“What will Sumner & Co. say now?” cried one.
“The only way is to kill the niggers off, and drive ’em out of the country,” said another.
I was struck by the perfect unanimity with which the company indorsed this last sentiment. All the outrages committed by whites upon blacks were of no account; but at the mere rumor of a negro insurrection, what murderous passions were roused!
Of the comparative good behavior of whites and blacks in a large town, the police reports afford a pretty good indication. Vicksburg, which had less than five thousand inhabitants in 1860, had in 1865 fifteen thousand. Of these, eight thousand were blacks. On Christmas-day, out of nineteen persons brought before the police court for various offences, fourteen were white and five colored. The day after there were ten cases reported,—nine white persons and one negro. The usual proportion of white criminals was more than two thirds.
An unrelenting spirit of persecution, shown towards Union men in Mississippi, was fostered by the reconstructed civil courts. Union scouts were prosecuted for arson and stealing. A horse which had been taken by the government, and afterwards condemned and sold, was claimed by the original owner, and recovered,—the quartermaster’s bill of sale, produced in court by the purchaser, being pronounced null and void. The government had leased to McAlister, a Northern man, an abandoned plantation, with the privilege of cutting wood upon it, for which he paid forty cents a cord: the Rebel owner returns with his pardon, and sues the lessee for alleged damages done to his property by the removal of wood, to the amount of five thousand dollars; a writ of attachment issues under the seal of the local court, and the defendant is compelled to give bonds to the amount of ten thousand dollars, or lie in jail. Such cases were occurring every day.
The beautiful effect of executive mercy upon rampant Rebels was well illustrated in Mississippi. A single example will suffice. The Reverend Dr. ——, an eloquent advocate of the Confederate cause,—who, as late as March 23d, 1865, delivered a speech before the State Legislature, urging the South to fight to the last extremity,—under strong pretences of loyalty, obtained last summer a full pardon, and an order for the restoration of his property. The —— House, in Vicksburg, belonging to this reverend gentleman, was at that time used as a hospital for colored persons by the Freedmen’s Bureau. Returning, with the President’s authority, he turned out the sick inmates with such haste as to cause the deaths of several; and on the following Sunday preached a vehement sermon on reconstruction, in which he avowed himself a better friend to the blacks than Northern men, and declared that it was “the duty of the government to treat the South with magnanimity, because it was not proper for a living ass to kick a dead lion.”
There was great opposition to the freedmen’s schools. Dr. Warren, the superintendent for the State, told me that “if the Bureau was withdrawn not a school would be publicly allowed.” There were combinations formed to prevent the leasing of rooms for schools; and those who would have been willing to let buildings for this purpose were deterred from doing so by threats of vengeance from their neighbors. In Vicksburg, school-houses had been erected on confiscated land, which had lately been restored to the Rebel owners, and from which they were ordered, with other government buildings, to be removed.
In the month of November there were 4750 pupils in the freedmen’s schools,—the average attendance being about 3000. Of these, 2650 were advanced beyond the alphabet and primer; 1200 were learning arithmetic, and 1000 writing.
The schools were mainly supported by the Indiana Yearly Meeting of Friends, the Ohio Yearly Meeting, the American Freedmen’s Aid Commission, (composed of various denominations,) and the American Missionary Association, (Congregational.) Elkanah Beard, of the Indiana Yearly Meeting, was the first to organize a colony of colored refugees in Mississippi, and through him his society have furnished to the freedmen practical relief, in the shape of food, clothing, and shelter, to a very great amount. The United Presbyterian Body had fifteen teachers at Vicksburg and Davis’s Bend. The Old School Presbyterian Church had a missionary at Oxford, introducing schools upon plantations, and the Moravian Church had a pioneer at Holly Springs.