After the War: A Southern Tour. May 1, 1865 to May 1, 1866Reid, Whitelaw
History
After the War: A Southern Tour. May 1, 1865 to May 1, 1866
Reid, Whitelaw
Plantation life; Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877); Southern States -- Description and travel
He was subsequently permitted to renew it. Shortly afterward, copying
and indorsing the foolish falsehood that Chief-Justice Chase had given
it as his opinion, since his Southern tour, that the negro race would
speedily root out the whites throughout the Gulf States, he thought it
wise and in good taste to say:
“The Judge, before he made his recent tour through the South, believed
that every white man within these States was too lazy to work, and,
instead of going out in the morning to get the meat that was desired
for dinner, would seize a young negro and pitch it into the
dinner-pot, to be served up for the post-prandial meal. By diligent
inquiry he found out that this was not true; and so he agreed to make
a compromise between his prepossessions and the facts he discovered in
his journey. The result is announced in the telegraphic report which
we reprint above. We do not eat little negroes, as he believed, but we
are so lazy that he seems to be fearful that, as we do not eat them,
we are bound, from our demoralized condition, to be presently eaten by
them. Well, this is what he has been teaching for many years—the right
of the negro to eat the white man.
“But why should a sensible man deal with such folly? The expression of
it shows with how little wisdom the world is governed, and shows,
moreover, how little wisdom there is in the fanatical hosts of which
Judge Chase is the most conspicuous member; and yet this man was feted
and caressed in his travels through the South, by Southern men and
Southern women.”
CHAPTER XXII.
Mobile Loyalists and Reconstructionists—Black and White.
The political situation in Mobile, in the early days of June, might be
briefly summed up. They were anxious for a re-establishment of civil
government that would release them from suspense about confiscation.
They expected severe punishment for their rebellion, as far as civil
rights were concerned, but were disposed to put the best face possible
upon affairs, ask for a good deal, and take whatever they could get.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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