With the better class, the Southerners, especially the soldiers, associated freely if seldom intimately.But the conduct of a few of their number who considered that the war had opened all doors to them, who very freely expressed their views, gave advice, condemned old customs, and were generally offensive, did much to bring all Northerners into disrepute.Tactlessly critical letters published in Northern papers did not add to their popularity.
The few Northern women felt the ostracism more keenly than did the men.
Benjamin C.Truman, an agent of President Johnson, thus summed up the situation: "There is a prevalent disposition not to associate too freely with Northern men or to receive them into the circles of society; but it is far from unsurmountable.Over Southern society, as over every other, woman reigns supreme, and they are more embittered against those whom they deem the authors of all their calamities than are their brothers, sons, and husbands." But, of the thousands of Northern men who overcame the reluctance of the Southerners to social intercourse, little was heard.Many a Southern planter secured a Northern partner or sold him half his plantation to get money to run the other half.For the irritations of 1865, each party must take its share of responsibility.
Had the South assisted in a skillful and adequate publicity, much disastrous misunderstanding might have been avoided.The North knew as little of the South as the South did of the North, but the North was eager for news.Able newspaper correspondents like Sidney Andrews of the Boston Advertiser and the Chicago Tribune, who opposed President Johnson's policies, Thomas W.Knox of the New York Herald, who had given General Sherman so much trouble in Tennessee, Whitelaw Reid, who wrote for several papers and tried cotton planting in Louisiana, and John T.Trowbridge, New England author and journalist, were dispatched southwards.Chief of the President's investigators was General Carl Schurz, German revolutionist, Federal soldier, and soon to be radical Republican, who held harsh views of the Southern people; and there were besides Harvey M.Watterson, Kentucky Democrat and Unionist, the father of "Marse" Henry; Benjamin C.Truman, New England journalist and soldier, whose long report was perhaps the best of all; Chief Justice Chase, who was thinking mainly of "How soon can the Negro vote?"; and General Grant, who made a report so brief that, notwithstanding its value, it attracted little attention.In addition a constant stream of information and misinformation was going northward from treasury agents, officers of the army, the Freedmen's Bureau, teachers, and missionaries.Among foreigners who described the conquered land were Robert Somers, Henry Latham, and William Hepworth Dixon.
But few in the South realized the importance of supplying the North with correct information about actual conditions.The letters and reports, they thought, humiliated them; inquiry was felt to be prying and gloating.
"Correspondents have added a new pang to surrender," it was said.The South was proud and refused to be catechized.From the Northern point of view, the South, a new and strange region with strange customs and principles, was of course, not to be considered as quite normal and American, but there was on the part of many correspondents a determined attempt to describe things as they were.And yet the North persisted in its unsympathetic queries when it seemed to have a sufficient answer in the reports of Grant, Schurz, and Truman.
