![Chapter 2
Cybertext theory
revisited
2.1 Introduction: the problem with
media plurality
In this chapter, we begin with a review of the problems media
plurality has caused for literary studies, revisit cybertext theory,
and discuss its critical reception and alternatives while teasing out
its implications and presuppositions.
The fact that poets in the 20th century were aggressive in using
all available material alternatives to the printed page is not a great
secret. During this period there have already been several types
of new media; as recently as in the 1980s and 1990s “new media
poetry” included not only digital but video and holopoetry as
well (cf. Kac [ed.] 1996) not to mention the predecessors of video
poetry from Marcel Duchamp’s Anemic Cinema (1926) to Paul
Sharits’ Word Movie (1965). It has also become obvious in the
light of visual, concrete, sound, and kinetic poetries that poetry has
ceased to be a merely verbal art (in fact, given the long history of
illustrated books and mixed-media performances, it can be argued
that it never was). Moreover, each of these poetic “movements” can
employ a wide variety of media for their purposes, as the following
quote from Eduardo Kac makes clear:](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4041-250614192657-8e34c6ec/85/Cybertext-poetics-the-critical-landscape-of-new-media-literary-theory-1st-Edition-Eskelinen-27-320.jpg)
![“Apparently not, sir; for you seem to be ignorant of the fact that free
negroes in North Carolina were voters from the formation of the
State Government down to 1835.”
“It isn’t so, stranger.”
“Excuse me; but your own State records will show it;[2]
and, if I must
say so, he is a very ignorant citizen to be talking about ways and
means of reorganization, who doesn’t know so simple and recent a
fact in the history of his State.”
The Cracker scratched his head in great bewilderment. “Well,
stranger, you don’t mean to say that the Government at Washington
is going to make us let niggers vote?”
“I mean to say that it is at least possible.”
“Well, why not have the decency to let us have a vote on it
ourselves, and say whether we’ll let niggers vote?”
“In other words, you mean this: Less than a generation ago you held
a convention, which robbed certain classes of your citizens of rights
they had enjoyed, undisputed, from the organization of your State
down to that hour. Now, you propose to let the robbers hold an
election to decide whether they will return the stolen property or
not.”
“Stranger,” exclaimed another of the group, with great emphasis, “is
the Government at Washington, because it has whipped us, going to
make us let niggers vote?”
“Possibly it will. At any rate a strong party favors it.”
“Then I wouldn’t live under the Government. I’d emigrate, sir. Yes,
sir, I’d leave this Government and go north!”
And the man, true to his States’-Rights training, seemed to imagine
that going north was going under another Government, and spoke of
it as one might speak of emigrating to China.
Meantime, the younger citizens of Beaufort (of Caucasian descent)
had found better amusement than talking to the strangers in the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4041-250614192657-8e34c6ec/85/Cybertext-poetics-the-critical-landscape-of-new-media-literary-theory-1st-Edition-Eskelinen-32-320.jpg)
![which it would be unkind, to the disinterested traders who follow in
the wake of an army, to call smuggling.
Passing the traces of the works thrown up at the point where
Burnside had his fight, we entered the remarkable city of log cabins,
outside the city limits, which now really forms the most interesting
part of the ancient town of Newbern. Before the war, it had between
five and six thousand inhabitants; now, these newly-built cabins on
the outskirts, alone, contain over ten thousand souls.[3]
Yet, withal,
there are few old residents here. The city proper is, to a
considerable extent, deserted by its former inhabitants, and filled by
Union refugees from all parts of the State; while these squares of
crowded cabins contain solely Union refugees—of another color, but
not less loyal.
Within a few days back, however, men, whose faces have not been
seen in Newbern for nearly four years, are beginning to appear
again, with many an anxious inquiry about property, which they
think ought to have been carefully preserved for them during their
hostile absence. Sometimes they have kept an aged mother, or an
aunt, or a widowed sister, in the property, to retain a claim upon it;
and in these cases they seem to find little difficulty in quietly
resuming possession. But, in more instances, they are forced to see
others in an occupancy they can not conveniently dispute, and to
learn of fortunes made from the property they abandoned.
The hotel keeper, for example, has returned. He finds here a Yankee,
who, seeing the house deserted when we occupied the city, and
being told by the officers that they wanted a hotel, determined to
keep it. The Yankee has paid no rent; he has been at no expense,
and he has made a sum reckoned at over a hundred thousand
dollars, by his hotel keeping and a little cotton planting which he was
able to combine with it. Naturally, he is in no haste to give up his
rent-free establishment, and the Rebel owner has the satisfaction of
contemplating the Yankee in possession, and calculating the profits
which might have gone into his own pockets but for the frantic
determination, four years ago, never to submit to the tyrannical rule](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4041-250614192657-8e34c6ec/85/Cybertext-poetics-the-critical-landscape-of-new-media-literary-theory-1st-Edition-Eskelinen-36-320.jpg)
![making him a lemonade. As the mild beverage was being mixed, the
friend insinuatingly asked if he wouldn’t like just the least drop of
something stronger, to brace up his nerves after the exhausting heat
and exercise. ‘No,’ replied the lecturer, ‘I couldn’t think of it; I am
opposed to it on principle. But,’ he added, with a longing glance at
the black bottle that stood conveniently at hand, ‘if you could
manage to put in a drop unbeknownst to me, I guess it wouldn’t
hurt me much!’ Now, General,” Mr. Lincoln concluded, “I’m bound to
oppose the escape of Jeff. Davis; but if you could manage to let him
slip out unbeknownst-like, I guess it wouldn’t hurt me much!”
“And that,” exclaimed General Sherman, “is all I could get out of the
Government as to what its policy was, concerning the Rebel leaders,
till Stanton assailed me for Davis’ escape!”
A heavy gale blew on the coast all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday,
and neither General Sherman’s Captain nor our own thought it wise
to venture out. Meanwhile, delegations of the Beaufort people came
off in little sail-boats to visit the “Wyanda,” bring us flowers and
strawberries, and talk politics. Since their last demonstrations, a few
days ago, they had toned down their ideas a good deal; and the
amount of their talk, stripped of its circumlocution and hesitation,
was simply this: that they were very anxious to re-organize, and
would submit to anything the Government might require to that end.
They said less against negro suffrage than before—frankly said it
would be very obnoxious to the prejudices of nearly the whole
population, but added, that if the Government insisted on it, they
would co-operate with the negroes in reorganization. “But the poor,
shiftless creatures will never be able to support themselves in
freedom. We’ll have half of them in poor-houses before a year!”[4]
Nothing could overcome this rooted idea, that the negro was
worthless, except under the lash. These people really believe that, in
submitting to the emancipation of the slaves, they have virtually
saddled themselves with an equal number of idle paupers. Naturally,
they believe that to add a requirement that these paupers must](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4041-250614192657-8e34c6ec/85/Cybertext-poetics-the-critical-landscape-of-new-media-literary-theory-1st-Edition-Eskelinen-39-320.jpg)
![CHAPTER V.
