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Southern letters.
Hoble L.Prentis.
Topeka,1881.

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1915

Price, 50 Cents.

Southern Letters.

Noble L. Prentis.

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Southern Letters.

BY

NOBLE L. PRENTIS,
m THE ATCHISON CHAMPION.

TOPEKA, KANSAS:
GEO. W. MABTIN, KANSAS PUBLISHING HOUSE.
1881.

Copyrighted, 1881, et Noble L. Prentis.

PEEFACE.
The letters here collected were written for the Atchison
Daily Champion in April and May of 1881.
The instructions received by the writer as the represent
ative of the Champion were to describe the condition of
the South exactly as he found it. It is believed that
these letters bear in themselves the evidence of an honest
effort to carry out these instructions.
It should be borne in mind that the South, as far as
visited and described, is the South of to-day, not the South
of five or ten years ago; and it should also be remem
bered that the "bull-dozed" States, with the exception of
South Carolina, were not visited. The writer has not un
dertaken to express opinions where he has had no oppor
tunity for observation.
Certainly nothing here is "set down in malice." The
South is here recognized as a part of our common country,
to the peace and prosperity of which no good citizen of
any section can remain indifferent.
The letters appear substantially as published in the
Champion, and the critical may object that the collection
savors more of the haste of the newspaper writer than the
care of the book-maker; but, such as they are, the letters
are submitted to the patient indulgence of the readers of
Kansas, which has never failed the writer in lo ! these many
years. N. L. P.
j Atchison, May 26, 1881.

LETTEES.

After Many Years  5
The Heart op Kentucky  12
The Mammoth Cave  20
"Tenting on the Old Camp Ground"  31
A Black University  38
In and Around Nashville  44
The Old War Trail  52
In and Around Chattanooga  58
The Mountain Capital  68
Concerning Tennessee  :... 74
Kenesaw  80
The Gate City  88
High Georgia  98
Down to the Sea  108
A Swing Around  115
A Drowsy Capital.  124
South 'Carolina Politics  136
In North Carolina  142
Some Hours in Richmond  147
Conclusions  157

SOUTHERN LETTERS.

AFTER MANY YEAES.
Louisville, Ky., April 10, 1881.
It was here at Louisville, in the hot July days of 1865, that
my regiment, the poor old much-marched and little-glorified
"Sixteenth," ended "officially" its connection with the volunteer
army of the United States. Here the men learned that their
term of enlistment was over, here they signed the last muster roll,
and a few days later at Springfield, Illinois, they received their
last pay, and dispersed to their homes, no more to rally at the
sound of the drum.
What a long tramp it had been since those pleasant, soul-stir
ring days in May, 1861, when, under the budding trees and the
gleaming blue of the sky, full of hope and eagerness to meet any
foe at any odds ; fearful, almost, that the Rebellion would be over
before it could try its hand, the young regiment had sworn
with uplifted hands to bear true faith and allegiance to the United
States of America. Many of the men lived to see the last day
of a term of four years and two months expire, and one of them
was the writer of this chronicle. The story of this regiment was,
compared with that of many other commands, an uneventful one.
It fired, in an obscure skirmish in Missouri, some of the first shots
of the war; it fired its last volley at Bentonville, North Carolina,
the last pitched battle of the long struggle. But between those
events it took part in none of the great historic conflicts.
It was its fate to be within hearing of Stone river aud Chica-
mauga, and the great battles about Atlanta, and yet not to be in
at the harvest of death. Yet what a long round was that which

'6 SOUTHERN letters.
ended at Louisville ! All over the prairies and woods of North
Missouri; among the swamps around New Madrid; down the
swollen Mississippi to Osceola, Arkansas; in the flash-in-the-pan
movement on Fort Pillow; up the river to the God-forsaken wil
derness around Corinth, where dunderpated old Halleck made
"reconnoissance in force;" then to Tuscumbia; then to Athens,
and on the great Buell-Bragg "swing-around" to Nashville, to
be there blockaded ; then to the South again, to hear the guns at
Mission Ridge and Lookout; then on the long march to the sea
with Sherman; then to Washington and the great review, and
then to Louisville, Spriugfield, and home.
Never in a great battle, seldom mentioned in the dispatches,
never gilded by any chance rays of glory — never uttering that
word; never the "pet" regiment of any city, county or State,
though one of the first in the field; ignored by Sanitary Commis
sion, Christian Commission, and even by the home sewing socie
ties, the regiment yet did its duty. How many miles it marched,
going into every Confederate State except Florida, Louisiana and
Texas; how many miles of corduroy it laid; how many boxes of
hard-tack it "packed" at Kelly's Ferry; how many lines of
breastworks it threw up in the Atlanta campaign; — and all this
time how many men it furnished for every arm of the service.
They commenced detailing at the first of the war, and they never
got through till the war was done — men for the artillery, men for
the gunboats, for the pioneers, even for the irregular cavalry, and
officers for batteries and for other regiments, white and colored.
It seemed that a full regiment must have graduated from its ranks.
Never slaughtered in great battles, it yet left its dead all along
its winding path from the Missouri to Savannah, and north and
west again until they came to Louisville, as soldiers to "die no
more." How well I remember the last muster rolls — how they
worked all the hot July night at them, and yet there was not
much excitement about it. Everything had become a matter of
course; the regiment, collectively, had become as stolid as an
overworked mule. The men seemed to mind little more about
being mustered out than again hearing little Captain Rowe rushr
ing about Company C 's quarters at four o'clock in the morning,

AFTER MANY YEARS. 7
ordering them to get up and get ready to march immediately
with four days' rations. They inarched to the Louisville ferry as
if they were going South instead of North.
" Home." How many times every man in that regiment had
uttered that word in every accent ! One would have thought
some little town or farm-house in Illinois was heaven itself, to
h«ar them speak of it. How they talked about the girls there
¦ — but they were not girls then — they were "angels ever bright
and fair." How they talked about the commonest articles of
food which they were going to eat when they got "home." It
was "home" in every heart and on every tongue for four years,
and now to those of us who had no wives or babies to go home
to — and the married were in the minority in the regiment — it
was not what we expected — this going "home."
The day came, each man took his discharge, the parchment with
the spread eagle at the top; some bought their muskets and
"traps" of the Government. One morning the sergeants called
the roll; the next morning there were no sergeants; no "orderly
books," no men — the regiment had gone "home."
There was a noticeable difference between 1861 and 1865, be
tween the going and coming volunteer. No fluttering handker
chiefs greeted the return of our regiment, no cannon shouted, no
committees of invitation or reception met the veterans at the
depots. The land was full of discharged soldiers then. By ones
and twos and threes the disbanded scattered about the country.
I remember that when I parted with some of them, they sang
out, " Send us your newspaper, old fellow. " With their pro
phetic eyes they saw my future doom.
And so the regiment went "home." I say "home," but while
some were met with clasping arms and the joyful clamor of greet
ing voices, many more wandered about for a time in unutterable
loneliness. The "cock's shrill clarion" heard across the country
in the gray of morn sounded melancholy enough to ears accus
tomed for years to the reveille. The struggle for work, for bread,
came hard enough ; for many it has been hard enough ever since;
and when once-in-awhile I meet one of the old regiment, some
thing in the sunken lines of his face, in his whitening hair, in the

8 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
stoop of his shoulders, tells me that the years of peace have
broken him more than all the marches and vigils of the war.
I have written thus because all these reflections have come
since I came here to Louisville, and because I have never in my
reading seen what seemed to me a true picture of the "soldier's
return." Louisville, in the sixteen years that have rolled by since I saw
it last, has changed for the better, as it should. It was full "of
all sorts of human refuse in 1865, and was villainously dirty.
The heart of the city has been finely built up, though the style
of business architecture is rather sombre. There is nothing to
remind you that you are in the South, and but little to remind
you that you are in Kentucky, except the frequent recurrence of
the sign, "Kentucky Whiskies." I had hitherto supposed that
old Bourbon, like virtue, was its own reward ; but it appears
that a premium is required here to get people to drink it. I
saw a sign at one ruin factory, "An oyster with each drink,"
while another enterprising vendor offered the temptation of " an
oyster and a hard-boiled egg" with each drink — thus insuring
the sufferer a lively turn of nightmare, even if he escaped the
jim-jams. The season I found no further advanced than at Atchison.
There was an hour, however, on Sunday morning, when it was
spring. It was just as the church bells were ringing and the
town clocks were striking; and the scene was on that fine street,
Broadway. A burst of yellow sunshine lit the wide street, the
stately houses framed in green grass-plots, and glorified the
throngs of gaily-dressed ladies and children on their way to the
churches. It seemed as if the dark limbed trees would in an
instant burst into leaf in honor of Palm Sunday, which festival
it was. But the gleam was transient, as most beautiful things
are, and soon the sky grew gray and dull, and the cold which
had been with us so long came back again.
In the afternoon I visited Cave Hill, for many years the great
cemetery of Louisville. It is divided into two parts, an old-
time "graveyard" and a modern cemetery. The latter derives

AFTER MANY YEARS. 9
its beauty from the inequality of its surface, being broken often
by circular, bowl-like depressions ; all is in the brightest sod,
and no ornamentation has been attempted except in the con
struction of a drive and in the planting of most magnificent
evergreens. At the extreme end of the grounds farthest from
the entrance is the National cemetery, where nearly four thou
sand soldiers are buried. The Union dead lie in long ranks on
a hillside, row on row, as if they were formed in column to
charge the crest. On the summit there is another detachment,
while on the farthest slope, as if retiring, are the ranks of the
Confederates, each grave marked with a neat head-stone. I no
ticed on one, " Elizabeth Temms, from Calhoun, Ga.," with the
added lines, "Bury me with my people;" and one Confederate
soldier's grave had been made with his comrades as late as 1872.
I doubt not such marks of attachment to the "lost cause'' will
continue in the South for years, as in Scotland the old Jacobites
continued to drink the health of "him that's awa' " long after
the cloud of irremediable ruin had settled upon the house of
Stuart. I looked in vain for the monument of George D. Prentice.
People I met were positive that such a monument existed, and
gave directions as to its probable locality, but while I found the
graves of his family, including his ill-fated son, Courtland,
killed in the Confederate service, there was nothing to mark the
resting-place of the man whose fame had made Louisville
famous. I thought of his own pathetic lines on the lone, un
marked grave of a little child in the wilds of Arkansas.
There was something strange in the surroundings of the place.
Separated from it only by the fence, and a little grove, rise the
gloomy, castellated walls of the workhouse. The prisoners look
ing through the grated windows see the peaceful slopes of " God's
acre," and I thought how many a weary-hearted outcast, not yet
lost to memory or to shame, must have gazed from the gloom of
this prison-house, and thought how better the dreamless sleep of
those resting thousands than life with a hopeless burden and an
enduring stain. Near the entrance of the grounds I heard the
continued and boisterous laughter of children at play. I found

10 SOUTHERN letters.
that it proceeded from the grounds of an orphanage near by.
The little fatherless and motherless made the air ring with their
shouts of glee, all unconscious of what their near neighbor, Death,
had clone to them.
I had never visited any sort of school exclusively supported
and conducted by colored people, and I gratified my curiosity,
late in the afternoon, by a visit to the Normal and Theological
Institute on Kentucky street, which is supported by the colored
Baptist churches. The surroundings, as I found them, were not
inviting. The building had once been a stylish family residence
in the center of a large inclosure filled with trees and shrubbery,
but it had been suffered to fall into decay; the front gates were
off their hinges, and the grounds looked disheveled and dirty.
On entering the big, empty, dirty hall, I pursued my investiga
tions till I finally found myself seated in the chapel, where the
boarding pupils, some thirty boys, girls, young men and young
women, were at service. The room had been a double parlor at
some time, and a handsome marble fireplace was still visible, but
rough benches and blackboards had transformed it. The room
was lighted with smoking kerosene lamps, the windows were thick
with dirt, and the establishment had a black look all around. The
principal of the school, a smart, portly, wordy yellow person,
with a moustache like John A. Logan's, delivered an energetic
exposition, of the story of the widow and her two mites. The
duty exemplified, was, of course, that of giving — in worldly par
lance, " whacking up ; " and I have yet to attend a colored religious
service where the contribution did not seem the most important
feature. The congregation was sleepy and listless, until a hymn
was given out, and then you heard it. Such voices, though all
untrained, you would not find in one white congregation in twenty.
A prayer by a young student, which seemed to me full of rever
ence, closed the exercises.
I had some talk with the principal, who, though a man of edu
cation, did not please me. He wore. a dressing gown, and
seemed bumptious. I had, however, another talk with a Mr.
Marrs, a man of unmixed blood, a school teacher by profession,
which was more satisfactory. I forgot about the dirt and the

AFTER MANY YEARS. 11
dressing gown and the grotesqueness of the surroundings, in
hearing how these poor people had shouldered a debt of thirteen
thousand dollars in buying the building ; how they had kept up
the running expenses of the school without encroaching on what
they had " laid down " for the payment of the property ; how
they had organized a band of "jubilee singers" to lift at the
wheel, and so on. I could not learn that the white people had
done much for the school, but Mr. Marrs acknowledged their
help in other matters, and spoke especially of the efforts of Rev.
Dr. Stuart Robinson, of Louisville, in behalf of the colored or
phan asylum. Dr. Robinson I had always regarded as the high
priest of Bourbonism, but, like many another good man, his
practice is better than his theories.
The lamps were shining in the streets when I took my leave
of Mr. Marrs in the dingy yard of the Normal and Theological
Institute, and here I will take leave of Louisville.

THE HEART OF KENTUCKY.
Lexington, Ky., April 13, 1881.
One of my earliest wishes in the direction of travel was to
visit the Blue-Grass region of Kentucky, of which I heard so much
from the tall young Kentuckians who were in my childhood my
father's personal friends and political associates. I firmly be
lieved it, for a long time, the most densely populated portion of
the United States, from hearing the oft-repeated assertion that
nobody ever saw a Kentuckian who hailed from over forty miles
from Lexington. Yet there was a time when to come even from
the Blue-Grass region was not exactly the greatest thing, for the
old-time emigrant, toiling along the roads of far Illinois, was
prone to answer the universal question of a new country. "Where
are you from ? " with, " I am from Kaintucky, here, sir, but I was
bawn in old Fudginny, sir." However, that was a long time ago.
To be born, as man or horse, in the Blue-Grass country, is now
deemed a patent of human and equine nobility.
The "Short Line" from Louisville to Cincinnati takes you to
Lexington, and though the road does not run all the way through
a region of surpassing beauty or fertility, still you see the famous
blue-grass pastures at intervals ; and the " old Kentucky home," a
white wilderness of porches and wings and outbuildings, includ
ing the old "quarters," is a frequent object in the landscape.
Lumber enough must have been consumed in one of those old
houses to build a business block in Kansas, and all the available
brick in the neighborhood was consumed in the two big chimneys
standing on the outside at either end of the big house. There
are some pretty towns, like Eminence, LaGrange and Midway,
along the line, and plenty of straggling old burgs which nearly
always stand a mile or so from the track, whether from antipathy
to the railroad or because the railroad did not seek their society,
could not be determined. (12)

THE HEART OF KENTUCKY. 13
There was no life or stir in the country. There are no manu
factories in these towns ; they make one think of villages in rural
England. I missed the hedges, common to England and Kansas.
Everything here is plank and post.
Near a station called Anchorage is one of the State asylums
for the insane, and one of the inmates is Buford, who murdered,
in cold blood, Judge Elliott. Buford agrees with the rest of
mankind in believing that he is not insane, and was not when
he committed the crime. He merely killed one of the judges
because the decisions of the court generally had been against him.
I got into conversation with a citizen of Owen county, where
Buford was tried. He said the jury was a miserable one ; that
five out of the twelve could not read, and the majority had never
been as far from home as Owenton before; that they were tired
out with legal arguments of the meaning of which they had not
the slightest comprehension, and determined to bring in a verdict
at once. The man from Owen was an interesting character, not
in any way allied to the aristocracy of the blue-grass country.
He was born in Owen ; had served his time in a Kentucky Con
federate cavalry regiment, and was a very practical person. He
said Owen had a bad name ; that it made considerable whisky,
which was entirely consumed at home ; that in his district he,
with others, had had a hard fight to get a free school established,
and he expressed great disgust, (in which I fully shared,) that one
of the opponents to the school tax was a man from Michigan.
The negroes, he said, could get a fair living in his county, but
out of the five or six hundred in the county, there were only two
whom he knew to be land-owners. He thought they did surpris
ingly well in the way of education. They had a school in his
neighborhood ; he did not know exactly how it was supported,
but it was kept up, and the children appeared to learn fast. He
said the black folks were very timid ; that they were afraid to
come into Owen from outside. In short, I judged from his sketch
that Owen was not the richest producing portion of the moral
vineyard. Later, he qualified his first evidence somewhat, and
said that the " pikes" through the county were kept in order, and
that the people were hospitable to the last degree. He invited

14 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
me, in parting, to come and see him, and said he would take me
to Owenton on a '' county court day," when, if the weather was
suitable, and the whisky operated with its usual suddenness and
power, I would see what Gen. Phil. Kearney was accustomed to
call "lovely fighting along the whole line."
As far as situation goes, Frankfort is certainly remarkable.
Crowded in between the high cliffs and bluffs of the Kentucky
river, it made me think of a miniature copy of Basle on the
Rhine, in Switzerland. The Kentucky river is a swift, shallow,
rolling stream, but is still dear to Congress, which makes appro
priations to lock and dam it. At certain stages of the water it
is used by raftsmen, and Frankfort is quite a native lumber
market in consequence. A queer, old-world sort of place is
Frankfort. I should think it ought to be left in peace, but I
am told that there is a chronic desire to remove the capital to
Louisville or Lexington, which probably irritates the burghers
of Frankfort. I am a Frankfort man, myself. 1 do not think
a place that is good for anything else should be a State capital.
Arriving at Lexington after dark, I put up, on the recom
mendation of my friend from Owen county, at the Southern Ho
tel, which establishment was commanded by his former Colonel. I
found the Southern a fine specimen of the wandering, confused,
tumble-down, dark, smoky old tavern, where the colored servants,
like the people before Noah's flood, do what seems right in their
own eyes, and do as little of anything as possible. Mine host
the Colonel was a very dark, spare, dignified person, who in his
military days had served not only in the line but on the staff,
and was perpendicular accordingly. I suppose the " Southern"
is the headquarters of the rank and file of the late Confederate
army, while the officers go to the " Phoenix." However, the
Colonel was very obliging, and I commend him to the attention
of privates and non-commissioned officers of the disbanded
" Federal " forces.
The prettiest woman is not "overly" attractive on washing
day, and it was my fortune to see Lexington first in a pouring
rain, one of the meanest of this horrible spring. Not a tree of
all the thousands that line the narrow streets was in leaf, and

THE HEART OF KENTUCKY. ' 15
only the vivid green of the brave blue-grass in the public grounds
and private inclosures served to remind one that spring had not
been abolished and stricken from the almanac.
The town is one hundred aud two years old. Think of that,
you "old" Kansans of twenty-five years' residence. I judge
that the place has always grown very slowly. The brick houses
on the ancient streets represent every style of architecture that
has prevailed during a century. There are plenty of old log
cabins iu the town, which have been preserved by weather-
boarding. There is a Masonic hall, an immense and rusty pile,
that looks as if it could tell, if it would, something about the
early days of the Obelisk. And then the trees ! Every day
for a hundred years must have been "arbor day." Miles of ma
ples, and oaks and elms galore, and in every front yard the most
magnificent evergreens, pines, hemlocks and spruces, their dark
green contrasting with the velvety shine of the blue-grass.
I wished to see the "oldest inhabitant," but the season is too
late for him. When the almost forgotten sun comes back again;
when the shadows of the new leaves dance on the old brick side
walks, the old man will come forth, leaning on his buckhorn-
headed cane, and talk about "me and Henry Clay;" but I shall
not see him.
I wandered out to see the cadets at their drill, but found that
in consequence of the mud and rain a parade in honor of the
birthday of Henry Clay had been dismissed. Determined to
see something or somebody, I soon found myself in a room with
a college president and three professors. One of them, Lieuten
ant Howell, the military professor, had been stationed once at Fort
Riley, with the artillery, which was a good-enough start for an
acquaintance. The group proved a pleasant one, and with va
rious talk with the shrewd, kindly Scotch President Patterson
and others, an hour passed away.
I learned that I was near Ashland, the home of Henry Clay,
and reverence for the Whig traditions of my family led me to
wade through a rain-soaked pasture and climb several fences to
see the place. I found a rather pretentious, modern-looking
brick house, that did not seem to be in harmony with pictures I

16 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
had seen. A listless colored girl answered the bell, and in an
swer to my question said that visitors were shown the house, and
ushered me into the library, a beautiful octagonal room, dimly
lighted from above; the ceiling and wainscottiug, consisting en
tirely of paneled ash from the estate, showing nearly as dark as
rosewood, and very handsome. A bust of Henry Clay stood in a
shadowy recess. After sending in, like General Wade Hamp
ton, my "address," the maid servant reappeared and informed
me that the family were sick and did not " wish to be bothered."
That was all I saw of Ashland. However, it was some consola
tion to know that the present house was not built by Henry
Clay, but by his son, James B. Claj', and that the property does
not now belong to the family, and is rented.
Coming back to the town, I overtook one of my new-found
friends, the professors, who kindly piloted me to Transylvania
University. I think the institution will go to heaven, eventually,
for it has "come up through- much tribulation." It was started
while Kentucky was a province of Virginia. I think from the
name it must have been one of Jefferson's ideas. I believe he
wanted to call one of the States to be carved out of the Northwest
Territory, Mesopotamia. The other-side-of-the-woods Univer
sity, (I believe that is what Transylvania means,) had a varie
gated time of it. It early fell into the hands of the Presbyterians,
and then one religious denomination after another took hold of it
and ran it a greater or less distance into the earth, and then
abandoned it to another. Still, iu spite of all this, it was for
years a great school. Prof. White (a noble old gentleman, by
the way) showed me some figures. Up to 1859 the medical
department graduated eighteen hundred and eighty doctors.
Shade of Hippocrates, M. D., what an amount of suffering these
figures represented ! What mountains of pills, what acres of
blisters, what rivers of gore ! Nearly every old-fashioned doctor
in the South and West, thirty years ago, was a Transylvanian.
There linger yet in the town traditions of the wild young saw
bones. It is told that in their day the country people shocked
their corn over the graves of their friends, to protect the dead
from the enterprising young disciples of science.

THE HEART OF KENTUCKY. 17
Some years ago Transylvania University was blended with
the University of Kentucky, from Harrodsburg, adopted the
name of the latter, and became an institution under charge of
President Garfield's people, the Disciples, Christians, or, as an
ungodly and stiff-necked generation call them, Campbellites. A
gentleman named Bowman, a sort of Christian Col. Sellers, was
chief engineer, and there was " millions in it " for awhile. Then
came the decline and fall of Bowman; and now, as I understand
it, the State of Kentucky proposes to dissolve a sort of limited
partnership with the church, and run an agricultural, military
and normal college of her own. Brother Bowman was not at all
discouraged, but got up a scheme, which he presented to our Min
ister to Mexico, to purchase that interesting country for four
million dollars. The Minister kindly sent the plan to the news
papers. Mr. Bowman was pushed for a place in Garfield's Cabi
net. Had his appointment tended to the subjugation of that
red-headed Pedobaptist of a Conkling, I could wish it had been
made. But to go a long way back. The portion of ex-Transylvania
I visited was Morrison College, a big ugly building with a beau
tiful site. The rooms looked bare and desolate. The library
was crowded with the oldest and oddest collection of books I
ever saw, and in it was a planetarium, an instrument invented, I
think, by a Lexington savant of long ago. The soldiers got at
the planetarium during the war and disarranged some of the heav
enly bodies, but the gay old earth, as I learned from turning the
crank, was able to come up smiling for her regular revolutions.
Contrasted with our brand new University at Lawrence, this
old Kentucky institution looked rather weather-beaten, as well it
might, having been occupied as a hospital during the war, and
fearfully knocked about. Still it is not buildings that make
scholars, but brains, and the faculty of this old college are every
where praised for their learning and devotion.
Lexington is a great town for academies and seminaries. There
is a female college here which cost a gentleman named Hocker
all he possessed and all he could borrow, his reward being to
have his name given to the school ; but at last he sold it, and an-

18 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
other name was attached, and so, in the language of the great
Latin poet whose name escapes me, Sic transit gloria Mocker.
Every visitor is shown the cemetery here. I saw it amid the
mist and the "tangled skeins of rain," and it was surpassingly
beautiful. I despair of giving any idea of it. The central ob
ject is the monument to Henry Clay. I had heard it severely
criticised, but it seemed to me majestic and graceful. The mon
ument to the Confederate dead is a beautiful piece of work —
simply a standard with broken staff and furled and tangled folds.
The designer, unconsciously I have learned, embodied the senti
ment of the lines from "The Conquered Banner:"
"Take that banner down; 'tis shattered —
Broken is its staff and shattered,
And the valiant hosts are scattered,
Over whom it floated high.''
I had the pleasure of passing an evening with the enthusiastic
Curator of the Kentucky State Historical Society, an organiza
tion, by the way, many years younger than the Kansas society.
Prof. Ranck has written a fine history of Lexington, and oblig
ingly gave me several documents bearing on the history of the
city and State. The Pennsylvanians who annually re-une at
Atchison, may be gratified to know that the founder of Lexing
ton, and, it is claimed, also of Cincinnati and Dayton, was a
Pennsylvanian named Patterson. Mr. Patterson was actively in
the town-site business in 1775. He was staking out this town
when he heard the news of the battle of Lexington, and the site
was named accordingly. The actual settlement was not made,
however, until four years after. Prof. Ranck showed me a plas
ter cast of the skull of Daniel Boone. It was not as symmetri
cal as the head I have seen carried on the shoulders of Daniel's
grandson, Col. A. G. Boone, of Westport, Mo. The forehead
was retreating. Daniel had not a "swell front," but the back of
the head, where the "bar-fighting" and Indian-killing propensi
ties are located, shows a healthy development.
Walking around the public square in Lexington, one reads the
history of Kentucky on the signs. I saw on one, "Breckinridge
& Shelby;" in that you have the story of a century of Ken-

THE HEART OF KENTUCKY. 19
tucky. Other names are connected with strange associations.
"Beauchamp," on one sign, brought up the "Beauchamp trag
edy," which bas been made the subject of a novel. These old
Kentucky families hold on astonishingly. No matter what the
mutations of war or peace or politics, the names are prominent
now that were in the days of the "dark and bloody ground." I
should think young men not born to the Kentucky purple would
chafe under this, but they do not. Kentuckians tell me that
talent is transmitted in these families, and hedce supremacy.
The Clays do not verify this theory, but on the other hand the
Breckinridges do. These remarkable people seem to inherit the
gift of eloquence, personal beauty, and grace of manner, from
generation to generation. They divided during the war, and
were a power on both sides.
I had intended to say something about the relations of politi
cal parties here, the idea of a New Kentucky and other matters
which would have interested my friend Willard Davis, of Kan
sas, a former Lexingtonian, but I have gossipped, I fear, past
the point of interest.

THE MAMMOTH CAVE.

Cave City, Ky., April 16, 1881.
One of the old-fashioned curiosities of the United States is the
Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. The word "mammoth" has an
old-time sound, and I believe is only applied now to circuses,
clothing stores, and the great Cave itself. The Cave has been
visited for the better part of a century, and in the way of descrip
tion there is really nothing new to tell ; so I will deal principally
in personal impressions.
Leaving Louisville by the Louisville & Nashville road at 11:35
on Thursday last, we journeyed, for a wonder, by the light of an
unclouded sun, and saw nothing of interest until the long ascent
of Muldrough's Hill was reached, where there is some fancy en
gineering in the way of steep grades, and airy, high-hung bridges ;
and so we came to Elizabethtown, and a sight of the prettiest
girl who resides in that sleepy borough, or for many miles around.
She stood, a slender and graceful figure, in the depot door, and
she held in her hand a gorgeous bunch of daffodils that gleamed
in golden contrast with the black and gray garb which she wore.
Her eyes were violet, while her eyebrows were dark, almost
black, and her hair the hue that is auburn in the shade and yel
low in the sun. Her features were not regular, but her grave,
slow-coming smile, as some one spoke to her, was full of dignity
and sweetness, and redeemed any defect which an over-critical
eye might have discovered. To complete the picture, one shapely,
though not excessively small foot, peeped beneath her dress.
Everybody on the side of the car. next to the depot looked at
her, but she seemed as unconscious as the great bouquet of daffo
dils she carried. She seemed to light the dingy depot, and to be
the embodiment of Spring. Who she was, none of the pilgrims
who looked upon her that April day will ever know ; how she
looked, they will not soon forget. (20)

THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 21
As you go southward you reach hamlets made famous by the
war. At Mumfordsville the town is surrounded by old unin-
closed commons, as if troops had been encamped there for some
time; and green mounds on either side of Green river mark
where batteries were located in a line of defensive works. Ma
sonry crumbles, and iron is eaten up by rust. There is nothing
so indestructible as a heap of earth thrown up by the spade. It
withstands a fire under which stone walls are pulverized, and
covering itself with sod, defies the frosts and rains of years. I
doubt not that a few hours' work would again make those old
grass-grown redoubts serviceable.
At Rowlett's Station, a few miles below Mumfordsville, a
sharp fight took place between a German Union volunteer force,
and a body of Texas Rangers under Gen. Terry. At Cave Hill
Cemetery, in Louisville, there is to be seen the monument of
thirty-two of the Union soldiers who fell in this action.
Cave City, eighty-five miles from Louisville, is reached at 3
o'clock in the afternoon, and thence you take McCoy's stages for
the Mammoth Cave, eight or nine miles distant, according to the
state of the roads. Last Thursday it was nine miles.
The road was worthy of the county of Edmonson, one of the
roughest, woodiest and most backward of Kentucky counties.
The county has but one town, Brownsville, the county seat, a
God-forsaken hamlet, twelve miles from the railroad or any
where else. The bluffs of Green river occupy the larger part of
the county, and moonshiners occupy the bluffs, save when they
resign in favor of the United States Marshal's merry men, who
pursue them in force. Up rocky hills and down deep ravines
and through deposits of red clay mud, the Concord coach made
its way slowly, though drawn by four good horses. There were
but two frame houses along the road, but plenty of log cabins,
situated in small patches of wretched land cleared in the midst
of the forest. The road for much of the distance wound along
the summit of the ridge, and on either hand were tremendous
bowl-shaped depressions, covered with forest, as is all the country.
This region has no running streams on the surface. Water for
the crumpled-horned, ewe-necked, rat-tailed, red-and- white "cow
2

22 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
brutes" we saw, is obtained from rain-water ponds and springs.
All the streams are subterranean, cut through the underlying
limestone. As if the "surface indications" of poverty were not
enough, a cyclone had swept through the timber, and the fallen
trees held up in their roots for our inspection great masses of
yellow clay and slabs of rock.
The country was by no means uninhabited. The cabins
swarmed with children, and groups of these products of the hills
appeared at the roadside and offered flint arrow-heads and "rat
tle stones " for sale. It was a raw day. They were barefooted, and
I felt very sorry for them — and was correspondingly disgusted to
learn afterward that it was their custom in cold weather to slip
off their shoes and stockings on the approach of the coach, and
resume them after its departure. Some of these children had
bright, strong faces, and looked very much like the groups de
picted in Porte Crayon's sketches of the mountain country of
Virginia. Occasionally we met an ox-team, the wagon being of
a pattern that would have made the Studebakers laugh them
selves to death.
As the sun was declining we emerged into a little clearing, in
front of the Mammoth Cave Hotel, the only house near the great
cave. Nobody knows how old the hotel is. It is a big log tavern,
weatherboarded and painted white, erected piecemeal during a
period of fifty years and upward, until it has become a vast,
rambling affair, capable of accommodating two hundred guests.
No two windows are on a line with each other, and the structure
is nearly as much of a curiosity as the Mammoth Cave itself.
There is no gas, no electric bells, no anything peculiar to a fash
ionable hotel; but there is an immense piazza, six hundred feet
long and wide in proportion, great fireplaces which will burn a
cord of wood at once, rooms of all shapes and sizes, no long stairs
to climb, immense forest trees in the great yard, and in short, it
must be in summer a dear old rambling, breezy place, where the
young might dream of the future and the old of the past, and the
sounds of the toiling, struggling, fighting world grow faint and
far away.
The season does not open until June, and there were but two
families at the hotel,

THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 23
My first visit to the Cave was made on the night of my arrival.
The party of seven persons, including three children, left the hotel
after sunset and before moanrise. Each member was provided
with a walking-stick and a rude swinging lard-oil lamp. We
made our way through the old garden, over a stile, down the steep
sides of a wooded ravine for two or three hundred yards, and
paused at the bottom to listen to the monotonous sound of a stream
of falling water. In a moment more, we descend into a dark cav
ity in the ground, surrounded on three sides by mossy, vine-cov
ered rocks, and shadowed by tall trees. On the third side was the
incline and rude steps by which we had descended. On our left
was a dark shadow, crossed by the white line of the little water
fall; it was the entrance to the Mammoth Cave, and, to use a
matter-of-fact illustration, it looked very like a railroad tunnel.
Going in some distance, we came to an iron-grated gate, which
made one think of the Pilgrim's Progress. Entering this, we were
in the grand gallery of the Cave proper. I will not give here a
detailed account of our wanderings that night. For hours we
walked and climbed and crept and wondered, under the guidance
of Old Matt, the black man who has piloted people about the
Cave for forty years. At midnight we stood again in the open
air; the cold, round m ion looked down through the bare tree-tops
into the darksome dell, and the waterfall plashed on the rocks
below, and so strongly do trifles impress us at remarkable times,
that I remember as we made our way through the garden to the
long, shadowy piazza, stretching away like a ship's deck, a great
peacock perched on a tree, wakened the night with his sharp and
angry scream.
That night I walked the Cave in my dreams ; and getting up
early in the morning, wandered past the entrance of the Cave
and on by the forest road to Green river, perhaps half a mile
away. It was the middle of April, and a long distance south of
Kansas, yet there was scarcely a sign of spring; a few leaves of
the dog-tooth violet were all I saw, and the buckeye, the pioneer
of spring, showed only leaf-buds. Yet the air, so to speak,
seemed to be "breaking," as the ice does in the rivers, and there
seemed to be a hopeful note in the morning chorus of the birds.

