February 1857
James Stirling (1805–1883), a Scot, generally presented commonplace ideas of the time. For example, he took a purely materialistic view of the conditions of slaves. Consequently, he divided slaves into field hands, whose physical existence was the most miserable, especially on large plantations with overseers; house servants, whose work was lighter and who were constantly with their white owners; and the slaves of small farmers, whose physical existence differed little from their masters. Stirling overlooked the psychological and spiritual aspect of race slavery. His comments were, however, based on interviews of plantation owners and former slaves.
James Stirling, Letters from the Slave States (London: John W. Parker and Son,1857), 163–162 and 178–180.
“Scene on the Alabama River, Loading Cotton” from Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, 28 November 1857.
MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA, 2nd February, 1857.
Olmsted gives a very poor account of his fellow-passengers on the Alabama river. He says they were ‘a rough, coarse style of people, drinking a great deal’—‘very profane’—‘often showing the handles of concealed weapons about their persons;’—and gambling during the whole passage, night and day, except on Sunday. My experience of Alabama river life was very different. The passengers seemed a very quiet, respectable class of people. There was no swearing or profanity to be heard, and no gambling to be seen. The only appearance of intemperance I noticed was in the case of a genteel-looking young man, who came on board at Mobile in a state of intoxication. I allude to this contrast, not only because it shows how careful a traveller should be in drawing general inferences from his partial experience, but because it illustrates the different waves of population that surge up and down this country. Mr. Olmsted’s fellow-passengers, he says, ‘were generally cotton-planters going to Mobile on business, or emigrants bound to Texas or Arkansas.’ Those who ascended the Alabama with me were mostly, I understood, business-men from New Orleans or Mobile, going north to make their Spring purchases, or Northern men returning from a business tour to the South. In manner they were a little reserved, but perfectly gentlemanly, and it gives me pleasure to be able to qualify so far the severe judgment of an American observer.
. . .The towns, and even cities, which I have seen in the South, are ill-paved, and utterly in want of sewerage. New Orleans has nothing but open gutters to carry off its putrescent waters, and this in the City of the Plague par excellence . . . The streets of Montgomery, Columbus, and Macon, are unpaved, not even planked; and the sewerage consists of huge ditches cut in the sand at each side of the streets, or down the middle. The absence of stone is some excuse for the want of paving; but why can the Southerners not have plank causeways and pavements as well as Northerners and Canadians! Surely they have pine enough! Yes, they have pine enough, but they lack that high spirit of civilization which is the soul of the North and of Western Canada. What capital they save, and that is not much, they lay out in niggers. Niggers and cotton—cotton and niggers; these are the law and the prophets to the men of the South.
Another criterion of civilization is roads. Judged by its roads, the South is far behind. In Kentucky I saw some good roads. In Tennessee they have some “pikes” (turnpike-roads), and some “mud-roads.” In Louisiana, Alabama, and Georgia, I have as yet met no well-made road. In the town of Montgomery I saw a country wagon with six mules, and the spokes of the wheels plastered over up to the very naves with thick tenacious mud. And Montgomery is the capital of the State!