A very few Union men could be seen. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say, a few could be found less treasonable than the majority of South Carolinians.

“To be frank with you,” said one of these men, a sallow-faced country lawyer, from the mountain district, “to be frank with you, we were all Rebels. The North has never understood, and I doubt if it ever will understand, the absolute unanimity with which, after the war was begun, we all supported it. While there was any use in it, we resisted secession; but after the State seceded, our district, which was always strongly Union, sent more and better volunteers to the war than any other.”

“You mean, then, that after secession was accomplished, the former Unionists became more violent Rebels than the rest; and that, practically, not a soul in the State remained true to the Union, except the negroes?”

“Well, I suspect you’re a little mistaken about the negroes. They’re very ignorant, and most of them were, and are, governed by their masters’ notions.”

“What security have we, in restoring political power to a community disposed toward us as yours was, and still feeling as you now represent?”

“Oh, our people are impulsive, and they are always decided, one way or the other!”

“Suppose Representatives should be admitted to Congress, and South Carolina should thus be clothed with all her old power. You who, before secession, were the Union men, will be the only voters now; but in two or three years, of course, everybody will vote again. Will not you original Union men be again outnumbered by the original secessionists?”

“I don’t believe we ever were outnumbered. I don’t believe there ever was a majority for secession in South Carolina.”

“The poll books tell a different story.”

“Yes; but remember we had been fighting secession for thirty years, and had got tired of it. Men said these restless spirits will never be quiet until they have tried secession. If we don’t let them try it now, they’ll keep us in a constant turmoil until we do. It is bound to come some time, and we may as well spare ourselves further trouble and let it come now.”

“In other words, then, men said, let the Union be destroyed, with whatever attendant horrors, rather than one should be bothered to keep up this perpetual struggle.”

“Well, not exactly that. You must remember there was a tremendous pressure. I myself had my house surrounded by a hundred and fifty armed men, one night, before the election, because they thought I was a Union man. There was no making head against the current.”

“By your showing, then, the rebel element was resistless before the passage of the secession ordinance, and universal after it. As you frankly say, you were all rebels. We have incurred an enormous debt in subduing you, and we know that there is a small party at the North openly, and a larger one secretly, desirous of repudiating that debt, in order to shake off the burden of heavy taxation. Now, if South Carolina, and other States occupying her position, are restored to power in the nation, what security have we that all you rebels would continue voting for heavy taxation to pay the debt incurred in whipping you? Would there not be very great danger of your uniting with this minority at the North, and thus securing a national majority in favor of repudiation?”

“Well, our attention has never been called to that subject, and we were not aware that there was likely to be any portion whatever of your people favorable to repudiation. I can’t say, however, what our more violent people would do. There has been very little comparison of views; and all our efforts must first be given to getting our civil authority and power restored, without considering what questions may come up back of that.”

“With what political party at the North, then, would your people be more likely to affiliate?”

“Of course with the Democratic. We have understood all along that it sympathized more with us than any other; that it was more opposed to the war, more disposed to leave us alone with our slaves, more ready for favorable terms of peace.”

“And if any considerable portion of that party were to propose lightening the taxes by repudiating (in reduction of interest or otherwise) part of the debt incurred in subduing you, you would be very apt to unite with them?”

“I don’t know but we would; but I can’t say; for, as yet, we are giving no attention to anything excepting reorganization!”

Recurring to his admissions concerning the bitterness of the original secessionists, I asked: “What security will we have, if political power should be fully restored to South Carolina, that the secessionists may not regain control of the State Government, and prove as pestilent as ever, if not in the field, then in Congress, and in the old expedients of obnoxious State legislation?”

“Oh, a barrel of cider never ferments twice.”

I asked about the popular feeling toward Jeff. Davis, curious to see if the hatred to him, of which we have heard at the North, really exists among any class in South Carolina except the negroes. My Union man replied: “There is a very general feeling of great kindness to him, and great sympathy for his present misfortunes. One party in the South assailed his administration very bitterly; but the feeling was not, to any extent, a personal one. He is greatly admired and loved by our people.”

“Was the South exhausted of men when the rebellion broke down? Was it really impossible to re-enforce Lee’s army, and, if so, what citizens have you now for re-organizing State government except the rebel soldiers, unless, indeed, you reckon the negroes?”

