In Indian dialect, Alabama signifies, "Here we rest;" but, for me, it had an exactly opposite meaning. We awoke one morning to find our boat lying at Montgomery. Reaching the hotel too early for breakfast, I strolled with a traveler from Philadelphia, a pretended Secessionist, to the State House, which was at present also the Capitol of the Confederacy.
Standing, like the Capitol in Washington, at the head of a broad thoroughfare, it overlooks a pleasant city of eight thousand people. The building is of stucco, and bears that melancholy suggestion of better days which seems inseparable from the Peculiar Institution.
The senate chamber is a small, dingy apartment, on whose dirty walls hang portraits of Clay, Calhoun, and two or three Alabama politicians. The desks and chairs were covered with antiquated public documents, and the other _débris_ of legislative halls. While returning to the hotel, we heard from a street loafer a terse description of some model slave:
"He is just the best nigger in this town. He knows enough to work well, and he knows nothing else."
We were also informed that the Virginia Convention had passed a Secession ordinance.
"This is capital news; is it not?" said my Philadelphia companion, with well-assumed glee.
For several days, in spite of his violent assertions, I had doubted his sincerity. This was the first time he broached the subject when no one else was present. I looked steadily in his eye, and inquired:
His half-quizzical expression was a satisfactory answer, even without the reply:
"I want to get home to Philadelphia without being detained on the way."
[Sidenote: "COPPERAS BREECHES" VS. "BLACK BREECHES."]
In the hotel office, two well-dressed southerners were discussing the omnipresent topic. One of them said:
"Yes, we shall," replied the other. "The Yankees are going to fight for a while; but it will make no difference to us. We have got copperas breeches enough to carry this war through. None of the black breeches will have to shoulder muskets!"
The reader should understand that the clothing of the working whites was colored with a dye in which copperas was the chief ingredient; while, of course, the upper, slaveholding classes, wore "customary suits of solemn black." This was a very pregnant sentence, conveying in a few words the belief of those Rebels who instigated and impelled the war.