Spring had ripened into fervid summer, as, after days of exquisite sailing on the Gulf, we steamed past the forts where Farragut added the latest laurels to our navy. Our pilot proposed taking us directly up the river, but presently the Wayanda’s keel plowed deep into the oozy mud of the channel, and admonished us that Mobile is an inland city, to which ocean-going vessels may not always venture to ascend.

A boat’s crew was sent forward, and even it had a perilous passage among the torpedoes which still lined the channel. Meantime we surveyed the greenish mud of the river from all its possible aspects, and through the long hours of a hot morning were taught the force of those early hopes which, in 1861, led the Mobilians to believe that their torrid weather and abounding mosquitoes would surely prevent the Yankees from making any successful movement against the forts.

Here, through all that braggart spring, from day to day, resounded the boasts of the young soldiers, who still thought war a sport like horse-racing or dueling.^[26]

The first volunteer companies, eager for Yankee scalps, and carrying pine coffins among their camp equipage, in which, they had told their wives and sweethearts, when they started, that they meant to bring back the corpses of Lincoln and his Cabinet, were hurried here to possess the forts, before “old Harvey Brown” should send over some of his regulars from Fort Pickens. Here Colonel Hardee experienced the difficulty of making gallant Southerners conform to his own tactics; and here, amid their champagne, the brave fellows murmured at being kept ditch-digging, when they wanted to be led at once against the cowardly Yankees. Here John Forsyth, at once Peace Commissioner and professional inflamer of the Southern heart, (now desirous of renewing his old vocation,^[27]) took Dr. Russell and other foreign visitors to show them model fortifications and model soldiers. By and by there was need for more serious work to the northward, and the young volunteers, their champagne and patés ruthlessly thrown out of the wagons, were taught on Virginia fields the beginnings of real war.

At last a light side-wheeler came steaming down the river for us, and presently we were joined by General Gordon Granger, and the whole array of city officials, representing the Yankee Government in the city. Among them was a keen-looking, suspiciously-elegant cotton agent, shirt and fingers ablaze with diamonds, and face wreathed in smiles, to meet the gentlemen whom he supposed all-powerful at the Treasury Department. He was enamored of the South; thought it would be best now not to irritate her, and especially that there should be no more offensive abolitionism than was absolutely necessary. He doubted very much the policy of talking about negro suffrage, and was sure he could do better for the Government in cotton by conciliating the Southern character. Besides, the negroes ought to be under some rigid control any way. If left to absolute freedom, they would not work, and the country would be ruined.

Secretary McCulloch once said: “I am sure I sent some honest cotton agents South; but it sometimes seems very doubtful whether any of them remained honest very long.” This man, who greeted us with such bright smiles and smooth-spoken talk, has since been fined two hundred thousand dollars and sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment for cotton stealing!

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:

1st. That all present holders of cotton sold or subscribed to the Confederate Government, but never delivered, should be recognized as its lawful owners, on the ground that the consideration for the stipulated transfer had failed.

2d. That a general amnesty should be accorded to all persons willing in good faith to take the required oaths, and aid in the re-establishment of civil government; and that the Executive influence should be given for the repeal of all confiscation laws.

3d. That this (which should be done, in order to show the Rebels now returning to their allegiance, that the Government was magnanimous, and not mercenary, as well as to relieve the general distress, and aid in the revival of industry and the return of prosperity,) must be accompanied or preceded by the adoption of fundamental laws in the States thus generously dealt with, which should permit no distinction of rights based merely on color; that thus the principal source of trouble in the future might be avoided.

Time will show—indeed, most men will agree that it has already shown—the wisdom and statesmanlike sagacity of the views thus early presented to the consideration of the President. That they would have been gladly accepted by the South, every man who saw the temper of the Rebel States in the May and June following the surrender is well assured. How much political embarrassment and pecuniary corruption their adoption would have saved can only be told by those who have probed to the depths the festering corruption of the cotton agency system, and who can forecast the issues of the present Congressional and Executive complications.

I speak advisedly in saying that every Rebel State would have promptly reorganized under such conditions, and that the majority in Congress would have as promptly admitted their representatives.