Fort Fisher.
On the morning of the 8th of May we came in sight of a long, low
line of sand banks, dotted with curious hillocks, between which the
black muzzles of heavy guns could be made out, and fringed with a
perfect naval chevaux-de-frise of wrecked blockade runners, whose
broken hulls and protruding machinery gave an ill-omened look to
the whole coast. As we were closely studying the bleak aspect of this
entrance to the great smuggling entrepôt of the Southern
Confederacy, the glasses began to reveal an unexpected activity
along the line of the guns, which our signal shot for a pilot by no
means diminished. Our ship drew too much water to cross the bar,
excepting at high tide, and we were, consequently, compelled to go
over in the Captain’s gig to the pilot boat—a proceeding that the
rough sea made very difficult and even dangerous. Leaving those
who could not venture the transhipment, to roll wearily among the
breakers till evening, we headed straight through the narrow and
difficult channel for Fort Fisher, and learned that we had been
mistaken for the Rebel pirate “Stonewall,” and that the guns had
been shotted ready to open fire the moment we should show signs
of a disposition to run in.[5]
Ah! that weary day at Fort Fisher! To see a fort is naturally supposed
to be not the most formidable of undertakings; but to see Fort Fisher
means a ride of miles over the bleakest of sand bars; means the
climbing of great heaps of sand, under the hottest of suns; means a
scrambling over irregular chasms and precipices of sand, where the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4041-250614192657-8e34c6ec/85/Cybertext-poetics-the-critical-landscape-of-new-media-literary-theory-1st-Edition-Eskelinen-43-320.jpg)
![off, guns dismounted, carriages shattered, the parapets plowed with
shells, a great crater in the sand where a magazine had exploded, all
shape and symmetry battered out of the works, and only their rude
strength remaining; and you have Fort Fisher.
The ground was covered with showers of musket balls. Behind every
traverse could be found little heaps of English-made cartridges,
which the Rebel sharpshooters had laid out for the convenience of
rapid firing, as they defended line after line of the successive
batteries, along which they were driven. Fragments of shells lay
everywhere over the works. Behind them were great heaps of shells,
bayonets, broken muskets, and other fragments of iron, which were
being dug out and collected to be sold for old iron. Hundreds on
hundreds of acres were under negro cultivation, producing this
valuable crop.
No man, I think, will ride along the coast line, which, by an
inconceivable amount of labor, has been converted into one
immense fort, without sympathizing with the officers who refused to
assault it, and marveling at the seeming recklessness which success
converted into the splendid audacity of the final attack.[6]
The pilot boat was again placed at the disposal of our party, after
some hours spent at Fort Fisher, and we ran over to Fort Caswell,
one of the main defenses of the other entrance. It was originally a
regularly-built brick fortification, with casemate and barbette guns,
salients, ditch and interior castle, pierced with loopholes, for a last
defense with musketry. Like Fort Macon, at Beaufort (and like
Sumter), this has been converted into an infinitely stronger work, by
having earthen fortifications thrown up outside and against it. The
Rebels blew it up after the surrender of Fort Fisher, and we shall
probably be making appropriations, every Congress, for the next
dozen years to rebuild it.
The labor here, as well as the vast amount involved in the
construction of Fort Fisher, was all performed by slaves, impressed
from time to time by the Rebel authorities. Both works were
completed—Wilmington had grown rich on the profits of blockade-](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4041-250614192657-8e34c6ec/85/Cybertext-poetics-the-critical-landscape-of-new-media-literary-theory-1st-Edition-Eskelinen-45-320.jpg)
![man, of graceful manners, and evident culture and experience—had
been through nearly the whole war as Colonel of a North Carolina
Rebel regiment.
Strangely enough, Colonel Baker claimed to have been a Union man
all the time, from which some idea may be had of the different
phases Unionism in the South has assumed. His father had been a
Unionist of unquestioned firmness; but the son, returning from
Europe in the midst of the secession enthusiasm, found the social
pressure of his circle too much to withstand. “I was forced,” he
naively said, “to raise a regiment in order to retain my influence in
the community!” And, with equal naïveté, he added, that if he had
not thus retained his influence, he could now have been of no use in
aiding to compose these difficulties! He pointed out a fine rice
plantation on the bank of the river, which he had owned, but about
his title to which, now, he seemed to have some doubts. He claimed,
and other Wilmingtonians agreed with him, that the rice grown here
is superior to that of South Carolina and Georgia, and that its
culture, in spite of the latitude, is quite as profitable.[7]
The gentlemen from Raleigh and Colonel Baker seemed each to be a
representative of a different phase of North Carolina Unionism. The
editor had always opposed secession till it was accomplished. Then
he was compelled to go with the current, but as soon as the first
fury was over, and the reaction began, he became openly anti-Davis,
and as much anti-war as he dared. He was an enthusiastic admirer
of General Sherman; thought the censure by the Northern press, of
his arrangement with Johnston, very unjust; was anxious now for
the speediest possible restoration of civil authority, and believed the
people stood willing to acquiesce in whatever basis of reorganization
the President would prescribe. If he had his way, he would have no
negro suffrage; even that would be preferable to remaining
unorganized, and would be accepted by the people, though it would
cause great dissatisfaction.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4041-250614192657-8e34c6ec/85/Cybertext-poetics-the-critical-landscape-of-new-media-literary-theory-1st-Edition-Eskelinen-48-320.jpg)
![The lawyer, on the other hand, insisted that none would revolt, with
more loathing, from the bare idea of negro suffrage, than the best
Union men in the State, who had suffered the most for their
devotion to the Government and opposition to the war. “It would not
even be satisfactory,” he insisted, “to leave the negroes, like other
non-voting classes, to take care of themselves. To leave them
absolutely without any control, save such as the law extends to
white people, also, would be unendurable. Either you must take
pity,” he exclaimed, “on those of us who, for four years, have
endured everything for the sake of the old flag, and send the
negroes out of the country altogether, or you must place them under
the control of the Legislature.” “What policy toward them would the
Legislature be apt to adopt?” “It ought to provide against vagrancy;
adopt measures to require them to fulfill their contracts for labor,
and authorize their sale, for a term of years, for breaches of order.[8]
Either do that, and so protect us against an intolerable nuisance, or
colonize them out of the country.”
The Colonel was not so emphatic in favor of this virtual re-
enslavement of the negroes, nor so peremptory in his condemnation
of negro suffrage; but he thought it would be wise to conciliate as
much as possible, and to avoid deep-seated prejudices. It was easy
to see that he was looking to what would be the least unpopular
with the people of North Carolina; and, indeed, I heard later in the
evening, that he was not unwilling to ask them to send him to
Congress.