"24 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
At ten o'clock in the morning I started again for the Cave, in
company with the Mellon family, of Pittsburgh, who had stopped
on their way home from Florida. Mrs. Mellon was a Leaven
worth girl, and the daughter of my old friend, the late General
Larimer; so Kansas had two representatives in the party.
We took as a guide, the famous William, a younger and much
better guide than Matt, who has become old and indifferent. On
this trip we took in places of interest not visited the night be
fore; and here I may as well record generally my impressions.
I had heard it said that the Mammoth Cave should be de
scribed by Dante and illustrated by Dore, but it did not impress
me with any special sense of awfulness or mystery. There was
something human, social and charming about it. Perhaps it is
because you come at once upon signs of human occupancy. In
the war of 1812 saltpetre was manufactured here for the Amer
ican army, and here remain the old loe pipes, the vats, and heaps
of leached nitrous earth. Here they say are wheel ruts and the
tracks of oxen. It was curious to think that the art of man, in
the darkness of this wild place, found the substance which
blazed and roared perhaps from the decks of Perry's ships; or,
it may be that this "villainous saltpetre," gathered in the forest
depths, carried death to the heart of Tecumseh, son of the wil
derness. Besides, all through the Cave on the walls, the names of thou
sands of visitors were carved in the rock or marked on the walls
by the smoke of lamps. There are heaps of stones piled up by
visitors from the various States, from foreign countries, and vari •
ous organizations. Kentucky has the largest cairn; and after
some search I found a small heap raised for Kansas. It was
distinguishable by a large stone marked "C. H. Hindman,
1880." Young William Larimer Mellon added to the monu
ment for his mother's and grandfather's sake, and I had piled on
as large a stone as two men could lift, and Mr. Klett, the super
intendent of the Cave, told me he would have a good and suffi
cient sign painted. There is a very large pile erected to the
memory of General Robert E. Lee, and in one of the passages
is a Garfield and Arthur pile. We asked William if he con-

THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 25
tributed to that pile, and he said it depended on the politics of
the party he was taking through the cave.
The air of the Cave is singularly sweet and delicate. It main
tains an average temperature of 59° the year round. There is
nothing damp, slimy or cavernous about the place. There is
water in places, but it is clean water. In old times visitors were
accustomed to put on a special dress for explorations, but this is
not necessary.
While, as I have said before, the Cave did not impress me with
its awfulness, it struck me as wonderfully interesting. There is a
sort of winning and gentle majesty about it. The floor is in many
places a red sand, which becomes hard and smooth and affords a
perfect pavement, and the colors are all in harmony. The ceil
ings of the great galleries, eighty feet wide and sixty feet high,
are a soft tint of gray, like the coming of the dawn, and are smooth
as if prepared by the hand of man. In other portions of the Cave,
the walls were yellowish brown ; in others a velvety black. The
stalactites and stalagmites in the Cave, beyond the river Styx, are
pure white, but those on the hither side are brown, in most in
stances, though sometimes white, like spermaceti.
The most beautiful sight to me, on the round we made on my
first visit, was the "Star Chamber." The ceiling of this great
room is dark and spangled with crystals. The guide took away
the lights, and in the silence and semi-darkness you looked
upward, and — there seemed no mistake — the roof of the cavern
had gone, and for the width of the departed roof you saw the
sky, as plainly as I see the paper I am writing on. There it was
— the blue, moonless but faintly star-lit sky of moist and early
spring. It was a perfect illusion. It required no effort of the
imagination. A movement of the screened lights, and more faint
stars appeared; another, and dark, smoky, filmy clouds swept
across the firmament. Spring was the season, and, as to the
time, " It was the hour when from the boughs
The nightingale's high song is heard ;
It was the hour when lovers' vows
Seem sweet in every whispered word."

26 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
Next to this came the Great Egyptian Dome, which I saw on
my second visit. This is an immensely high room, looking as
lofty as the dome of the capitol at Washington. There are here
immense columns, one square, with a capital fluted and carved to
perfection; others resembled Corinthian columns; and one, a
perfectly circular pillar, seemed transplanted from one of the
great cathedrals of Europe. The floor here is very rough, cov
ered, as many of the chambers are, by great masses of fallen
rock. Occasionally there is falling water; it is strange to hear,
hundreds of feet underground, all the sounds of the summer rain.
The bottom of Bandit's Cave is a mere incline of broken frag
ments, but, however rough the base, the ceiling is usually smooth.
In one chamber (I do not remember the names of one in ten of
them), the ceiling seems to have been moulded, not carved, as if
it had been covered with stucco, and then rounded forms im
printed, and all, by the Bengal lights, shows that soft gray, yet
almost white tint, which somehow makes one think of babyhood
and sleeping innocence.
The domes, as they are called, are accompanied by pits. It
is as if circular excavation was made in the floor of the rotunda
in the capitol at Washington. There is Gorin's Dome, and
Shelby's Dome, and many others, all varying and yet alike; these
are connected by winding passages through which one can walk
with little difficulty, and by yet other passages through which the
guides creep in their exploration, pushing their lamps before them
and making arrows on the walls to indicate the direction they
came. It is not generally understood that the Mammoth Cave is con
structed in five stories. There are avenues under avenues, and
chambers under chambers. Not long since, some lumber needed
for a stairway in the Egyptian Dome was passed down through
the roof from Audubon avenue. It is known that the Rotunda
is under the present summer dining room of the hotel. The dis
covery was made by some workmen digging a cistern, who heard
voices beneath them. While sounds are thus transmitted, there
is no echo in the cave, except at Echo river, which I was unable
to visit on account of intervening high water. We once thought

THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 27
we heard a very remarkable echo, but it turned out to be William,
who is a good ventriloquist.
The pleasant, bracing air, the constant variety of scenery, and
the climbing, stumbling, and little mishaps, make the tour a pleas
ant one. Fat Man's Misery is a long, winding, narrow groove in
the floor of a passage, the "narrowness" reaching about to the
waist. As your correspondent, who was a " citizen on foot" at the
rear of the procession, entered upon this narrow way, the rest of
the company bade him a very "good evening," but he struggled
through. He is inclined to think, however, that Prouty would
get "hung up" for ninety days. There is, following this, a Tall
Man's Misery, where you must stoop a long distance, and then
you emerge into a loftier place called the Great Relief.
The formations, stalactites and stalagmites are much rarer than
I expected to see. They exist in their beauty beyond the river.
This much-talked-about river is probably a branch of Green
river, into which it certainly empties. All through the cave are
masses of gravel and sand, and driftwood is seen sticking in the
clefts of the ceiling. In the lower levels the passages are some
times entirely filled with water. The Dead Sea is a dull pool of
deep, turbid water, and when I saw it, was an obstruction to
further progress. The Bottomless Pit looks like a deep well, and
is by no means bottomless. The Smoke House is a curious place,
the ceiling having been worn into forms which resemble not only
hams, but sides and shoulders. As a visitor from "Hogtown," I
was of course deeply impressed. The church is a fine room, not
far from-the entrance, with a projecting rock on one side, called the
Pulpit. Religious services were held here two years ago, the
great room being lighted by two hundred lamps. Seven or eight
hundred persons were present, exclusive of the bats, of which
there are several millions. These queer "birds" do not stray far
from the mouth, and move out in warm weather.
The only melancholy feature of the Cave is some roofless stone
houses, erected years ago for consumptive patients, who fancied
that the perfectly even temperature of the Cave would benefit
them. Poor creatures! — how ghastly must their wan faces have
looked as they gazed at each other in the weird lamp-light. One

28 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
died, and the experiment was abandoned. Not even in this place,
down deep in the earth, may one avoid the "fell sergeant Death,"
and better far it is to meet him in peace wherever he may come,
than doom ourselves to fruitless journeyings and pitiful exile
from friends to avoid him.
The Mammoth Cave is something to be always remembered,
but the returning visitor can never describe it to his friends. I
might write on for hours, and convey to others no clear impres
sion. Pictures do not do it justice; photographs least of all.
For myself, I do not remember by name many of the "show
places," but I shall never forget the vine-hung entrance, the cas
cade, the iron door, the smooth floors, the sweet air, the flicker
ing lights, the moving shadows, the lofty arches, the low and
winding passages, the dripping waters, the bubbling springs, the
thousands of names inscribed from year to year, the ladders and
the bridges, the pillars, the merry voices of my companions; the
pits we looked down at, and the ceilings we looked up to; the
curious forms we saw, the "Fat Girl," the profile of Washing
ton, the "Giant and Giantess;" the cold air that warned us we
were approaching the outer world again; the moon of midnight
and the sun of noon that greeted our return.
I wish every Kansan, or "any other man" who does me the
honor to read this account, would visit the Mammoth Cave; and
at present there is some hope that this wonder is to be made a
matter of more popular interest.
The history of the Cave is involved in some confusion. It early
became the property of Dr. Croghan, a brother of the gallant
Col. Croghan, one of the heroes of the war of 1812. From Dr.
Croghan, who was a bachelor, it passed into the hands of his
brother's family. Everybody knows the propensity of the old
regular army families to perpetuate themselves in the service ; con
sequently the Mammoth Cave estate, of some 2,000 acres, is now
owned by several heirs, nearly all of them army officers. One
of these is Captain Wheeler, honorably known in connection with
the Government surveys west of the 100th principal meridian.
Up to last fall, the hotel was run by a worthy old gentleman, born
in the vicinity, named Miller, who understood the hotel to be a

THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 29
country tavern. On behalf of Captain Wheeler, Mr. Francis
Klett, formerly of the Austrian army, and later connected with
the Wheeler survey, has taken charge of the property; has intro
duced many needed reforms, is renovating and repairing the
premises, and is endeavoring to modernize, energize and advertise.
It will surprise most Kansans to know that the Mammoth Cave,
one of the wonders of the world, has never averaged over two
thousand visitors a year. It should have forty thousand.
I cannot imagine a more instructive and agreeable trip for a
large party of Kansas excursionists, than from Atchison to Look
out Mountain, via the Mammoth Cave. Save those who served
in the army, Kansas people kuow nothing of the South. To the
ladies of the party it would be a visit to a new and strange coun
try, as different from Kansas as could well be imagined. How
these gay people from the State of brag and breeze would wake
the echoes of Edmonson county; how they would promenade the
great piazza of the Mammoth Cave Hotel; how they would hunt
the lair of the moonshiner, and write "Ad Astra per Aspera " all
over the Mammoth Cave. The time should be in the leafy month
of June, and care should be taken to ascertain in advance if the
river Styx is crossable. A reduction of twenty-five per cent, is
made to parties of ten and upward. A person visiting the Cave
alone must lay down about ten dollars, which includes three dol
lars stage fare to and from Cave City, which charge, by the way,
is unreasonable.For myself, the visit to the Cave was a charming experience.
I found everybody kind and obliging, and enjoyed every moment
of my stay.
I had no companion on my return to Cave City, except the black
driver, and, while his name was not Macaulay or Froude, he was
a "powerful" historian. Here is a chapter about the "war be
tween the States:"
"Dar was about fifteen hundred of Morgan's men in de town,
[Bowling Green, I believe,] and one of Gineral Morgan's staff
ossifers was up on a box a makin' a speech. He was a hollerin'
an' a wavin' his sword and handkercher, an' sayin' that they was
a goin' right straight to Looieville, an' the women stood in the

30 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
do's and windus and waved handkerchers, and cheered and hol
lered. 'Bout one hundred and fifty of Woolfud's men, with a lot
of waggins, was a comin' in on de road. A man, he went out
on the road, an' tole 'em dat de town was jess full of Morgan's
men — fifteen hundred or mo'. The Captain, he 'lowed he
couldn't get back, 'cos ef he did they'd hear of it, sho, and put
out after him and get him, and he said he reckoned he'd have to
go ahead and pull through wid de waggins somehow. So, while
the speakin' was goin' on, as I tole ye, Woolfud's men come
around the kawner jess a whoopen. Crack, bang, bang, sping,
ta, ta, ta, ta-a-a-a, went dem kyarbeens ; two or free men and hosses
tumbled; de women fell outen de do's and windus, and Mor
gan's men dey got out and run for eight miles, and Woolfud's
men dey closed up and went on fru wid de waggins."

"TENTING ON THE OLD CAMP GROUND."

Nashville, Tenn., April 19, 1881.
Cave City, Barren county, Kentucky, presented no special
attractions except a "sing" which reminded me of my departed
youth. It was a grand free entertainment to exhibit the profi
ciency of the "class." The teacher, a gentleman from Indiana,
looked like John Speer, and had a voice like John K. Wright,
of Junction City. When I say that the "show-piece" of the
evening was "Fairy Moonlight," some idea can be formed of the
antiquity of the programme. The audience was large. A gen
tleman who walked with me to the "Union Church," where the
"concord of sweet sounds" was to come off, said that people had
come up from "Bear Wallow." That reminded me of an old
forgotten experiment at educating Indians. At a school estab
lished for Indians at "Bear Wallow," old Abram Burnett, once
chief of the Pottawatomies in Kansas, was educated. In circum
ference he exceeded any other man I ever saw, and he had adopted
at least one of the habits of the white man — he never missed a
circus. I asked some questions about "Bear Wallow," but my
man knew nothing about the place, except that he once got a horse
shod there. At Cave City I met the only drunken man I saw in
the whisky-making State of Kentucky. He seemed much de
jected, as well he might, for he informed me that he procured the
liquid cause of his depression at a drug store.
Leaving Cave City before sunrise, the train sped southward,
and in fifty miles we came upon signs of spring, and in twenty-
five more we met the late lingerer in the lap of winter on her
journey to the north.
It was what would be called, even in Kansas, a perfect day.
The sun shone, and we were flying southward like a swallow.
Approaching Nashville, the country grew gayer and fioer with
every mile. The plows were running in all the fields ; the
wheat fields and the pastures were emerald ; on the summit of
,(31)

32 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
every rise of ground was some quaint house, with its great chim
neys, embowered in evergreens and snowy-blossomed cherries ;
while here and there the ever-present feature of the Southern
spring landscape, the " old field " or wayside peach tree, glowed
like a rosy flame. One did not think of war in gazing on this
gentle scene; but, before we thought, the sad reminder came.
The train passed swiftly by the great Government cemetery,
eight miles north of Nashville, where the thousands who died in
and around that city have been gathered. But amid those mute,
white tokens of the loved and lost, there rose a consolation.
High above them, between us aud the sky and sun, floated the
flag of the United States of America. ¦ It seemed almost trans
parent in the sunlight, as if it were something belonging to the
heavens rather than the earth. I had seen that flag with a
choking heart when an ocean rolled between me and my native
land, but never did it affect me as when I caught that momentary
glance, and realized what it had cost to plant it there, the sym
bol of a strong and eternal Union.
"Nashville!" said the brakeman, and I looked out. the window
on the right-hand side of the train as we approached the east end
of the bridge, and realized that the " fashion of this world passeth
away." Where I had last seen the ten white rows of company
tents, the one long line of the officers' tents along the river bank,
and the sentries walking their beats, each man executing his
"about face" at the same time, there were piles of lumber and
an ugly wooden structure with the inscription, "Pump Factory."
That was all. Edgefield, which I left a village, had grown into
a young city, and our old camp, policed every day with such
care, where we drilled and mounted guard and paraded for nine
long months, was a lumber yard and a pump factory.
Since- that first surprise, I have explored this town, so well re
membered by thousands of former soldiers, and find it a queer
mingling of the new and the old.
The "disbanded volunteer" will find, I think, mixed up with
new and often splendid structures, every house he knew while
here. The town has extended' a long distance to the north and
south, but in the old city the narrow, rocky streets still wear a
familiar look.

33
Finding an old acquaintance, I went first to the capitol. The
building, when I saw it for the first time, was occupied by the
First Middle Tennessee Infantry, the dirtiest regiment I ever
saw. They were cleaned out, however, shortly afterward, and
the building also, but the grounds consisted of some earthworks
and a stone quarry. All that is changed. The plain and sim
ple, yet beautiful, building is now surrounded by green terraces,
graveled walks and shrubbery. A copy of Clark Mills's bronze
equestrian statue of General Jackson stands, or rather rears, on
the east front. I have never fancied this long-legged general on
his fat horse, but I suppose I ought not to set up my private
judgment against the artistic taste of Tennessee.
The interior of the building, which once seemed magnificent to
us "Johnny Raws," somehow seemed to have lost its grandeur.
The Legislature had adjourned, and the Bill Higgins of the Ten
nessee House had not cleaned up. The carpets were worn and
dirty, the old-fashioned desks were likewise, and numerous bills
strewed the floor, though no paper wads indicated that the Ten
nessee statesmen had indulged in the closing festivities peculiar to
a Kansas Legislature. The Senate chamber looked more forlorn
than the House. The old coal stove that warmed the room was
the most thoroughly spit upon of any article of furniture that
ever met my gaze. If the session had lasted a little longer I
think it would have disappeared in a flood of "ambeer." The
State offices were plain apartments, and mostly desertedv I looked
in vain, in the State Treasurer's office, for such a vault and safe
as John Francis presides over, and learned that the State of Ten
nessee does not keep its money in hand, but has it scattered over
the State in some twenty-six banks. An oasis was finally reached
in the State Library. This fine room and its valuable contents
have been for some time under the charge of Mrs. Hatton, the
widow of a Confederate general, and her daughter, and woman's
taste and care are everywhere visible. There is a very fine collec
tion of portraits, mostly of eminent Tennesseeaus, and a great
store of relics of all sorts, among others the cap of General Pat.
Cleburne, who was killed at the battle of Franklin, and guns be
longing to all the ancient Tennessee hunters. The first $5 green-

34 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
back ever issued is in this collection. It was discovered in a pile
of bills in a Nashville bank. There is a fine portrait of General
Thomas in the room, amidst quite a crowd of Confederates, and
he stands side by side with Governor Brownlow. The portrait
of the wife of General Jackson interested me. She has been
represented as a kind, motherly, but plain-featured and ignorant
woman. The portrait represents her as a woman who must have
been beautiful in her youth, and an old gentleman who knew her
assured me that she was a lovely person, and far more intelligent
than is popularly believed.
The capitol was an interesting spot, but the object that brought
back the greatest throng of recollections was the old Nashville
theater. Its exterior presents the same appearance that I remem
ber in 1862. The door was open, and I went up into the deserted
gallery. They have changed things somewhat, and put in chairs
in the place of the old benches, but it is about the same rusty
dusty old place it always was. I recognized in the gallery the
same pen in which the' unrepentant Magdalenes used to sit, all
alone in their sins. The crowds I have seen in that old house;
just one mass of blue from "pit to dome," broken only by the
bayonets of the provost guard, the Eighth Kansas; and then the
voices, the laughs, the cheers, the thunder of army brogans, and
the army cries, whatever they happen to be. At one time the
"slogan" was "Oh, Joe!" and then, "Here's your mule" had a
great run. How superior we thought the stock actors, and how
we adopted this one or that as a favorite. There was Mrs. Hattie
Bernard, who played everything, from Betsy Baker to Desdemona;
and there was Mr. Claude Hamilton, who was equally obliging
with male characters; and there was old man Jordan, who played
Toodles, and Baillie Nieol Jarvie in "Rob Roy; " and there was
Miss Annie Scanlan, and pretty Mrs. Duncan, who was greatly
pitied by the soldiery because it was said that her husband ill-
treated her, and who, in fact, played Ophelia one night with a
bad black eye; and then in later days came Matilda Heron and
played "Camille" to a tremendous audience; though the most ter
rific jam was the night when Capt. Sheridan, of the Signal Corps,
appeared as Macbeth, to the music of three patriotic airs by the

"TENTING ON THE OLD CAMP GROUND." 35
orchestra,as ordered by the Post Commander. That was an event.
Standing in the old gallery it was easy to bring back all the past,
and to people the stage again with the kings, queens, nobles, sol
diers, gay gallants and ladies fair; villains and bravos, crazed"
lovers and cruel fathers that once walked it; but coming out into
the street we saw on the walls in big blue letters, that Miss Mary
Anderson, who was sucking candy in short dresses when the old
theater was in its prime, would appear next Monday evening as
Parthenia in "Ingornar" — and we realized that nearly twenty
years had flown.
Another landmark was the present Maxwell House, which, dur
ing the war, stood unfinished, and was used as a sort of barracks.
It was the depot of the thousands of convalescents in their trans
fer to the front. Here the recuperating heroes had clothing issued
to them, including an absurd long-tailed, dark-blue coat, de
scribed somewhere in the army regulations as a "dress coat." It
looked like a cross between a window-shutter and a dressing-gown,
and was nicknamed a "convalescent" coat by the hardy veterans .
who wore blouses. There was a name also for the convalescents
themselves, which doubtless is still remembered. The Maxwell
House is now the great hotel of Nashville, taking the place the
St. Cloud occupied in the war-time.
The devil is said to be old, and he seems to have perpetually
the same old locations. His Nashville address was in the war
time "Smoky Row," and is still. The same horrible, sunken,
weather-stained old frame and brick houses, haunts where Bill
Sikes might have murdered Nancy, are in existence that twenty
years ago witnessed scenes of indescribable riot, brutality and
shame. Mingled with these are more pretentious structures of
modern growth, but nothing but the fires of the last day will
ever thoroughly purge the place. It retains its hideous name
and character.
The old wooden railroad bridge has been replaced by an iron
structure, but the railroad "scenery" about the Louisville &
Nashville depot, and beyond, is much the same, including the
long lines of trestle-work extending toward the Chattanooga
depot.

36 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
Around the old market square some fine new buildings have
been erected. The row on the north side, where great stores of
ordnance were formerly kept, is, however, recognizable. The old
building of the Southern Methodist Book Concern has given place
to a large, new and rather handsome structure.
In a previous letter I have mentioned the enduring character
of earthworks. This is abundantly demonstrated about Nash
ville. The outline of Forts Morton and Negley is as clearly dis
cernible against the sky, on the summits of the high hills, as on
the day they were thrown up. They may endure until in some
future age the learned shall discuss the purpose of their con
struction. Nashville in detail is not a beautiful city. It seems less so
now than it did twenty years ago, when it had a sort of shady
dignity and grace about it, in spite of war and trouble. Now
there is too much of a mixture of hovels and palaces; too much
yellow clay and bare rock in sight; but, seen as a whole, it is a
very striking and picturesque town. Standing on the high porch
of the capitol, which overlooks the whole city and the valley of
the Cumberland until it is shut in by the encircling chains of
saw.-like hills, I know of few more impressive pictures. Old
Nashville lies in a dark mass of roofs, chimneys, spires and tree-
tops, wreathed iu a mist or smoke, on the slopes of the capitoline
hill. Up and down the river, north and south, stretches the new
town, until the houses become scattered and the country begins ;
but the most impressive feature is the line of public institutions
encircling the city like a line of fortifications. First, on the
south, is the great cotton factory ; next the massive building of
Fisk University; then the three buildings of Vanderbilt Uni
versity; then the Baptist college for colored people; and thence,
on a line drawn toward the river, are Central Tennessee College,
a Methodist institution for colored people; the University of
Nashville, and the various State asylums. Instead of warlike
defenses, ditch and parapet and embrasure, glacis and abattis,
the city is surrounded by a cordon reared by Business, Education
and Charity — good generals they, who march to the rescue of the
world.

"TENTING ON THE OLD CAMP GROUND." 37
No one, I think, who has ever seen war, can, in spite of the
remembrance of its horrors, fail to feel at times something of the
spirit of Othello's pathetic farewell, and yield himself to " the spell
the martial music weaves." It seems a trifle strange here, after all
the vanished years, to miss the old sights : the staff officers and
orderlies galloping about; the steady tramp of a regiment or so
moving out to open ground under the guns of Fort Negley for
drill or inspection, their arms swaying or glittering in the sun, or
coming with a crash to "shoulder," as they pass the post head
quarters ; but, after all, peace is far better. There are no great
hospitals now, filled with pale and dying sufferers; there are no
ambulances now, coming in from the front with their freight of
pain; there are no sad processions now — no companies with re
versed arms and slow drum-beat. All that has gone. Here now
are the cheerful rattle of wheels, and groups of children on their
way to school, and rising smoke and the clang of bells, and the
scream of steam whistles, and all that goes to make up the Nash
ville of prosperous peace, of which I shall speak of at another
time. 3

A BLACK UNIVERSITY.

Nashville, Tenn., April 20, 1881.
If you wish to learn anything in this section of the country,
you must go and see it for yourself. No matter how desirous
those whom you interrogate may be to give you the best infor
mation possible, no matter how conscientious may be your
witnesses, the testimony is so conflicting and confused as to be
nearly valueless.
Take the matter of the education of the colored people. One
man — and he is as apt to be a Southern Republican as a Southern
Democrat — will tell you that they learn nothing; another, that
a knowledge of reading and writing is becoming generally dif
fused among them, and nothing more; and here and there is a
man who will tell you that their advance depends only on the
character of their instructors, and that, all things being equal,
they progress nearly or quite as well as white students.
It was with a view to satisfying my own mind, and laying re
sults exactly as I found them before the readers of The Cham
pion, that yesterday I visited Fisk University, which, with the
possible exception of Atlanta University, is the best equipped
school for colored people in the South. I told no one I was
going; I asked no one's opinion, save that while waiting for the
street car, I stepped into a news depot and asked the dealer, a
German Republican, if he ever sold the students of any of the
colored institutions of learning any newspapers, and he said, very
few; and he thought they read no journals except religious
papers. This was not encouraging to begin with.
The University is well out of the thickly-populated portion of
the city, near the former site, I believe, of a field work called
Fort Gillem. The street railway does not approach nearer than
a quarter of a mile. Unheralded and unknown, I found myself
in front of a fine brick building with white stone trimmings, and
(38)

A BLACK UNIVERSITY. 39
situated in a tract of twenty acres, bright with grass and shrub
bery. The house cost one hundred thousand dollars.
I had no letter of introduction, and hunted up the first white
man I could, the Treasurer, and was introduced to the President,
Rev. A. M. Cravath, who looked like a New England Congrega
tional clergyman. All the faculty I met seemed New Englanders
and Congregationalists, though I believe some are Presbyterians
— it is easy to mistake one denomination for the other. At any
rate, I have not seen so much Yankee in any other spot in the
South. There was system, order, promptness, nicety everywhere.
It was evident that these educators had been brought up to be
lieve the word "shiftless" the most abhorrent iu the language.
After a few moments conversation with the President, we went
to the chapel, where I sat on the platform to take a good square
look at the audience of students. The room was large, well fur
nished, and scrupulously clean. There was a picture of General
Clinton B. Fisk over the center of the platform. There were
busts of Charles Sumner and John. Brown on brackets. It was
like being in Kansas. There was, of course, a fine cabinet organ.
The young people sat quietly. I heard no shuffling or giggling;
all seemed reverent expectation. There was every shade of com
plexion and variety of feature. There were girls and boys as
black as if they had been born in Ashantee; there were young
men who were whiter than any Cuban or Mexican ; there was
the unmistakable African face, and there were cheeks in which
the rosy flush was visible; there was the heavy-set black who
seemed the descendant of field hands from the flood, and there
were features that seemed to have come down through a long line
of students and scholars. But all were well dressed, silent and
attentive. They sang a hymn, and I will not attempt to describe the beauty
of the singing. There was prayer, and the reading of the Scrip
tures in the responsive manner, and more music, and then the
word was given to clear the room, " gentlemen first."
It was very odd in a man from Kansas, where we are always
talking about ourselves and old John Brown's devotion to free
dom — the old firm, you know, of Us & Brown; but I started at

40 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
the word "gentlemen." I had never heard it thus applied before.
And yet why not ? They looked like gentlemen. The students
at our State University could have made no better show in the
matter of dress and bearing than these sons of slaves, as, moving
in exact time to a march by the organ, they filed out of the room.
Then I picked up something of the history of the school. It
was started by the American Home Missionary Association just
after the war, and occupied some wooden buildings turned over
to it by the Freedmen's Bureau, situated near the Chattanooga
depot. Then came the rise of that wonderful enterprise, the Ju
bilee Singers. Their history is known to everybody, and need
not be repeated. They sang the twenty acres and the building
into existence. Not a dollar was given by the State of Tennessee
or the city of Nashville. The "nigger singers" did it with their
throats and lungs. The portraits of the singers adorn the walls
of the University, as they should. I learned that one of the or
iginal company, who studied at the University of Edinburgh, is
now au evangelist in France, preaching in the French language,
which he has acquired ; another is pursuing his studies at Stras
burg; the others are still singing. T^iree hundred and sixty stu
dents have attended the school the past year. They have paid
for tuition about $8,000. The rest for current expenses is made
up by Northern subscriptions and by the parent Missionary Soci
ety. I could not learn that help from the Peabody fund, or any
local aid, had been given.
I listened to several of the recitations. I heard a gentleman
who might be cut up into aces of spades read Horace; and I
heard another translate, easily and gracefully, a passage about
the Scythians, who used wagons as their "wandering homes,"
from which I concluded the Scythians were the original home
steaders. Then there was a class in English literature, when a
young girl gave a very lucid account of Spenser, his life, his po
etry, his troubles with the Irish "Land League" of his time, his
death and burial. The subject of "Arthur and the Table Round "
coming up, the young person obligingly read for me some lines
from Tennyson's "Passing of Arthur." After this there was a
recitation in Moral Philosophy, and, very curiously, the subject

A BLACK UNIVERSITY. 41
discussed was the nature of civil government, and what consti
tutes a "legitimate" government. The illustration used by the
author was the late Southern Confederacy, which he declared
would have been a legitimate government had it succeeded,
though founded on "a wanton and wicked rebellion." This gave
rise to a discussion as to how far a good man's conscience would
permit him to recognize a government so founded, and much
acuteness was displayed. I may say here that one theory, that
of the improvement of the negro mind by admixture with the
white race, utterly broke down in these recitations. Students of
purest 'African blood were quite the equals of the others.
A conversation with the most advanced students developed the
fact that in their vacations they taught school to help themselves
through college. Some had taught in Tennessee, others in Georgia.
Three months appears to be the average year's schooling afforded
either whites or blacks in the rural districts of these States, by
State aid. In Tennessee there is provision from the school fund
and a local school tax ; in Georgia there is the school fund and
the balance is paid by the patrons of the school — by subscription,
in fact. Both sources do not appear to be sufficient to carry on
the schools more than three, or at most, four months. I believe
the most these colored teachers can save from their pay is about
nineteen dollars a month. This is certainly educating and being
educated under difficulties.
Hearing the sound of a piano, we entered one of the music
rooms, and found the music teacher, a young lady from Vermont,
instructing what, under the old classification in slave times, would
be called a " likely brown girl." It so happened that the teacher
was of the highest Caucasian type of face, with high forehead,
chiseled features, and clear red-and-white complexion, and the
contrast was startling. I said when we had left the room, " Will
these two ever stand together?" and the quiet answer was: "It
will be a long time first, and perhaps never."
There seemed to be no disposition on the part of the faculty to
believe in miracles. There were no stories of remarkable profi
ciency; there was no attempt to show off. It was not pretended
that the students represented the average of the colored people.

42 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
"These are the best," the President said to me, and he has inves
tigated for fourteen years.
Next to this evident fairness, I admired the consistency and
courage of these men and women who have devoted themselves to
this work. Having set out with the doctrine of the social equality
of the races, they stick to the text. At dinner there was no di
vision on the color line, and this is everywhere, I believe, the
crucial test. The professors sat at different tables. At ours was
President Cravath, his wife and young daughter, with several stu
dents. At the end of the table was a young Louisianian, who
conversed in French with the young miss. Before the company
was seated at table, a grace was chanted by all present. It was
indeed beautiful and impressive to hear from all those voices in
unison, "Give us this day our daily bread."
Of course the question came up — it could not be avoided; I
do not know that it ought to have been — "How are you teachers
regarded by the community in which you live?" The answer
was given without any trace of passion or resentment, or even
complaint: "In matters of business, and by men, with perfect
courtesy ; by the press, with liberality ; the institution, as such, is
regarded with pride by the people of Nashville; but when it
comes to the social recognition of the ladies connected with the
school, you arrive at the 'dead-line.'"
This is the fact. I submit it without any comment. I also
submit, without any extended remarks, my own conviction that
the ladies and gentlemen who constitute the faculty of Fisk Uni
versity are engaged in the noblest work possible for human be
ings. If there is anything better in the way of benevolence or
good works than helping these young men to a nobler destiny
than that of whitewashes and field hands, or saving these young
women from the miserable fate that befalls so many of their race
and sex in the South ; of helping them on to the fair and open
place where they shall be the mothers of a happier generation, I
do not at this moment remember what that better work is.
They are succeeding. The school is crowded, and through the
munificence of Mrs. Stone, of Maiden, Mass., another fine build
ing is soon to be erected. Fifteen hundred young men and

A BLACK UNIVERSITY. 43
women from the institution are now^scattered over every State in
the South, mostly engaged in teaching. This is the story, and
the application is easy enough.
One fact seems to be very obvious, whether flattering to the
colored people or not, and that is, that in the matter of education,
white experience and talent should be brought to bear. The
system which leaves the colored people to work out their own
destiny without help, is false in morals and ruinous in practice.

IN AND AROUND NASHVILLE.

