The South As It Is: 1865–1866

Chapter 32

XXXII PARISH OF ORLEANS, LA., February 17, 1866 I WISHED after leaving New Orleans to visit Baton Rouge, and, for the sake of seeing the country and the people between these two cities, I decided to make the journey on foot. My valise and overcoat, therefore, were sent forward by express, and I carried with me only a very light equipment of such things as would be indispensably necessary during a week's walk. I reached the little suburb of Carrollton before twelve o'clock, and there enquired for the road to Baton Rouge. "The river," everybody answered with a stare; "a boat; nobody went by land," and at last they told me to take to the levee. Accordingly I climbed the bank and was fairly on my way. At the end of the first five hundred yards a colored soldier ordered me to halt, and referred me to his officer for the reason. The lieutenant said that he had orders to keep all Jews and peddlers out of the camps; the men were being paid off. Satisfying him that I was not a peddler, he suffered me to pass on, and for a little way I walked in company with two Negro women who were going into the country to make a Sunday visit to their relatives. They talked about the capture of New Orleans, the cannonade at the forts, the first appearance of the fleet, and the fright among the citizens. That was the day, one said, when them rebels run all about. Yes, said the other, that was the time when the stripes come off'n their pantaloons! They told her the d--n Yankees had come, and the very first thing they'd blow up the city and kill all the people. They wouldn't kill her, she told 'em. She knowed she'd never done nothin' but work hard; not her, not since they done sell 319 320 John Richard Dennett her out 0' old Virginny. They told her a heap more'n she believed. Same as they said that Confederate flag never should come down off'n the Custom House; the man that laid a hand on it should die sure. But she noticed the Yankee flag went up very quick. As for herself, her mind was all made up to run for them same cannon that talk' down the river, if the Yankees didn't come up. These recollections the women dwelt on with much apparent enjoyment, as is usual with the Negroes whenever they talk of Federal successes. By-and-bye we came upon another guard, and I went on alone, leaving the soldiers examining the baskets of the women to see if they contained whiskey, and soon I fell into the company of a young man who, after finding out my business, informed me that he was a teacher employed by the Freedmen's Bureau, and urged me to spend the night with him. He would show me a lusus naturlP, he said. He would introduce me to Mr. B--, a man born in the South, once the owner of several slaves, afterwards for a long time an overseer, who was not only a Unionist, but actually believed that the Negro was the equal, and in many respects the superior, of the white man, and should be allowed to vote. Mr. B-- was manager of the plantation he was living on, which was only twenty-five or thirty acres further up, and I would find him very hospitable. I consented to go with him, and as we walked along he bade me remark that the surface of the river was eight or ten feet higher than the land, and that the field-ditches all ran not towards it but away from it. The country along the Mississippi for many miles above and below New Orleans and Baton Rouge was a narrow strip of good land, with the river on one side of it and a swamp on the other. Then each plantation was a strip of land, the most of it worthless, extending back, sometimes many miles, into the swamp water; and in estimating the size and value of the farm the important element entering into the calculation was always the number of acres fronting on the levee. The country is exclusively agricultural . It is customary, therefore, in measuring length to use the measure applied to the farms, and to speak of points upon the road as being so many acres...