Clearly enough, few Union men in the South, who have political
aspirations, can be safely expected to advocate justice, much less
generosity, to the negro, or severity to the Rebels. The latter are
sure to be voters—many of them now, after carelessly taking oaths
of allegiance—all of them some day; and politicians are not likely to
make haste in doing that which they know to be odious to the men
whose votes they want.
At a dinner party at General Hawley’s, and subsequently at a little
party, later in the evening, we saw and heard a good deal of the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4041-250614192657-8e34c6ec/85/Cybertext-poetics-the-critical-landscape-of-new-media-literary-theory-1st-Edition-Eskelinen-49-320.jpg)
![The native negroes of Wilmington, however, are doing well. They are
of a much higher order of intelligence than those from the country;
are generally in comfortable circumstances, and already find time to
look into politics. They have a Union League formed among
themselves, the object of which is to stimulate to industry and
education, and to secure combined effort for suffrage, without which
they insist that they will soon be practically enslaved again. A
delegation of them waited on Mr. Chase; and certainly looked as well
and talked as lucidly as any of the poor whites would have done.
There are a very few of the whites who encourage them; but, in
general, the bitterest prejudice against these black Unionists, is still
among those who have been the only white Unionists—the often-
described poor white trash.
The Wilmington negroes have no faith in the ready assent to the
proposition that slavery is dead, which all the old slaveholders give.
They say—and the negro refugees, all, and some of the whites bear
them out in it—that in the country slavery still practically exists. The
masters tell them that slavery is to be restored as soon as the army
is removed; that the Government is already mustering the army out
of service; that next year, when the State is reorganized, the State
authorities will control slavery. Meantime, the negroes are worked as
hard as ever—in some cases a little harder—and they have no more
protection from the cruelty of the whites than ever.[9]
“I tell you, sah” said a very intelligent negro, who had been reciting
the present troubles of his people, “we ain’t noways safe, ‘long as
dem people makes de laws we’s got to be governed by. We’s got to
hab a voice in de ‘pintin’ of de law-makers. Den we knows our frens,
and whose hans we’s safe in.”
The war, according to these negroes, had, in some respects, made
slavery harder for them than before. They were naturally trusted
less, and watched more. Then, when provisions became scarce, their
rations, on the large plantations, were reduced. On one, for
example, the field hands got no meat at all, and their allowance
consisted of a peck of unsifted corn-meal and a pint of molasses per](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4041-250614192657-8e34c6ec/85/Cybertext-poetics-the-critical-landscape-of-new-media-literary-theory-1st-Edition-Eskelinen-54-320.jpg)
![feeling exists here, however, as in Virginia, where the farmers are
said to hold on with a death grip to their lands, and to consider it
discreditable to sell to a Yankee. Many of the most violent Rebels
here will sell at exceedingly low rates, in order to get out of the
country, where everything reminds them of their mortifying defeat
and disgrace. And of those who remain, large numbers will be forced
to sell part of their lands, to get means for living comfortably on the
remainder.[10]
The new blood, likely thus to be infused into North
Carolina, will be its salvation; and the capital which is now seeking
openings for trade, will presently find vastly more profitable returns
from investments in lands.
General Hawley, General Abbott and their wives, the Collector, the
Treasury Agent, a party of staff officers and others, pursued us with
kindness till our vessel had absolutely pushed off from the almost
deserted wharf, which, four years ago, was crowded with the keels
of a thriving commerce, and even a year ago bustled with scores of
adventurous blockade runners. Trade, indeed, follows the flag; but
for trade you must have money; and of this there is far too little in
the exhausted country to bring back business into its old channels,
as speedily as Northern speculators are imagining.
Some of the officers and their wives came down with us in the river
steamer, to the bar, whither the “Wayanda” had returned to await
us; and kindly good-byes and fluttering handkerchiefs could still be
heard and seen after the vessels had each begun moving. At the
North we think little of loyalty; here loyal men, and especially those
in the service of the Government, seem drawn toward each other, as
are men who serve under the same flag in a foreign country.
7. The farther north you can grow any grain, or other crop, and
mature it, the better it is—according to the theory of the North
Carolina planters. The rice crop is more profitable here, they
claim, than on the best plantations about Savannah.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4041-250614192657-8e34c6ec/85/Cybertext-poetics-the-critical-landscape-of-new-media-literary-theory-1st-Edition-Eskelinen-56-320.jpg)
Cybertext poetics the critical landscape of new media literary theory 1st Edition Eskelinen
- 1. Cybertext poetics the critical landscape of new media literary theory 1st Edition Eskelinen download https://textbookfull.com/product/cybertext-poetics-the-critical- landscape-of-new-media-literary-theory-1st-edition-eskelinen/ Download full version ebook from https://textbookfull.com
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- 5. Cybertext Poetics International Texts In Critical Media Aesthetics Volume #2 Founding Editor Francisco J. Ricardo Associate Editor Jörgen Schäfer Editorial Board Roberto Simanowski Rita Raley John Cayley George Fifield
- 7. Cybertext Poetics The Critical Landscape of New Media Literary Theory Markku Eskelinen
- 8. The Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane 11 York Road Suite 704 London New York SE1 7NX NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com © Markku Eskelinen, 2012 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Eskelinen, Markku. Cybertext poetics : the critical landscape of new media literary theory / by Markku Eskelinen. p. cm. -- (International texts in critical media aesthetics ; v. 2) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-4411-2438-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-4411-2438-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-1-4411-0745-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-4411-0745-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Literature and technology. 2. Digital media--Social aspects. 3. Literature and society. 4. Communication and technology. 5. Narration (Rhetoric) I. Title. PN56.T37E85 2012 809’.93356--dc23 2011038964 ISBN: 978–1–4411–1820–2 Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk, NR21 8NN
- 9. CONTENTS Acknowledgments vii 1 Introduction 1 2 Cybertext theory revisited 15 3 Cybertextuality and transtextuality 47 4 The textual whole 69 5 The enigma of the ergodic 87 6 Towards cybertextual narratology 103 7 Towards an expanded narratology 123 8 Tense 133 9 Mood 165 10 Voice 181 11 Ergodic and narrative discourses 199 12 Ludology and the exhaustion of narratology 209 13 Game ecology and the classic game model 235 14 Game ontology 259 15 Rules and configurative practices 275 16 Game time 295 17 Games as configurative practices: models and metaphors 313
- 10. vi CONTENTS 18 Transmedial modes and ecologies 327 19 Ergodic modes and play 349 20 Textual instruments and instrumental texts 367 Notes 388 Bibliography 432 Index 455
