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Up the East Tennessee valley. The Cumberland Mountains are on our left, and on our right another range, parallel or nearly so with the Cumberland, and averaging about eighty miles apart. This constitutes the eastern wall of the valley and the legal boundary of Tennessee,--mountains of many names, Stone, Iron, Bal, Great Smoky Unaka, Unicay, or Unicai; and somewhere yonder rises the boasted Black Mountain, which is said to have wrested the championship from our Mount Washington, but I am not yet convinced. It is a beautiful valley that we are traversing, watered by the Holston, the Clinch, the Nolichuckey, and
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numerous other rivers, all bringing their largess of loveliness and wealth. In this region they point out the tree on which was hung the first victim of the rebellion in Tennessee; and Greenville, late home of the President; and the roof of the house in which the guerilla Morgan was shot. Here too you see what none show,--the hosts of war-worn fugitives fleeing from rebel prisons, coming
"Through the jaws of death, Back from the mouth of Hell,"
seeking the shelter of the old Flag. O the aching feet that have climbed these mountain-sides, the fearful eyes that have seen a pursuer in every shadow, the brave hearts that have held on through every danger! It seems almost pusillanimous to have sat quietly at home all through the thunder-storm of battle, and, as soon as the cloud had discharged its death-bolts, to come riding as quietly over the fields of its devastation, just to look at them.
On and on, up and down, we are in the famous valley of Virginia, past Mount Airy, past the "Peaks of Otter," lifting their heads high above the surrounding scenery, with the gap be-
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tween marking the line of retreat pursued by General Hunter when foiled in his effort to capture Lynchburg. Some we see by day and some by night, ghostly and grand in the bright moonlight,--for there is but one train a day on the railroad, and travellers have no choice of light or darkness. But the sleeping-car is luxuriously easy, and gives rest if not sleep.
There is pleasant talk, too, in the long journey. I hear no words of bitterness or hatred, scarcely any politics or any allusion to the war. Only an elderly gentleman scowls upon the boy who offers him a Harper's Monthly for sale, and affirms rather ostentatiously that he does not allow it in his house! And a young man and his wife, of middling position, have a contemptuous word to say to each other about the "Yankees," which they could be taught to unsay in ten minutes. There is a pretty girl opposite, travelling with her newly-married husband, the purple and fine linen of her bridal outfit as yet all unassoiled. Down the car is a family group migrating eastward, two grown girls among them, chattering their musical nothings with the inexhaustible light-heartedness of youth and good spirits.
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On a seat next a window sits a young woman alone, and in front of her a man alone. He was evidently originally intended to be handsome after a large and generous sort, but a coarse, not to say a dissipated life, has robbed him of every vestige of beauty. Moreover he is not neatly dressed, and altogether is not pleasing. The woman I have never seen before, but the man has been travelling some distance our way, and soon after his appearance was pointed out as a person of distinction, elected to high office by a Southern State, and of some national prominence. Of course I am interested in him. I am near, and I can see him without looking, and in any lull of the train I cannot help hearing all that is said. What I do hear furnishes a charming offset to Yankee inquisitiveness. The man has several newspapers lying on the seat and over its back. In one of our many pauses the young woman asks permission to look at a paper. He grants it graciously, but in a gruff and peculiarly hollow voice, that reminds one of his youthful experiments of talking into an empty barrel. Presently she returns the paper with thanks. After a while he offers her another,
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which she declines with thanks. Then I smile inwardly, to see him half glancing at her from under his shaggy eyebrows, and now and then turning half around to her, evidently making up his mind to speak. It is always so easy to see what a an wants to do when you stand aloof yourself. She gazes all the while tranquilly out of window, but I make no doubt is quite as awar as I am of everything going on. Presently he can contain himself no longer, and opens the ball.
"Travelling South?"
"No sir," with the slightest possible start of surprise that does not in the least deceive me. "I am going to Washington."
"Do you live in Washington?"
"No sir,"--a half-pause, but evidently not wishing palpably to snub him. "I live in New Hampshire."
"What part of New Hampshire?"
"The southwestern part, near Keene." (A "Yankee school-ma'am," I say to myself.)
"Name of town?"
Half annoyed and half amused, she perhaps gives the name of the town, but I do not catch it,
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neither I think does he, yet he has not the smallest suspicion of being repulsed. If he thinks anything, he doubtless thinks she is shy, and needs to be drawn out by an affable interlocutor like himself. Her face I cannot wholly see, but I imagine her "mingled emotions" as his character gradually reveals itself. As a companion he is not agreeable, but as a phenomenon he is worth observing.
"Visiting in the South?"
