The political situation in Mobile, in the early days of June, might be briefly summed up. They were anxious for a re-establishment of civil government that would release them from suspense about confiscation. They expected severe punishment for their rebellion, as far as civil rights were concerned, but were disposed to put the best face possible upon affairs, ask for a good deal, and take whatever they could get.

One day the Mayor called, together with his city council—a group of fine-looking gentlemen, several of them past middle age. The Mayor himself was a Northern man, who, years ago, had removed to Alabama and identified himself with her interests. Of course, therefore, he joined in the war against the Yankees, and professed no love for them now; but, say what he might, he couldn’t help looking like the shrewd Yankee he was. They were all “ready to accept the new order of things.” That is, they knew they had to submit, and they preferred, by putting a good face on it, to continue in their offices. That anybody wanted “acceptance of the new order of things” to have a wider significance, I failed to discover. The negroes were free; but to expect them to work, or even to behave themselves, without coercive measures, was preposterous. Slavery being destroyed, the Mobilians awaited the lead of the United States in discovering some new mode of constraining service. The idea of service without constraint never entered their heads.

Among the callers was a fine, courteous, florid-faced old gentleman, with gray locks carefully collected behind into an antique queue, who began his talk about “this unfortunate class of our population,” by going back to the foundations of things. “You know they are the descendants of Ham, sir, and that service in some form is their heritage. It would be flying in the face of Providence to attempt changing that. Now, sir, there are foolish fellows among them, who, since they have been made free, want to rise from that sphere to which they have been appointed. Of course, they’ll fail; we have no uneasiness on that score; but we are the friends of these people, and we are sorry to see them expose themselves to so much misery in making attempts that we know from the outset must be abortive. Isn’t it better to have the laws in some way take the matter out of their hands and make them work?”

I told the old gentleman of what we had seen at St. Helena. He utterly refused to believe that free negroes could be self-supporting. General Saxton had helped them, and stood in the place of a master to them. No negroes were going to work steadily and successfully without the aid of Anglo-Saxon organization and direction.

Negro suffrage seemed to all the most revolting of possibilities. They were not willing to think their conquerors could mean to inflict such degradation upon a gallant people. In fact, they wouldn’t—no, they didn’t really think their population could he brought to endure it!

Herein was observable a marked change of tone since our visit to the cities on the Atlantic coast. There they were just as vehement in their protestations against negro suffrage, but they ended in entreaties that the conquerors would spare the infliction of such disgrace. Here came threats. Everywhere else it was manifest that if the restoration of civil authority depended on negro suffrage, then negro suffrage would be accepted. Here, for the first time, we were told the people would not stand it! The explanation is simple. They were just beginning to get a knowledge of the North Carolina proclamation, and to imagine that the President was willing to concede to them more power than they had dared to hope. It was the old maxim illustrated once more. They had been offered an inch; they were soon to be seen clamorous for ells.

A “reconstruction meeting” was called for the evening on which we left, and men were busy consulting on plans to be pursued. The upshot of the whole matter was that they meant to resist negro suffrage just as far as they dared, and to seek a reconstruction that should let them back with as few changes as possible.

All this was natural. It required small statesmanship at Washington, or anywhere else, to comprehend it. They were powerless; they wanted to make the best arrangement they could, but were sure to take, because they must take, any they were offered. Down to the time when the terms of the North Carolina proclamation came to be understood, we had found the South like clay. The Washington potters could mold it to their liking; it was only to be hoped they knew of what fashion republican vessels should be shaped. But the moment they heard of that proclamation, the late Rebels began to take courage on the question of suffrage, and to suspect that they were not so helpless as they had imagined. Even yet, however, the golden moment was not wholly past.

Less bitterness was observed than might have been expected. The most heated manifestations were those of the returning Rebel soldiers against some who had tempted them into the ranks. Here and there one heard of a case in which returned soldiers had attacked or even hung citizens for failures to keep their promises about supporting the families of those who had volunteered. Northerners in Mobile had an idea that the presence of our soldiers alone prevented such scenes in the city itself, and they professed, on what authority I scarcely know, to enumerate at least twenty cases of the kind in adjoining counties. But proofs were not wanting of the spirit in which, to the very last, the conflict against the Government had been waged. One of our officers, whose duty led him to search for a quantity of Rebel manuscripts, by lucky accident discovered in time a torpedo planted among them, and so arranged that his movement of the papers would have been sure to explode it. The spirit of unconquerable hate, after the battle was fought and lost, could hardly go further.

“Where do you come from?” one of the party happened to ask a negro who had been employed for some trifling service. “From Charleston, sah. I b’longed to Massa Legree, uncle to the great lawyer.” Massa Legree had proved worthy of the name which an Abolition pen has made immortal. He had sold this man into Alabama fifteen years ago, and the gray-wooled fellow said that since then he had neither seen nor heard from wife or child. “But I’s much ’bliged to all the good gemmen and ladies as has helped us to freedom. We’ll all s’port oursel’s now, and I’s hope soon to hab money enough to go back and look for my old ’oman and babies.” The poor man seemed to have no comprehension of the fact that his babies of fifteen years ago were scarcely to be considered babies now.

He was right about their supporting themselves. During the preceding month the military authorities had issued rations to the destitute Mobilians, white and black alike. To the master race no less than fifty-nine thousand rations had been given away by the Government they had been trying to subvert. Among the negroes only eleven thousand and eighty (or less than one-fifth as many,) had been needed. In June the number of destitute negroes had decreased till they were drawing only one-tenth as many rations daily as were required by the whites. A stranger might have concluded that it was the white race that was going to prove unable to take care of itself, instead of the emancipated slaves, over whose future, unless brightened by some vision of compulsory labor, their late loving masters grew so sad.

