From Knoxville I went direct to Atlanta, Georgia, the key of the great campaigns in the West, the memorable surrender of which re-elected President Lincoln, and proved the beginning of the end.

The city was adapting itself, with remarkable rapidity, to the new order of things. “Sherman, his mark,” was still written too plainly to be soon effaced, in gaping windows and roofless houses, heaps of ruins on the principal corners and traces of unsparing destruction everywhere. The burnt district of Richmond was hardly more thoroughly destroyed than the central part of Atlanta; yet, with all the advantages of proximity to the North, abundant capital, and an influx of business and money from above the Potomac, Richmond was not half so far rebuilt as Atlanta. What is more remarkable, the men who were bringing a city out of this desert of shattered brick—raising warehouses from ruins, and hastily establishing stores in houses half finished and unroofed—were not Yankees, but pure Southerners. These people were taking lessons from Chicago, and deserved to have, as they then seemed likely to have, the foremost of the interior cities of the Gulf States.

Not less than four thousand mechanics were at work; and at least as many more would have been employed, if it had been possible to secure building material enough to supply the enormous demand. A hundred and fifty or two hundred stores were already opened; and others found themselves unable to rent rooms for their goods. The streets were blockaded with drays and wagons. The four railroads were taxed to their utmost capacity, without beginning to supply all the demands upon them. The trade of the city was a third greater than it had ever been, in its most prosperous days before the war.

But the faces one saw on the streets or behind the counters were not the faces of men with whom you would choose to do business. “I have spent five days here,” exclaimed a simple-hearted scientific man, as he greeted me; “I have spent years among the Black Feet, and have been pretty much over the world, but I never saw such demoralized faces. The war has destroyed their moral character. There isn’t one man in a score here I would trust with my carpet-bag.” The geologist was too severe, but the traces of the bad passions and disregard of moral obligations which the war has taught, are written almost as plainly on the faces as are Sherman’s marks on the houses of Atlanta. More tangible evidence of the war’s demoralization was to be found in the alarming insecurity of property and even of life. Passing about the dark, crooked streets of Atlanta after night, unaccompanied and unarmed, was worse than attempting a similar exploration of the Five Points, in New York, ten years ago. Murders were of frequent occurrence; and so common a thing as garroting attracted very little attention.

The soil of the country, for many miles in all directions, is poor, but prices of land in the immediate vicinity were run up to fabulous rates. The people were infected with the mania of city building; and landholders gravely explained to you how well their plantations, miles distant, would cut up into corner lots. Cotton is, of course, the only staple. It ought to be raised in abundance, for the soil will produce nothing else, but he would be a skillful cultivator who should get an average of a third of a bale each from many acres. Ten or twelve bushels of corn to the acre would be a great crop. Indeed, throughout wide stretches in the interior of the cotton-growing States, so worthless was the soil for any other purpose, that the planters used to buy their corn and pork for the mules and negroes, and thus reserve all their arable land for the undivided growth of cotton.

A few Union men are to be found in the region to which Atlanta is the natural center. All complained that it was worse for them, under the progressing reconstruction, than for the original Rebels. “We are in no sense upheld or encouraged by the Government; public sentiment is against us because we opposed the war; or, as they said, because we were tories; but, when the Government triumphed, we were secure because we were on the winning side. But you pardon Howell Cobb and every other leading secessionist; they at once become the natural leaders in an overwhelmingly secessionist community; and we, through mistaken kindness of our own Government, are worse ostracized to-day, in the new order of things, than we ever were during the war.”

The feeling among the Rebel portion of the community against the course of the Convention was strong. “They have repudiated the debt they incurred themselves. If that Confederate debt isn’t honestly due, no debt in the world ever was. If we’ve got to repudiate that, we may as well help the Democrats repudiate the debt on the other side too. What’s fair for one is fair for the other.”^[52]

In spite of their new-found love for President Johnson, they could not help grumbling a good deal at “this Presidential interference with the rights of a State.” They seemed utterly unable to comprehend that, after they had once submitted, they could possibly labor under any disabilities on account of their effort to overthrow the Government. “Treason is a crime, and the greatest of crimes,” vociferated the President. His Southern friends seemed to regard this as only a little joke. To interfere, for a moment, with the free action of their Conventions and Legislatures, half made up as yet of unpardoned Rebels, was monstrous. “What’s the use o’ callin’ it a free country, ef you can’t do as you please in your own Legislater?” asked one indignant Georgian. “It’s a pretty note ef we’ve got to take men as went agin the State through the wah to make laws for it now. For my part, I hain’t got no use for sich.”

