How Things Look in the South.
From an article by Rev. Gilbert Haven in the N. Y. Independent of Dec. 13, 1866, we extract the following paragraphs, which show the feelings which those lately in open rebellion still entertain toward the North, or rather, toward the nation. At Nashville, tableaux were lately acted for a charitable cause, in which the Confederacy was represented in her weeds, and the rebel symbols were flaunted before a sympathizing audience. Rebel women of that city yet indulge in that truly Southern lady's custom of expectorating their rattlesnake spittle at, if not into, the faces of the Union ladies who have come thither from the North since they were captured, and who can command a position equal with their own. Our ladies, when shopping, are insultingly jeered at by those who are waiting upon them, and even told by these lordly mesdames of the yard-stick that they do not wish for Yankee customers. A Northern merchant of that city declared it was hardly possible to get any trade from these people, however liberal were his prices. They loathed the presence of these Yankee intruders, whether as buyers or sellers; and in all possible ways, that stop short of open war, vent their spite against them. In a word, the freedom with which we can debate and develop the true ideas of democratic and Christian unity in the North is practically impossible in almost all the South. A Kentucky slaveholder, himself quite a gentleman, but exceedingly rebellious in his feelings, told me that one could not talk freely in his neighborhood. His life would be sacrificed. An illustration of their peaceful condition is seen in an experience reported to me by an officer still in our army. A friend of his, a captain in our army, while traveling lately up the Shenandoah, was approached at a station by a company of men who asked him if he did not shoot a man in that place when our army marched through there. He acknowledged he did; but he said the man, standing between two women, was insulting our flag. He was determined that he should not shelter himself behind his body-guard, and killed him where he stood. These subjugated Virginians told him he must pay the price of that patriotism. He drew his revolver, and declared no less than twelve of them should die first. They shrank back, and he escaped. But what kind of a peace is it when our soldiers are thus compelled to fight their way alone over the country they have once subdued in an army? Other incidents yet more thrilling were related to me by officers detailed to collect our dead and replace them in the national cemeteries. One of these, an army chaplain, said that when they went to Pittsburg Landing, they were met with the hootings of the savages, not Indians, but rebels, that abide there; and they could only pursue their work by threatening them with a cannon, which they pretended they had in their possession. A major in our service said that he dared not make his tour of inspection in his uniform, but had to hide his official dignities under a citizen's dress; that, even then, he was often in great peril of his life. But lately, visiting Rome, Ga., to see how many of our dead lay there, he was approached by men at the tavern, who asked him his business. He replied that that was his own concern, not theirs. They still pressed him; and, as if suspicious of his errand, asked him if he had come to seek after dead Yanks. He became somewhat alarmed, and said he had come to seek for a friend who had died in the Confederate service. The landlord instantly ordered up a team, without any order from him, and these men drove him to the cemetery, where both the rebels and the Union dead are buried, but in opposite divisions. They asked him the name of his friend. He gave them a fictitious name, and a fictitious statement that he was his step-brother, and his mother had desired to have him found. On arriving at the cemetery, he neglected his “half-brother,” and proceeded to count the rows of Union graves and the number in a row, that he might ascertain how many coffins he would need. His “patrons” noticed his indifference, and asked him why he did not hunt up his brother. He had given them an odd name, as one too common would have excited suspicion; and he had to get out and go up and down path after path, searching among more than a thousand graves for his lost “brother.” While thus engaged, the perspiration rolled from him in drops. If he could not find this name, his life must be instantly sacrificed. At length, the second from the last, appears the welcome word—the long-lost brother is found, and his life is safe. Let the nation look on its officer thus compelled to creep among rebel graves, under the haughty eye of rebel drivers, that he might find a name that shall deceive them and save his life: and that, too, while engaged in the service of the nation, and holding a commission from the President of the United States. Sherman is needed again at Rome, more than in Mexico. Well does Mr. Phillips say that Gen. Grant has but half done his work, and will lose all the fame he has won if he allows such a state of things to exist. The same officer declared that, while riding through the wild mountain country in this same region, on this same service, he offered a blacksmith five dollars to shoe his horse. The fellow who scented his origin and business, said he “would not put a shoe on a Yankee's horse for fifty dollars;” and immediately mounted his own, to raise the country. The officer started in an opposite direction, bought an old shoe and some nails of a Georgia maiden for two papers of tobacco, put it on himself, and rode forty-five miles that day to get away from these peaceable citizens, to whom Mr. Johnson has given up the state and tries to give up the nation. Applying to a rebel soldier for information as to where some of our dead lay, the man, who was more friendly than his neighbors (the soldiers are the best behaved of the people), said, if he told, they would certainly kill him. Such is the actual state of the South in Northern Georgia and Alabama and the western borders of the Carolinas. It is not likely to be any better in other portions.