On the cars of the Mississippi Central Railroad, a party of girls, attended by one or two rustic beaux, going down to New Orleans to see the sights and have their winter “society,” monopolized the conversation, and did it in no whispered tones. The burden of all their discourse, the staple subject that never failed them—when questions as to how long Sam stayed the other night when he came to see Sally, were fully exhausted—the pièce de résistance to which they always reverted, was the meanness, the ignorance, the hatefulness, the cowardice of the detested Yankees. One had to leave school because the dirty Yankees were too near. Another’s “par” had lost all his house servants because the sneaking Yankees had enticed them away. Another knew that the Yankees were all cowards, and would never have overpowered us if they hadn’t called in the Dutch, Irish, niggers, and all the rest of their superiors in creation, to help them. “Didn’t my brother Tom—you know, Lizzie, he’s as brave and gallant a man as ever lived—didn’t he tell me hisself, with his own lips, that he chased five of ’em, in full uniforms, with swords in their hands, and plenty of revolvers, full gallop, out of Holly Springs? His own self, mind you, by hisself.” The presence of an officer in uniform in the car, part of the day, only served to increase the volubility and virulence with which these Mississippi ladies delivered their utterances.
By and by one of the beaux, having run out of subjects for talk with the ladies, took a seat beside me, and produced the unfailing Mississippi substitute for an introduction—a whisky bottle. “Try some, stranger; don’t be afeard. Jist sample it. You’ll find it the rale stuff.” “Didn’t that Yankee officer look sheepish just now, when the gals was givin’ it to him so hot?” he asked, after our acquaintance had progressed smoothly for some time. This was a little too much for Northern flesh and blood, and I informed him that I was a Yankee myself.
“Stranger, you’re jokin’.” I insisted that it was a solemn fact.
“Whar’d you come from?”
“From Washington City.”
“Well, who’d a thought it? But, stranger”——and a prolonged stare followed.
“I say, stranger, take another drink,” and the uncorked bottle of villainous whisky was thrust to my lips. “I rather guess, stranger, you must be pretty well used to hearin’ that sort o’ thing, if you’ve been down heah long. The truth is, you don’t look like one o’ them sort, and I don’t b’lieve y’ are one o’ the mean kind anyway; but we do all hate the Yankees like pizen—thar’s no use tryin’ to hide it.”
I traveled one day through Northern Alabama and Western Tennessee with a Texan, who had been North, begging merchants to give him credit again, and help him on his legs.
“I tell you, you don’t none o’ you know anything about the meanness of the Yankees. I’ve been among them—I understand ’em. Why, do you know, a little thing a Texas store-keeper’d throw in ’thout thinking to tell you of ’t, one o’ them New York fellers’ll make you out a bill for, and ten to one he’ll reckon in the interest till paid.”
In such a strain he entertained his listeners for hours. By his account; Northern hotels were sponging houses, as compared with similar establishments in the South. Northern railroads were wholesale swindles, the churches were like the circus, and a “high-toned gentleman” was unknown. From this the talk naturally digressed to life in Texas. We had vivid accounts of little personal differences with the Bowie-knife; precise instructions as to the best way to stand to make your antagonist miss you in a duel, while you got a good shot at him; and challenges to anybody to name as charming a town to live in, under this Yankee-cursed Government, as Galveston, Texas. Nobody named one.