THREE MONTHS AMONG THE RECONSTRUCTIONISTS.
[Atlantic
Monthly (February 1866), 237-245.]
[p1]
I spent the months of September,
October, and November, 1865, in
the States of North Carolina, South
Carolina, and Georgia. I travelled over
more than half the stage and railway
routes therein, visited a considerable
number of towns and cities in each
State, attended the so-called reconstruction
conventions at Raleigh, Columbia,
and Milledgeville, and had much
conversation with many individuals of
nearly all classes.
I.
[p2]
I was generally treated with civility,
and occasionally with courteous cordiality.
I judge, from the stories told me
by various persons, that my reception
was, on the whole, something better than
that accorded to the majority of Northern
men travelling in that section. Yet
at one town in South Carolina, when I
sought accommodations for two or three
days at a boarding-house, I was asked
by the woman in charge, "Are you a
Yankee or a Southerner?" and when
I answered, "Oh, a Yankee, of course,"
she responded, "No Yankee stops in
this house!" and turned her back upon
me and walked off. In another town
in the same State I learned that I was
the first Yankee who had been allowed
to stop at the hotel since the close of
the war. In one of the principal towns
of Western North Carolina, the landlord
of the hotel said to a customer, while
he was settling his bill, that he would
be glad to have him say a good word
for the house to any of his friends;
"but," added he, "you may tell all
d--d Yankees I can git 'long jest as
well, if they keep clar 'o me"; and when
I asked if the Yankees were poor pay,
or made him extra trouble, he answered,
"I don't want 'em 'round. I ha'n't got
no use for 'em nohow." In another
town in the same State, a landlord said
to me, when I paid my two-days' bill,
that "no d--n Yankee" could have a
bed in his house. In Georgia, I several
times heard the people of my hotel
expressing the hope that the passenger-train
wouldn't bring any Yankees; and
I have good reason for believing that I
was quite often compelled to pay an
extra price for accommodations because
I was known to be from the North. In
one town, several of us, passengers by
an evening train, were solicited to go to
a certain hotel; but the clerk declined
to give me a room, when he learned that
I was from Massachusetts, though I
secured one after a time through the favor
of a travelling acquaintance, who sharply
rebuked the landlord.
[p3]
It cannot be said that freedom of
speech has been fully secured in either
of these three States. Personally, I
have very little cause of complaint, for
my role was rather that of a listener
than of a talker; but I met many person
who kindly cautioned me, that at
such and such places, and in such and such
company, it would be advisable
to refrain from conversation on certain
topics. Among the better class of people,
resident in the cities and large
towns, I found a fair degree of
liberality of sentiment and courtesy of
speech; but in travelling off the main
railway-lines, and among the average
of the population, any man of Northern
opinions must use much circumspection
of language; while; in many
counties of South Carolina and Georgia,
the life of an avowed Northern radical
would hardly be worth a straw but for
the presence of the military. In Barnwell
and Anderson districts, South Carolina,
official records show the murder
of over a dozen Union men in the
months of August and September; and
at Atlanta, a man told me, with a quiet
chuckle, that in Carroll County, Georgia,
there were "four d--n Yankees shot
in the month of October." Any Union
man, travelling in either of these two
States, must expect to hear many very
insulting words; and any Northern man
is sure to find his principles despised,
his people contemned, and himself subjected
to much disagreeable contumely.
There is everywhere extreme sensitiveness
concerning the negro and his
relations; and I neither found nor learned
of any village, town, or city in which
it would be safe for a man to express
freely what are here, in the North, called
very moderate views on that subject.
Of course the war has not taught its
full lesson, till even Mr. Wendell Phillips
can go into Georgia and proclaim
"The South Victorious."
II.