- 11. Acknowledgments There are eight people without whom this book would have been either pointless or impossible for me to write: Espen Aarseth, John Cayley, Julianne Chatelain, Gonzalo Frasca, Raine Koskimaa, Stuart Moulthrop, Francisco Ricardo, and my wife. I remain in debt and you all know why. I feel lucky. Fifteen years ago I decided to stop writing fiction and essays in Finnish and to do something completely different instead. I didn’t ever expect to find myself belonging to a wonder- fully open and welcoming international community of scholars and artists just a few years later, but that is exactly what happened to me after the first Digital Arts and Culture conference in Bergen in 1998. Ever since that magical event I have enjoyed having intense and inspiring discussions with an evergrowing number of people on top of their profession. Among those friends, colleagues, artists, and researchers who and whose work have shaped my thinking the most are Simon Biggs, Philippe Bootz, Laura Borrás Castanyer, Serge Bouchardon, Eliza Deac, Maria Engberg, Mary Flanagan, Peter Gendolla, Loss Pequeno Glazier, Anna Gunder, Cynthia Haynes, Jan Rune Holmevik, Fotis Jannidis, Michael Joyce, Jesper Juul, Aki Järvinen, Eduardo Kac, Lisbeth Klastrup, Michael Mateas, Talan Memmott, Nick Montfort, Jason Nelson, Katherine Parrish, Mariusz Pisarski, Jill Walker Rettberg, Scott Rettberg, Jim Rosenberg, Jörgen Schäfer, Roberto Simanowski, Janez Strehovec, Patricia Tomaszek, Rui Torres, Susana Tosca, Ragnhild Tronstad, Piret Viires, and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. Thank you all, it was fun. To be honest, I was also genuinely inspired by several scholars whose work I despise, but me being me, they are way too numerous to be listed here. Markku Eskelinen Helsinki, 1 August 2011
- 13. Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Points of departure Cybertext Poetics has three different points of departure: theoretical, strategic, and empirical. It uses ludology and modified cybertext theory as a cross-disciplinary perspective to solve four persistent and strategically chosen problems in four separate, yet interconnected fields: literary theory, narratology, game studies, and digital media.1 The problems in the first three fields stem from the same root: hegemonic theories are based on a subset of possible media behaviors that is far too limited, and this limitation seriously undermines their explanatory and analytical power. The cumulative effects of this lack also obscure our understanding of transmediality, media ecology, and digital media. An example may perhaps help demonstrate what I mean. If we take an ordinary printed and bound book, what are the facts that we just might agree about? The color of its cover, the number of its pages and words if we bother to count, but all this is deemed banal for a good reason: the rest and with it everything that really interests us is up to interpretation. By now we know very well to where that road leads: irreducible differences in reception, contexts and communities and also in competence and skill. But let’s try another kind of book, B.S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates: it comes with simple instructions allowing the reader to decide in which order to read the bundles of text. Here we can also agree, in addition to those banal facts, on a certain operational procedure of
- 14. 2 cybertext poetics how we should make this literary work function. The whole range of existing media behavior naturally goes far beyond this simple operation of choosing paths, as is evident in such dynamically ergodic digital works as Book Unbound (Cayley 1995a) or The Impermanence Agent (Wardrip-Fruin et al. 1998–2002). Two aspects are essential here: we have established a range of media behavior that is easily verifiable. Luckily, for the last 15 years we have had a theory that takes into account the dimension that is lacking and ignored in contemporary and hegemonic theories of literature, Aarseth’s cybertext theory, which is capable of situating every text, based on how its medium functions, into its heuristic but empirically verifiable map of 576 media positions. Before going any further into this it is important to understand that similar theories of media functioning do not exist in neighboring scholarly fields (including those centered on audiovisual presentations) – in this respect cybertext theory is a unique achievement. If currently hegemonic literary theories are viewed from the perspective of cybertext theory, it quickly becomes evident that these theories cover and are valid only in a very limited range of media positions. In practice, they are based on only one position and therefore on literary works that are static, determinate, intran- sient, featuring random access and impersonal perspective, no links and only interpretative user function, while pretending to be general theories of literature applicable to every literary work in every possible medium. Similar limitations also affect classical and postclassical literary (and film) narratologies and the behavioral scope of their favorite objects of choice. The clash between the claims of hegemonic literary and narrative theories and their actual explanatory and analytical power is by no means only theoretical and cybertextual: empirically verifiable anomalies and counterexamples to the basic assumptions, premises, and presuppositions of these theories abound in digital and ergodic works of literature and film. In short, in the first half of the book we’ll see what happens and what can be made to happen when sophisticated theories of reading and text are supplemented by an equally advanced theory of media. However, those are not the only benefits of adopting the cybertextual perspective on media behavior. It is also relevant in ludology and game studies, because it can be used to introduce and justify the existence of comparative game studies as a paradigmatic
- 15. Introduction 3 alternative and extension to digital game studies and to suggest the shift of focus from what a game medium is to what it does in terms of ludic media positions. Finally, because cybertext theory is ultimately based on a study of media, it is also applicable to the problems of transmediality and media ecology that become somewhat easier to crack after expanding literary and narrative theories to cover a fuller range of media positions and constructing one possible basis for comparative game studies. With cybertext theory, we are not limited to speculations on what a medium supposedly is and what it can or cannot do, which usually only result in long-lasting, hype-ridden, and counter- productive dichotomies (such as print vs. digital for example) excluding overlaps and the actual media behavior. We also don’t need to limit our observations to loosely or poorly defined genres, but are able to look beyond them from a more unified perspective constructed from the full range of media positions (a theoretical entity that is necessarily open to change). Therefore this is not a study of hypertext fiction, poetry generators, first-person shooters or MMOGs, even though examples of these and many other “genres” are used in building the argument for more compre- hensive literary theory, narratology, and game studies. Following the inherent tension in cybertext theory between what is (the empirically verifiable behaviors) and what could be (myriad combi- nations), this project is necessarily oriented towards poetics as well. 1.2 Orientation: the uses of theory Ultimately, this treatise is a theoretically oriented enterprise that aims at constructing several heuristic models. This necessitates a conscious move away from past debates while applying perspec- tives and conceptualizations that have explanatory power and analytical potential beyond the schisms in question. Thus, while applying McHale’s theories of postmodernism (McHale 1987; 1992; 2004), we are not interested in being stuck with the all too familiar problems of how to discern postmodernism from modernism or how to maintain (if one so wishes) or draw a clearcut and inviolable boundary line between them. Instead, it is much more important to us to lift the useful distinction between
