"Where do you get your leather?"
"Well, sir" (with a searching look, as if a little suspicious of being quizzed), "it also comes from the North, at present; but we shall soon have tanneries established. The South, especially Texas, produces the finest hides in the country; but they are nearly all sent north, to be tanned and curried, and then brought back in the form of leather."
Thanking the superintendent for his courtesy, and wishing him a very good evening, I strolled homeward, reflecting upon the Southern Shoe Factory. It was admirably calculated to appeal to local patriotism, and demonstrate the feasibility of southern manufacturing. Its northern machinery, run by northern workmen, under a northern superintendent, turned out brogans of northern leather, fastened with northern pegs, and packed in cases of northern pine, at an advance of only about one hundred per cent. upon northern prices!
New Orleans afforded to the stranger few illustrations of the "Peculiar Institution." Along the streets, you saw the sign, "Slave Dépôt—Negroes bought and sold," upon buildings which were filled with blacks of every age and of both sexes, waiting for purchasers. The newspapers, although recognizing slavery in general as the distinguishing cause which made southern gentlemen gallant and "high-toned," and southern ladies fair and accomplished, were yet reticent of details. They would sometimes record briefly the killing of a master by his negroes; the arrest of A., charged with being an Abolitionist; of B., for harboring or tampering with slaves; of C.—f. m. c. (free man of color)—for violating one of the many laws that hedged him in; and, very rarely, of D., for cruelty to his slaves. But their advertising columns were filled with announcements of slave auctions, and long descriptions of the negroes to be sold. Said The Crescent:
Studying Southern Society.
"We have for a long time thought that no man ought to be allowed to write for the northern Press, unless he has passed at least two years of his existence in the Slave States of the South, doing nothing but studying southern institutions, southern society, and the character and sentiments of the southern people."
There was much truth in this, though not in the sense intended by the writer. Strangers spending but a short time in the South were liable to very erroneous views. They saw only the exterior of a system, which looked pleasant and patriarchal. They had no opportunity of learning that, within, it was full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Northern men were so often deceived as to make one skeptical of the traditional acuteness of the Yankee. The genial and hospitable southerners would draw the long bow fearfully. A Memphis gentleman assured a northern friend of mine that, on Sundays, it was impossible for a white man to hire a carriage in that city, as the negroes monopolized them all for pleasure excursions!
One of my New Orleans companions, who was frank and candid upon other subjects, used to tell me the most egregious stories respecting the slaves. As, for instance, that their marriage-vows were almost universally held sacred by the masters; the virtue of negro women respected, and families rarely separated. I preserved my gravity, never disputing him; but he must have known that a visit to any of the half-dozen slave auctions, within three minutes' walk of his office, would disprove all these statements.
Reporting a Slave Auction.