Historical voices

But to talk of any genuine Union sentiment, any affection for the Union, any intention to go one step further out of the old paths that led to the rebellion, than they are forced out is preposterous.

They are all Union men, in the sense that they submit, (since they can’t help themselves,) and want to make all they can out of their submission.

For many years they will be the hardest people in the civilized world to persuade into insurrection.

Wait a little while, and as they get settled, and see something of the rewards of steady industry, they’ll be as eager to accumulate and save, as any other class of laborers.

Won’t a fair day’s wages, in the long run, be sure to bring a fair day’s work?

Must the poor negroes prove the vent for this rage that dare not reach to higher objects?

These people have discovered that they must tolerate the opinions of others, but their intolerant spirits have not yet been sufficiently disciplined to it; and so it happens that sometimes, now, their utter impotence only serves to…

Such waste and destruction all about us; and still these insatiable men—these handsome tigers—want more conciliation!

As a member of the Georgia Convention, entertaining the views I then did, I opposed the immediate secession of the State from the Union, and used every effort in my power to prevent it, until I became satisfied that a controlling majority…

Everything dangerous to the settled order of things, everything looking to an establishment of the results of the war, or tending to an indorsement of the political grounds on which the North suppressed the rebellion, is to be abhorred and…

If that Confederate debt isn’t honestly due, no debt in the world ever was.

But you pardon Howell Cobb and every other leading secessionist; they at once become the natural leaders in an overwhelmingly secessionist community; and we, through mistaken kindness of our own Government, are worse ostracized to-day, in…

We are in no sense upheld or encouraged by the Government; public sentiment is against us because we opposed the war; or, as they said, because we were tories; but, when the Government triumphed, we were secure because we were on the…

The people were infected with the mania of city building; and landholders gravely explained to you how well their plantations, miles distant, would cut up into corner lots.

Passing about the dark, crooked streets of Atlanta after night, unaccompanied and unarmed, was worse than attempting a similar exploration of the Five Points, in New York, ten years ago.

More tangible evidence of the war’s demoralization was to be found in the alarming insecurity of property and even of life.

What is more remarkable, the men who were bringing a city out of this desert of shattered brick—raising warehouses from ruins, and hastily establishing stores in houses half finished and unroofed—were not Yankees, but pure Southerners.

Time and effort will lead the negro up to intelligent manhood, but I almost doubt if it will be possible to ever lift this ‘white trash’ into respectability.

Moreover, no trick of words can make plain the scene in and around one of these habitations; no fertility of language can embody the simple facts for a Northern mind; and the case is one in which even seeing itself is scarcely believing.

Such filthy poverty, such foul ignorance, such idiotic imbecility, such bestial instincts, such groveling desires, such mean longings; you would question my veracity as a man if I were to paint the pictures I have seen!

These three ideas—or, let me say, shadows of ideas—do not make the creature a man, but they light him out of the bounds of brutedom.

However poor or ignorant, or unclean, or improvident he may be, I never yet found a negro who had not at least a vague desire for a better condition, an undefined longing for something called freedom, a shrewd instinct of self-preservation.

Give East Tennessee her long-sought railroad connection with Cincinnati and the North, and the emigration thither from all the over-crowded localities of the Middle States can not fail to be very large.

There are few large planters; small farms are easily purchased; the community is made up of men not ashamed to labor for themselves, and not disposed to sneer at the emigrant who fences his own fields and does his own plowing.