CHAPTER XLVII. FROM CORINTH TO MEMPHIS. Ar daylight we were running through the level lower counties of West Tennessee. This is by far the most fertile divis ion of the State. Its soil is a rich black mould, adapted to the culture of cotton, tobacco, and grains, which are produced in great abundance. Occasionally in the dim dawn, and later in the forenoon, we passed out-door fires about which homeless negroes had passed the night, and around which they still sat or stood, in wretched plight, but picturesque and cheerful, — old men and women, young children, and tall girls in tattered frocks, warming their hands, and watching with vacant curiosity the train as it shot by. "That's freedom! that 's what the Yankees have done for 'em!" was the frequent exclamation that fell from the lips of Southern ladies and gentlemen looking out on these miserable groups from the car windows. 66 66 They 'll all be dead before spring." Niggers can't take care of themselves." "The Southern people were always their best friends. How I pity them! don't you?" "Oh, yes, of course I pity them! How much better off they were when they were slaves!" With scarcely one exception there was to be detected in these expressions a grim exultation. The slave-owners, hav ing foretold that freedom would prove fatal to the bondman, experienced a satisfaction in seeing their predictions come true. The usual words of sympathy his condition suggested had all the hardness and hollowness of cant. Those who really felt COMMERCE OF MEMPHIS. 333 commiseration for his sufferings spoke of them in very different tones of voice. which would have been a occasion been St. Patrick's But there was another side to the picture. At every stopping-place, throngs of well-dressed blacks crowded upon the train. They were going to Memphis to "buy Christmas," as the purchase of gifts for that gay season is termed. Happier faces I have never seen. There was not a drunken or disorderly person among them, remarkable circumstance had the day, or the Fourth of July, and had these been Irish or white American laborers. They were all comfortably clad, — many of them elegantly, in clothes they had purchased with money earned out of bondage. They paid with pride the full fares exacted of free people, instead of the half fares formerly demanded for slaves. They had still left in their purses ample means to "buy Christmas" for their friends and relatives left at home. They occupied cars by themselves which they filled with the noise of cheerful conversation and laughter. And nobody said of them, "That is freedom! That is what the Yankees have done for them!" Past cotton-fields and handsome mansions in the pleasant suburbs, we ran into Memphis, a city which surprised me by its beautiful situation and commercial activity. Memphis stands on a high bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. It is the emporium of West Tennessee, Eastern Arkansas, and Northern Mississippi, and is the most important town between New Orleans and St. Louis. Its growth has been rapid. Laid out in 1820, its population in 1840 was 8,839; in 1850, 16,000; in 1860, 50,000. Its present population is not known; but it has immensely increased since the last census, and is still increasing. I was told that, at the time of my visit, the building of nineteen hundred new houses had been contracted for, and that only labor was wanted to complete them. In the year ending September 1st, 1860, 400,000 bales of cotton were shipped from this port. During seven months of the year 1864,- May to November inclusive, the shipments amounted to only 34,316 bales. In 1865, from May, the month when the cotton released by the fall of the Confederacy began to pour ir, to December 22d, the date of my visit, the shipments were 138,615 bales. These last figures, furnished me by the government assessors, do not include the government cotton, which passed untaxed, and a considerable quantity 'which came to Memphis after being taxed in interior districts.1 The view of the commerce of Memphis from the esplanade overlooking the landing is one of the most animated imaginable. You stand on the brow of the bluff, with the city behind you, and the river below, its broad, sweeping current severing the States. From the foot of the bluff projects an extensive shelving bank, with an understratum of sandstone; forming a natural landing, commonly called a "levee," although no levee is here, the celebrated levee at New Orleans having impressed its name upon all landings of any importance up the river. You look down upon a superb array of steamers, lying along the shore; their elegantly ornamented pilot-houses and lofty tiers of decks supported by slender pillars fully entitling them to be named floating