The political phraseology of these Southern gentlemen is at once peculiar and concise. Every desirable thing, politically, is described as high-toned and conservative. Everything dangerous to the settled order of things, everything looking to an establishment of the results of the war, or tending to an indorsement of the political grounds on which the North suppressed the rebellion, is to be abhorred and avoided under the name of radical. President Johnson was greatly praised, “because he is conservative on the nigger.”

“Johnson knows niggers, I tell you,” said an Atlanta worthy. “He’s not going to let any such cursed radicalism as inspired Lincoln trouble him. If Johnson had been President, we wouldn’t have been embarrassed by any infernal Emancipation Proclamation.” So all good conservatives were exhorted in all the papers to convince the South of their desire to reconstruct the Union by admitting at once the Southern Representatives and Senators; and, above all, it was to be understood that sound conservative men of all parties must unite in the repeal of the odious radical oath. It absolutely prevented Rebel office-holders from at once becoming national law-makers.

Mr. Jas. F. Johnson aspired to represent the Senatorial District in the General Assembly. He furnished an excellent type of what passes among Georgians for a respectable and proper Sort of Unionism. He stated his position, in an advertisement in the public papers, thus:

“As a member of the Georgia Convention, entertaining the views I then did, I opposed the immediate secession of the State from the Union, and used every effort in my power to prevent it, until I became satisfied that a controlling majority of the Convention entertained different views. I then yielded my opposition, believing it to be the best interest of the State to be united in supporting the action taken by a majority of the Convention. And since that time, until the surrender of the Confederate armies, I did all in my power, both in person and means, to sustain the resolution of the Convention, and establish, if possible, the independence of the Southern States.”

Another style of Unionism might be inferred from the phrase heard a dozen times every day: “I’ve taken the oath,” or, “I’ve got my pardon; and I’m just as big a Rebel now as ever I was.” “I’ve got just the same rights now that any of the d——d Yankees have,” added one, “and I mean to demand my rights. I’m pardoned; there’s nothing against me, and I mean to demand fair treatment.” He had Confederate cotton, which he insisted should not be taken from him, since, although he had subscribed it to the Rebel Government, he had never made the actual delivery.

Between Atlanta and Knoxville one passes over the track of the destroyer. Down to Dalton the damage from the war has not been very great; but for the rest of the route, solitary chimneys and the debris of burnt buildings everywhere tell the old, old story. If the country did not reveal it so plainly, it might still be read in the faces of our passengers. Every one of them was a record of some phase of the contest, of its squalor and misery, of its demoralization, of its barbarism, or of its ennoblement. Bright, fair faces that ought to have adorned happy rural homes, grown coarse and brassy, flaunted beside young officers. They were the transformation of the camps—the results of its license and lax morality. Trembling old refugees watched the conductor as he counted their hard-earned gatherings, to see if the little pile of fractional currency would be all exhausted in paying their fare home. Aimless young men in gray, ragged and filthy, seemed, with the downfall of the rebellion they had fought for, to have lost their object in life, and stared stupidly at the clothes and comfortable air of officers and strangers from the North. By the roadside, here and there, might be seen—as I saw on a public corner, in the midst of all the bustle and whirl of Atlanta—a poor, half starved, half naked white woman, gathering her little children about her, and cowering in the gray dawn over the dull embers by which, in dull wretchedness, she had watched through the weary night.