- 16. 4 cybertext poetics epistemological and ontological problems from McHale’s discourse and to graft it onto our constructions that have nothing to do with the already automated discourses on modernism and postmod- ernism. The ample empirical evidence of both epistemological and ontological problems that remain alien and unknown to modernist and postmodernist fiction and poetics is more than enough to justify this move. Likewise, in theorizing and modeling the textual whole (a material-theoretical-ideological entity perhaps under erasure), the Oulipian distinction between objects and operations is lifted from its original context and applied as a heuristic model of how to best think about that totality, its behavior and reception. Generally speaking, theories and theoretical constructions are mostly seen as heuristic tools, perspectives and frameworks that can be modified, revised, abandoned and supplemented should the need and evidence arise. This brings us close to Todorov’s definition (1977, 33) of poetics as “a sum of possible forms: what literature can be rather than what it is.” Thus, for example, in the context of expanding literary narratology from one to several available media positions, we are not stifled by the lack of the literary works to exemplify some positions, as long as they can be deduced or inferred from empirical examples through sound theoretical categorizations. Should we require authoritative justification for our efforts in poetics, we could do worse than to quote Genette twice on what is certain and what is important: “What is certain is that poetics in general, and narratology in particular, must not limit itself to accounting for existing forms or themes. It must also explore the field of what is possible and even impossible without pausing too long at the frontier, the mapping out of which is not its job ... what would theory be worth if it were not also good for inventing practice” (Genette 1988, 157); and: “What is important about it is not this or that actual combination but the combinatorial principle itself, whose chief merit is to place the various categories in an open relationship with no a priori constraints” (Genette 1988, 129). In short, what we have here are constellations, along with the principle that is also at work in Aarseth’s open model of seven dimensions combining into hundreds of media positions, and as long as the values of the variables are found in our research objects,
- 17. Introduction 5 an empty slot or 10 in the combinatory system do not constitute a problem. On the contrary, such empty slots give us a valuable and very rare glance at several new frontiers of literature, narrative and games that may also help us formulate new research questions. The flexible modularity and temporality of digital media makes this combinatory principle even stronger and the resulting constella- tions much less permanent both in theory and in practice. To resist hype and speculation, there usually is an empirical point of departure and a corresponding need for theoretical elabo- rations and revisions in every chapter. To take three examples: whatever one thinks of transtextuality and intertextuality, it is hard to deny that networked and programmable media have brought with them new relations and types of relation between and among texts (discussed in Chapter 3); whichever definition of narrative one prefers there is a strong connection between narratives and (re)presentation of events and time and it is hard to deny that digital media have added new means to manipulate time (theorized mostly in Chapter 8); and however one wishes to see the relations between games and narratives, it is hard to deny that current narrative theories cannot explain (and were never set to explain) such key features of games as rules, goals and player effort (as discussed in Chapters 12 to 17). Similarly, it is very hard to imagine a comprehensive literary theory that would not include theories of intertextuality, narrative theories ignoring narrative temporalities, or ludologies excluding the study of the dominant formal features of games. The scope of this project is much less ambitious than it may sound. Even though one of the main thrusts is to revise, expand, and integrate theories in several scholarly fields, the aim is not to construct yet another grand theory, but to make several small steps away from the doxa of the day, mostly by following and being guided (and constrained) by an eclectically and pragmati- cally selected variety of empirically verifiable counterexamples. This is also reflected in the modular structure of the book, within which each chapter, and each section of each chapter comes with its own (yet mutually compatible) focus and agenda. The open arrangement should also convey the feeling that new, exciting, and unexplored possibilities are within one’s grasp and there is no need or reason to limit one’s theoretical appetites and practical interests to traditional zones of comfort.
- 18. 6 cybertext poetics 1.3 Disciplinary contacts and contexts 1.3.1 Literary studies Even though the dichotomy between paper- and digital-based media is false and breaks down under closer scrutiny, it still seems to divide the scholarly field of literary studies. Even (and sometimes especially) the most prominent literary scholars usually avoid digital and ergodic texts and stay firmly with printed and non-ergodic works. There are exceptions, most notably Brian McHale’s (2004) recent probes into postmodernist poetry, but even in these cases the digital-ergodic realm is barely touched on and when it is, the results are not very convincing. As just one example, McHale’s labeling John Cayley and Jim Rosenberg as postmodernist poets may well raise their cultural status from obscurity to marginality, but it also misses significant features of their oeuvre that run counter to various constructions of postmodernism, including McHale’s own. On the other side of that divide, scholars of digital literature tend to focus only on digital specimens, even though a limited selection of print literature is usually mentioned and included in discussions, most likely as “predecessors” (for example as proto- hypertexts) to the main objects of study providing a tradition and all the other benefits that come with that territory. Similar reliance and discourse on predecessors often occurs during theoretical construction when theories of print literature or Aristotelian drama are extended and mildly modified to better explain the theorists’ digital objects of choice. At its most extreme these “new” objects are seen as embodiments of the ideas of recent literary- philosophical theories (as in Bolter’s and Landow’s influential but ill-informed attempts to conflate poststructuralism and hypertext literature in the early 1990s). In many ways, this is just business as usual in the academy, as scholars have to specialize and prefer to stay within their primary areas of expertise. Still, there is no reason for boundaries or barriers of specialization to exist between the studies of print literature and digital literature. Our problem with that boundary is that the print side, which, for historical reasons, has the upper hand (culturally, economically, institutionally, educationally, theoretically etc.), still sees print literature as the one and only literature with any value.
