Report on the Condition of the South | Page 3

extensive in
the different States I visited. As they naturally depended somewhat
upon the time the military had had to occupy and explore the country,
as well as upon the progressive development of things generally, they
improved from day to day as I went on, and were best in the States I
visited last. It is owing to this circumstance that I cannot give as
detailed an account of the condition of things in South Carolina and
Georgia as I am able to give with regard to Louisiana and Mississippi.
Instead of describing the experiences of my journey in chronological
order, which would lead to endless repetitions and a confused mingling
of the different subjects under consideration, I propose to arrange my
observations under different heads according to the subject matter. It is
true, not all that can be said of the people of one State will apply with
equal force to the people of another; but it will be easy to make the
necessary distinctions when in the course of this report they become of
any importance. I beg to be understood when using, for the sake of
brevity, the term "the southern people," as meaning only the people of

the States I have visited.
CONDITION OF THINGS IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE CLOSE
OF THE WAR.
In the development of the popular spirit in the south since the close of
the war two well-marked periods can be distinguished. The first
commences with the sudden collapse of the confederacy and the
dispersion of its armies, and the second with the first proclamation
indicating the "reconstruction policy" of the government. Of the first
period I can state the characteristic features only from the accounts I
received, partly from Unionists who were then living in the south,
partly from persons that had participated in the rebellion. When the
news of Lee's and Johnston's surrenders burst upon the southern
country the general consternation was extreme. People held their breath,
indulging in the wildest apprehensions as to what was now to come.
Men who had occupied positions under the confederate government, or
were otherwise compromised in the rebellion, run before the federal
columns as they advanced and spread out to occupy the country, from
village to village, from plantation to plantation, hardly knowing
whether they wanted to escape or not. Others remained at their homes
yielding themselves up to their fate. Prominent Unionists told me that
persons who for four years had scorned to recognize them on the street
approached them with smiling faces and both hands extended. Men of
standing in the political world expressed serious doubts as to whether
the rebel States would ever again occupy their position as States in the
Union, or be governed as conquered provinces. The public mind was so
despondent that if readmission at some future time under whatever
conditions had been promised, it would then have been looked upon as
a favor. The most uncompromising rebels prepared for leaving the
country. The masses remained in a state of fearful expectancy.
This applies especially to those parts of the country which were within
immediate reach of our armies or had previously been touched by the
war. Where Union soldiers had never been seen and none were near,
people were at first hardly aware of the magnitude of the catastrophe,
and strove to continue in their old ways of living.

Such was, according to the accounts I received, the character of that
first period. The worst apprehensions were gradually relieved as day
after day went by without bringing the disasters and inflictions which
had been vaguely anticipated, until at last the appearance of the North
Carolina proclamation substituted new hopes for them. The
development of this second period I was called upon to observe on the
spot, and it forms the main subject of this report.
RETURNING LOYALTY.
It is a well-known fact that in the States south of Tennessee and North
Carolina the number of white Unionists who during the war actively
aided the government, or at least openly professed their attachment to
the cause of the Union, was very small. In none of those States were
they strong enough to exercise any decisive influence upon the action
of the people, not even in Louisiana, unless vigorously supported by
the power of the general government. But the white people at large
being, under certain conditions, charged with taking the preliminaries
of "reconstruction" into their hands, the success of the experiment
depends upon the spirit and attitude of those who either attached
themselves to the secession cause from the beginning, or, entertaining
originally opposite views, at least followed its fortunes from the time
that their States had declared their separation from the Union.
The first southern men of this class with whom I came into contact
immediately after my arrival in