palaces. From the tower-like pipes issue black clouds of smoke, with here and there rising white puffs of steam. The levee is crowded with casks and cotton bales, covering acres of ground. Up and down the steep way cut through the brow of the bluff, affording access to the landing from the town, a stream of drays is passing and repassing. Freights are going aboard, or coming ashore. Drays are loading and unloading. Bales of cotton and hay, casks, boxes, sacks of grain, lumber, household furniture, supplies for plantations, mules, ploughs, wagons, are tumbled, rolled, carried, tossed, driven, pushed, and dragged, by an army of laborers, from the levee along the broad wooden stages to the steamers' decks. The movement, the seeming confusion, the rattling of drays, the ringing of boats' bells, the horrible snort of the steam-whistle, the singing calls of the deck hands heaving at a 1 Since March 15th, 1864, the government tax on cotton had been two cents a pound. The average weight of a bale, which was latterly 460 or 465 pounds, is now 500 pounds. The tax on a bale was accordingly about ten dollars. There were in Memphis at that time 30,000 bales. SCENE ON THE LEVEE. 335 rope or lifting some heavy weight, the multitudinous shouts, and wild, fantastic gesticulations of gangs of negroes driving on board a drove of frightened mules, the voices of the teamsters, the arriving and departing packets, drift-wood going down stream, and skiffs paddling up, the whole forms an astonishing and amusing scene. Then over the immense brown sand-bar of the Arkansas shore, and behind its interminable line of dark forest boundaries, the sun goes down in a tranquil sea of fire, reflected in the river, - a wonderfully contrasting picture. Here all is life and animation; there all is softness and peace. Evening comes, and adds picturesque effect to the scene. The levee is lighted by great smoking and flaring flambeaux. A grate swinging in a socket on the end of a pole is filled with bituminous coal and wood, the blaze of which is enlivened by flakes of oil-soaked cotton, resembling fat, laid on from a bucket. The far-illuminating flame shoots up in the night, while the ignited oil from the grate falls in little streams of dripping blue fire into the river. Until late at night, and often all night, amid darkness and fog and rain, the loading of freight goes on by this lurid illumination. The laborers are chiefly negroes, whose ebon, dusky, sallow and tawny faces, lithe attitudes, and sublime carelessness of attire, heighten the pictorial effect of the scene. Bale after bale is tumbled from the drays, and rolled down the levee, a negro at each end of it holding and guiding it with cotton-hooks. At the foot of the landing it is seized by two other negroes, who roll it along the plank to its place on the deck of the upward-bound boat. Here are fifty men rolling barrels aboard, each at the other's heels; and yonder is a long straggling file of blacks crossing the stage from the levee to the steamer, each carrying a box on his shoulder. CHAPTER XLVIII. FREEDMEN'S SCHOOLS AND THE FREEDMEN'S BUREAU. By a census taken in June, 1865, there were shown to be 16,509 freedmen in Memphis. Of this number 220 were indigent persons, maintained, not by the city or the Bureau, but by the freed people themselves. During the past three years, colored benevolent societies in Memphis had contrib uted five thousand dollars towards the support of their own poor. There were three thousand pupils in the freedmen's schools. The teachers for these were furnished, here as elsewhere, chiefly by benevolent societies in the North. Such of the citizens as did not oppose the education of the blacks, were generally silent about it. Nobody said of it, "That is freedom! That is what the Yankees are doing for them!" Visiting these schools in nearly all the Southern States, I did not hear of the white people taking any interest in them. With the exception of here and there a man or woman inspired by Northern principles, I never saw or heard of a Southern citizen, male or female, entering one of those humble school-rooms. How often, thinking of this indifference, and watching the earnest, Christian labors of that little band of refined and sensitive men and women and girls, who had left cheerful homes in the North and voluntarily exposed themselves to privation and opprobrium, devoting their noblest energies to the work of educating and elevating the despised race, how often the stereotyped phrase occurred to me, "The Southern people were always their best friends!" The wonder with me was, how these "best friends" could be so utterly careless of the intellectual and moral interests of the freedmen. For my own part, I could never enter one of |