From Selma to Mobile the best route is by the way of Meridian, Mississippi. Meridian boasts numerous hotels. Lusty porters, clad in Nature’s black and Rebellion’s gray, lustily chant their respective praises. “If a gemmen wants a gemmen’s accommodation he goes to de Henrie House.” “’Ere ye are for de Snagsby House; only place in town for a gemmen.” “All de gemmen in town go to de Jones House.” I went, at a venture, to the Snagsby. I am therefore well prepared to recommend any of the others to subsequent travelers. They cannot fare any worse, and they have a chance that inheres in all things sublunary, of possible improvement.

What I saw of Meridian was this: A frame one-story shanty, labeled, “Liquors for sale;” two straight railway tracks in the midst of a wide expanse of mud; a crowd of yelling negro porters; half-a-dozen houses that may have been used for storing cotton and whisky; the hotels aforesaid; some disconsolate looking negro huts; and a few shabby residences that differed only from the huts in the extent to which the disconsolate appearance was made possible with them by the larger scale of their construction. There may have been other things in Meridian last November, but, if so, they were buried in the mud.

But I forget the Snagsby House. There being neither carriage, nor omnibus, nor dray, one was forced to wade through the mud, amid the encouragements of the porter who “toted de trunk,” and the anathemas of the half-dozen whose offers to “tote” it had been disregarded. Emerging thus from the mud, one looked upon the Snagsby as really inviting. Such is the power of circumstances.

There were four rooms. One of them was the ladies’ reception room and parlor. It had only four beds. The others had each two or three bedsteads, and about eight beds spread on the bare floor. In each was a smoky wood fire. In the passage way was the office, where you paid your three dollars for supper, lodging, and breakfast, in advance. And to the rear, in a separate building, was the negro kitchen, in which, to do the house justice, were served the best meals I have found in the country towns of these States. It may be interesting to know what a Mississippi hotel, in the interior, is like; the above is a faithful statement.

Adversity breaks down reserve. We were all in the Snagsby House together. And so we became social. There was no candle in the room. It has been observed that this increases sociability.

“You’re from Washington, I see from the register. Is there much change there in the last five years?”

I mentioned a few of the more prominent improvements the Yankees had wrought.

“What do they think there of Joe Johnston’s great Express Company? Surely the Government won’t interfere with it?”

“Possibly not. Indeed, I fancy neither the Government nor the public think very much about it. But I have heard express men suggest that General Johnston was not accustomed to close financial calculations, and not likely, therefore, to make the best manager for a struggling enterprise.”

“They were fools, then, who hadn’t sense enough to understand General Johnston. He’s the ablest man in the country, and everybody but a blockhead knows it.”

I looked around in some little surprise. The tone indicated that the speaker did not mean to be personally rude, though the language certainly grazed the border of politeness. In the dim firelight I made out a soldierly-looking personage with an empty coat sleeve. When he went to the window, a moment later, some one whispered, “That’s General Loring, a classmate of Joe Johnston’s, and one of his Division Generals.”

The conversation that followed soon disclosed Major A. D. Banks, an officer of Joe Johnston’s staff, (at one time Postmaster of the House at Washington, and at another, for a short period, editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer,) as another member of a group that was filled out by a Government cotton agent and half-a-dozen Rebel planters.

The first important question with all these Southern gentlemen was, “Will the Southern members get in?”

“Possibly, during the winter,” I replied, “on the reception by the Government of adequate guarantees for the future, but certainly not at the organization.”

“Why not at the organization?”

“Because, Mr. McPherson, the Clerk of the House, construes the law governing his action in making up the roll so as to preclude him from inserting their names.”

“But the tremendous pressure we can bring to bear,” suggested an old Washington stager, “can give him new ideas as to the possible construction of the law.”

“Pressure is not likely to affect an honest man in a conscientious interpretation of an explicit law.”

“Well, a bigger office might?” “I tell you,” continued the same speaker, “the whole question turns on what Mr. Johnson wants to do. I have reason to believe that he means to side with us. If he does, he can buy up Congress. There’s no use in you Yankees talking. Johnson can force through Congress anything he wants.”

