New Orleans in January was a very different city from New Orleans in November. Trade had swelled to its old volume; the city was crowded beyond its capacity; balls, theaters, the opera, crowded upon one another, and all were insufficient to satisfy the wants of this amusement-loving community.

But these changes were nothing, compared with that in the tone of political affairs. Governor Wells had accomplished another revolution on his axis. Lifted into power by the Banks régime, he had congenially betrayed it, in order to make interest with the returning Rebels; had appointed them to office by scores; had turned out the Unionists that elected him wherever he could find Rebels to take their places; had made over himself and his power without reserve. They used him, and threw him aside; the betrayer was in turn betrayed, and had nobody to pity him.

The Legislature had passed a bill authorizing a new election for city officers in New Orleans, avowedly to get rid of the Union appointees, and elect “men who were the choice of the great majority of the people”—that is, undisguised Rebels. The Governor, seeing that the movement boded him no good, had broken with the Rebels and vetoed the bill; and they had promptly passed it over his head.^[65] The leader in this movement was Mr. Kenner, an old Rebel politician, and member of the Confederate Senate at Richmond, recently pardoned by Mr. Johnson. Such was the return he was making for the forgiveness for his treason which he had begged and received.

Nevertheless, the general feeling was much less defiant than in November. Then they had been sailing, with favoring winds and under full headway, straight into their old power in Congress and control of the country’s legislation. The check had been sudden, and they were not fully recovered from the shock. Business interests, too, had come into play. Trade always softens away angularities of prejudice, and too often of principle also. Northerners having money to invest in the South, men were very willing to forego manifestations of Rebel spite toward them for the sake of furthering their chances of a good bargain.

I was frequently a guest at the “Varieties Club,” an organization composed almost exclusively of former Rebels, and sharing with the “Boston” the favor of what was considered the crême de la crême of New Orleans. The “Varieties” differs from every other club in this country, in the fact that it is the owner of the favorite theater of the city, in which the best boxes and orchestra chairs are always reserved for the use of the members and their friends, free of charge.

One evening I happened to enter just as some scene was being enacted in which the hero is suddenly pounced upon and disarmed by a couple of ruffians. As he stood helpless between them, he interpolated a sentence to suit the latitude, exclaiming, “Let me go, let me go; I’ll take the oath!” The whole audience burst out into uproarious laughter and cheering, which for some little time delayed the action of the play. It was manifest that they had a very clear apprehension of the average value of oaths of loyalty.

The first night I was there, a Union Major General was also one of the guests. Sitting at the same table with him, drinking his whisky—if there are any places in the country more remarkable for hard drinking than the Varieties Club of New Orleans, I have never seen them—and hob-nobbing in the most companionable way, was an officer of the Rebel army who had surrendered to him in Texas. A number of other Rebel officers, some of high grades, members of the Rebel Legislature, registered alien enemies, and a crowd of resident Rebels, were passing through the room. Nothing could exceed their genial courtesy, or the “hospitality” (so called in the South) with which they pressed their whisky.

The next day, I heard that, in the organization of a new club, expressly intended to be established on a loyal basis, the word “Union” had been stricken out of the title by an overwhelming vote. “Do you know,” said a resident Northerner, “I was very much in favor of that myself? I am determined that I will have nothing to do, down here, with any social organization into which politics are permitted to enter!” In his mind the use of the word “Union” as part of the title of a club was the introduction of an offensive political distinction! A few days later, in the reading-room of this new club, I noticed, conspicuously hung on the walls, side by side, five portraits of General Sheridan (the commander of the department), and of General Robert E. Lee.

Mr. Flanders was very bitter in his denunciations of what he called Northern toadyism. “With the Northern men and the Northern capital we have here, we could absolutely control this city. But we can’t make use of our power, because of these miserable toadies. They imagine it is necessary to truckle to Southern men in order to get trade and acquire influence. Poor fools! Can’t they see that the moment Southern men get power, they’ll kick them all aside? Even now they despise them.”

“Give us a couple of hundred Northern men, with money and brains, who were not flunkies, and their honest, straightforward talk would do wonders,” he continued. “But the traders are nearly all flunkies. Those who have gone on plantations are more manly, but they are in positions where they have less influence.” It was the old, old story.

He insisted that the abatement of Rebel violence, then visible everywhere, was only a torpor, not a radical change. They were discouraged now about their chances. Let them get in again, and they would be up and hissing at once.

Others made the same complaints about the tendency to conciliate Southern prejudices. Begun in the praiseworthy desire to exhibit the most generous consideration to the vanquished, it had degenerated, they said, into the very flunkyism of which Mr. Flanders complained. “Here is General Herron,” exclaimed one. “A better or manlier fellow we didn’t have in our army. He has settled down as a commission merchant here; has plenty of capital, and ought to do well. But, do you know that he can’t get as many favors, soldier though he is, at the Quartermasters’ and Commissaries’ headquarters here, in the way of legitimate business, as can any resident Rebel? Why? Because it’s the thing to display distinguished consideration to these fellows, in order to convince them that we’re willing to forget the past, if they’ll only be good enough to do the same. Of course, then, it’s all smooth sailing in business intercourse; but, in the bottom of their hearts, how they must despise us!”

