AFTER THE STORM. CHAPTER XXIII. FREEDMEN IN TENNESSEE. Kicking a dead dragon, with other diversions - My hat is measured — I am introduced to King Cotton. No lack of employment for coloured or colourless citizens of Memphis, but all heartily at work, and getting through as much business as is done in any place of equal size! This was my conclusion, after seeing the "Bluff City" during the last days of November, 1865. Memphis lies in the south-west corner of Tennessee, far from that Unionist section of the State where Andrew Johnson worked his way to promiFor many miles round the Chickasaw Bluffs, cotton has been, and still is, the one important product. No rice or sugar is produced hereabouts; no nence. VOL. II. B AFTER THE STORM. CHAPTER XXIII. FREEDMEN IN TENNESSEE. Kicking a dead dragon, with other diversions — My hat is measured - I am introduced to King Cotton. No lack of employment for coloured or colourless citizens of Memphis, but all heartily at work, and getting through as much business as is done in any place of equal size! This was my conclusion, after seeing the “Bluff City" during the last days of November, 1865. Memphis lies in the south-west corner of Tennessee, far from that Unionist section of the State where Andrew Johnson worked his way to prominence. For many miles round the Chickasaw Bluffs, cotton has been, and still is, the one important product. No rice or sugar is produced hereabouts; no VOL. II. 2 B lumbering or stock-raising occupies the people. It is a cotton country, and was, until recent changes, entirely dependent upon slave labour; whilst Memphis is a cotton city, and was largely interested in the local slave trade. This then was a district, both country and town, in which to appreciate the revolution that had taken place since 1860. A glorious revolution, though dearly purchased-I mean the change from slavery to freedom! Here there should be a word of explanation for the benefit of such persons in England as have been led away, by their admiration of Confederate pluck, from a proper English stand-point in regard to slavery. However much some among us may have sympathized with the weaker side in a struggle, because it was the weaker side, and whatever doubts may be entertained in regard to the productiveness of Southern plantations under a system of free labour, there can be no question that an incubus has been removed from Southern society by the abolition of the "peculiar institution." Blacks will be enabled for the future to contract legal marriages, and to learn to read. Whites will have great temptations to cruelty and other sins removed from them. Let us have done with all shallow sophistries about a great wrong, and half-fledged excuses for the same, invented because its champions happened to fight bravely. Slavery was an accursed thing, and we may thank Heaven that it is over. |