The explanation was a simple one. The negroes had gone to work: it was the only way they knew for getting bread, except when the morals of slavery had taught them to steal, and for that there was now small chance. The whites had nobody left to go to work for them, and that was the only way to get bread they knew.

Throughout the city the negroes found plenty of employments. In the country they were already talking of clubbing together and working plantations. But I heard of no movement of this kind that promised success. They had been accustomed to obey a common master; relieved from his control, each one now wanted to set up for master on his own account, and “boss” the rest. There was little doubt that they would make enough to keep from starving; but there was no prospect of their doing much more. Large cotton crops were not to be expected from any plantation which negroes controlled.

An evidence or two appeared of the “war of races” which the mourners over dead Slavery were predicting. Some negroes were heard of, at Montgomery, who had come into the city with their ears cut off by their former masters, in punishment for their assertion of their freedom. Of course, such things were far from general; but the fact that they ever occurred gave point to the occasional croakings about negro insurrections. “Negro insurrections,” forsooth! We need new dictionaries to help us understand one another, when knocking a man down for trying the playful liberty of cutting your ears off becomes “insurrection!”

Mobile houses showed the straits to which the people had been reduced. The pianos all jangled, and the legs of the parlor-chairs were out of tune quite as badly. Sofas had grown dangerous places for any but the most slow-motioned and sedate. Missing bits of veneering from the furniture illustrated the absence of Yankee prepared glue. The glories of fine window-curtains had departed. Carpets had in many cases gone for army blankets.

We saw curious rough earthen mugs, that looked as if they had been dug out of Pompeii, where they had been badly glazed by the heat of the lava. These were specimens of home manufacture, to take the place of broken glasses, and had been sold at several dollars apiece, Confederate money. “It didn’t make much difference what they asked; it was about as easy to pay ten dollars of that stuff as one. But look out that your own greenbacks don’t soon get in the same fix.” A Rebel songster was a rare prize, presented by a Mobile lady to one of our party. Its cover was of wall paper, over which the title was printed; and the paper for the body of the book was scarcely whiter.

Dinners were a sad trial to the old hospitable and luxurious entertainers. They had fine wines left, but champagne must be taken in plain tumblers, and enough to go around the table of one size or shape could hardly be mustered, even with energetic borrowing. Sets of dishes—whatever, in fact, was breakable—had undergone like disasters.

“But we’re all poor alike,” said a sprightly young friend of Madame Le Vert’s. “It makes no difference to us here. Nobody can do any better; so, what is the use of being unhappy about it. I wear this palmetto hat, for example, made in Mobile. It doesn’t look like the elegant straws of the Northern milliner-shops; but everybody has to wear palmetto, and so I’m in the fashion. This silk may be very old-fashioned, and I’m sure the style in which it’s made is; but how were you going to do any better in Mobile? These gloves are not Jouvin’s best, but find me any Mobile lady that has them. And as for shoes, we’ve all learned not to despise calf-skin, or even something a good deal stronger.” And the little foot gave a stamp that certainly never came from a New York gaiter boot.^[28]

A wretched officer, who had been listening, had the heartlessness to add: “And when we came here, a dozen of you could sit in a church pew, where it is now crowded with only four or five.” It was true; even crinoline had been added to Mobile wardrobes in less than a month. Most of the dresses still gave ludicrous evidence that they had been made with reference to less expansive underclothing.

Madame Le Vert herself, with a few other Mobile ladies, made up a pleasant party to accompany us down the river to the forts, under whose guns the Wayanda was lying. The noted little lady seemed to have gone bravely through the war; though at its close she was reduced to quite as great straits as the rest. She steered discreetly clear of dangerous complications; scrupulously said “Confederate” in place of “Rebel,” and “Federal” in place of “Yankee,” and could hardly consider her literary labors ended till she, too, had contributed her book about the war.

All were bitter about the sudden collapse of the Confederate currency. It had gone down until a dollar was worth only four or five cents, but still it was worth something, “and Heaven knows,” ejaculated a lively young person, “there was enough of it, such as it was.” But there was no time for such conversions as were possible. There were opportunities for buying real estate with it; Jew brokers were ready to buy up currency and give gold; provisions might at least have been secured with it. But hundreds of widows and orphans still had nearly their whole possessions in Confederate currency; while General Maury assured them they need not be uneasy; that he could hold Mobile against a six-months’ siege from the whole army and navy of the United States. Till the last week, and almost to the last day, the confidence of the most was unshaken. Without a word of warning came the surrender, and in an hour thousands were made penniless.

“You ask,” said one, “why so many white people are drawing rations. You have the reason. Negroes had nothing, and lost nothing. We had what passed for money; your entrance turns it into waste paper in our purses. Of course, therefore, we are destitute.”

All this was plain; but the good Mobilians saw only in part. The negroes had gone to work; the whites too often were listlessly awaiting events, and talking of selling their houses or lands to get bread. The fresh tide of Northern enterprise will soon sweep rudely enough against these broken remnants of the ancien régime, and wash them under. The “old families” seem, in many cases, exhausted of force and energy. They had enough originally to gain position; they have not enough left now to retain it; and it waits the grasping hand of the coming parvenues. “New men” will soon be the order of the day, in Mobile and in many another center of Southern aristocracy.