“The South never was exhausted of men, sir; there were plenty of them everywhere. Disaffection, weariness, indisposition to the long strain of an effort that took more than four years to accomplish its purpose; that was what broke down the Confederacy. There were plenty of men all the time, but they dodged the conscripting officer, or deserted at the first chance they got. Of course, our losses by death and disabling wounds have been terribly great; but the race of arms-bearing men in South Carolina is not extinct.”^[14]

On the afternoon of our last day’s stay in Charleston, a meeting, in one of the negro churches, afforded me the first opportunity of the trip to see large masses of negroes together. It was called a week or two ago by General Saxton, who stands in the light of a patron saint to all these people; but it was doubtless swelled by the hope that Chief Justice Chase, whom General Saxton had earnestly invited, might consent to be present. He had emphatically refused, the evening before, and had forbidden any announcement of his name; but had finally said that, if he could go unheralded, he would like to see the negroes together.

The church is of the largest size, and belongs exclusively to the negroes, who have their own negro pastor, occupy pews in the body of the building, and send the poor people to the galleries, very much after the fashion of their white brethren. The pavement in front was crowded, and the steps were almost impassable. A white-wooled old deacon saw my difficulty in forcing my way up the steaming aisle, and, crowding the negroes and negresses aside with little ceremony, led me to a seat almost under the pulpit, where I found, perhaps, a dozen whites, all told. Among them was Colonel Beecher—a brother of Henry Ward Beecher—and at the table sat the inevitable reporter. If the people of Timbuctoo were to have a great meeting to consider the subject of their rights, and were to give a week’s notice of it, I believe some gentleman with a pocket full of sharpened lead pencils, and a phonographic red-ruled note-book under his arm, would come walking up at the last moment and announce himself as the special reporter for some enterprising American journal.

A Major-General, in full uniform, occupied the desk and was addressing the crammed audience of negroes in a plain, nervous, forcible manner. It was an odd sight, but General Saxton certainly adorns the pulpit. Ladies would call him a handsome man; and his black hair and luxurious English whiskers and mustache would be their especial admiration. He looks—to judge of his intellect by his face and head—narrow, but intense; not very profound in seeing the right, but energetic in doing it when seen; given to practice, rather than theory; and, withal, good and true. He is the first regular army officer who was found willing to undertake this work of caring for and superintending the freedmen; and he has done it faithfully, under all manner of slights and obloquy from brother officers, who thought his work unworthy of West Point. And yet he undertook it, not from any special love of the negro, but because he was ordered. “I would have preferred being in the field,” he said simply, last night, “but I was ordered to do this thing, and I have tried to do it faithfully, till the Government gave me something else to do. I was educated in its school and for its service, and I thought it my business to do whatever it required.” The Government has rarely been so fortunate in selecting its agents for tasks that required peculiar adaptability.

The audience was a study. Near the pulpit sat a coal-black negro, in the full uniform of a Major of the army, with an enormous regulation hat—be sure there was no lack of flowing plume, or gilt cord and knots—disposed on the table beside him. At every emphatic sentence in the General’s speech he shouted, “Hear, hear,” and clapped his hands, with the unction and gravity of an old parliamentarian. Near him were two others in uniform, one a mulatto, the other scarcely more than a quadroon, and both with very intelligent faces, and very modest and graceful in their bearing. One was a First Lieutenant, the other a Major.

Around them was a group of certainly the blackest faces, with the flattest noses and the wooliest heads, I ever saw—the mouths now and then broadening into a grin or breaking out into that low, oily, chuckling gobble of a laugh which no white man can ever imitate. Beyond them ranged all colors and apparently all conditions. Some, black and stalwart, were dressed like quiet farm laborers, and had probably come in from the country, or had been field hands before the war. Others, lighter in color and slighter in build, were dressed in broadcloth, with flashy scarfs and gaudy pins, containing paste, or Cape May diamonds. Others looked like the more intelligent class of city laborers; and there were a few old patriarchs who might recollect the days of Denmark Vesey. On the other side of the church was a motley, but brilliant army of bright-colored turbans, wound around wooly heads, and tawdry bandanas, and hats of all the shapes that have prevailed within the memory of this generation, and bonnets of last year’s styles, with absolutely a few of the coquettish little triangular bits of lace and flowers which the New York milliners have this year decreed. Some of them wore kid gloves, all were gaudily dressed, and, a few, barring the questionable complexion, had the air and bearing of ladies.

They were all enthusiastic, the women even more than the men. Some of the ancient negresses sat swaying to and fro, with an air of happy resignation, only broken now and then by an emphatic nod of the head, and an exclamation, “Dat’s true, for shore.” The younger ones laughed and giggled, and when the great cheers went up, clapped with all their might, and looked across to see how the young men were doing, and whether their enthusiasm was observed. Ah, well! Who is there who doesn’t want to know whether his world, be it a big one or a little one, is noticing him?

