Historical voices

They were imbedded in constitutions, they were walled about by the accretions of a century’s laws, they were part and parcel of the accepted faith of the people.

But all the concomitants and outgrowths of slavery and State sovereignty, doctrines which lie at the foundation of secession, and beliefs which reject the possibility of free negro labor, or the prudence of conferring legal rights upon…

So much they gave up, because they realized that they must.

Three-fifths of them still insisted that slavery was an institution beneficial to both races, if not indeed indispensable to Southern prosperity; but they appealed to war to sustain it, and they yielded to the logic of accomplished facts…

Most of them honestly said that they still believed it a constitutional right; but that having appealed to the verdict of arms, instead of the verdict of the Supreme Court, they were bound to acquiesce in the decision which the trial by…

He was blind, therefore, who failed to see that any government then set in motion by the votes of these Rebel Louisianans, must be composed of Rebel officers, chosen because they were known to be in full sympathy with their Rebel electors.

No reorganization was possible on a white basis which should not leave these men in full control of the civil government by an overwhelming majority.

But the great mass of the adult white male population of New Orleans (nine-tenths, indeed, of the white male population of Louisiana) were in sympathy, or, by active efforts, supporters of the rebellion.

I do not use the word Rebel as a term of reproach—these people themselves would hardly regard it in that light—but simply as the best distinctive term by which they can be accurately described to Northern readers.

We are all washed under, and the most of us only live peaceable lives by the sufferance of our Rebel neighbors.

They wanted to make the best for themselves of a bad bargain.

The men who were to legislate safely for the Freedmen were the men from whom the national victory extorted freedom to the slave.

In Alabama and throughout the greater portion of the Gulf States, the men who were taking the offices were the men who had just been relieved of duty under their Rebel commissions.

Now, when we sought for Union men to re-organize civil government there were none to be found.

Then we’ll show you who’s going to govern this country.

We’ll unite with the opposition up North, and between us we’ll make a majority.

We acknowledge the whipping, but we don’t kiss the hand that gave it—not by a d——d sight!

The North would be politically a power divided against itself; the South would be a unit, and it would rule again as it always had ruled.

The North, we were told, must have the Southern trade; and with that trade it was to be corrupted.

Now he was as warm and unrestrained without the introduction as he used to be after it.

Formerly a Southerner was moody, and resentful of approaches from Yankee-speaking strangers, unless they came properly introduced.

Everywhere, in the throng of cotton buyers, around the reeking bars, at the public tables, in the crowded places of amusement—two classes, crowded and commingled—Northern speculators and Rebel soldiers.

The “new blood of the South” was, of a truth, leaping in right riotous pulsations through the veins of the last captured city of the coast.

In the Spring of 1865, when I had last seen Mobile, it was a city of ruins; warehouses ruined by “the great explosion,” merchants ruined by the war, politicians ruined by the abject defeat, women bankrupt in heart and hope.