Note 62 — Chapter XLI · Cotton Speculations—Temper of the Mississippians.

The official organ of the city of New Orleans thus editorially explains this feeling:

“Our citizens, who had been accustomed to meet and treat the negroes only as respectful servants, were mortified, pained, and shocked to encounter them in towns and villages, and on the public roads, by scores and hundreds and thousands, wearing Federal uniforms, and bearing bright muskets and gleaming bayonets. They often recognized among them those who had once been their own servants. They were jostled from the sidewalks by dusky guards marching four abreast. They were halted, in rude and sullen tones by negro sentinels, in strong contrast with the kind and fraternal hail of the old sentinels in threadbare gray or dilapidated homespun. The ladies of villages so guarded, ceased to appear on the streets, and it was with much reluctance that the citizens of the surrounding country went to the towns on imperative errands. All felt the quartering of negro guards among them to be a deliberate, wanton, cruel act of insult and oppression. Their hearts sickened under what they deemed an outrageous exercise of tyranny. They would have received white troops, not indeed with rejoicing, but with kindness, satisfaction, and respect; but when they saw their own slaves freed, armed, and put on guard over them, they treated all hope of Federal magnanimity or justice as an idle dream.”