Nashville, Tenn., April 21, 1881.
The notion that the South can be built up only by Northern
capital and enterprise, is doubtless very gratifying to Northern
pride, but it is not true as far as Nashville is concerned. The
leading business men here are Southerners of the purest blood,
and on inquiry I cannot find that there is any distinctive "North
ern element" here. The Northern Methodist Church, which is
usually indicative of the strength of such an element, if it exists,
is a very limited organization, and I have even heard doubts if
there is any such church. What has been done, then, has been
done by the South ; and this is a fact, it seems to me, which ought
to be received with gratification.
From the close of the war until 1870 the town appears.to have
been poor, if not sulky. The millions disbursed here by the Gov
ernment and by the army do not appear to have permanently
enriched anybody. The apparent prosperity caused by the war
is only an appearance. Its evils are real. In 1870 the " boom"
began, and is still in progress. In 1870-71, the largest cotton
crop ever known, 104,C00 bales, was marketed here, and build
ing, the criterion by which we judge progress in Kansas, is now,
I think, more active than ever. The town has spread in every
direction. Edgefield has grown beyond the knowledge of the
old-timer. The new Nashville has been fairly started. As I have
said, there are many old familiar features, but the new buildings
greatly outnumber the old.
Business in Nashville is scattered over many streets, but Broad
street is the heart of the city's commerce. The big, plain, un
pretentious, and even ugly warehouses, show the varied resources
of the country. One house displays on its sign : " Cotton, to
bacco and wheat;" another, "Wheat and corn;" another, "Cot
ton, tobacco and wool." These i buildings give no outward
(44)

IN AND AROUND NASHVILLE. 45
evidence of the wealth piled up in them. There is no Eastlake
furniture in the offices ; and the men who control them dress in
common clothes and are very quiet in their ways. They indulged
in no extravagant talk, but seemed confident of the future. The
city has become one of the great cotton marts of the country.
Buyers are here from New England and Liverpool. The great
cotton factory buys its cotton and disposes of its goods here. I
see nothing to prevent this from being a very wealthy city.
As to whether the average cotton crop is larger than before
the war, in short, whether free labor is more productive than
slave labor, there is of course a dispute. Apparently equally well
informed men will give directly opposite- statements, but at any
rate the cotton is here. Nashville has much more extensive railroad
connections than before the war, and is remarkably well situated.
To the north there is nothing nearer than Louisville; to the west
than Memphis (and it is said that many Memphis men have re
moved here); to the south it is a long way to Mobile, and to the
east there is no city of prominence. The tobacco of southern
Kentucky, and of course of northern Tennessee, comes here, and
the Nashville cotton merchant draws from the fine country in
northern Alabama and far below there. Up the Cumberland is
what a Kansas man would call a poor country, yet in the aggre
gate it produces a great deal of what might be called "truck."
I was astonished, on going to the foot of Broad street, to see the
amount of native lumber piled up. It comes, much of it, from a
long distance up the river. Ou two or three blocks of Broad
street you see what there is to " bank on " — cotton, tobacco, corn,
wheat, hemp, wool ; all that the North has, and more.
Kansans, accustomed to talk about their own State as the
"golden belt," may be surprised to learn that Tennessee is a great
wheat-growing State, aud is developing in that direction. Nash
ville has several first-class elevators, and six flouring mills, with
one building of a capacity of four hundred barrels a day, which
can be increased to twelve hundred.
The agricultural-implement business is a very safe indication
of the growth of the country, aud it is a great business here.
Mr. McGavoc showed me through his great store, four stories,

46 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
each over two hundred feet long, and crowded with wagons and
machinery. I saw, for the first time, a horse cotton-planter, like
a corn-planter. It was manufactured at Rockford, Illinois.
Nevertheless, Mr. McGavoc does not tie to cotton entirely. He
said that his firm had sold, last season, eight thousand bags of
clover seed. Much of it is raised in Tennessee, and it is sold
from South Carolina to Arkansas, and south nearly to Mobile.
This passion for "going to grass" should inspire Senator Ingalls,
the author of "Blue-Grass," with the liveliest hopes as to the
restoration, elevation and civilization of the South. But to re
turn to the implements. . Out on the Lebanon pike, yesterday, I
saw a black man with a sorry team. There was a sore-backed
mule, and a horse which seemed nearly transparent, but the load
consisted, among other things, of the most improved style of
plows, which he was taking to Smith county. I suppose the time
will come when the agricultural machinery, etc., will be manu
factured in the South. At present one recognizes the presence of
the North. The Southern farmer rides in a Studebaker wagon,
Leaving Broad street and going through College, Market,
Church, Union and Front streets, in fact over all the portion of
the city between Broad and the Louisville & Nashville depot, and
between High street and the river, one sees a crowd of vehicles and
people. It is the "new South" in a business sense. There seem
to be no gentlemen of leisure. Except at night, one meets few
people at the office of the Maxwell House, and of those who gather
there after sunset a great proportion are commercial travelers
and business men. I do not think I have heard two men sit down
and talk politics for ten minutes consecutively. When I left
Atchison, you were all talking about Mahone. I have heard his
name mentioned but once since I crossed the Ohio.
All branches of business are largely represented. The dry
goods establishments are as fine as those of any inland American
city. The audience that filled the Masonic Theater the other
night, on the occasion of Miss Mary Anderson's appearance, was
a very brilliant oue. The town wears good clothes, aud enjoys
itself. I found one of the finest bookstores I have seen in many
a day, near the Maxwell House. Conspicuously on sale was "The
Fool's Errand."

IN AND AROUND NASHVILLE. 47
I have remarked the absence of white gentlemen of leisure.
There are in the business portions of the city, few idlers of any
sort. Early in the morning you meet large parties of black men
going to their work, with their dinner buckets, and at evening
you see them returning.
That the South would ever be a manufacturing country, I have
always had doubts. In the slave times it was hardly reasonable
to expect it, and since the war I have thought it would be difficult
to secure, first, money, and second, labor. It is useless to talk
about carrying on cotton-spinning, for instance, with coolies, or any
variety of foreign or imported laborers. A great manufactory
should be the product of the soil on which it stands. It was
New England labor that made New England a manufacturing
country. The same is true of old England. In the great por
celain works at Worcester, they told me that out of the six hun
dred people employed, all but six were born in England. It is
Germans who make Krupp guns, and so on. The cotton factory
here, and the great factories at Columbus, Ga., have solved the
labor question. The factory here is entirely a Nashville enter
prise, built with Nashville money. It is a magnificent mill. The
four hundred horse power engine is, after the Corliss engine at the
Centennial, the finest I have ever seen. There is no perceptible
jar, in spite of the great amount of machinery in the building.
Three hundred hands are employed, all white, except three or four
laborers employed as roustabouts. The employes, male and fe
male, were secured in Nashville. The superintendent of the mill,
Mr. Kallock, is from Maine. He spells his name differently from
Rev. Mr. Kalloch, formerly of Maine, and there are other im
portant differences. Most of the foremen of the different depart
ments are from the North. All the "help" had to be taught,
many never having seen a cotton mill before, but they have
learned their business now, and they have $7,000 handed them
over the counter every monthly pay-day. Of course where one
mill can thus succeed, others can.
Cotton is king, after all; if not an absolute monarch as of old,
still a king. In a music store, I heard a young man say of a
piece of music, " It makes a man's soul feel like cotton, aud lint

48 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
cotton at that," The compress and the cotton-seed oil manu
facture have given the cotton business a great impetus. The
compress here is doing a fine business. Forty-four compressed
bales can be loaded in a car, instead of twenty-five, as formerly.
There are two oil mills here, and both are making money.
As to matters which many people regard as higher than mere
money-making, Nashville is peculiarly fortunate. Standing on
the streets between eight and nine o'clock in the morning, and
you see the troops of children on their way to schools. There are
nine very large public school buildings, four of them for colored
pupils; and eighty teachers are employed, which is very good
for'a city of- 43,000 people. The bavies of young ladies who fill
the. street cars are the pupils at Ward's Seminary. It has two
hundred pupils, and in the last fourteen years has graduated
five hundred.
I have noticed, in a previous letter, Fisk University, but the
great school here is Vanderbilt University. Why Commodore
Vanderbilt, who was supposed to have about as much idea of
philanthropy as a nether millstone, should have founded this
great institution, is a conundrum. No explanation is offered
here, except that Commodore Vanderbilt and Bishop McTyeire
married cousins. Bishop McTyeire is head of the institution,
which is controlled by the Methodist Church South. The motto
of the institution appears to be " Everything." The Commodore
gave, in all, one million dollars. There is a department of phi
losophy, science and literature; a biblical or theological de
partment; a college of medicine, a school of pharmacy, and a
dental college. Civil engineering is also made a department.
The old Nashville Medical College has been merged into Van
derbilt University, and is turning out doctors at a great rate.
Of the six hundred students attending the University, about half
propose to be doctors.
Commodore Vanderbilt, of whom Jere Black said that his
moral and intellectual nature was a " howling wilderness," seems
to have clone a great and good thing for the South. I presume
that the text-book at Vanderbilt is not Fairchild's Moral Phi
losophy, which teaches that the late Rebellion was '• wicked and

IN AND AROUND NASHVILLE. 49
wanton," but that question can be left for future ages; and mean
while, the cause of general education progresses.
A mere list of the educational institutions is instructive. I
have mentioned the public schools, Fisk University, Vanderbilt
University, and Ward's Seminary. There are also St. Cecilia's
Academy; the Nashville Institute (Baptist), and the Central
Tennessee College (Methodist), both devoted to colored students;
and St. Barnard's Academy. This certainly provides for the
"higher education." Much the greater number of those who at
tend school in the city are educated in the public schools.
The State of Tennessee has located her charitable institutions
here, and also the penitentiary, but I have not visited them
There is a wonderful family resemblance in asylums.
The United States courts for the middle division of Tennes
see are held here, and the Government has erected a building
here which in Europe would be called a palace. It is not yet
finished, but will cost not less $400,000. It is designated here as
the "custom house." The United States court is now in session
here, with Judge Key, late Postmaster General, on the bench.
Judge Key looks like an enlarged edition of Col. Benton, of Ef
fingham. The time of the court is largely taken up with whisky
and tobacco cases, and the court room, on the occasion of my
visit, was full of moonshiners, of the class who- take to that sort
of business. The physique of the mountain man in the South
never changes. Such as creation's dawn beheld, you see him now.
There he was, with his long "laigs," as Sut Lovengood calls them,
his indescribable emaciation of body, his sharp nose and chin,
his scanty beard and mustache, his long, heavy hair, and his clay-
colored visage. Butternut, as of yore, is his only wear. In court
I saw Campbell Morgan, a smooth-shaven, big-boned, foxy-look
ing man, who in company with about one hundred and fifty Over
ton county moonshiners, held a party of nine revenue officers
besieged, as my informant expressed it, " without food or clothes,"
for several days. They could not stick their noses out without
being fired at. At last, at the intercession of prominent citi
zens, Morgan raised the siege and allowed the hungry officers to
depart. He is now a deputy United States Marshal, and is at-

50 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
tending court in that capacity. I also saw Capt. Davis, one of
the most alert and capable officers in the service. He is a large,
heavy, dark-featured, black-bearded young man, and like most of
the Marshal's assistants, served in the Confederate army. These
ex-Confederates served in regular regiments, and not as bush
whackers, and are very brave and efficient in the performance of
their duty. Singularly, the moonshiners where they saw service
at all, were Union men. They are for the most part very poor
people, and it is a pity that they are in conflict with the law.
The newspapers, which should record from day to day all that
I have said, and more too, are not particularly strong. The
Louisville Courier -Journal appears to hold the field, to the ex
clusion of about everything else in Kentucky and Tennessee.
Here there is but one morning paper, the American, a well-con
ducted journal. It is conservative, and does not dine on com
bustibles of any sort. I believe the other papers call it a
Republican paper — which it is not.
About the most satisfactory conversation I have had,' so far,
was with a leading clergyman of this city. A Pennsylvanian by
birth, he had come South when a young man, married, remained
through all the evil days of the Confederacy, and is now preach
ing to a congregation of six hundred, having started in with
thirty members. He said that the Southern people were slow
and rather lazy, but he thought they had done very well. When
he came to Nashville, after the war, there was not a fence within
ninety miles. I could see for myself what had been done since.
He and others built their houses on what was a Government
stable-lot and corral. He said a wave of sentiment was sweeping
over the South from the North; not a political wave, but a busi
ness wave. The Northern idea of business, of money-making,
was taking hold of the people. He thought political discussions
were conducted with much more heat in Illinois than in Ten
nessee. If a man wanted to live where little interest was felt in
politics, Tennessee was the place for him. The Northern people,
he thought, remembered more about the war than the Southern
people. He had visited Kansas, and he thought Tennessee the
better State. This was very different from the style of talk we

IN AND AROUND NASHVILLE. 51
used to hear a few years ago, about the "down- trodden, robbed
and impoverished South," and I was very glad to hear it.
Pollard, in the closing chapter of his "Lost Cause," the most
readable book about the war produced by the South, urges the
people of the South to remain as they were at the close of the
war ; not to desire a material prosperity like that of the North,
or to work for it, but to maintain in dignity and poverty the old
South. Nashville has failed to recognize Mr. Pollard, and has
prospered. Nashville has respectfully declined to be sacrificed
to tradition. What she has done I have tried to set forth in out
line, and I am sure no Northern man but will rejoice to hear this
story of progress.

THE OLD WAR TRAIL.
Chattanooga, Tenn., April 23, 1881.
Before bidding good-bye to Nashville, in company with an old
army friend I made a pilgrimage to the Hermitage. However
elevated the moral worth of the two travelers, there was nothing
sufficiently gorgeous in the array to violently stir up the pop
ulace along the road. The pilgrimage was made in an express
wagon, with a colored gentleman, the driver and proprietor, on
the box.
The old Lebanon pike was found in good order, with the toll
gates in their old locations. I doubt if there is a pleasanter old
road in America. It was a soft, hazy day, a sort of combina
tion of all the seasons save winter. It looked like spring,. was
as warm as summer, and had the smoky horizon of autumn.
The road is lined with large farms (plantations was the old
name), with stately "manor houses" with Greek porticoes in
front, and enormous oaks and elms all about. Good, old-
fashioned houses these, built when each family was large in
itself, and was, besides, visited by a gre"at host of relatives. The
fences were in good repair; the newer ones being constructed of
& flat barbed wire. Black people were in the fields ; one large
party was setting out a nursery; others were sowing plaster of
Paris broadcast ; many were plowing. The white men were also
engaged. One was overseeing the nursery operations, and others
were going fishing. We passed through a wayside shady village,
where the store and other buildings were being held up by men
leaning against them. The hamlet is known as Slip-Up.
It is a long eleven miles from Nashville to the point where
you leave the pike and turn off down a sort of woods road to
the Hermitage. This traveled a quarter of a mile, we came
upon a brick house almost hidden from view by a growth of
•cedars. This was once the home of Andrew Jackson, and here
be is buried. (52)

THE OLD WAR TRAIL. 53
We turned around the corner of a mouldy board fence which
inclosed the cedars, and moved up a rough lane to the side of
the house. There was no stir about; only an enormous turkey
stepped across the lane, and a young calf came out of the cedars
and looked through the fence with the curiosity of youth. No
human being was visible.
General Jackson built what was, for his time, a stylish house.
He seems to have had some idea of Mount Vernon. There is a
large two-story brick house, and on each side one-story wings,
one used, in the General's time, as an office, and the other as a
long dining room, adjoining the parlor. A lofty two-story porch,
with high wooden pillars of an uncertain order of architecture,
graced the front and also the back of the main building. The
windows of the parlor were open. We stood on the stone-floored
porch aud rang the bell. No one answered, and a journey around
to the back of the house resulted in the discovery of a bouncing
yellow girl, who explained that she could show the house in the
absence of her grandma, who was sick. So we all went into the
parlor, which is just as Gen. Jackson left it. It is a stiff, gloomy
sort of room. The brocade-covered chairs, magnificent in Jack
son's time, looked fit to break any modern back. Then there
were the old-fashioned horse-hair chairs, which are twice as fu
nereal as a hearse. There was a quaint little old piano, made by
Gilbert, of Boston, and bought by Gen. Jackson. It was about
half the size ofa Steinway, and its yellowed ivory keys gave a
shrill, crackling sound, like an old woman's voice ; yet, how many
fair fingers have swept over those keys, when the old General,
broken by age and illness, got out his hymn book ( hime book, he
called it), and had the young ladies sing. There were portraits
of Gen. Jackson, and a frigid marble bust. Healey's picture,
painted a short time before Gen. Jackson's death, is the finest. I
never saw age and pain more faithfully depicted. There were
^various relics and curiosities, mostly locked up in a glass case.
One lay outside, a British bayonet, picked up on the battle-field
of New Orleans, around which the root of a tree had grown,
making it a very peaceful-looking bayonet.
This parlor did not seem much like Jackson, and we walked
4

54 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
around the sunken, moss-grown brick walks, and noticed the gen
eral air of decay about the place. The State of Tennessee issued
bonds to buy it, and whether the bonds should be paid is what the
State Credit and Low Tax parties have been quarreling about.
At present it remains in the Jackson family, a son of Gen. Jack
son's adopted son occupying the place. Between him and the
State, the house may yet tumble down.
Going out to the garden, we saw an aged black woman ap
proaching. She was so old that her original black color had
faded into an ashy hue. The old lady joined us in the large
garden, first laid out, as she informed us, by the artist, Earl, but
now sadly dilapidated. There were ragged shrubs, and neg
lected flowers; it made one think of Goldsmith's "blossoming
furze, unprofitably gay." Under a little circular temple of
stone lie the remains of General Andrew Jackson, beside his
wife Raehael. The long aud often-printed inscription over the
dead wife, told much of her husband's life and nature. I pre
sume had I been a voter in Jackson's time, I should have taken
great satisfaction in voting against him, and should have de
nounced him as an ignorant, violent, overbearing, horse-racing,
dueling old tyrant, as was the fashion that then prevailed; but
seeing the two graves, and reading the lines over the woman he
loved so faithfully and so long, it was impossible to remain in
arms against his memory. "A being so gentle and yet so virtu
ous, slander might wound but could not dishonor," says the
inscription. It was to avenge words against her that Jackson,
himself wounded, yet unflinching, shot down Charles Dickinson
in one of the most ferocious duels recorded iu history.
The old servant who lived at the Hermitage the last four
years of Gen. Jackson's life, told, as she had done a thousand
times, the story of his waning days. It was an oft-repeated tale,
yet as told it touched me more than any printed page.
There are no buildings about the Hermitage save some houses
occupied by renters and servants, mostly cabins ; aud in a grove
near the turnpike is an old-fashioned country church — a square,
ugly edifice of dull-colored brick, with a large chimney but no
tower. The church was built by Jackson, and it is connected

THE OLD WAR TRAIL. 55
with all his later history. Suffering constantly, utterly broken
in body, the old man walked up and down the avenue of cedars
he had set out, and thought of the world beyond. In that
church he professed his belief in " the Friend who would keep
him to the end." The old servant described him as the friend
of every child he met; the kindest of masters; surrounded by
young company ; glad to have the young ladies sing to him the
hymns he had marked in the old leather-covered book. When
the word came to the church, one Sunday, that he was dying,
the entire congregation flocked to the Hermitage. The black
people, too, came to the "big house," and thronged into his
room, one that looks out on the lower front piazza. They would
have sent them away, but the dying General, issuing his last
order, said, " No, let them stay. God is no respecter of persons."
This is what the old woman saw. It is known to others that,
though tortured and weak, the old man to the last kept his eye
on the political horizon, though no longer for himself. I have
myself seen, in Kansas, a letter written by him two months before
his death, in which, speaking of Polk's Cabinet, he said: "Mr.
Buchanan would make an able Secretary of State, but he lacks
moral courage."
The Hermitage was left to darkness and silence, and after an
other day in Nashville, I started southward over the old railroad,
the Nashville & Chattanooga, the old war trail, every inch of
which was fought for in the great struggle, and so famous it be
came that the name of every little station on it was spoken of and
known at the ends of the world.
Through the cedar brakes and across Stone river to Murfrees
boro. The old line of defenses was passed, just as good as ever.
The town has improved some, but looked dark after the rain of
the night before. Christiana, a little station where the houses
stand on posts. Fosterville, aud a line of conical wood hills, the
outposts of the Cumberland Mountains, rose up as if to bar the
way. Wartrace, old name, but looking thrifty with new cot
tages and a new church.. Normandy, and the south end of the
car began to be the highest; we had begun to climb to the plateau,
and there were lofty hills on either hand. Tullahoma ; .here we

¦56 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
were on the high plain. A smart-looking place, with nothing
but a growth of young oaks all about it, as if the old timber had
been cut down for camp fires. I remember one night, at the
old Nashville Theater, the thunder that rolled over the house
when it was announced, in a song from the stage, that "we" were
in Tullahoma. Then came Cowan, and a new iron furnace, and
a railroad winding like a snake up the mountains to a bare spot
visible a long distance, where is located the University of the
South, and beyond the objective point of the road, the great
Sewanee coal mines.
The day was perfect, and the mountain-sides were gray and
bronze and emerald with the changes of the coming leaves. It
was all loftiness, verdure and sunshine, with a sky like dissolving
pearls. In and out among the mountains swept the swift train,
down all the time now, and then crossed the State line and entered
Alabama; came out in a level red-clay country, and here was
Stevenson, at the junction of the Nashville & Chattanooga and
Memphis & Charleston Railroads, and j ust as shabby as when I saw
it last. The row of dirty-faced houses under the bluff, staring
like loafers at the railroad track, and the old fields and even some
intrenchments were still there. One man had built his house in
a redoubt, and used the breast- works for a fence. The former
law office of Hon. W. C. Webb, now of Topeka, Kansas, was
probably in sight, but I could not distinguish it. The Judge had
departed, and left " no sign."
Low, swampy woods, a branch railroad striking out for Jasper,
and then the great mountain wall south of the Tennessee rose
before us, and we slowly ran into Bridgeport. I was looking up
at the ridge at the left of the road, at a little red line of heaped
earth, an old relic of the war, and some growing peach trees, and
thinking of a dreadful explosion I once witnessed there, and had
quite forgotten everything else, when the train slowly moved out
on the bridge, and what a sight burst upon my vision ! Here was
the smooth, brown, gliding flood of the Tennessee, coming forth
from its rocky portal. Looking up the stream you see the pur
ple mountains, line on line, stretching on every hand; mountains
to the right and to the left, one behind the other, bathed in the

THE OLD WAR TRAIL. 57
sunshine. Just at their foot rose a column of black smoke from
the furnaces at New Pittsburg. A steamboat taking the chute
back of the island, drifted slowly, the smoke lazily floating from
her chimneys toward the bridge. Then we were over. A short
distance from Bridgeport we passed out of Alabama, and again
ran into Tennessee. The country grew wilder; the railroad
seemed hunting its way; ever and anon it sought the river, then
climbed back into the hills; now up, now down; past Shell
Mound and Whiteside, over the spider-web bridge at Running
Water; then we saw high above us the long gray wall of a moun
tain we had seen before; then a green valley at its feet; a run
along a narrow shelf between the cliff and the river, past the
mouth of a cave; then we saw the long slope of Lookout Moun
tain, with the great rock looking down ; a cloud of smoke rose
before us from the town. We were at one of the famous pre
cincts of the world. Here was Lookout, Mission Ridge, and
Chattanooga.

IN AND AROUND CHATTANOOGA.

Chattanooga, Tenn., April 24, 1881.
It is fortunate that the writer of this letter is not the discoverer
of Chattanooga, endeavoring to give the world a first description,
for ihe town is so beset by ridges, ranges, spurs, knobs and " coves,"
in the way of mountain scenery, and so involved are the tortuous
windings of the Tennessee, that nothing but a map can convey an
idea to the non-beholder. In this letter it will be taken for
granted that the reader has " been there," and an attempt will be
made to bring, in a general way, to the mind of the ex-soldier,
the changes which have occurred since he departed.
To begin with, it is necessary to understand that Chattanooga
has grown to be a city of fifteen thousand people, and has far
outgrown the lines erected for its defense, and the reader should
bear in mind that the boy baby, born in the days of Lookout
Mountain and Missionary Ridge, is now about ready to enter the
field with a moustache, and is laying vigorous siege to the young
lady who made her appearance in this bothersome world at that
period. On the evening of my arrival here, iu company with a former
officer of the Seventy-eighth Pennsylvania, who took part in the
operations in and about Chattanooga, I visited some of the impor
tant localities. Our first visit was to the National Cemetery,
which lies between the city and Orchard Knob. This cemetery,
though not naturally as beautiful as many of the sites selected by
fhe Government, is carefully watched and tended, and in time
art will change what was once a gravelly knoll covered partially
with cedars, into a charming park. On the highest ground is an
observatory, with brick pillars and a sodded floor, at present roof
less, from which the gazer can see, on one side the city, on the
other Missionary Ridge — the present and the past ; while Lookout,
which you can never escape in Chattanooga, lifts its great form
against the sky. (58)

IN AND AROUND CHATTANOOGA. 59
The cemetery is the resting-place of thousands. It makes
one's heart ache to think of how many. And in the record the
Eighth Kansas fills a sadly large portion of a full page. I vis
ited the graves of Captains Trego and Graham, who have their
real monuments in two Kansas counties, named in their honor.
They are buried side by side, not far from the entrance to the cem
etery, in the midst of an open circle. In common with the others,
the inscriptions above them give only their names, rank and State,
but the rest will be remembered. It has seemed to me, howejver,
that in each of the counties named after the dead soldiers of Kan
sas there should be some permanent memorial ; a portrait or bust,
or some mural tablet in a public place or building in the county,
to preserve the memory of the brave. Already there have been
questions as to the real origin of some Kansas county names, and
such questions should be settled forever.
The cemetery is laid out in drives, one of them passing by a
natural cave which is used as a vault. There are few conspicu
ous monuments in the cemetery, but, wanting such tokens, (which
semetimes seem to savor of the pride of the living rather than
respect for the dead,) love and patriotism still remember the
sacred place. The visitors' book bore thousands of names from
every Northern and many Southern States. They come here
singly and in excursion parties, and the people here tell me that
scarcely a day goes by but some solitary man looks curiously
about him for traces of former years, and questions the passers-
by, saying : " I have not been here since the war ; " and a genera
tion will pass away before men will cease to be led here by
sentiment alone — that stirring in the heart which leads us to
long journeying to visit once more the scenes of long-ago gayety
or grief, of glory or defeat.
From the cemetery we went to Orchard Knob, famous as the
point of observation for the leading commanders during the bat
tle of Missionary Ridge. I am told that this hill was once actu
ally selected as a site for a fruit orchard, but no traces of it re
main. It is now a rocky eminence, rising like a wave in the
plain that stretches toward the foot of Missionary Ridge. It is
densely covered with a growth of cedars, and running across its

60 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
crest is what seems a hurriedly-constructed line of works; two
lines, in fact, are still visible. As there is no soil to speak of, the
breastworks are constructed of loose, broken rocks, and the work
of raising them must have been very laborious. In spite of the
cedars, Missionary Ridge is plainly visible. The slope of the
Ridge directly opposite Orchard Knob is now cleared ground to
the crest. In fact, the Chattanooga side of the Ridge has been
greatly changed iu places. Where there were old fields, a growth
of young timber has sprung up, and in other places the timber
has-been cleared away, and there are fields and orchards. A part
of the ground swept over by our advance is now a flourishing
young peach orchard of two hundred acres. There is little tim
ber between the town and the Ridge, except a young growth of
oaks which has sprung up since the "troubles."
We returned from Orchard Knob to the city by way of old
Fort Wood, afterward called Fort Creighton. It is still a strong
work, aud is the property of the Dupont Powder Company, which
used it for some time as a magazine.
The present appearance of things may be very briefly summed
up. The forts, which cost the army so much labor, were built of
an article of red clay which has been found very useful for street
and brick- making purposes. Thousands of cart-loads have been
used in grading the streets of Chattanooga, and brickyards have
been established near some of the old works. They have been
mixed, moulded and burned, and are now in substantial build
ings all over the city. I find but very few of the old landmarks-
Direct! y to the west of the town will be remembered the high
eminence somewhat resembling Lookout in shape, and now called
Cameron Hill. It terminates in an abrupt descent at the river.
Formerly it was covered with a close growth of cedars, but the
east, or town slope, is now bare. The vivid green of the grass
and the intersecting gullies, which at a distance might be taken
for hedges, remind one of the high hills of Ireland. On this
height our signal corps was established, and also a battery of very
heavy Parrott guns. Roads were constructed which are still in
use, and traces of the old parapets are still visible from the town.
The lower eastern slope is covered with some of the most tasteful

IN AND AROUND CHATTANOOGA. 61
residences in Chattanooga, surrounded by lovely grounds. The
residences are climbing the slope, and one of the highest is the
house of Mr. John Stivers, a cousin of our Tom. Cameron Hill
is a favorite resort for the loungers of Chattanooga.
Descending to the foot of Market street, there are traces of
old lines along the river, and then houses intervene until you
come to Fort Wood, which I have mentioned. On the next rise
there stood a work, the name of which I have forgotten, but it
has entirely disappeared, and the site is occupied by a stately
private residence and gardens. Fort Negley (later Fort Phelps)
is rapidly being converted into brick. In a little while it will
have disappeared. The large brick house occupied by Col.
Martin as headquarters is still standing, and is the property of
the Lookout Rolling Mill Company, which occupies the adjoin
ing grounds. It is on what is now Whiteside street, and there
are houses for half a mile beyond it.
To go back to the fortifications. There are traces of a covered
way between the fort I have spoken of as having disappeared en
tirely, and Fort Negley. On the line nearer Lookout, no large
works are visible, nor do you see anything of importance, till,
swinging around to the foot of Cameron Hill again, you come to
Fort Mihalozy, still in good order. In traveling about the open
spaces and commons of the town, you come upon fragments of
ditches and parapets, and there are traces in the interior of the
city of a very elaborate work built on a sort of cliff, and known
as Fort Jones. Out in the oak brush, between the city and Mis
sionary Ridge, may be found the front line of Confederate de
fenses. The works in most cases appear much less elaborate and
well preserved than our own. The elegant court house in Chatta
nooga is said to occupy the site of a former field work.
In company with Col. McGowen, of the Chattanooga Times,
I started out in search of the camping-place of the First Brig
ade, Second Division, Fourteenth Army Corps, near Rossville,
from whence it started on what resulted in the long march to
the sea. We went out a good road constructed by county con
vict labor, until we reached the former home of the Cherokee
family of Ross. On the road we met the old-timers coming in.

62 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
Lookout will become a blooming prairie before the "pore" white
man of northern Georgia changes. Here they were, the same
gay old cavalcade, the lank, narrow-skirted old woman with her
snuff stick in her mouth ; the same grief and famine-stricken
mule, tied up with rope "gears" with a sway-backed white
horse; the same weather-beaten wagon. Nothing had changed,
not even to the bundle of blade fodder in the wagon for the
"critters'" dinner.
We left the road and passed through the gap in the Ridge, but
where I expected to find open fields all was covered with young
pines twenty feet high, and I gave up the search. I learned,
however, that a portion of the ground is still in cultivation.
Giving up this trail, we skirted along the1 foot of the western
slope of the Ridge, seeking a road to the crest. The road lost
itself in the woods, but finally, by letting down bars and pass
ing through cultivated ground, we came out at the summit, some
distance south of Bragg's former headquarters. Here was a
neat farm house, with a vineyard, strawberry beds, and a mar
ket garden. The proprietor, Mr. Carpenter, came out. I soon
learned that he came from Ohio here; was a born New Eng-
lander, and had learned his trade in Springfield, Vermont, a vil
lage I knew very well in my boyhood, and here he was plow
ing and sowing on this once blood-stained height. It was a
delicious day. Before us lay like a map the plain and town; the
smoke of the iron mills rolled away to the south; beneath its
cloud we knew was heard the roar of the fires; the hoarse
'scaping of steam ; the ringing of iron upon iron; the hundreds
of sounds of peaceful industry. And Lookout, changeless in
war or peace, ever the same in its gray majesty, while genera
tions of men about its foot are born and live, and laugh and
weep and die, looked down upon it all. Here surely there bad
never been any stain upon the earth darker than the falling
petals of the peach bloom or the strawberry's snowy blossom.
But even as this thought came, the gardener led me aside, and
removing the covering of a box showed me the mouldering bones
of a human being; the remains of some lost and forgotten sol
dier he had just found mingled with the soil of his vineyard.

