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
Then thou shalt say unto the son: We were Pharaoh’s bondmen in
Egypt; and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.
And the Lord shewed signs and wonders, great and sore, upon Egypt,
upon Pharaoh, and upon all his household before our eyes.
And He brought us out from thence, that He might bring us in, to
give us the land which He sware unto our fathers. (Deut. vi: 20, 21,
22 and 23.)
The newspapers which make these Scriptural applications, however, it
must be remembered, are the productions of the Northern editors who have
come down in the wake of the army, or of Southern journalists who have
stood ready to change with the tide.
This evening several of these gentlemen called on me, on board the boat.
One, of unkempt hair and clothes, and glittering eye, that even opium
could have made no brighter, and air at once of the gentleman and the
seedy Southerner, has already a wide Northern acquaintance. Who has not
read of “Doesticks,”—his adventures at Niagara, and his multifarious
encounters with a single glass of ale? “Doesticks” turns up in the flesh
in Savannah; and Mr. Mortimer Thompson assures us that he finds it pay
down here very well, if it “were not for this cursed blockhead of a
Commanding General!” Alas! how that ghost still stands in the way of the
enterprising journalist! Even Punch, with all his gibes, is overawed
before our conquering Northern Mars; and Doesticks groans under the
oppression of the uniform of the “Commanding General.” His circulation
is good, he avers (and there lurks no fun, for a wonder, beneath the
word), every Rebel takes the paper, because every Rebel wants to know
the news from the Yankees; and there is a better chance than ever
before, to spread Yankee notions among this people, _if_ it weren’t for
that cursed Commanding General! Advertising is good; Savannah merchants
and Northern sutlers compete for the trade of the army and the city;
news is plenty; there is no trouble about selling papers and coining
money; _if_ it weren’t for the perpetual interference of that blockhead
of a Commanding General! Northern men could succeed, even better as
journalists here than Southerners, because they have more industry, know
more about their business, and could make better papers, _if_ it weren’t
for that Commanding General! I believe, from a hint Gillmore has given,
that the Commanding General is about to be changed; and, from the bottom
of my heart, I congratulate Doesticks on it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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