and the new order of things as any man I have met in all my tour. He is of very cold, hard, severe, inflexible cast of countenance, has a taunting and aggressive manner, and speaks in a high, falsetto, sarcastic, impassioned tone of voice. His appearance, his manner, and his voice alike attest his individuality. He made many speeches during the Convention, and each of them was galling and venomous. He was the most audacious of those who demanded pardon for Jeff Davis, the most haughty of those who advocated the dogma of State sovereignty, the most galling of those who sneered at the supremacy of the nation, the most insolent of those who denounced the government for requiring a repudiation of the Rebel war debt, the most domineering of those who fought everything looking toward a recognition of the legal rights of the negro, the most stubborn of those who resisted the effort to establish co-operative action between the people and the Freedmen's Bureau.
The moral of this election is so plain that he who runs may read. And the city of Augusta, which would have General Steedman believe she is loyal, cast three fourths of her vote for this malignant Matthews!
In the stage between here and Milledgeville I rode a month ago with two gentlemen of considerable local weight and prominence, who were both anti-Secessionists in 1860-61. They talked of the approaching Convention, and of its probable
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action in redistricting the State for representatives. "Well, Colonel," said the younger, himself a man of over forty years, -- "well, Colonel, what will be our proper course when we are once more fully restored to the Union?" The answer came, after a moment's consideration, "We must strike hands with the Democratic party of the North, and manage them as we always have." There was a pause while we rattled down the hill, and then the questioner responded, "That's just it; they were ready enough to give us control if we gave them the offices; and I reckon they've not changed very much yet." There was then conversation on other matters; but half an hour later, after a mile or so of silence, the Colonel suddenly resumed, "Yes, sir, our duty is plain; we shall be without weight now that slavery's gone, unless we do join hands with them. Andy Johnson will want a re-election, and the united Democratic party must take him up; it shall be a fair division, -- we want the power and they want the spoils."
"I hate the Yankees with my whole heart," said a genteely dressed woman who sat just behind me in the cars the other day coming to the city. "And I hate them so bad that I'm going off to Texas to live," answered the gentleman with whom she talked.
At Atlanta I saw a family of seven persons, from the county above this, on their way to that region; at Greensboro I saw a family of thirteen, including the old folks, with daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren, and having a wagonload of trunks, bound for that State; at Berzelia, twenty miles west of here, I fell in with a man who had just returned from an inspection tour, and would start for there next week at the head of a company of twenty. I asked him if he did n't like it in this State. To which he answered, "I am going to see if I can't get shet of the Yankees." A man whom I sat opposite at breakfast this morning told his neighbor that a common acquaintance from Athens left last
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week, and he knew of another family near Washington who would go in a few days. I have heard of very few persons who fall in with the Alabama scheme for emigrating to Brazil; but I am convinced that in the Central and Eastern sections of Georgia there are many who purpose moving to Texas, and only in one or two instances have I heard any reason assigned but a desire to get away from the Yankees.
Yet not all the people of this section are of such antagonistic spirit, -- not all of them are so at war with common sense and the conquering Yankee.
"I don't believe I'll ever vote again in my life," said a young man from Athens to me; "the first vote and the only vote I ever cast was for the revolution candidates from our county to the Convention of 1861. I left college and went into service two days after Sumter was fired on, and I stayed in the army to the bitter end. I've got enough of war, and if there is ever another in this country I shall emigrate."
"I'm d -- n glad the war's over, any how," said a Madison gentleman to me. He was dressed like a gentleman and mostly spoke like one, but profanity is much more common down here than in the North. "I did all I could for the revolution, and now I'm going to do all I can for the Union. You must n't ask me to give up my idea of State rights, -- that's in my bones, and never can be got out; but I assure you it shall never give any more trouble, so far as I am concerned."
When Federal soldiers died in the South, while held as prisoners, they were very rarely given burial in the cemeteries of the town or city in which they died, but were generally packed away outside the walls, if, indeed, their bodies were not ignominiously buried in by-places. Here, however, the bodies of such men were all given decent burial in the large and beautiful city cemetery, -- a fact which must be infinitely grateful to the friends and relatives of the two hundred boys who finished their warfare in this city. They
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lie in three long rows in the southeastern corner of the cemetery, and can readily be identified by a reference to the sexton's books. When the first ones were laid there, now two years ago, some of the extra-finished Rebels of the city were very much offended, and complained of the sexton for his action in the matter, saying that it was an insult to bury Yankees there. With gratitude and admiration I set down the answer of the sexton: "If you ever get to heaven, you'll find plenty of Yankees there; and 't wont hurt anybody to lie alongside a Yankee in here, I reckon."
Down on the river-bank yesterday afternoon I had some talk with a middle-aged gentleman, who said he had always been a Union man. He kept out of the war, but only at the expense of all his property. He thought there were not over one hundred men in this whole county who could be trusted as Union men; he was very certain the President ought not to pardon Howell Cobb, and reckoned it would have been a good thing if General Wilson had strung him up the first time he got eyes on him; he wanted South Carolina blotted out of existence as a State, and allowed it would suit every Union man in the South if she was turned over to the niggers; he could never vote for a man who was a Secessionist, and had n't voted at the recent congressional election; he was glad the President had paroled Alexander Stephens, though he wanted a man to be one thing or t' other, not half Union and half Secesh, and he hoped C. C. Clay would soon be paroled; as for Jeff Davis, he did n't know, though he reckoned the old fellow might as well be set loose on t' other side the ocean; and, finally, he thought we should have more peace in the country if each side, the North and the South, just hung about a thousand parsons!
The people of this city and vicinity are unusually exercised about the pardon of Jeff Davis. There are two classes. A young man, representative of one class, who had been a major in the Rebel service, said to me last evening, "I believe
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President Davis and General Lee the two greatest men of the present generation, and I feel like fighting every time I think how Mr. Davis is kept shut up in Fortress Monroe, and every time I hear the great and good Lee maligned by the Yankees." An elderly gentleman who lives a few miles below the city, and who was a delegate in the late Convention, said the other day, in a stage wherein I also was a passenger, "Mr. Davis ought to be hung, but not by the Yankees; he was the Marplot of our cause, and he ought to be hung, not for treason, but for his cursed mismanagement in the Presidential office of the Confederacy. We should have succeeded but for his obstinacy; and his favoritism toward every man we distrusted and every man who proved himself incompetent, did us more harm than Yankee guns ever did." This gentleman represents the second class, which is just as anxious for Mr. Davis's pardon as is the first named. I have heard much talk about his pardon in all sections, but in none more than this; and I learn that some of the ladies of this city, stimulated by the recent example of their sister-sympathizers in Baltimore, are canvassing the expediency of getting up a monster petition of the women of Georgia in his behalf.
I saw Alexander H. Stephens to-day, -- a little old man with most marvellous eyes, looking not so much like a human being as like a character from one of Dickens's stories. Yet if Georgians reverence anybody it is Mr. Stephens; and there is n't the least question but that his presence in the State is beneficial in the best sense. He resists all importunities to make a public speech; but I am told that he converses freely with all who call upon him, and that he urges everybody to accept the issue of the war in the most cheerful and liberal spirit. While in Columbus, two weeks ago, I was told of a letter he wrote to a friend in that city immediately after the famous Hampton Roads conference. I tried in every way to get a sight of it, but without success.