IN AND AROUND CHATTANOOGA. 63
With what army he fought, for what cause he died, nothing
could be known. The corroding earth had obliterated all. Not
a button remained. If a Union soldier, in all the search he had
been lost. If a Confederate, he had not been missed. He had
joined the army of the "unknown," forgotten by all save those
who perhaps listened for months for his unreturning feet; for
gotten by all save those and God, who we would fain hope knows
and cares at last for all.
I was glad to turn away and speak to Mr. Carpenter of other
things. He told me that his neighbors for a mile along the
Ridge were Northern men, from Pennsylvania and Ohio, engaged
like himself in fruit-growing and gardening. The Northerners
still hold Missionary Ridge. The eastern slope, which is much
less rugged than the western, was for some distance in cultivation
to the foot. The soil looked yellow and poor to a Kansas man,
but I am assured that it is productive. I was told that Northern
men were quite successful in this sort of business, where the na
tive "cracker" sinks into the most worthless of created beings.
If there is anything in the influence of natural scenery on the
heart and mind, these dwellers on the Ridge are most fortunate,
for to the west they have one of the noblest prospects on earth,
while to the east range on range of hills, varying in color as they
recede, from green to purple, stretch away, to terminate finally
in the Kenesaw mountains.
This is about all there is to say of the Chattanooga of the
past. The Chattanooga of the present is the most interesting
town I have seen in the South. A gentleman who has been in
both places says it resembles Atchison, and in some respects the
comparison is not a bad one. The population is divided in birth
and in political sentiment, and the result, instead of being dis
sension, is unity. Here are Confederate and Union soldiers; cit
izens of both parties. Colonel McGowen, who edits a Democratic
paper here, came as the commander of a colored regiment, and I
presume there are changes in the other direction. Then there are
State-Credit Democrats and State-Credit Republicans, and Low-
Tax men of both parties, forced to some extent to act together.
But the great tie that binds men together is business, and Chatta-

64 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
nooga is a business town. Market street is as wide as Kansas
avenue, in Topeka, and as busy as Commercial street, in Atchison,
and is twice as long as the latter street. Chattanooga is a great
manufacturing town — greater than we of the North suppose. In
fact, while we have been speaking of the South only as a political
stamping-ground, a great industrial revolution has been going on,
at least in portions of that country. We know all about the Ku-
Klux and the White-Liners, but we have not heard about the
mines and the foundries, the factories and the rolling-mills.
Chattanooga is dotted all over now with the fortifications of in
dustry, as she once was with those of war. I devoted a good
many hours to the task, and then did not see half that I wished.
At the river bank there is the extensive furniture factory and
saw-mills of Loomis & Hart, both Northern men. They use a great
amount of native lumber from up the Tennessee. The revival
in this trade is wonderful. One New York party has 500,000 feet
of black walnut lying in the river just above Chattanooga. Over
in the narrow valley between Cameron ^Hill and the river, the
ground was covered for many acres. There is the Roane Iron
Works, owned principally by Cleveland capitalists, employing
550 men at Chattanooga, and as many more in Roane county, at
their mines and mills. These works are the outgrowth of a rail
mill started by the Government in 1865. Then there is next an
extensive manufacture of tile drain pipe, owned by Montague &
Co. A few yards further on is one of the largest tanneries in the
United States, that of J. B. Hoyt & Co., of Boston, manufac
turers of sole leather and belting. The great belt that ran the
machinery at the Centennial exhibition was made by this firm.
Three hundred aud twenty hides a day are handled here, and 120
men are employed. Then there is a large blast furnace owned
by J. C. Warner & Co., of Nashville; and then, going out into
the open plain stretching to Lookout, are the Wasson car works,
employing 200 men, and manufacturing box and flat cars, in
cluding the wheels. AH these works draw their raw material
from the surrounding country. The iron ore is dug out of the
Tennessee mountains; the clay for the tile comes from Birming
ham, Alabama; the thousands of cords of oak bark are gathered

IN AND AROUND CHATTANOOGA. 65
iu Tennessee and northern Alabama and Georgia; the lumber
for the car works and the furniture factory is floated down the
Tennessee. The coal used is a home production, and coke fur
naces are being built all over the country. It is such things as
these that people talk about in Chattanooga. Besides these
works, there is the Lookout nail works, and under the shadow of
the mountain the Vulcan nail works. Then we have the cotton
factory; the extensive machine shops of Gen. John T. Wilder,
formerly commander of our mounted infantry brigade, now post
master at Chattanooga, and one of the pioneers of the modern
iron industry. There are flouring mills ; au ice factory ; an es
tablishment for making gas pipes, and many more. All the
works I visited employ both black and white labor; the laborers
being also a home production. Chattanooga is the center of a
great coal and iron business. At Rising Fawn, J. C. Warner &
Co. have immense works, and at South Pittsburg, on the river
between Chattanooga and Bridgeport, an English company has
invested $1,500,000.
This, to moralize a little, shows what cau be done in the South
by a union of forces. At Chattanooga, Northern money and mind
and Southern money, muscle and mind, have made a combi
nation, and the result is something to be proud of. In a letter
from Nashville, I gave full credit for what has been done by
Southern enterprise; but at Chattanooga, both Northern and
Southern men have worked together, and I am free to say that I
like that better.
I have no time to speak of the wonderful railroad system of
Chattanooga. I noticed one thing, however, that the Southern
roads are adopting the Northern system of advertising. Future
Pangborns and Charley Gleeds will find employment in the South,
and will do what has been so well done for and by the Santa Fe
road in Kansas and Colorado.
I cannot close this letter without saying a word about Lookout.
You cannot get away from the sight of it at Chattanooga; it is
impossible, almost, not to visit it. I had stood on the "Point"
years ago, and to see that incomparable spectacle of river, valley,
rock and mountain once, is never to forget it. Still I could not

66 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
resist the temptation to visit the mountain again, and starting
between showers, made the ascent on horseback. It rained at
intervals all the way, but one forgot the rain in such a journey
up and up the winding St. Elmo road, now wrapped in mist, now
catching glimpses of the valley through the parting curtains of
the storm ; listening to the sighing of the wind in the pine-tops,
and the voice of the mountain stream that "slips through moss-
grown stones with endless laughter." On arriving at the crest I
rode over to Rock City, that curious c jllection of Nature's freaks
¦ in fancy stone work, and then finally, drenched, tired and hungry,
I came back to the Natural Bridge Hotel, near the St. Elmo road.
Here I was "hospitably entreated," had an excellent dinner,
looked at the natural bridge, and just as the sky showed some
signs of clearing, started back to Chattanooga.
It is to be regretted that, over such a beautiful place as Look
out Mountain, there should rest a shadow of greed and extortion,
such as has deterred thousands of people from visiting Niagara
Falls. The heritage of the Cherokees was divided by lottery, a
considerable tract on Lookout Mountain, including the Point,
being drawn by a family named Martin. The Martius left the
country, and the property fell into the hands of Col. Whiteside,
who bought it in for a trifle. It is now in the hands of his widow
and other heirs. The mountain had been a sort of free summer
resort for thirty years, and it was not until the yellow fever sum
mer that the Whiteside heirs bethought themselves to extort
money from the public. A crowd of terrified people sought the
mountain for safety from the scourge, and so the house of White
side established a toll-gate on the old road, and commenced a
regular system of exaction. The people of Chattanooga were
greatly angered and disgusted at this, and a company built the
St. Elmo road up the mountain, an excellent highway, and des
titute of the ornament of toll-gates. The Whitesides attempted
to enjoin this enterprise, but without success. They have now
even built a fence across the Point, put up toll-gates, and actu
ally refuse access to visitors who come up the mountain with
teams hired at other livery stables than their own. A spot
which really ought to be the property of the United States is

IN AND AROUND CHATTANOOGA. 67
now fenced in and toll-gated, and surrounded by vexatious re
strictions. A considerable number of law suits have been brought,
with, so far, no relief to the public. I write thus, first, to pre
pare the visitor for what he may expect; and second, to relieve
the people of Chattanooga from any suspicion of complicity -in
this meanness.
Notwithstanding all this, Lookout Mountain, with its natural
features and its historic associations, it is a pleasure, almost a
duty, to visit. There are a thousand things to see, and the old
soldier especially finds traces of the work of the most stirring
years of his life, which awaken emotions which he alone can feel.
Near the Rock City I found ten lines of rude stone chimneys,
which marked the old camping-place of a regiment. The visitor
who desires to learn the history of this region will find a bright
chronicler in Mrs. Thomas, of the Natural Bridge Hotel, who was
born at Rossville, almost in the evening shadow of the mountain,
the daughter of the pioneer surveyor of this region in the days
when the Cherokee turned his sad face to the westward. With
the hope that every wandering Kansan visiting Chattanooga may
find there the same gay welcome and free-handed hospitality
that the writer did, he says good-bye.

THE MOUNTAIN CAPITAL.

Knoxville, Tenn., April 26, 1881.
Probably no other town in the South so endeared itself to the
loyal people of the North during the war a-< Knoxville. The
names of Brownlow and Knoxville, and of East Tennessee, ac
quired in those days an imperishable fame. Strangely, how
ever, the strongest Union town in the South was occupied until
the war was half over by the Confederates. Thousands of brave
Tennesseeans were in arms for the Union, yet for a long time
they saw the chief city of their mountains beyond their grasp.
At last it was occupied by the Union troops without a struggle;
then was the object of a fierce and desperate, though unsuccess
ful, struggle to take it, occasioning the severest march ever made
by our troops during the war, for its relief; and then the cloud
of war rolled away from it, it is to be hoped forever. It was for
history's sake that your correspondent went to Knoxville.
The town, seen of a showery morning, has an ancient but not
a decayed look. It is a green old age, like Adam's in "As You
Like It," "frosty but kindly." The brick greatly used in the
buildings look as if smoke had been mixed with the clay ; not
soot, you will understand, but smoke. The impression of an
tiquity is conveyed by the number of churches having church
yards attached, after the fashion of the old countries. Then the
substantial houses that have sheltered three generations of the
same families, are shaded with trees as old; and there are more
old-fashioned flowers, as dandelions and lilacs, in Knoxville than
anywhere else this side of the Hudson.
The earliest settlers were, I believe, Presbyterians from North
Carolina; and that church is still powerful in the town. It was
named after a New Englander, Gen. Henry Knox, of Maine, the
artillerist of the Revolution, and has a flavor of Yankee in its
ancient composition. Every alternate fine house in the town
seems to belong to a Cowan or a McCIung, and the Cowans are
(68)

THE MOUNTAIN CAPITAL. 69
of Yankee origin. One of the rich men of the town started in as
a working carpenter from Connecticut. Horace Maynard came
down from Massachusetts and went into politics, in which pur
suit the Lord has blessed him, and he has also been able to retain
the respect and affection of his fellow-townsmen in all his office-
holding years.
Knoxville was once the capital of Tennessee. It has always
been the capital of East Teunessee. In the old court house at
Knoxville all the eminent orators of East Tennessee have begun
and usually closed their oratorical careers. The old court house
itself is a type of Knoxville. It is probably about fifty years
old, but is so stoutly built that it would smile at a Kansas cy
clone. It is rusty rather than venerable, at present. A trace of
former magnificence is seen in each of the offices, in the shape of
a magnificent horse-hair-covered sofa. I should think a whole
jury could sit on one of them. There are preserved in the ar
chives old records bound in parchment. I looked over the record
in the first murder ease tried in the county — Abongphigo, a
Creek Indian, charged -with killing John Ish, a white man. Mr.
A. was found guilty on the 1st of August, and hung on the 4th.
A marginal note on the record says that a son of Ish stated that
his father was killed by another Indian, but that the Creeks de
livered up Abongphigo to be hung, because he was half-witted
and of not much account anyhow. The poor fellow should have
lived till our day, and it would have gone hard if we had not
got him off, not so much on the ground that he was innocent,
that not being material, but that he was crazy, and also that he
committed the act in self-defense.
Knoxville is built on more hills than Rome, and as the mount
ains are round about Jerusalem, so they are even more round
about Knoxville. Standing on the roof of the Government
building, the town seems shut in by rows on rows of hills, and
beyond these, mountains. To the east may be seen the Smoky
Mountains, first a low range known as Rattlesnake Bluff, and be
yond that the great boundary of Tennessee and North Carolina.
These are true mountains ; the blue outline not being long and
straight, the edge of a plateau, like the Cumberland range, but
5

70 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
with the waving lines and sharp summits which we associate with
" the purple peaks that tear the drifting skies of gold." Then
there are more elevations to the north; and west, through a gap,
are seen the Cumberland Mountains; and south, hills upon hills.
Through these hills, past the gates of Knoxville, runs what has
been for two years past legally and officially the Tennessee, but
formerly the Holston river.
In company with Mr. E. W. Adkins, Circuit Court Clerk,
whose acquaintance I made when he was Quartermaster-Sergeant
of the Third Tennessee Union volunteers, I walked and rode
over all the hills of Knoxville, and it must be understood that
they are not crags, like those at Kansas Gity, but real, easy, up-
and-down hills of red clay, ameliorated by macadam. The one
fine public edifice of the town is the United States building, of
white Tennessee marble, quarried a few miles from town. This
house cost $375,000. With this and a $400,000 custom house at
Nashville, it must be confessed that Colonel Sellers's "old flag
and an appropriation " has been a good thing for Tennessee. This
building is the only one in which I saw this beautiful material
extensively used, although East Tennessee has more marble than
all the isles of Greece.
The town has made a start in manufactures. They make iron
and ice, and perhaps other things. There are water mills scat
tered around in the hollows, with none of your fancy turbine ar
rangements, but with the old overshot wheels, that go round and
round in the plashing water. Water, by the way, is a big thing
in this mountain country. There are "branches," creeks, rivers
and springs innumerable, including all the dirty-tasting waters
which have been pronounced medicinal, enough to set up a hun
dred Saratogas. A man from this region, in hunting a new coun
try, never inquires about the soil or climate, but only about the
water. This led Bob Ingersoll to observe that Dives was prob
ably an East Tennesseean or North Carolinian.
There are educational institutions in profusion. On a high,
smooth green hill, stand scattered brick blocks of surpassing ug
liness. This is the agricultural, military and scientific University
of Tennessee; then there is a new colored college in the suburbs-

THE MOUNTAIN CAPITAL. 71
a young ladies' seminary, and a fine system of free schools for
white and black. These are the coming schools of the city, as
they will be of the South, or Tennessee at least. The State insti
tution for the deaf and dumb is located at Knoxville. The build
ing was used as a hospital during the war, but has been greatly
enlarged since. The head of the school is Prof. Ijams, formerly
of Washington City ; but my own "guide, philosopher and friend "
in the establishment was Professor Hummel, a native of Knox
ville. From this gentleman I learned that " God's great gift of
speech" not only need not be "abused," but that it need not be
used. He explained the natural language common to deaf mutes,
which he said would be sufficient for them if they were thrown
into a community by themselves and without education. A class,
the most advanced in the school, described by pantomime common
objects, and the emotions of grief, anger, disgust, curiosity, and
love. This was natural acting, and it occurred to me that some
of the dramatic sticks who disfigure the stage of Corinthian Hall
might go to the nearest deaf and dumb asylum and learn some
thing. The school seemed a great success — a really happy place,
destitute of that penal-settlement look common to some charitable
institutions. The military history of Knoxville is very brief. The Confed
erates, during their occupation, never fortified it, nor did the Union
troops do>so until menaced by Longstreet. Why that officer al
lowed them time to do so, is one of the conundrums of the war.
After he appeared, Burnside made great exertions, and threw up
works so strong that they are powerful yet. In no place have I
seen military remains in such full preservation. Longstreet in
vested the town on the north and. west, and shut off communica
tion pretty thoroughly. However, the scout Reynolds is still
living, who entered the town with a dispatch to Burnside, an
nouncing the approach of relief. He carried the dispatch in the
barrel of his revolver. I made a circuit of the works and in
spected Fort Sanders, where one of the most desperate charges
and the most frightful slaughters of the war took place. It is still
a very strong place, and was, when attacked, the strongest point
in the whole line of defense, and much conjecture has been in-

"72 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
dulged in why Longstreet selected it for the assault. It is ap
proached by a long, easy rise for half a mile, every foot of which
is now open to view; probably it was then more covered with
undergrowth. Up this slope came the Confederates, in face of a
'horrible fire, and clear to the deep ditch where the high slope of
the work rose above them. Telegraph wire had been strung along
the outer edge of the ditch, fixed to stakes, and over this the charg
ing men yet unwounded, fell headlong into the ditch. The car
nage was awful. The defenders cut short the fuses, and threw
shell among the struggling masses in the ditch, tearing them to
fragments. In spite of this, some of them reached the top of the
work, and there is a story that one young lad clambered up with
his flag to the muzzle of a gun, called out, "Surrender! " and was
blown, a bloody mass, into the air by the discharge. The assault
failed, and the ditch was full and the slope covered with the
dead and wounded. The Confederate dead were hastily covered
with earth, a short distance from the work; and a gentleman as
sured me that some days afterward he saw the hands and feet, and
even faces of the dead, protruding from the ground.
The Armstrong house, in front of Fort Sanders, is still stand
ing. It was occupied by the Confederate sharpshooters, who did
much damage. A shot from this house killed General Sanders,
after whom the fort was named. The Union sharpshooters kept
up a fire on the house, and one of the enemy was killed in the ob
servatory. The blood-stains are still visible on the stairs.
The portion of the city known as North Knoxville was burned
by General Burnside, because it sheltered the enemy's skirmish
ers. It is now entirely rebuilt, much larger and finer than before.
The line of defense on Summit *Hill is now the vine-clad and tree-
embowered Vine street.
The name of Brownlow will always be associated with Knox
ville. I passed the brave Parson's old home, a two-story white
frame house on Cumberland street, standing sheer with the side
walk. Near by is the little frame office where for so many years
the editorials of the Knoxville Whig were written. It was at
the porch gate that Miss Sue Brownlow, revolver in hand, de
fended the flag which symbolized the belief of that house and

THE MOUNTAIN CAPITAL. 73'
family. I had the pleasure of meeting this lady, now Mrs.
Boynton, and her interesting daughters — the granddaughters of
the famous Parson. To Mrs. Boynton I am indebted for some
incidents of the times that tried not only men's but women's
souls. Of the Brownlow family, James Brownlow, a fighting
volunteer Colonel, and afterward an officer in the regular army,
is dead; John Bell Brownlow holds a Government position in
Washington. The four daughters, three of them married, and
one a widow, reside in Knoxville. Horace Maynard has a very
unpretentious drab frame house, built even with the sidewalk,
and plain to ugliness.
Having spoken of some prominent people, I may say that I
made some inquiries concerning George Harris, who wrote the
" Sut Lovengood " papers. Every elderly gentleman I have met
in this region knew him perfectly, and no two agree about any
thing—placing the date of his death, for instance, all the way
from 1861 to 1870. He was a native of East Tennessee, with no
special educational advantages; a little man with a peculiar,
short, fast step. He had a few friends to whom he was devotedly
attached, and who returned his affection. One of these was East
man, a Vermonter, who edited first a paper at Knoxville, and
then the leading Democratic organ at Nashville. To Eastman
the collected Lovengood sketches are dedicated. Harris was a
mechanical genius — a sort of Col. Sellers, with a taste for every
thing that was unprofitable. He learned to be a tailor and also
a silversmith. His sketches were published originally in the
Nashville Union and American. He was postmaster at Knox
ville for a time. He appears to have finally become connected
with the Wills Valley Railroad, and to have removed to Trenton,
Georgia. In his latter days, I am told, he was quite dissipated.
One day he was found, in a dying condition, in a car of the East-
Tennessee & Virginia road, at Knoxville. He was taken to the
Atkin House, and there died. Hereabouts he is always spoken
of as " Sut Lovengood," yet they remember little of him, after all.
We remember those who make us weep, not those who make us
laugh. Alas, poor Yorick!

CONCERNING TENNESSEE.

Marietta, Ga., April 27, 1881.
Before starting regularly upon the incidents of travel in
Georgia, I think it proper to sum up, at least in a hasty way,
my impressions of Tennessee.
The State of Tennessee is divided, as everybody knows, into
three remarkable natural and political divisions of West, Mid
dle and East Tennessee. It has always been so, and will prob
ably be so to the end of time. In the division of the State in
stitutions, in the make-up of State tickets, the existence of these
three divisions is always recognized.
Of West Tennessee, the capital of which is Memphis, I can
not speak either from past or present observation, and what I
have to say is limited to the other two divisions.
During my stay in the State I traversed it from the Ken
tucky line to Nashville; thence to Chattanooga, thence to
Knoxville, and back to Chattanooga. I remained several days
at Nashville, considering that a sort of center of business and
opinion, and as good a point as any to gather the information I
sought. Of the material development of the State there can be no
doubt. If it is not a prosperous country, then it is a very de
ceptive one. The last year of the war I was not serving in Ten
nessee, but from all accounts that year was the most destructive
of the struggle. The fences left before went then. Said an ex-
soldier to me : "I never smell cedar burning that I do not think
of the rails we burned in Middle Tennessee." That part of the
State was virtually put back over fifty years. The ex-Confed
erate coming back to the old plantation or farm, found it, to use
a familiar illustration, "As bare as the back of your hand."
The towns were little better off than the country. The houses,
unpainted and uncared-for for four years, had been occupied as
(74)

CONCERNING TENNESSEE. 75
officers' quarters, barracks or stores. Nearly every church was
taken for a hospital ; old corrals, the homes of successive gener
ations of army mules, were a prominent object in the landscape.
It was wretchedness itself. To bring things back to a condition
as good as they were before the war would have been creditable,
but Tennessee has done much better.
The city of Nashville I have spoken of at some length in a
previous letter, and have only to repeat that good work has been
done there, and it has been done by Southern men. At Chat
tanooga more has been done than at Nashville; there, Northern
men and money have aided in the work; but then Nashville has
no such natural advantages as Chattanooga. I do not know half
a dozen places in the South which have. Knoxville has the
name of being a rich but slow old place. It has a lovely situ
ation naturally, but not railroads enough in sight from the roof
of the United States court house. A road east through the
mountains of North Carolina, and so to Augusta, Georgia, was
begun years ago, but has got but sixteen miles ; another road,
originally designed to reach Louisville, ends in the coal region
at Graysville. Knoxville has virtually but one road, the East
Tennessee & Virginia, running to Chattanooga, the "Gate."
Knoxville will always be a nice town to live in. I can cheer
fully recommend it to Northerners. If they do not go to Chat
tanooga they had better go to Knoxville.
There has been an immigration for some years to Tennessee
from the North ; nothing like the rush to Kansas, of course, but
still a steady movement. The new people come almost entirely
from Ohio and Pennsylvania. They do not come, I think, in
colonies — I should be sorry to think that necessary — but by ones
and twos, and settle down among the Tennessee people. They
have, as I have stated in a previous letter, occupied Missionary
Ridge with their fields and gardens and vineyards. There have
been failures. A gentleman told me that a party from Massa
chusetts had tried the experiment of farming in Franklin county,
and had given it up and gone back to their old home. He at
tributed their bad luck to buying miserably poor land. At
Chattanooga and at Knoxville I heard considerable about the

76 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
Rugby colony, started by Mr. " Tom Brown" Hughes. Most
people seem to regard it as an absurdity, and thought nothing
could be done with the priggish Britons, who were already say
ing: "Why, hits a blawsted, beastly country, ye know." Mr.
Hughes has certainly selected a very poor agricultural region for
his experiment.
It is quite probable that we make a mistake in inviting every
body to come to Kansas. To the mass of people in Iowa or Illi
nois, or any of the prairie States, and to many Indianians,
Ohioans or Pennsylvanians, Kansas affords the best outlet possi
ble; but there is a class of people in the States east of Illinois,
accustomed to rocks, woods and hills, who seem to thrive in such
surroundings, and-are unhappy without them, who certainly ought
not to try Kansas, and who might do well in Tennessee.
The objection, of course, to a removal South, has all along
been the disposition of the Southern people toward the Northern
people coming among them. The past I do not propose to dis
cuss, and have only to say that I do not in the least doubt what
has been said of social ostracism in the years succeeding the war,
nor do I doubt that, in more-or-less benighted localities, it exists
at present. The most I can say is, that the prejudice is disap
pearing in Tennessee; this was the testimony of a very large ma
jority of the intelligent men I conversed with, of every shade of
political thinking. The South, even Tennessee, is not the North,
and a Northern Republican will find the difference quite percep
tible; but by choosing his location in Tennessee he can live at
peace with all mankind and stand a reasonable chance of dying
peacefully in his bed.
The great objection, I should say, to life in the rural districts
of Tennessee, would be the want of schools. It must be remem
bered that there is no magnificent school fund arising from the
sale of public lands, and that the whole burden of public educa
tion falls directly on the taxpayer. This, in a country where
there is a large body of non-taxpayers, and where all have been
but lately accustomed to a free-school system, is an onerous load.
But the free schools are gaining ground. The cities have done
nobly. Nashville has had a thorough public school system for

CONCERNING TENNESSEE. 77
twenty years ; at Knoxville there are fine buildings and an effi
cient corps of teachers, though the organization has been in ex
istence but ten years. I made it a business to talk with farmers,
and country people, Southern men, and especially ex-Confederate
soldiers, and I found them in favor of education for all, white
and colored. They admitted the existence of opposition, but said
it was dying out. I never heard, in Tennessee, any man seriously
object to the education of the colored children. Some doubted
the receptive faculty of the blacks ; some said they were in favor
of giving them all the education they were capable of receiving;
one candid man, one of the most thoughtful persons I talked with,
said to me: "You will disagree with me, and say that I believe
a black man a mere animal, but I believe that giving a darkey
an education generally fits him the better to be a rascal." Yet
this man admitted that the colored school in his district was a
success, and he also admitted that the young man from Fisk Uni
versity, who taught the school, had not been made a rascal by
education. As the Kansas farmer has a disposition to croak all the spring
over the poor prospects, and all the fall and winter because there
is so much stuff in the country that prices are down to starvation
figures, thus blaming the Creator of Kansas for doing too much
or too little, so the Tennessee farmer has a chronic habit of growl
ing over the " unreliability of the new system of labor," He has
rhymed it over a long time, and will for a long time to come.
It is very curious to hear this old cry under all circumstances. I
remember standing near a gang of colored laborers at the Roane
iron works, at Chattanooga; they were loading steel rails on the
cars. Out of the five huudred and fifty men employed at the
works, half are black. Yet when I asked the white foreman how
he got along with the black help, he said : " Oh, they're shiftless."
Yet unless I happened to be, at the time, blind or crazy, they
were working before my eyes, and that very hard and fast. The
same story was told at the tannery, where many colored people
were employed. The only variation I heard from the regular
talk about unreliability, shiftlessness and laziness was at the Was-
son car works, at Chattanooga. There a foreman, an English-

78 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
man I judged, said that the colored employes did very well; that
they were employed in every department of the works, including
the foundry, where there were seven black moulders. At the cot
ton factory at Nashville, the young man who showed me around
said with great pride that there were only three "niggers" about
the premises, and that if one were employed in the mill proper
there would be a strike; yet as the same person told me that the
late Legislature had passed a law which fixed the marriage license
fee at $25, which he thought a good thing, as it would " cut out
these pore whites and niggers from marrying," I concluded that
his store of information was not extensive and varied enough to
be relied on. This young man had grown up since the war. I
hope he did not represent the rising generation in the South.
The Kansas Republican will probably attribute the improve
ment in Tennessee to the increasing strength of the Republican
party in the State. If he does, he will get the cart before the
horse — at least in my opinion. The political improvement is a re
sult rather than a cause. With slavery removed, the ideas of the
North, about every question as well as politics, have a chance to
spread and grow. Every Studebaker or Milburn or Coquillard
wagon — and you see them at nearly every substantial farmer's
door now — is a missionary. It tells the people that there is an
other country besides the South ; that there is a North, a country
filled with a prosperous and inventive people, who can make
wagons aud everything else. The South is filled with Northern
commercial travelers and agents, who sell wagons and a thousand
things besides; each one of these has his say and does his work.
A hundred different agencies are at work. Northern men are
getting out Tennessee lumber and marble and iron and coal. I
had no conception of the extent of these Southern industries
until I came and. saw for myself, nor do I think the most of
Northern people have.
The State of Tennessee has always had a warm place in my
heart. I have always believed it the first Southern State in point
of resources. The climate is a delightful one, the golden mean
between the too hot aud the too cold, and besides, owing to the
difference in elevation, you can have any variety of climate you

CONCERNING TENNESSEE. 79
want within the limits of the State. I believe there is a great
future for the State. The action of the people in regard to the
debt has been most honorable, and must greatly help the credit
of Tennessee. Occasionally I met a low-spirited citizen, who
said: "Oh, our people are too slow; they will never improve the
country;" but nevertheless I do not doubt that improvement
will come. It does seem as impossible that the marble quarries
and coal and iron and copper mines of East Tennessee will go
undeveloped, as that the same number of gold mines would be.
High up on the Southern mountain-side, the other day, my guide
pointed out to me that every fallen oak tree had been stripped of
its bark. Somebody had clambered up there with great diffi
culty, and gathered the bark for a tannery established by a
Northern man in the valley below. The sight gratified me. It
meant business ; it meant money for some poor mountaineer; it
signified a sensible understanding between North and South ; it
was the harbinger of more books, more school houses, and a wiser
and more tolerant generation than ours.
God, we are informed, did not hurry in making the world, and
men can afford to wait for many things. The North cau afford
to wait for Tennessee, and as sure as the world moves — and he is
a fool who says it does not move — the day will come when from
the blue mountains that hem in the State on the east to the great
tawny river that skirts her western boundary, the same ideas and
the same prosperity will prevail in Tennessee that we know in
Kansas. I should deem myself a very poor specimen of an Amer
ican if I did not hope so, and a very dull observer if I did not
believe so. It will all come right, gentle reader, and don't you
forget it. It will not be announced, this glad result, on any given
day; bv the unfolding of any flag, or by the resolutions of any
political convention ; or the formal clasping of the fat hands of
two sets of politicians. But you will know it when it comes, by
the smoke of the furnace at the mountain-foot; the roariDg blast
at the quarry; the ringing ax in the forest glade; the contented
faces and busy fingers in the cotton field; the whirring of ma
chinery in the factory ; the slow-gliding boats on the Cumberland
and the Tennessee; and the rumble of trains where now the high-
perched cedars look down on solitude.

KENESAW.

Atlanta, Ga., April 29, 1881.
The 2:45 p. M. train on the Western & Atlantic, on Tuesday
last, pulled out from Chattanooga under a lowering sky. The
dark curtains of the storm were being drawn around the land
scape; occasionally a great cloud of mist would almost hide Look
out, from sight, and the great height would emerge with something
like a frown upon its mighty face. I took one more look, perhaps
the last — and here I will say what I have before forgotten, that
the famous White House still stands in the clearing, half-way up
the northern slope. It is occupied by Mr. Cravens, who owned
it at the time of the battle.
The car was not crowded. There were several of the tall and
indescribably emaciated countrywomen who abound in this moun
tain country; several men to match; a man in Southern jeans,
who seemed to wish to look like a Confederate, but who was really
an Ohioan, and employed by Gen. Warner, ex-carpet-bag Senator
from Alabama, at some iron works he owns in that State; a sure-
enough Confederate, with one wooden leg, copperas breeches, and
a slouch hat, going all the way from Texas to his old home in
Georgia ; and a gentlemen opposite, who looked like Harry Bost
wick, and whom I took for a Northern business man.
By the time we had passed the point of Missionary Ridge, and
were bowling along toward the "land of cotton" aud likewise of
"cinnamon seed and sandy bottom," it was raining furiously.
The flat, yellow fields were flooded. Chickamauga station was
passed unnoticed, for the train was the fast express, and does not
stop at the little places. Nothing turned up familiar until the
brakeman called " Ringgold." I camped on a high hill at this
place once, but could see nothing of it. It grew darker and
rainier and more lonesome, and I went across and sat with the
man who looked like Harry Bostwick. He seemed to know
(80)

KENESAW. 81
something of the country. I wondered what Illinois or Ohio or
Indiana regiment he had belonged to. But it came out in a little
while. He was on the "other side;" had fought us with a bat
talion of sharpshooters all the way from Dalton down to Atlanta,
where he was wounded. He was an "original secessionist," if I
ever met one. He had helped capture the Augusta arsenal at
the first flash of the Rebellion, and had stuck to it as long as he
could. Perhaps he would try it again if he had a chance, but I
rather think not. As the rain was coming down in torrents, and
the thunder was muttering and the gullies in the old fields were
running full of yellow water, I remarked that, just as a matter
of taste, I rather preferred riding in a comfortable passenger
coach, to marching all the afternoon in the rain and sleeping be
tween two fence rails on one of those hillsides at night, and my
Confederate fellow-traveler quite agreed with me. He was the
first Confederate I ever met who admired Jeff. Davis. He thought
him a great man, and said his forthcoming history would be the
fairest account yet given of the war between the States. He
talked Georgia politics some. He was anti- Joe Brown and anti-
Colquitt. And, by the way, the latter gentleman is in trouble.
It is the old State-treasury trouble. They have had it bad in
Missouri. It appears that the State money is deposited in banks,
and some banks have broken lately, and when they came to look
for the money it was not there, but the Governor's notes were.
Putting the State money in a bad bank and borrowing the money
yourself, is what the people call it.
I looked eagerly about at Rocky Face and Buzzard Roost;
but in the storm, and whisked about the curves at a high speed,
it was impossible to distinguish anything. I passed within a few
feet of where a dear friend of mine, throwing his hand to his
breast, staggered and fell with his death-wound, but I could not
mark the spot as we passed.
At Dalton the rain seemed to have reached its length, and
after that we saw the towns in a sulky drizzle. They had nearly
all greatly improved. Cartersville I should never have known.
A new brick town had sprung up in addition to the wooden town
of old. Kingston looked more natural. Acworth had de-

82 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
veloped into quite a handsome place. Big Shanty has but one
"shanty" still, a raft of a house where the train takes supper.
A smart yellow woman, with her head tied up in a red handker
chief, came through the cars with cups of coffeee, milk and
sugar on a tray. This looked like "befo' de wah." Alatoona
we missed, which we regretted. After passing Big Shanty the
Confederate and myself kept a lookout for an object of mutual
interest. I called him across finally to look. There it was,
painted in black against the murky sky; the high hill with a
lower one attached. It was Kenesaw. A tall, big man in thin
black bombazine clothes, began to talk, and explained that he
lived in Atlanta, and that the road made a big bend, so that the
mountain appeared first on the left and then on the right, and
that he was from Illinois; and I asked where he was in the days
when Kenesaw was going into history, or words to that effect,
and he replied he was in Chicago, but he said in a voice like a
duet by a trombone and a bass drum: "I followed you with the
spelling-book and the Bible." I hope I appreciate both books,
but this loud messenger of peace depressed me, and a great still
ness prevailed until I shook hands with the Confederate and got
out in the blackness of darkness at Marietta.
There was, not much to be seen in Marietta, and if there had
been it was too dark to see it. They said Mrs. Frances Willard
was appointed to speak on temperance, at the court house, but I
drank of the fountain freely flowing on that subject at Topeka last
winter, and felt thoroughly saturated, and went to bed without
hearing Mrs. Willard ; and every time I woke in the night, I could
hear the rain pouring down and a gutter-spout dripping, and it
made me think of "Bleak House."
In the morning, and "hit a rainin'," as Sut Lovengood says, I
went across to the livery stable and presented a card to Mr. Chuck
Anderson. I asked that gentleman if he could give me informa
tion respecting the military lines about Kenesaw, and Chuck, a
large, hearty, soldierly-looking man, said, "No sir, I served in the
Virginia army ; " and so we understood each other. Before break
fast I went to the National Cemetery, and met Capt. Hughes, the
gallant keeper, and gathered a rose-bud from the grave of poor,

KENESAW. 83
young John McGovern, of "Ours," who was killed at the crossing
of the Chattahoochee; and after breakfast, Mr. Anderson sent out
a little black, the best "single-foot racker" in Cobb county, and
so I started for Kenesaw.
Going out along a long maple-shaded lane, I overtook a gray-
headed, homespun-clad farmer, on a white horse. He was reading
a letter, and after learning where I was from he handed me the
envelope. It was postmarked Atchison. The old man, whose
name was Green, said he had two daughters in Atchison, and told
me all about them, which is not material to this narrative. After
awhile he made another revelation. He said, speaking of a period
during the war, "At that time I was down here at a place called
Andersonville." "And were you guarding our men there?"
" I was." I looked at the old man with a genuine curiosity. I
had never before heard a human being admit that he had had
anything to do with that awful place. However, he seemed an
honest old man, and I told him I should be very glad to hear his
side of the story. He went on, in a very candid way, at some
length. He said that never in his life had he offered an insult
or an injury to a prisoner. A prisoner of war could not be made
comfortable. At Andersonville the prisoners suffered for shelter ;
but the rations issued them were exactly the same as those issued
to the guards — pretty rough, he admitted. The hospital, he said,
was not a bad place, and the rations there issued were better than
the guard received. Wirtz he did not believe a bad-hearted man.
He was a passionate man, but with a streak of humor in him.
He cursed and threatened everybody, prisoners and guards alike,
but after damning the object of his wrath, he frequently relented.
He did not deny the great mortality at the prison, but he said
there was a great difference in the prisoners; some were always
active, engaged in something and kept themselves as clean as
they could; while others sank into a sort of apathy, lay about,
would not wash themselves, and died because they seemed not to
care to live. The old man, having finished his story, went his
road, and I moved into the woods and went on to the house of Mr.
Kirk, who had been recommended by " Chuck " as familiar with
the country. We were then under the western front of Big Ken-

84 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
esaw. The Kirks, the father and a grown son, mounted mules
and started with me along the road about the foot of the mount
ain. We passed a heavy work which had evidently been built
by the Confederates to prevent a flank movement in case we
turned the Little Kenesaw end of the mountain. The old man
said he had been employed, after the war, to accompany the party
who removed the Federal dead, buried scattered about on the
slopes of the mountain and elsewhere, to the cemetery at Marietta,
and knew every foot of the ground. It was pleasant riding along
in the damp woods, crossing the brawling mountain streams, and
admiring the great masses of honeysuckles which shone in the
green forest, and a score of other flowers I did not know by name.
The old man told me that after the war the woods were full of
guns, shells, bayonets and other old iron, and that he lived a year
or two by hauling his findings to the foundry. Some people, he
said, cut the bullets out of the trees and sold quantities of lead.
We turned the extreme point of the mountain, and the old man
led on to where he was certain my regiment was placed. I was
certain he was wrong, but he said he could go directly to a place
where "they were all jammed up together," where the "head-logs"
were just as full as they could hold of bullets, and where the Fed
eral and Confederate dead were found side by side. I thought
this must be the scene of the assault in which Col. Dan McCook,
of our division, was killed, and his command frightfully cut
up. He led to a spot, but it was not the spot. The old man
seemed reluctant to ride over rough places, and manifested a
general want of enterprise, and so we dismissed him, and young
Mr. Kirk went on duty as "guide."
We found works and works in the thick woods. Here were
our lines running straight across the country, and there were
rifle pits of both armies ; everything in regular order just as it had
been left. The Confederate lines were very strong. In one place
the ditch was filled with young poplars thirty feet high, but the
parapet had not in the least lost its outline or diminished in
height. Some of the old rifle-pits were faced on the inside angle
with logs, now mossy and decaying. Blackberries grew rank in
the ditch, tangled creepers and vines massed on the slope. All

KENESAW. 85
was in the dense shade, and all was silence, where was heard once
the sharp hum of the skirmisher's bullets, changing at times to
an unearthly hiss, as they glanced from some tree and flew bat
tered through the air.
The little black took everything he came to, clambering over
works and feeling his sure-footed way across the old ditches. We
rode back along the line until we came to the line of works di
rectly in front of Little Kenesaw aud close to the mountain.
There was the old breastwork just as the regiment left it; there
was the almost perpendicular steep of the mountain, with the
rocky wall near the top; there was the old place of the Confed
erate battery on the mountain over our heads, and I knew that
behind us was the field where Barnett with his guns opened up
on that battery and shut it up.
We then went straight to the mountain, and up the side, dis
mounting, and leading the animals as we neared the crest, and
had to pick our way among the boulders.. We came out on a
lower ridge between the two mountains, then turned to Little
Kenesaw, and in a few minutes rode up on the parapet of the
Confederate battery, on the sunny, wind-swept height, and looked
down to the spot from whence I had once looked very anxiously
up. The battery was in very good shape, with traverses and
embrasures for four guns.
The vegetation at the mountain showed the effect of elevation
and sterility. The masses of rocks were covered with moss ; cac
tus was abundant, and the oaks were stunted, twisted and covered
with moss. We found the top of Big Kenesaw nearly destitute
of vegetation; rocks were piled about. It was used by both
armies as a signal station. The view was fine. A great, low,
green forest plain, broken by plowed fields and crossed by the
fed lines of country roads, lay beneath us. At that height
smaller elevations are not perceivable. The sky line was broken
by the Blue Ridge ; by the solitary rise of Lost Mountain, and
the haystack-shaped outline of Stone Mountain. Below us the
white houses of Marietta shone amid the trees; twenty miles
away a solitary spire and a cloud of smoke betokened the site of
Atlanta. 6

86 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
It was a good place to have passed a sunny day, but we left it
to the shadowy cows and phantom pigs, who seemed to have pre
empted the location.
The young man told me about himself as we rode along. He
was born within a mile of Kenesaw, and had never been seventy
miles from home. ' He was a child when the war came, but remem
bered all about it. He remembered the Union officers had occu
pied one end of their cabin, and he had looked through their
field-glasses. A shell struck the cabin one day, but he did not
think he had ever known fear. The "old man " had got through
the world early and easy. He was on duty at Savannah at one
time, and dreamed " powerful dreams " of all the Yankees would
do to the country. Everything had " come true."
He said many Northern people came to Marietta in the summer
time. Several Northern men lived in the city. He knew and re
spected them very much. One of them he named, and said he
could have any office in the county he wanted. He was certain
there was no prejudice against Northerners in this part of the
country; He thought there was a prejudice against working men
like himself. He said that they had two grades of Baptist churches
in Marietta, one for the rich, another for the poor. The develop
ment of the country he regarded as wonderful. Land that I
laughed at he said was well worth $10 an acre. Cotton growing
was on the increase, and 15,00,0 bales were marketed at Marietta
in the season. The use of fertilizers was increasing. " Now,"
said he, "I am nothing but a little jackass farmer, but I used
thirty-two hundred pounds of guano last year." Much more he
told me, and pointed out, with a request that I call the attention
of the public to it, " Bill Haine's peach orchard" on the northern
slope of Big Kenesaw.
Down the road up which the Confederate artillery was dragged,
now traversed by tourists and picnic parties, we wended our way ;
thence down one narrow lane and up another to the mansion of
the Kirks, with the rail fence around it and the hollow-tree ash-
hopper in the yard. . They brought me a drink of the coldest and
clearest water, and — "old times come again" — it was in a gourd.
If there is any moral to this story, it is that the Kansas man

KENESAW. 87
who is tired of the prairie and the wind and the sun, and would
fain refresh his soul, should come to Marietta, ask Mr. Chuck
Anderson for the "Lester pony," hunt up young Marcus Kirk,
and go to Kenesaw.

