war was over, the blockade was raised, and the necessaries and
comforts so long and so painfully missed came within sight again, the
South was made only more sensible of her poverty. It was indeed an
appalling situation, looking in many respects almost hopeless. And for
all this the Southern woman, her heart full of the mournful memories
of the sere past and heavy with the anxieties of the present, held the
"cruel Yankee" responsible.

From time to time, traveling from State to State, I reported to
President Johnson my observations and the conclusions I drew from
them. Not only was I most careful to tell him the exact truth as I saw
it; I also elicited from our military officers and from agents of the
Freedmen's Bureau stationed in the South, as well as from prominent
Southern men, statements of their views and experiences, which formed
a mighty body of authoritative testimony, coming as it did from men of
high character and important public position, some of whom were
Republicans, some Democrats, some old anti-slavery men, some old
pro-slavery men. All these papers, too, I submitted to the President.
The historian of that time will hardly find more trustworthy material.
They all substantially agreed upon certain points of fact. They all
found that the South was at peace in so far as there was no open armed
conflict between the government troops and organized bodies of
insurgents. The South was not at peace inasmuch as the different
social forces did not peaceably cooeperate, and violent collisions on a
great scale were prevented or repressed only by the presence of the
Federal authority supported by the government troops on the ground for
immediate action. The "results of the war," recognized in the South in
so far as the restoration of the Union and the Federal Government,
were submitted to by virtue of necessity, and the emancipation of the
slaves and the introduction of free labor were accepted in name; but
the Union was still hateful to a large majority of the white
population of the South, the Southern Unionists were still social
outcasts, the officers of the Union were still regarded as foreign
tyrants ruling by force. And as to the abolition of slavery,
emancipation, although "accepted" in name, was still denounced by a
large majority of the former master class as an "unconstitutional"
stretch of power, to be reversed if possible; and that class, the
ruling class among the whites, was still desiring, hoping, an