Mobile talked, however, rather of plantations and cotton than of politics. Dozens of Northern men were on the streets, buying cotton on speculation. Every steamboat swelled the number of Yankees on the look-out for plantations, and of planters anxious to sell or lease. These planters were entirely honest in the idea which lies at the bottom of their convulsive grasp on slavery. They did not believe the negro would work without compulsion. Accordingly, they considered themselves absolutely destitute of reliable labor, and were anxious to be rid of their lands. The Yankees had faith in Sambo and propose to back their faith with abundant capital. If they succeed, their cotton fields are better than Nevada mines. If they fail—but a Yankee never fails in the long run. ----- Footnote 59: Sometimes as low as two or three dollars per acre. CHAPTER XL. Phases of Public Sentiment in New Orleans before Congress met. “Memphis is a more disloyal town than New Orleans,” said some one, during the winter, to General Butler. The cock-eye twinkled as the General answered: “I’m afraid, then, they never had the gospel preached to them in its purity, in Memphis!” That General Butler’s gospel was preached with all plainness of speech and freedom of utterance, in New Orleans, was a fact to which the whole city testified; but still, if Memphis was worse, it was bad indeed. “What about the Union party here?” I asked of a conspicuous gentleman, the day after my arrival. “There is no Union party, sir. We are all washed under, and the most of us only live peaceable lives by the sufferance of our Rebel neighbors.” I was constrained to confess the remark nearly if not quite just. Remove the military power, and the next day such men as ex-Marshal Graham, Benjamin F. Flanders, and Thomas J. Durant would live in New Orleans by bare sufferance. One of the newspapers soberly reproached Mr. Flanders with ingratitude to “the people of New Orleans,” who only drove him out of the city in 1861, when they might just as easily have hung him for his unconcealed hostility to the State! After this signal proof of personal kindness to him, the newspaper continued: “Mr. Flanders had the ingratitude to persist in stirring up strife in our midst, by presuming, contrary to the laws of the State and the feeling of our citizens, to make speeches to assemblages of negroes!” A charge to the grand jury by a city judge, published in the papers, menaced Flanders, Durant, and others of the ablest men of New Orleans, with imprisonment, for illegally addressing negro meetings! Was it any wonder that the few Unionists grew cautious, or that they complained of having been washed under by the returning Rebel tide?