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The gentleman who told me of it had read it, and used these words in respect thereto: "He said that peace could be obtained on terms not humiliating to the South, and that it ought to be made at once, but Mr. Davis and his principal advisers did not want peace."
I hear much talk about Wirz during the last three or four days, because the last of the illustrated papers chronicles his execution, I suppose. Winder is generally considered the chief brute, but Wirz is held to have been a willing tool. Of course the people don't readily own that the Andersonville cruelties were practised in their State, and occasionally I find a man who seeks to justify them. The great majority of the people, however, condemn them; and I am constantly assured that such models of Christian manhood as Howell Cobb and Robert Toombs did all they could to improve the condition of the prisoners. Most persons claim that there was much perjured testimony given at the trial, but many admit that General Wilson would have been justified in hanging Wirz as soon as he caught him. On the whole, -- though one young man said to me, "He was a bully fellow and died game," -- I believe there is a general sense of relief at Wirz's execution. "There's one wretch the less left to remind us of the terrible war," earnestly said a very intelligent Macon gentleman.
I have talked with many of the planters of this section. Most of them complain of the negroes; and General Tillson, State Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau, says he is satisfied that the blacks are not generally doing more than about half the work they might, though he considers this quite a good proportion when all the facts of the situation are taken into account. Many of the planters, however, are making arrangements to introduce white labor. I have, within the last four days, heard of no less than nine leading men, in their respective localities, who either have already made contracts for white labor or are soon going
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North to secure it. One of these planters left here yesterday for New York, to arrange for sixty men for himself alone, and for thirty more for some of his neighbors. He will get Germans if possible, and does not doubt but that they can readily be taught to make cotton with proficiency. "The only way in which we can control the labor of the free negro is to bring him in competition with the white laborer," is the language of scores of men.
THE general election of this State took place yesterday. In this city and county it passed off quietly enough, -- the vote being about one fifth larger than that cast for delegates to the late State Convention.
The election of Judge Charles L. Jenkins, of Augusta, to the governorship of the State is cause for congratulation. I had frequent occasion to speak of him during the session of the late Convention, of which body he was the undisputed leader. The office to which he is now elected has been more than once at his disposal; but, though he served his county often in former years in the Legislature, he never had much desire for office, and latterly has given himself to the duties of his profession and of his position as Judge of the Supreme Court. Everybody concedes his entire personal and official integrity, and he has always been especially free from the contamination of party or legislative intrigue. That a man of such universally acknowledged probity and uprightness of character has been elected to the high office of Governor of a great State is in itself cause for congratulation. It must also be added that Judge Jenkins appreciates the present situation much better than the majority of the people of the State. He was defeated as a Union man, in spite of the great repute in which he was personally held, for the Convention of 1861. His position on the bench kept him aloof from active affairs during the war; but though, like almost every one else, he "went with the State," it was known by all who cared to inquire his views, that he never ceased regretting the course of the
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South. He was the choice of many of the best men of the State for Provisional Governor, and was elected to the late Convention without opposition. His course in that body is well known. As chairman of the committee of sixteen, he reported the obnoxious clause of the new Constitution which sets up the claim for compensation for emancipated slaves, but one of his friends asserts that he very decidedly opposed the adoption of that clause in committee. As chairman of that committee, he also reported the bill repealing the ordinance of secession; but I have his own assurance that he desired to declare it null and void. As chairman of that committee, he also reported the equivocal measure respecting the rights of the freedmen in the courts. How far it concurred with his own views I am unable to say. He voted against the repudiation of the war debt; his position being that the people ought to be left free to do as they pleased in regard to its payment. A better man for the office and the crisis might possibly be found, but it is a good deal to get one into that position of such stamp as he is. He has been elected without opposition, each of the other gentlemen mentioned for the office having formally declined being candidates.
In the Second Congressional District, comprising the extreme southwestern section of the State, -- twenty-two counties, -- there were two candidates for Congress, -- General Phil Cook and Dr. J. E. Blount. General Cook was originally opposed to secession, but went into the war as soon as the State went out of the Union, and remained in it to the end, -- receiving some slight wounds. He was one of the silent members of the late Convention; and is, I judge, reasonably well disposed toward the government. Dr. Blount opposed secession, opposed the war, and now says that "the only hope for the peace, happiness, and prosperity of our people is in the free and cheerful support of the Union and the President." Of course General Cook is elected.
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In the Third Congressional District, comprising the fifteen counties of Middle Western Georgia, including that in which Columbus is situated, there were also two candidates, -- Colonel Hugh Buchanan, of Coweta County, and Judge Benjamin H. Bigham, of Troup County.
Mr. Bigham has many times been a member of the lower house of the Legislature, and generally occupied important positions on the committees of that body. He is now judge of the Atlanta Circuit. He defined his position in a lengthy card, of which the substance is in the following paragraph: --
"I opposed the secession of Georgia from the Union; but I nevertheless regret to see that we have a candidate for Congress in this district who commends himself by saying he thinks he can take the test oath, to which he especially refers. Speaking for myself, I am not ready to write `traitor' over the graves of the honored dead. I would not, if I could, thus insult the survivors of the recent severe conflict of arms. I am fully committed to the firm and substantial support of the President, reserving to myself the manly right to discriminate, and to disagree with him where I may conscientiously think he is wrong. I will not cringe to power nor sacrifice principle; nor by any act or expression of mine countenance the proscription of any man for past opinions; and I speak in all sincerity when I say the fate of our people shall be my fate."
Mr. Buchanan is a lawyer by profession, who has served two terms in the upper house of the Legislature. He was an original Secessionist, and entered the Rebel army in April, 1861, as a third lieutenant. He rose through the intermediate grades to a lieutenant-colonelcy; and at the battle of Pavillion Station, in June, 1864, was so severely wounded that it was thought for months he could not recover; and in fact he was not able to return to his command when the Confederate armies surrendered. His card contains the following precious paragraph: --
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"It may not be amiss or improper to state, for the information of those not acquainted with me, that, at the commencement of the late war, I volunteered my services, and, through the executive of the State of Georgia, entered into the army of the Confederate States, served in the army of Virginia, and did all in my power to sustain the cause of the South, and secure the independence of the Confederate States. No law was ever passed by the Congress of the Confederate States by which I could be required to take up arms during the whole struggle. I was exempt by the laws of the Confederate States. I refused to avail myself of the exemption, and continued in the service to the last. The cause failed, the Confederacy fell, and our expectations of a separate and distinct nationality passed away. I feel that I am not responsible for that failure in any way. As a citizen, a soldier, and a man I did all I could to insure success."
You see, it was no question between a Unionist and a Disunionist, but a mere contest between two Rebels. Of course the one who went into the army carried the day. His county organ says of him, that "he will be the peer of any member from this State in intellect and every virtue that adorns the human character."
In the Seventh Congressional District, composed of the fourteen counties in the extreme northwestern corner of the State, and constituting what is locally known as "Cherokee Georgia," there were three prominent candidates.
