Mr. G——, one of the bitterest Yankee-haters I met, became nevertheless one of my most intimate steamboat acquaintances. I cull the following from many talks I had with him.
“I owned a cotton factory in Dallas County, above Selma. I had two plantations besides, and an interest in a tan-yard. Wilson’s Thieves came in, and just stripped me of everything. They burned eight hundred bales of cotton for me. That was because I happened to be running my mill for the Confederate government. I was making Osnaburgs for the government for a dollar a yard, when citizens would have paid me four dollars a yard; and do you imagine I’d have done that except under compulsion? But the Yankee rascals didn’t stop to consider that fact. They skipped my neighbors’ cotton and burned mine.
“In other respects they treated them as bad as they did me. They robbed our houses of everything they could find and carry away. I shouldn’t have had a thing left, if it hadn’t been for my niggers. Some of ’em run off my mules and saved ’em. I gave all my gold and silver to an old woman who kept it hid from the raiders. On one of my plantations a colored carpenter and his wife barrelled up three barrels of fine table crockery and buried it. One of the Yankee officers rode up and said to this woman, ‘Where’s your husband?’ ‘There’s my husband,’ she said, pointing to the mulatto. ‘You’re a sight whiter’n he is,’ he said,—for she is white as anybody, and he had taken her for the lady of the house. An old negro saved the tannery by pleading with the vandals, and lying to ’em a little bit.
“Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in gold wouldn’t cover my losses. I never can feel towards this government like I once did. I got started to leave the country; I swore I wouldn’t live under a government that had treated me in this way. I made up my mind to go to Brazil. I got as far as Mobile, and changed my mind. Now I’ve concluded to remain here, like any alien. I’m a foreigner. I scorn to be called a citizen of the United States. I shall take no oath, so help me God! Unless,” he added immediately, “it is to enable me to vote. I want to vote to give the suffrage to the negro.”
As I expressed my surprise at this extraordinary wish, he went on: “Because I think that will finish the job. I think then we’ll have enough of the nigger, North and South, and all will combine to put him out of the country.”
“It seems to me,” I said, “you are a little ungrateful after all you say your negroes have done for you.”
“There are a few faithful ones among them,” he replied. “If all were like some of mine I wouldn’t say anything. They’re as intelligent and well behaved as anybody. But I can’t stand free niggers, any how!”
“I notice,” said I, “that every man who curses the black race, and prays for its removal or extermination, makes exceptions in favor of negroes he has raised or owned, until I am beginning to think these exceptions compose a majority of the colored population.”
G—— made no reply to the remark, but resumed,—
“I want this country filled up with white men. I want the large plantations cut up, and manufactories established. We never had any manufactories for this reason: Southern capitalists all jammed their money into niggers and land. As their capital increased, it was a few more niggers, a little more land. The few factories we had were consequently one-horse concerns, that couldn’t compete with those at the North. They were patronized by men who wanted to buy on credit. If a man had cash, he went to the North to buy goods; if he was short, he bought here. Consequently, to carry on a business of a hundred thousand dollars, a capital of three hundred thousand dollars was necessary. Two thirds of it was sunk; below the water, like the guards of this boat.