"Yes sir, and in the West. I have been in Cincinnati and around through Nashville, Chattanooga, and Knoxville." (This detour is necessary to all travellers this way, there being but one railroad as yet, though I believe one is projected directly through from Cincinnati to Knoxville, and so to Washington.)
"Ah! relic-hunting!"
"No, not exactly. Rather sight-seeing."
"Any friends in Chattanooga?"
"Yes sir, a few, not many."
He had "made up his mouth" to ask their names, but she turns him aside with some remark that I do not hear, and the next question that comes to my ears is,--
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"Travelling alone?"
"No sir, my cousin is with me."
"Travelling with cousin, eh?"
"Yes sir."
He must have found his pursuit of knowledge rather fatiguing, for he forbears further investigation and subsides into semi-somnolence.
In an hour or two we pass a cemetery on a pleasant hillside, and several of the passengers leave their seats to look at it. The young woman in question goes to the rear of the car for a better view, and on her return her obliging neighbor remarks, "Cemetery for the Federal soldiers."
Perhaps she is a little lackadaisical, for she answers, "After life's fitful fever they sleep well."
He gazes at her a moment, evidently struck with the new idea that they all died of fever, and then puts the entirely irrelevant query,--
"Husband ain't along?"
"No sir."
"Left him in Massachusetts?"
"He is there if he is anywhere, doubtless," with a smile only half-suppressed.
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"Ah! not married, did you say?"
"O no! I did not say that. However, I am not married."
"Young ladies coming from the North generally get caught up pretty quick at the South."
"Then it stands them in hand to stay at home."--But repenting herself of the inference, she adds, "if they don't want to get caught up."
"Did you ever see a young lady that did not want to get married?"
"I don't know that I ever did."
"That 's honest. Never saw one that did not want to get married?"
"No, I did not say that. I don't know that I ever saw one. I do not know what young ladies want."
But I do not reckon this man one of the pearls and corals of deep-sea soundings in the South. He is but a weed temporarily tossed up by the storm.
Our own party is increased and enlivened by the advent of a Georgian planter, a man of the world, shrewd, wealthy, and witty. Yankee shrewdness is proverbial, but when a Southerner gives his mind to it he is a fair match for the
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Yankees. Our Georgian friend looks, too, like the ideal Yankee. He is tall, and slender, and sallow,--enfeebled just now by a recent illness. He seems to be conversant with the whole country. He is interested in developing mines in Georgia. He has dealings in Tennessee also, and both the Carolinas,--and he expresses himself with great freedom. "It was a most needless war," he says,--"a wanton war. It never ought to have been fought. It was brought on by unprincipled men,--your side as well as mine," with a playful, defiant nod as us Yankees. "It was not a people's war. It was a politician's war. Look at ----- State. Take all the papers that were blatant for secession. How many of them represented any material interest? Not one. They were managed by a set of poor devils who had nothing to lose. The rich men knew that the war meant ruin, and they went dead against it, but they were powerless. What is the result? Just what was prophesied. They sold themselves, and lost the niggers."
In one sense, doubtless, the war was a needless war, but in another sense it was inevitable.
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The alleged provocations were insufficient to induce an appeal to arms, but in the great march of events--human nature being what it is, and human development at its present stage--we had come to a point where no further progress could be made without collision. The causes of the war lay far below its occasion, far below the power of politicians materially to hurry or hinder. Perhaps we shall understand this better a thousand years hence than now.
"Look at what the war has done for me," adds the ireful Georgian. "Here is East Tennessee that you have just seen,--a heaven-favored valley, but where is it now? Bad men who cared only for their own pockets took the lead in the rebellion, protested long and loud their loyalty to the South, and so got the ear of the Confederate authorities and dictated the policy for this, to them, disloyal population. They perpetrated revolting outrages upon the unprotected Union men, and when their reign was over the Unionists suffered again at the hands of their friends. Men who had been honest citizens before the war came back from the Federal army, to which they had fled for protection, de-
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moralized by camp life and determined to revenge themselves on those who had forced them away from their homes, and they went for those who should grant the greatest latitude to their vengeance. Being allowed to prey first upon their enemies' property, as a punishment for real or imaginary wrongs, the whole thing soon sunk into a general system of plunder, carried on by gross violence. Men have been killed, mobbed, exiled, from no higher motive than pelf. Indeed, for a time violence and dishonesty got the upper hand entirely, and the tendency was to the wildest excesses. Men who did not like to steal outright did it under color of law. Courts were organized, narrow-minded, illiterate, incompetent men were placed on the bench, and such another crop of litigation as sprang up there you must go far to find."
"But this state of things is giving way to something better?"