Mr. H. G. Cole, of Atlanta, was the candidate of the original Union men who never gave in their adhesion to the defunct Confederacy and who never acquiesced in the decision of the Secession Convention. He was everywhere known from the beginning to the end of the war as an out-and-out enemy of the Rebellion and a friend of the Union, and suffered a year's imprisonment at the hands of Howell Cobb and other malignants of the State on that account.
Mr. James P. Hambleton, the Atlanta editor who got up the famous "black list" against New York merchants, in the fall of 1860, was the candidate of the original Secessionists
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and all the present Rebel malcontents. A single paragraph from his card clearly reveals his status and eminent fitness for a seat in the Congress of the United States: --
"From the date of the ordinance of secession to the dark days of the surrender of the Southern armies I did all and everything in my power for the establishment of Southern independence and a separate and distinct nationality. Would to God the cause for which we all suffered so much had been crowned with success; but as it was otherwise ordered, I accept the decision of the sword."
General William T. Wofford, of Cass County, was the candidate of the men who were not original Secessionists, but who acquiesced in the action of the Convention of 1861, and supported the State in her efforts in behalf of the Confederacy. He published no card, but allowed his friends to speak for him, and a paragraph from their plea will show his position: --
"General Wofford is not an extreme man in any sense. He is eminently conservative in all things. We need men in Congress in whose honor and integrity we can repose confidence, who will contend to the last for all we can now ask for in support of the policy of President Johnson, and who are as little obnoxious as possible to those in power. The reason for this is plain. We can expect but little from those we so recently regarded as our enemies, if we send men to them whom they regard with suspicion and distrust. In General Wofford we have a man in whom all have confidence, the purity of whose motives no man North or South can question, upon whose record there is not a blot, and from whose influence we have more to expect than almost any man in the South."
The returns from this district will, I am confident, show the election of General Wofford. He is a lawyer by profession, and a cavalry soldier of the Mexican war. He has served one term as clerk, and two terms as member, of the lower house of the Legislature. He strongly opposed Secession in the winter of 1860-61, and voted against the passage
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of the ordinance of secession in the Convention of May, 1861. But, as one of the cards in his behalf says, "The State went out, and as a true Georgian, believing in the honesty of the people and in the principle that the majority ought to rule, he went with her." He was made colonel of the 18th Regiment, was promoted to a brigadiership, and was in command of the district of Northern Georgia at the time of the surrender of the Confederate forces last spring. From all I can learn respecting him, I judge that he is not very badly disposed toward the government and the new order of things.
Without waiting for the returns, I can safely say that the local elections in nearly all the counties of the western and southwestern sections resulted in favor of the men who "went with the State." I do not hear of the success of a single candidate who opposed the war or was even lukewarm in its support, while as between war men the result is generally in favor of the most radical.
In most of these counties wherever an issue was made during the canvass for delegates in the late Convention, the election resulted in favor of men who were co-operationists in 1861 and against those who were original Secessionists. There was a certain disagreeable work to do in the Convention, and the people seemed to think that quasi Union men were the proper parties to haul the chestnuts out of the fire. Now the case is different. The Legislature will be composed of men of another stamp, -- generally of men of more ability, but also of less original Unionism than those in the Convention.
I everywhere encounter more or less of the feeling which a Cuthbert man expressed in this terse and forcible language: "I hope every district in the State will elect a man for Congress who can't take that d -- d test oath; I want to see the Yankees try it on; if Georgia is n't a free sovereign State, I think, by G -- d, it's time we knew it!" This
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practical reaffirmation of the dogma of State rights is something of every-day witness to any one travelling here. The people hold to it just as strongly to-day as they did five years ago; and the moral of this election is, that the supremacy of the State is above that of the nation.
THIS is a pleasant little town of some sixteen hundred to two thousand inhabitants, situated thirty miles below Macon and about one hundred miles above the Florida line. It is the principal place in Houston County, though not the county seat, and is the junction of the Muscogee and the Southwestern Railroads. It is not a point for the cotton trade, but does a large retail business with the surrounding country.
The section of the State below here, of which Albany may be called the centre, constituting Southwestern Georgia, is one of the finest cotton-growing regions of the South. It was not much traversed by either army, had no chance at running the blockade, and could get very little shipment on the railroads; consequently the surrender of the Southern army found in the country about all the cotton that had been raised in five years. Various gentlemen whom I met in the Carolinas from time to time told me there was probably more cotton in Georgia at the close of the war than in any other Southern State; and many gentlemen of this State tell me that the great bulk of the amount was in the southwestern section. The estimates of the amount in forty counties of this quarter average about two hundred thousand bales. The estimates of the amount made this year in the same counties average near ten thousand bales.
The men who did the fighting are everywhere the men who most readily accept the issues of the war. "I can whip any three Yankees in town," blustered an ex-Rebel officer at Americus the other day; but when I inquired about his record
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in the army I found that he was generally "seriously unwell" on the day of battle. So, too, one of the most malignant men I met at Milledgeville served during the war in the home guard, and, afterwards, as the commandant of a prison.
The late Rebel privates of this section are, generally, doing quite well. They mourn over the defeat of their armies, and are very fond of showing that but for this little mistake, or that little accident, or that other little blunder, the Confederacy would now be a great nation; but they appear, on the whole, to accept the issue of the war in good faith and with a determination to do their duties hereafter as orderly citizens. I should add, however, that there are more exceptions to this general fact than I found in South Carolina.
However strongly the Carolinian clings to his State-rights doctrine, he knows and feels that his State has been punished as a criminal for promulgating and upholding that dogma. The people of this section hold to the old faith on the abstract question, and do not seem to recognize that they have been beaten in the contest; and hence there is much scolding at what is termed "Presidential interference in the affairs of the State." Most noticeable as this is, there are very few who desire any further war on the subject. "I am as good a Calhoun man to-day as ever I was," said a gentleman to me at Smithville, "but you Yankees are too strong for us; and now I propose to keep my opinions to myself and do my duty as a good citizen."
An Americus merchant told me he was a hot Secessionist all through 1860, and, though sixty years of age, shouldered his musket early in 1861 and saw two years of service before he broke down. "We staked everything on the result, and for my part I submit to the issue without a murmur"; but before our conversation closed he said, "We have all taken the amnesty oath; we have just as many rights now as Mr. Johnson himself has; Georgia is again a member of the
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Federal Union, and I should like to see any Massachusetts or New York congressman get up and deny her sovereignty!" and, warming with his subject, he soon added, "We're not going there to ask favors, by G -- d, but to demand our rights!"
There is a pretty general contempt everywhere for the "Yankees," the word standing for the resident of any Northern State. Passing by a piazza in Americus on which three or four men sat, I overheard one of them remark, "Well, hell's the place for Yankees, and I want 'em all to go thar as soon's possible, and take the niggers 'long with 'em." Talking with a very intelligent Macon gentleman, I asked him how Northern men would be likely to succeed in business if they were to come into the State this winter; and his answer was, "I think they would get along well enough in the upper-country, but in the lower part of the State there is such ignorance and prejudice that I reckon they would see hard times a long while before they made a living." I must add, that in a general way I hear much expression of a desire for an influx of Northern energy and Northern capital. "Yet when the Yankees come down here," said a man from Columbus, whom I sat next at the tea-table, "they 'll have to be Georgians if they reckon to make money."
