I was frequently a guest at the “Varieties Club,” an organization composed almost exclusively of former Rebels, and sharing with the “Boston” the favor of what was considered the crême de la crême of New Orleans. The “Varieties” differs from every other club in this country, in the fact that it is the owner of the favorite theater of the city, in which the best boxes and orchestra chairs are always reserved for the use of the members and their friends, free of charge.
One evening I happened to enter just as some scene was being enacted in which the hero is suddenly pounced upon and disarmed by a couple of ruffians. As he stood helpless between them, he interpolated a sentence to suit the latitude, exclaiming, “Let me go, let me go; I’ll take the oath!” The whole audience burst out into uproarious laughter and cheering, which for some little time delayed the action of the play. It was manifest that they had a very clear apprehension of the average value of oaths of loyalty.
The first night I was there, a Union Major General was also one of the guests. Sitting at the same table with him, drinking his whisky—if there are any places in the country more remarkable for hard drinking than the Varieties Club of New Orleans, I have never seen them—and hob-nobbing in the most companionable way, was an officer of the Rebel army who had surrendered to him in Texas. A number of other Rebel officers, some of high grades, members of the Rebel Legislature, registered alien enemies, and a crowd of resident Rebels, were passing through the room. Nothing could exceed their genial courtesy, or the “hospitality” (so called in the South) with which they pressed their whisky.
The next day, I heard that, in the organization of a new club, expressly intended to be established on a loyal basis, the word “Union” had been stricken out of the title by an overwhelming vote. “Do you know,” said a resident Northerner, “I was very much in favor of that myself? I am determined that I will have nothing to do, down here, with any social organization into which politics are permitted to enter!” In his mind the use of the word “Union” as part of the title of a club was the introduction of an offensive political distinction! A few days later, in the reading-room of this new club, I noticed, conspicuously hung on the walls, side by side, five portraits of General Sheridan (the commander of the department), and of General Robert E. Lee.
Mr. Flanders was very bitter in his denunciations of what he called Northern toadyism. “With the Northern men and the Northern capital we have here, we could absolutely control this city. But we can’t make use of our power, because of these miserable toadies. They imagine it is necessary to truckle to Southern men in order to get trade and acquire influence. Poor fools! Can’t they see that the moment Southern men get power, they’ll kick them all aside? Even now they despise them.”
“Give us a couple of hundred Northern men, with money and brains, who were not flunkies, and their honest, straightforward talk would do wonders,” he continued. “But the traders are nearly all flunkies. Those who have gone on plantations are more manly, but they are in positions where they have less influence.” It was the old, old story.
He insisted that the abatement of Rebel violence, then visible everywhere, was only a torpor, not a radical change. They were discouraged now about their chances. Let them get in again, and they would be up and hissing at once.
Others made the same complaints about the tendency to conciliate Southern prejudices. Begun in the praiseworthy desire to exhibit the most generous consideration to the vanquished, it had degenerated, they said, into the very flunkyism of which Mr. Flanders complained. “Here is General Herron,” exclaimed one. “A better or manlier fellow we didn’t have in our army. He has settled down as a commission merchant here; has plenty of capital, and ought to do well. But, do you know that he can’t get as many favors, soldier though he is, at the Quartermasters’ and Commissaries’ headquarters here, in the way of legitimate business, as can any resident Rebel? Why? Because it’s the thing to display distinguished consideration to these fellows, in order to convince them that we’re willing to forget the past, if they’ll only be good enough to do the same. Of course, then, it’s all smooth sailing in business intercourse; but, in the bottom of their hearts, how they must despise us!”
At the residence of a friend, I met, one evening, Mr. J. Ad. Rozier, a lawyer of considerable prominence, whose record during the war might, I was informed, be described as that of a conservative Rebel. He was greatly delighted with the recent election of Alexander H. Stephens to the Senate by the Legislature of Georgia, because he “believed in brains.” There was no abler or fairer man, he thought, in the whole South than Mr. Stephens. He would be, as he had been before, an honor to the South in the Senate of the Union.