THE GATE CIT.Y.

Atlanta, Ga., April 30, 1881.
Coming back to Marietta a few minutes too late for the
Atlanta train, there was nothing for it but an afternoon in that
drowsy seat of justice in and for the county of Cobb.
Marietta has its busy season. Marcus Kirk thought it in the
cotton-selling season a second New York. It claims 3,000 in
habitants, but a quieter 3,000 have never existed than possessed
the shady town on the April day to which this record refers.
The roomy Kenesaw House seemed as vast, and far more
empty than the Mammoth Cave. Silence profound reigned on
the public square. It is surrounded by two-story brick business
houses ; before the war they were three-story, but at the close of
the war there were none at all. In the center of the square is
an octagonal park, dark with the shade of the trees. Radiating
from the square are long streets lined with residences of a pat
tern peculiar, it seemed, to Marietta; white, one-story, very
wide, with piazzas in front with classic wooden pillars of Greek
models. These wooden columns seem to have appeared all over
the South at once, and their size and height indicated the wealth
and aristocracy of the owner of the mansion. Of course these
white mansions were embowered in such vines and shrubbery as
would make a Northern gardener turn as green as the leaves
themselves with envy. Nature does more for every little South
ern town in this way than nature and art can do, or at least have
done, for us, in any Kansas metropolis.
Marietta did not look shabby by any means. It was only
resting under its thousand trees. Everybody was sitting down.
The merchants brought out cane-bottomed chairs and sat on the
mossy brick sidewalks in front of their stores; the ladies, as
the evening drew on, sat on the low, wide-front verandas, or in
the doorways; the children did not run and whoop, after the
(88)

THE GATE CITY. 89
manner of the youth of Kansas, but sat around in a ring on the
ground, and played some game in which legs do not count. A
very restful place is Marietta, when the sun goes down. I gath
ered no information about the city. People are not communica
tive in a city of three thousand, where the post office is closed at
five o'clock p. m.
In the dusk the fast train on the Western & Atlantic bore me
on to Atlanta. Nothing seemed to so tell me that peace had
come as the fact that you made the run from Chattanooga to
Atlanta in five hours; and the journey before cost so many
weary, bloody weeks.
Riding along in the soft April night, and gazing at the sky
and the stars which shone with unusual brilliancy, I tried to re
construct the Atlanta I had last seen, but it was a difficult task.
We had come into the town from Jonesborough, having taken
part in the movement called by the boys the " swing around by
Red Oak," and the consequent battle at Jonesborough. We lay
in the open ground out at a suburb, Whitehall, for a few days.
Then the command went off on a long chase after Forrest, in
North Alabama, and I was left in Atlanta. It seemed like a
town stricken with the plague. It was hot, dusty, desolate.
The inhabitants were nearly all gone; there did not even seem to
be many troops in the place; nothing but wagon trains and
mules. The monotony was insufferable, and I started out in
pursuit of the regiment and met it at Rome, coming back from
the Forrest "water haul," and then trudged back to Atlanta
again. Camping on a rise in the edge of the town that night, I
saw the city burn, or at least every house or shop in it which
could be of use to the Confederacy. It was a fire that no one
tried to extinguish. The flames rose against the sky of night, it
seemed with a sort of steady, destructive purpose. The hundreds
of shells fired into the town, and which had not exploded, burst
as the fire reached them. This lasted all night. In the morning
we marched away, going around the town, as one would shun the
sight of a dead man lying in the woods.
After leaving Marietta the train made few stops, as if there
were nothing worth considering except Atlanta. The pine woods

"90 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
ceased all at once at the dancing flames and dusky shadows of
what seemed a rolling-mill; then there was visible somewhere the
hundred gleaming windows of a cotton factory; then here we
were in the heart of a city, under the great open arch of the car-
shed — union depot we would call it in Kansas — and street-car
bells were ringing, and a long line of hacks was waiting, and
there were great hotels, all a-light from sidewalk to cornice; and
long rows of stores of all sorts, all with open doors, and filled
with people — and this was Atlanta. I had found business and
beauty for ashes.
It had been my purpose to write something about the remains
of the war about Atlanta, but there is nothing in the city to re
mind you that there had ever been a war. Atlanta is the new
creation of peace. Everything you see is less than twenty years
old — even the trees that shade the streets. There was some old
iron and an ash-heap here once, but that has nothing to do with
the Atlanta of now.
I do not pretend to account for the existence of Atlanta. It
is called the "Gate City," because it lies just a little outside of
the last mountain ridge crossing the State of Georgia. But
there are just as good "gates" anywhere within a radius of fifty
miles. It is not as near the center of the State as Macon. There
was not much expected of it at first. They cut out a place in
the scrub oaks, among the low red hills, and called it Marthas-
ville — a compliment to the daughter of Governor Lumpkin.
Now nobody expected Marthasville to be a great place, any more
than it is expected that any of the hundred " Jimtowns" in the
United States will rise to celebrity. As soon as it was seen that
the town had the grow in it, Marthasville gave way to Atlanta —
big and classical.
I suppose the purchase of Cherokee Georgia beyond the Chat
tahoochee helped Atlanta, but its day came with the railroads.
It must have been the first town in the South to be built by rail
roads. It was probably gifted with the railroad spirit from the
first, just as some colts of no known pedigree turn out famous
flyers like Goldsmith Maid. At the outset of the war Atlanta
had a great name, but small towns in a rural country like the old

THE GATE CITY. 91
South had a great reputation. Our soldiers were greatly sur
prised, on entering some of these metropolises, to observe that
they were little more than villages. With the war came Atlanta's
destruction and advertisement. It is no small thing for a town,
no matter under what circumstances, to be mentioned for three
or four months in every newspaper in the world. The railroads
were torn up and the depots burned down, and what was more
natural than that at the end of the war, they should be restored ?
Had there been no war I firmly believe there would have been no
Atlanta as we know it. Some Northern men went there at once,
Kimball for one, and while the carpet-bag regime is a thing of
the past, it lasted long enough to make Atlanta the capital of
the State, and do other things which will help Atlanta as long as
one stone remains upon another.
Some Southern cities moaned and sulked awhile after the war.
Atlanta did not, and I found a proof of it before I had looked
about the town half an hour. The public library, the first place
I visited, owns property valued at $35,000, and it was started in
1867, two years after the close of the war. I found the nine
thousand volumes in a lofty hall, with alcoves marked, " History,"
"Poetry," "Romance," and so on, and there was an open-roof
ceiling, and stained-glass windows, and a wide gallery, and much
magnificence, and they told me that the institution was started in
1867, only two years after I saw the hereinbefore-mentioned fire.
One would have thought that books and pictures were the last
things to be thought of at such a time. The libraria'n was a
young man, and very courteous. He brought me General Joseph
E. Johnston's history of his operations in defense of Georgia and
Atlanta, and I wish to digress enough here to say that General
Johnston tells the truth, whatever Jeff. Davis or anybody else
may have to say about it.
The gallery is devoted to works of art, portraits, so far, of
Georgia civilians, great and small, and Confederate Generals, Lee,
Johnston, Cobb, and others. There are also several Confederate
battle-flags in glass cases. As a Northerner, or rather as an Amer
ican, I might have liked it better had there been a Union General
or two, say McPherson or Thomas, on the wall, or, hanging up

92 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
somewhere, the flag of the United States, of which Georgia is be
lieved to be a member at present; but I was satisfied in knowing
that the Northern idea was here in the shape of these books, and
that had it not been for the victory of the Union there never would
have been any public library at all. The Confederacy, had it
succeeded, would never have established any libraries; you may
be sure of that. Among the portraits, I noticed that of Senator
Joseph E. Brown, or in common talk, Joe Brown. This was
proper. He took the bonds issued to erect the building; his son,
Julius L. Brown, is the president of the library association. Gov
ernor Brown is a South Carolinian, I believe, but not of the
hereditary aristocracy of that country. He looks like the shrewd
old Yankee farmer I have seen act as moderator in a Vermont
town meeting.
After looking through the library I went to the capitol. It
was Kimball's Opera House once, and was sold to the State for a
good figure, at which Georgia howled, if I remember rightly, but
it makes a good-enough capitol. The offices are quite as good as
those in the Tennessee capitol. The halls are plain, dirty sort of
rooms. In the representatives hall are some old portraits which
somehow got through the war and were brought from Milledge
ville. One of Jefferson, I noted, because his hair was of the right
color, not common in his pictures. There was one of Oglethorpe,
first Governor of Georgia. The janitor, a young man who had
lost a leg and arm for the Confederacy, called it Ogletharpe.
GoverndV Colquitt, who is always ready to talk, or if called upon,
to sing and pray with any visitor, was not in the building. They
are to have a new capitol at Atlanta, and the site has already been
selected. For the rest, I made only a very general survey of Atlanta.
The readers of the Champion know just how a flourishing North
ern city of 40,000 inhabitants looks, and that is substantially
the way Atlanta looks. There is, however, the dash and racket
about Atlanta peculiar to a new town. It is all less than twenty
years old. There is a profusion of street-car lines; and they run
on the principal streets, and all center at the union depot, or as
they call it in Atlanta, the car-sheds. I rode out in the evening,

THE GATE CITY. 93
on Peachtree and Washington and McDonough streets, and saw
absolutely the latest styles in the way of residences. It looked
like an architects' exposition. Every style; you pay your money
and you take your choice. Such porches and pinnacles, and arches
and recesses, and piazzas and verandas, and galleries and porches,
and everything as new as if it had been built yesterday, as most
probably it was. Peachtree street was quite alive with dashing
turnouts, and all the piazzas were filled with ladies and children,
and occasionally a husband and father who had not yet started
down town to the lodge. It was very gay. They told me this
house was built by a cotton dealer, and that by a tobacco man,
and so on. The Southern business man loves to spend his money
and make a show. His surplus cash formerly went to organize
a personal staff of colored servants, who kept him waiting for
whatever he wanted all the days of his life, and redounded more
to his glory than his comfort; but now he builds a fine house on
tfilTbest street in town, or puts up a business block with his name
oh the front in large letters. I may say that Gov. Brown s
singularly un-Carolinian disposition shows itself in a very plain
mansion, though he has money enough to buy a street. There
were stories about some of the houses, and in one fine mansion I
was told there had lived a poor mad woman. Marrying against
her wish, she came to live in this fine house. The man she loved
and rejected came to live in the next house. She saw him come
and go, day by day. She heard his footstep on the walk, his
hand upon the latch — but not at her gate — late at night, and
her brain turned under the strain, and she became a violent
maniac. The story was told me by a woman, of course. It was
the only romance I heard in Atlanta, and I tell it as it was told
me. I believe manufacturing has not yet become a leading interest
in Atlanta. But it is growing; bless your soul, they are going to
have everything in Atlanta. There is a big cotton factory. In
any other town it would have been lighted with gas, but in Atlanta
it is illuminated with the electric light. There are cotton com
presses, and foundries, and fertilizer works. The South has the
fertilizer mania bad, and "Guano" in big black letters. There

94 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
is an ice factory ; no Southern town of size can get along without
one now ; there are car works and planing mills, and various
sorts of wood-working factories, and they manufacture cotton
gins, and are about to give the Northern manufacturers some
competition in the way of making wagons. The most enormous de
velopment is in the way of hotels. I doubt if any other town of
its size iu the world has as many large hotels. The Kimball
House is big enough for Chicago, and was built in less time than
any house of the same size in America; and all the botels ap
peared to be crowded.
Atlanta is a great town for excursions and receptions. I was
pointed out, as one of the celebrities of the town, the captain of
the Gate City Guards, the crack military corps of the city, who
do the leading procession business. A few days before my arrival
the Southern Decoration Day was observed, the Gate City Guards
turned out with the Cadets, and the graves of both the Union
and Confederate dead were strewn with flowers. Speaking of sol
diers, a small artillery garrison is kept here in a range of ugly
wooden buildings known as McPherson Barracks. But regular
soldiers make a town look peaceful rather than otherwise.
Of course I visited the Constitution office. The Constitution
is regarded as the leading Southern newspaper. The editor, Mr.
Finch, is from Hornellsville, N. Y., and was brought up with
Dwight Thacher. I found Mr. Finch in a rusty editorial room <
of the ancient type. It did not even rival the modest gentility
of The Champion sanctum, and Southern newspapers do not yet
aspire to the gaudy splendors of a dado room. Mr. Finch is a
Northerner of the purest type, and may live South for a thousand
years and will never be anything else. Not bred to the editorial
profession, a writer for the press only as an occasional con
tributor, he came South nine years ago, and associating himself
with native citizens, has built up the best-paying paper south of
Louisville. The Constitution has " made it," by identifying
itself with its section, employing the best Southern talent, and
discarding the old " gags " that made the old-fashioned Southern,
bilious, bombastic newspaper a laughing-stock. The Constitution
reaches with au iron hand for the long-haired country " Cunnel"

THE GATE CITY. 95
who, in the Magnolia Blossom and Southron Chinkapin, talks
about "paladins" and "knights," and the "master race," and
"mercenary Yankees," and all that rot. At the same time, the
Constitution is a Southern paper. It has developed "Bill Arp'
and " Uncle Remus," and published the best sketches of the old
South that I know of — the recollections of Col. W. H. Sparks,
the author of " Reminiscences of Fifty Years." Mr. Finch ap
pears abundantly satisfied with the situation. He said to me
that about the first thing a Southern politician had to say now
was, that slavery was fortunately abolished, and that secession
was a great mistake. He thought Northern people could do
well in Georgia, but that it would be pleasanter for them to
eome in colonies ; not for protection or anything of that kind,
but for society's sake at first. The old South was isolated from
the rest of the world by slavery. An isolated people are every
where a vain .people; knowing no other, they esteem themselves
above everybody else. The barrier removed, Southern people
are coming to believe the German saying, "Beyond the moun
tains there are men also."
Mr. Joel Chandler Harris, " Uncle Remus," is an associate edi
tor of the Constitution, and does the paragraphing work besides
the " Uncle Remus" papers. Mr. Harris is a native Georgian, a
boyish-looking man, with red hair, a freckled face, a retreating
double chin, and wears the eleven-dollar cassimere suit adopted
as the uniform of the " Inter-State Press Association" organized
at Topeka last winter. He has served his time also at the case.
Mr. Harris is very quiet in his ways, says little, and does all his
laughing internally. He is a success. " Uncle Remus " is read
all over the South ; quite as generally, I think, iu the North; and
has been warmly commended by literary critics in England.
Southern people express various opinions. One gentleman thought
the dialect exaggerated ; another that Mr. Harris put too much
brains in the nigger ; " but Col. Sparks, than whom no better au
thority exists in the South, testified to the perfect fidelity to nature
of " Uncle Remus's" talk. There is a wonderful touch of kind
ness about the old darkey's talks, of late, with the " little sick
boy," which, it seems to me, must touch every heart, and stamps
the writer as a skillful player upon that wondrous instrument.

96 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
I have referred to Col. W. H. Sparks, a gentleman known
throughout the South. It was my good fortune to pass a few
moments in the society of this venerable gentleman and his bright
wife. All his life the companion and friend of the most dis
tinguished men of his section, as well as many Northern statesmen
men of the old school; familiar with all the upper walks of pol
itics and society, he has retained a wonderful fund of recollec
tions, which he gives you in the clearest and most charming
manner. I called to talk with him about the old song of " Rosin
the Bow," of which he has given the world the only true version
and history. The title is a corruption of "Rossum the Beau,"
and Rossum was an actual personagg. He, Col. Sparks, not
Rossum, informed me that the air was a very old one, a Metho
dist hymn tune. "I heard it," said my aged chronicler, "in
Bishop Asbury's time." Col. Sparks gave me some interesting
bits of information about Judge Longstreet, wh^se " Georgia
Scenes" have been so long admired, and he claimed for James
Longstreet, the grandfather of General Longstreet, the honor of
having been the first man to practically apply steam power to
river navigation, the river being the Savannah. Col. Sparks's
book, "The Reminiscences of Fifty Years," is a delightful vol
ume, and will be more prized when the days of the " Old South,"
shall be with the "years beyond the flood."
The State of Georgia has established an Agricultural Depart
ment, similar in its purposes to our own. Dr. Thomas P. Janes,
Commissioner of Agriculture, has issued a little "Manual of
Georgia," which I have found very useful. I also met Mr. J.
Henley Smith, of Atlanta, who is interested in real estate opera
tions, and who extended to me many courtesies; and as a slight
return for them, I advised him to go to Kansas, where the great
land-grant railroad companies have reduced land-selling to an
extremely fine point, and where the real estate agents are the
most eloquent, imaginative, audacious and successful in the world.
Mr. Smith believes in Northern emigration to Georgia, and is
working for it.
The city and its people so engrossed my attention that I went
but once beyond its precincts, and that was to visit Clark Uni-

THE GATE CITY. 97
versity, a Methodist school for colored students, to which Mrs.
Chrisman, of Topeka, has given $10,000. I found a good build
ing, surrounded by the natural forest, a mile or two beyond the
city limits. The President and most of the professors were ab
sent, but the steward was busy, in charge of a lot of colored stu
dents, in erecting a mechanical building, in which carpentering
and other trades will be taught. An excellent idea. He re
ported the school in a flourishing condition.
Most towns disappoint us; Atlanta does not. The only diffi
culty in writing about it is, as I have stated, its resemblance to
other prosperous cities of its size. It claims 42,000 people. It
is well built, in modern style, and is filled with the men of to-day.
And as the drowsy village of Milledgeville, the old capital of
Georgia, compares with Atlanta, so will the Georgia of the past
compare with the Georgia of the future, of which Atlanta will
be, as now, the "Gate City."

HIGH GEORGIA.

Tallula Falls, Ga., May 1, 1881.
When at Knoxville, I looked longingly at the blue line of the
smoky range and inquired if there was no direct route to the
wonderful mountains and cascades which I had been told ex
isted in Rabun county, Georgia. No road I found had pene
trated farther eastward than sixteen miles from Knoxville, a
long way from Rabun Gap. Yesterday morning I learned from
Mr. J. Henley Smith, of Atlanta, that Rabun could be reached
by the Air Line, and abandoning the idea of going at once to
Savannah, I took the three o'clock train for Toccoa City, ninety-
two miles north of Atlanta.
The Air Line road is a comparatively new line, having been
built in 1868. It is the direct route from Richmond and the
North to Atlanta. The fast mail from New York to New Or
leans, via Atlanta, passes over it. It has lately been consoli
dated with the Richmond & Danville, and is excellently equipped,
and it had on the train yesterday the gayest, best-natured, most
amusing and most instructive conductor I ever met — Mr.
McCool. This gentleman was no stiff-legged and iron-backed
minion of a corporation, intent only on knocking down fares and
preserving his dignity. On the other hand, he was "the life of
the festal board." If the train came to a halt, he put his head
in the door and remarked, "If you want to know why the train
stopped, it's to get wood." When any point of interest was
being approached, he would sing out, "All on this side now; we
are coming to Currahee mountain and Currahee valley. " Two
fountains by the track he alluded to as the "Geysers," and a
dirty-faced woman with a child in her arms, at a tumble-down
wayside shanty, he explained to the passengers was " love in a
cottage." When we reached, simultaneously, dark, Toccoa City
and supper, he called out at the supper table at frequent inter
vals: "Take your time, ladies and gentlemen. Eat all the sup-
(98)

HIGH GEORGIA. 99
per you want; there is plenty of time." I was not astonished
to learn that Mr. McCool was respected by the men and idolized
by all the women on the Air Line.
The ninety-two miles between Atlanta and Toccoa is up hill
all the way to Mount Airy, which is 1,600 feet above the sea
level, and is the highest town and railroad point in the South.
There is a fine hotel there, a resort in summer for visitors from
the lower Southern country, and for consumptives from both
North and South. The scenery for most of the way is monoto
nous — a succession of piney woods, red-clay cuts, old fields, new
fields white in the sun, and little sun-dried station towns. The
striking exception to these last is Gainesville, a place of 2,500
people, the station for Dahlonega, the center of the gold-mining
region of Georgia, and the former site of the United States mint,
I found the Air Line did not pass nearer than some twenty miles
to any gold mine. Gold is found in fifty Georgia counties, prin
cipally in the northern part of the State. The most extensive
operations are carried on around Dahlonega, where a Northern
company has introduced hydraulic mining on a large scale, and
is making it pay. Placer mining, with sluices, rockers, etc., has
been carried on in a rude way for many years. But as I came
to see mountains and waterfalls, and not gold mines, we will re
vert to the scenery, which, as I have said, was monotonous, until,
nearing Mount Airy, I caught sight, to the northwest, of the line
of the Blue Ridge, which I had turned by the gate of Chatta
nooga. There they were again, stretching along from northeast
to southwest — low mountains and high mountains, one chain be
hind the other, the long billowy line between us and the setting
sun. And as one star differeth from another in glory, so did one
mountain from another; for resting against the crimson sky
of eve, one peak was like the crest of the ocean wave, and
another was a pinnacle, and one was dark, and another pur
ple, and another amethyst. Most have no names, except local
ones known to people who live about them, but the names left
are those given by the Cherokees. There is Mount Yonah, high
est of all; and the valleys are Cherokee, too, as the Nacoochee;
and from out the mountains emerge streams with the soft Indian

100 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
names, the Tallula and the Chattooga, the Toccoa and the
Tugaloo. I found Toccoa a pine town in the pine woods. It has always
beeu there, I believe, but more so since the railroad came. It is
eleven hundred feet above the sea, but you do not know it. I
slept and ate in a pine hotel, with no lath or plaster or carpet;
neither was there any dirt, and the ventilation was perfect, and so
were the ham and eggs. The landlord is known to all the country
as "Cousin John." He has another name, I think, but if you go
to Toccoa and inquire for "Le Hotel de Cousin Jean," you will
find it. The universal relative knows all about gold, also about
amethysts, and also about that curious substance, asbestos, which
the soil bears abundantly in the county of Habersham and the
counties round about.
Lying over night at Toccoa, I made diligent inquiries about the
county of Rabun. It is the most perpendicular of Georgia coun
ties. Eighty-one per cent, of its surface is too mountainous for
cultivation. It has but one town, Clayton, which has 120 inhab
itants ; and has produced but one eminent person, Judge Bleckley,
of the Georgia Supreme bench, and the Eugene AVare of the same,
whose funny decisions appear to afford the Albany Law Journal
an endless supply of amusement. Rabun is the corner-stone of
Georgia, and possesses the most striking mountain scenery within
its borders. It produces gold, asbestos and moonshiners, each in
destructible productions.
I learned at Toccoa City that the first object of my quest, Toc
coa Falls, was within two miles, but that a sight of Tallula Falls
necessitated a journey to the borders of Rabun, sixteen miles
away. This morning the awkward journey was accomplished. The
road led over the foot-hills and through the pine and oak forest
all the way. We came first to Toccoa Falls. It was in the
early, clear morning, before the air had been colored or stained
or heated by the advancing day, that I saw this most beautiful
of cascades. You leave the team a little way and go up a tiny
valley. It is shut in by wooded hills, so narrow that you could
toss a stone across it. It is all shade and coolness and seclusion.

HIGH GEORGIA. 101
You come to a sheer granite wall, black and yellow and brown,
and the Toccoa, a small mountain stream of sparkling water,
coming from the mountain, arrives at the verge of this wall and
drops over it, one hundred and eighty-six feet. There is no roar,
no jar, no rising clou,d of spray, no whirlpools, no rushing rap
ids. All at once the water comes to the wall, springs lightly in
a mass into the air, and drops down into a little pool as clear as
crystal. First water, then snowy foam, then still water again.
A great mass of rock has fallen, and the lower part of the cas
cade is hidden by it. The fall is slightly parted by a shelving
rock at the top, and so seems in two divisions. This is Toccoa
Falls. It is within two miles of one of the leading railroads of
the South, and is hardly known. I went around and reached the
top of the fall, and lay down on the rock where I could almost
put my hand in the water after it makes the spring. It was like
looking into a cascade of diamonds. Above and below, the Toc
coa glides along unnoticed. It is splendid only at one place and
for an instant, like a human life illumined by one great deed.
Leaving Toccoa Falls, we went on over the high hills. Monk,
the driver, said they were mountains; this one was Walker
mountain, and the other, Panther mountain. They did not seem
mountains, and are really the foot-hills that finally run into
Tallula Ridge, and so on higher aud higher to the great Blue
Ridge. The country seemed miserably poor, and was well set
tled, as I think every poor country is. I have ridden ten miles
in two of the oldest-settled counties of Kansas within a few years
past, over as fertile prairie as ever the sun shone on, without pass
ing near a house; yet on. this rough mountain road the cabins
were within sight of each other all the way. The houses were all
of pine logs and pine boards. The chimneys were either of sand
rock or sticks and yellow clay. All the material for the habita
tions was gathered within a few steps of where they stood. They
seemed a part of the mountains and the woods, as a bird's nest
seems part of the tree. If one of these houses burns down, it is
only necessary to go out in the woods and get another one. The
openness of the sides and the unreliability of the roof would
terrify a Kansan, even though he is a resident of the Italy of
7

102 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
America. The people who thus humbly lived did not appear to
be idlers. At nearly all the houses there was an old-fashioned
loom and spinning-wheel on the porch. The doors were all open,
and the often solitary room seemed to have known the wisp broom,
which was always in sight.
On the road we found one school house, ten miles from Toccoa.
It was a little pine log cabin on a hillside, in an old field grown
up to scattered pines. The door was fastened with a staple and
hasp, with a stick for a lock. I made bold to enter the moun
tain seminary. It could not have been over twelve feet square;
the loose boards which constituted the ceiling were but little
over six feet from the floor. There were some pine slab benches
with the bark on, and a pine table for the teacher, and a brush
broom. There was a stone fireplace, and in the corner lay an
armful of pine knots. I picked up a tattered spelling-book
from the floor. A poor place this, I thought, and yet on this
humble altar is kindled learning's sacred flame. This tattered
book is the key that unlocks all. This may bring to the moun
tain child all that is recorded in our English speech of the
studies of the wise, the wit of the bright and gay, the valor of
the brave. "Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a
cage," nor can this rude hut shut in or cabin or confine the soul
that is inspired of heaven. From this old field the sower may
go forth to sow the field which is the world.
. Nature has been kind to these hills in one respect. Such a
profusion of wild flowers I never saw in any other country.
One ravine was lined on both sides with honeysuckles as far as
the eye could reach ; great patches of violets and a sort of dwarf
fleur de lis brightened the ground ; and the dogwood reared its
head of snow everywhere. The prodigal hand of nature seems
to satisfy the natives. I saw, however, a great thicket of yellow
roses in front of one cabin, and a shrub with flowers like the
fuchsia, which the woman said were called "flower of pear."
There was among these primitive people some signs of pros
perity. The grist mill was about the roughest collection of
wooden wheels ever turned by water, but we passed a modern
saw mill and several new houses. I hope the country may grow

HIGH GEORGIA. 103
so rich that there will be a change of contour. We did not pass
on the road a man, woman, child, horse, cow or dog that was fat.
All the time occupied in these reflections we were rising from
high into higher Georgia, and in due time arrived at the Tallula
Falls Hotel, 2,382 feet above the level of the sea, on the bound
ary between Rabun and Habersham, and the head of the succes
sion of cataracts known as Tallula Falls, or, more properly speak
ing, the Falls of Tallula.
The Tallula is a stream rising in the heart of the mountains
about twenty miles from here; gathering volume as it comes
tumbling along, winding in and out among the mountains, until,
a river some fifty yards in width, it breaks boldly through the
range here on its way to the Tugaloo, and thence to the Savan
nah and the ocean. The falls have been visited for at least forty
years, parties coming from all over Georgia and camping out in
the woods. The hotel is a modern idea. It is a roomy structure
with wide piazzas and halls. The rooms are ceiled, not plastered
and papered, and on all the mantels were great bouquets of honey
suckles. In summer guests are plentiful, but, as at the Mam
moth Cave, I chanced to be ahead of the season. Mrs. Young,
the landlady, did the honors of the establishment, and when I am
luxuriating in the wealth which always finally flows in on the
newspaper man, I shall undoubtedly sigh over the dishes pre
pared by my French cook, for the wholesome fare and the colos
sal appetite that waited on it in the breezy dining room at Tal
lula, which was filled with the fragrance of the honeysuckle and
the sound of falling waters.
After dinner, with Monk for a guide, I went to look at the
river. The Tallula ripples along at its usual width, until a little
above the hotel it strikes the barrier. Then begin what are
called the Indian Arrow rapids. The vexed river zig-zags, bends
to and fro in its war with the rock, and lashes itself to foam.
This continues for half* a mile, when the river, now hemmed in
by immense cliffs, rushes down the fall of Ladore. The perpen
dicular fall is forty feet, but the incline down which the water
speeds its swift and foaming way is a hundred feet or more. To
approach the river it is necessary to clamber down the cliffs from

104 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
rock to rock, or by a steep path through thickets of laurel. The
laurel, when young, is quite symmetrical, but in age, like the
temper of some old people, it becomes gnarled and knotty. It
grows in all sorts of fantastic shapes in root and branch. So by
root and branch you clamber down, or at times keep along the
cliffs in the path carpeted with pine straw. Between the laurel
and the pine the air is filled with a bracing aromatic odor.
After the leap of Ladore, the water slides down a few yards
further, and then makes the Tempestia fall. The river, confined
to half its natural width, leaps, an almost square mass, into the
air, and striking on a step of the unyielding granite, is converted
into foam and spray, which, driven against the black cliffs that
rise from the foot of the fall, exactly resemble the snow pursued
by a Kansas blast. The Tempestia fall is eighty-one feet per
pendicularly. As the river pursues its way down the gorge the
cliffs on either side rise higher, attaining in some places an alti
tude of nine hundred feet. Several beautiful cascades come in
on either hand. The Caledonia drops from rock to rock over
five hundred feet. The Ribbon cascade falls in successive steps
eight hundred feet. A little below the Tempestia is the Hurri
cane fall. The water here, before making the plunge, seems to
swing in a mass sideways up a considerable incline. At the very
verge, looking across the fall, there is a foaming crest, like the
wake of a great steamer. The spring made, the Tallula falls, in
foam and thunder, for ninety feet. The spray rises against the
granite wall for more than two hundred feet, and returns in a
million trickling drops. Where a crevice affords a foothold,
masses of some creeping plant of the brightest green cover the
face of the rock, and every delicate leaf trembles in the breath
of the fall. The water roars, the condensed spray trickles, the
leaves quiver, and against the black cliff a rainbow shines, and
so it goes on forever.
Nothing can be more dramatic than the succession of these won- '
dors. At first is the Ladore fall, by itself not remarkable, but
as the visitor follows the stream, availing himself of every point
of observation, the scenes increase in interest. From a shelving
roek high above the stream, called "Cupid's Repose," the La-

HIGH GEORGIA. , 105
dore, Tempestia and Hurricane falls may all be seen at once.
The banks are as striking as the river. Lying on the rock one
looks down into the tops of great pines and hemlocks, and into
the mass of smaller trees into which seem to grow every tree
known in America. There are several of these lookouts, with
various romantic names, the view from each being entirely dif
ferent. The stream makes two more falls, the Oceana and the
Bridal Veil, each remarkable for beauty rather than grandeur.
At last comes the Grand Chasm. Looking down, the river,
seeming a mere ribbon, describes the form of the letter U, and
the outside curve of the U is formed of cliffs sloping like the
inside of a bowl, and for a great height as smooth. From the
summit of these to the river is eight hundred feet. A rock thrown
from the crest strikes unheard, far, far below, and is ground into
dust. Passing this curve, theTallalula pursues its way, at sharp
and often-recurring angles, through the mountains, but makes no
more falls.
Crossing Young's bridge in the evening, a walk of two miles
brought us to Rock mountain. From here the world of moun
tains to come may be seen. There was no one with me to point
out localities. I saw, it seemed, the outlines of a hundred moun
tains. Four distinct ranges lay in front of me, each receding
range seeming higher. Behind me lay the hills I had passed
over, and behind these the level country, broken only by the
solitary peak of Currahee. At my feet could be seen the glitter
ing, winding, foaming shallows of the Tallula, and the roar of
the falls alone broke the silence of the approaching night. The
vast expanse, swept by a glass, bore scarcely a trace of human
habitation. A few brown fields on the mountain-side, a single
road (that from Toccoa), and a rising smoke from a distant val
ley, alone proclaimed that I was not on this high eminence the
first, like stout Balboa " upon the distant peak in Darien." Of
course within this great circuit were the homes of hundreds of
mountaineers, but they live in the deep valleys and beside the
streams, and their humble improvements do not dot the high
mountain which serves as a range for their diminutive, scrawny
cattle and half-wild swine. The forest covering the mountains

106 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
is a mixture of pine and other growth ; the hue of the pine con
trasting with the other, like a dark figure in a carpet of bright
green. In this high solitude I could have remained forever with the
grand prospect, embracing as it does portions of four States:
Mount Mitchell, the loftiest of the Atlantic coast mountains ;
Rabun Gap, the only pass to the southern coast above Chatta
nooga; and many beauteous heights unknown to fame; but as I
looked the sun went down, the wind rose and brought with it
higher and clearer the song of the falls, and stirred the leaves of
the pine trees, which gave that suppressed sigh which only comes
from the heart of the pine. Shadows of night crept on from the
Atlantic, but a golden glow still rested over the West, the land of
the Mississippi, of the great prairies, of the mysterious windings
of the Missouri, of Kansas, the land of the future, of progress
and of hope. It was hard to leave it all, and it was black dark,
broken only by the slender crescent of the new moon, when the
hotel was reached again. But the hope of years had been at
tained. I had seen High Georgia.
So far as I know, I was the first Kansau to register at the Falls
of the Tallula, and nearly all the visitors I saw recorded for
many months were Georgians ; yet hundreds and thousands of
Northerners pass and repass through this country on their way to
and from Florida. At Toccoa, they are within two miles of one
of the most beautiful cascades in the world. To Tallula Falls it
is sixteen miles over a mountain road ; but that is nothing to a
genuine traveler. The people who growl about the nine rough
miles necessary to reach the Mammoth Cave ought never to leave
home. To the real traveler, willing to put up with inconven
iences, a bit of rough road or a scramble through laurel thickets
or shelving rocks, the South affords a wonderful field. I should
think people with a real love of nature would far prefer such
scenes to painted and varnished watering-places. Had I the op
portunity, I could pass a month of happiness in traversing the
mountains of North Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas ; all
the road from the hospitable door of " Cousin John," at Toccoa
to Asheville, North Carolina.