I have seen not a little of feminine bitterness since coming into the South; but the women of this section have favored me with some unusual exhibitions during the past week. One who took the train at Montezuma remarked to an acquaintance that the Yankees had all left that place, and she hoped to the good gracious that none would ever be seen there again; to which her friend responded, "I wish we could git shet of 'em forever up to our place." While going through the hotel hall to my room, one evening, from the parlor came a woman's voice asking Henry, the man of all work, if any Yankees came on the train. He reckoned not. "I'm thankful for that," answered the voice. When we
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went down past Andersonville the other day, a genteel young lady who sat in the seat in front of mine said to the gentleman who was her seatmate, "Do y
You know, I'm not sorry so many Yankees died here, for they'd no business to come down and fight the South!"
I found many negroes below here who were run out of the northern part of the State and out of South Carolina, on the approach of Sherman's army. The beauty of the old "patriarchal institution" appears in the fact that none but the able-bodied negroes were brought away, -- the love of the late masters for their servants so prevailing that the aged and infirm were left to the tender mercies of the Yankees!
These refugee negroes generally seem anxious to return to their former homes, though the whites profess to think it an indication of shiftlessness that they desire to see fathers and mothers and children. I saw a party of eleven one morning just starting out to walk over to Barnwell District, South Carolina, a distance of at least two hundred and fifty miles; and the members of another gang of fourteen told me they were going to start for North Carolina so as to get there by Christmas.
The idea that the whites and the blacks cannot live together is unusually prevalent throughout all this section. "The negroes were the ignorant cause of the war, and are bound to be exterminated before the conflict closes," said one gentleman, a member of the late Convention; and I have heard the same idea a dozen times expressed within a week. "We must go down or they must," says another man; and his associate responds, "D -- d if it's us, though." The colonization scheme has no supporters, I judge; for I've not heard it mentioned since coming into the State.
I sat an hour or more in the Freedmen's Bureau agency office at Albany one day last week. A planter from Mitchell County came in with the stereotyped phrase, "Niggers won't work, and everything is all going to ruin." He
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wanted the captain to send him a dozen good fellows who would work right along. I don't at all wonder that he has trouble with his negroes, -- white men wouldn't work for him if he talked to them as he said he did to his present hands. While he sat there, in came a planter from Lee County, an ex-Rebel colonel, who works twenty men and twelve women. He said he had found no trouble with his negroes. As soon as he came home from the army he called them together, explained to them that they were free and could go where they pleased; said to them that he would like to have all of them remain on the place, and would pay them fairly for their work. He gave them a week for consideration, and then every one was ready to contract with him. The contract gives them house room, firewood, medical attendance, and one third of the crop. None of his hands have left him, and all are ready to contract for the next year. In the statement of these two cases lies the whole problem: give the negro fair treatment and there will be very little cause for complaint against him.
The cases in which the planters turn the negroes off the plantation as soon as the crops are gathered are somewhat numerous. Here is one that comes under my own observation. The planter worked seven men and six women. I met the men on the street one forenoon, wandering aimlessly about. When I talked with them they told me their story. "Ole mass'r had 'greed to give we one tird de craps, an' dun got 'em all up, -- got de corn shucked, an' de tatees digged, and de rice trashed; an' ole mass'r he dun gone sold all de craps, an' he bringed we all up yere yes'erday, an' gif we seven dollar fur de man an' he wife to buy de cloth wid to make we clofes, an' he say may be he gif we some shoes; an' he dun gif we'n none o' de craps, none o' de rice, none o' de corn, none o' de tatees, on'y de seven dollar fur de man an' he wife; an' den he tell we ter come on de plantation no mo'; an' he say we all bof mus' make
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livin' on we'ns freedom; an' we got not'ing fur all de work on'y de seven dollar fur de man an' he wife, an' we got no corn nor not'ing for de winter." I have some satisfaction in knowing that this wretch is ordered to appear before the provost-marshal at two o'clock to-morrow afternoon.
An intelligent boy of about twenty touched his old cap to me, and asked the way to head-quarters. I went there with him and heard his story. He was a refugee from C'lina, -- brought down last spring by his old master, who had since died. He had been doing job work this season, and had got fifty dollars laid up. He was a blacksmith, and worked at his trade. "A month ago, sah, -- next Monday's four weeks, sah, -- I goes to work fur Mr. Bell; an' he promise to do well by me; an' I make no reg'lar bargain with him, but jes' work right 'long ev'ry day from sun to sun; an' he say to me yes'day mornin', sah, `Henry, you go up to town with me an' I reward you well for your work'; an' I dun cum up in his wagon, an' he drive round town an' say ag'in he gwine to reward me well; an' when he git ready to go home, he jes' give me dis yer old pipe an' he don't want me no more; an' when I ax'd him where was de reward he gwine to give me, he cut at me wid de whip an' tell me to go 'bout my business; an' den I comed yere, an' I tell you de whole story." That old pipe did not seem to the captain a sufficient compensation for a month's work at blacksmithing, and Mr. Bell was also ordered up for settlement with Henry, the aforesaid freedman.
In the South Carolina Convention one of the leading upcountry delegates, during the debate on the slavery-prohibition clause of the Constitution, said, substantially, that the condition, as well as the name, of slavery should be prohibited; and in this view he took exception to the phrase, "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist except as a punishment for crime," &c.; for, he argued, it will be very easily possible for the Legislature, if so disposed, to
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re-establish the condition of slavery by a system of crimes and punishments impliedly authorized by that clause.
Down here in Southwestern Georgia is the man who furnishes the practical illustration for this argument. He is called General John T. Morgan, and he has been making a speech on the negro question, which the editor of his county paper indorses as "sensible." "The grand point in his speech," says the editor, "was that in order to wield the bone and muscle of the negro effectively in the various industrial pursuits of the South, we must put him in competition with white laborers, and we thought he was very successful in its demonstration." The abstract of his views on this point is brief, but it is full enough on the main question, as the following paragraph shows: --
"He urged that, as the Constitution gives the power to inflict involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime, a law should be so framed as to enable the judicial authorities of the State to sell into bondage again those negroes who should be found guilty of certain crimes; and in conclusion said he thought that this, in connection with the whipping-post and the pillory, would do more to check vagrancy, theft, robbery, and other crimes among the negroes than all the penitentiaries which could be built."
I cannot doubt that some simple-minded persons really apprehend trouble with the blacks about Christmas. I have talked with hundreds of the negroes since I left Milledgeville, but am utterly unable to find any feeling among them that seems to me to threaten a revolt. On the contrary, they appear to believe that their only chance for decent treatment during the winter lies in the protection which the presence of the military will give them. If the troops are all removed they fear just what this General Morgan advocates, -- a virtual re-establishment of slavery.
FINALLY I have found what I began to fear I should not see in this Southern trip, -- evidence that it is possible for at least some persons in this section of the country to know and appreciate order and beauty and taste and neatness and home-like comfort.