But, so far as the political points were concerned, they had already been adversely decided at Washington. As to the question of cotton, Mr. Mellen, in whose charge the entire matter was placed, without controverting the views above suggested, was unable to accept and act upon them. His instructions contemplated making the most out of the captured cotton. To give it away would at once be denounced as a corrupt waste of great sums of the public money. It was replied that this cotton was not the same as public money or even public property now in hand; that it was not actually captured; was scattered over hundreds of miles of territory; was only known by uncertain records to have been subscribed to the Rebel Government; could not be found without protracted search, nor without protracted examinations in each case, which opened up boundless opportunities for bribery and wholesale frauds; in short, that no effort could be made to collect this cotton which would not end with little profit and less credit to the Government.

Mr. Mellen earnestly desired to do the right thing. Much abused as he has been, I have never seen an official charged with such weighty responsibilities, and so liable to slanderous accusations, whatever course he should take, who seemed more earnestly and sincerely bent on simply finding out his duty, and then doing it with his whole mind and heart. But as to the general policy of making the most out of the effects of the Rebel Government, whatever might be his own opinions, his instructions left him no discretion.

The work of cotton seizure therefore began. Before these records of Southern travel are finished, there will be ample opportunity to tell how it ended.

Alabamians had as yet scarcely recovered from the shock of the surrender, and few in the country adjacent to Mobile had formed any definite plans for the future. Some thought of going to Brazil; some wanted to plunge into Mexican broils; a few wanted to get away from the “sassy free niggers” by going North. Scarcely any seemed to regard their chance of cultivating their lands by free negro labor as hopeful, and the most had a vague, uncertain idea that in some way or another they would have to give up their lands. Still there were scarcely any sales, and prices had found no settled standard. Some would take one-tenth of what used to be considered the value of their estates; others would be satisfied to sell their plantations for the cost of the buildings which stood upon them. Nearly all were without faith in greenbacks. If they sold at all, they must get something for their lands. They didn’t want much, but what they did want must be in gold.

There was general uncertainty, however, as to whether they had any right to sell, or whether the titles they might execute would be valid. They were not willing to believe it possible that an attempt would be made to enforce so absurd a piece of legislation as the Yankee confiscation law, but still there was no telling!

Communication with the interior was still very difficult. They could reach Selma and Montgomery by a week’s steamboating, and the Tombigbee would take them to Demopolis, but trips were rare; and though Mobile was the necessary political and business heart of the State, this heart’s circulation was yet so impaired, that it neither strengthened nor was strengthened thereby. What was said at Mobile, therefore, was not, as formerly, the concentrated thought of the State, gathered there through all its converging lines of approach, but rather the thought of those who were accustomed to speak for the State, at a period when almost completely isolated from their constituents.

Railroads were not in running order, nor likely to be for some months. The war had destroyed their rolling stock. Some were left without cars; nearly all without good locomotives. Bridges were burnt; rails were torn up and twisted for miles and miles; the companies themselves were utterly impoverished; and unless they could get unlooked-for aid, most of them would have to go into liquidation.

To the courtesies of a serenade, drives, rides, dinners, and innumerable calls, the officials added a review of the entire military force in and about Mobile, in honor of the Chief Justice.

The Mobile men gathered about the corners, or sullenly contemplated the pageant from their windows, but scarcely a lady could be seen. They had neither smiles nor glances, just then, for the garrison of the conqueror. One needed indeed to be sanguine, as he watched the scene, and especially as he studied the bearing of the inhabitants, not to think of Warsaw.

General Granger, a fine, soldierly-looking person, with face browned by many a campaign, and a history through the war, from its very inception down to his last action, at the head of the land forces co-operating with Farragut in the attack on Mobile, that makes soldiers always ready to follow where he leads, took his station, with the Chief Justice by his side, and a showy staff surrounding them, at the crossing of the principal streets. Regiment after regiment marched past, whose banners, as they drooped low in salute, showed names of nearly every battle in the war. One came up with swinging, steady tramp, but with ranks sadly thinned, though often recruited. Its tattered and stained standards were crowned with the name of the first great conflict of the West. In their young, fresh beauty they had waved where Lyon fell.

