Fortunately, this class is confined almost exclusively to the Eastern slaveholding States.
[42]. This statement is literally true, but, without another, it might convey a wrong impression. The negroes were everywhere found quiet, respectful, and peaceable; they were the only class at work; and in, perhaps, most respects, their outward conduct was that of excellent citizens. But they would steal. Petty pilfering seemed as natural to three-fourths of them as eating. Our officers and missionaries thought they saw some reformation in this respect; but there was still abundance of room for more.
CHAPTER XXXI.
Mid-summer at the Capitol.
No party ever made a graver mistake than did the one that had elected the Administration during the summer after the assassination of Mr. Lincoln and the surrender of the Rebel armies. Representatives, senators, leading men of the party in other official stations or in private life, abandoned their new President before he was lost. Dissatisfied with the North Carolina proclamation, they made little effort to convince the President of the justice of their dissatisfaction. Whispering to one another their fears that his Southern prejudices would lead him over to the side of the returning Rebels, they made little effort to retain him. Occasionally some prominent Unionist came down to Washington to see the President, found the ante-room filled with pardon-seeking Rebels, and the city rife with the old Rebel talk, became disgusted and hurried back to the North.
All summer long the capital was filled with the late leaders in Rebel councils, or on Rebel battle-fields. They filled all avenues of approach to the White House. They kept the Southern President surrounded by an atmosphere of Southern geniality, Southern prejudices, Southern aspirations. Mr. Johnson declared that treason must be humbled—they convinced him that they were humble. That traitors must be punished—they showed him how they had suffered. That only loyal men should rule—they were all loyal now.
He had been a “poor white,” with all the hatred of his class to the negroes. They showed him how the “Radicals” wanted to make the negroes as good as the white men. As a Tennessee politician, it had been necessary for him to denounce the “Abolitionists and fanatics of the North;” to declare, in the stereotyped phrase of the stump, that he had equal hatred for the Secessionists of South Carolina and the Abolitionists of Massachusetts. They asked him if he was going to let Massachusetts Abolitionists lead him now and control his Administration, while his own native South lay repentant and bleeding at his feet. He was ambitious, proud of his elevation, but stung by the sneer that after all he was only an accidental President. They cunningly showed him how he could secure the united support of the entire South and of the great Democratic party of the North, with which all his own early history was identified, for the next Presidency.
Such were the voices, day by day and week by week, sounding in the President’s ears. He heard little else, was given time to think little else. And meanwhile the party that had elected him, simply—let him alone. The history of our politics shows no graver blunder.
Every day the White House presented the same scene. Passing through the ante-room to the public staircase, one always encountered a throng of coarsely-dressed bronzed Southerners, carrying heavy canes, tobacco-ruminant, and full of political talk. The unfurnished desolate-looking room in which visitors gather, while waiting their turns for interviews with the President, was always crowded. One day I saw there two or three Rebel Generals, as many members of the Rebel Congress, and at least a score of less noted leaders. In a corner, occupying the only chair which the room contains, sat a former Secretary of War of the Rebel Confederacy. Not far from him stood Henry W. Hilliard, once United States Congressman from Alabama, and subsequently prominent in the plots which Andrew Johnson so sternly resisted for seducing Tennessee into rebellion.
From nine o’clock until three the President sat in the room adjacent, conversing with one or another as the doorkeeper admitted them. Pardons were discussed, policies of reorganization were canvassed. The pardon-seekers were the counsellors on reorganization—there were none others there with whom to consult. Thus the weary day passed, with a steady stream of Rebel callers. At three o’clock the doorkeeper’s hands were full of cards not yet presented to the President, and the ante-room was thronged; then the door was thrown open, and the crowd rushed in as if scrambling for seats in a railroad car. The President stood by his desk; to his left, at another table, stood General Mussey and Colonel Browning, his two private secretaries. On the table in the center of the room lay a pile of pardons, a foot high, watched by a young Major in uniform.