December broke the earliest hope of the revived Southern temper. The preponderating Rebel element, which reorganized the State Governments under Mr. Johnson’s proclamations, first expected to take Congress by a coup de main, organize the House through a coalition with the Northern Democracy, and, having thus attained the mastery of the situation, repeal the war legislation and arrange matters to suit themselves. Defeated in this by the incorruptible firmness of Mr. McPherson, the Clerk, they next hoped by Executive pressure, combined with Southern clamor, to force a speedy admission of all Representatives from the rebellious States who could take the prescribed oath. These once in, the rest was easy. They were to combine with the Northern Democracy and such weak Republicans as Executive influence could control, repeal the test oath, thus admit all the other Southern applicants, and turn over the Government to a party which, at the North, had opposed the war for the Union, and at the South had sustained the war against it.
By the 1st of January all knew that the plot had failed. A few days later, I left the Capital again for the South.
Traveling wholly by land from Washington to New Orleans, taking the trip leisurely, with frequent stoppages and constant intercourse with the people, I had abundant opportunities for discovering at once the marked change in the tone of public sentiment. In November I had found it buoyant and defiant. In January it was revengeful, but cowed.
Prominent public men were much more cautious in their expressions. They talked less of their demands; were more disposed to make elaborate arguments on their rights. There were few boasts as to what the South would do, or how heartily that true Southern man, the President, would sustain them; there was more tendency to complain that they had been whipped for trying to go out, and that now the door was shut in their faces when they tried to come in.
A very few, whom I should judge to have been Union men through the war, or to have been so thoroughly disgusted with the rebellion as to accept its defeat with cheerfulness, professed their entire satisfaction with the action of Congress. “It is none of our business to be making a fuss or demanding anything,” said one of these. “We’ve been guilty of a great crime; we have reason to be thankful that we are treated as leniently as we are, and it becomes us to keep quiet, and hope for the best.”
Such were the expressions of two classes. Together, they were but a small minority.
Everywhere, on the cars, in the hotels, on the streets, at public meetings, in social intercourse with the people at their homes, the great majority held very different language.
A little east of Lynchburg, an officer in the national uniform happened to pass through the cars. “There’s one of the infernal villains,” exclaimed an old man in homespun behind me. “Well,” said his companion, “perhaps it isn’t right to talk so, but how can we help hating them? They’ve burned our houses and made us paupers, and now they kick us out of the Capitol. May be my sons may feel differently, by the time they’re as old as I am, if they have to live with them, but I always expect to hate the sight of a Yankee till my dying day.” These were plain old Virginians from the mountains, apparently farmers.
At Grand Junction, Tennessee, I whiled away half a day in the bar-room of a dilapidated little frame house called a hotel. A wood contractor from one of the interior towns of Northern Mississippi was the leading talker. For hisself, he’d rather be a pauper all his days than do business with the dirty, mean, low-down Yankees. Certainly four out of every five in the room at any period during that half day, in some form or another re-echoed the sentiment.