April 1852
Ferencz Aurèl Pulszky (1814–1897) was born to privilege. His European travels resulted in a book on Great Britain, a country that he particularly admired, and that resulted in his membership in the Hungarian Academy. In 1848, Pulszky was elected to the Hungarian Reichstag; this was followed by government posts in both Budapest and Vienna. In short order, the Hungarian nationalist fled to England where he joined Lajos Kossuth, the Hungarian nationalist revolutionary leader. Together they and their wives traveled to the United States to raise support for the Hungarian cause. The South was not as supportive of the Hungarian cause as was the North, so the warm welcomes that Kossuth and Pulszky received in Mobile and Montgomery surprised them.
In 1852, Austria condemned Pulszky to death in absentia. Eight years later, he participated in the Italian unification movement, served with Garibaldi, and was imprisoned in Naples. After years in political exile, in 1866 he was amnestied by the Austrian emperor and returned to Budapest where he reentered political life. His contributions, however, were not limited to politics. He also served as an official of the Hungarian Academy and the director of the National Museum, as well as distinguishing himself as an archaeologist.
The diary that was the basis of White, Red, Black was actually kept by Pulszky’s wife, Terézia Walder Pulszky (1819–1866). The book seriously addresses American slavery. Although the Pulszkys are critical, they are also objective. They observed a strong anti-black racism in the North and noted that few Southerners defended slavery, but that many wanted foreigners to understand the Southern slave system.
Francis and Theresa Pulszky, White, Red, Black: Sketches of American Society in the United States, 2 vols. (New York: Redfield, 1853), II: 114–119.
II. THE ALABAMA RIVER AND MONTGOMERY.
April 6th.—Amongst the shouts of the citizens of Mobile, we left on the 3d the hospitable city, which had greeted us with the warmest sympathy, the more unexpected to us, as one of the Senators of Alabama, Colonel Clemens, had made himself prominent in Washington City by his vehement invectives against Kossuth, though aware that his arguments had no more than six supporters in the Senate. We thought, therefore, that he had expressed the sentiments of his State, until the demonstration of the most important city in Alabama agreeably undeceived us.
We have scarcely yet made a more picturesque tour in the United States than the trip from Mobile to Montgomery, up the Alabama River. Here for the first time we felt ourselves amidst primitive nature, almost without any trace of culture. The river winds through a dense forest, unscathed by the fires of the Indians and by the axe of the settler. The pine, the black oak, and the cypress tower darkly over the lighter colored sycamores, poplars, elms and willows. Here and there we see a splendid magnolia or a magnificent live oak, adorned by festoons of Spanish moss. A venomous species of ivy, which causes inflammation if touched, curls up the trees; the white blossoms of the dogwood and the purple of the red-bud blend their color harmoniously with the glossy green of the laurel, which forms here the thick underwood. Patches of high-grown cane cover the little islands, and the Southern hue of the sky completes the delightful landscape. On long tracts no human abode meets the eye, distant smoke alone shows the presence of man; everything around is silent; on a falling withering tree rests a lazy tortoise; the kingfisher divides the air with bold strokes; dark butter-ducks, disturbed by the paddling of the steamer, flutter up in advance of the boat; while gulls bathe their breasts in the waves; swift pigeons flit over the woods; a host of cranes steer towards the north, and high in the air sails a lonely turkey-buzzard. The reddish clay of the soil is little fit for sugar or cotton, and no other crop repays slave-labor, the land is therefore left to its primitive freedom. Let the “Homestead Bill” pass, and the Alabama will bend its course through cornfields, and will team with steamers, whilst now we have met but one single boat in three days.
Yesterday afternoon we again saw plantations. The banks rose perpendiculary to about a hundred feet; the paths to the plantations were ladders: pulleys were used to let the cotton-bales down to the boats and to haul the cargo up. Numerous blacks and a few white men here gazed idly down on the river; it was Sunday, the day of rest. An old free negro, poorly clad, came down from one of the plantations and went along with us about twenty miles. When he reached the place to which he was going, he asked the purser for the price of his fare. He got the reply: “We do not charge such poor people as you.” Our fellow-travellers were planters. All with whom we conversed, complained that Europeans did not understand the character of the “peculiar institution.” “Were all the negroes free,” said one of them, “they could not rise in their social position. In the presence of their former masters, impressed with the associations of their servitude, they always would only do menial work, they never would presume to consider themselves as equals to the white. There is a tendency amongst them to grow white in their posterity. A mulatto girl feels honored by marrying a lighter colored man; an alliance with a darker hue seems dishonorable to her. Therefore you will notice that the full blacks have become fewer in the course of time; in the cities you scarcely meet with any. One century has already made the great bulk of them lighter; in another century many of them will be assimilated to the whites.”
