Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 35.djvu/347

Rh effort was to preserve the part of the United States west of the river to the Pacific Ocean as a slaveholding Confederacy. Of course, if the European nations adopted the plan, it was certain that the vast majority of the negroes from the Carolinas to the river would be moved across it and that section would be an agricultural free-trade community. It was, of course, an iridescent dream, but some of the ablest men in the South were dreaming it."

I should feel inclined to think that it is the dream of a dreamer, and that the correspondent of the Washington Post has dreamed it, for I have known all the most prominent men of the South and many others who might well come within the designation of "some of the ablest men," and never heard any one of them as much as hint at such a venture. Indeed, many of them knew too well that the institution of slavery proved the greatest bar to every hope of foreign assistance, and that the establishment of a new slaveholding community with the aid of a foreign power an absolute impossibility. But apart from this negative objection, I am able to give information of a positive nature which will point to the same conclusion.

I have said that while I was at Shreveport, preparing for my journey, Governor Allen had imparted to me a scheme he was then revolving in his mind. I will now disclose it. Seeing that the South could not replace its fallen combatants, whereas the North disposed of an ever-increasing army of foreign mercenaries; moreover, that whenever the Federals obtained temporary possession of Southern soil, they kidnapped the negroes and pressed them into military service, Governor Allen's idea was to arm the negroes, and as a consequence to give them their freedom. I remember his very words: "Of course," he said, "we must give them their freedom." Such a plan is obviously incompatible with the notion of a retrocession of Louisiana as a slave-holding community, and some interesting conclusions can be drawn from it.

In the first place, it shows that a prominent Southern man, thoroughly acquainted with all the conditions of political and social life in the Southern States, felt a perfect confidence in the loyalty of the black population. Many Northern men would,