The Express.
London, England, 1866-01-02 00:00:00

THE SOUTHERN STATES.

(FBOY ♦ conorommt.)
NEW ORLEANS, 1110. 4.

From Charleston, whence my previous letter was
dated, I proceeded by way of Augusta, Atlanta,
Montgomery, and Mobile, to this place. A portion,
about sixty miles, of the railway between Charles_
ton and Augusta, destroyed by Sherman's 'army,
has not yet been restored, and I shall not soon
forget the stage journey between the two interme-
diate points, which occupied the whole of a night and
the greater part of a day, jolting at the rate of
rather more than three miles an hour over some of
the worst roads that can be imagined. We came in
some places upon the line of the track which had
been destroyed, and certainly most effectually had
Sherman done his work—each length of rail being
not only torn up, but bent completely double so as to
snake it impossible to re-lay it. This was accom-
plished by making the rail red hot in the middle
and then bending it round a tree till the two ends
met. With this exception the line along the whole
of the above route was in working order, though
the speed was of the slowest and the travelling of
the roughest—the passenger cars beingwitatno-
thing more theft goods trucks fitted up '
deal seats. Atlanta itself, so completely laid in
ruins, is rising most rapidly from its ashes, houses
and warehouses springing up on all sides, for At-
lanta is too valuable a centre of commerce to remain
long in a state of devastation.
It may be taken as a sign of the times that on a
railway oar, in the centre of Georgia, I bought a
copy of the New York Tribune, and, although I paid
16 cents for that which sells in New York for 4, I
have no reason to think that the extra 11 cents was
laid on as a tax upon abolitionism, seeing that I
paid 35 cents, about la. 11, for a number of Punch
in Augusta the day before. The fact is, that with
the destruction of slavery disappears the aecessity
for the old restrictions on the free circulation of
Northern literature. The South is wiser than the
proverb—the steed is gone, and it no longer cares
to lock the stable door.

I mentioned in my last that many of the planters,
acting upon a precipitate conclusion that the free
labour of negroes is not to be relied on, are turning
their attention to the introduction of white labour,
chiefly that of foreign immigrants. I noticed at
Montgomery the advertisements of a house offering
to provide white labour at the rate of 150 dollars per
annum for men, 100 for women, and 50 for children
of 12 to 14, the labourers engaging to live in the
huts and upon the fare of the negroes, to clothe them.
selves, and to pay their own doctors' bills, it being
further undertaken that one out of every six. of
'Germans should speak English. These rates ap-
peared so exceedingly low that I at once came to the
conclusion that the thing could only be done by
entrapping unwary emigrants on their arrival, and
since then I perceive that the German residents in
Alabama, looking upon it in the same light, have
taken the matter up and applied to the Freedmen's
Bureau to put a stop to it. The price offered for white
labour in Louisiana is 50 dole. (about 71. 10s.) per
month with board, which is an exceptionally high rate,
as far as my experience goes. The introduction of

white labour is one of the features which mark a new
era in the South. So long as slavery existed honest
toil was considered a disgrace. "But," says the Rich-
mond Republic, " the time has gone by when
labour was the peculiar badge of the servile class.
If labour was not respectable formerly, it is neces-
sary to make it so now."
It might be expected that the people of the

South, fully realising the fact, as I think they do,
that slavery is a thing of the past, and at the same
time looking upon the present generation of negroes
as in the mass incorrigibly indolent, dishonest, and
untrustworthy, would welcome the instruction
afforded in such a thorough and effecti:e manner by
the Freedmen's Aid Commission to the coloured
children as a means of rendering the future gene-
ration of workers more moral, more intelligent, and
more industrious. lam sorry to say that this is
not the case ; but, on the contrary, these schools
everywhere meet with bitter opposition. The only
rooms that can be obtained for the purpose are
those occupied as coloured churches ; and in some
cases attempts have been made to burn down the
buildings in consequence of the schools established
in them. The teachers, mostly young women from
the North, find the utmost difficulty in getting any
one to take them in. A hard life it is for these
poor girls in some of the country places, shut off
from all sympathy with their neighbours, and with
nothing but their native spirit and a sense of use-
fulness to support them in their work. Mr. Fiske,
the superintendent of the schools of North Caro-
lina, where there are about 5,000 children
under instruction, looking forward to a
time when the protection of the United States
government would be withdrawn, made an
earnest attempt to secure their permanence by
enlisting the religious element of the State in their
favour, but without success. It is to be feared
that on the withdrawal of the United States autho-
rity most of the schools in the smaller country
towns will have to be abandoned, and this is a
result which—having visited many of these schools
and witnessed the progress which has been made,
and the discipline which has been accomplished—l
feel is very much to be deplored.
The day after my arrival at New Orleans, finding
that a "Grand Fenian Mass Meeting" was to be
held, in order to inaugurate the movement in that
town, I repaired at the appointed hour to the place.
Seeing only a band of music in a balcony, and a
crowd about equal to that which you may See any
day in Cheapside to watch Mr. Bennett's clock strike,
I began to think that I had come to the wrong
place. But presently the band striking up " Sprig
of Shillelab" and a small green flag being produced,
I knew that I was all right. The meeting being
further advertised by the discharge of rockets
in the street, the crowd increased to about 400
or 500, mostly Irish of the labouring class, and
the proceedings commenced. The principal speaker
was the Attorney-General of Louisiana, Mr.
Lynch, whose connection with the movement
had already, it seems, been commented on
by the London Times a great thing for
him, as it gave him an opportunity to stand
there, and "defy the Times." Re gave a long and
wearisome historical ditquisition, tracing the his-
tory of Ireland from the earliest period, and enu-
merating in detail all the old wrongs inflicted on
her by her Saxon oppressors. But when he
came to the present day, what do you think was
the charge he had to make ? Nothing but
the sending out of the Alabama and her
sister pirate ships to sweep American commerce
from the seas. And the audience cheered his
I remarks—thus, in the chief city of the Confederacy