[p5]
I often had occasion to notice, both
in Georgia and the Carolinas, the wide
and pitiful difference between the
residents of the cities and large towns and
the residents of the country. There is
no homogeneity, but everywhere a rigid
spirit of caste.. The longings of South
Carolina are essentially monarchical
rather than republican; even the common
people have become so debauched
in loyalty, that very many of them would
readily accept the creation of orders of
nobility. In Georgia there is something
less of this spirit; but the upper classes
continually assert their right to rule,
and the middle and lower classes have
no ability to free themselves. The whole
structure of society is full of separating
walls; and it will sadden the heart of
any Northern man, who travels in either
of these three States, to see how poor,
and meagre, and narrow a thing life is
to all the country people. Even with
the best class of townsfolk it lacks very
much of the depth and breadth and fruitfulness
of our Northern life, while with
these others it is hardly less materialistic
than that of their own mules and
horses. Thus, Charleston has much
intelligence, and considerable genuine culture;
but go twenty miles away, and you
are in the land of the barbarians. So,
Raleigh is a city in which there is love
of beauty, and interest in education; but
the common people of the county are at
least forty years behind the same class
of people in Vermont. Moreover, in Macon
are many fine residences, and
the city may boast of its gentility and
its respect for the nourishing elegancies
of life; but a dozen miles out are
large neighborhoods not yet half-civilized.
The contrast between the inhabitants
of the cities and those of the
country is hardly less striking than that
between the various classes constituting
the body of the common people.
Going from one county to another is
frequently going into a foreign country.
Travel continually brings novelty, but
with that always came pain. Till all
these hateful walls of caste are thrown
down, we can have neither intelligent
love of liberty, decent respect for
justice, nor enlightened devotion to the
idea of national unity. "Do men gather
grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?"
[p6]
It has been the purpose of the ruling
class, apparently, to build new barriers
between themselves and the common
people, rather than tear away any of
those already existing. I think no one
can understand the actual condition of
the mass of whites in Georgia and the
Carolinas, except by some daily contact
with them. The injustice done to three
fourths of them was hardly less than
that done to all the blacks. There were
two kinds of slavery, and negro slavery
was only the more wicked and debasing
than white slavery. Nine of every ten
white men in South Carolina had
almost as little to do with even State
affairs as the negroes had. Men talk of
plans of reconstruction; -- that is the
best plan which proposes to do most for
the common people. Till civilization
has been carried down into the homes
and hearts of all classes, we shall have
neither regard for humanity nor respect
for the rights of the citizen. In many
sections of all these States human life
is quite as cheap as animal life. What
a mental and moral condition does this
indicate! Any plan of reconstruction
is wrong that does not assure toleration
of opinion, and the elevation of the
common people to the consciousness
that ours is a republican form of
government. Whether they are technically
in the Union or out of the Union, it is
the national duty to deal with these
States in such a manner as will most
surely exalt the lower and middle classes
of their inhabitants. The nation
must teach them a knowledge of their
own rights, while it also teaches them
respect for its rights and the rights of
man as man.
[p7]
Stopping for two or three days in
some back county, I was always seeming
to have drifted away from the world
which held Illinois and Ohio and
Massachusetts. The difficulty in keeping
connection with our civilization did not
so much lie in the fact that the whole
structure of daily life is unlike ours, nor
in the other fact that I was forced to
hear the Union and all loyal men
reviled, as in the greater fact that the
people are utterly without knowledge.
There is everywhere a lack of intellectual
activity. Schools, books, newspapers, --
why, one may almost say
there are none outside the cities and
towns. The situation is horrible enough,
when the full force of this fact is
comprehended; yet there is a still lower
deep, -- there is small desire, even
feeble longing, for schools and books
and newspapers. The chief end of man
seems to have been "to own a nigger."
In the important town of Charlotte,
North Carolina, I found a white man
who owned the comfortable house in
which he lived, who had a wife and
three half-grown children, and yet had
never taken a newspaper in his life. He
thought they were handy for wrapping
purposes, but he couldn't see why anybody
wanted to bother with the reading
of them. He knew some folks spent money
for them, but he also knew a many
houses where none had ever been
seen. In that State I found several
persons -- whites, and not of the "clay-eater"
class, either -- who never had
been inside a school-house, and who
didn't mean to 'low their children to go
inside one. In the upper part of South
Carolina, I stopped one night at the
house of a moderately well-to-do farmer
who never had owned any book but a
Testament, and that was given to him.