"Things are bad enough now. The internal affairs of the State are in a most unsettled condition. It affects the simplest matters of business. Nobody knows what to look for, and therefore nobody knows what to do."
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"What is the remedy, in your judgment?"
"The true policy was that foreshadowed by President Lincoln, and the terms of capitulation conceded by Grant. Had this been acted upon in its broadest sense and guaranteed by universal amnesty, we should to-day, in my opinion, have been the most united, harmonious, and prosperous people on earth. The South was conquered, and in a temper to have appreciated and responded to a generous forbearance on the part of the North with a warmth of gratitude and national pride that would have electrified the nation. Their defeat, losses, and sufferings had already begun to engender a feeling of hatred against the men who had betrayed them into rebellion. A little encouragement would have kindled this lurking dissatisfaction into open denunciation, and peace would have come at once. But distrust aggravated by falsehood, short-sightedness, and party machinations intervened and forbade the banns, and here we are drawing wider and wider apart."
"But what do you consider the exciting cause of this distrust? What was it that prevented the--"
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"I will tell you what it was. Politicians--men who prize place more than they do the public good--fancied that the restoration of the Southern States would displace them from power. Under this conviction, and with the view of retaining power and controlling and carrying the next Presidential election, they deliberately set themselves to work to prevent a restoration."
I asked him of the President. President and Congress he believed to be acting from one and the same motive, self-aggrandizement, and as their objects are world-wide apart there could but be a quarrel. "All the advantage the President has over Congress is that he is nearer right than they. The quarrel itself must display the workings of the spirit that produced it, a disregard of truth and the decencies of official position and intercourse, intolerance, vituperation, and a wanton trampling under foot of official oaths. Everything seems to be done with an eye singlt to the advancement of party till the Constitution is already, so far as Congress is concerned, abrogated, and there is no limit to Congressional action except the capri-
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cious Congressional will, which is animated and controlled by petty malice and narrow views of party policy. What we want is a statesman who can rise far enough above personal considerations to point out the road to safety. I do not care for his residence or his former party predilections, if he is only capable, true, and patriotic."
I asked him what attitude he took at the commencement of the struggle.
"For twenty years," he answered, "I warred against the growing spirit of alienation, the tendency to national disruption,--but to no purpose. When the conflict began, I deplored it more than any act of madness our countrymen had ever perpetrated, and I did all I could to avert it. But of course I could not hate the Southern people. The influence of many others throughout the South was exerted in favor of the maintenance of the authority of the Federal Government. We believed the solemn declaration of Congress that the war was waged for the preservation of the government and the Union, and we did not believe that men like myself had forfeited any of our constitutional
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rights; we believed, if treason was a crime, it was the crime of those who committed it, and not the crime of the State, and that, as the Federal army approached, it would be an army of liberation, and not of oppression; that it would bring with it the protection which the Constitution guarantees to every American citizen, to every loyal man residing in the South. We were willing to bear all the inevitable evils incident to war, and to submit to such changes in the fundamental law as were necessary to secure the future safety of the country. So we not only acquiesced, but aided, in the abolition of slavery. Beyond this we were unwilling to go."
"How were your own slaves affected by the war?"
"I said to them in the beginning: 'You are going to be free. The war is going to free you all. You stay at home and behave yourselves. Don't you go to cutting up, and don't you go into the army.' Not one of thm left me. They knew I was their friend. I never flogged my slaves. If they stole, I sold them, that 's all, and no words about it. When the time came,
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I bought farms and put some of my men on, and set them up forthemselves. I got places for some of them, and some I hire. They come to me now when they want anything. About all owe me money, five or ten dollars apiece. I think it is better to lend them money than give it to them, because they don't come so often. They are afraid, if they ask for more, I shall ask them to pay what they borrowed before. I had no trouble with my slaves through the war. They would do anything for me,--ride fifty miles by night alone if I asked them. I had one of them to help me bury my silver at night. He and I went out together. He was the only one that knew anything where it was. When peace came, he went with me and got it out again."
I asked how he bore himself towards the war.
"I kept everybody out of it that I could. I advised every one over whom I had any influence not to go into the army. Whenever I found any fugitive, Union prisoner, or rebel soldier lurking about my grounds, I fed him. My servants had orders to feed everybody that wanted food."
Was he always furnished with food?
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"Always. I looked out for that in the first place. I had hams laid up for a regiment. I laid up store for two years ahead. I could have held out a good while longer than the war did. I advised against taking the Confederate Bonds. I knew they were worthless. To be sure nobody believed me, and went on just the same. They said, if we succeeded, the Confederate Bonds would be as good as cotton or gold. If we failed, all the land would be confiscated, and therefore real estate would be worth no more than bonds. There was a possibility of gain on one side, and a certainty of loss on the other. I took Confederate Bonds to pay my debts and buy plantations with. That is all the use I ever had for them."