HIGH GEORGIA. 107
In this long ride one would be disturbed by none of the ques
tions which agitate the rest of creation. If the traveler could
leave behind him all brain-racking theories of his own, no new
ones would be thrust upon him. It is a prevalent belief here
that God made these mountains, but how or when only He knows,
and the mountain people do not care.
The curious delver in the earth can find here not only gold,
but diamonds, opals and amethysts. The latter gem is very com
mon. Georgia is a land of wonders.
The people have but one wish beyond making provision for the
necessities of life, aud that is the repeal of the whisky tax.
These mountains are full of moonshiners, who regard themselves
as persecuted men. The mountain still affords the only use or
market for their corn, and they think it hard that they should be
interfered with in a trade once counted lawful. They are poor
people, and I should think that the tax, if collected, would
amount to little above the cost of collecting it. As it is now, the
expense of maintaining the army of revenue officers must far ex
ceed the sum realized by the Government. Whisky having al
ways been the enlivener of the mountaineer's heart, there was a
touch of sadness in the following "notice," which I saw on the
walls of an ex-saloon near Tallula Falls:
"Soda Water Plenty to Drink. Tax Paid and a Free Con-
trey." A"Contrey" free only to drink soda water, seems bitter
mockery to a Northeast Georgian.
In a previous letter I have suggested that the Kansas Edito
rial Association make its next tour by the Mammoth Cave and
Lookout Mountain. I would now amend by adding that it ex
tend the trip to Atlanta, and thence by the Air Line to Toccoa
and Tallula, and then "on to Richmond."

DOWN TO THE SEA.
Savannah, Ga., May 3, 1881.
Coming down from Toccoa City on a bright Sunday morning,
I had a chance to see Georgia with its good clothes on. The
churches in the woods were surrounded with buggies and saddle
horses. A large number of colored people boarded the train at
one station, bound for a "big meetin'." They went where all
the colored folks go in this country, in the smoking car, and
were as happy as possible. I am quite sure that black should
never have been adopted as the color of mourning, but rather as
the emblem of rejoicing. The crow is a more jovial bird than
the swan, and black people enjoy much more happiness to the
square inch than white people. -
I had for a traveling companion between Toccoa City and
Atlanta a plainly-dressed, country-looking young fellow, a North
Carolinian, who was the best-informed and cleverest talker I
have met in the South. He was very proud of his State. South
Carolinians get all the credit for this sort of glorification, but
the much-laughed-at "tar-heel" is not a whit behind. This
young man spoke in glowing terms of the prosperity of the
State; and of his own town of Readsville, which he said had de
veloped into a great tobacco market. It is not far from the
grazing-ground of Blackwell's celebrated "Durham." I am
afraid my stay in the "old North State" will be short, and so I
take the present opportunity of informing her friends in Kansas
that she is doing well.
Atlanta we saw again bathed in sunshine, and the morning re
vived a childish idea that the sun shone brighter on Sunday
than on other days. And before I take leave of Atlanta I wish
to add that the public library, of which I spoke in my last, is
soon to come into possession of fifty thousand geological and
other specimens from Florida, the gift of Mr. Postell ; and also,
(108)

DOWN TO THE SEA. 109
that in "taking in" the city, I was greatly aided by Mr. Brophy,
of the Constitution, who informed me that he manned the bul
wark of freedom, upheld the palladium of liberty, and lit the
torch of civilization, in other words, at one time ran a weekly
newspaper, in Kansas.
Turning away from the " Gate City," we sped along the Geor
gia Central and passed through various villages which acquired
a day's celebrity, and at last came to Jonesborough, a little town
that I am likely to remember for a long time, for near it I once
saw a bit of war.
It was on just such another afternoon, I thought, that I saw
Jonesborough first, and at about the same hour. How clearly
the old afternoon came back, and the scene on which the old
drama of war was enacted. There was a strip of woods just out
of Jonesborough ; in front of the woods, open fields, first inclin
ing, then rising again to another bit of forest facing the first.
Then there was a road sheltered in part by this second forest,
and on this road a column of our troops moving cautiously. In
the edge of the first wood named was the Confederate works, and
occasionally there came a puff of smoke from the edge of the
wood, and shells came hurtling over the troops, and finally be
gan to strike close and do damage. Then two guns were sent
out into an open space facing the Confederate battery, and I
heard an officer say : " Don't fire till they do, and then lam it into
them." The "lamming" began presently. How the two guns
did flash and roar, and how the shells burst right into the edge
of the wood, and the smoke went up through the air in whirling,
circling rings. Then, all at once, the troops in the road were
gone, and our people were soon lying on their faces in front of
the Confederate battery and line, and the Colonel alone stood up.
Then there was a charge farther along in the open fields, and
I saw the advancing line waver, and curve forward and back
like the motion of a whip-lash. Three of our men broke and
ran back into the fields and up the side of a hill, and an aveng
ing Confederate shell passed over the heads of hundreds, as if
directed by fate, and tore two of the fugitives to fragments.
Then the Colonel shouted " Forward ! " and the long line of men

110 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
rose up from the ground and dashed up to the works and over
the battery in a minute, and that part of the fight was over.
I remember, as our line passed on, the Confederate prisoners
came running back through it to the rear, and one athletic young
fellow was laughing like a maniac. Then we learned that the
captured guns belonged to Goldthwaite's Mississippi Battery.
The journal of the battery, kept almost up to the day of the bat
tle, fell into our naiads. It was kept in a neat, clerkly hand, and
I read the whole story. It was the story of brave men, and we
added the last chapter ourselves. It was that the men of Gold
thwaite's Mississippi Battery stuflk to their guns, and were captured
"right there." Then came the awful part of it. Next day in a
church — I thought I saw it again as I passed through Jones
borough — I saw the floor covered with the Confederate wounded.
They lay on the floor, with nothing between it and their poor
bones except some loose cotton. Men were there mangled and
torn in every conceivable manner, their bandages stiffened with
blood. It was horrible.
Jonesborough did not seem larger than when I saw it last. It
is one of the places foreordained to be slow and small, and a
hundred years from now its environs will be sought for by anti
quarians in search of certain mounds of earth and depressions,
and the oldest inhabitant will say that his father remembered
that a battle had once been fought there. He is a very stupid
man, no matter what his politics, who does not take an interest
in the spot where a battle has been fought. The railroads of the
South all understand this. In their circulars they tell you that
their lines run through the scenes of "battles lost and won."
The Western & Atlantic, one of the finest roads in the South,
advertises itself as the "Kenesaw Route." Kenesaw is not in
itself a remarkable mountain, but men look at it, and go a long
way to do so, because brave men climed in vain its bloody slopes,
defended by the brave.
From Jonesborough on 1 saw no names I knew personally, though
Lovijoy station figured in one of our cavalry raids. Griffin looks
prosperous and shady. It is said that Griffin was the most south
ern point reached by the " Uncle Tom's Cabin " combination.

DOWN TO THE SEA. Ill
At Griffin the company met the dead-line, and also eggs. I no
ticed that after "Guano," "Bar" was the most conspicuous sign
in most of these towns. Fertilizer aud destroyer seemed the
principal objects of commerce, and the bars were so numerous
that it seemed as if there were some truth in the sign I saw painted
on a fence, "Everybody drinks Monongahela whisky."
The farming country looked prosperous. We passed through
a young orchard of five hundred trees. The cotton was just be
ginning to show in the rows, but the wheat grew green and strong.
It occurred to me that a country which could grow cotton and
wheat in adjoining fields, ought to prosper. I had some talk with
an Ohio man, who was going to southern Georgia. He had tried
farming in southern Virginia, near Petersburg. He admired the
climate, and himself and other Northern men were treated very
kindly by the people, but7^e~could not make money. I told him
my North Carolina friend had said that when the pines were cut
down on the old fields that had rested for twenty years or so, the
land brought very good cotton. The ex- Virginian thought other
wise. He gave me the details of a plan for making Southern
land productive. If I got the idea, it was to sow cow peas be
tween the corn rows, and then plow the peas under, and keep this
up year after year. I thought when a Kansas farmer had to plow
one crop under to raise another, the exodus to "wife's folks" in
Indiana would begin in earnest. Noticing the contented appear
ance of the colored people along the road, the Ohio man said he
got along excellently with colored help in Virginia; by selecting
good people and paying them promptly,' there need be no diffi
culty, he thought.
Dark and Macon were reached, and I decided to lay over at
Macon, which I had never visited, and which is one of the most
important towns in Georgia.
Macon is noted for its streets. I shall never abuse Kansas
avenue, in Topeka, again. Laid down in the middle of a Macon
street it would be a cow-path. But then they are not particular
about the streets in Macon being used as such. They erect fire-
engine houses in the middle of them, plant rows of trees in them,
and in case there are forest trees, leave them standing. There

112 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
need be no " additions" to Macon. By building a couple of blocks
of houses down the middle of each street, any probable future
population can be accommodated.
In the most public place in the city, near the fine building
which serves as the court house and post office, stands the Con
federate monument. It still bore the withering garlands of
Decoration day. On a handsome pedestal stands a figure sup
posed to represent a Confederate soldier, holding his musket by
the upper part of the barrel, the stock resting on the ground, aud
the whole figure bearing an air of attention. The monument,
the inscription states, was erected by the ladies to the memory of
the men of Bibb county and all others who died in support of
the independence of the South. Panels bear the arms of the State
of Georgia, and of the Confederate States, a figure in the old
Continental uniform, mounted on horseback, with the motto, Deo
Vindici. The figure of the soldier is a very noble one, with a fine face.
It was carved of purest white marble, in Italy. Some ex-Confed
erates whom I met criticised the statue, and said that they had
heard that it had been duplicated in the North, for Union soldiers'
monuments, aud that it was not distinctly Confederate; that in
stead of the overcoat the figure should have worn a short jacket
and a rolled blanket. Nevertheless, the statue suited me very
well, and I am glad it stands there. It seemed to me the first
and last thing seen in the town. I never turned a street corner
without coming upon the tall white soldier and his musket.
Let the soldier stand there at the crossing of the busy ways,
white and noble in the sun or shade. He stands for thousands
of the good and true who went from home followed by prayers and
tears, and whose death brought a moveless shadow on the mourn
ful hearth. Let him stand there ; I do not object, for he stands
to mark where a cause fell, not where it started. It is the end,
not the beginning. That monument is the last mile-stone on the
journey of the ill-fated Confederacy. Let him stand there. The
dead soldiers he commemorates are not more dead than the idea
of a government among civilized men, the corner-stone of which
shall be human slavery. Hour after hour pass and repass the

DOWN TO THE SEA. 113
living evidences of the futility of the struggle for what the monu
ment calls the "independence of the South." Every free black
face that looks up at those marble lineaments is a witness of a
cause so utterly lost that it can never be restored. Bravery, pat
riotism, freedom — these live; but the spirit that filled the graves
this marble warrior marks, is as impotent now as the weapon he
holds in his pulseless hands of stone.
There was little to be found out about Macon, save that it has
grown slowly as to population since the war, having now some
12,600. It is a prominent cotton market, ranking among the first
in Georgia. It is also a railroad center. I learned that its ear
liest settlers were Northern men who gathered to try their luck
in a new town. Quite a number of Northerners are in business
in the city, including several ex-Union soldiers, and like many
other Southern cities, Macon is becoming a winter resort for
Northern people. I think the recollection of last winter's bliz
zards will crowd the South next winter.
Speaking of Northern people, Georgia seems always to have
been a favorite location for wandering Yankees. Long ago a
New England colony started a town in South Carolina, and called
it Dorchester. I believe some of the Sumners, connected with
Charles Sumner's family, were in the movement. Eventually
they removed to Liberty county, Georgia. A Macon gentleman,
a Georgian, told me that when he was in college, there were more
boys there from Liberty than from any other county. I am as
sured, however, that the descendants of these New Englanders
were all secessionists of the most pronounced type.
I had in Macon a long talk with Mr. Glover, the postmaster,
a native of Georgia, originally a Whig, and since the war a Re
publican. He expressed the opinion, which I have heard every
where in the South, that the spirit of toleration is steadily in
creasing in the South. I asked him if the " Fool's Errand " was
a correct picture of things as they once existed. He said that he
had no doubt it was, in the district laid as the scene of the story.
He had never seen things as bad in Georgia, though as late as
1870, several base political murders had been committed in the
State. For himself, he has fared very well; was treated with

114 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
perfect kindness and courtesy by everybody, as much so as though
his politics were different. The fires were pretty well laid now.
Northern emigration was coming into the State; in Morgan and
Greene counties there were many Northern farmers. As to the
political future, nothing was said. Mr. Glover said that the
carpet-bag Republicans believed that a Republican party could
be built up on a foundation of blocks, but that the native Re
publicans had never entertained any such belief.
Mr. Glover did not take as hopeful a view as many do, of the
business condition of the South. He said the farmers were buy
ing their fertilizers and getting their bacon, which they ought to
make themselves, from the North, and when these were paid for
there was nothing left. He thought men who could make money
in southern Indiana ought to make money in Georgia, and he
wished they would come and try it. He seemed to look forward,
rather sadly, after all, I thought, to the Northernization of the
South. He said the Southern system of railroads was rapidly
passing into the hands of Northern capitalists; and the North
would eventually "possess the land."
At dark I left Macon, which is on the edge of the low coun
try. I had just seen High Georgia; I had marched over Low
Georgia, and remembering its monotony, did not wish to see it
again. The train crept along all night, and when morning came,
we were in the piney woods and the swamps, with the cypress
trees, and the little clearings with white houses with picket fences
around them. There were many rude shanties with black
people standing in the doors, who looked as if they had just
come from Africa. Then we came into a land that looked like
Holland, low-lying and green. We had a glimpse of water and
the rigging of ships. People were picking at long, green, high
rows of peas; and a one-horse cart, with an old black woman
"inside," and an old black man sitting on the shafts, toiled
through the sand toward the town of Savannah.

A SWING AROUND.

Augusta, Ga., May 4, 1881.
It was winter when I first visited Savannah, and a peculiarly
dark and soundless season. The column moved along the roads
almost in silence, the usual tramp being lost in the deep sand.
The skies were dim day after day ; the occasional boom of a gun
came faintly through the heavy air; the mournful murmur of
the pines was overhead, and the Spanish moss swayed to and fro
from the branches, reminding one of weeds and woe. I remem
ber that, to intensify the weird effect of all this, some "bummer"
gave me that curious volume, De Quincey's "Confession of an
Opium-Eater," which I carried in my haversack, and read at
halts, until I seemed to have caught the spirit of the author's
dreams. To this day when I see the book it brings back the
straight road through the pines, the arms stacked in line, the men
sitting by the roadside, or lying in the sand with their knapsacks
under their heads.
Nothing exciting occurred at Savannah. The old regiment
had its usual fortune. We were not in at Fort McAllister, and
lay in front of a strong Confederate line of works, with a swamp
in fro'nt of it, near a railroad — I do not remember which one —
and the railroad was protected by a heavy battery. Just at a
certain hour every evening a battery somewhere inside was ac
customed to fire a given number of solid shot into and around
our camp, cutting off the limbs of the pine trees, but hurting no
one. One day the battery failed to come to time. It had ad
journed sine die, and we went into Savannah.
A deserted city is not bright under any sky, and the sun
scarcely shone on Savannah in those January days. It struck me
as the queerest and gloomiest place I had ever seen. There was
one day a review of Kilkpatrick's cavalry, by Secretary Stan
ton, whom I then saw for the first and last time. He stood with
(115)

116 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
his unmoving, iron face, for hours, looking at the regiments file
past. His plainness contrasted very strongly with " Kil.," who
was as gay as a jaybird.
Returning to Savannah the other day, I was a trifle astonished
to find the sun bright and the city fairly glorious in its garb of
summer. It made me think of the old song of the " Ivy Green,"
and I wandered about everywhere in the shade, trying to find
remembered places. There had been little change in the build
ings, but a great change in the atmosphere and surroundings. It
was a trifle aggravating to a man from Kansas, where we take
such pains to make trees and blue-grass grow in the prairie towns,
to see the happy and easy habits of Savannah vegetation. Some
thing green grows everywhere: in every chink in the high brick
walls which shut in the grounds of old family residences; prom
ising shrubs are seen half-way up the sides of the houses, and
every old roof is thatched with moss.
Every visitor to Savannah remembers the old cemetery, once
in the edge of the town, now in its center. It was abandoned as
a place of sepulture years ago, and is full of. the ancient history
of Savannah. It is on one of the main streets of the town, and,
passing, I found the gate open. It is full of sad old trees, and
the ancient brick tombs were overgrown with briers and vines,
which have obtained a foothold between the bricks. I wished to
find again an epitaph which I had read years before. It recited
that the "late lamented" was "killed in a duel," and this state
ment was followed by a most scathing denunciation of the other
party to the duel ; but the revengeful old tombstone was gone.
So I paused before an old stone, which marks the resting-place of
a young Philadelphian, who, "in the 19th year of his age, when
unarmed and peaceably walking in the streets of Savannah, was,
on the evening of the 14th of November, 1811, attacked and inhu
manly assassinated by an armed banditti, belonging to the crews
of the French privateers, ' La Vengeance, ' and 'La Francaise.' "
The inscription closed with these quaint lines :
" Best, hapless youth, far from thy friends inurned,
By strangers honored and by strangers mourned;
Though thy lone turf no kindred drops can lave,
Yet virtue hallows with her tears thy grave."

A SWING AROUND. 117
It was a sudden transition from the past to the present ; but
going a little farther down the street, I saw something that might
well have stirred the ashes of the departed. Observing a crowd
of black people in front of an office, I saw what I have never
seen, and am not likely to soon see in Kansas, a colored justice
of the peace trying a case. He was a fine-looking man, Wood-
house by name, and on the wall hung his commission, signed by
Governor Colquitt, as Colonel of the First Battalion of the col
ored militia of the State of Georgia. He told me he was one of
three justices of color in the city. I heard him mentioned several
times by white people, never as the "negro justice," but as "Judge
Woodhouse." The world moves a little, I think. Not far from
the spot where I saw the Judge, I once picked up some legal
papers in the case of the yacht " Wanderer," an American slaver,
engaged, with perfect approval of a considerable number of
American citizens, in the revival of the hideous African slave
trade, only a few years before the war.
There is something tropical about Savannah. The enormous
number of trees, most of the principal streets having four rows
of them, forming two long dark aisles of verdure; the profusion
of flowers; the palmettoes, thrusting their fan-like leaves over
the high brick walls ; the iron-grated windows of the lower stories
of the houses, as in Spanish countries — these all savor of the
land of sun; but most of all, the negroes, of whom there are
countless numbers. They spoke a dialect quite new to me; it
it reminded me of broken French or Spanish ; I suppose it was
broken African. It was peculiarly noticeable among the boat
men from Beaufort, Hilton Head and thereabouts, who navigate
their frail craft in the thousand creeks, bays, sounds and inlets
of the Georgia and Carolina coasts. At one time I was minded
to invest in a voyage to Hilton Head, but the colored mariner
said he would not " go outside wid de corpse." I am not super
stitious, but I did not care to go to sea with a dead man for a fel
low-passenger. Savannah is a great commercial town — that is, for a Southern
city; but its commerce is all its own. It is the second cotton
port in the South, and at the railroad depots are immense cotton

118 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
yards — great floored spaces — covered with flakes of cotton, for
this is not the cotton-selling season, and a comparatively small
amount of baled cotton was on hand. I also got interested in the
rosin trade. Near the Florida Railroad depot were acres of rosin
barrels. The inspector, Mr. Russell, told me that 300,000 bar
rels of rosin were marketed annually in Savannah, and that he
inspected 150,000 barrels. The inspection is a curious operation.
The barrels are opened and the rosin broken up; then a man
takes a specimen chunk and cuts from it a cube exactly an inch
square for the inspector's use. The work of making these little
blocks seems very rapid and easy, but it requires much practice,
and is done with a little adze of hardened steel made for the pur
pose. There are twelve regular and fifteen intermediate grades
of rosin. The finest grade is almost perfectly colorless, and one
of the cubes dropped into a glass of water is hardly distinguisha*
ble. The rosin marketed in Savannah is a Georgia production,
and the business has grown up since the war. The pine in its
different varieties is a main-stay in the South. At Savannah
large quantities of yellow-pine lumber are sawed, and many ships
loaded with it. You hardly expect to find another Maine in the
South, but the thing is possible. This State of Georgia ought to
be richer than a dozen Californias. Suppose that we in Kansas
could raise wheat in one field and cotton in the next, and in the
woods next to that field could make rosin and turpentine, and
then cut the trees down for dimension lumber: what would the
real-estate agents say? Yet I suppose no Kansas man would
give the Second Judicial District for all of Georgia. But we
have not got through all Savannah's "things" yet. Going down
an alley — they call them "lanes" in Savannah — I saw a yellow
man unloading Spanish moss from a wagon. He said he owned
a sloop and cruised along the coast as far as Doboy, and bought
the moss from the people who gathered it, and made some money.
This moss is the free gift of nature, just as a wisp of straw thrown
up in a tree is anybody's property.
In Savannah I struck politics in a mild form for the first time
in the South. Mr. Waller, the acting editor of the News, dis
cussed a novel theme, the decision of the Electoral Commission

A SWING AROUND. 119
in the case of Mr. Hayes. But then Waller is from West Vir
ginia, and takes an interest in national questions. I don't be
lieve they care in Georgia whether Hayes was a "fraudulent
President" or not. I also heard an old gentleman, in a genteel
way, abuse Mahone and Gov. Brown. I also listened to a very
funny triangular talk between a Republican, a leading business
man of Savannah, and two of the opposition, also of Savannah.
One of the latter, who was slightly under the influence of vinous
irritation, started out by declaring that he was "a rebel," and
wound up by saying that he was a " Southern Union man," and
in favor of a "New South" — this being the only time I have
heard the expression in this country. The other member of the
opposition made several important admissions. He said that
slavery was wrong, and the South ought to have gotten rid of it
long before the war; and also, that when he was a boy he went
to school in Massachusetts, and that he knew many good people
there; he would not say that that was the general rule, but he
knew there were some good people in that State. The debate
was conducted with great humor, and was amusing, if not pro
found. Savannah has two public monuments, those of Gen. Greene,
of Revolutionary memory, and a very beautiful one to Count
Pulaski. How a little romance preserves a man's memory !
Nathaniel Greene, the son of a Rhode Island Quaker, was the
ablest strategist of the American Revolution and a master mil
itary mind, yet his name is seldom mentioned in Savannah,
while everybody knows something of the brave Pole, Pulaski,
whose services were far less valuable and conspicuous.
Savannah, they told me, was flourishing. I only noted espe
cially that it was beautiful. I hope it will never change. I do
not wish it to become another Atlanta. I do not wish them to
macadamize its streets, but let them remain ankle-deep in soft
black sand in which wheels make no sound. I hope my great
grandchildren, going to Savannah, will find everything as I
found it, with all its live oaks and magnolias and elms where
they are now, and the little green squares at the intersections of
the streets just as Oglethorpe planned them, and filled with

120 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
babies with their black nurses, and children of a little larger
growth, playing just as I saw them play. Progress is a very good
thing, but some things had better be left as they are, and Savan
nah is one of them.
In the evening. I went down the river eighteen miles to Tybee
island, the favorite resort of Savannah people, and of Georgians
generally. From the steamer's deck we look across low islands
for the most part uncultivated, covered with rank grass and
dotted here and there with the huts of an amphibious race of
black people. In the lowest ground on the main shore was visi
ble the lighter green of rice fields, each with its rude floodgates.
There is something dreary about these fields, and I do not wonder
that they were associated in the mind with the darker horrors of
slavery. Fort Jackson, an old mouldy brick fortification, was
passed, and the remainder of the obstructions placed across the
river by the Confederates during the war. Later, the white col
umn of Tybee lighthouse rose from the low-lying green of the
island, and as the evening shadows fell, the pure radiance of the
light shone over the waters, the lighthouse itself fading into the
darkness, so that the light seemed hung in the lower sky like a
star. Then there was the dim faint light of the new moon, the
yellow gleam of the Tybee light; the red flash of a beacon; a dot
of light here and there, marking where some yet unseen ship lay
at anchor, and the clangor of a bell-buoy, rung by the waves,
gave warning to the mariner. The island reached, a horse rail
way conveys the passenger to the line of hotel and cottages which
line the Atlantic side of the island, where stretches a smooth beach
for five miles. When morning came there was the level, sun-lit
ocean, and clouds that told where Turner got his colors, and far
out a lone ship that seemed a phantom of the deep. Nearer lay
Fort Pulaski, a huge brick pile, built long ago at great cost. A
modern war vessel with her powerful rifled guns could stand off
out of range and reduce the old brick walls to crumbling frag
ments. I hope the experiment will never be tried. At six o'clock
in the morning came the return up the river again to Savannah,
an hour more in the old town, and then good-bye.
To go from Savannah to Augusta by the Central road required

A SWING AROUND. 121
a doubling of that road, back as far as Millen, and if a traveler
has to go over that road twice I advise him on his second trip to
cultivate a talent for sleep. Nothing can be more monotonous
than the succession of pine woods; I believe the prairie is less so.
The train stopped occasionally, but no stations were called. I do
not know that these stopping-places have any names. It was
pleasant to come to Millen and a change of cars. A few people
took dinner, and a very old lady came into the hotel and carried
something to her sick son on the train. The conductor looked
up from his plate, and said in a general way. " Do you see that
old lady? It is so with all these Western people. They help
themselves. Forty of them can get out of a car while three of
ours are getting out and standing around in each other's way."
He had been railroading in the South for twenty years, and prob
ably knew.
The road from Millen to Augusta runs through but two coun
ties, Burke and Richmond. The former was once the banner
cotton county of Georgia, and has three times as many blacks
as whites in its population.
My fellow-voyager this trip was a revenue officer, a native of
Georgia, a soldier in Longstreet's command, and a participant in
the battle of Gettysburg and all the heavy battles in the East.
He was a Republican ; the only white Republican, he told me,
within a hundred miles.
He said he had been elected to a county office soon after the
war, as a Republican, and had held a Federal office since. It
was bitter medicine at first. Nobody had offered him personal
violence, but his fellow-citizens cursed him as he passed. Every
other white Republican in his vicinity ( there were never over a
dozen of them) had yielded to the pressure and gone over to the
enemy. This sort of thing in its worst shape began to mitigate
somewhat by 1871. During the last five years there had been
an entire change. There was a time when it was difficult to get a
white man to accept a position under the United States Govern
ment. He did not believe that one man in a hundred would now
refuse one. He was once called a "scalawag." He now went
his rounds and was treated with as much courtesy as if his poli-

i22 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
tics were different. There was no trouble, and little violation of
the law. As United States Commissioner he had not had a case
before him in eighteen months.
Omitting my interrogatories, he went on to say that the talk
about the "robbery and oppression" of the reconstruction gov
ernment in Georgia was nonsense. They had brought Governor
Bullock back to Georgia with handcuff's on, but they had proved
nothing against him, and not long ago the Augusta Constitution
alist had said that Bullock was an honest man, and ought to have
had a place in Garfield's Cabinet. Farrow, a member of the
carpet-bag party, (though a native,) still lived in Atlanta, as did
Bullock. No purer man had lived in Georgia than Gen. Aker-
man. Kimball, once bitterly denounced, was still the foremost
citizen of Atlanta, and ran ahead of his ticket for mayor. He
regarded Joe Brown as the head of the original reconstruction
movement, and to-day he represents Georgia in the United States
Senate. Not a Federal officer in Georgia, native or carpet
bagger, had ever been a defaulter to the amount of a dollar.
In regard to the future, the Republicans of Georgia were in
this situation: If carpet-baggers led the movement it would fail;
if it was attempted to organize a party of blacks, white men
would not join it. The only chance for the blacks was two
Democratic parties; and they could throw their weight with the
wing that offered them the best treatment. He regarded Joe
Brown as the leader of the liberal wing of the Democrats, op
posed by old Toombs and all the irreconcilables. For himself,
he had stood by Brown, and he proposed to do so. He took the
same rather melancholy view of the blacks that all native South
ern Republicans do, thougb he said there was a fair vote in his
county last fall. He saw to that himself, and the county went
for Garfield. Yet the blacks, unable to read or write, were un
able to organize themselves. He understood that the colored Re
publicans of Georgia were clamoring for recognition. He thought
that about every black man capable of filling an office had one
already. They were route agents, clerks in post offices, deputy
collectors, and so on.
He believed the general idea of political toleration in the

A SWING AROUND. 123
South was gaining ground. Thinking of Jeff. Davis's statement
that he had never seen a reconstructed Southern woman, I ex
pressed my doubt as to whether the ladies would ever accept the
situation. He said that he noticed that Northern men had no
difficulty in marrying in the South — a potent means of conver
sion. He knew of one case where great good had been done.
An acquaintance of his, a Federal officer, had remained in the
South after the war. He paid his attention to a Southern girl,
and became eminently " solid." It was quite certain " Pa " would
object; still the disbanded Federal waited on the old man, who
said that no daughter of his should ever marry a Yankee, and
proceeded to indulge in some fancy imprecations, whereupon the
candidate for the position of son-in-law knocked the old gent
over, and thumped him on both sides, and wound up the exer
cises with the observation, " Now, you old cuss, go home and tell
your wife to go to baking cake. I am going to marry your
daughter." The cake was baked on time. This was the last
story I heard on the sacred soil of Georgia, for in the morning I
shall, from this fair town of Augusta (of which I have something
yet to say), proceed to the invasion of the Carolinas.