When I expressed some surprise at this
fact, he assured me that he was as well
off as some other people thereabouts.
Between Augusta and Milledgeville I
rode in a stage-coach in which were two
delegates of the Georgia Convention.
When I said that I hoped the day would
soon come in which school-houses
would be as numerous in Georgia as in
Massachusetts, one of them answered:
"Well, I hope it 'll never come, --
popular education is all a d--n humbug
in my judgment"; whereunto the
other responded, "That's my opinion,
too." These are exceptional cases, I
am aware, but they truly index the situation
of thousands of persons. It is
this general ignorance, and this general
indifference to knowledge, that make
a Southern trip such wearisome work.
You can touch the masses with few of
the appeals by which we move our own
people. There is very little aspiration
for larger life; and, more than that,
there is almost no opportunity for its
attainment. That education is the stairway
to a nobler existence is a fact which
they either fail to comprehend or to
which they are wholly indifferent.
[p8]
Where there is such a spirit of caste,
where the ruling class has a personal
interest in fostering prejudice, where the
masses are in such an inert condition,
where ignorance so generally prevails,
where there is so little ambition for
improvement, where life is so hard and
material in its tone, it is not strange to find
much hatred and contempt. Ignorance
is generally cruel, and frequently brutal.
The political leaders of this people have
apparently indoctrinated them with the
notion that they are superior to any
other class in the country. Hence
there is usually very little effort to
conceal the prevalent scorn of the Yankee,
-- this term being applied to the
citizen of any Northern State. Any plan
of reconstruction, is wrong that tends
to leave these old leaders in power. A
few of them give fruitful evidence of a
change of heart, -- by some means save
these for the sore and troubled future;
but for the others, the men who not
only brought on the war, but ruined the
mental and moral force of their people
before unfurling the banner of rebellion,
-- for these there should never any
more be place or countenance among
honest and humane and patriotic people.
When the nation gives them life,
and a chance for its continuance, it
shows all the magnanimity that humanity
in such case can afford.
III.
[p9]
In North Carolina there is a great
deal of something that calls itself Unionism;
but I know nothing more like the
apples of Sodom than most of this North
Carolina Unionism. It is a cheat, a
Will-o-the-wisp; and any man who
trusts it will meet with overthrow. Its
quality is shown in a hundred ways.
An old farmer came into Raleigh to
sell a little corn. I had some talk
with him. He claimed that he had
been a Union man from the beginning
of the war, but he refused to take
"greenback money" for his corn. In
a town in the western part of the State
I found a merchant who prided himself
on the fact that he had always prophesied
the downfall of the so-called Confederacy
and had always desired the
success of the Union arms; yet when
I asked him why he did not vote in the
election for delegates to the Convention,
he answered, sneeringly, -- "I
shall not vote till you take away the
military." The State Convention declared
by a vote of ninety-four to nineteen
that the Secession ordinance had
always been null and void; and then
faced squarely about, and, before the
Presidential instructions were received,
impliedly declared, by a vote of fifty-seven
to fifty-three, in favor of paying
the war debt incurred in supporting that
ordinance! This action on these two
point exactly exemplifies the quality
of North Carolina Unionism. There
may be in the seed of loyalty, but
woe to him who mistakes the germ for
the ripened fruit! In all sections of
the State I found abundant hatred of
some leading or local Secessionist; but
how full of promise for the new era of
national life is the Unionism which rests
only on this foundation?
[p10]
In South Carolina there is very little
pretence of loyalty. I believe I found
less than fifty men who admitted any
love for the Union. There is everywhere
a passionate devotion to the State,
and the common sentiment holds that
man guilty of treason who prefers the
United States to South Carolina. There
is no occasion to wonder at the admiration
of the people for Wade Hampton,
for he is the very exemplar of their
spirit, -- of their proud and narrow and
domineering spirit. "It is our duty,"
he says, in his letter of last November,
"it is our duty to support the
President of the United States so long as he
manifests a disposition to restore all our
rights as a sovereign State." That
sentence will forever stand as a model of
cool arrogance, and yet it is in full
accord with the spirit of the South-Carolinians.