Greensboro is the only place of thirty or forty in which
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I have stopped that may challenge comparison with Northern towns on the score of general appearance. It is the shire town of Greene County, has a population of sixteen hundred to two thousand persons, and is often mentioned in the State as the place where Mr. Secretary Seward once taught school. It is situated on the Georgia Railroad, about midway between Atlanta and Augusta, in the heart of a high, rolling, productive country, in which there are many good farms under fair cultivation. It formerly had a cotton factory, which is now used as barracks for the one hundred and fifty soldiers stationed here; a handsome brick college in grounds luxuriant with vines and flowers and evergreens, in which an academy is now kept; and two or three small hotels, which are now all closed. It has half a dozen substantial brick stores, and is doing a moderate trade with the well-peopled surrounding country. Its court-house is the best I have anywhere seen in the State; and two of its half-dozen churches are buildings both tasteful and costly. Its beautiful yards and gardens are not so numerous as in some other towns I have visited, but there is everywhere a noticeable absence of that glaring showiness so common in the South. In general, the little town has a very Northern appearance, -- looking not indeed so much like a New England town as like a quiet county seat of Northern New Jersey or Central New York.
Finally, I have also found what I began to fear I should not see in this Southern trip, -- evidence that it is possible for at least some Southern women to know and appreciate the dignity of domestic life, and to comprehend the subtile mysteries of thrifty and orderly and cleanly housekeeping.
The house of this widow lady, in which I am domiciled for a day or two, is the one house of all in which I have stopped that may challenge comparison with the house of any New England dame under the sun. It is a small cornor-lot
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house, set round with vines and evergreens and china-trees, and having the usual cook-house and servants' quarters in the rear. Every one of its four rooms below and its three chambers above is as neat and tastefully and appropriately furnished as any house I ever saw in Massachusetts. There is a place for everything, and everything is in its place. The room assigned to me is without carpet, but its bare floor is as clean as water and soap and scrubbing-brushes can make it; its furnishing is old and quaint, but every way proper and in order; its bed will bear the most careful inspection, from the snowy counterpane to the solid cotton mattress; and in one corner is an old-fashioned reel, -- evidence of how much well-ordered household economy! I confess that I am charmed and delighted, -- for how much sloth and apathy and filth and shiftlessness and slovenliness has vexed and saddened my New England soul for twelve long weeks!
Nor is the comfort and good order of the household due wholly to the servants, either. There appear to be a couple of them, and they well do their work, but the head of the house is the widow lady herself; and she and the married daughter living with her superintend household affairs to their minutest detail; and I am sure that if the servants were to leave to-morrow, the home would neither fall in pieces nor go into bankruptcy. The table is well supplied, and the manner in which it is served demonstrates what my general experience in the South contradicts, -- the capacity of a negro woman to be a good cook. Need I say, after all this, that the ladies of the house are ladies in the good sense of the word? It is a private boarding-house, at which chance travellers are always at liberty to ask for accommodations, and I expect to pay the usual four dollars per day; but the boarders are apparently at home, and I am treated like the guest of the family. The mistress of the house owned a few slaves, and is not very hopeful regarding free negro labor;
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but in that respect she does not differ from every other native resident of the State, and I am very sure no one can be kinder to this black man working out his great destiny than she was to her slaves.
Does all this matter seem merely personal or unimportant? It is neither. The son and son-in-law of the house were both soldiers, and both suffered long imprisonment at our hands. They are now good citizens, who live by honest work. If any member of the household has any bitterness of feeling because of the war, I have failed to find it, after a good deal of conversation on all branches of the subject. They mourn the loss of property, but they accept that as part of their defeat. They wish the soldiers were out of the way; but peaceable citizens of no town like the presence of the military. They have some prejudices against the Yankees, but they are not offensively apparent, even to one who avows himself a Yankee of the Yankees. It is not a small matter that there is even one town in the whole of this great State that may court measurement by a Northern standard; for herein is the promise of many more such towns to be built up, when the land is purged of the spirit of slavery. It is not a small matter that one traveller has found a pleasant stopping-place; for in that fact is proof enough how little slavery cared either for the comforts or the economies of home, and proof also of the future homes that shall rise here under the new heavens. It is neither merely personal nor unimportant that twelve weeks of travel in three of the late slave States should find but one village and one household that would lose nothing in comparison with fifty villages and some hundreds of households in Massachusetts alone. Give this people Freedom and all her handmaids, and the traveller of a dozen years hence will not need to draw such pictures as I have drawn of Southern shiftlessness and slovenliness.
Visiting many of the wretched towns of this State and
the Carolinas, and seeing how all the inhabitants live, one can scarcely wonder that the negroes sought early opportunity to break away from their old homes, and begin life on their own account. If they said, "Anything will be better than this," they exaggerated very little. The new life might bring them poverty and trouble, but it at least gave them freedom, and the poverty was no strange thing.
In such towns as Greensboro, and proportionately in others as they approximate toward it, one cannot help seeing most vivdily the other side of the question involved in their course. That freedom should bring desire for change was most natural, as all human experience testifies. Yet, seeing what that change has worked in many of the best towns of Central Georgia, one cannot help wishing the poor negro could have been content, for a time, in his old situation. His removal has reduced hundreds of these Southern women to even such necessary work as will support life, and thousands more to a certain amount of manual labor. Let no one regret this.
If there is one thing more needed in the whole South, -- in the three States, I mean, which have come under my observation, -- more needed here than loyalty, it is respect for labor as labor; not merely respect for it as a means of sustaining life, but respect for it as a branch of Divine economy, respect for it as a means of human elevation. And if there is one thing more needful than to teach the men of the South that labor is noble, it is to teach the women of the South that labor is not degrading. Therefore, as one who would see the problem of man's capacity wrought out in this country to most beautiful results, I welcome the necessity which the course of the negro has forced upon so many women here. Let them work, -- let them begin as children, and learn to do housework.
It is pitiful that, in this age and in this country, one should find occasion to say what is thus impliedly said; but we shall
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not see the full fruit of the war till labor is dignified in every town and village of the whole South; and if the negro must ignorantly many times sacrifice his own ease and comfort now for the good of this people, as they have heretofore sacrificed his freedom and his life for their pleasure, there will only be given another proof that "God works in a mysterious way His wonders to perform."
Yet that the negro should thus ignorantly sacrifice his ease and comfort is none the less touching. That he does do this is apparent to any one who looks upon the situation with unprejudiced eye. He does it everywhere in individual cases, however hard that fact may be of acceptance to any of our theorists; but in all Central Georgia he does it on a wholesale scale. He is a human being, and it was not easy to believe that he would do what all my experience had proved human beings would not do except in isolated cases; yet that thousands of negroes in this section, where slavery was less a burden than in almost any other part of the South, that thousands of negroes have left homes wherein they had every needful care and comfort, for the uncertain chances of life by themselves, is a fact that I cannot refuse to see. In Greensboro, in Madison, in Sparta, in Milledgeville, in Macon, in Athens, in Washington, -- go where you will in Central Georgia, and you cannot fail to come to this conclusion. It is neither supposition nor speculation; it is a hard, unpalpable fact.
In the Carolinas and in other parts of this State I found a few negroes who had clearly let go the bird in hand without any prospect of finding even one in the bush; here I find thousands of such. I know very well that every white man, woman, and child in the whole State is ready to swear that every negro is worse off now than before he was freed. I accept no such evidence; but hundreds of conversations with negroes of every class in at least a dozen towns of this section have convinced me that the race is, on a large scale,
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ignorantly sacrificing its own material good for the husks of vagabondage.
