I remained two days at Montgomery; saw General Swayne and other officers of the Bureau; visited plantations in the vicinity; and conversed with prominent men of the surrounding counties. Both there, and on my subsequent journey through the eastern part of the State, I took copious notes, which I shall here compress within as small a space as possible.
I have already sketched the class of planters one meets on steamboats and railroads. These are generally men who mix with the world, read the newspapers, and feel the current of progressive ideas. Off the main routes of travel, you meet with a different class,—men who have never emerged from their obscurity, who do not read the newspapers, and who have not yet learned that the world moves. Many of them were anti-secessionists; which fact renders them often the most troublesome people our officers now have to deal with. Claiming to be Union men, they cannot understand why their losses, whether of slaves or other property, which the war occasioned, should not be immediately made up to them by the government.
As in Mississippi and Tennessee, the small farmers in the Alabama legislature were the bitterest negro-haters in that body; while the more liberal-minded and enlightened members were too frequently controlled by a back-country constituency, whom they feared to offend by voting for measures which ignorance and obstinacy were sure to disapprove.
In Alabama, as in all the Southern States, the original secessionists were generally Democrats and the Union men Old Line Whigs. The latter opposed the revolution until it swept them away; when they often went into the war with a zeal which shamed the shirking policy of many who were very hot in bringing it on, and very cool in keeping out of it. I found them now the most hopeful men of the South. If a planter said to me, “I’m going to raise a big crop of cotton this year,—my negroes are working finely,”—I needed no other test that he belonged to this class.
Concerning the loyalty of the people I shall give the testimony of a very intelligent young man of Chambers County,—whose story will in other respects prove instructive.
“I enlisted in the Confederate Army for one year; and before my time was up I was conscripted for two years; then, before these expired, I was conscripted for two more. I was made prisoner at Forest Hill, in Virginia, and taken to Harrisburg, in Pennsylvania. At the end of the war I was paroled. I knew that my people were ruined, and all my property gone. That consisted in twelve slaves; their labor supported me before the war, but now I had nothing but my own hands to depend upon. I made up my mind to stay where I was and go to work. I hired out to a farmer for six dollars a month. I had never done a stroke of labor in my life, and it came hard to me at first. But I soon got used to it.
“One day a merchant of Harrisburg was riding by, and he asked me some questions which I answered. A few days after he came that way again, got into conversation with me, and proposed to me to go into his store. He offered me eighteen dollars a month. I said to him, ‘You are very kind, sir, but you probably do not know who I am, or you would not want me: I am a Rebel soldier, just out of prison.’ He said he believed I was an honest fellow, and would like to try me. I went into his store, and after the first month he raised my wages to thirty dollars. After the second month, he gave me forty, and after the third month he gave me fifty. I had been a wild boy before the war; I had plenty of money with no restrictions upon my spending it. But I tell you I was never so happy in my life as when I was at work for my living in that store. My employer liked me, and trusted me, and I liked the people.
“I have now come home on a visit. My relations and neighbors are very much incensed against me because I tell them plainly what I think of the Yankees. I know now that we were all in the wrong, and that the North was right, about the war; and I tell them so. I have met with the most insulting treatment on this account. They feel the bitterest animosity against the government, and denounce and abuse the Yankees, and call me a Yankee, as the worst name they can give me. To you, a Northern man, I suppose they won’t say much; but they talk among themselves and to me.”
“How large a proportion of your people express such sentiments?”
“Well, sir, there are fifteen hundred voting men in the county; and all but about a hundred and eighty feel and talk the way I tell you. They can’t be reconciled to living under the old government, and those who are able are preparing to emigrate. A fund has already been raised to send agents to select lands for them in Mexico.”