A change in the feeling toward the negroes was also manifest from the first day’s entrance within the cotton region. In November nothing could exceed the hatred which seemed everywhere felt to the freedmen. Now, this feeling was curiously and almost ludicrously mingled with an effort to conciliate them. Cotton was no longer king, but the cotton-maker was. Men approached the negro with an effort at kind manners; described to him the comforts of their plantations, and insinuatingly inquired if he wouldn’t like to enter into contract for a year. The sable owner of muscle, his woolly head greatly perplexed with this unwonted kindness, held aloof, and seemed, as he respectfully listened to the glowing inducements, to be wondering whether the fly would make anything by his visit to the nicely-arranged parlors of the Mississippi spiders.
The anxious planters argued and pleaded, and the puzzled negroes—kept up their thinking, I suppose. At any rate, very few contracts were yet made in many parts of the interior, especially in Mississippi, though by this time it was near the close of January, and the season for beginning the year’s cotton work was rapidly passing away. They were willing to contract on the Mississippi River, and, to some extent, along railroads; but they were very shy about venturing into the interior at all, and, when they did, insisted on remaining in sight of the towns. “I could have got plenty of hands at Vicksburg,” complained a planter returning from an unsuccessful trip for labor, “if I had only been able to pick my plantation up and move it twelve miles across the country to Holly Springs.” Another came nearer success: “I could have got plenty right at home, if my quarters had been at the other side of my plantation, where it joins the corporation-line of the village; but the black rascals wouldn’t trust themselves the width of my plantation away from town for fear I would eat ’em up.”
An old Mississippian was returning from New Orleans in a great rage: “Do you believe, sah, I even demeaned myself so much as to go to a d——d nigger, who called himself a labor agent, and offered him five dollars a head for all the hands he could get me. He promised ’em at once, and I was all right till I told him they was to be sent to ——, Mississippi. To think of it, sah! The black scoundrel told me flat he wouldn’t send me a man. ‘Why not,’ says I; ‘I’ll give you your money when they start.’ ‘I wouldn’t send you a man ef you gave me a hundred dollars a head,’ said the dirty, impudent black dog. And why? All because the sassy scoundrel said he didn’t like our Mississippi laws.”
I subsequently learned that these statements were literally correct, and that many Mississippi planters who had gone to New Orleans for laborers, found they could engage plenty, but lost their hold on every man as soon as they let him know that it was in Mississippi he was wanted. Through the interior, planters were complaining of the disappearance of the negroes. They couldn’t imagine where the worthless things had suddenly sunk to, until it occurred to some of them to observe that this disappearance began shortly after their reconstructed Legislature had embodied its wisdom in laws on the negro question.
CHAPTER XLV.
Political and Business Complications in the South-west.
New Orleans in January was a very different city from New Orleans in November. Trade had swelled to its old volume; the city was crowded beyond its capacity; balls, theaters, the opera, crowded upon one another, and all were insufficient to satisfy the wants of this amusement-loving community.
But these changes were nothing, compared with that in the tone of political affairs. Governor Wells had accomplished another revolution on his axis. Lifted into power by the Banks régime, he had congenially betrayed it, in order to make interest with the returning Rebels; had appointed them to office by scores; had turned out the Unionists that elected him wherever he could find Rebels to take their places; had made over himself and his power without reserve. They used him, and threw him aside; the betrayer was in turn betrayed, and had nobody to pity him.
The Legislature had passed a bill authorizing a new election for city officers in New Orleans, avowedly to get rid of the Union appointees, and elect “men who were the choice of the great majority of the people”—that is, undisguised Rebels. The Governor, seeing that the movement boded him no good, had broken with the Rebels and vetoed the bill; and they had promptly passed it over his head.[[65]] The leader in this movement was Mr. Kenner, an old Rebel politician, and member of the Confederate Senate at Richmond, recently pardoned by Mr. Johnson. Such was the return he was making for the forgiveness for his treason which he had begged and received.
Nevertheless, the general feeling was much less defiant than in November. Then they had been sailing, with favoring winds and under full headway, straight into their old power in Congress and control of the country’s legislation. The check had been sudden, and they were not fully recovered from the shock. Business interests, too, had come into play. Trade always softens away angularities of prejudice, and too often of principle also. Northerners having money to invest in the South, men were very willing to forego manifestations of Rebel spite toward them for the sake of furthering their chances of a good bargain.