future, I would set my face as a flint against every appeal to my feelings."*

Two incidents of the pass-office, related to me by Lieutenant Martin, will place this matter distinctly before the reader's mind.

One Mrs. L. haunted the office for three weeks, pleading with tears for her starving children, to whom she wished to convey a little food. She had shown some kindness to Union troops on one occasion, when they were passing her house, and this was remembered in her favor. A pass was given her to go to St. Johns and return. Something led a detective officer to examine her boat with unusual thoroughness. He found that "false hips" had been built out upon her sides, which were filled with commodities outrageously contraband. The woman had deceived every one. Her simulation of a mother's agony and tears, sustained, too, for three weeks, was so perfect, that no one could doubt the reality of her emotions. Yet she was a professional smuggler.

Some weeks later, a lady applied to Lieutenant Martin for a similar permit. Her children, too, were starving, almost within sight of their mother; and, alas! this was a genuine case. Her children were starving. She was a lady in every sense of the word, and she convinced the lieutenant of the perfect truth of her story at the first interview. But he could only inform her, that no passes were then issued, and that any application to the general on her behalf would be useless. She came every day for a month, always hoping for a relaxation of the rule. At length, the young officer was so deeply moved by her distress, that he promised to disobey orders so far as to lay her case before the general, and she might come the next day to learn the result. She came. Lieutenant Martin had the anguish of telling her that her application was necessarily refused, as her boat was certain to be seized if she crossed the lake. She turned pale as death, and fell senseless to the floor. She was carried to the nearest physician. In half an hour she revived-a raving maniac. She has never known a gleam of reason to this day.

* Atlantic Monthly, July, 1863.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE NEGRO QUESTION-FIRST DIFFICULTIES.

LOUISIANA has a population of about six hundred thousand. Before the war, there was a slight excess of whites over slaves, but when the Union troops landed at New Orleans, there was one slave in the state to every white person. Many of the parishes contain twice as many slaves as whites; some, three times as many; a few, four times as many; one has nine hundred white inhabitants to nearly nine thousand slaves. The marching of a Union column into one of those sugar parishes, was like thrusting a walking-stick into an ant-hill-the negroes swarmed about the troops, every soldier's gun and knapsack carried by a black man, exulting in the service. For, in some way, this great multitude of bondmen had derived the impression that part of the errand of these troops was to set them free.

The population of New Orleans was about one hundred and fifty thousand, of whom eighteen thousand were slaves and ten thousand free colored. The class last named is the result of that universal licentiousness which exists, necessarily, in every community where the number of slaves is large. In New Orleans, that licentiousness was systematized, and partook, in some degree, of the character of matrimony. The connections formed with the quadroons and octoroons were often permanent enough for the rearing of large families, some of whom obtained their freedom from the affection of their father-master, and received the education he would have bestowed upon legitimate offspring. The class of free colored, therefore, includes a considerable number of wealthy, instructed, able, and estimable persons. They have been styled by competent observers, the richest class in New Orleans; many having inherited large estates, and many carrying on lucrative business. One of them entertained General Butler at a banquet of seven courses, served on silver.

The secret, darling desire of this class is to rank as human beings in their native city; or, as the giver of the grand banquet expressed

it, "No matter where I fight; I only wish to spend what I have, and fight as long as I can, if only my boy may stand in the street equal to a white boy when the war is over."

It is difficult for an inhabitant of the North to know how far such men as he were from the likelihood of ever enjoying the equality he craved. There was at the North a general, mild prejudice against color, before the late riots in New York expelled the last vestige of it from the heart of every decent human being. But, at the South, the prejudice is so complete that the people are not aware of its existence; they fondle and pet their favorite slaves, and let their children play with black children as with dogs and cats. The slightest taint of black blood in the superbest man, in the loveliest woman, one all radiant with golden curls and a blonde complexion, perfect in manners and abounding in the best fruits of culture, suffices to damn them to an eternal exclusion from the companionship of the people with whom they would naturally associate. The most striking illustration of the intensity of this abhorrence of African blood is the well-known fact, that a white wife in New Orleans is not generally jealous of her husband's slave mistress; and is frequently capable of consoling herself by the reflection that the other family, in the next street, are worth a hundred dollars each on the day of their birth, and increase in value a hundred dollars a year during the first fifteen years of their lives. She does not recognize in the mother of those children a being that could, in any sense of the word, be a rival of a woman in whose veins flowed no African blood that was discoverable. The slave mistress, also, relieved the sickly white wife of the burden of childbearing. This is southern prejudice against color. The prejudice that prevailed at the North, before the recent scenes revealed to every one its hellish nature, was base enough, and was strongest in the basest; but it was a trivial matter compared with the unconscious completeness of aversion that is observable in the true southerner-the "original secessionist."

