[829] I have seen a coarse article reflecting on the character of southern women originally published in the Tribune and copied in a small Alabama paper each issue for several weeks. It asserted in thinly veiled terms that many of the young southern women were too intimate with negro men; the solution of the race question by amalgamation was asserted as sure to come; details of such a solution were suggested, and examples of what was taking place were cited.
[830] General Terry attempted to explain the condition of affairs by saying that the results of the war were but the legitimate consequence of a conflict between an inferior and a superior race. “Land We Love,” Vol. IV, p. 243. Gen. T. Kilby Smith, in September, 1865, complained that Federal officers were not received in society in Mobile. General Wood, he said, had been six weeks in Mobile, “ignored socially and damned politically”; and this, he said, in a community which before the war was considered one of the most refined and hospitable of all the southern maritime cities, the favorite home of army and naval officers. Doc. No. 9, accompanying the report of Schurz.
[831] In addition to references cited above, see also Huntsville Advocate, March 9 and 23, July 26, 1865; Ho. Mis. Doc., No. 42, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.; Sen. Mis. Doc., No. 43, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. (Truman); Reid, “After the War,” pp. 211, 212, 218, 219; “The Land We Love,” passim; “Our Women in the War,” p. 279 et passim; Abbott, “The Rights of Man,” pp. 224-226; Clayton, “White and Black,” pp. 150-152; Clay, “A Belle of the Fifties”; Straker, “The New South Investigated,” pp. 24, 57; Report of the Joint Committee, 1866, Pt. III; N. Y. Daily News, April 16, 1864, and Dec. 4, 1865; Reports of Schurz, Truman, and Grant; Reports of the Freedmen’s Bureau; Southern Magazine, 1874 (DeLeon); N. Y. Times, Oct. 31, 1865; N. Y. Herald, July 23, 1865; Miller, “Alabama,” pp. 233-251; Columbus (Ga.) Sun, March 22 and April 19, 1865; The Nation, Feb. 15, 1866; Ku Klux Rept., Ala. Test., passim; Reconstruction articles in Atlantic Monthly, 1901.
[832] Trowbridge, “The South,” p. 448.
[833] Thomas W. Conway, of the Freedmen’s Bureau, who passed through the state in 1866, stated that there were men in Alabama who, rather than sell their lands to northern men or borrow money in the North, would see their plantations lie waste, and before they would hire their former slaves as free laborers they would starve. The spirit of hatred toward northern men was universal, he said. Report to Chamber of Commerce, New York, June 7, 1866.
[834] Jan. 17, 1867, the state legislature declared that the reports published in the northern papers that it was unsafe for northern men to reside in Alabama were false. The lower house declared that “we, in the name of the people of Alabama, most cordially invite skilled labor and capital from the world, and particularly from all parts of the United States, and pledge the hearty coöperation and support of the state.” Annual Cyclopædia (1867), p. 15. For several years every inducement was offered by the planters to encourage immigration to the Black Belt. As late as 1869 immigration conventions were held. Annual Cyclopædia (1869), p. 10. During 1865 the north Alabama “unionists” hoped to see northern white men come in and take the place of the negroes. The Nation, Aug. 17, 1865.
[835] Report of Truman, Sen. Ex. Doc., No. 43, 39th Cong., 1st Sess.; Reid “After the War,” passim; Trowbridge, “The South,” p. 448; N. Y. Times, Nov. 10, 1865, July 2 and Oct. 31, 1866; General Swayne’s testimony, Report Joint Committee, Pt. III, p. 141; General Tarbell’s testimony, Report Joint Committee, Pt. III, pp. 155, 156.
[836] Report Joint Committee, 1866, Pt. III, pp. 139-141.
[837] In addition to the above references, see The World, Nov. 13, 1865; N. Y. Times, July 2 and Sept. 9, 1866; N. Y. Herald, July 23 and Aug. 28, 1865 (Swayne); Truman’s Report, April 9, 1866; Swayne’s Report, Jan., 1866; Harper’s Monthly Magazine, Jan., 1874.
[838] Pastoral Letters, May 30 and June 20, 1865.