"But are your plantations good property now?"
"Not now. They are doing very little yet; but they are as good as anything, and will be better if the country is ever settled. But nothing can be done so long as we are in this distracted and uncertain condition."
The train has been standing still in the woods a long while, from some unexplained cause. But
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we do not object; it is a pleasant place, and the cessation of the whiz and whir is a relief to the ear. In the pauses of our talk I heard the ripple of an unseen brook by the roadside. It turns out that we have run over, or rather have tossed up a cow, and she in return has tossed the tender off the track. Many cows have had hairbreadth escapes from us to relate to their listening calves on some future summer eve, but this is the first one who has proved in her own experience the truth of George Stephenson's answer to the incredulous and somewhat sneering Parliamentary Committee, who asked him if it would not be a very awkward circumstance should a cow stray upon the track and get in the way of the engine. "Very awkard indeed--for the coo!"
"Plantations," says another planter, joining in the conversation,--a Northern young man who went from college to the war, and after the war remained--one can hardly say "settled"--in South Carolina, leasing plantations and tilling them with his own brains and money,--"plantations are of very little use without money. I know of people in South Carolina
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who were millionnaires [sic] before the war, and who have plantations by the dozen now, but are utterly cleaned out of ready money."
"Yes," said the Georgian, "a few persons have preserved their property, but very few."
"It must make a vast difference in the whole state of society?"
"I should think so," said the Northern planter. "I do not know how it used to be,--the aborigines hold themselves much aloof from the invaders,--but going to Charleston from the North is like going back a hundred years. The forced economy, simplicity, and quiet are very striking. Houses all old, but most of them large, commodious, and picturesque. No street lights, worse than no street pavements, no private carriages, no theatres or other public amusements (not even a sensation preacher). People wear any sort of clothes, old Confederate uniforms, sometimes with the buttons altered, sometimes not, 'jeans,' and other homespuns. Kid gloves are almost unknown. Girls go to parties at eight, wearing high-necked muslin dresses, and sup on cake and sangaree. The conductors of the street cars are young gentlemen,--real ones.
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Family equipages, if there ever were any, have disappeared."
"Not six," added the Georgian emphatically, "in this town, that formerly boasted two hundred."
"Do they submit to this state of things, or do they struggle against it?"
"They take to it rather kindly than otherwise. There is very general stagnation. People have nothing to do, and give themselves plenty ot time to do it. The burnt district still lies empty. In the ruined tower of a church near my town boarding-house I have heard the screech-owl. The people are prostrate and despairing. They confess themselves a conquered country and ready to suffer anything. They seem to live in the memories of the past, consoling themselves with having made a good fight in a bad cause, and boasting like Palmerin of England in the giant's castle: 'Certes, it can never be said of me, that, using my strength, I was conquered to my shame!'"
"One cause is," said the Georgian, "that the people are utter disbelievers in republican government, and convinced that the United States
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must go to the deuce some say, however properous at present."
"I think, however," said the Northerner, "that the men are rather more inclined to reconstruction than the women."
Of course I put in a word of explanation here, which it is not necessary to report. What I desire is simply to present the unstudied opinions of honest men who are neither partisans nor politicians,--the opinions that are given in common conversation, which seem to me far more valuable than public set speeches.
"I know," continued the younger planter, "some desperate fire-eaters, renowned duellists, whom I now regard as Christian did Giants Pope and Pagan. The war has cut the claws of many such giants. Do you remember how, in the old dramatists (Marlowe's Edward II. is a good example), the character who is revelling in wicked power at the beginning is so ill-treated before the end, that you forget his old offences and he attracts all your sympathy? That is the way these Charlestonians affect me now; and I do not like the idea of their being exterminated piecemeal, as a cat kills a mouse, by the
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triumphant, power-intoxicated Congressional majority."
"Half the talk about the negro," said the Georgian, "is mere humbug, to keep up that abominable system of robbery called 'protection.'"
"Abominable indeed," I echo, sympathetically.
"What do you know about it?" he queries, glowering at me, good-humoredly.
"Everything there is to know,"--sacrificing truth to bravado.
We are coming back once more to villages,--Charlottesville with its University, the child of Jefferson's old age, past Monticello, his home, and then through a succession of battle-grounds, scarred still with strife, wrapped now in a deathly quiet. Manassas, Bull Run,--what intensity of life lies hidden in those words, what past and future meet in voiceful silence here!