Embittered feelings, of course, follow all such controversies. The negro feels himself aggrieved by the petty spites of the men who can no longer hold him enslaved; the master feels himself outraged that one over whom his power had been so absolute should “go to putting on airs this way” in his very face. Against the negro troops, who alone kept these smouldering elements from breaking forth, the hatred of the community was especially intense.[62] Some timorous souls had great fears of a negro outbreak at Christmas, and even our officers believed that, in some cases, the negroes were distributing arms, to be used to enforce their claims to their masters’ lands. There was not a particle of foundation for the fears. They got arms, indeed, but what of it? Was not every man armed? Could you brush closely against any ragged neighbor without being bruised by his concealed revolver? People had not got over regarding negroes as something other than men; and when it appeared that they were imitating the example of the whites, and preparing to protect themselves, forsooth we had straightway cock and bull stories of impending negro insurrections and a war of races! The heel of the destroyer had been on Jackson too; and solitary chimneys and shattered ruins attested the thoroughness with which the work was done. The same recuperative power was not displayed, with which the stranger was so impressed at Atlanta or Selma. The Mississippians seemed more listless. In traveling several hundred miles in the State, I did not see a white man at work in the fields, or very many at work anywhere or anyway. Cotton, however, continued to come out—a satisfactory proof that the “niggers” had still been able to do something. Piles of it were stored near the railroad; and through the interior one noticed an occasional wagon drawn by a couple of oxen, with, perhaps, a mule in front, bringing a few bales to the nearest station. The “Legislature,” in session in Jackson, seemed to me a body of more than average ability. Leading Mississippians, however, even of the ultra type, denounced it as impracticable. There could be no question of its rebellious antecedents. Scarcely a dozen, probably not half so many of its members, could be named who did not in some way actively countenance or support the war. But they were all Union men now; that is, as one of them tersely stated it, “we are whipped, can’t get out, and want now to get back on the very best terms we can possibly make, and with the least possible loss from our failure!” The tone of the Mississippi papers, like the tone of the Mississippi talk, was bitter. A Jackson journal soundly berated anybody who should presume to insist that the President required the admission of negro testimony in the courts. Mississippi, at any rate, should not be crawling to the President’s feet to ask what she should do. She should walk erect, assert her rights, and demand their recognition! And a Vicksburg paper spoke its views thus: