The Confederacy was full of places where the almost limitless forest afforded timber without end, and the labor of the prisoners themselves under the same guards that garrisoned the prison would have comfortably housed and warmed them, and then the scant and wretched rations would not so soon have been the cause of emaciation and disease. The risk of escape would not have been great, and I doubt if as many would have got away as in fact managed to do so in the actual circumstances. The almost certainty of sickness and death nerved many a man to incredible exertions to be free, who would have waited more patiently for an exchange if his condition had been less intolerable or less sure of a fatal result. But even if there had been some more escapes, it would be no argument in favor of the horrible system which was adopted. There is no resemblance between the situation of prisoners in a pen, and that of soldiers in bivouac. The latter build shelters of rails or of brushwood, if they have no shelter-tents, and they are very rarely stinted in firewood. Their active life helps to preserve their vigor. To liken these to men without shelter of any kind and without fire enough to cook by, herded inside a ring-fence in winter weather, is an abuse of words. Enough of the shocking subject!
As soon as headquarters baggage could be brought up I established my own camp in the northern edge of Greensborough, in a grove which was part of the grounds attached to the mansion of Mr. Dick, since that time judge of the United States District Court. The first impression of the people was that all government was now in the hands of the army, and we had no little difficulty in correcting it. The policy of the government was to recognize the ordinary courts and local magistrates, and to support their authority in preserving the peace, punishing crimes, and determining ordinary civil rights. The political organization of the State was left subject to such changes or conditions of reconstruction as might be prescribed by national statute. The army, however, was the present palpable fact. The muskets and the cannon were physical engines of power that everybody could see, and everybody knew that the commandants of department and district could use them if need be. There was, therefore, a national tendency, both in civil magistrates and in the people, to refer all sorts of questions to the military authorities. I tried in good faith to make it understood within my own district that we were averse to meddling with local affairs, and wished the ordinary current of civil administration to run on in its accustomed channels till it should be replaced by that which should have the new authority of a reconstructed state under Acts of Congress. I not only promulgated this through the military channels, but I accepted several invitations to address the people at different points and explain our attitude and purpose during the interregnum, and to give them serious advice as to their conduct in the very trying circumstances in which they were. It need hardly be said that the gist of this advice was to recognize the absolute death of the system of slavery, to deal with the freedmen with perfect sincerity as free laborers who were at liberty to make the best bargain they could for their labor, and to confine for the present their political activity to the duty of keeping alive such local magistracies as would prevent the community from falling into anarchy. There was a wistful solicitude noticeable in people of all classes to know what was to become of them. Their leaders had educated them to believe that the success of the National arms would mean the loss of every liberty and subjection to every form of hateful tyranny. Yet they almost universally showed a spirit of complete resignation to what might come, and a wish to conform obediently to everything enjoined by the officers of the occupying army. It was the rarest thing in the world to meet with anything like sullen resistance or hostile or unfriendly utterances. [Footnote: The same disposition in the people was noticed elsewhere in the South. Halleck said, in a dispatch of April 22d, "From all I can learn, Richmond is to-day more loyal than Washington or Baltimore." (Official Records, vol. xlvi. pt. iii. p. 888.) Sherman sent similar reports from Savannah. (Id., vol. xlvii. pt. iii. p. 371.)] My own stay in North Carolina did not extend into the period of the provisional governments authorized by Acts of Congress, and I was not personally witness to the varying phases of sentiment among the people at that time.
The political character of North Carolina during the war had been different from that of the Gulf States. We found very few indeed who were known as "original Secessionists." The "old Whigs" had given the tone to public sentiment, and the community as a whole had sincerely desired that the Union might be preserved. Yet a society based upon slavery had such community of interest with the States further south that it was soon dragged into the secession vortex. When once war had begun, the growth of hostility against what was regarded as their public enemy was rapid, and in every State a war party in time of war has a great advantage over the opposition. The charge of "giving aid and comfort to the enemy" is too powerful a weapon against the minority, and the outward appearance was soon that of almost complete unanimity in the desperate struggle to make secession a success. Party leaders were borne along upon the current, and vied with each other in extravagant professions of devotion to the Confederacy.
In such circumstances the men who were at heart opposed to the war thought they were doing all that was wise or prudent in making what they called a constitutional opposition to the Davis government, professing to acquiesce in the Confederate organization, but urging the negotiation of peace on the best attainable terms. In the fever of actual conflict the following of such men was small, although it seemed plain to me that a majority of the people of the State sympathized with them at heart.
The outspoken Union men were, almost as a matter of course, treated as traitors, and lived under a reign of terror. In the mountains, where their numbers were considerable, they were the victims of a relentless guerilla warfare, as the same class was upon the other slope of the Great Smokies in East Tennessee.
Out of these classes came the elements of new struggles for political power. The minority naturally felt that their time had now come, and were not altogether patient with the principles of our democratic Constitution, which require that a majority shall not be disfranchised, and which therefore make it practically impossible that a minority shall rule. At the time I am speaking of, these elements were quiet in the first stunning effect of the collapse of the Confederacy; but we could see the tendencies to antagonisms that were to agitate the State during the next decade.