- 19. Introduction 7 This is not only an aesthetic problem, but a theoretical one. Digital and ergodic literature contain specimens that run counter to a wide variety of basic assumptions and presuppositions that ground an equally wide variety of sophisticated theories of print literature that pretend or are taken to be general theories of literature (in whatever medium). In other words, several implicit and explicit generaliza- tions these theories make about literature either are or may be valid only in the context of print literature. Print scholars seem to be blind to this, and if digitally and ergodically oriented scholars do not challenge them with insights and perspectives derived from digital and other anomalies, the implicitly print-biased paradigms of literature will remain in power. My aim is not to hint at revolutionizing literary studies (not even at palace revolution inside departments of comparative literature if and where such ineffective islets are still allowed to exist), but to set selected paradigms of hegemonic literary theory in dialogue with digital and ergodic anomalies, much to their own benefit, and most of all to the benefit of the enterprise of literary theory that has for quite some time now (after various “post” movements and cultural studies) existed without fresh challenges, new openings or remarkable advances. The nature of these challenges is grounded in empirically observable textual behavior, which makes these challenges easily verifiable even though we may (and are very likely to) disagree on how to best theorize them. More generally then, we will cross the unnecessary divide between traditional literary studies of mainly non-ergodic texts and digital literary studies of mainly ergodic texts. This divide still has its institutional basis, but it is getting harder and harder to see the actual benefits (if willful ignorance doesn’t count) of maintaining the split in any theoretically oriented scholarly work. The usual interpretative orientation could go on as unaffected as before, as from the vantage point of the humanistic-interpretative industry digital and ergodic literary texts are neither appealing nor canonized enough to become career-making cases. 1.3.2 Media studies and literary studies Schematically, we can draft at least four partly overlapping stages in theoretical discussions and developments around literary media
- 20. 8 cybertext poetics and more generally around digital media. First, various poetics of individual practitioner-theorists working in text generation (Bense 1962), digital poetry (Glazier 2002), intermedia (Higgins 1966), hypertext fiction (Joyce 1995), holopoetry (Kac 1995), video poetry (Melo e Castro 2007), and “interactive fiction” (Montfort 2005), to name but a few, who were usually content to explore the potentials of one particular medium, genre or material technology without generalizing their findings to other areas and without any attempt at constructing a theoretically valid comparative and comprehensive perspective. Second, the rise of hype contrasting the digital and new with the print or the analog and old (cf. the main bulk of hypertext theory) resulting in various lists of the supposedly novel or key properties of the new media or medium (cf. Manovich 2001; Murray 1997) that break down under closer scrutiny. Third, introduction of a comparative theory of media functioning and textual communication within which any literary text could be situated, shifting emphasis away from media essen- tialism (what a medium is or is supposed to be) to what a medium does (Aarseth 1991; 1994; 1997). Fourth, approaches trying to go beyond the textual surface and communicative models in general into operations, operational logics, and processes of various digital media (Bogost 2006; Bootz 2003; Wardrip-Fruin 2009).2 So far these approaches are not fully developed and their explanatory power and heuristic value is still unclear. Moreover, to fully assess their value and usability, at least at this point in time, one needs to be considerably more familiar with research in artificial intelligence and computer science than I am. Still, in what follows we abandon only the second type, and apply mainly the third, while trying to be informed by the first and fourth. 1.3.3 Ludology and game studies The importance of the section (Chapters 12–17) on first-generation ludology is at least fourfold. First, without ludology addressing and studying the defining and core features of games, the whole field of game studies would be left to what could be called overlap studies, more interested in connecting games to other phenomena, and thus ultimately eroding the justification for the existence (not to mention future) of game studies as a distinct academic discipline.
- 21. Introduction 9 As always such distinctiveness would not exclude interdiscipli- narity; one simply needs to have a discipline before it is possible to become truly interdisciplinary. Second, the necessary ontological question (what is a game?) begs additional questions concerning the constituents of narrative as well. The blind spot or imbalance among various contem- porary definitions of narrative is that that they mostly predate the emergence of representational video games and certainly the recognition of the latter’s cultural and aesthetic importance. Perhaps the most significant consequence of this historical fact is that narrative scholars still take for granted that narratives have an absolute monopoly for representing events, i.e. that every kind of representation of events is necessarily or potentially a narrative or at least contains narrativity. This type of thinking makes sense only in an environment, cultural context, or scholarly field that excludes or is not aware of simulations and representational games, and within which the closest competitors and points of comparison to narrative are other text types such as argument and description. Compared to these, digital and other games constitute a much stronger challenge to the cultural and theoretical hegemony of narratives, and may even provide a welcome alternative to the lesser blessings of the narrative turn. Third, ludology is much more than yet another anti-narrative movement, as its opponents often take it to be. The third section could therefore have been titled “In defense of radical ludology”, not only because it counters the serious and unproductive misun- derstandings and both scholarly and non- or semi-scholarly misrepresentations in the famous debate between ludologists and narrativists that is also the founding debate of (digital) game studies, but also because it brings to the fore several forgotten heuristic suggestions for further research in the early ludological work. In other words, the point is to point to the paths not yet taken or followed to their logical conclusions, and to the ludological project as being far from complete, and its role as a necessary countermeasure to the current fetishizing of both players and game cultures that causes the field to gravitate towards an interpretative and meaning-oriented synthesis of cultural studies and social sciences. With some justification these two could be seen as moving game studies to the state and status of normal science, but as the section tries to show, the road there is less straightforward and
- 22. 10 cybertext poetics perhaps also less rewarding than the prevailing consensus among the interested parties in academia and industry seems to assume. Perhaps the most important of the half-forgotten ludological paths leads from digital game studies to comparative game studies. Fourth, constructing a more unified ludology creates a heuristic perspective that can be applied far beyond games and game studies. As games are, unlike literature and art, a dominantly configurative practice,3 ludology is useful in situating the wide variety of ergodic forms, modes and genres within a double perspective. In other words, we will have a fuller view if the current dyad of art and ergodic (or “interactive”) art is replaced with the triad including games. 1.4 Structure and brief outline of the book The four chapters that try to come to terms with the multipli- cation of literary media (Chapter 2), transtextual relations and connections (Chapter 3), and challenges to reading and to the notions of the textual whole (Chapter 4) as well the enigma of the ergodic (Chapter 5), are primarily concerned with constructing a conceptual map that could include both ergodic and non-ergodic literature. The existence of an ever widening variety of literary media is inherently challenging to mainstream literary theories that still avoid close encounters with the trend that has been around for 50 odd years (or more) and perhaps even more importantly exclude from consideration the growing multitude of literary works that run counter to what such theories of literature still take for granted and as universal conditions and limitations of literature. Needless to say we take an opposite view, and formulate the main challenges and revisions through slightly revised cybertext theory and its heuristic notions of media positions, textonomical genres, non-trivial traversal, and the ergodic as a series of modes, genres, and discourse levels. On top of them, the main connecting line or frame is another notion that is implicit in Aarseth’s theory: literature as dominantly interpretative practice. After these four chapters, we move on to the problems of narratology and narrative theory, first to solve one remaining