He continues: -- "Above all,
let us stand by our State, -- all the sacred
ties that bind us to her are intensified
by her suffering and desolation.
...It only remains for me, in bidding
you farewell, to say, that, whenever the
State needs my services, she has only
to command, and I shall obey." The
war has taught this people only that
the physical force of the nation cannot
be resisted. They will be obedient to
the letter of the law, perhaps, but the
whole current of their lives flows in
direct antagonism to its spirit.
[p11]
In Georgia there is something worse
than sham Unionism or cold acquiescence
in the issue of battle; it is the
universally prevalent doctrine of the
supremacy of the State. Even in South
Carolina a few men stood up against
the storm, and now claim credit for
faith in dark days. In Georgia that
man is hopelessly dead who doubted or
faltered. The common sense of all
classes pushes the necessity of allegiance
to the State into the domain of
morals as well as into that of politics;
and he who did not "go with the State"
in the Rebellion is held to have
committed the unpardonable sin. At Macon
I met a man who was one of the
leading Unionists in the winter of 1860-1861.
He told me how he suffered then
for his hostility to Secession, and yet
he added, -- "I should have considered
myself forever disgraced, if I hadn't
heartily gone with the State, when she
decided to fight." And Ben Hill, than
whom there are but few more influential
men in the State, advises the people
after this fashion, -- "I would vote for
no man who could take the Congressional
test-oath, because it is the highest
evidence of infidelity to the people
of the State." I believe it is the concurrent
testimony of all careful travellers
in Georgia, that there is everywhere only
cold toleration for the idea of national
sovereignty, very little hope for the
future of the State as a member of the
Federal Union, and scarcely any pride
in the strength and glory and renown
of the United States of America.
[p12]
Much is said of the hypocrisy of the
South. I found but little of it anywhere.
The North-Carolinian calls himself a
Unionist, but he makes no special
pretence of love for the Union. He desires
many favors, but he asks them
generally on the ground that he hated
the Secessionists. He expects the
nation to recognize rare virtue in that
hatred, and hopes it may win for his State
the restoration of her political rights;
but he wears his mask of nationality so
lightly that there is no difficulty in
removing it. The South-Carolinian
demands only something less than he
did in the days before the war, but he
offers no pleas of Unionism as a guaranty
for the future. He rests his case
on the assumption that he has fully
acquiesced in the results of the war, and
he honestly believes that he has so
acquiesced. His confidence in South
Carolina is so supreme that he fails to
see how much the conflict meant. He
walks by such light as he has, and cannot
yet believe that Destiny has decreed
his State a secondary place in the Union.
The Georgian began by believing that
rebellion in the interest of Slavery was
honorable, and the result of the war
has not changed his opinion. He is
anxious for readmission to fellowship
with New York and Pennsylvania and
Connecticut, but he supports his application
by no claim of community of interest
with other States. His spirit is
hard and uncompromising; he demands
rights, but does not ask favors; and he
is confident that Georgia is fully as
important to the United States as they
are to Georgia.
[p13]
Complaint is made that the Southern
people have recently elected military
men to most of their local State
offices. We do ourselves a wrong in
making this complaint. I found it
almost everywhere true in Georgia and
the Carolinas the best citizens of
to-day are the Confederate soldiers of
yesterday. Of course, in many individual
cases they are bitter and malignant;
but in general the good of the Union,
no less than the hope of the Sout, lies
in the bearing of the men who were privates
and minor officers in the armies
of :Lee and Johnston. It may not be
pleasant to us to recognize this fact;
but I am confident that we shall make
sure progress toward securing domestic
tranquillity and the general welfare, just
in proportion as we act upon it. It
should be kept in mind that comparatively
few of those who won renown on
the field were promoters of rebellion or
secession. The original malcontents, --
ah! where are they? Some of them at
least are beyond interference in earthly
affairs; others are in hopeless poverty
and chilling neglect; others are struggling
to mount once more the wave of
popular favor. A few of these last have
been successful, -- to see that no more
of them are so is a national duty. I
count it an omen of good, when I find
that one who bore himself gallantly as
a soldier has received preferment We
cannot afford to quarrel on this ground;
for, though their courage was for our
wounding, their valor was the valor of
Americans.