At the residence of a friend, I met, one evening, Mr. J. Ad. Rozier, a lawyer of considerable prominence, whose record during the war might, I was informed, be described as that of a conservative Rebel. He was greatly delighted with the recent election of Alexander H. Stephens to the Senate by the Legislature of Georgia, because he “believed in brains.” There was no abler or fairer man, he thought, in the whole South than Mr. Stephens. He would be, as he had been before, an honor to the South in the Senate of the Union.

I couldn’t help suggesting that, according to the appearances then, there wasn’t much chance for his doing a great deal very soon either to honor or dishonor the South in the Senate.

“Oh, he must get in soon. It won’t be possible to refuse admission to such men. The position of the Republicans is so utterly untenable that they must soon find it out.”

The Republican party, he insisted, was not at all an Administration party. “It is only coquetting with Mr. Johnson. Pretty soon it will turn against him openly.”

I suggested that, as it had control of both houses, in any event it made very little difference whether Mr. Johnson agreed with it or not, so far as the present question, the immediate admission of the Southern Representatives, was concerned.

“Ah, but the present Congress doesn’t reflect the real views of the Northern people. It was elected under a war pressure, and it is proving itself utterly unfit to deal with the issues which the peace has brought forward. You may be right about the admission of Southern members now; but the next Congress will soon fix things.”

Nothing, he thought, could exceed the indignity with which Congress had treated honorable Southern gentlemen elected to it in good faith by Southern constituencies, in refusing them the empty privilege of seats on the floor. That was an extraordinary way to meet the returning loyalty of the South. Perhaps it was honest in thinking them not entitled to membership; but the refusal of seats to men bearing certificates of election was a gross and studied discourtesy which could not be forgotten or forgiven.

Among men of Mr. Rozier’s class I found a general disposition to restrict rather than extend the suffrage. Negro suffrage, they argued, would only be another step in a path which had already led to most of our existing troubles. Too many voted now, instead of too few. What business had any man to cast a vote for the imposition of taxes who had no taxes to pay? What right had any man to a share in shaping the legislation of the country who had no settled interest in the country? Or what sort of government could be expected from the votes of men too ignorant to know anything about government? In short, no man ought to vote unless he had landed property and was educated. The gentlemen of the country should be the ruling class of the country.

But this was only the talk of the clubs and the dinner-tables. The mob who made up the Rebel vote and the Rebel army, and who now furnish the substratum for the universal Rebel feeling, heard nothing of such sentiments. The discussion of them—like their principles themselves—belonged exclusively to the “natural governing classes,” and in a special degree to the late slaveholders.

Still, no evils of republican institutions were likely now to drive them out of the country. They had heard enough from their Mexican explorers. Bad as the nigger equality was here, they had discovered it to be much worse there and in Brazil. But their whole hearts were with the Imperialist party in Mexico. Part of this came from the French sympathies of a large portion of the population; another part was due to a general preference for monarchical institutions. The Monroe doctrine had come to be considered a Yankee notion. The impression common at the North, that war with France would help heal the wounds of our own strife, was manifestly untrue, as to Louisiana. It would there be regarded as another Yankee crusade. It would probably meet no open resistance; but it would unquestionably find no support, unless of the coldest.

The great rush of Northerners seeking plantations was already over. Along the Mississippi, and in other favorable localities for cotton-planting, prices had gone up so largely that men who had only been tempted South by the hope of ruinously low bargains, took Northern exchange for their money and went home again. Others, who had made investments in the interior of Alabama and Mississippi, were greatly discouraged by the temper of the people and by the scarcity of laborers. Lands were being leased on the Mississippi, from Natchez to Lake Providence, at rents ranging from eight to as high as twenty-two dollars an acre. The lessees, after paying these enormous prices, had still in most cases to stock the places with everything, erect fences, contend with a two to four years’ growth of Caco and Bermuda grass, and pay fifteen dollars a month, with rations and medical attendance, for laborers. And then, after incurring the expenses, they had to take the risk of overflow, and face the prospect of a steadily declining cotton market. With a good year and good fortune, they were certain, after all these outlays, of a large profit remaining; but the contingences were so numerous and the risks so great, that an investment in Mississippi bottom cotton plantations seemed to many business men very much like an investment (heretofore very well known on the Mississippi), on the chances of turning up sevens or holding aces.

The city was full of negroes. They felt their new power, of which it was impossible that they should be ignorant while the demands for their services were so pressing; and they were very slow about making contracts except on terms entirely satisfactory to themselves. They had no doubt of their safety in the cities; but they feared to trust themselves in the old Rebel communities in the country.

For even the limited number of plantations which were being worked, the supply of labor was wholly inadequate; nor would all the idle negroes in the cities have made it up. There seemed no reason to doubt that during the war there had been an actual and very great disappearance of negroes. A few had gone North; some, the rumor had it, were being carried to Cuba; but disease and privation accounted for the most. Their new-found freedom had soon liberated them, in very many cases, from all services on earth.