- 23. Introduction 11 problem from the first section: the status of so-called anti- or non-narratives that seem not to belong to any recognized text type except narrative but are for various reasons excluded from more or less sophisticated late 20th century narratologies. Without integrating postmodernist, Oulipian and experimental narratives into the narratological framework we cannot embark on studying the interplay between ergodic and narrative layers, and therefore prospects for a more inclusive narratology are discussed in Chapter 7, which is also the first of the three intermissions in this study. These intermissions designate specific borderline or fuzzy areas that cause problems for standard approaches and require new or revised conceptualizations. Chapters 6 and 7 complement and supplement one another as the former one negotiates its way around the contested concepts of narrative and story and discusses several competing narratologies to ground the investigation in the following four chapters. As the manipulation of temporality and the double logic of time are core features in almost any given narratology, Chapter 8 expands theories of narrative tense. The categories of narrative order, simultaneity, repetition (frequency), speed and duration are extracted from the context of their two media positions (in literary and film narratology respectively) and situated in the much wider variety of both non-ergodic and ergodic media positions. Chapters 9 and 10 revise the categories of narrative mood and voice following similar procedures that were applied in Chapter 8, and thus we finally have a fully revised and expanded literary narratology at our disposal as well as a well-grounded conceptual frame capable of taking into account the main differences and similarities between literary narratives, on the one hand, and dramatic, filmic, and other audiovisual presentations, on the other. Chapter 11 concludes the narratological section, discussing the interplay of narrative and ergodic discourses not only in terms of user functions but also in relation to the discourse layers of negoti- ation and progression. In particular, the presence of the former is shown to be a strong indication of the presence of game structures that are capable of dominating narrative structures, pointing thus to modal differences between games and narratives, which is one of the topics of Chapter 12. Chapter 12 counters and confronts the limits of expanded narra- tologies and bears witness to the exhaustion of their explanatory
- 24. 12 cybertext poetics power in the theoretical debate or semi-debate between ludologists and narrativists in the emerging scholarly field of (digital) game studies. This chapter marks the beginning of and the transition to the third part, which attempts to synthesize a first-generation paradigm of ludology from the theories and insights put forward by Espen Aarseth, Markku Eskelinen, Gonzalo Frasca and Jesper Juul. This paradigm is also a paradigm of dominantly configurative practices of gaming and play that will later be used to situate ergodic literature and art between interpretative and configurative practices. Chapter 13 continues to chart ludological groundwork and takes as its point of departure Jesper Juul’s classic game model while trying to construct a preliminary game ecology, an inter- and transludic system that both functions and is contextualized differently from narrative and other transmedial ecologies. The construction of game ecology counterbalances theories of transme- diality that are usually centered on stories and narratives as if they were the only modes possessing transmediality. The recognition and construction of game ecology is also necessary for situating games in relation to other transmedial ecologies and for making valid comparisons between games. Chapter 14 focuses on game ontology and builds on Aarseth’s pioneering work while combining it with insights derived from Jesper Juul, Elliot Avedon, and Brian Sutton-Smith. Game ontology and game ecology supplement and support one another: only by combining diachronic and synchronic perspectives can we see the whole scope and depth of comparative game studies and locate the most important elements circulating and being transformed within game ecology. After coming to better terms with what games are and how they relate to one another, it is time to move on and balance system- centric and player-centric approaches to games and play. Therefore in the next two chapters the focus is on the player’s rule-based and goal-oriented manipulative action. Chapter 15 builds on Gonzalo Frasca’s pioneering work on game rules, discussing the role of different types of rule in guiding and constraining player effort on micro- and mesolevels of gameplay. Chapter 16 shifts the focus towards the macrolevel while theorizing the complexities of time in games. A preliminary model of game time is constructed by synthe- sizing dimensions from the models of Elverdam and Aarseth, Juul, Eskelinen, and Mateas and Zagal.
- 25. Introduction 13 Chapter 17 constitutes the third intermission. It combines the loose ends from various discussions in section three, and tries to circumscribe and contextualize games as configurative practices in relation to other configurative practices. The chapter specifies the differences between two partly overlapping conceptualizations of players, the implied player(s) of ludology and the real player(s) of social sciences, and highlights the inevitable shortcomings in the kind of game research that dismisses the former as formalism. In Chapter 18, ludological thinking is applied to transmedi- ality, which is now viewed from the perspectives constructed in section three. Transmediality is anchored in two types of mode, representation and action, which constitute two basic ways of articulating events and existents. Chapter 18 also locates several modal ecologies and various ergodic practices cutting across them. In Chapter 19, ergodic literature is situated within the latter while its actual and potential connections to ergodic art and various forms of play are foregrounded. Finally, in Chapter 20, this investigation leads us to theorizing textual instruments, and to a lesser degree instrumental texts, arguably the most important genres of ergodic literature that have emerged since the publication of Cybertext in 1997. At stake here is the middle space between ergodic practices and computer games (as dominantly ergodic practices) as well as finding a balance between interpretation and configuration.
- 27. Chapter 2 Cybertext theory revisited 2.1 Introduction: the problem with media plurality In this chapter, we begin with a review of the problems media plurality has caused for literary studies, revisit cybertext theory, and discuss its critical reception and alternatives while teasing out its implications and presuppositions. The fact that poets in the 20th century were aggressive in using all available material alternatives to the printed page is not a great secret. During this period there have already been several types of new media; as recently as in the 1980s and 1990s “new media poetry” included not only digital but video and holopoetry as well (cf. Kac [ed.] 1996) not to mention the predecessors of video poetry from Marcel Duchamp’s Anemic Cinema (1926) to Paul Sharits’ Word Movie (1965). It has also become obvious in the light of visual, concrete, sound, and kinetic poetries that poetry has ceased to be a merely verbal art (in fact, given the long history of illustrated books and mixed-media performances, it can be argued that it never was). Moreover, each of these poetic “movements” can employ a wide variety of media for their purposes, as the following quote from Eduardo Kac makes clear:
- 28. 16 cybertext poetics Between 1982 and 1983 I was very unsatisfied by what I then considered as a blind alley of visual poetry. Aware of the multiple directions the genre had taken in the twentieth century, I experi- mented with different media ... billboards, Polaroid cameras, artists’ books, fine graffiti, electronic signboards, video, mail art, photocopiers, videotex, and finally holography. (Osthoff 1994) As far back as the mid–1960s Dick Higgins (1982, 414–15) tried to untangle the pluralities of media by separating intermedia from mixed media. In the latter, the spectator can “readily perceive” the separation of different media (for example musical, literary, and visual aspects in opera) while in the former, they cannot be resolved in the combination of older media, as the elements are in much tighter fusion. Higgins used the concept of intermedia to connect (or fuse) poetry to various other arts and technologies. His list of fusions includes visual poetry, video poetry, sound poetry, conceptual poetry (fusion of poetry and philosophy), object poetry (fusion of poetry and sculpture), postal poetry (fusion of poetry and mail art), and action poetry (fusion of poetry and happenings), while remaining open for countless other fusions. Higgins also notes that through familiarity any intermedium may become a new medium existing in between the old ones. The introduction of personal computers and computer networks added yet another wave of multiplication and diversion to this already rich tradition of moving away from literature as verbal signs printed on paper. From the perspective of the media history of poetry, the paralyzing theoretical dichotomy of printed versus digital works seems to have originated from a narrow scholarly focus on narrative fiction and prose literature, in which context the digital seems to mark the shift from one major medium to the competition (and coexistence) between two. In any case, literary theory chose to ignore the existing and increasing multitude of literary media, its behavioral variety, and its theoretical and methodological implications, until the emergency of cybertext theory in the 1990s (Aarseth 1991; 1994; 1995;1997), despite the fact that cybernetic thinking was there in the very beginning of digital literature (Bense 1962; Gendolla 2010). Compared to the other new media mentioned earlier, digital media attracted much more scholarly attention and many more attempts to conceptualize its most important properties and