There were a great many loose negroes about New Orleans when the troops landed, slaves of masters in the rebel army left to shift for themselves. A still larger number hired their time from their masters, and demonstrated that they could take care of themselves, besides contributing from sixty cents to a dollar and a half a day to the maintenance of another family.

"These colored girls," said a new-comer one day to a Union officer, "whom I see selling bouquets, nuts, oranges, cakes, candies, and small wares, on the street corners, must save a great deal of money."

"These people," was the reply, "are merely the agents of their white masters and mistresses, who grow their flowers and oranges, make the bouquets, pies and candies, and send their slaves to sell them in the streets. If she is an apple or a violet short, the balance is struck on her back. Many of the people of New Orleans live, and have lived for years, in this way."

It is obvious to the most unreflecting person, that the negro question at New Orleans could not be disposed of, as at Fortress Monroe, by an epigram. Fortress Monroe was a Union island in a secession sea. The number of slaves in the vicinity was not great; only nine hundred in all found their way to Freedom Fort; and every laborer who came in was one laborer lost to the rebel batteries. The duty of the commanding general was clear the moment the "epigram" occurred to his mind. But, in Louisiana, any considerable disturbance of the relations of labor to capital would have been a revolution far more revolutionary than any merely political change ever was. Suppose, for example, that all slaves coming into a Union camp had been received and maintained, as they were at the fortress. General Butler would have had upon his hands, in a month, in addition to the thirty thousand destitute whites, not less than fifty thousand blacks, for whom he would have had to provide food, shelter, clothing and employment; while the plantations from which the city was supplied with daily food would have lain waste. The Fortress Monroe experience was, evidently, of no avail in dealing with the negro question at New Orleans.

The instructions given by General McClellan to General Butler were silent on this most perplexing subject. General Butler, however, had instructions with regard to it. On leaving Washington he was verbally informed by the president, that the government was not yet prepared to announce a negro policy. They were anxiously considering the subject, and hoped, ere long, to arrive at conclusions. Meanwhile, he must "get along" with the negro question the best way he could; endeavor to avoid raising insoluble problems and sharply defined issues; and try to manage so that neither abolitionists nor "conservatives" would find

in his acts occasions for clamor. This, however, only for a short time. The moment the administration were prepared to announce a general policy with regard to the negroes, all generals commanding departments would be notified, and required to pursue the same system.

This sounded reasonably enough at Washington. It wore a very different aspect when it had to be applied to the state of things in Louisiana.

The difficulty began on the day after the landing of the troops, and became every day more formidable. Some negroes came into the St. Charles hotel, penetrated to the quarters of staff-officers, and gave information which proved to be reliable. Great numbers soon flocked into the Custom-House, pervading the numberless apartments and passages of that extensive edifice, all testifying the most fervent good-will toward the Union troops, all asking to be allowed to serve them. Wherever there was a Union post, negroes made their appearance-at Fort St. Philip, Fort Jackson, Carrollton, Algiers, Baton Rouge, and elsewhere.

A new article of war forbade the return of these fugitives to their masters. What was to be done with them? Their labor in the city was not wanted; there was a superabundance of white laborers. If they were entertained and encouraged, what was to prevent an overwhelming irruption of blacks into every post? The whole negro population was in such a ferment, that only a slight misstep on the part of the commanding general would have sufficed to reduce society to chaos.

In these circumstances, the wise, the great, the splendid thing to do, was to declare all the slaves in Louisiana free, and put them all upon wages, leaving questions of compensation to loyal masters to be settled afterward. General Butler was capable of writing a general order that would have achieved this sublime revolution with speedy advantage to every white and every black in the state. It was possible, it was feasible. It was, of all conceivable solutions of the problem, the most easy, the most simple, the most expeditious, the least costly, the least dangerous. But even if the general had not been restrained by instructions, this course was excluded even from consideration by the arrival of news, on the 9th of May, that General Hunter's proclamation of freedom to the slaves of South Carolina had been revoked by the president.