But the noteworthy point in all this enthusiasm was, that it was intelligent. Bulwer makes Richelieu relent toward a young man who applauded his play at the proper places. General Saxton had equal occasion to be gratified with his auditors. On taking his seat, he was followed by the gorgeous Major (who turned out to be the same negro about whom Lord Brougham raised that beautiful little diplomatic muddle with United States Minister Dallas, at a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society in London). The Major was not happy in his remarks, and elicited very little applause, till, suddenly, he was astounded by a thundering burst of it. He began acknowledging the compliment, but the tumult burst out louder than ever; and the orator finally discovered that it was not for him, but for Major-General Gillmore, commanding the department, who was advancing up the aisle, escorting Chief Justice Chase.

Presently General Saxton introduced the Chief Justice, and the whole audience rose and burst out into cheer after cheer, that continued unintermittedly till we had counted at least nine, and possibly one or two more. The negroes may be very ignorant, but it is quite evident that they know, or think they know, who their friends are. The little “talk” that followed was like its author, simple, straightforward and weighty, till, at the close, it rose into a strain of unaffected eloquence that almost carried the excitable audience off their feet. “’Tisn’t only what he says,” whispered an enthusiastic negro behind me to his neighbor, “but it’s de man what says it. He don’t talk for nuffin, and his words hab weight.”^[15]

After more tumultuous cheering, the audience called for Gillmore, till the great artillerist absolutely blushed in his embarrassment. His speeches for Charleston were made from the muzzle of the Swamp Angel.

I spent the evening in the Charleston Courier office. The old library remained, and Congressional Globes and arguments on the divine right of slavery stood side by side with Reports of the Confederate Congress, and official accounts of battles, while on the wall was pasted one of the most bombastic proclamations of the runaway Governor. Several of the old attaches of the concern remain, among them a phonographic reporter and the cashier. The circulation of this most flourishing Southern paper in the seaboard States, had dwindled down to less than a thousand. “We wrote our reports,” said the phonographer, “on the backs of old grocery bills, and in blank pages torn out of old account books.” “We deserved all we got,” he continued, “but you ought not to be hard on us now. The sun never shone on a nobler or kinder-hearted people than the South Carolinians, and this was always the nicest town to live in, in the United States.”

Encountering a so-called South Carolina Unionist, from the interior, I asked about the relations between the negroes and their old masters. “In the main, the niggers are working just as they used to, not having made contracts of any sort, because there was no competent officer accessible before whom the contracts could be approved. A few have been hired by the day; and some others have gone to work for a specified share in the crops. In a great many cases the planters have told them to work ahead, get their living out of the crops, and what further share they were entitled to should be determined when the officers to approve contracts came. Then, if they couldn’t agree, they could separate.”

“Have there been no disturbances between the negroes and their former masters, no refusals to recognize the destruction of slavery?”

“In our part of the State, none. Elsewhere I have heard of them. With us, the death of slavery is recognized, and made a basis of action by everybody. But we don’t believe that because the nigger is free he ought to be saucy; and we don’t mean to have any such nonsense as letting him vote. He’s helpless, and ignorant, and dependent, and the old masters will still control him.^[16] I have never been a large slaveholder myself—for the last year or two I have had but twelve, little and big. Every one of them stays with me, just as before, excepting one, a carpenter. I told him he’d better go off and shift for himself. He comes back, every two or three nights, to tell me how he is getting along; and the other day he told me he hadn’t been able to collect anything for his work, and I gave him a quarter’s provisions to get started with.”

“I had to give him,” he significantly added, “a sort of paper—not, of course, pretending to be legal—certifying that he was working for himself, with my consent, in order to enable him to get along without trouble.” There was a world of meaning in the phrase, “To enable him to get along without trouble,” though he was as free as the man that gave the paper.

I asked what they would do with the negroes, if they got permission to re-organize.

“Well, we want to have them industrious and orderly, and will do all we can to bring it about.”

“Will you let any of them vote?”

“That question has not been discussed. Nobody could stand up in the State who should advocate promiscuous negro suffrage. It is possible that a few might be willing to let the intelligent negroes vote—after some years, at any rate, if not now.”

“I believe you let the sandhillers vote. Don’t you know that these disfranchised negroes of Charleston are infinitely their superiors, in education, industry, wealth and good conduct?”

“Well, they’re pretty bad, it’s true—those sandhillers—but there isn’t the same prejudice against them.”

The moon lit up, with a softened effulgence, all the beauties, and hid all the scars of Charleston, as, late at night, I walked, through its desolate streets, and by its glorious shrubbery, to the landing, and hailed the “Wayanda.” A boat shot out of the shadow for me; and before I had joined the Doctor, below deck, the anchor had been hoisted and the vessel was under way.