A DROWSY CAPITAL.
Columbia, S. C, May 5, 1881.
At Augusta I took my leave of Georgia, after many a long
mile's travel. I visited Atlanta, Macon, Savannah, and lastly
Augusta itself, and saw something of Upper, Middle and Lower
Georgia. With the exception of the wonderful mountain country in
extreme northern Georgia, there is little in the State to interest
the seeker after 'the picturesque. Yet every portion of the State
is well worth a visit from the Northerner, if for nothing else than
because the country affords such a contrast to his own.
To Kansas eyes Georgia in all its parts looks barren, yet it is
far from being so. It was before the war the "Empire State" of
the South, and while it does not appear to be as fine a country as
Tennessee, it will, with the advantage of the seaboard, doubtless
continue to be the leading commercial State of the South. I
found the State apparently prosperous, and although I was as
sured that the present mania for cotton planting would impover
ish the farmers, I still believe Georgia to be on the road to wealth.
After hearing for many years the defenders of slavery, North and
South, assert that cotton would be raised only by slave labor, I
felt a singular satisfaction in hearing the same people declare
that the South was being ruined by too much cotton raised by
free labor. Neither statement, as it happens, was true.
Of the political situation in Georgia, and of various other
matters, I reserve what I have to say until a later date, perhaps
until the conclusion of my wanderings, when all the evidence
shall have been received.
Coming up from Millen to Augusta, I had another opportunity
to see how fallacious are the stories told about the South. I had
been told by both parties that since the war negro women did not
work in the fields. One side regarded this as an evidence of im-
(124)

A DROWSY CAPITAL. 125
provement, the other as the result of "nigger shiftlessness." As
it happened, I saw black women and girls in nearly every field
between Millen and Augusta, and have since seen them employed
all the way from Augusta to Columbia. The colored renter, who
takes land for a share of the crop, in the busy season puts his
whole force in the field, his wife and all his children who are old
enough; so those philanthropists who have been distressing them
selves with the fear that the young blacks of the South were
growing up in idleness, may as well wipe their weeping eyes.
Augusta is a beautiful town. Green street is regarded by every
Georgian with commendable pride. Before Atlanta came into
being, Augusta was regarded by the rural Georgian as the most
splendid city on earth, and to have visited Augusta entitled (?he
back-countryman to the respect of his less-traveled neighbors.
Augusta was very fortunate during the "troubles." One of the
first cities in the South to declare for secession, it yet entirely es
caped occupation by our troops until the war was over, and has
been steadily prosperous ever since.
On the evening of my arrival, the Germans of several Georgia
cities were enjoying a Schiitzenfest and the German flag was fly
ing from many business houses on Broad street, but I nowhere
saw the American ensign, although I looked for it carefully, and*
even made inquiries if the stars and stripes had been seen in the
vicinity. It was a new sort of Schiitzenfest to me. I had never
failed to see the flag of the Union displayed at any German dem
onstration in the North. Its absence at Augusta left me wonder
ing whether I was really in the United States, Germany, or the
Empire of Georgia. In default of a sight of the flag which I
had fondly supposed was the flag of Georgia as well as of the
rest of this country, I had ample leisure to examine the Confed
erate monument in Broad street. It is, I believe, the finest pile
yet reared to the Confederate dead. The Confederate soldier
that crowns the summit is a fine piece of work, and more true to
life than the Macon soldier of which I have spoken, save that
the artist has given the soldier a cap. I never saw a Confeder
ate private soldier with a cap on. The inscriptions on the monu
ment would sound strangely to the readers of the Champion, but

126 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
I did not wish to copy them. They relate not so much to the
lost soldier as to the "lost cause." I am sorry the brave men
died; I am devoutly glad that their cause perished from the
earth. There are two Augustas. Walking along Broad or Green, or
any of the long aisles of trees, lined with pretty, white, rose-
embowered houses, you would suppose that Augusta was a rich,
leisurely old Southern town, with nothing to do, but by going to
the suburbs you find yourself in the midst of long rows of cotton
factories — long, high brick structures, with quite a New England
look. The Augusta canal, which takes water from the Savannah for
manufacturing purposes, is nine miles long, 150 feet wide at the
top and 106 feet at the bottom, with eleven feet depth of water.
Taken from the canal, it makes two falls before reaching the
river, thus affording room for two lines of factories. The com
bined fall at the Enterprise mills is thirty-two feet. The esti
mated horse-power is 14,000.
I visited the Enterprise mills, one of the smaller factories, and
happened to be at the mill when the two hundred hands quit
work for the night. They were all, I found, recruited from the
piney-woods population. Out of the possible 2,000 hands em
ployed in the Augusta factories, scarcely any are foreigners. I
have always believed that the "poor white" of the South would
not work, but many of the faces of those who passed me bore the
unmistakable "cracker" look. I presume the mass of the girls
are the daughters of small farmers, but there were certainly some
who came from the clay-eater class, who in their native woods
own nothing and do nothing. The superintendent of the mill
told me that the country people liked to work in the mills.
They earn more than they could possible do on the red-clay hills
among the broom sedge ; and do not shrink from the confine
ment, since they have not a naturally roving or adventurous dis
position. I noticed very young boys employed, and one mother
had her baby, just able to walk, toddling around, rather reck
lessly, I thought, among the machinery. The mills support many
poor families, and widows with young children.

A DROWSY CAPITAL. 127
The growth of factories will be a great blessing to the South;
yet I wondered if, with such material for help, there would not
grow up such a system as fills the alleys of great manufacturing
towns in England with very wretched people. The girls I saw
in the Augusta factories did not resemble those who for years
kept up the "Lowell Offering," the organ of the factory girls of
Lowell, Massachusetts; nor did they resemble the young ladies
who were my teachers in boyhood, who earned the money to ob
tain an education in New England factories. Yet anything, al
most, is better than to be a snuff-dipping, piney-woods woman.
The oldest of the factories at Augusta is the "Augusta.'' It was
started many years ago, by Southern men and money. Not over
$50,000 of the capital stock was ever paid in, yet it has paid enor
mous dividends, and the property is now valued at at least a mil
lion dollars. This factory steadily made money duriug the war,
in spite of the worthlessness of Confederate currency. It now
employs 24,000 spindles and 800 looms. The Enterprise has
13,892 spindles and 264 looms. The Richmond has 3,400 spin
dles. The Globe mills had 1,500 spindles in 1878, and is increas
ing its capacity. The Riverside, Summerville and Sibley mills,
the latter an enormous affair, are now being built. The capital, I
was told, is furnished in about equal proportions by North and
South. Charleston has considerable money invested.
Returning to the city, I walked through a street lined by the
brick houses occupied by the "Augusta " mill-hands. They were
formerly furnished free to operatives, but the company now re
quires $1 a month per room as rent. There is a free school near
by, for the factory children.
My ramble among the factories lasted till it was quite dark.
At supper at the hotel I listened to two gentlemen who were dis
cussing the trial and conviction that day of a black man for the
murder of a white man. One of them, I judged, had been a
juror in the case. He did not know that I was from the North,
yet he alluded to the belief in our section that a black man does
not have his rights in a Southern country. He said that in this
case the murderer had had a second trial; that able counsel had
been assigned him, and that his own- confession had been ruled

128 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
out. It seemed to me that everything had been done that could
be asked. The murder was a brutal one, committed for money,
by a low, ignorant creature. I was struck by the gentleman's
allusion. There is such a thing as a public conscience. The
South is very sensitive, I think, to Northern criticism. I regard
it as a good indication.
Early in the morning I took the Augusta, Columbia & Char
lotte road for Columbia. I wished to visit Columbia principally
to see any remains, if they existed, or to listen to the traditions,
if there were any, of the singular government of carpet-baggers
and blacks, of which Columbia was once the seat. I had always
suspected that both sides lied plentifully and profanely about the
government, and it occurred to me that a few grains of truth
might be picked up "on the spot."
As usual, I looked about on the train for some one to converse
with, and found an excellent witness. I wish his kind were
more plentiful in the South. I should have more hopes of its
regeneration. He was a business man, the cashier of a national
bank at Newberry ; a native of South Carolina, as was his father
before him; not allied, as he himself assured me, to the aristoc
racy of the country; trained from the first to business, worship
ping his Creator in the days of his youth, and not the sover
eignty of South Carolina; a Democrat, because he thought it
decent and respectable in South Carolina to be such; and a
Christian of the Baptist denomination. He went with me from
Augusta all the way to Columbia, and I am indebted to him for
much information about the country.
We crossed the Savannah at Augusta, and entered Hamburg.
It is a wretched, mouldy place, crowded between the bluff and
the river; a place full of rats, I should think. I would hate to
go about it after dark. It was once a business town, but was
overshadowed and crushed out by Augusta. The remains look
very unwholesome, but will probably incumber the South for
some time, linked with the hateful word, " massacre."
Emerging from purgatory, or the next station below, we came
to heaven at Graniteville, the prettiest manufacturing village I
ever saw. My companion, whom I will call Mr. Newberry, said

A DROWSY CAPITAL. 129
it was established many years ago by a gentleman named Gregg,
from Charleston, who employed the hill people, started a school
as well as a cotton mill, and enforced very rigid regulations re
specting the morals of his operatives. Mr. N. said the system
worked a complete transformation in the people. The mills were
situated in a little shady valley on the banks of Horse creek.
Along the side of the hill ran a street, dark with the shade of
trees, and lined with residences covered in front with white climb
ing roses fit to bloom in paradise. Farther away, as the train
moved on, I saw the factory villages, the sharp roofs of the frame
cottages peering above the trees. What a contrast, this, to the
narrow, dark alleys, the cobble-paved streets, the grim rows of
smoky brick houses of a manufacturing town in the North or in
England. And then the climate. Who that has seen the shiv
ering crowds called out by the clang of the factory bell before
light of a bitter, wintry morning, but will appreciate the differ
ence between that, and this land where it never snows. But to
travel on, we came to another factory, at a place called Vaucluse,
(I am not positive about the spelling,) a sort of offshoot of Gran
iteville. Mr. Newberry said that factories of the first class were
being built at Spartanburg, Williamston and Piedmont; a steam
factory was to be built at Charleston, and an effort made to em
ploy the water power at Columbia.
We ran on the carpet-bag breakers immediately. I happened
to use the word " district," when my man said : " That was the
old name, but the government we had set up over us a few years
ago, without any reason changed it to ' county.' " This was a
starter. I intimated that I would be glad to get the whole story,
and before we reached Columbia, I was in possession of it.
The charges of stealing, it seemed to me, were rather vague.
He said enormous taxes were raised and squandered. I did not
learn how. He said Moses and Scott were thorough rascals.
Moses the younger was a native Carolinian, and a villain from
his birth. Governor Chamberlain was a gentleman in appear
ance, a fine scholar, and originally possessed of good intentions.
He came South, said my candid friend, expecting to find a decent
Republican party, composed of respectable people, such as exists

130 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
in the North ; but there was no such party in South Carolina. It
was made up of negroes, densely ignorant, and led by bad white
men. Governor Chamberlain could not shake off this party or
rise above it. Mr. Newberry said, further, that he did not be
lieve that Chamberlain took any amount of money away with him.
He went on, and spoke of the question of social proscription for
opinion's sake. He said that a Republican officeholder in his
county, who had lately gone to Kansas, was burned out, but it
was on account, not of his politics, but of his low moral stand
ing, his relations with negro women, and so on; but said my in
formant, "a more correct and honest public officer I have never
known." I thought the clause proscribing a man for the pater
nity of mulattoes, must have been inserted in the South Carolina
code since the war ; but I kept my reflections to myself, and my
mentor went on to say that Dr. Goodspeed, of Columbia, a good
man, and a Baptist like himself, was held on the outside to some
extent because he was engaged in the instruction of colored youth,
but he did not think that right; he would not proscribe Dr. Good-
speed himself; but allowance must be made for the prejudices of
a lifetime. The time would come, he thought, when no barrier
would meet such men as Dr. Goodspeed.
Mr. Newberry spoke of the occupation of the country after
the war by the Federal troops. A garrison for a long time oc
cupied Newberry. The officers were gentlemen, and no trouble
was occasioned by the presence of soldiers. In regard to the
troubles, reference was only made to the Hamburg massacre. He
said the whites were greatly provoked and exasperated, but that
the killing of the blacks after they were prisoners was entirely
unjustifiable. Of course a conversation with an " office-bearer" in the church,
as Mr. Newberry was, took a religious turn at times. A better
feeling exists between black and white churches of the same faith
than I supposed; and here I may say that I think the South a
more religious country than the North. I mean by that, that it
is more orthodox, and more reverence is felt for what may be
called the established religion. People are nearly all Baptists,
or Methodists, or Presbyterians, or Episcopalians. There are few

A DROWSY CAPITAL. 131
Freethinkers and Liberals. Bob Ingersoll could never flourish
down here. Father Scanlan, the acting Bishop of Nashville,
told me that, outside of the Catholic church, there was little be
lief in religion among the educated classes in the South. Father
Scanlan was mistaken. It is a very believing country. We of
the North regarded the Southern Confederacy as a progeny of
hell, but never was any cause supported more earnestly by the
religious people of a country. Never was a cause more earnestly
commended to the favor of heaven.
South Carolina when I saw it last was a forlorn region, and its
forlornness did not seem the result of war so much as of natural
sterility. I found it much improved. A plateau between Au
gusta and Columbia .called "the Ridge," was the best cultivated
country I have seen in the South, and more new houses were being
built than I have seen elsewhere. Mr. Newberry said that Ridge
Springs "looked like a New England village." New England ap
pears to be the symbol of thrift down here.
Columbia lies on a high ridge overlooking the Congoose river.
The ridge is flat on top, and long level streets run across the top
and climb up and down the sides the best way they can. Colum
bia is not a very ancient place, and, like most towns built for State
capitals, is a stupid place. The hours passed here have been
among the dullest of my life. St. Louis could not have been
worse. There are some beautiful streets, for which one may thank God,
since man here has only to set out trees and flowers and Provi
dence does the rest. The streets do not look like streets, but like
green alleys in the forest. On one of the finest is the house
once owned by Gen. Wade Hampton. The original structure
was built by his grandfather, Gen. Wade Hampton of Revolu
tionary celebrity. It is now the property of Mr. Dodge, of
Phelps, Dodge & Co., of New York, whose family live here a
few months in the year. Mr. Dodge made his money originally,
I believe, in tin and sheet-iron. Possibly the South Carolina soul
may grieve because a "Yankee tinner" now owns the ancestral
halls of the Hamptons and the Prestons, but the house has had
a much worse fate. It was occupied at one time by the native

132 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
South Carolina thief, Frank Moses. The house is a roomy, old-
fashioned structure, the garden the most beautiful private ground
I have ever seen. The whole cannot have cost less than $100,-
000. It was sold, I have heard, to Mr. Dodge for $15,000. Gen.
Hampton lives in the country, and is poor. Gen. Preston, who
occupied the residence at one time, was buried a few days ago.
He was a fine scholar, a great orator, and the most determined
enemy that this Union ever had. Opposite the Hampton house
is an old-established Presbyterian theological seminary. The
gloomy, decayed brick buildings are now closed.
There is but one business street in Columbia — Main street. It
was burned by the soldiers of General Sherman's command.
General Sherman thinks differently. Our own corps did not enter
the town, consequently I did not see the burning. But I remem
ber well enough the night when our command crossed the Savan- •
nah at Sisters Ferry, the loud, long vengeful yell, that rose as
company after company stepped upon South Carolina soil. The
men felt that South Carolina was the cause of the war and all
the suffering it had brought. They did not love South Carolina,
and it is said that if certain men who had been inhumanly treated
as prisoners of war ever got to Columbia, they would burn the
town. I should not be at all surprised to learn definitely that
they did.
Whoever did the burning, it was done, and great gaps on Main
street show to this day how complete was the destruction. The
Government has erected a fine building on the street for a post-
office, etc., and it is the only fine public building.
The former capitol of South Carolina has entirely disappeared.
I was obliged to ask where it once stood. Not a vestige remains.
The new capitol, the walls of which were carried up some dis
tance when the old one was burned, was roofed in, and presents,
with its partly wooden facade, an unsightly spectacle. Columns
and capitals are piled around it, and a large quantity of marble
that escaped the fire is stored away in the basement. The State
does not propose to finish the building.
I went into the State Library, and found a wreck of ancient
South Caroliua in the Librarian. He was an old Rip -Van-

A DROWSY CAPITAL. 133
Winkle-looking person, and hated Yankees, carpet-baggers and
niggers. He said he had a hundred niggers when the war broke
out, and he had worked like a dog to pay for them, and they had
all gone. Sherman had burned two houses for him also. I sat
and looked out on the sleepy old town while he detailed the situ
ation. Sherman's soldiers set fire to the town; he saw them
do it. He supposed they were ordered to ; if not, why did they
do it? It was in his room that "Old Bond" tried the Ku-Klux.
Was he a good judge? Well, he had a pretty hard face on him.
Did the Ku-Klux have a fair trial? Well, he hardly thought
they had. Were they guilty of anything? No; they never killed
anyone; that was all a lie in the Northern papers; he supposed
the niggers took their stock, and they went around to their houses
and whipped 'em like the devil — that was all. What sort of a
man was Governor Chamberlain? Oh, he was a very bad man,
but he was as plausible a man as you ever saw, and looked like a
saint; but he was a bad man, and stole a great deal of money
and went away with it. He came to South Carolina as a clerk
on a rice plantation, and he had a pretty good education, and so
got to be Governor. What sort of a man was Mr. Wilder, the
postmaster at Columbia? He was a very orderly, peaceable nig
ger; he had to have a white man to do the duty of the office for
him. And so he went on.
He brought me a copy of the proceedings of the constitutional
convention of 1868, and a copy of the investigation into the elec
tion of Patterson as United States Senator. The report of the
convention was verbatim, and there was a good deal of smart nigger
talk in it. The constitution seemed well enough. From a hasty
look at the investigation, I judged that the honorable members
smoked a good many cigars and drank a good deal of whisky at
the expense of the State. I judge that Patterson spent his money
in a very direct fashion. It was bad enough, doubtless.
I walked out of the building and looked at a bronze statue of
Washington in the vestibule. It was very old, and made Wash
ington look like a bumpkin. The old man did not know who was
the artist. He only knew that the niggers got into a row one day
and broke the cane off.
9

134 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
It was melancholy. In the noon sun lay the flat, empty street;
no signs or sounds of business were visible. Here was the mar
ble monument to the Coufederate dead; opposite was a monument
in the shape of au iron palmetto tree, to the dead of South Car-
lina in the war with Mexico; here was the unfinished capitol, and
the bronze Washington with the broken cane. As if in mockery,
some oue had set up beside the entrance of the State House a
cage with three owls in it, and here was the old man who had
lost a hundred niggers that he had worked like a dog to pay for.
I louged for something more cheerful, and asked the old man if
he would have the kindness to show me the way to the peniten
tiary. He did so, and I left the capitol with its unfragrant mem
ories and its blinking owls, I think forever.
The penitentiary is a new institution, founded in 1867. In the
good old times they hung people for most offenses against the law,
and so the county jails were sufficient for the purpose of confin
ing the few criminals who were not hung. At present there are
600 State prisoners. Three hundred of these are farmed out to
railroad and other contractors ; the remainder are kept at the
prison. It was a rude sort of slab arrangement; the cell doors
openinginto the prison yard. The prisoners, who were nearly all of
a deep, beautiful glossy black complexion, were working at weav
ing prison-cloth on looms that Adam might have made for Eve,
shoe-making, and other like employments. Some were building
a new wall about the prison, some were gardening, some sat
around and talked to each other; there seemed to be no restric
tion on conversation. The wooden buildings were very rough ;
everything was clean, and the prisoners seemed well treated. The
guards wore a gray uniform.
A fine home gone from its ancestral owners into the hands of
strangers; an unfinished State House and a prison — these con
stituted the "sights" of Columbia as I saw them.
I much wished to see a member of the old State Government,
a carpet-bagger, or one of the colored statesmen, but I was in
formed that they had nearly all disappeared. Beverly Nash, a
black orator who figured in the Constitutional Convention, was
said to be somewhere in the vicinity, and I heard often of a Gen.

A DROWSY CAPITAL. 135
C. J. Stolbrand. If I mistake not, this officer was at one time
stationed at Fort Leavenworth. C. G. Cox, formerly of Junc
tion City, used to tell some funny stories of the "hyperborean,"
as he was accustomed to call him.

SOUTH CAROLINA POLITICS.

Charlotte, N. C, May 6, 1881.
Columbia held out as it began. The last thing I noticed in the
august capital of South Carolina was a "cracker" driving on the
main street a two-wheeled cart, containing one-sixth of a cord of
crooked oak wood, the shaky cart being drawn by one dilapidated
ox. Boarding the train for Charlotte, my attention was attracted
by the appearance and conversation of a gentleman opposite. He
had a thin face, like the late Lord Beaconsfield, piercing black
eyes, a rather Hebraic nose, and a physiognomy remarkable for
what might be called its ugly attractiveness. He began talking
at once, with the air of a professional talker, and becoming in
terested, I shortly afterwards introduced myself to the Hon.
Thomas J. Mackey, Judge of the Sixth Judicial Circuit of South
Carolina. The Judge immediately introduced me in turn to the Hon. B.
H. Massey, one of the Penitentiary Commissioners of the State
of South Carolina, who he informed me was the author of the
law passed two years ago, forbidding the intermarriage of whites
and blacks, under penalty of long imprisonment. I expressed
some surprise that such a law should be needed in South Caro
lina. The Judge told me it was needed ; that low-down whites
were marrying negroes, a hundred cases having occurred in a
year, and that the law was to prevent " the debauching of the
race." I ventured to ask in case of such a marriage which race
was "debauched." "The white race, sir; the white race. A
white man in hell is better than a negro archangel," was the
reply. This was the key-note to a long conversation, which was in
hearing of a car full of people, and so was in no sense confiden
tial. I found the Judge a very entertaining fellow-traveler. He
had been all over the West; had served with Mayne Reid, the
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SOUTH CAROLINA POLITICS. 137
novelist, in the Mexican war; had hunted buffalo on the Platte,
and served as chief engineer on the staff of Gen. Sterling Price,
and gave me a very graphic account of the fight at Pilot Knob.
Like most brilliant talkers, his statements were occasionally con
tradictory, and he took positions from which he retreated, but as
a whole I regarded his talk as instructive.
Mention was made of Frye's speech in the Senate. I had not
read it, and asked what Mr. Frye wanted. " Oh," said the Judge,
" he wants the majority to rule, but it does not rule in South Car
olina, nor shall it rule." He said that when the white race paid
97 per cent, of the taxes, and had 99 per cent, of the intelligence,
it would do 75 per cent, of the voting, and nothing could pre
vent it. You might fill South Carolina with troops, and the
result would be the same. . The whites would exterminate the
blacks, if it were necessary. I asked if the blacks did not vote
in South Carolina. "They vote," was the answer, "but the ma
jority is not counted. Their vote only embarrasses the judges of
the elections."
The negro, my political instructor informed me, was a good
hand in the fields, but in a government he was a destructive
force. He had no moral sense nor virtue. Yet his offenses were
of a petty order. Hearing a rooster crow in the woods, on Sat
urday, he would move in a bee line four miles through the woods
on that bird, and incorporate him into his physical system on
Sunday at dinner-time. A white man going that distance would
at least rob a store of all its contents before returning. The
negro, in short, was a sort of half-brute, born to steal, lie, get
drunk, and occasionally " get " a religion which made him worse
instead of better. I inquired if there was no prospect of the
negro being a better voter in the future, under the influence of
education. No, education did not make men better voters. He
would have the negro taught to read, write and cipher, so as to
protect himself from being cheated, but no more. He would
never be any better qualified as a voter. This was the general
tenor of the Judge's talk. Generally he spoke of the blacks
with a bitterness I heard from no other man in the South.
He said, incidentally, that the "Fool's Errand" was a true

138 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
story. That he had been requested to answer it, but reading it
through, he found it substantially correct. I asked him his opin
ion of Gov. Chamberlain. He said that no act of official cor
ruption had ever been traced to him. That matter had been
judicially determined and settled. As to his ability, it was first-
class. He was the ablest man who had ever been Governor of
South Carolina.
A car with a picnic party had been attached at Columbia,
bound for Winnsboro. As we pulled up to Winnsboro, a mili
tary company was drawn up on the depot platform to receive the
young ladies. Just as we passed a large residence near Winns
boro, a black boy came out and waved a Confederate battle-flag
at the train. The Judge, Mr. Massey and myself happened to see
it at the same moment. The Judge was evidently irritated. As
usual, he held the darkey responsible, and said he ought to have fif
teen lashes for doing such a thing. But the absurdity of this was so
apparent that he said further that "nobody but a hare-brained
fool, like  , would have it done;" that the military com
panies of the State always carried the flag of the United States.
It happened that I had seen the Governor's Guards parade at
Columbia the day before, without it. I told the Judge about the
Schiitzenfest at Augusta, and said that while a flag might be only
a piece of cloth, it meant a. great deal more to a Northern man.
That it was just such "hare-brained fools" as his fellow-citizen
who sent out a Confederate flag to be waved in the face of North
ern men traveling through the country, that kept up the feeling
between the sections ; and that a Northern Union man, before he
would remove to a country where the Union flag was not seen,
and the Confederate flag was ostentatiously displayed, would mi
grate in preference to the sulphur hills and naming brimstone
plains of perdition.
The tone of the South Carolina portion of the audience was
perceptibly changed after the display of the ancient banner of
the Confederacy, and thereafter we conversed about the Revolu
tionary history of the locality. The Judge pointed out to me the
house in Winnsboro occupied by Lord Cornwallis as headquar
ters, and from whence he marched to attack Gates at Camden.

SOUTH CAROLINA POLITICS. 139
He had previously pointed out Anvil Rock, where Tarleton, the
bloody British dragoon, encamped at one time.
At Chester the Judge left us, and thereafter the Penitentiary
Commissioner devoted himself to my enlightenment.
He was a planter from the banks of the Catawba ; a man of
substance, a farmer from his youth, and of ordinary education.
He was extremely conservative and conciliatory in his talk, and
evidently did not wish me to take the Judge, with his brilliant
bitterness, as a representative of the South Carolina sentiment.
We first spoke of the penitentiary. He deplored the praetiee
of farming out the prisoners, and said that as the State grew
better off" the prisoners were being jirenght in, and it was hoped
in time to keep them all in the prison. He explained that Judge
Mackey was a convert from Radicalism, and had been at one
time "hand-in-glove with the negro and carpet-bag government.
This confirmed an ancient saying to the effect that " one renegade
is worse than ten Turks."
The gentleman now in hand said that nothing had ever been
proven against the official character of Gov. Chamberlain. "We
could not fasten anything on him." This settled a belief of
mine, that of all the men who have been mixed up in Southern
affairs, Gov. Chamberlain has been the most infamously treated.
Beset by Bourbons on one hand, and a lot of Senegambian plun
derers and native white rascals, of whose greed and rapacity the
Northern mind can hardly conceive, on the other, and denounced
with the rest of the carpet-baggers by a lot of fine-haired Re
publican newspapers in the North, he had very hard measure
dealt out to him. Yet my informant told me that he was a mem
ber of the Democratic State Executive Committee which decided
to call a State convention ; that the proposition was carried by a
few votes; that the majority of the party at that time favored
Chamberlain ; and that at first scarcely a Democratic paper sus
tained the action of the committee. A more conciliatory dispo
sition than that of Mr. M., I have not met lately. He believed
in peace; in popular education for white and black; and, rather
unexpectedly, the elevation of black men to office. He said
there were several colored members in the last Legislature, and
that he believed it would be policy for the dominant party to

140 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
elect more of them. I may say that a similar idea was advanced
by the gentleman I have spoken of in a previous letter as "Mr.
Newberry." This rather took the wind out of the Judge's ulti
matum. "In South Carolina," said he, " it is not a question of
Democrat against Republican; it is a question of race against
race." But the "race" theory goes up whenever a black man is
elected to office.
Such are the diversities of political policy or sentiment that
one meets in the South. I have cited in South Carolina four
witnesses. Believing two of them, I should say that "hating
niggers" was the chief end of existence in South Carolina. Be
lieving the other two, one could well believe iu a New South; in
an era of justice to the blacks, and toleration for everybody. I
am satisfied that among the bone and sinew of the country the
latter sentiment is gaining. When it will be the strongest no one
can tell.
I parted with South Carolina and my planter statesman at
about the same time, but not until he had pointed out tome,
with much satisfaction, the new cotton mill at Rock Hill, soou
to be opened, running 6,000 spindles and built by South Carolina
capital. That mill and every mill I saw seemed an omen of
better days. When I parted with Mr. M. it was with a regret
on his part, that I could not remain to attend the Cowpens cele
bration, to which I see President Garfield has accepted an invi
tation, and a regret on my part that I could not go down to the
old plantation ou the Catawba, or the Wateree as it is called
lower down.andramble around among the hills where Briton and
American, Whig and Tory, Tarleton and Sumter, all of whom
honest old Horry writes, fought their fights aud rode their forays .
But time did not permit, and so I suppose I must some day take
Lossing's " Field Book" and read about it.
It is hard to overcome old prejudices, aud I have always en
tertained one against South Carolina. Since the Revolution I do
not know a name in her annals which has ever attracted my affec
tion or respect. Mr. Calhoun I have always regarded as the evil
genius of the politics of his time — all the more dangerous be
cause of his great ability and his exemplary personal character.
My personal knowledge of her statesmen began in the era of the

SOUTH CAROLINA POLITICS. 1-11
Hammonds, who invented the term "mudsill" as a reproach to
white laborers; with the Brookses and the Keitts, the swash
bucklers and bullies who disgraced the councils of the Nation
and the human race at Washington when I was a boy. The
very emblem of the State, the palmetto, I have always regarded
as a sort of vegetable fraud — an elongated cabbage trying to be
a tree, and at best succeeding in being, as its name implies, a little
palm. What I saw of the State during the war confirmed the
old contempt. There was not a square-out battle fought on her
soil. The last field of the Confederacy was Bentonville, North
Carolina, where the "Tar-heel," dragged out of the Union against
his will, exhibited once more his patient valor. I do not now re
call a great name furnished the Confederate cause by South Car
olina. Let the past go, however, is the word for to-day. If Mother
Shipton is not correct, South Carolina has yet a chance, and I
believe sees it. The son of Senator Hammond, I was told, is now
preparing a work on cotton, its history, culture and manufacture,
with a view of especially advertising the advantages of the State.
This is better work than his father did. The Brookses and the
Keitts are dead. The old race of nullifiers and irreconcilables and
secessionists, who roused the wrath of Jackson and vexed the soul
of Lincoln, have passed and are passing away. They have lost
statesmen in South Carolina, but they have discovered phosphates,
which are far more valuable. There is hope for the old land yet.
The agricultural portion of the country seemed improving. There
was a good deal of new land in cultivation; the growth of the
manufacturing interest I have mentioned, and that is a comfort.
We will remember Graniteville and Langley and Vaucluse and
Rock Hill, and forget Hamburg and Columbia.
In the middle of the afternoon we came into the ancient town
of Charlotte, in the county of Mecklenberg and in the State of
North Carolina; but I will not speak of North Carolina now, but,
out of respect to the doctrine of the sole independence and sov
ereignty of the State of South Carolina, will leave her all alone
in a letter by herself.

IN NORTH CAROLINA.

Eichmond, Va., May 7, 1881.
The old town of Charlotte was named, I believe, after the
Queen of George III, a very clever old lady who raised a large
family of children, and who was accustomed to accompany her
husband, "Farmer George," about the lanes and alleys of Wind
sor, talking with the cottagers, and' inquiring what they were
going to have for dinner. Yet this loyally-named town of Char
lotte was one of the first in America to give his Sacred Majesty
trouble, for here was drawn up the famous "Mecklenburg Dec
laration," which led the Philadelphia 4th-of-July document by
a considerable time, and it was a very stirring "declaration,"
although neither Thomas Jefferson nor Thomas Paine drew it up.
As a matter of course, the first substantial citizen whom I asked
for the "points" of his town, told me where stood the old log
court house where the famous declaration was drawn up, and re
marked that a celebration was held in Charlotte every few days
in honor of the event, and that every man who came to Char
lotte to live was obliged to swear to support the " Mecklenburg
Declaration." He told me, moreover, that the frame house just
up the street was once occupied by Cornwallis as headquarters —
I think just before he marched away to fight at Guilford Court
House. This was a pleasant introduction to Charlotte.
Disappointed in not reaching the Georgia gold field, I was re
warded in seeing a portion of the same belt at Charlotte, for this
town is the center of the North Carolina portion of the great
Southern gold-mining region. Here, many years ago, a United
States mint was established, and still exists in the shape of an
assay office, and in the adjoining county, Cabarrus, was found
the largest nugget ever dug in the United States. The pioneer
gold mine of the Atlantic slope was opened in North Carolina.
In company with two New York gentlemen, one of whom was
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IN NORTH CAROLINA. 143
fortunately a manufacturer of mining tools, and so knew all
about mines, I visited the Rudisill mine, just out of the city lim
its of Charlotte. It has been worked at "odd spells" for fifty
years. They say a million and a half in gold has been taken
from it. During the war the Confederate Government worked
the mine, but it was for sulphur, not gold. Powder was wanted
and must be made, gold or no gold.
The mine was out in the middle of a nearly flat red-clay "old
field." The buildings comprised a few sheds to cover the ma
chinery, a pump to clear the mine of the clay-colored water, and
the hoisting windlass and the stamps. Piles of ore lay about,
looking just like the cart-loads of specimens brought to Kansas
from Colorado. The machinery looked rude enough, and what
I would call the walking-beam of the pumping engine was loaded
with a miscellaneous collection of old iron. The shaft, I was
told, was three hundred feet deep. Near by, some men were
sinking another shaft, walling it up as they went down, with pine
logs. This shaft was to be of less depth than the other, which
was to drain it. Mining in North Carolina appears to be a very
matter-of-fact affair, carried on when there is nothing else to do>
the work being done like cellar or well-digging — by laborers
who work for day wages. Just now there is a revival of the
mining industry, as there is of every other industry in the South.
We learned that reduction works, with a capital of $600,000,
were to be started at Charlotte, for smelting ores of all sorts, from
iron to gold.
After passing by the military school, where a lot of hearty
boys in the inevitable gray uniform were playing ball, we drove
to the old mint. It is a snowy-white building, one story, with a
high basement, surrounded by trees of course, one of which was
a flowering variety of the buckeye, and very handsome. Over
the door was our old friend the American Eagle, spread out like
a quail on toast, and from the flagstaff floated the flag in which
Kirby was wont to wrap himself when he died.
The director of the mint showed us through a few of the rooms.
Being a Government institution, most of them were closed early
in the afternoon. The Government never works late. The rooms

144 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
were littered with all sorts of rocks and fragmentary boulders,
but one thing in the rock line was new to me. It was a long,
narrow bar of flexible sandstone. Taken up by the middle, the
stone bent as much as would a piece of leather of similar length
and thickness. The black people call this sandstone "limber
grit." It would make a good backbone for a politician — looking
like the real article, but yielding on occasion. A quarry of this
curious stone exists near Charlotte. We also saw the " leopard
stone," a white rock, with small black spots penetrating its sub
stance. The assayer explained the operations of his department, and
gave the benefit of twelve years' observation of North Carolina
gold-mining. He spoke of the activity now prevailing, but I
judged that as a whole the business did not, or at least had not,
paid. Still it seemed like richness. Just as we were entering
the mint a gentleman came out with a little bar of gold in his
hand, in shape like a small plug of tobacco. It was marked $182.
He said the gold came from a placer mine of his, some fifty miles
away. At the hotel I saw several of these bars, one of them
valued at $1,000. The gold was from mines in the vicinity.
On the register of visitors at the mint was the recently inscribed
name of President Chadbourne, of Williams College. He had
passed through Charlotte a few days before, and gone to the North
Carolina mountains. The truth is, every nook and corner of the
South is being explored by Northern men. Every mineral de
posit is being examined ; every forest and every stream affording
water power. All the mountain fastnesses, from Asheville to
Rabun Gap, are traversed by tourists who hire teams in the
mountain towns and travel for days together. Northern capital
is making its mark from Birmingham, Alabama, all the way along
the great mountain chain. The eager Northern spirit is abroad
in the hills ; a wonder-working genius, waking the stillness which
has prevailed since time was. The wealth which the South for
years has refused is now ready to be poured at her feet.
Charlotte has another " boom " besides gold ; it is temperance.
I never expected this in the State of North Carolina, even though
the Governor of South Carolina found it a "long time between

IN NORTH CAROLINA. 145
drinks." The Observer, the old paper of Charlotte, was full of
it. The city had just passed an anti-license ordinance, and the
Observer said that although many colored votes went against pro
hibition, enough voted for it to secure its adoption in Charlotte.
The movement seems spreading in the North Carolina towns.
Perhaps the, example of Kansas has something to do with it.
At Macon, on the 2d of May, a gentleman said : * Well, your fel
lows stopped drinking yesterday." I had forgotten what this Geor
gian remembered. Everything that Kansas does is important to
the rest of creation.
We left Charlotte early in the morning by the "Fast Mail,"
which did not prove so very fast after all, and crossed the bal
ance of the State of North Carolina, and before noon had ar
rived at Danville, Virginia. The country possessed the same
uniformity of low wooded hills and fields that I had observed for
so many miles. The pines were perhaps not so frequent as in the
country below, and the oaks were more abundant, but the want
ing charm of the Southern landscape in Georgia and the Caro-
liuas is grass. Trees and flowers do not compensate for its
absence. One sees the most beautiful roses growing apparently
in almost pure sand — not a blade of grass beneath or around
them. The forest isles are covered with the dead pine-straw.
The country makes one think of an uncarpeted room.
The most important town passed through in North Carolina
was Salisbury. Here was a Confederate prison-pen . during the
war; and much suffering and the work of death among the pris
oners, observed by a surgeon of literary tendencies, led to the
writing of a magazine article, one of the saddest I ever read,
called " The King of Terrors Uncrowned," designed to show, it
seemed, that to these poor captive soldiers death came a welcome
visitor. Since I read it, however, nothing could "uncrown" the
terrors of Salisbury for me. A cloud passed over the sun as we
came to the place, and the old wooden buildings about the depot
looked forlorn in the shadow. It seemed hard that a town named
after a sweet old cathedral city in England, its name reviving
the story read when we were younger, and perhaps nearer heaven
than now, the "Shepherd of Salisbury Plain," should be linked
with such an evil memory.