And, as one looks over the scene, and takes in the full sense of all this sad destruction, a Major from Longstreet’s staff sits down to talk. “If you of the North want now to conciliate and settle the South, you must do one of three things: re-establish slavery; give the old masters in some way power to compel the negroes to work; or colonize them out of the country, and help us to bring in white laborers!” A handsome man he is; tall, bearded like the pard, brown with campaigning, battered, clad in worn-out Confederate gray, but with good army blue pantaloons, taken, doubtless, from the body of some dead or captured soldier of the Republic. Such waste and destruction all about us; and still these insatiable men—these handsome tigers—want more conciliation!

Some Southern merchants, from different points in Alabama and Georgia, were returning from New York, after making their purchases. They could not say too much about the kindness with which they had been met, and their disappointment at not finding the Yankees all eager to drink their blood for desert after dinner. But in a moment after such expressions they would break out into the most fearful and blasphemous invectives against some conspicuous Northerner, who had the misfortune to differ from them as to the best mode of re-establishing peace throughout the Rebel regions. These people have discovered that they must tolerate the opinions of others, but their intolerant spirits have not yet been sufficiently disciplined to it; and so it happens that sometimes, now, their utter impotence only serves to increase their malice. Must the poor negroes prove the vent for this rage that dare not reach to higher objects?

Manifestly the negroes themselves have no faith in them. At one of the railroad eating-houses I happened to ask a fine looking old “uncle” what wages he received.

“Twenty dollahs a month, sah; but I’se gwine to quit. ’Tain’t enuff, is it?”

“O yes, uncle, if they give you twenty dollars a month and your boarding, you are getting fully as much as you would get at the best places in the North for this kind of work. In Richmond they are only getting fifteen dollars.”

“You tink, den, sah, dat we oughtn’t fur to quit—dat when dey pay us twenty dollahs dey ain’t a cheatin’ us?”

“By no means. Work straight ahead, and do the best you can, as long as you can get such wages.”

“Well, den, sah, I’ll do as you say. I was afeared of dese men cheatin’ me, because I knowed dey would if dey could. But I’ll do jus as you say, sah. If you say wuck on, I’ll do it.” And three or four of the servants who had gathered about, nodded and grinned their approval of the old man’s conclusions.

“That’s just the trouble,” exclaimed a young Alabamian, to whom, a few hours later, I was narrating the incident. “These fellows have all got to believe in the Yankees, and to think that we, who have always been their best friends, want to cheat them. It’s going to ruin the South. Five years hence, I firmly believe, the cotton-growing regions will be an utter waste, unless you Yankees, who don’t know anything about cotton growing, come in, learn it, and get the niggers to work for you. They won’t half work for us.”

“Won’t a fair day’s wages, in the long run, be sure to bring a fair day’s work?”

“No. I tell you, the nigger never works except when he is compelled to. It isn’t in his nature, and you can’t put it in. He’ll work a day for you for good wages, and then will go off and spend it; and you’ll not get another lick out of him till he’s hungry, and has got nothing to eat.”

“Possibly, at first. But remember, these people are intoxicated with their first draught of freedom. Wait a little while, and as they get settled, and see something of the rewards of steady industry, they’ll be as eager to accumulate and save, as any other class of laborers.”

“Not a bit of it. I tell you, niggers are niggers. You’re talking about a different class of laborers altogether. That’s always the way. You know, and every Northern man knows, that we have been the best friends the nigger ever had. Yet this is the way they treat us. They’ll work for you a little while, and then they’ll serve you in the same style.”

An old negro on the platform, at the very moment, was droning out a curious commentary on the Alabamian’s complaints: “One-half of dese niggers,” said he to the brakeman, “one-half of dese niggers ought to be killed, any how. Dey don’t do nuffin but hang roun’ and steal from dem dat work.” His old brass watch, it seems, had been stolen, and he was scowling through his brass-mounted goggles in the direction in which he supposed the thief had gone.

I told the Alabamian of the persistent labors of the Sea Island negroes. He utterly refused to believe that I had not been deceived. Finally, the crucial test was mentioned—the balances to their credit in the National Bank.^[53] “Well, I don’t understand it. There were never any such niggers around in our country.” And with that he suddenly ended the talk.