The town had neither the means nor the material to rebuild: “We made no bricks during the war.” I found the scene of the disaster a vast field of ruins. Where had stood the warehouse in which the ammunition was stored, there was a pit twenty feet deep, half filled with water, and surrounded by fragments of iron and bricks, and unexploded shells. A large brick block, containing a cotton-press, which stood between the magazine and the river, had entirely disappeared. “The bricks were all blown into the water, and we never saw them any more.”
Business was brisk. “There are more goods on Dauphin Street to-day,” an old merchant told me, “than I have ever before seen in the whole of Mobile.” And the captain of the Mobile steamer, who took me up the Alabama to Selma, said: “There was never such a trade on this river before. Nobody ever expected such a freight on this boat: her guards are all under water.” Her upward-bound lading consisted mostly of supplies for plantations and provincial stores,—barrels of Western flour and whiskey that had come down the Mississippi, and boxes of fine liquors, soap, starch, and case goods, from the North Atlantic ports. Her downward freight was chiefly cotton.
CHAPTER LX.
ALABAMA PLANTERS.
The Alabama River steamers resemble those of the Mississippi, although inferior in size and style. But one meets a very different class of passengers on board of them. The Alabamians are a plain, rough set of men, not so fast as the Mississippi-Valley planters, but more sober, more solid, more loyal. They like their glass of grog, however, and some of them are very sincere in their hatred of the government. I found the most contradictory characters among them, which I cannot better illustrate than by giving some specimens of their conversation.
Here is one of the despairing class. “The country is ruined; not only the Southern country, but the Northern country too. The prosperity of our people passed away with the institution of slavery. I shall never try to make another fortune. I made one, and lost it in a minute. I had a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in niggers. I am now sixty years old. I’ll bet a suit of clothes against a dime, there’ll be no cotton crop raised this year. If there’s a crop grown, the hands that raise it won’t pick it. Some few niggers go on, and do well, just as before; but they’re mighty scarce. They never will be as well off again as they have been, and some of ’em see it. A nigger drayman came to me the other day and asked me to buy him. He said, ‘I want a master. When I had a master, I had nothing to do but to eat and drink and sleep, besides my work. Now I have to work and think too.’ When I said the law wouldn’t allow me to buy him, he looked very much discouraged.”
I heard of a few such cases as this drayman’s, but they were far less common than one would have expected. Poor fellow, he did not know that if he was ever to be anything but an animal, a beast of burden, it was necessary for him to begin to think.
Mr. J——, of Marengo County, also an old man, talked in a different spirit.
“The trouble with the freedmen is, they have not yet learned that living is expensive. They never before had any idea where their clothes came from, except that ‘Master gave ’em to me.’ In my county, I find them generally better disposed than the whites. I don’t know of a case where they have been treated kindly and justly, and have deserted their masters. A few restless ones are exceptions. I noticed one of my boys that I had asked to make a contract for the coming year, packing up his things; and I said to him, ‘Warren, what are you doing?’ He replied, ‘Master, they say if we make contracts now, we’ll be branded, and made slaves again.’ I had always treated him well. I don’t remember that I ever struck him, but he says I did strike him once, and he’s a truthful boy. Another old man that I was raised with, said, ‘Master, all the contract I want with you is that you shall bury me, or I’ll bury you.’ He said he would go on and work for me like he always had; and he’ll do it, for he’s an honest man.”
Mr. J—— related the case of one of his neighbors who contracted with his freedmen to furnish their supplies and give them one fifth of the crop. He gave them provisions for a year at the start; and deducted a dollar a day for lost time. “He raised the largest crop of corn he ever did; but when he came to harvest it, he owed them nothing, though he had kept his contract. He was honest, but he had managed badly. I give my hands a share of the crop,” added Mr. J——. “But I do not give them provisions any faster than they need them, for if I did they would call in their friends, make a great feast, and eat up everything,—they are so generous and improvident. I deduct a dollar a day for lost time, but instead of putting it into my own pocket, I give the lazy man’s dollar to those who do the lazy man’s work. I find that encourages them, and the consequence is, there are few lost days.”
This genial old gentleman, whom I found to be well known and highly esteemed throughout the country, justified the North in its course during the war, and expressed confidence in the future of the South under the free-labor system.