“But why do you think him on your side? How long has it been since, in the Senate, he was denouncing you all as traitors?”

“We think him on our side because of what he has done, and what we know him to be. Last spring, you can form no conception of the utter, abject humiliation of the Southern people. We were all prostrate, helpless, and abased to the dust, but out of this abject condition Mr. Johnson has partly lifted us. He has made us feel that we have some standing ground, some chance still to battle for our rights; and for this, there has now sprung up throughout the whole South a warm feeling of regard and gratitude. Johnson knows this. He knows that if he continues in this way, he will be able in 1868 to count on the South as a unit for his re-election. There would be no thought of contest—he would be nominated by acclamation. Now, he is a man of strong will and boundless ambition. Of course he wants to be re-elected. He doesn’t want to quit the stage as an accidental President. And he knows perfectly well that, with the South as a unit at his back, his enormous patronage will enable him to carry New York and Pennsylvania, and defy the whole Black Republican pack. Those States will be enough to elect him. A blind man could see the game, and Andy Johnson has got plenty of nerve to play it.”

Such are almost the very words in which were thus frankly revealed the hopes of the Southern politicians. Later in the evening and next morning, as my Yankee proclivities began to attract more attention, my Rebel acquaintances grew more cautious and reticent. “How do you all feel toward Sherman, who ravaged your country so mercilessly?” I asked one of them. “The truth is, sir, the Southern people have been so soundly thrashed that just now they’ve got d——d few opinions of any kind. All we want now is to get back to civil government and the making of our own laws!”

What struck me most, however, in the conversation of all these gentlemen was the utter scorn with which they treated any professions of principle. “A first foreign mission would give McPherson new ideas of his duty as clerk.” “Don’t tell me Southern members won’t get in if Johnson decides that he wants them in. Things have changed mightily if he can’t buy up enough Congressmen to carry his ends.” “It’s as sure as fate, that the Democratic party will carry the next Presidential election. You say it died, in the late New York struggle, for want of principles? Nonsense. It can soon get together all the principles it wants to win on. Remember its old stagers have been hungry eight years, while the Black Republicans have been feeding at the public crib?”

Their old prejudices against Northern public men seemed unchanged by the war. Sumner they spoke of with loathing. Chandler was a beast and a blackguard in a breath. Seward had the ability but not the courage to be a first-class devil.^[58] Chase was the greatest of Yankee public men, and had subjugated the South by keeping up the Yankee finances, but, d——n him, he would some day get his reward, for taking a side he knew to be wrong, in order to gratify his ambition. Yet in the midst of all this talk, that called up so vividly the Southern politician of five years ago, there was one notable change. You could talk abolition as safely in that Mississippi country-tavern as in Faneuil Hall. Since entering the cotton States I had not seen, on the whole trip, an indication of the slightest desire to interfere with free speech. Off the lines of travel, in remote quarters where neither railroads nor good wagon-roads penetrate, I heard that the case was different; but in all the out-of-the-way places I reached, I felt just as safe as in Washington and just as free to express my opinions.

But I saw cause for thankfulness, more than once, that I was not a Government cotton agent. On the road between Selma and Meridian, near Demopolis, it was necessary to embark, for a short trip, on a steamboat on the Tombigbee River. In the cabin, I entered, a violent altercation was raging. A short, portly old planter, florid-faced and white-bearded—the impersonation of the fine old Southern gentleman, who could finish half-a-dozen bottles of claret at a sitting, and had been doing it, any time, for the last dozen years—was berating a black-bearded, trim-built and very resolute Yankee. The oaths were fearfully blasphemous, but the substance of the old man’s complaint was that he had delivered up to the agent a quantity of cotton which he had originally subscribed to the Rebel cotton loan, and that, as he had subsequently learned, he was entitled, by such voluntary surrender, to one-fourth of the value of the cotton; which sum he accused the agent of unjustly withholding. “But I’ll follow you, sah,” he vociferated, shaking his fist in the very face of the agent. “I’ll follow you to General Wood’s, aye, and to Andy Johnson! I’ll follow you, sah, to hell and Illinois, but you shan’t swindle me, sah.”

