Report on the Condition of the South | Page 6

regard to the government's friends and
agents, and the people of the loyal States generally. I mentioned above
that all organized attacks upon our military forces stationed in the south
have ceased; but there are still localities where it is unsafe for a man
wearing the federal uniform or known as an officer of the government

to be abroad outside of the immediate reach of our garrisons. The
shooting of single soldiers and government couriers was not
unfrequently reported while I was in the south, and even as late as the
middle of September, Major Miller, assistant adjutant general of the
commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau in Alabama, while on an
inspecting tour in the southern counties of that State, found it difficult
to prevent a collision between the menacing populace and his escort.
His wagon-master was brutally murdered while remaining but a short
distance behind the command. The murders of agents of the Freedmen's
Bureau have been noticed in the public papers. These, and similar
occurrences, however, may be looked upon as isolated cases, and ought
to be charged, perhaps, only to the account of the lawless persons who
committed them.
But no instance has come to my notice in which the people of a city or
a rural district cordially fraternized with the army. Here and there the
soldiers were welcomed as protectors against apprehended dangers; but
general exhibitions of cordiality on the part of the population I have not
heard of. There are, indeed, honorable individual exceptions to this rule.
Many persons, mostly belonging to the first of the four classes above
enumerated, are honestly striving to soften down the bitter feelings and
traditional antipathies of their neighbors; others, who are acting more
upon motives of policy than inclination, maintain pleasant relations
with the officers of the government. But, upon the whole, the soldier of
the Union is still looked upon as a stranger, an intruder--as the
"Yankee," "the enemy." It would be superfluous to enumerate instances
of insult offered to our soldiers, and even to officers high in command;
the existence and intensity of this aversion is too well known to those
who have served or are now serving in the south to require proof. In
this matter the exceptions were, when I was there, not numerous
enough to affect the rule. In the documents accompanying this report
you will find allusions confirming this statement. I would invite special
attention to the letter of General Kirby Smith, (accompanying
document No. 9.)
This feeling of aversion and resentment with regard to our soldiers may,
perhaps, be called natural. The animosities inflamed by a four years'

war, and its distressing incidents, cannot be easily overcome. But they
extend beyond the limits of the army, to the people of the north. I have
read in southern papers bitter complaints about the unfriendly spirit
exhibited by the northern people--complaints not unfrequently flavored
with an admixture of vigorous vituperation. But, as far as my
experience goes, the "unfriendly spirit" exhibited in the north is all
mildness and affection compared with the popular temper which in the
south vents itself in a variety of ways and on all possible occasions. No
observing northern man can come into contact with the different classes
composing southern society without noticing it. He may be received in
social circles with great politeness, even with apparent cordiality; but
soon he will become aware that, although he may be esteemed as a man,
he is detested as a "Yankee," and, as the conversation becomes a little
more confidential and throws off ordinary restraint, he is not
unfrequently told so; the word "Yankee" still signifies to them those
traits of character which the southern press has been so long in the habit
of attributing to the northern people; and whenever they look around
them upon the traces of the war, they see in them, not the consequences
of their own folly, but the evidences of "Yankee wickedness." In
making these general statements, I beg to be understood as always
excluding the individual exceptions above mentioned.
It is by no means surprising that prejudices and resentments, which for
years were so assiduously cultivated and so violently inflamed, should
not have been turned into affection by a defeat; nor are they likely to
disappear as long as the southern people continue to brood over their
losses and misfortunes. They will gradually subside when those who
entertain them cut resolutely loose from the past and embark in a career
of new activity on a common field with those whom they have so long
considered their enemies. Of this I shall say more in another part of this
report. But while we are certainly inclined to put upon such things the
most charitable construction, it remains nevertheless true, that as long
as these feelings exist