The prospect was favorable for a good cotton crop in Georgia, although anxiety was felt with regard to the vitality of the seed, much of which, being several years old, had no doubt been injured by keeping.
[18]. Since my return from the South, I have received a letter from a gentleman of character, late an officer in the Federal army, from which I make the following extract bearing on this subject:—
“After leaving you at Grand Gulf, I rode twenty or thirty miles into the interior, but could find little inducement for a Northern man to settle in that portion of the South. The further you go from main routes, the more hostile you find the inhabitants. I finally determined to locate on or near the Mississippi, and recent experience only confirms my earlier impressions. I am now located on the river, one hundred and sixty miles below Memphis, on the Arkansas side, and am making preparations to plant one thousand acres of cotton. It has been very difficult to secure help here, and I determined to make a trip to Georgia for the purpose of obtaining the requisite number of hands. I succeeded tolerably well, and could have hired many more than I needed, had not the people induced the negroes to believe that we were taking them to Cuba to sell them. I award the palm to the Georgians, as the meanest and most despicable class of people it was ever my misfortune to meet. While they are constantly urging that the negro will not work, they use every means to dissuade him from securing honorable and profitable employment. I was never so grossly insulted as when in Georgia. They fear the powerful arm of the government, but are to-day as bitter Rebels as at any time during the war. The consequences would be most disastrous if the military force scattered through the South should be at once removed.”
CHAPTER LXIX.
SHERMAN IN EASTERN GEORGIA.
The track of the Central Railroad, one hundred and ninety-one miles in length, was destroyed with conscientious thoroughness by Sherman’s army. From Gordon, twenty miles below Macon, to Scarborough Station, nine miles below Millen, a distance of one hundred miles, there was still an impassable hiatus of bent rails and burnt bridges, at the time of my journey; and in order to reach Savannah from Macon, it was necessary to proceed by the Georgia road to Augusta, either returning by railroad to Atlanta, or crossing over by railroad and stage to Madison, between which places the Georgia road, destroyed for a distance of sixty-seven miles, had been restored. From Augusta I went down on the Augusta and Savannah road to a station a few miles below Waynesboro’, where a break in that road rendered it necessary to proceed by stages to Scarborough. From Scarborough to Savannah the road was once more in operation.
The relaid tracks were very rough; many of the old rails having been straightened and put down again. “General Grant and his staff passed over this road a short time ago,” said a citizen; “and as they went jolting along in an old box-car, on plain board seats, they seemed to think it was great fun: they said they were riding on Sherman’s hair-pins,”—an apt name applied to the most frequent form in which the rails were bent.
“Sherman’s men had all sorts of machinery for destroying the track. They could rip it up as fast as they could count. They burnt the ties and fences to heat the iron; then two men would take a bar and twist it or wrap it around a tree or a telegraph post. Our people found some of their iron-benders, and they helped mightily about straightening the rails again. Only the best could be used. The rest the devil can’t straighten.”
Riding along by the destroyed tracks, it was amusing to see the curious shapes in which the iron had been left. Hair-pins predominated. Corkscrews were also abundant. Sometimes we found four or five rails wound around the trunk of a tree, which would have to be cut before they could be got off again. And there was an endless variety of most ungeometrical twists and curves.
The Central Railroad was probably the best in the State. Before the war its stock paid annual dividends of fifteen per cent.,—one year as high as twenty seven and a half per cent. It owned property to the amount of a million and a half dollars, mostly invested in Europe. This will be nearly or quite sunk in repairing the damage done by Sherman. Then the road will have all of its bent iron,—for Sherman could not carry it away or burn it;—and this was estimated to be worth two thirds as much as new iron. The track, composed partly of the T and partly of the U rail, was well laid; and the station-houses were substantially built of brick. I was told that the great depot building at Millen, although of wood, was equal in size and beauty to the best structures of the kind in the North. Sherman did not leave a building on the road, from Macon to Savannah. For warehouses, I found box-cars stationed on the side tracks.