In South Carolina, as I have already said, where slavery reached its lowest estate, it was not easily possible for the negro to make his condition worse by striking out for himself. There was scarcely more than a choice between two evils, and he chose that which promised him most independence. Hereabouts his situation was different, and he has too often made the bad choice.
This must also be borne. For if the privileges of freedom are given to the negro, must he not also take its duties and responsibilities? If his exercise of the privilege of choice leads him into want and suffering, will you again enslave him with the requirement that he shall live with the old master or mistress who treated him well? You may advise him to such course, but you cannot compel him thereto. If you would secure his freedom to him, you must let him have his own way in this regard, even if you see that it will bring him to the utmost misery.
I went into the outskirts of Macon and hunted up many of the negroes who had left old homes in the city and surrounding country. I did the same thing at Madison and Milledgeville. Hundreds and hundreds of them will feel the pangs of cold and hunger this winter who might have kept every necessity and many of the comforts of life, if they had chosen to remain with those who formerly held them as slaves. Who shall have the heart to blame them? For they were in search of nothing less noble and glorious than freedom. They were in rags and wretchedness, but the unquenchable longing of the soul for liberty was being satisfied. Pity them I did, but blame them I could not; advise them I did, but scold them I could not.
Over by the half-built Confederate arsenal in Macon I found a little hut in which were eleven negroes, -- an old man, a middle-aged man, three women and six children.
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There was beside in the hut only a couple of bundles of old rags, which answered, I suppose, for beds, three or four rude stools, a single chair, a bag of meal, four or five pounds of bacon, and half a dozen cooking utensils.
"Well, Uncle," said I, after he had told me that he was raised near Knoxville, some thirty miles away, -- "well, Uncle, what did you come up to the city for? Why did n't you stay on the old place? Did n't you have a kind master?"
"I's had a berry good master, mass'r," he said, "but ye see I's wanted to be free man."
"But you were just as free there as you are here."
"P'r'aps I is, but I's make a livin' up yer, I dun reckon; an' I likes ter be free man whar I's can go an' cum, an' nobody says not'ing."
"But you would have been more comfortable on the old place: you would have had plenty to eat and plenty of clothes to wear."
"Ye see, mass'r, de good Lo'd he know what's de best t'ing fur de brack, well as fur de w'ite; an' He say ter we dat we should cum up yer, an' I don't reckon He let we starve."
I had some further talk with the family, but could only get for answer to my many times varied question, that they came to the city to get freedom.
Near Milledgeville I found another of these crowded cabins, in which lived a man and his wife and seven children, the eldest of whom could not have been over twelve or thirteen years of age. He was an intelligent fellow, and there was a certain air of spruceness about his cabin rather uncommon. I had much talk with him. He came up from Fort Valley country, he said, an' he reckoned he could get something to do after a bit. 'T was rather hard times, he knew, an' good many black people was comin' to de city, but he reckoned they'd all git through the winter some way.
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"But don't you think," said I, "that it would have been better for a great many of them to remain on the plantations or with their old masters and mistresses in town?"
"Wa'l now ye see, sah, das a Scriptur' what says if de man hab a little to eat, an' he eat with a 'tented mind, he be better off dan de man what hab de fat ox an' is n't 'tented."
There seemed no further occasion to argue the case with this man at least. Elsewhere in the same neighborhood I talked with other negroes. Many of them had left comfortable homes, but all seemed to think they could get along somehow through the winter. It was a warmish day, and many of the women were sitting on the ground on the sunny side of their huts, engaged, as so many negro women everywhere are, in knitting socks or stockings.
This morning I walked out to the little negro village near Greensboro, where are living many blacks who were house-servants in the town, as well as some who have come in from the country. Their average condition is better than that of those in the neighborhood of large cities, but yet it is impossible but that many of them must either suffer or steal before spring. I am convinced that many of those who were servants in town had pleasant homes, and did not want for any of the simple comforts of life.
"Well, Auntie," said I to one of them, a weather-beaten old creature, who looked as though she had seen at least sixty years, but was as vigorous about her small housework as a girl of twenty, -- "well, Auntie, how do you get along in your freedom?"
"No reason to make complaint, sah. I has sum soin' and some washin', and 'pears like I had nuf ter do."
"But you are getting to be an old woman, and your old mistress would have given you a good home as long as you live. Would n't it have been better to stay with her?"
"Well now, honey, ye don't see only one side 'pears like. I be an ole woman as ye say, but I's mighty peart yet, and
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I don't reckon I'll want fur nothing dis yer winter; and when de wa'm season cum agin, mebbe I go back to town ter live."
"What did you leave the old place for, Auntie, any way?"
"What fur? 'Joy my freedom!"
The directness and exultation of this answer half puzzled and half disconcerted me. I knew how this old woman had lived, -- knew what a favorite she had been in the family in which she had formerly been owned, -- knew what large liberty had been always given her in everything. What is the "freedom" that war has brought this dusky race?
AS I looked up the streets of Newnan from the windows and platform of the railway car, it seemed a charming place, -- a gentle slope toward the east, three or four white stores, the corner of the court-house with its surroundings of luxuriant China trees, the hotel with its broad and high piazzas, a wealth of trees and shrubbery everywhere, on all sides handsome cottage houses embowered in greenness and rose blossoms, to the right and left numberless oaks with their crimson and golden frost-touched leaves, and then in the dim background the dreamy and uncertain outline of wooded hills with their blue beauty shimmering in the low sun of a glorious Indian summer afternoon!
Yet Newnan is just like every other Southern town, -- streets full of mud-holes and wallowing swine, fences in every stage of tumble-down ruin, sidewalks in every condition of break-neck disorder, yards full of sticks and stones and bits of every conceivable rubbish, -- everywhere a grand carnival of sloth and unthrift and untidiness and slovenliness, -- everywhere that apathy of shiftlessness so pitiful to the soul of a New-Englander!
'T is n't Nature's fault. She is infinitely more bountiful
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than under our Northern skies. Wild-flowers beautifying every grove and creek-side, and roses and half a dozen strange blossoms tempting into every garden, -- and snow on our Massachusetts hillsides! One may well say the war did not produce its full and proper fruitage if the year 1870 does not show this fair South-land redeemed from the careless mistreatment of all these long years, -- this Southern people educated to a love of order and cleanliness, and an appreciation of thrift, industry, and the royal dignity of labor!
Newnan is the county seat of Coweta County, and has a population of about twenty-seven hundred. It is on the line of railroad from Atlanta to Montgomery, -- forty miles below Atlanta, thirty miles from the western line of Georgia, and rather above the middle of the State north and south. It is the home of very many rich planters, boasts numerous handsome suburban residences, is said to have a more elegant and cultured society than any other place in the western part of the State, prides itself on its early and constant devotion to the cause of secession, and has just elected radical Secessionists and unconquered Rebels to the Legislature.
"If your party carries the day in the forthcoming elections in the North," said a Convention delegate to me at Milledgeville, three weeks ago, "I shall think it perfectly useless for us to send congressmen to Washington." These Georgians thought the President had gone over to the Democratic party, and one man assured me that he wished the success of their nominees in New York and New Jersey!