[p14]
The really bad feature of the situation
with respect to the relations of these
States to the General Government is,
that there is not only very little loyalty in
their people, but a great deal of stubborn
antagonism, and some deliberate defiance.
Further war in the field I do not
deem among the possibilities. Be the
leaders never so bloodthirsty, the common
people have had enough of fighting.
The bastard Unionism of North Carolina,
the haughty and self-complacent
State pride of South Carolina, the arrogant
dogmatism and insolent assumption
of Georgia, -- how shall we build nationality
on such foundations? That is the
true plan of reconstruction which makes
haste very slowly. It does not comport
with the character of our Government
to exact pledges of any State which are
not exacted of all. The one sole needful
condition is, that each State establish
a republican form of government,
whereby all civil rights at least shall be
assured in their fullest extent to every
citizen. The Union is no Union, unless
there is equality of privileges among
the States. When Georgia and the
Carolinas establish this republican form
of government, they will have brought
themselves into harmony with the national
will, and may justly demand
readmission to their former political
relations in the Union. Each State has
some citizens, who, wiser than the great
majority, comprehend the meaning of
Southern defeat with praiseworthy insight.
Seeing only individuals of this
small class, a traveller might honestly
conclude that the States were ready for
self-government. Let not the nation
commit the terrible mistake of acting
on this conclusion. These men are the
little leaven in the gross body politic
of Southern communities. It is no time
for passion or bitterness, and it does
not become our manhood to do anything
for revenge. Let us have peace
and kindly feeling; yet, that our peace
may be no sham or shallow affair, it is
painfully essential that we keep these
States awhile within national control,
in order to aid the few wise and just
men therein who are fighting the great
fight with stubborn prejudice and hide-bound
custom. Any plan of reconstruction
is wrong which accepts forced
submission as genuine loyalty, or even
as cheerful acquiescence in the national
desire and purpose.
IV.
[p16]
Before the war, we heard continually
of the love of the master for his
slave, and the love of the slave for his
master. There was also much talk to
the effect that the negro lived in the
midst of pleasant surroundings, and had
no desire to change his situation. It
was asserted that he delighted in a
state of dependence, and throve on the
universal favor of the whites. Some
of this language we conjectured might
be extravagant; but to the single fact
that there was universal good-will
between the two classes every Southern
white person bore evidence. So, too,
in my late visit to Georgia and the
Carolinas, they generally seemed anxious
to convince me that the blacks had behaved
well during the war, -- had kept
at their old tasks, had labored cheerfully
and faithfully, had shown no
disposition to lawlessness, and had rarely
been guilty of acts of violence, even in
sections where there were many women
and children, and but few white men.
[p17]
Yet I found everywhere now the
most direct antagonism between the
two classes. The whites charge generally
that the negro is idle, and at the
bottom of all local disturbances, and
credit him with most of the vices and
very few of the virtues of humanity.
The negroes charge that the whites are
revengeful, and intend to cheat the
laboring class at every opportunity, and
credit them with neither good purposes
nor kindly hearts. This present and
positive hostility of each class to the
other is a fact that will sorely perplex
any Northern man travelling in
either of these States. One would say,
that, if there had formerly been such
pleasant relations between them, there
ought now to be mutual sympathy and
forbearance, instead of mutual distrust
and antagonism. One would say, too,
that self-interest, the common interest
of capital and labor, ought to keep them
in harmony; while the fact is, that this
very interest appears to put them in an
attitude of partial defiance toward each
other. I believe the most charitable
traveller must come to the conclusion,
that the professed love of the whites
for the blacks was mostly a monstrous
sham or a downright false pretence.
