the river to General Canby, and I had been recommended to him by some colored people. I said I would take them; and I sewed them up in my vest collar. Then I went to my master, and told him there was no chance for work since the Yankees had come in, and got a pass from him to go down to Mobile and find work. Tuesday night I started in a canoe, and paddled down the river. I dodged the Rebel guard when I could, but I was taken and searched twice, and got off by showing my master's pass. I paddled night and day, and got to Montgomery Hill on Sunday. There I saw Federal troops, and went ashore, and delivered myself up to the captain. He took me to General Lucas, who sent me with a cavalry escort to General Canby at Blakely."

For this service Mencer was paid three hundred dollars in greenbacks, which he had recently invested in a freedmen's newspaper," The Constitutionalist," just started in Mobile.

The negroes every where sympathized with the Federal cause, and served it when they could; but they would seldom betray a master who had been kind to them. Many stories were told me by the planters, illustrating this fidelity. Here is one, related by a gentleman of Lowndes County:

"The Yankees, when they left Selma, passed through this side of the river, on their way to Montgomery. The streams were high; that hindered them, and did us a sight of damage. I got the start of 'em, and run off my horses and mules. I gave a valise full of valuable papers to my negro boy Arthur, and told him to hide it. He took it, and put it in his trunk,threw out his own clothes to hide my property; for he did n't suppose the Yankees would be mean enough to rob niggers. But they did after they robbed my house, they went to the negro-quarters, and pilfered them. They found my valise, took out my old love-letters, and had a good time reading 'em for about an hour. Then they said to Arthur,

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:

You are your master's confidential servant, a'n't you ?' "Yes, sir,' says Arthur, proud of the distinction. "You know where he has gone with his mules and

horses?'

DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY.

"Yes, sir, I know all about it.'

439

"Jump on to this horse, and go and show us where he is, and we 'll give you five dollars.'

6

"I don't betray my master for no five dollars,' says Arthur. "Then,' says they, we'll shoot you if you won't show us!' And they put their carbines to his head.

"He never flinched. You can, shoot me if you like,' he says, but I sha'n't betray my master!'

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They were so struck with his courage and fidelity that they just let him go. So I saved my horses. He don't know it, but I'm going to give that boy a little farm and stock it for him."

Another planter in Lowndes County, an old man, told me his story, which will pass as a sample of a hundred others.

"The Yankees burnt my gin-house and screw. They did n't burn my house, for they made it a rule to destroy none but unoccupied dwellings. But they took everything from my house they wanted, and ruined about everything they did n't want. They mixed salt with the sugar, emptied it on the floor, and poured vinegar on it. They took a great fancy to a little grandson of mine. They gave him a watch, and told him they'd give him a little pony to ride if he would go to camp with them. I won't go with you,' says he, for you 're taking away all the flour that we make biscuit of." They carried him a little ways, when they stopped to burn a school-house. 'Here! You must n't burn that!' he says; for that's our school-house.' And they did n't burn it."

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"The Confederates used me as bad as the Yankees," said Mr. M, a planter whom I saw in Macon County. "They had taken twenty-six horses from me, when Wilson came and took thirty more. I ran off six of my best horses to a piny hill; and there I got on a high stump, and looked over the bushes, to see if the Yankees were coming. I wasn't near as happy as I'd been some days in my life! All I thought of was to get my horses off down one side of the hill, if I saw the raiders coming up the other."

This gentleman had been extensively engaged in the culture

of the grape, to which, by the way, the soil and climate of Alabama are admirably adapted. He had in his cellar twenty thousand dollars' worth of wine, when Wilson came. His wife caused it all to be destroyed, to prevent it from falling into the hands of the soldiers. The last cask was scarcely emptied when they arrived. "She thought she'd sooner deal with men sober than drunk," said M—. They treated her very well and took nothing from the house they didn't need."

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The route of Wilson's cavalry can be traced all the way, by the burnt gin-houses with which they dotted the country. At Montgomery they destroyed valuable founderies and machineshops, after causing the fugitive Rebels to burn a hundred thousand bales of cotton, with the warehouses which contained it. I followed their track through the eastern counties of Alabama, and afterwards recrossed it in Georgia, where the close of hostilities terminated this, the most extensive and destructive raid of the war.

THE CAPITOL OF THE CONFEDERACY.

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CHAPTER LXII.

NOTES ON ALABAMA.

MONTGOMERY, the capital of Alabama, and originally the capital of the Confederacy, is a town of broad streets and pleasant prospects, built on the rolling summits of high bluffs, on the left bank of the Alabama, one hundred miles above Selma. Before the war it had ten thousand inhabitants.

Walking up the long slope of the principal street, I came to the Capitol, a sightly edifice on a fine eminence. On a near view, the walls, which are probably of brick, disguised to imitate granite, had a cheap look; and the interior, especially the Chamber of Representatives in which the Confederate egg was hatched, appeared mean and shabby. This was a plain room, with semicircular rows of old desks covered with green baize exceedingly worn and foul. The floor carpet was faded and ragged. The glaring white-washed walls were offensive to the eye. The Corinthian pillars supporting the gallery were a cheap imitation of bronze. Over the Speaker's chair hung a sad-looking portrait of George Washington, whose solemn eyes could not, I suppose, forget the scenes which Treason and Folly had enacted there.

I remained two days at Montgomery; saw General Swayne and other officers of the Bureau; visited plantations in the vicinity; and conversed with prominent men of the surrounding counties. Both there, and on my subsequent journey through the eastern part of the State, I took copious notes, which I shall here compress within as small a space as possible.

I have already sketched the class of planters one meets on steamboats and railroads. These are generally men who mix with the world, read the newspapers, and feel the current of

progressive ideas. Off the main routes of travel, you meet with a different class, men who have never emerged from their obscurity, who do not read the newspapers, and who have not yet learned that the world moves. Many of them were antisecessionists; which fact renders them often the most troublesome people our officers now have to deal with. Claiming to be Union men, they cannot understand why their losses, whether of slaves or other property, which the war occasioned, should not be immediately made up to them by the govern

ment.

As in Mississippi and Tennessee, the small farmers in the Alabama legislature were the bitterest negro-haters in that body; while the more liberal-minded and enlightened members were too frequently controlled by a back-country constituency, whom they feared to offend by voting for measures which ignorance and obstinacy were sure to disapprove.

In Alabama, as in all the Southern States, the original secessionists were generally Democrats and the Union men Old Line Whigs. The latter opposed the revolution until it swept them away; when they often went into the war with a zeal which shamed the shirking policy of many who were very hot in bringing it on, and very cool in keeping out of it. I found them now the most hopeful men of the South. If a planter said to me, "I'm going to raise a big crop of cotton this year, my negroes are working finely," -I needed no other test that he belonged to this class.

Concerning the loyalty of the people I shall give the testimony of a very intelligent young man of Chambers County, whose story will in other respects prove instructive.

"I enlisted in the Confederate Army for one year; and before my time was up I was conscripted for two years; then, before these expired, I was conscripted for two more. I was made prisoner at Forest Hill, in Virginia, and taken to Harrisburg, in Pennsylvania. At the end of the war I was paroled. I knew that my people were ruined, and all my property gone. That consisted in twelve slaves; their labor supported me before the war, but now I had nothing but my own hands to