Surprised as most of them are at the result, not one man in fifty seems to have any true conception of the real significance of the late elections in the North. The merchant of Columbus who said in the public parlor of the hotel one evening so loudly that half a dozen persons heard him, "I'm in favor of having our men go to Congress and take their seats any way, whether the d -- d Yankees are willing or not," only put in strong phrase an idea I have heard half a
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dozen times in more cautious language. If there are fifty good Union men in all the towns where I have stopped within two weeks they live so quietly that neither observation nor inquiry can find them; and the great mass of the people characterize the result of the recent political campaign in the North as sectional.
Through this part of the State the moral standing of the citizen seems to be measured by his war record. The chief requirement in respect to any man is that he shall "go with the State." The supremacy of the Constitution of the United States is formally acknowledged, but the common conversation of all classes asserts the supremacy of the State. The Calhoun doctrine is pushed to its last conclusion. There is not merely a broad assertion of the rights of the States, but an open enunciation of the supremacy of the State over the general government, -- an enlarged reaffirmation of the doctrine declared in simply repealing the ordinance of secession.
A gentleman whom I met in the eastern part of the State said to me: "If there had been three bold and true leaders in the winter of 1860-61, we could have saved the State from secession, in my judgment; but Benj. Hill forsook us, and then Alex. Stephens forsook us, and we had only Josh. Hill left, and the State swung into Rebellion."
Benjamin H. Hill lives at LaGrange, some twenty miles below here. He has long been one of the leading men of the State. He acquiesced in secession, but did not go into the army, I believe. Pending the recent election, he was asked his opinion as to the duty of the people in the present emergency, particularly with reference to the expediency of electing gentlemen to Congress who cannot take the test oath. The following letter is his answer: --
"The oath is unconstitutional, because it adds to and varies from the oath required by the Constitution. This is settled by several adjudications.
The oath is unwise, unnatural, and unprecedented, because it
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is retroactive in its requirements. It does not seek to procure proper conduct in the officer while discharging the duties of his office; but does seek to exclude him from the office altogether by reason of something done or not done long before the office was conferred.
If Congress can prescribe one test it can prescribe another test; and thus, by legislation, destroy the right of representation.
I would vote for no man to represent Georgia who could take this oath, because it is the highest evidence of infidelity to the sentiments of the people of the State.
I would vote for no man, anywhere, who would take this oath, because it is the highest evidence of his infidelity to the Constitution. The man who takes that oath admits a power in Congress to destroy every department of the government as well as every right of representation.
I am a candidate for no office, and will seek none and desire none. The man who wishes now to be a representative in Congress from the South either does not comprehend the very unpleasant and very heavy duties of that position, or has made up his mind to hold the position without discharging the duties. In either case he is not fit to be trusted.
There is no danger now from any spirit of resistance in Geor gia. The only danger comes from an opposite direction, -- servility. I intend to be loyal myself, and I have not been faithless to any obligation I ever assumed, even when unwillingly assumed. I resisted secession until resistance was hopeless, and then I resisted subjugation until resistance was hopeless. I would not, if I could, change my record.
But I will help no man to represent Georgia whose fidelity to the State is doubted, or whose ability and willingness to maintain and vindicate the honor of her people, living and dead, is suspicious. I will vote for no man to administer the Constitution who, in the very beginning of his work, would take an oath which admits a power in Congress to subvert that Constitution.
Each house of Congress is sole judge as to whether persons seeking seats have the qualifications prescribed by the Constitution, and have been elected and returned according to the laws. The people are the sole judges of every other qualification. Otherwise, Congress can nullify or even destroy the right of election
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secured to the people alone, and thus make a congressional despotism.
The right of the States to representation in Congress is the clearest of all rights under the Constitution. It is the right without which no other right can exist and no obligation can be imposed. I have an abiding faith that the President will not permit its destruction by test oaths or otherwise. He was for the Union against the South; and it is my opinion that he will show himself for the Union against Massachusetts when the issue comes."
I have only to add that the italics of this remarkable letter are Mr. Hill's. I believe it expresses the feeling of four fifths of the men and of all the women of Georgia. If it is not a formal declaration of war against the nationality of the government I am unable to comprehend the force of its very plain and explicit language; and if it does not indicate an insolence and dictatorial spirit without precedent I have read history to little purpose.
Let Congress dispense with the test oath, and give us back the good old times! Let it admit all these Rebel generals and colonels and politicians, and so restore universal harmony! Let us all join hands and cover the nakedness of the land, and assure the world that it is not scarred with a million graves, and that there has been no war for lofty principles and the natural rights of man, but only a friendly contest of strength and endurance, in which the victors concede everything to the vanquished on the sole condition that the latter pronounce the former magnanimous!
Whether the North Carolina "dirt-eater," or the South Carolina "sand-hiller," or the Georgia "cracker," is lowest in the scale of human existence would be difficult to say. The ordinary plantation negro seemed to me, when I first saw him in any numbers, at the very bottom of not only probabilities, but also possibilities, so far as they affect human relations; but these specimens of the white race must
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be credited with having reached a yet lower depth of squalid and beastly wretchedness. However poor or ignorant or unclean or improvident he may be, I never yet found a negro who had not at least a vague desire for a better condition, an undefined longing for something called freedom, a shrewd instinct of self-preservation. These three ideas -- or, let me say, shadows of ideas -- do not make the creature a man, but they lift him out of the bounds of brutedom. The Georgia "cracker," as I have seen him since leaving Milledgeville, seems to me to lack not only all that the negro does, but also even the desire for a better condition and the vague longing for an enlargement of his liberties and his rights. Such filthy poverty, such foul ignorance, such idiotic imbecility, such bestial instincts, such grovelling desires, -- no trick of words can make plain the scene in and around one of these "cracker" habitations, no fertility of language can embody the simple facts for a Northern mind, and the case is one in which even seeing itself is scarcely believing. Time and effort will lead the negro up to intelligent manhood; but I almost doubt if they will be able to lead this "white trash" even up to respectability.
Ex-Governor Herschel V. Johnson closed the late Convention with a brief speech. It brought tears to the eyes of many delegates, was ordered to be spread upon the journal, and has been very generally printed in the newspapers of the State. During my journeyings since the adjournment of the Convention, I have often been referred to it as an epitome of Georgia feeling and judgment. It is scarcely less noticeable for what it contains than for what it does not contain; but I note now only a single paragraph in which he speaks of the freedmen. It is as follows: --
"We are now to enter upon the experiment whether the class of people to which we are in future to look as our laboring class can be organized into efficient and trustworthy laborers. That may be done -- or I hope it may be done -- if we are left to ourselves.
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If we cannot succeed, others need not attempt it; and I trust that in the future we will have the poor privilege of being let alone in reference to this class of our people."
I bear you sorrowful witness that there spoke the true Georgian. He is sublimely ignorant of the fact that the negro is also a child of the Republic; sublimely ignorant of the other fact, that the war has restored to him certain human rights. He only sees so many machines, the mission of which it is to do his work; and he asks you to let him alone in their management. He begs of you to give him this "poor privilege," and gravely tells you that they cannot be made to work at all if this be denied him!
