“The Southern people are the niggers’ best friends,” resumed the first speaker. “They feel a great deal of sympathy for them. There are many who give them a heap of good advice when they leave them.”
Good advice is cheap; but nobody gave these homeless ones anything else, nor even that,—with a single exception: there was one who gave them kind words and money, but he was a Yankee.
The remarks of the ladies in the car were equally edifying.
“How much better they were off with somebody to take care of ’em!”
“Oh dear, yes! I declare it makes me hate an Abolitionist!”
“The government ought to have given them houses!”—(sneeringly.) “If I had seven children to take care of, I’d go back and sell ’em to my old master.”
“Do see that little bit of a baby! it’s a-kicking and screaming! I declare, it’s white! one of the young Federals’, I reckon.”
From Atlanta, until within about twenty-five miles of Macon, the railroad runs upon a ridge, from which the waters of the country flow each way,—those of the west side, through the Flint River and the Appalachicola to the Gulf; those of the east, through the Ocmulgee and Altamaha to the Atlantic. The soil of this ridge is sandy, with a mixture of red clay; much of it producing little besides oaks and pines. The doorways of the log-huts and shabby framed houses we passed, were crowded with black, yellow, and sallow-white faces,—women, children, and slatternly, barefoot girls, with long, uncombed hair on their shoulders,—staring at the train. The country is better, a little back from the railroad, as is frequently the case in the South.
Macon, at the head of steamboat navigation on the Ocmulgee River, and the most important interior town in the State, is a place of broad, pleasant streets, with a sandy soil which exempts it from mud. It had in 1860 eight thousand inhabitants. As it was a sort of city of refuge, “where everybody was run to,” during the latter years of the war, its population had greatly increased. Hundreds of white refugees from other parts of the country were still crowded into it, having no means of returning to their homes, or having no homes to return to. The corporation of Macon showed little disposition to relieve these unfortunate people, and the destitution and suffering among them were very great. They were kept from starvation by the government. “To get rid of feeding them,” said Colonel Lambert, Sub-Assistant-Commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau, “we are now giving them free transportation wherever they wish to go.”
By a recent census, taken with a view to catching vagrants and setting them to work, the colored population of Macon was shown to be four thousand two hundred and seventy-three. “All those who are not now employed will soon be taken by the planters. If any will not hire out, they will be set to earning their living on the public streets. I have now on hand applications from Alabama and Mississippi planters for three hundred laborers; I could fill the orders if I chose to, for the negroes are much disposed to emigrate. But all the freedmen in the counties of my district are needed here, and I encourage them to remain.”