Such are almost the very words in which were thus frankly revealed the hopes of the Southern politicians. Later in the evening and next morning, as my Yankee proclivities began to attract more attention, my Rebel acquaintances grew more cautious and reticent. “How do you all feel toward Sherman, who ravaged your country so mercilessly?” I asked one of them. “The truth is, sir, the Southern people have been so soundly thrashed that just now they’ve got d——d few opinions of any kind. All we want now is to get back to civil government and the making of our own laws!”
What struck me most, however, in the conversation of all these gentlemen was the utter scorn with which they treated any professions of principle. “A first foreign mission would give McPherson new ideas of his duty as clerk.” “Don’t tell me Southern members won’t get in if Johnson decides that he wants them in. Things have changed mightily if he can’t buy up enough Congressmen to carry his ends.” “It’s as sure as fate, that the Democratic party will carry the next Presidential election. You say it died, in the late New York struggle, for want of principles? Nonsense. It can soon get together all the principles it wants to win on. Remember its old stagers have been hungry eight years, while the Black Republicans have been feeding at the public crib?”
Their old prejudices against Northern public men seemed unchanged by the war. Sumner they spoke of with loathing. Chandler was a beast and a blackguard in a breath. Seward had the ability but not the courage to be a first-class devil.[[58]] Chase was the greatest of Yankee public men, and had subjugated the South by keeping up the Yankee finances, but, d——n him, he would some day get his reward, for taking a side he knew to be wrong, in order to gratify his ambition. Yet in the midst of all this talk, that called up so vividly the Southern politician of five years ago, there was one notable change. You could talk abolition as safely in that Mississippi country-tavern as in Faneuil Hall. Since entering the cotton States I had not seen, on the whole trip, an indication of the slightest desire to interfere with free speech. Off the lines of travel, in remote quarters where neither railroads nor good wagon-roads penetrate, I heard that the case was different; but in all the out-of-the-way places I reached, I felt just as safe as in Washington and just as free to express my opinions.
But I saw cause for thankfulness, more than once, that I was not a Government cotton agent. On the road between Selma and Meridian, near Demopolis, it was necessary to embark, for a short trip, on a steamboat on the Tombigbee River. In the cabin, I entered, a violent altercation was raging. A short, portly old planter, florid-faced and white-bearded—the impersonation of the fine old Southern gentleman, who could finish half-a-dozen bottles of claret at a sitting, and had been doing it, any time, for the last dozen years—was berating a black-bearded, trim-built and very resolute Yankee. The oaths were fearfully blasphemous, but the substance of the old man’s complaint was that he had delivered up to the agent a quantity of cotton which he had originally subscribed to the Rebel cotton loan, and that, as he had subsequently learned, he was entitled, by such voluntary surrender, to one-fourth of the value of the cotton; which sum he accused the agent of unjustly withholding. “But I’ll follow you, sah,” he vociferated, shaking his fist in the very face of the agent. “I’ll follow you to General Wood’s, aye, and to Andy Johnson! I’ll follow you, sah, to hell and Illinois, but you shan’t swindle me, sah.”
“You’ll follow me to Mobile, sir, if you want to; that’s where I live, and you’ll never have any trouble in finding me.”
The agent stood, trim, compact, cool as an icicle, evidently ready for anything, and watching the fiery planter, as a pugilist might watch for the instant to strike. The stout old man, tremulous and hoarse with passion, blustered up and shook his fist in angry gesticulation, but the agent never moved a muscle. One grew proud of him, and even the Southern crowd, forming a ring about, evidently respected his bearing. Two or three friends bustled up to the old planter, twined their arms about his neck, and finally coaxed him out of the throng. The agent then turned on his heel and walked away. “Is he a gentleman, or is he a Yankee?” I heard one of the passengers inquire. “He is a scoundrel, of course,” said another, “for he’s a Government cotton agent, and I wish the old man had shot him, as his fellow was shot, the other day, at Montgomery.” I subsequently learned that, only a few weeks ago, a son of the white-bearded old planter had shot a Northern soldier in some brawl at the polls. Life is cheap here, and the Northern papers report that the demand for pistols from the South is brisk!
The little quarrel with the cotton agent being over, the planters on board fell to discussing the labor question, as we slowly steamed down the Tombigbee. “You’re all going crazy,” said a top-booted personage, who turned out to be a Rebel mail contractor that had recently transferred his allegiance to Governor Dennison. “You’re crazier even than I thought you. First you lost your slaves, and now you propose to give away your plantations! Give them away, I say,” he continued dogmatically. “Lands that are worth sixty and eighty dollars an acre, you’re selling for ten and twelve. Why, you can rent them for half of that.”
“But what’s the use of lands when you can’t work them?”
“We’ve got to change our whole system of labor,” said another planter. “Let the Yankees take the niggers, since they’re so fond of them. Why, I was talking, down to Selma, the other day, with Jim Branson, up from Haynesville. We figured up, I don’t know how many millions of coolies there are in China, that you can bring over for a song. It will take three of ’em to do the work of two niggers; but they’ll live on next to nothing and clothe themselves, and you’ve only got to pay ’em four dollars a month. That’s our game now. And if it comes to voting, I reckon we can manage that pretty well!”
But they all agreed that, unless the Yankees raised it, there would be no cotton crop grown in these States next year.