Daily Ohio statesman. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1855-1870, 1867-05-13

Is uameu-GndG Is II we may call IL living |
alone, to have q house full of company most |
Il found Mr.. Stephens, as have saidN
seated In his room, reading and smokingd
Upon reading the letter OF fintroductionf j
handed him, he immediately welcomed medl
and, beforea dozen words had passed bel
tween us, he inquired wherewa my valiseaI
Upon. being told that it was at the hotel, ,heiI
called "Tim,r and sent him
for it, insisting that / should make myself
at home withIhim as long as remained in
that part of Tho; country. In q very few
minutes we had entered into conversations
about the condition of the South, and espes
cialiy of Georgiaysin the war; Mr.. Ste
phens said he believed the people were
trying 1iton do stheirV best " to- repair
their Host fortunes that ithey had
been badly set back by lthe,7failufe 10f
last years crop, but, If they could manage
to- get along until next harvest-time.9 che
thought they would do tolerably well after
that. There are good deal of piIfering
and stea ling going on, principally by idle
and9olazy negroes, . and this caused the
farmers great deal Of annoyance. yttTou
win find very little aristoer&cy in this
neighbOrhoodf, Z, said he; sin dacE, there is
very little Of it In Georgia, less, j Think
than in any other State in the Union. Most
of the people here are the descendants of
men who came here after the revolntionary
war and squatteds on the land. Those who
are rich got rich by the plow."i0 u id5
:, Mr.. Stephens was about TO visit his farm,
a couple Of miles distant, and readily acS
cepted a kind invitation TO take q seat In
his buggy and accompany him. AS we
logged along the road, followed by his two
faYofite dogs, he conversed very freely of
events in the history of the country during
the past ten years. He was never a very
strong advocate of slavery, per Sc he only
defendedIit as State right; it was subject
to a great many abuses, the ecrowniug one
of which he considered to be the denial of
the right of education to the negro; how
ever, IL the Institution had lasted much
longer.O this q would have BEEN RENEE
died in Georgia, at least. He always
repudiated- the idea that if the slaves
were educated they would rise in
insurrection; and he always believed the
value of slave depended in a great meas
ure upon the, amount of intelligence he
possessed. But slavery was gone now, and
he did not believe any respectable number
Of the people of Georgia would re-estab-
Iish it If they could. asked him how the
negroes were getting along in their new
condition OF freedom; Hereplied that they
were not doing very well. They missed
the controlling and directing head of the
white man; they had very.Vague ideas Of
gave it no other construction than idleness.
Most of them were satisfied to get along
from day to day, or from hand to mouth,
as the saying is. His own negroes, he
thought, had done better than any others in
the neighborhood, He had given them a
good chance, and yet they had scarcely
''made out" When the war closed he call
ed his negroes together-he had thirty7one
and told them they were free. They
could either remain with him and work for
him, or go elsewhere, as they pleased. They
all decided to remain, and he kept them on
his farm, which he turned over entirely to
them, on s.sharesn-he to get one-fourth of
the crops for rent, they three -fOurths for
labor. They worked very well, better than
most of the negroes around them, and yet
were unable to make both ends meet last
year. The heads of families all came out
In debt to the stores or the doctors, This
year they might do better; and he thought
they would. -., s,.-,. .-tI
After a slow drive of about half an hour
we reached the farm. Passing by an old
unpainted frame house on the roadside, Mr..
Stephens pointed to it and said, THAT'S the
farmhouse of my pface.I built it to ac-
commodate some poor relatives of mine,
who used to live in it, Under our slave
laws you couldn't keep a lot of negroes
without some white folks among them, SO
these poor relatives of mine came up here
to live. Since the war and the changed
condition of the negroes, they have gone,
and two negro families live there nOw.''
lAshwe passed along the negroes. old and
young, saiuted Mr.. Stephens with cordial
q How d. do Mass AlicE," which he as
cordially returned. He inquired after sew
eral of the old folks who were sick, and
seemed to take quite as much interest in
theft welfare as If they still belonged to
him. His farm consists of about a thou
sand acres, of what he says is poor land
] The whole would not bring over three
Thousand dollars he thinks; but he
wouldn't sell it for any money, As it is an
old homestead which was settled first by
bis grandfath in 1895. His father was
obliged TO sell it shortly before his death,
but he, soon after his fathers death, was
able to buy it back again. The Old-family
| graveyard is pointed, out as you 90
along, and near it the site upon which stood
the house in which Mr.. Stevens was born
i Returning from the tarIi, Mr.. Stephens
talked freely of the late war. The South
| he believed. made two fearful mistakes =
1 First, in going to war at all, and secondly
in the object for which they went to war
i It was great absurdity to think that there
lcouId be such a thing as permanent separa-
tion of the two sections He was opposed
to secession in the first place; but when he
could not resist that-when Georgia went
out, aud he, as States rights man, felt
bound TO go with Georgia, then he wanted
to fight only for terms Of reconstruction
i such as would cement the country on &
4 better basis than it ever stood. JEFF. Davis
andthe fire-eaters fought for Southern in
dependence, and ruined the South in doing
so. 1 called his attention to reports ir
Southern newspapers during g tht
war. that he, Stephens, had de.
elared his opposition to recon.
struction upon any terms. They were
all false, he said, and he was sorry to see il
! Pollard's Lost Cause, which he considered
a wretchedfy bad history OF the war, wha
pretended TO be an extract from q speech
made by him at Charlotte, North Carolina
after his unsuccessful attempt to confer
with Lincoln at Fortress Monroe fbefor,
the Hampton Roads conference), in which
: he is represented as saying that under M
{ circumstances would he consent to recon
: struction. He never said anything sucl
thing. He was reconstructionist, he said
from the first day of the war till the last
Referring TO politics in the North durin!
the war, he expressed his regret that tn
peace party had not been successful in 1854
He thought the Democrats made a miStak
| in nominating a war man. Ii straight
: out peace man had been nominated HI
: might have been elected and tn
{ Ereconstructionfsts of the South woul
, with them. sBut," said /, ''in the NOrt
!. the people could not be persuaded that tn
e peace party was not secession party
: There's where you made great mistake,
] said Mr.. Stephens. "Jeff. Davis wante
3 Lincoln elected; he told me SO, The recon
I structionists of the South wanted you {
t the North to elect a peace man, aud W
J. would then have overthrown the Davi
war party of the South and made terms Q
D reunion without any dif1iculty.n reptile
3 that thought If the people of the Mort
t had had any assurance that the election {
r peace Democrat would have secured
g restoration of the Union on shonorabl
< terms they would have elected one. .Bu
j the Democratic party of the North ha
j made itself obnoxious as secession party
n its leaders had been to a great degree in
j strumentaI in bringing the war about b
g assuring the Southern fire-eaters of a fir