The “Legislature,” in session in Jackson, seemed to me a body of more than average ability. Leading Mississippians, however, even of the ultra type, denounced it as impracticable. There could be no question of its rebellious antecedents. Scarcely a dozen, probably not half so many of its members, could be named who did not in some way actively countenance or support the war. But they were all Union men now; that is, as one of them tersely stated it, “we are whipped, can’t get out, and want now to get back on the very best terms we can possibly make, and with the least possible loss from our failure!”
The tone of the Mississippi papers, like the tone of the Mississippi talk, was bitter. A Jackson journal soundly berated anybody who should presume to insist that the President required the admission of negro testimony in the courts. Mississippi, at any rate, should not be crawling to the President’s feet to ask what she should do. She should walk erect, assert her rights, and demand their recognition! And a Vicksburg paper spoke its views thus:
“If any radical was ever black enough to suppose the people of Mississippi would endow negro schools, for their ilk to teach the rising eboshin hatred of his former master, but his best friend, then such chaps had better take to marching on with John Brown’s soul; they will hardly reach the object of their desires short of the locality where John is kicking and waiting. The State has not opened them, nor has she the slightest idea of doing anything of the kind.”
[61]. The following was, however, a well-authenticated, case:
“A physician and planter, near Greenville, Mississippi, called a freedman in his employ to account for some work which he alleged he had neglected to do as directed. The freedman said he had received no such directions. The doctor told him if he dared to dispute his word he would kill him on the spot. The negro replied that he never had such directions. Thereupon the doctor, without any other provocation being alleged, drew his revolver, and the negro ran. After some little pursuit, and after discharging several shots, he killed the negro dead in the field. The murdered man’s wife interposed to save his life, when the doctor fired several shots at her, and was only prevented from a double murder by the efforts of his own mother, who, with difficulty, saved the poor woman’s life.
“Colonel Thomas, Superintendent of Freedmen, caused the arrest of the murderer. He was taken to Vicksburg and placed in military custody.”
[62]. The official organ of the city of New Orleans thus editorially explains this feeling:
“Our citizens, who had been accustomed to meet and treat the negroes only as respectful servants, were mortified, pained, and shocked to encounter them in towns and villages, and on the public roads, by scores and hundreds and thousands, wearing Federal uniforms, and bearing bright muskets and gleaming bayonets. They often recognized among them those who had once been their own servants. They were jostled from the sidewalks by dusky guards marching four abreast. They were halted, in rude and sullen tones by negro sentinels, in strong contrast with the kind and fraternal hail of the old sentinels in threadbare gray or dilapidated homespun. The ladies of villages so guarded, ceased to appear on the streets, and it was with much reluctance that the citizens of the surrounding country went to the towns on imperative errands. All felt the quartering of negro guards among them to be a deliberate, wanton, cruel act of insult and oppression. Their hearts sickened under what they deemed an outrageous exercise of tyranny. They would have received white troops, not indeed with rejoicing, but with kindness, satisfaction, and respect; but when they saw their own slaves freed, armed, and put on guard over them, they treated all hope of Federal magnanimity or justice as an idle dream.”