A Just and Lasting Peace: A Documentary History of Reconstruction by John David Smith

Author:John David Smith [Smith, John David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Classics
ISBN: 9780451532268
Google: TpInTOhPf1sC
Amazon: 0451532260
Barnesnoble: 0451532260
Goodreads: 13542693
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2012-12-04T05:00:00+00:00

J. T. TROWBRIDGE, A PICTURE OF THE DESOLATED STATES; AND THE WORK OF RESTORATION, 1865–1868

(1868)

The popular Northern writer John Townsend Trowbridge (1827–1916), author of the antislavery novel Neighbor Jackwood (1857), visited eight Southern states in mid-1865 and early 1866, recording his observations of places and conversations with a broad range of whites and blacks. He first summarized his findings in The South: A Tour of Its Battlefields and Ruined Cities, a Journey Through the Desolated States, and Talks with the People (1866) and two years later brought the story up-to-date in A Picture of the Desolated States; and the Work of Restoration. Trowbridge likened the condition of the South to “a man recovering from a dangerous malady: the crisis is past, appetite is boundless, and only sustenance and purifying air are needed to bring health and life in fresh waves.” Much like The Nation’s proposal for solving the Indian problem, Trowbridge urged simply that justice be accorded all men. He predicted that Southern whites ultimately would accept black suffrage. Like social change across time and place, it too would take time.

. . . It now only remains for me to sum up briefly my answers to certain questions which are constantly put to me, regarding Southern emigration, the loyalty of the people, and the future of the country.

The South is in the condition of a man recovering from a dangerous malady: the crisis is past, appetite is boundless, and only sustenance and purifying air are needed to bring health and life in fresh waves. The exhausted country calls for supplies. It has been drained of its wealth, and of its young men. Capital is eagerly welcomed and absorbed. Labor is also needed. There is much shallow talk about getting rid of the negroes, and of filling their places with foreigners. But war and disease have already removed more of the colored race than can be well spared; and I am confident that, for the next five or ten years, leaving the blacks where they are, the strongest tide of emigration that can be poured into the country will be insufficient to meet the increasing demand for labor.

Northern enterprise, emancipation, improved modes of culture, and the high prices of cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco, cannot fail to bring about this result. The cotton crop, if no accident happens to it, will this year reach, I am well satisfied, not less than two million bales, and bring something like two hundred and fifty million dollars,—as much as the five million bales of 1859 produced. Next year it will approximate to its old average standard in bulk, and greatly exceed it in value; and the year after we shall have the largest cotton crop ever known. Meanwhile the culture of rice and sugar will have fully revived, and become enormously profitable. Nor will planting alone flourish. Burned cities and plantation-buildings must be restored, new towns and villages will spring up, old losses must be repaired, and a thousand new wants supplied. Trade, manufactures, the mechanic arts, all are invited to share in this teeming activity.

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