146 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
At some little town on the road — Thomasville, I think — a child
came to the door with an American flag, the only time I had seen
that symbol thus displayed in all the long round through the
South. The train was confined to one passenger car, and the stops at
the pine-woods piles were very frequent. We entered Virginia
and a tobacco eftuntry, and the enemies of the weed may add to
their arguments that it makes the country devoted to its cultiva
tion the abomination of desolation. The soil of the fields was so
white in the sunshine as to almost pain the eyes, and ugly, mud-
daubed and windowless tobacco barns disfigured the fields. We
were traveling a country settled two hundred years ago, yet still
largely in forest. Towns were scanty. Two I remember as hav
ing figured in the war story — Burkeville and Amelia Court House.
The sun crept down the sky, and when its slanting rays announced
four o'clock we came to a remembered place, Belle Isle.
At Belle Isle station passengers change cars for Washington.
The island itself is separated from the station by one branch of
the James, which roars in and around and through countless
boulders. The low flat point of the island was where the prison
ers were camped. On the low hill was a battery overlooking
them. The battery and the prisoners are gone; and a portion of
the point is occupied by the black roofs and smoking chimneys of
the "Old Dominion Iron Works." Bridges now connect the
island with both banks of the James. In a few moments we were
in Richmond.

SOME HOURS IN RICHMOND.
Washington, D. C, May 10, 1881.
As the site of the old Tolbooth in Edinburgh was the heart of
Mid Lothian, so the Capitol square in Richmond is the heart of
Virginia, and hither, a few moments after the train crossed the
bridge, or rather succession of bridges, from island to island, that
cross the James, my steps led me. Here on the crest of the
shaded hill stands the plain, old-fashioned capitol, with its col
umns and its wide porch, where for over a hundred years the
Governors of Virginia have been inaugurated; near at hand is
the "hip-roofed," brick gubernatorial mansion, the statue of
Stonewall Jackson, the immense bronze monumental pile sur
mounted by Crawford's great equestrian statue of Washington,
and a little farther down the slope, under a sort of pagoda, is the
graceful form and expressive features of Henry Clay, in marble.
This old State House was used as the Confederate capitol, and
in and around this square every human passion has found a stage
for its exhibition. The frenzy of the outbreaking revolt ; the mad
exultation over victory ; the crushing gloom of disaster ; the con
fused flight of panic — all these has this little spot of earth wit
nessed. For four long years not a single moment of absolute
peace and quietude had visited it; but on this Saturday afternoon
what a picture of peace it presented ! The sunlight sifting through
the elms fell in bright patches on the wide walks; hundreds of
children slept or smiled in their little carriages, or clung to their
black nurses' fingers as they took their first lessons in the art of
walking; the tame squirrels scurried over the grass, and the air
was full of the petulant clamor of the sparrows. High above all
sits on his great bronze horse the soldier farmer of Mount Ver
non, intently gazing on some crisis in the hard-fought field where
the ragged Continentals grapple with the foe and will not yield ;
while the horse, his ears laid forward, his nostrils spread, one im-
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148 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
patient fore-foot pawing the air, seems but to need the slightest
lowering of the strong hand on the rein to send him flying like a
thunderbolt into the thickest of the fray. Around the monument
stand the colossal figures of Marshall, Mason, Henry, Lewis, and
the other great statesmen, law-givers and founders of Virginia;
and as I read their names I remembered that not one of them
failed, before he descended to his grave, to enter, with all the
solemnity of a prophet of old, his protest against the continuance
of slavery in Virginia. Alas, alas, that their voices were not
heard and heard in time !
The other statues of the square seemed dwarfed by the pres
ence of this great work, worthy, I think, of any capital in the
world. The Jackson statue, contributed by Englishmen, is a fine,
soldierly figure, somewhat idealizing, I should think, the Presby
terian general, but still fine. The Clay statue is by Hart, the
Kentucky sculptor, and is a pleasing work.
The fine, well-built streets of Richmond would be attractive if
there were no special historical associations connected with them.
The city lies on a succession of hills along the James, and from
its start has shown a disposition to move west. The town was
originally started five miles further down the James, but, as the
stories go, the " town company " placed such an extravagant figure
on the lots that the people moved on up the river. In the time
of the Revolution, Church Hill, a sharp bluff" overlooking the
James, was the center of the town, but now the fashionable " West
End" is over a mile away. The city has gained 27 per cent, in
population since 1870, and now contains 62,000 people.
Sunday was passed in looking at what may be seen on a rest-
day, and at night I went to church and heard, from a clergyman
of the Methodist Church South, a very good Republican dis
course. One passage was particularly fine; it was where he
showed that the division of land among all the people, and the
exercise by every man of the elective franchise, was the glory
and safety of the Republic. Yet I did not learn that the preacher
was even a Readjuster.
On Monday I walked along Casey street in a rather more agree
able state of mind than several thousand of my countrymen have

SOME HOURS IN RICHMOND. 149
traversed that thoroughfare, and stopped to look into the largest
old junk warehouses I ever saw. There was old iron enough
piled up in there to sink a man-of-war. The proprietor, a rosy,
pleasant gentleman, formerly one of Stonewall Jackson's artillery
men, went about with me and exhibited his treasures. There were
caunon balls of all calibers, cannon of all patterns, and partially
concealed by a pile of boards was a huge, rusty mass of iron; it
was part of the shaft of the Merrimac, the famous ram that sank
our poor old Cumberland, but brought out the Monitor to fight
aud almost revolutionized naval warfare. The battle-fields, the
ex-gunner told me, were pretty well cleaned up now, though for
a long time they furnished enormous quantities of lead and iron.
Next we came to Libby prison. Its exterior is little changed,
I should judge, and the iron gratings still cover the windows.
It bears but one sign on its front, in worn letters the words,
"Southern Fertilizer Company." The whole building is now
used as a manufactory of cotton and tobacco fertilizers, and a
sharp, pungent odor pervades the rooms. The fertilizer is pre
pared with South Carolina phosphate as a base, treated with sul
phuric acid, and there is nothing offensive about the premises
save the sharp smell. Many ladies visit the place. The super
intendent, Mr. Gilham, in the intervals of business went about
with me and chatted about the old institution. He seems to take
a great deal of pride in it, and takes pleasure in showing visitors
around. The number of sight-seers is quite wonderful. The
first page of the register I looked at showed one hundred and
eighty visitors in one day. Nearly all were from the New Eng
land States. An occasional Western man strolls around, and I
noticed among the last recorded the name of " Theodore Terry,
Topeka, Kansas."
Mr. Gilham told me that Libby, whose name was attached to
the prison, never owned a brick in the building, and occupied
only a portion of it. He said Mr. Libby suffered a good deal of
opprobrium on account of the misfortune to his name. The Fer
tilizer Company occupied a portion of the building in 1872, and
in 1880 took possession of the last of it. The building has been
lithographed as au advertising card, and hundreds will see it with-
10

150 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
out suspecting that they are looking at the once-famous prison.
The arrangement of the rooms is about the same as of old, though
doors have been cut through in places. The ceiling of Major
Turner's office is still visible, though the partition cutting off his
apartments from that into which the commissioned officers were
ushered is gone. Mr. Gilham still retains the folding-doors.
Having heard a good word for Wirz down in Georgia, I was
not surprised to hear Major Turner commended. Mr. Gilham
said that ex-prisoners almost universally spoke kindly of him,
regarding him as grown men regard the schoolmaster of their
boyhood. This may be so; yet I have not felt any poignant re
gret that I failed to make the Major's acquaintance during the
war. Mr. Gilham pointed out to me some of the names carved in the
floor. I noted "Sergt. A. E. Berry, Co. K, 7th Regt. O. V,
August 18, 1863." Thousands of names have been covered with
whitewash. Mr. Gilham said that he was requested by letter to
cut out of the floor and send to the writer his name, which he
would find in a designated place. He did so, and I saw where a
new piece of plank had supplied the vacancy. Checkerboards
marked on the floor are still visible on inspection.
Mr. Gilham is certainly of an obliging disposition, or he would
be greatly worried by some of his callers. He took down the old
flagstaff which had borne in turn the flags of the Union and the
Confederacy, and sawed it up for the benefit of lady relic-hunters,
and exhibited a pardonable sense of injury because some doubted
the genuineness of the relic, although it cost them nothing.
The yard under which prisoners were wont to construct tunnels
has been cut down, and is partly covered by sheds. Mr. Gilham
said he had had among his visitors the officer who first went into
the tunnel business, but he did not remember his name.
The last room visited was the famous garret, so graphically de
scribed by Chaplain McCabe in his lecture on Life in Libby
Prison. Its grim and cobwebbed rafters have not changed, yet
I should think it by far the most comfortable room in the house.
For some time I sat in Mr. Gilham's office, looking out on
Casey street. There was a telephone there. What would not

SOME HOURS IN RICHMOND. 151
the prisoners have given for a telephone which would have
brought to them the sounds of home ! Opposite was a machine
shop and a yard full of young trees, and beyond that the Bethel
public school, (formerly a sailors' chapel,) and the scholars look
ing out of the upper windows at the old prison, and the sailing
craft moored to the wharf, and the gliding James, and the low
greeu lands beyond it. The building a little further down the
street, once used as the prison hospital, now presents a squalid
appearance. The windows have been bricked up, and the place
is a stable and wagon yard. Castle Thunder I did not see. It
exists no more. It was burned up utterly a year ago last No
vember. Of Belle Isle I have spoken. Libby alone remains,
but its memories will remain for many years yet — until the last
man who ever dwelt within its walls a prisoner has ceased to live.
Then it will become a fading tradition, losing itself in the gath
ering mists of time, until what was cruel shall cease to vex the
hearts of men. For such is the decree of pitying heaven.
From Libby I went down the long street for some distance, and
then climbed a long flight of wooden steps and passed the man
sion occupied by the Van Lews, including Miss Van Lew, for
merly postmistress at Richmond, and so came to St. John's
church. In this church Patrick Henry made his most famous
speech. The church, a wooden structure, has been greatly
changed, but pew No. 68 is still pointed out as the spot where the
great Virginian spoke his choice : "As for me, give me liberty or
give me death." The janitor showed the old font which came
from a yet older church on the lower James, and the old sound
ing-board now in a brick lecture room in the churchyard; but I
kept thinking about Henry and his speech, and wondering if in
those days before short-hand was invented, they really did get
his exact words. I think the speech was unpremeditated. Some
body had proposed another compromise; a little more "May it
please your Majesty" business, and so Patrick Henry just got
up and "turned loose" on him. That is what I 'think.
Falling in with a young fellow, a native of Richmond and
somewhat familiar with localities, a view was taken of the city
from Libby Hill. A Virginia gentlemaD, who had seen better

152 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
days, joined us in reduced circumstances aud a suit of blue
clothes. We learned from him that the .war was a piece of fool
ishness from the begiuniug, and involved great loss of life and
property, and that had it not been for the war Richmond would
now be a city of 100,000 people. As it was, Virginians were
leaving Virginia, and a funereal state of affairs prevailed gener
ally. This was too much, and we moved off in the direction of
Powhatan, (you will accent the last syllable,) the ancient seat of
the Mayos, still a leading family of Richmond, a mile or two down
the river. We came first upon the old neglected family cemetery
of the Mayos — a picture of desolation. One broken-down tomb
marked the final resting-place of the two young children of Win-
field and Maria Mayo Scott. Leaving this, we went to a sub
stantial brick house near by, and found on the lawn, under a
ruined summer house, a rock. Beneath it, we are told, lies the
gallant Captain John Smith, the founder of Virginia. A little
black girl led us into a kitchen garden, and there we found
another boulder, on which lay Capt. Smith's head, which Powha
tan (with the accent on the last syllable) proposed to mash, un
til Pocahontas rushed in, according to history and the pictures,
and saved J. S. The rock looked as if it might be the rock. It
offered as many conveniences for the braining business as any
rock, and we went away satisfied with the tradition.
A long, hot walk back to the city took the life out of future
investigations, except a visit to the capitol. It being after three
o'clock, the State Library, which contains a fine collection of
historical portraits, was found closed. I met Mr. Ruffher, the
State Superintendent of Public Instruction, who informed me
that Virginia raised and expended from all sources about one
million dollars a year on her common schools, and that the num
ber of scholars, white and black, was yearly increasing.
The colored janitor led the way to the roof, where a fine view
was obtained of Richmond and the country about it. The view
is simply pretty, and not imposing. The guide pointed out the
directions of Mechanicsville, Gaines Mill, Seven Pines, and the
other battle-fields of the seven days' fighting. In the far dis
tance a yellow spot indicated the site of a still-remainin<* work

SOME HOURS IN RICHMOND. 153
of the three lines of defense which encircled the city. The works
nearest the town have generally disappeared. Monroe Park, the
pretty new park of Richmond, was the old fair ground, used by
the Confederates as a camp of instruction. One of the points of
interest pointed out was the only colored insane asylum in the
world. Iu these stirring times in Virginia politics it would not do to
leave Richmond without visiting some party headquarters. There
not being time to hear both sides, I "took in" the Mahone organ,
the Whig. The Funders have for their mouthpiece the Dispatch,
and an evening paper, the State, the editor of which always signs
his name in full, thus: John Hampden Chamberlayne. The Whig
people, though playing a lone hand, seemed in excellent spirits.
One of the attacbes was an old Richmond newspaper man, and
gave some stirring sketches of newspaper life in the good old
times. I remarked that running a paper in Richmond in the war
time must have been attended with difficulties, meaning meager
dispatches, and things of that sort. " Difficulties ! I should say
so," said he; "we had both the Pollards here, and times were
lively. Scarcely a day passed that some one did not come into
the office with a gun." He described in a cheerful way the
taking-off of Mr. Rives Pollard, once an ornament to Richmond
journalism. It appears that in his latter years Mr. Pollard took
up the sometimes lucrative but occasionally dangerous practice
of blackmailing. He was warned that his useful and agreeable
existence might be suddenly terminated, but felt confident in his
ability to "draw" quicker than anybody else. One day he wrote
an article attacking the sister of a man named Grant. He sent
a proof of the article to the brother. He was asked what it
would cost to suppress the article. He replied fifteen hundred
dollars. Mr. Grant said he could not pay it, and decided that a
shot-gun would be cheaper. The article appeared, and Grant
retired to the third story of a building, where behind a window
curtain, he waited for Pollard's approach. At last he appeared,
driving a light wagon. From the window up aloft came the
crash of both barrels of the shot-gun. The victim sprang up
with a last convulsive effort, drew his pistol, turned his ghastly

154 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
head about to see from whence came the blow, and dropped dead.
The editors of Richmond have always done their share of fight
ing. Mr. Elam, the present editor of the Whig, a very mild-
mannered gentleman, by the way, figured in one of the latest
duels, aud was severely hurt. Editorial life in Richmond is not
the cold, dead, barren waste it is with us.
I endeavored to get at least a clear idea of the Readjuster
position. It requires a great many figures to state it accurately.
Throwing out the mathematics, it is substantially this :
TheReadjusters claim that the lawful debt of the State of Vir
ginia, at the outbreak of the war, was about $30,000,000. Taking
out the one-third they claim that West Virginia should pay, left it
$20,000,000. They claim that, throwing out compound interest,
interest that has been paid on what was really West Virginia's
part of the debt, and making allowance for what has been regu
larly paid by Virginia, the debt remains at about $20,000,000.
This the Readjusters say they will pay. There is no talk of ab
solutely refusiug to pay, or repudiating. The Readjusters say
that they will pay this $20,000,000 with three per cent, interest,
and that is all the State can pay without an increase of taxation,
which neither party dares advocate.
The Funder estimate makes the debt larger, aud the Funder
party proposes to pay it off in talk about " the honah of Vir
ginia." The Readjusters claim that the Funders were in power for nine
years, and instead of paying it off, increased it. They claim for
themselves that they have been in power a year, and that in that
time the penitentiary has become self-supporting, the schools have
prospered, and the State government has been honestly conducted.
The Readjusters have called their State Convention for June,
and were holding primary meetings in and around Richmond at
the time of my visit. Their convention will consist of over
seven hundred members, and it is intended that Democratic Re
adjusters, Republican Readjusters, and Readjusters of both colors,
shall have a representation. The black Readjusters are allowed
delegates iu proportion to their vote.
The Funder party seems to contain all the swallow-tail, kid-

SOME HOURS IN RICHMOND. 155
glove politicians; all the doctors of divinity, all the irreconcilables
and implacables, and all who believe in Jeff. Davis. The Funders
rely on their tone, and will be supported by all the fine-haired
Republican papers of the North.
The advances to the blacks appear to be made by the Readjust
ers alone, and in view of this I should not be surprised if the
Funders drop the debt question, raise the cry of the white against
the " nigger," and go in for a fight on the color-line, as of old.
I do not know that the Readjusters will do any good, but I
know the Funders will not. Northern men can take up their
position accordingly.
This morning I left both the Funders and the Readjusters.
Taking the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac road, I sped
away northward. We passed through but one town of note,
Fredericksburg. A former member of the Fifty-fifth Virginia
stepped out on the platform and showed me the position. Here
on a ridge on the north side of the Rappahanock the Federal ar
tillery kept up a tremendous fire while the pontoons were laid, and
our troops fought their way through the town. Yonder was
Marye's hill; there was still Marye's house; at the base of the
hill was the fated stone wall. Here was the slaughter ; you could
walk over a large space stepping on the bocjies. At one point,
following a ravine, the Union troops broke the Confederate line,
but were driven back and the assault failed. I looked back at
the town, at the hills, at the river. It was perhaps the last time
I should look upon a field where my countrymen, Southern as well
as Northern, fought and fell, and were laid in bloody graves. As
for the rest, it was peace. We came to the Potomac; sailing up
its broad expanse we passed Mount Vernon, its low roof, its pil
lared porch, its tufted woods and green slopes, fit for the resting-
place of a good man, whom his countrymen of every section and
faith delight to remember and honor. Later, we came in sight of
that marvel, the dome of the capitol. Enduring as a mountain
yet seeming as light as a great white bubble, it rose against the
sky. It seemed to me in its strength and brightness and white
ness, an emblem of a Nation, free and pure and strong, made, not

156 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
for separation or division, or downfall or decay, but for a refuge
and a hope for all men till the end of days.
With my arrival at Washington my tour through the South
ended, and nothing remains now but in another letter to sum up
the lesson it has taught.

CONCLUSIONS.

Washington, D. C, May 11, 1881.
From the beginning of this correspondence it has been my in
tention to reserve a full expression of opinion in regard to the
condition of the South until I had taken all the accessible testi
mony by eye and ear. In spite, however, of this resolution, it is
quite probable that I have before given opinions in a piece-meal
fashion ; but I revoke now all previous acts, and declare this my
last judgment on the case. Of course this is to be understood as
purely an individual expression. It is not given as The Cham
pion's opinion, or as an authoritative expression of Republican
sentiment. It is at least possible that another Kansas Republi
can, with precisely the same opportunities for observation that I
enjoyed, might come to entirely different conclusions. I say this
because I do not wish hereafter anything that I have said in these
letters brought up as a party argument. The story is submitted
as my own, to have such weight as it may with the several hun
dreds or thousands of Kansans I have the honor to number among
my friends and acquaintances.
As to the opportunities: I have traversed the States of Ken
tucky, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and
Virginia. I visited four capitals — Nashville, Atlanta, Colum
bia, and Richmond, judging that these cities might be counted as
centers of opinion, and fair sources of information. I also visited
such cities as Knoxville, Chattanooga, Macon, Savannah, and
Charlotte, as centers of business.
As to the people I met, I bore no letters to eminent persons,
and in fact, lost out of my pocket at Lexington, Kentucky, nearly
every letter of every sort I started with, and thereafter made my
acquaintances by "word of mouth." In consequence, I did not
meet the self-styled "leaders of opinion." I met the common
sort of people, and I am inclined to think that they lead in the
(157)

158 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
long run. A successful political leader in this country is the
man who watches the drift and falls in with it. The breaker
does not lead the ocean. It comes to shore because it is obliged
to by the pressure behind it. In the South I tried to consult the
ocean, not the surf.
I do not think I was met by any want of confidence. I made
no secret, it is true, of my own opinions, or my errand. I did
not think my style of beauty adapted to the detective business,
but I am greatly mistaken if any Southern man kept back or
evaded anything on that account. Everybody seemed at least
frank, and I may add, friendly. I do not remember that I heard
in the South a word uttered designedly offensive to me as a
Northern man and a Republican.
Pursuing the course I have indicated, I met editors, farmers,
merchants, clergymen, Federal office-holders, native Democrats,
native Republicans, Union soldiers, Confederate soldiers, and men
of both colors. If there had been any other kinds or varieties of
men down there, I should have endeavored to interview them.
For myself, I met no ostracism, no coldness, no insolence, no
hostility; yet I do uot in the least doubt that all these have ex
isted in the past. I particularly questioned men as to the faith
fulness to a once-existing state of facts of Judge Tourgee's
"Fool's Errand." Two gentlemen, one a Republican, the other
a Democrat, both native Southerners, told me they did not believe
that the book, though a romance, was an exaggeration. Their
names, if given, would carry weight wherever they are known.
The Northern man who fancies that because the sea is reasonably
calm now, there has never been a storm, is very greatly mistaken.
One of my purposes was to ascertain if there was any prospect
of a " New South" in a political sense. I did not find evidence
to justify me in believing in the growth to dominance in any
Southern State, of the Republican party as it exists in the North ;
but I do think there is a general division into two camps among
the Democrats. I do not know that when a general election
comes there will be an absolute separation at the polls. There
are, however, two sorts of Democrats. There are Democrats in
Tennessee who voted for the Republican, Hawkius, in preference

CONCLUSIONS. 159
to either of the Democratic candidates. There are Democrats in
Georgia who vote for Joe Brown because they think him liberal,
and there are Republicans who vote for him for the same reason.
There are Democrats who vote against him because he is not au
implacable, pig-headed Bourbon. In South Carolina there is such
a thing as a liberal Democrat, who in time will make his voice
heard against the eternal rule of the " first families " in that State.
The Mahone party in Virginia, I am free to say, would be a good-
enough Republican party for me if I lived in Virginia. I do not
know much about the Virginia State debt, but I know that the
Readjusters are for a vote for every voter, aud a spelling-book
for every child; and that is all the Republicanism that is abso
lutely needed in the South just now. In Kentucky, the regular
Republicans say that the party is slowly gaining ground In
North Carolina, salvation must come through the Republican
organization, when it comes.
Straws show which way the wind blows, and I should say that
in the South the sign of hide-bound Bourbonism was a still cling
ing belief in that hoary humbug, Jefferson Davis. A man who
believes in Jeff. Davis is incapable of learning anything. The
style of head that holds Jeff. Davis has no more rooms to let.
Judging from indications, the Jeff. Davis party is in the minority.
I suppose in stores, offices, and other places, I saw the portraits
of Lee and Jackson a hundred times. I did not see Jeff. Davis
once. I suppose his portrait is hung up in the family shrines of
the bitter-hearted class of old women to which Davis himself be
longs. My business in the South was entirely with adult males.
If you desire to consult a thermometer of public sentiment in the
South, just note whether Jeff. Davis is rising or falling.
I found a great deal of pride and reverence felt for Lee, Jack-
sou, Joseph E. Johnston, and other Confederate generals. The
struggles of the Confederate army were spoken of with much
exaltation of feeling. This from men who fought and suffered in
the Confederate armies is very natural. So far from censuring
it, I think Northern people ought to accept it as proper enough.
It really has nothing to do with the final settlement of questions.
If a political revolution ever occurs in the South, it will be led

160 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
by ex-Confederate soldiers. I regard the ex-military element
quite as hopeful as any to be found in the South.
As far as the colored people are concerned, I should say that,
save in South Carolina, where their vote is not counted, they
have votes, but no direct political influence. They do not appear
to have the faculty of self-organization. If the Bourbons had
sense enough to put some colored men on their ticket, they could
seriously break into the Republican ranks in local and State
elections. The colored folks appear to be as sheep without a
shepherd. To sum up, the States I have visited are quiet in a political
sense. I should judge that, save in South Carolina, the colored
man has a fair show to vote, if nothing more. I think there is
a growing idea of political toleration ; for the evidence of it, I
refer to past letters. I saw little of the rural country, and it is
quite possible that political bigotry still exists there. I did not
happen to see it.
If it is asked to what cause I mainly attribute this improve
ment, I should say, the utter defeat of Tilden in 1876 and Han
cock in 1880. The Southern people are easily elated, and arrogant
in the hour of victory. The first battle of Bull Ruu was an
awful disaster to the South for this reason. A Bull Run in 1876
or 1880 would have produced similar results. The South, to
change the Scripture, would have thought that new things had
passed away and all thiugs had become old, and would have
attempted to turn back the clock, with the result of bitterly ex
asperating the North, and infinitely injuring the people of the
South, white and black. I believe firmly in the final salvation
of the Southern soul, but I would not yet allow the Devil any
liberties with the convert.
Next to the belief among the Southern people that the spine of
the great National Democratic party of the country has been
hopelessly injured, I should place as an effectual means of grace
the daily-increasing intercourse with Northern people in the way
of business. We of Kansas do not go South ; we have a good-
enough country of our own to attend to; but the number of
Eastern people who go South is astonishing. In the winter,

CONCLUSIONS. 161
Florida is full of them, and they travel very leisurely on their
homeward journey, stopping here and there. The mountains of
North Carolina are full of tourists. Millions of Northern capi
tal are now invested in the South, and the people have no partic
ular occasion to quarrel with men who are bringing money into
their country. Such men are usually Republicans, and will say
their say. Northern newspapers are not as generally sold in the
farther South as I could wish, but they are working in. The
Southern, press, too, is growing, and it is noticeable that the
papers which are most read are such as the Louisville Courier-
Journal and the Atlanta Constitution — papers raised up by Prov
idence to tell the Southern donkey politician that he is not a lion,
by any manner of means.
I heard very little vaporing in the South. Nobody talked
about the "Southern gentleman, sah," which made me believe
the more strongly in his existence. I judge John Edwards's
"knights" and "paladins" are not scattered through the brush
as plentifully as in the old time. There has been a great change
in the Southern vocabulary.
The vital question will of course be asked : Is there among the
mass of the white people of the South any real love for the Union?
In reply I should answer, very little, as we of the North under
stand it. I judge as much as anything by the absence of the
National flag. I do not remember seeing it, except in one in
stance, waving anywhere — except on vessels and United States
buildings. I have mentioned its absence at the Augusta Schiitz
enfest and in the parade of the military company at Columbia."
If they loved it they would hang it upon the outer walls. The
signs of attachment to the late Confederacy are disheartening
only as they supplant attachment to the Government and the
cause which is not lost. I did not hear a Southern Democrat say
that he felt himself an American rather than a Georgian or a
South Carolinian. The universal custom of wearing a gray uni
form whenever any uniform is worn, is another mark of a narrow
idea of what one's country is. The South is yet a long way off.
I do not expect the South to worship John Brown, or even Charles
Sumner. I mean that the Southerner has not vet learned to take

162 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
pride and hope in this Nation, in which his interest is as great as
that of a Northern man.
I found a general kindly feeling prevailing in regard to Presi
dent Garfield. I have no reason to hope that the President will
pay any attention to my advice, but I believe in the advice all
the same. He has it in his power to help the South, to keep
it on the up grade, and I hope he will do it. I believe the fact
is generally accepted in the South that he is a Republican Presi
dent, and he is not expected to act as anything else. He is not
expected to appoint Democrats to office, but there is a choice of
Republicans. If I were President, I would, in the distribution
of patronage in the South, appoint or reappoint native Republi
cans, especially men who served in the Confederate army, and
wheu the war was over owned up like little men. I should stand
by Longstreet, and Gen. McLaws of Savannah. I think it un
grateful to discard men who breasted the storm of popular hatred
in defense of the good cause. I am free to say that I would not
have endured what they did for all the offices in America. The
supply of native Republicans exhausted, I should take Northern
Republicans who have been in the South for some years, engaged
not in politics but business. I should appoint colored men to
such positions as they could fill with credit to themselves, the
good of the public service, and without giving offense to all the
white people without regard to party. I do not know of any
principle that requires the appointment of any man, white or
black, to a position for which he is not competent, and who irri
tates the public with whom he has to transact business.
So much for the political situation in the South. It is improv
ing, but yet needs improvement.
Of the improvement of the South financially, and in every
business sense, I have spoken in every letter I have written. It
is really a noble country, and its resources are so varied. I know
that it can be developed.
All the old fallacies of slavery are exploded. The idea that
the black man will not work except as a slave, has gone to the
dogs. He does work. The old theory that cotton cannot be
raised by free labor, is disputed by the bales of cotton themselves.

CONCLUSIONS. 163
That the negro must have an overseer, is confessed nonsense. He
does best as a renter, when he is thrown on his own responsibility,
and makes or loses, according to his industry or lack of it. That
the white man cannot work in the Southern climate, is idiocy.
He does work. A man who can stand the fires of an iron-mill
in Alabama is not likely to perish in the sun. The Confederate
soldier was a most enduring specimen of manhood, and stood the
climate; and where a man can carry a knapsack in summer he
can plow. The Scotch Highlander is the best soldier of any race
or color that ever fought under a tropical sun. There is nothing
the matter with his endurance. The white man of the South can
work if he will. I hope he will.
Republicans have always relied on popular education as an
ally, and the free school is certainly becoming a popular institu
tion in the South. The attendance of both whites and blacks is
yearly increasing. Let us all take courage.
I think the black man has a future in the South. He will al
ways live there, and I think will prosper. He will do the work,
and as the country improves he will have more work to do. In
the cities his children are supplied with the best educational ap
pliances. We have no such colored schools in Kansas. He has
•good churches, too, and a trifle too many of them and too expen
sive; and I think here and there a preacher could be profitably dis
pensed with. The Southern white churches made a great mistake
in allowing the colored people to leave them. They say they
would go, but probably religious Bourbonism had something to
do with it.
The theory has been advanced, and I am inclined to believe it,
that the colored race in the South has divided into two classes —
one moving upward and the other down. The former class are
acquiring property and consideration; the latter are in danger of
beiug swept from the earth by their own vices. The low-down
black man is very low, that is certain; but decidedly the worst
place of resort for drunken colored people of both sexes I saw in
the South was kept by white men.
The South must go on, and she will, as surely as there is a
Power in the world thac works for final aud eternal good. I do

164 SOUTHERN LETTERS.
not believe that there are Bourbons enough in the world to stop
the course of industry and prosperity. "Sovereign, just and
mighty death," as Raleigh calls it, is doing some good, and the
race of statesmen who made the- South what she was before the
war, and then dragged her into the war, like a ruffian who, not
satisfied with bludgeoning his victim, would fain cut her throat
afterward, are dying off. God certainly will not send another
generation of such. All the North has to do is to stand by the
party which never had anything to do with slavery or rebellion,
and await the issue with patience, while the South recovers from
the effects of both slavery and rebellion.
Were I obliged to sleep, like Rip Van Winkle, I would choose
for the place of my long repose some high mountain in 'the South,
so that when I awoke I might see a "New South" indeed; so that
I might see fields where now is wilderness, and palaces where
now are huts; so that I might see the white school-house by the
wayside, and the church upon the hill, and the mill beside the
stream; so that I might see above all, and everywhere, a banner
now tolerated, but not loved, although it represents all that man,
North or South, really holds dear and precious ; .so that I might
see standing, as now, the beautiful monuments of the Confederate
dead, but standing beside them the figure of him who, could he*
have had his dearest wish, would have saved the effusion of a
drop of Confederate blood. When Lincoln stands in the market
place, then the South will indeed have become " new," and strong
and happy as well.