[43]. Judge Kelley, of Philadelphia.
CHAPTER XXXII.
Richmond, after Six Months of Yankee Rule.
In my first visit to the Southern States, beginning in the spring of 1865, and ending in mid-summer, there were peculiar circumstances to be taken into account, in drawing conclusions as to any of the questions which the loyal portion of the nation was asking about the South. Our party was constantly surrounded by men desirous of impressing their own views. Southern politicians were endeavoring to convince the Chief-Justice of the returning loyalty of their people. Naturally, they suppressed unfavorable facts and expressions. Intelligent negroes were arguing the fitness of their people for suffrage. Naturally, they did what they could to hold the unfit ones away. Whoever approached the Chief-Justice or his party, was likely to have some special motive for doing so, either of courtesy or of interest. Naturally, whatever did not comport with that motive was glossed over, or kept out of sight.
The trip had thus shown us the leaders at their best. I now wanted to see the people, at home and out of company dress. The Secretary of the Treasury, and other members of the Cabinet, had been kind enough to furnish me with letters to the Provisional Governors who had been appointed for all the Southern States; but it was rather the governed than the governors who might be expected to reveal the actual feeling and condition of the community. Acting on what a large mass of his supporters thought a mistaken policy, the President had inaugurated a system of reconstruction. State governments had been set in motion; legislators and congressmen were being elected. It was an opportune time, before Congress met and the ardent Southern sentiment was chilled by the fresh breezes from the North, for a run among the reconstructed, avoiding officials, whether Northern Generals, or Southern Governors, candidates, or Freedmen’s Bureau Agents; moving quietly among the people, and seeing in what temper they were carrying on the work to which Mr. Johnson had summoned them.
When I had been last in Richmond—a day or two after the surrender—it was thought to be something of a feat to make the trip in a couple of days. In November, so rapidly had the broken ways been mended and the crooked paths made straight, it was accomplished in a night. The traveler southward left Washington at nine in the evening, and was aroused up next morning at five in Richmond.
The trip naturally inspires an appetite; but among the morning papers I found the following further appetizer from the Richmond Examiner, of Rebel memory:
“A special dispatch to the Baltimore Sun avers that ‘it is now pretty clear that the President has at heart the admission of Southern Congressmen, and will make it a measure of his Administration. Those opposing it will be regarded as hostile to the most material points of his policy.’ It would appear from this that the President does not agree with the learned librarian of the House,[[44]] nor with the clerk of the House, who, it is said, will not enter the names of Southern Congressmen until after the organization, and their admission is specially granted by the exclusive members who are to participate. The President, if this be true, will have done a good part in shifting the burden of the difficulty from the shoulders of the Southern members to his own. The clerk and librarian may now have the pleasure of a dispute with his Excellency, if they will, instead of the luxury of looking solemn and severe at some Southern gentlemen they would like to keep out in the cold for a short time.”
Paragraphs like this served a special use. They illustrated the temper in which pardoned Rebels, who had sought the Attorney-General’s office[[45]] as their “last ditch,” resumed their duties as loyal citizens. “None so hard to please as a beggar.” These men abjured all their rights under the Constitution, and did their best to overthrow it. They were forced back. Yesterday they cringed for pardon at the feet of “the boorish and drunken tailor” they had denounced; to-day they are harder to satisfy than ninety and nine just men who have no need of repentance.
An ex-colonel of a Virginia regiment was exceedingly anxious to argue his political principles. They were talking, he heard, about keeping the Southern members from participating in the organization of the House, just to enable the Radicals to get all the officers. But he didn’t believe they would dare to venture on so grossly tyrannical a course. If it was proposed to conciliate the South, they must no longer be subjected to such iniquitous oppression. The whole war had been of the same sort. The North had no business to begin its attack in the first place—no justification for it under the sun. The South was only defending itself from Northern violations of law. Didn’t Massachusetts, in her Legislature, threaten to secede in 1812?[[46]] And wasn’t there a clause in the Constitution about importing slaves down to 1808, which was put in for her benefit, and at her peremptory demand?