The negroes were, of course, of none of these parties. Very few of the whites were in favor of emancipation on principle, though all accepted it as the inevitable result of the war. Tacitly or avowedly, they all admitted that the fate of the "system" had been the real issue at stake, and that the surrender meant universal freedom. But the colored people were ignorant, and had cherished strange illusions as to the change which was to come to them. It was a common belief among them that the whites were to be stripped of all property, and the land to be given to them. We had heard curious discussions among them around the camp-fires, in which they had apportioned the real and personal property among themselves. The faith that they were each to have "forty acres and a mule" was of a little later growth. The first noticeable thing among them after the surrender was the almost universal disposition to quit work. It would have been very natural that they should wish for a great holiday, and try to realize their freedom by extending it at their own will, and thus prove to themselves that no man was their master. But in addition to this, they seemed to fear that any continuance of the relation of laborers for their former masters would cover some waiver of their right to freedom. Yet, as they had hopes that the real estate would be given to them by the National government, they were disinclined to leave the old home. The outcome was that for a time they occupied their old quarters and asserted a kind of proprietorship in them, whilst they "struck" from labor.
When it is remembered that the kitchen of Southern houses is a detached building of which the servants have exclusive occupation, it will easily be understood that the situation was anything but comfortable for housekeepers. Oftentimes they could neither hire cooks nor get access to the open kitchen fire and the rude utensils which the colored people appropriated as their own. According to my observation, the Southern white women were very systematic and thorough in the supervision of household work, but were necessarily ignorant of the actual manipulation. They knew what flour and other ingredients to weigh out for a batch of bread, but they had never done the baking. Some of them tried their first experiments over the open fire with "Dutch ovens" and other primitive implements, whilst a group of colored women sat around commenting drolly but most exasperatingly upon the results. As a temporary compromise, we were obliged to "clear the kitchen" by military authority, making it known that that was part of the "house," and that if the mistresses of the mansion had to do their own work, it was not necessary that it should be done before such an "audience." Such a social crisis is always short, but it is very severe. No doubt those who have gone through it look back upon it as one does upon the day after a fire, when the wretchedness of dirt and destruction seems hopeless, but, like other mundane things, soon passes away and is spoken of as all "part of a lifetime."
A delicate and amiable lady, whose fortune at her marriage had been of that ample sort which was measured in Southern parlance as "a hundred negroes," herself told me, with a mixture of tearful pathos and recognition of the comic side of it, of her own first efforts to make a batch of soda biscuit for her husband and children after she got possession of her kitchen. She knew all about the rule, but in new practice the rule didn't work. The ingredients got wrongly mixed; the fire was too hot or not hot enough; some biscuits were burnt to a crisp, some were not cooked, and none were eatable, and her heart was ready to break at the prospect of her family's condition till something could be done to remedy the trouble. In more than one household our officers' messes helped tide over the painful interval by giving camp hospitality and friendly assistance to their new neighbors. We frequently heard housekeepers say that if they only had the snug ranges of Northern kitchens within the house they would have made light of the labor; but their outdoor kitchens and primitive methods, which produced appetizing results in the hands of colored cooks who had been brought up to them, were killing upon those who had been delicately reared.
We saw more of the domestic form of this social anarchy than of farm labor, for the outdoor work could wait, whereas the indoor work could not. The same difficulty was everywhere, however, and the intelligence of the community soon hit upon temporary expedients. Such men as Mr. Gilmer and Judge Dick took the lead in advising the colored people to avoid their apprehended risk of compromising their freedom, by hiring out temporarily to work for others than their old masters. By thus changing about, the consciousness of working under a voluntary contract was stronger, and the uneducated brain was less puzzled to tell whether any change of situation had really come. We did our best to dispel the notion that wealth and idleness were to follow emancipation, and to encourage the freedmen to resume industrious labor as the foundation of real freedom and independence. [Footnote: See General Schofield's Order No. 46; Official Records, vol. xlvii. pt. iii. p. 503.] The peaceful character of the colored people was shown even in what they supposed was a great revolution in their favor. There was no rioting or angry disturbance,--no effort to accomplish anything by force. They abandoned for the time their usual employments, and congregated in their quarters or in groups about the streets, waiting for some great thing to happen. There was, of course, plenty of talk and some excitement, but even this gradually diminished; and as they began to realize that without work there would be no food, they made such bargains as suited them, and the affairs of the plantation and of the house began to move on. The owners of property did not hope for profits; they expressed themselves earnestly as anxious only that such crops might be raised as would save the community, white and black alike, from absolute destitution. I know of prominent examples of well-known men offering the farm hands all that they could raise for that season if they would only go to work and plant something which could still ripen into food. The season was advancing, and a little delay was very dangerous. The last chance for a crop in that year would soon be gone. The influence and advice of sagacious and prudent men was never more useful, for society seemed to be resolved into its original elements when all authority but the military went for nothing. As soldiers, we refrained from meddling in civil affairs, but it was understood that we should preserve the peace and allow no force to be used by others. It was a time when everybody felt the need of being patient and conciliatory, and the natural authority of known character and wisdom asserted itself. Everybody soon went to work to make a living, and the burning problems of political and social importance were postponed.