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10 In Georgia and Virginia December 1866 Sunday 23 December 1866 Savannah–Augusta, Central Georgia Railroad, 130 miles, from 8 am until 6:30 pm, with a two hours’ delay at Millen. It is Sunday.The whole region is noth­ ing more than a vast pine forest, sandy and swampy in places. Only now and then I see a clearing and a settlement of a few houses. The clearings are mostly cotton plantations, also many cabins of Negroes. Here is being demonstrated how the Negroes “squat about,” according to the current expression.They build a hut, clear a few acres, and raise corn that yields at least thirty bushels per acre, where a couple of bushels will suffice to feed a family the year round.They have a gun and fishing tackle and use these to supplement their diet with some animal food. According to Mr. Wilkinson and others this is the future of the Negro race. In Charleston I saw many of them getting out in the morning with an old gun and returning later with a squirrel and a couple of birds. This way of life must surely be very attractive to them, and unless more civilization will make them recognize that there are other things to be done and to be wished for, I think that many of them will succumb to that easy way of life. Prelo Huger says that they are so immoral that a woman often will have intercourse with another man while her husband sleeps in the same bed. Men also swap their wives as the old Spartans did, and there is hardly a girl of twelve still a virgin. The train is full of Negroes in cars of their own, with much laughter and amusement; the women smoke pipes. At the depots they also turn up in large numbers, all in their Sunday best, especially the women in multicolored clothes, red scarves and colored handkerchiefs round their heads. Some are dressed after the latest fashion with toreadors, others in long white gowns, covering their heads as well, which gives them a distinct Oriental look. I was amused by many of the children with their round faces and white teeth.1 104 A Young Dutchman Views Post–Civil War America The white traveling public as seen in the hotels and on the railroads is of a most distinctive character, very different from the Northern type. Mostly dark-­ haired, with long beards, often plump, and always more corpulent than the Yankees. Some have bloated faces, but all have the same expression of apathy and even stupidity. Do they hate the Yankees so much because they feel that they are inferior to them? In this respect there is a strong distinction between “low whites” and the higher classes, who are always intelligent, refined, and well-­ bred. My friend and cabin mate on the Saragossa, Captain Allsworth, was a South­ erner and a good example of the race. Most of them are pleasant and kind-­ hearted, I believe. I never saw so many people kissing each other on the train, even more than I have experienced in some regions of Germany.2 Mementoes of the war in many places, burnt houses and such. Only a few remnants of the depot at Millen are still standing. In the wooden shed, now serving as temporary depot, we got a reasonably good dinner. Ladies and gentlemen have their separate dining rooms. While New York is skating, the weather here today is warm and pleasant. I spent a large part of the journey on the platform of the last car of the train, smoking and daydreaming of bonds, promotional parties of bygone days, and the political situation here now. I have developed a few thoughts about that political situation, perhaps not quite unfounded. The North represents the centralizing and equalizing trends of these days, the South the conservative and somewhat aristocratic ideas of earlier times, in itself not inferior as far as I can see.The great counterweight to the pure democracy was the ‘self government’ by communities, townships, and states.The North rejects both, especially the doctrine of ‘states’ rights,’ so strongly defended by the South, and in earlier days also adhered to by Massachusetts and other states. The urge for abolition has caused the Republican Party to sidestep these old-­ established and recognized rights, and the war has confirmed the supremacy of the Union, maybe more so than more prudent and moderate people had wished.The Republicans now...

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