Infantry, artillery, and cavalry streamed by, and then came the sight which brought curses to the mouths of nearly all the onlookers. The negro troops marched very handsomely, and made, perhaps, the best appearance of any regiments in the column; but every citizen seemed to consider their appearance as a personal insult to himself. That the “miserable runaway niggers” behaved so handsomely only aggravated the offense. “There’s my Tom,” muttered a plethoric old citizen, while the natural red of his face inflamed to purple. “How I’d like to cut the throat of the dirty, impudent good-for-nothing!”

But no such voices reached the party surrounded by the glittering staff. The subjugation was as yet too fresh and real. One had to mingle with them to find how sore they were at the degradation of being guarded by these runaway slaves of theirs. To be conquered by the Yankees was humiliating, but to have their own negroes armed and set over them they felt to be cruel and wanton insult. Yet they scarcely dared still to speak of it above whispers, and their combination of rage and helplessness would have been ludicrous, but for its dark suggestions of the future.

The review occurred early in the morning, and the heat did not seem oppressive to us, quietly remaining about the hotel; but a portion of our party who were out riding found it intense, and in the course of the day there were several deaths in the suburbs, chiefly among Northern men, from sun-stroke. But the general testimony of Northerners in Mobile is to the effect that they find but little difference between people from the different sections in their capacity for enduring the heat. Only its long continuance, they say, and not its intensity, makes the Southern summer dangerous to Northern men.

General Andrews, three or four years ago a briefless young lawyer in a remote Minnesota village—such have been the rapid promotions the war has offered—showed us through the portions of the city destroyed, only a week or two before, by perhaps the most destructive explosion that ever devastated any American city. How it originated will be forever a mystery. Every one who might explain it perished. There were large quantities of ammunition stored near the upper end of the landing, and in the heart of the cotton warehouses. One of the concealed torpedoes left by the Rebels may have been touched; Rebels may themselves have stealthily arranged a system of wires to explode it; a percussion shell may have been dropped; some reckless dare-devil may have been smoking a cigar. However it occurred, there was a sudden roar in the midst of the busy throng of workmen and soldiers, and one common, instantaneous destruction overwhelmed them all.

Over four-fifths of the entire storage of the city was destroyed. A hundred mules were buried in a single corral. Days afterward corpses of here and there a hapless soldier began to be dug out by those who cared to risk exposure to the scattered shells still hourly exploding. Even when we drove down into the ruins we heard now and again a dull, heavy thud, like the stroke of some ponderous weight against the solid earth. It was a shell buried far beneath the rubbish of fallen houses, and fired by the heat that still smouldered across whole squares.

Long before we reached the scene of complete destruction, we came upon houses shattered, bottom stories bereft of superstructure, door and window-frames driven in, gable-ends standing up alone, without the roofs they were raised to bear. The streets were filled with the rubbish. Here was a little fragment of a wall, twenty bricks, perhaps, lying sidewise as they fell, still fastened by the unbroken mortar; there the whole outer course of a gable-end dropped flat, and paving the street. Other walls would still be standing; but six or eight feet from the ground the outer course of bricks had been abruptly started outward an inch or more, and thence upward the wall imitated the direction—but by no means, as we momentarily witnessed, the security—of the leaning towers of Pisa.

All this passed, we came to the scene of actual explosion. Here, for eight or ten squares, was one waste of broken brick and mortar, still smouldering and smoking, and still—horrible thought!—roasting beneath this parched debris its human victims. Solid warehouses, chimneys, cotton-presses, machinery, all had been flattened as a whirlwind might flatten a house of card-boards.

It was a sickening sequel to such a scene to listen, as we afterward did, to the descriptions by our surgeons in the old United States hospital, of the condition in which the Rebels had left it, filthy to the last degree, full of neglected sick men, destitute of medicines, or, indeed, of the commonest hospital comforts. Several of the surviving victims of the explosion had been brought here, who all seemed to attribute it to Rebel torpedoes, fired by design.

Among the soldiers who filled the other wards, it was curious to watch the recognition of the Chief Justice, by his likeness on the one-dollar greenbacks. Finally he entered into conversation with a soldier in one of the outer hospital tents, who told him he was from Ohio. “Ah, so am I.” “Are you? from what part?” asked the soldier. “Don’t you know Mr. Chase, your former Governor?” suggested General Andrews. “O yes; but, Governor, you must remember we haven’t seen any of them greenbacks o’ your’n for so long, we’ve kinder forgot the look o’ your features!” It seemed the paymaster had neglected him.