At daylight we were running through the level lower counties of West Tennessee. This is by far the most fertile division of the State. Its soil is a rich black mould, adapted to the culture of cotton, tobacco, and grains, which are produced in great abundance.
Occasionally in the dim dawn, and later in the forenoon, we passed out-door fires about which homeless negroes had passed the night, and around which they still sat or stood, in wretched plight, but picturesque and cheerful,—old men and women, young children, and tall girls in tattered frocks, warming their hands, and watching with vacant curiosity the train as it shot by.
“That’s freedom! that’s what the Yankees have done for ’em!” was the frequent exclamation that fell from the lips of Southern ladies and gentlemen looking out on these miserable groups from the car windows.
“They’ll all be dead before spring.”
“Niggers can’t take care of themselves.”
“The Southern people were always their best friends. How I pity them! don’t you?”
“Oh, yes, of course I pity them! How much better off they were when they were slaves!”
With scarcely one exception there was to be detected in these expressions a grim exultation. The slave-owners, having foretold that freedom would prove fatal to the bondman, experienced a satisfaction in seeing their predictions come true. The usual words of sympathy his condition suggested had all the hardness and hollowness of cant. Those who really felt commiseration for his sufferings spoke of them in very different tones of voice.
But there was another side to the picture. At every stopping-place, throngs of well-dressed blacks crowded upon the train. They were going to Memphis to “buy Christmas,”—as the purchase of gifts for that gay season is termed. Happier faces I have never seen. There was not a drunken or disorderly person among them,—which would have been a remarkable circumstance had the occasion been St. Patrick’s day, or the Fourth of July, and had these been Irish or white American laborers. They were all comfortably clad,—many of them elegantly,—in clothes they had purchased with money earned out of bondage. They paid with pride the full fares exacted of free people, instead of the half fares formerly demanded for slaves. They had still left in their purses ample means to “buy Christmas” for their friends and relatives left at home. They occupied cars by themselves which they filled with the noise of cheerful conversation and laughter. And nobody said of them, “That is freedom! That is what the Yankees have done for them!”
Past cotton-fields and handsome mansions in the pleasant suburbs, we ran into Memphis,—a city which surprised me by its beautiful situation and commercial activity.