For myself, I judge that it was nothing
less than an arrogant humbug.
[p18]
The negro is no model of virtue or
manliness. He loves idleness, he has
little conception of right and wrong, and
he is improvident to the last degree
of childishness. He is a creature, -- as
some of our own people will do well to
keep carefully in mind, -- he is a creature
just forcibly removed from slavery.
The havoc of war has filled his heart
with confused longings, and his ears
with confused sounds of rights and
privileges: it must be the nation's duty,
for it cannot be left wholly to his
late master, to help him to a clear
understanding of these rights and
privileges, and also to lay upon him a
knowledge of his responsibilities. He is
anxious to learn, and is very tractable in
respect to minor matters; but we shall
need almost infinite patience with him,
for he comes very slowly to moral
comprehensions.
[p19]
Going into the States where I went,
-- and perhaps the fact is true also of
the other Southern States, -- going into
Georgia and the Carolinas, and not
keeping in mind the facts of yesterday,
any man would almost be justified in
concluding that the end and purpose in
respect to this poor negro was his
extermination. It is proclaimed everywhere
that he will not work, that he
cannot take care of himself, that he is
a nuisance to society, that he lives by
stealing, and that he is sure to die in
a few months; and, truth to tell, the
great body of the people, though one
must not say intentionally, are doing
all they can to make these assertions
true. If it is not said that any
considerable number wantonly abuse
and outrage him, it must be said that
they manifest a barbarous indifference
to his fate, which just as surely drives
him on to destruction as open cruelty
would.
[p20]
There are some men and a few women
-- and perhaps the number of these
is greater than we of the North generally
suppose -- who really desire that
the negro should now have his full
rights as a human being. With the
same proportion of this class of
persons in a community of Northern
constitution, it might be justly concluded
that the whole community would soon
join or acquiesce in the effort to secure
for him at least a fair share of those
rights. Unfortunately, however, in these
Southern communities the opinion of
such persons cannot have such weight
as it would in ours. The spirit of caste,
of which I have already spoken, is an
element figuring largely against them
in any contest involving principle, --
an element of whose practical workings
we here know very little. The walls
between individuals and classes are so
high and broad, that the men and women
who recognize the negro's rights and
privileges as a freeman are almost as
far from the masses as we of the North
are. Moreover, that any opinion savors
of the "Yankee" -- in other words, is
new to the South -- is a fact that even
prevents its consideration by the great
body of the people. Their inherent
antagonism to everything from the
North -- an antagonism fostered and
cunningly cultivated for half a century
by the politicians in the interest of Slavery,
-- is something that no traveller
can photograph, that no Northern man
can understand, till he sees it with his
own eyes, hears it with his own ears,
and feels it by his own consciousness.
That the full freedom of the negroes
would be acknowledged at once is
something we had no warrant for expecting.
The old masters grant them
nothing, except at the requirement of
the nation, -- as a military and political
necessity; and any plan of reconstruction
is wrong which proposes at once
or in the immediate future to substitute
free-will for this necessity.
[p21]
Three-fourths of the people assume
that the negro will not labor, except on
compulsion; and the whole struggle
between the whites on the one hand
and the blacks on the other hand is a
struggle for and against compulsion.
The negro insists, very blindly perhaps,
that he shall be free to come and go
as he pleases; the white insists that
he shall come and go only at the
pleasure of his employer. The whites seem
wholly unable to comprehend that
freedom for the negro means the same
thing as freedom for them. They readilly
enough admit that the Government
has made him free, but appear to believe
that they still have the right to
exercise over him the old control. It
is partly their misfortune, and not wholly
their fault, that they cannot understand
the national intent, as expressed
in the Emancipation Proclamation and
the Constitutional Amendment. I did
not anywhere find a man who could see
that laws should be applicable to all
persons alike; and hence even the best
men hold that each State must have a
negro code. They acknowledge the
overthrow of the special servitude of
man to man, but seek through these
codes to establish the general servitude of
man to the commonwealth. I had
much talk with intelligent gentlemen in
various sections, and particularly with
such as I met during the conventions
at Columbia and Milledgeville, upon
this subject, and found such a state of
feeling as warrants little hope that the
present generation of negroes will see
the day in which their race shall be
amenable only to such laws as apply
to the whites.