Another gentleman remarked: “Had a large number of blacks in the last one hundred and fifty years been thrown on to the coasts of England, such as have been imported against our will into America, it is a great question whether, amidst the competition of a more energetic race, their number would not have dwindled down to insignificance. Surely they would be wretched paupers, inferior to our slaves, who are physically strong and morally better than any African tribe that has not passed through the school of slavery. Slavery has improved the race,” he added.
A lady told me that her parents had come to the United States from Scotland when she was a little child; she had married a Southerner. After six of her daughters had married she and her husband took their seventh daughter to Europe, as the lady wished to visit her native country. “We went to Scotland,” said she, “but everything was strange to me; I found all my relations dead, and people very ignorant about America. Once we met an Irish gentleman who had a son, a boy about twelve years old, who asked my daughter whether she was an American? He could not believe it, as she was fair, and he thought that all the Americans were black. My daughter told him that we had black servants in the houses and in the fields. ‘What do you give them to eat?’ asked the young Irish man. ‘Why,’ said she, ‘what we eat ourselves, meat and vegetables every day.’ The father of the boy seemed much astonished to hear it, and assured me that the poor people in Ireland who work in the fields taste meat but few times a year.”
A gentleman of South Carolina asked me whether we had large farms in Hungary, and as he heard that estates of a thousand and even of ten thousand acres were not rare, he asked whether we had colored people to work them. He thought it remarkable that large tracts of land can be tilled for wages without compulsion. “In America,” he said, “the great estates would all be broken up, had we no slaves. Were the blacks free, they would squat in the woods, they would easily earn enough to maintain their life, and no money could induce them to work for the planter. They have no higher wants, and therefore it is their greatest enjoyment to be idle. Moreover, white labor does not do for sugar or rice, and even for cotton in our hot climate, which only negroes can endure.”
The evening was lovely; a gentle breeze slightly rippled the surface of the waters, and the shrill and wild strains of the negroes on board broke with peculiar charm the silence of the night. As often as we left the shore the blacks repeated a monotonous song which sounded like the wailing of a sad farewell.
When we came nearer to Montgomery the high cliffs on the banks disappeared. The river runs here through an undulating country; houses were scattered along the banks; a crowd was assembled along the landing-place, guns were fired, gentlemen displayed their horsemanship, carriages and committees awaited us, to take us to the city, but the shouting and cheering and the reports of the cannons frightened the horses, and I was glad when we were safely lodged in the Exchange Hotel.
The 1851 Capitol, designed by Barachias Holt of Maine. This contemporary image was made from W. H. Freer’s circa 1856 daguerreotype, which is one of the earliest images of the 1851 Capitol. Today this building is the central block of the Capitol, but it now has a south wing (1906), a north wing (1911), and a rear or east wing (1885 and 1992).
April 7th.—The charms of Southern nature adorn Montgomery, but the capitol of Alabama (which is thought to be the great feature of the city, with its high cupola covered with shining tin plate, with its Greek portico and two balconies behind the columns) looks more grotesque than fine. We made the acquaintance of an Americanized German, who took us to see all the attractions of the place. “What a nice house!” said I, observing a handsome cottage surrounded by a very elegantly cultivated garden. “It belongs to a gentleman who became bankrupt last fall; when he saw that his affairs were turning for the worse, he transferred his property to his wife.”
“But that is dishonorable,” objected I. “Why,” said our companion, “it ceases to be so where it is a daily occurrence, and where the capitalists are prepared for it, and therefore do not lend their money under twenty per cent. I could show you several houses here which belong to the wives of ruined men. A bankrupt, if industrious, does not even lose his credit here; he can redeem it easily, for after his failure he is reckoned to be more experienced and more practical than before.”
The German gentleman described to us the way in which people live and manage here. “Nobody,” said he, “can do in these parts without slaves, though the occasional losses through them are sometimes very heavy. Last year, for instance, I bought a powerful fellow, and two weeks after he died. I rented him out to the road contractors, he got the ague in the swamps, and had I not insured his life before to the amount of one thousand dollars I should have lost my capital.”
At the hotel, we met an amiable lady, the wife of a planter. In summer she resides in the North, in winter in Montgomery. She told me that her slaves on the plantation get up balls and dancing parties, and on such occasions use her plate, china and glass. “Our house-slaves,” continued she, “are yet more under our immediate care. I often dress my maid when she goes to the ball; and when she was married, I adorned her with all my jewels. But the house-slaves likewise feel themselves the aristocrats among the colored people; they look down upon the field hands; they think them very vulgar and uncouth, and do not deign to greet them in the streets.”