“You’ll follow me to Mobile, sir, if you want to; that’s where I live, and you’ll never have any trouble in finding me.”

The agent stood, trim, compact, cool as an icicle, evidently ready for anything, and watching the fiery planter, as a pugilist might watch for the instant to strike. The stout old man, tremulous and hoarse with passion, blustered up and shook his fist in angry gesticulation, but the agent never moved a muscle. One grew proud of him, and even the Southern crowd, forming a ring about, evidently respected his bearing. Two or three friends bustled up to the old planter, twined their arms about his neck, and finally coaxed him out of the throng. The agent then turned on his heel and walked away. “Is he a gentleman, or is he a Yankee?” I heard one of the passengers inquire. “He is a scoundrel, of course,” said another, “for he’s a Government cotton agent, and I wish the old man had shot him, as his fellow was shot, the other day, at Montgomery.” I subsequently learned that, only a few weeks ago, a son of the white-bearded old planter had shot a Northern soldier in some brawl at the polls. Life is cheap here, and the Northern papers report that the demand for pistols from the South is brisk!

The little quarrel with the cotton agent being over, the planters on board fell to discussing the labor question, as we slowly steamed down the Tombigbee. “You’re all going crazy,” said a top-booted personage, who turned out to be a Rebel mail contractor that had recently transferred his allegiance to Governor Dennison. “You’re crazier even than I thought you. First you lost your slaves, and now you propose to give away your plantations! Give them away, I say,” he continued dogmatically. “Lands that are worth sixty and eighty dollars an acre, you’re selling for ten and twelve. Why, you can rent them for half of that.”

“But what’s the use of lands when you can’t work them?”

“We’ve got to change our whole system of labor,” said another planter. “Let the Yankees take the niggers, since they’re so fond of them. Why, I was talking, down to Selma, the other day, with Jim Branson, up from Haynesville. We figured up, I don’t know how many millions of coolies there are in China, that you can bring over for a song. It will take three of ’em to do the work of two niggers; but they’ll live on next to nothing and clothe themselves, and you’ve only got to pay ’em four dollars a month. That’s our game now. And if it comes to voting, I reckon we can manage that pretty well!”

But they all agreed that, unless the Yankees raised it, there would be no cotton crop grown in these States next year.

Dinner was announced, on the boat, and we all went in, belligerent cotton agent and cotton-planter among the friendliest. There were on the table water, soggy corn-bread, raw onions, sweet-potatoes, and beans, and that was absolutely all. The bill was a dollar. “At them licks a man must be made o’ money, to stand it long.” Thus said a plethoric planter.

Between Selma and Demopolis we passed through the garden lands of Alabama. A little cotton could still be seen, standing in the fields. Fine houses appeared occasionally along the road. The fences were standing, cornstalks showed the extent of last year’s cultivation, and not many traces of war were perceptible in the face of the country.

After we returned to the cars, beyond the Tombigbee, the appearance of the country was somewhat changed. The cane-brake and prairie were exchanged for pine barrens, and we had passed the most desirable cotton lands.

A Georgian, emigrating to Texas, with his whole family, had seats in our car. One of the children grew noisy. “General,” said the father, reprovingly, “General, if you don’t behave yourself I won’t call you General Beauregard any longer. I’ll call you some Yankee name.”

Cigars were freely smoked, it being taken for granted that the ladies had no objections. Pistols and Bowie-knives were shown, and one had a comparison of views as to the proper mode of using these weapons to the best advantage.

It was in a county not very far from here, that sundry wise resolutions were adopted, as,

“Whereas, We have for four years most bravely and gallantly contended for our rights with the United States; and,

“Whereas, We have been overpowered by numbers,

“Resolved, That we will, for the present, submit to the Constitution of the United States, and all laws in accordance with the same.”

Somewhat similar seemed the view of all of our passengers who had anything to say. “Mighty ha’d on po’ Confeds. We’re the unde’dogs in the fight. We’re subjugated. I wouldn’t fight no mo’ for the stars and bars than for an old dish-rag.” “Nor for the stars and stripes nuther,” exclaimed his companion, and the sentiment elicited general approval.