I also bear you sorrowful witness that every Georgian despises the negro. As a slave he was well enough; but as a man he is only a poor, pitiful creature, from whom little or no good can be expected. Secessionists and Unionists are just alike, so far as I can see, in contempt for him, and alike in wanting him out of the way.
"I hope you will remain in the State long enough," said a very intelligent gentleman of Northern Georgia to me, nearly a month ago, -- "I hope you will remain in the State long enough to see what a miserable thing the negro is, the poor creature who brought on the war and is bound to be exterminated before it ends; for it won't end till they or we are gone." There also spoke the true Georgian, a kindly man, a sober judge, and a professed Unionist.
From the average Georgia stand-point, he is half insane who talks of educating the negro. "What, build schoolhouses for the niggers!" exclaimed a citizen to a Cincinnati gentleman with whom I sat in the public room at the Macon hotel. "Well, when we do, I'll just let you know." Some of the leading men see and say that the interests of the State will be promoted by educating the freedmen; but nine tenths of the people sneer just as the Macon man did. Yet within four blocks of that same hotel I saw the negro porter of a store
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laboring at his spelling-book in the corner, when no customers were in; and a young negro woman with her spelling-book fastened to the fence, that she might study while at work over the wash-tub. Still I'm everywhere told that the nigger can't learn, and money spent in educating him would be money thrown away!
Georgia is the richest and most enlightened of the Gulf States. It asks Northern capital, but it holds out no inducement for the development of the mental and moral capital dormant in its negroes and poor whites. For which of these classes there is the best chance in the coming years it is hard to say. There certainly can be no more wretched human beings than the "crackers." The adults of this class can have no hope for this life, and the children will grow to the estate of their parents unless the spirit of caste is broken down and common schools are built up. The universal prophecy that the negro will not work is undermining his humanity and forcing him to its partial fulfilment. The universal contempt in which he is held is driving him into hatred of his contemners and such vagabondage as leads by swift steps to the grave.
"There are two places in the State," said an acquaintance to me at Augusta, "where they'd as soon shoot a man as a dog, -- Albany and Waynesboro. I've been in Albany nine times in the course of three or four years, and have seen a big row every time I was there. Waynesboro is just as bad, only it is n't so large a place. They manage to shoot half a dozen men a year there, though, without much trouble." It was a hint to walk very circumspectly, and, remembering Albany, I am giving it due heed.
Waynesboro is n't a lovely place, by any means. In fact, I don't see why anybody should desire to live here; and a forced residence of half a year might very well make a man long to be shot. Happily, though the town is the county seat of Burke, but few persons do live here, -- five hundred, perhaps. From Greensboro to Waynesboro is about one hundred miles, but those miles space the distance from civilization to barbarism. Not to be unjust to Waynesboro, let me say that it has a hotel, and a church, and two or three stores, and a good many dram-shops, and at least a hundred residences.
The town is the present terminus of the railroad from Augusta to Savannah, and therefore every traveller must pay it at least small tribute. It is thirty miles below Augusta, and stages run from here to make connection with the Savannah end of the railroad. About sixty miles of the
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line was destroyed by Sherman's army, and that sixty miles of staging was probably the worst in the whole South. Fortunately, -- for I must make the trip to-night and to-morrow, -- fifteen miles of the gap have been filled, and there are now but forty-five miles to make in these terrible old ambulance coaches. That will take ten hours at least, beginning at eleven P. M. The ride of six or seven hours in the chill November night, over a new and wretched road, through the low and marshy piny woods, will be very pleasant -- for those who like it!
Most of the counties in this section elected original Secessionists to the Convention, and have not changed their course of action in respect to the Legislature. Some of the men sent to the Convention were such notorious Rebels that the story was started immediately on their election that they would be arrested. Of course it had no other foundation than mere rumor. Yet, if I am not wrongly informed in regard to several of those elected to the lower house, almost the last place in which they should be is in a body called to legislate so as to restore the State's relations to the Union.
I scarcely need add that there is hereabouts a strong surface hatred of the Yankees. Officers on duty tell me some very curious stories illustrative of this fact. I am assured by one whose veracity no man can question, that in an adjoining county there is a public league of young women who have vowed not to speak to a Federal soldier under any circumstances whatever. Insolent treatment of soldiers and officers on the street is so common that it excites little or no remark. One of the drivers of the stageline tells me that only three days ago a man refused to ride in his coach because an officer of the army had a seat therein. It is confidently reported that in one neighboring county young ladies have been seen within a fortnight wearing little secession flags in their hats; but I am slow to believe this
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story, though it circulates on what appears to be good authority. While my acquaintance with some of the better class of citizens furnishes no cause for the assertion that there is unusual hostility to the government or to people from the North, the every-day language of the lower classes is clear proof of the existence of what I have designated as surface hatred.
As a curious specimen of what one hears, take the following little speech made by an apparently intelligent man to a group of half a dozen persons, of whom I was one: --
"I've sent an advertisement to the paper for a job of overseeing some plantations next year. I reckon I could do that right lively. O, I tell you, I can do up some tall cussin' when I get started. Can't lick free niggers, but I don't know if there's any law ag'in cussin' 'em, and I believe it does 'em a heap o' good. It's next best to lickin'. Jest cuss one o' 'em right smart for 'bout five minutes, and he'll play off peart. Probably the Yankees don't like that style, but I ha'n't no use for a Yankee no how. I had a lot of likely negroes, but they 're all gone; had Confederate money, but that's all gone; and I 've got a heap o' Confederate bonds, but they a'n't worth a damn. I reckon God Almighty fought on the other side in this war. He used to smile on us, but He has n't given us anything but frowns lately. I don't care a damn, but I don't like to see my friends all so cut up about it. I can git along well enough. I should like to lick a hundred free negroes jest once all 'round. If I did n't bring 'em to know their places, I'd pay ten dollars apiece for all I failed on. But the Yankees give us our orders, -- we mus n't lick the freedmen, they say. Free-damn-cusses I call 'em. I reckon 't a'n't ag'in no law to swa'r at 'em, and damn me if I can't do that ar. Yes, sir, God Almighty was ag'in us, but I 'low 't won't be wrong to cuss the free niggers. Yes, sir, God Almighty was ag'in us. . . . Waal, I ha'n't no use for a Yankee, -- they 're low-down, triflin' fellows, any how, and I reckon I shall have to play a lone hand and git 'long the best I can by myself."
The State-rights doctrine flourishes here much more vigorously than in the northern part of the State. "I don't vote
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for no man as long as I live, who did n't go with the State in the revolution," said one man to me. I should scarcely exaggerate, if I said that the test of a man's moral worth is his position on this question. State allegiance is made a sine qua non, apparently, by everybody. "I ha'n't got no use for a man who went ag'in the State, though," said one who had been telling me at some length how he opposed secession. "We shall have to knuckle down a little more, I reckon," remarked one gentleman to another, in the hotel at Augusta, "but I shall be a Calhoun man as long as I live." No one argues the point, as some do in South Carolina. It seems to be the common average sentiment that only a secondary allegiance is due to the general government.
I asked one of the delegates to the late Convention what the war had settled, and his answer was, "Well, it settled that the North was the strongest, and that the negroes are free."
"But did it settle nothing in regard to State rights?" I continued.
"It se