With attention about equally divided between the dangers of our tortuous, torpedo-lined passage, and the “thunders” of the salute to the Chief-Justice, we finally reached the tumble-down wharves. Planks had been torn up for squares along the levee to make fire-wood, and the bare sleepers were rotting from exposure; elsewhere the decayed planks rattled ominously under carriage-wheels, and disclosed here and there ugly holes that might prove dangerous to unwary walkers. Half the warehouses and shops along the levee seemed closed; a few transports only lay at the landing, and anchored off in the stream were portions of Farragut’s famous fleet; but of the commerce that once made Mobilians dream of rivaling New Orleans, scarcely an indication remained.
When one entered the city, however, save in the universal torpor of business, and the presence of soldiers at every corner, few traces of the war were to be seen. The shrubbery was as glorious as ever—a little more luxuriant indeed, since the pruning-shears had perforce been idle for a year or two. Lovely country villas still lined the shell-road, which was once the glory of Mobile. There were hedges of Cherokee rose, and arbors of Scuppernong grapes, groves of orange-trees, and everywhere the glossy leaves of the magnolia, gleaming and shimmering in the sunlight, as the wind stirred them. A better hint that the war had wrought its changes was to be gathered when one came to pay the bill for an hour’s drive. The craziest, ricketty vehicle, with a single seat, cost ten dollars.
Everywhere the Rebel soldiers clustered on the corners, or mingled in the throngs about the bar-rooms and hotels. They still wore their uniforms, for the best of reasons—they had no other clothes to wear; but nothing could have been more unexceptionable than their general conduct. “I tell you, sir,” exclaimed one of our Generals, in a burst of enthusiasm, “I tell you, they are behaving splendidly. In fact, sir, these Rebel soldiers are an honor to the American name.”
“You’ve whipped us,” said one of their officers, with whom I had been carrying on a desultory conversation, “and you did the work thoroughly. I think too much of the bravery of our army and of my own honor to admit that we would have surrendered if we had not been thoroughly whipped. Of course, then, we’ve had enough of it. If we hadn’t, we’d have fought on. As we had, we mean to d——n politics, try and get some clothes, and go to making money.”
Nearly all the old inhabitants of Mobile were in the city when it fell, and very few had yet procured the means, even if they had the desire, to leave. Stores that had been closed for months, or even years, were being reopened, in the hope that the antiquated stocks of goods might bring in some trifle in a currency no longer worthless, to supply the wants of the family. A large furniture store was pointed out, where the owner had sold enough to supply himself with the immediate necessaries of life, and had then closed again, declaring that he wouldn’t sell another article till fall. His explanation gives a curious glimpse into the condition of the people. Everybody, he said, wanted to buy, and nobody had any money. When they began to sell their lands or their cotton, and get money, he was ready to resume business; but till then, it would ruin him to have his store open. If he refused credit, he would make all his old customers enemies; if he gave credit, he would soon be bankrupt. To save himself from destruction, there was absolutely no way but to bolt his doors and put up his window-shutters!
Cotton was beginning to come out, but the enormous frauds which have since made the very name of cotton agent odious were then only in their infancy, and there is no reason to suspect that at that time the Mobile agent already referred to, who subsequently gained such a disgraceful notoriety, contemplated any other rascality than a swindle of the “Rebel holders,” that should still seem technically honest in the showings to the Government.
But the germ of all the difficulties had already made its appearance. There were, as the officials believed, in Mobile itself, six thousand bales, and in the adjacent country not less than one hundred and twenty thousand, which captured records showed to be the property of the Rebel Government. Much of this was soon in the hands of private parties, who professed to have bought it from the Rebel authorities in good faith, to have given adequate compensation for it, and therefore to be now its legitimate owners. What was to be done in such a case? Or again: Planters had subscribed large amounts of cotton to the Rebel loan, under the same species of coercion by public sentiment which filled the Rebel ranks with men who had sturdily voted against secession in all its stages. The authorities had never removed the cotton; the former owners had been compelled to take care of it; they had steadily kept possession of it all the time, and they now claimed this possession to constitute ownership, arguing, plausibly enough, that their compulsory contracts (by subscription) with the Rebel Government had never been carried out, and that now it ill became the United States Government to undertake their enforcement. In other ways, and by all manner of side issues, the subject had become so inextricably complicated that the immediate representative of the Treasury Department in our party was at his wits’ ends.
Naturally, Mr. Chase’s opinion had great weight, and it was freely given. He thought it wiser and better for the department over which he had presided, and which was now administered by one of his own most trusted appointees, to wash its hands of the whole business. Here was a quantity of cotton promised under compulsion to the Rebel Government. They never came to take it; in most cases it was never actually in their possession; it was now in the hands of its old owners. It would better comport with the dignity of a great and successful nation to leave it among this impoverished people, rather than enter into a confused scramble against ready swearers and men who felt that they were being cheated out of their all, in order to gather up and auction off the beggarly effects of the bankrupt Confederacy. In any event, the Government would be apt to realize very little from the effort, and it would lose far more in a wasted opportunity for diffusing good feeling and promoting the revival of industry than it would gain in cotton.
Weeks, indeed, before this, while the party was at Key West, Mr. Chase had foreseen, from the indications along the Atlantic coast, the troubles in store, and had suggested what seemed to him the wisest policy for avoiding them. He would have had the President issue a proclamation setting forth substantially: