But there were very distinct traces of State jealousy. “Those d——d Hotspurs of Charleston were very keen to get us into this scrape,” said a North Carolinian, “and now, after sending us poor troops through the war, they’re sneaking off to Mexico, instead of staying with us to stand it out.” Tennesseeans were not general favorites; and it was amusing to hear the contempt showered upon the once petted Kentuckians. “Poor braggadocio devils! After all their strut and swagger, they didn’t know which side they were on, and stood, like a pack of half-scared curs, growling at both.” Missouri, on the other hand, was often praised. Several times I heard the statement, that “Missouri troops were among the very best in the Confederate army.”
I have already said that we found no Union party in the South, in the months immediately following the close of the war. I should have excepted the negroes. The prevalent stories of their fidelity to their masters were preposterously false. Not one negro in a thousand hoped for the success of the rebellion, or was without some pretty distinct notion of his personal interests in the issue. They often served or saved masters to whom they were personally attached, even in the most critical moments of danger, but this did not in the slightest degree affect their desire for the triumph of the Yankees.
The expectation was general, among the more intelligent, that suffrage would be given them, and many were beginning to assert their claim to lands. How far they were qualified for giving their voice in public affairs, we had no very satisfactory means of judging. We saw mainly those in cities, or near the armies, and in most cases these were the brighter and more intelligent. In Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, and New Orleans, the masses of resident negroes seemed to me quite as orderly, respectable, and intelligent as many of the voters in New York that help to elect mayors like Mr. Fernando Wood.
But we were constantly told that the plantation hands in the interior were a different order of beings. We saw many plantation hands, as on the Sea Islands, and at numerous other points, who were the superiors in good-breeding, and not much the inferiors in education, of many of the “poor whites;”[[41]] but these, we were always assured, were only the smart ones, who knew enough to run away. Could we but see the stupid residuum still in the interior, who constituted the vast majority, we would form radically changed notions as to their fitness for any right of a citizen, or, indeed, for taking care of themselves at all. It was not till some months later that I was to see this stupid residuum. Till then, I may fitly leave its description in the language of those who professed to know it best.
But of the great masses of negroes whom we did see in May and June, two general statements may safely be made:
They were as orderly, quiet, and industrious as any other class of the population;[[42]] and,
They were far more eager than any others to secure the advantages of education for themselves, and especially for their children.
[41]. I have several times spoken of this class. Lest it should be thought that I am exaggerating their condition, let me quote the description of a writer against whom no accusation of prejudice, or lack of familiarity with the subject, can be brought. Mrs. Fanny Kemble Butler says of the poor whites, on page 146 of her Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation, (to wit, that of her husband):
“They are, I suppose, the most degraded race of human beings claiming an Anglo-Saxon origin, that can be found on the face of the earth—filthy, lazy, ignorant, brutal, proud, penniless savages, without one of the nobler attributes that have been found occasionally allied to the vices of savage nature. They own no slaves, for they are, almost without exception, abjectly poor; they will not work, for that, as they conceive, would reduce them to an equality with the abhorred negroes; they squat, and steal, and starve on the outskirts of the lowest of all civilized societies, and their countenances bear witness to the squalor of their condition and the degradation of their natures.”