[p22]
I think the freedmen divide themselves
into four classes: one fourth
recognizing, very clearly, the necessity
of work, and going about it with cheerful
diligence and wise forethought; one
fourth comprehending that there must
be labor, but needing considerable
encouragement to follow it steadily; one
fourth preferring idleness, but not
specially averse to doing some job-work
about the towns and cities; and one
fourth avoiding labor as much as possible,
and living by voluntary charity,
persistent begging, or systematic
pilfering. It is true, that thousands of the
aggregate body of this people appear to
have hoped, and perhaps believed, that
freedom meant idleness; true to, that
thousands are drifting about the
country or loafing about the centres of
population in a state of vagabondage. Yet
of the hundreds with whom I talked, I
found less than a score who seemed
beyond hope of reformation. It is a cruel
slander to say that the race will not
work, except on compulsion. I made
much inquiry, wherever I went, of great
numbers of planters and other employers,
and found but a very few cases in
which it appeared that they had
refused to labor reasonably well, when
fairly treated and justly paid. Grudgingly
admitted to any of the natural
rights of man, despised alike by Unionists
and Secessionists, wantonly outraged
by many and meanly cheated by
more of the old planters, receiving a
hundred cuffs for one helping hand and
a thousand curses for one kindly word,
-- they bear themselves toward their
former masters very much as white men
and women would under the same
circumstances. True, by such deportment
they unquestionably harm themselves;
but consider of how little value life is
from their stand-point. They grope in
the darkness of this transition period,
and rarely find any sure stay for the
weary arm and the fainting heart. Their
souls are filled with a great, but vague
longing for freedom; they battle blindly
with fate and circumstance for the
unseen and uncomprehended, and seem
to find every man's hand raised against
them. What wonder that they fill the
land with restlessness!
[p23]
However unfavorable this exhibit of
the negroes in respect to labor may
appear, it is quite as good as can be
made for the whites. I everywhere
found a condition of affairs in this
regard that astounded me. Idleness, not
occupation, seemed the normal state.
It is the boast of men and women
alike, that they have never done an
hour's work. The public mind is
thoroughly debauched, and the general
conscience is lifeless as the grave. I met
hundreds of hale and vigorous young
men who unblushingly owned to me
that they had not earned a penny since
the war closed. Nine tenths of the people
must be taught that labor is even
not debasing. It was pitiful enough to
find so much idleness, but it was more
pitiful to observe that it was likely to
continue indefinitely. The war will not
have borne proper fruit, if our peace
does not speedily bring respect for
labor, as well as respect for man. When
we have secured one of these things,
we shall have gone far toward securing
the other; and when we have secured
both, then indeed shall we have noble
cause for glorying in our country, --
true warrant for exulting that our flag
floats over no slave.
[p24]
Meantime, while we patiently and
helpfully wait for the day in which
"All men's good shall
Be each man's rule, and Universal Peace
Lie like a shaft of light across the land,"
there are at least five things for the nation
to do: make haste slowly in the
work of reconstruction; temper justice
with mercy, but see to it that justice is
not overborne; keep military control of
these lately rebellious States, till they
guaranty a republican form of government;
scrutinize carefully the personal
fitness of the men chosen therefrom as
representatives in the Congress of the
United States; and sustain therein
some agency that shall stand between
the whites and the blacks, and aid each
class in coming to a proper understanding
of its privileges and responsibilities.
Transcribed by T. Lloyd Benson,
Department of History, Furman University, from the Atlantic
Monthly (February 1866), 237-245.