- 29. Cybertext theory revisited 17 aspects. Among the most influential of these have been the general models and conceptualizations of Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin (1999), Lev Manovich (2001), and Janet Murray (1997), all of which seem to assume (albeit to varying degrees) that digital media (or medium) are uniquely different from its predecessors. We’ll take a quick look at each of these attempts before going into more literary matters. 2.2 The problem with digital media In Hamlet on the Holodeck (1997, 71) Murray listed four main properties of the digital medium seemingly equal to digital environ- ments: they are procedural (i.e. programmable), participatory (i.e. interactive), spatial, and encyclopaedic. Perhaps because Murray’s focus is on speculative development of virtual worlds, and not on myriad other forms and genres of digital media, she seems to have missed both literary and audiovisual works that are neither participatory nor encyclopaedic (for example, many kinetic texts and textual movies) and in which spatiality plays a minimal or even non-significant role (as in Eliza). We are therefore left with only the first property which, if not further specified, is almost tauto- logical. Instead of specifying further, Murray only speculates on the possibilities of a hypothetical technology for fiction which was not around in 1997 and is still not available today. As Murray’s focus is limited to narrative (conceptualized in prenarratological fashion), her discourse is more speculative than analytical, and her definitions and distinctions fail (including the major presupposition that there is only one unified digital medium), her model cannot be used in comparisons among literary (or other) media. In The Language of the New Media (2001, 29–48), Lev Manovich identifies not four but five key features of digital media (numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability, and transcoding), while stating that the last three are dependent on the first two. However, these two core features turn out to be problematic. As Aarseth notes: Numerical representation is much older than computer repre- sentation (it is as old as writing), so it is not a principle exclusive
- 30. Discovering Diverse Content Through Random Scribd Documents
- 31. “And, of course, then you have only to submit to any terms the conquerors may impose?” “No, sir—oh, ah—yes, any terms that could be honorably offered to a proud, high-minded people!” The rest of the dignitaries nodded their heads approvingly at this becoming intimation of the terms the “subjugated” State could be induced to accept. It was easy to see that the old political tricks were not forgotten, and that the first inch of wrong concession would be expected to lead the way to many an ell. “What terms do you think would be right?” The County Clerk, a functionary of near thirty years’ service, took up the conversation, and promptly replied, “Let Governor Vance call together the North Caroliner Legislator. We only lacked a few votes of a Union majority in it before, and we’d be sure to have enough now.” “What then?” “Why, the Legislater would, of course, repeal the ordinance of secession, and order a convention to amend the Constitution. I think that convention would accept your constitutional amendment.” “But can you trust your Governor Vance? Did not he betray the Union party after his last election?” “Yes, he sold us out clean and clear.” “He did nothing of the sort. North Caroliner has not got a purer patriot than Governor Vance.” And so they fell to disputing among themselves. I asked one of the party what this Legislature, if thus called together, would do with the negroes? “Take ’em under the control of the Legislater, as free niggers always have been in this State. Let it have authority to fix their wages, and prevent vagrancy. It always got along with ’em well enough before.” “Are you not mistaken about its always having had this power?” “What!” exclaimed the astonished functionary. “Why, I was born and raised hyar, and lived hyar all my life; Do you suppose I don’t know?”
- 32. “Apparently not, sir; for you seem to be ignorant of the fact that free negroes in North Carolina were voters from the formation of the State Government down to 1835.” “It isn’t so, stranger.” “Excuse me; but your own State records will show it;[2] and, if I must say so, he is a very ignorant citizen to be talking about ways and means of reorganization, who doesn’t know so simple and recent a fact in the history of his State.” The Cracker scratched his head in great bewilderment. “Well, stranger, you don’t mean to say that the Government at Washington is going to make us let niggers vote?” “I mean to say that it is at least possible.” “Well, why not have the decency to let us have a vote on it ourselves, and say whether we’ll let niggers vote?” “In other words, you mean this: Less than a generation ago you held a convention, which robbed certain classes of your citizens of rights they had enjoyed, undisputed, from the organization of your State down to that hour. Now, you propose to let the robbers hold an election to decide whether they will return the stolen property or not.” “Stranger,” exclaimed another of the group, with great emphasis, “is the Government at Washington, because it has whipped us, going to make us let niggers vote?” “Possibly it will. At any rate a strong party favors it.” “Then I wouldn’t live under the Government. I’d emigrate, sir. Yes, sir, I’d leave this Government and go north!” And the man, true to his States’-Rights training, seemed to imagine that going north was going under another Government, and spoke of it as one might speak of emigrating to China. Meantime, the younger citizens of Beaufort (of Caucasian descent) had found better amusement than talking to the strangers in the
- 33. sand bank of a street. One of them wagered a quarter (fractional currency) that he could whip another. The party thus challenged evinced his faith in his own muscle by risking a corresponding quarter on it. The set-to was at once arranged, in the back-yard of the house in front of which we were standing, and several side bets, ranging from five to as high as fifteen cents, were speedily put up by spectators. One of our party, who joined the crowd at the amusement, reported that half-a-dozen rounds were fought—a few “niggers” gravely looking on from the outskirts of the throng—that several eyes were blacked, and both noses bruised; that there was a fall, and a little choking and eye-gouging, and a cry of “give it up;” that then the belligerents rose and shook hands, and stakes were delivered, and the victor was being challenged to another trial, with a fresh hand, as we left the scene of combat; and so closed our first visit to a North Carolina town. 2. North Carolina, by her Constitution of 1776, prescribed three bases of suffrage: 1. All FREEMEN twenty-one years old, who have lived in the county twelve months, and have had a freehold of fifty acres for six months, may vote for a member of the Senate. 2. All FREEMEN, of like age and residence, who have paid public taxes, may vote for members of the House of Commons for the county. 3. The above two classes may, if residing or owning a freehold in a town, vote for members of the House of Commons for such town: provided, they shall not already have voted for a member for the county, and vice versa. By the Constitution, as amended in 1835, all freemen, twenty- one years of age, living twelve months in the State, and owning a freehold of fifty acres for six months, should vote, except that
- 34. “No free negro, free mulatto, or free person of mixed blood, descended from negro ancestors to the fourth generation inclusive (though one ancestor of each generation may have been a white person), shall vote for members of the Senate or House of Commons.” The last clause would seem to have looked to amalgamation as a pretty steady practice, for such zealous abolition and negro- haters. Under the Constitution of 1776, free negroes, having the requisite qualifications, voted as freely as any other portion of the voting population.
- 35. CHAPTER IV. Newbern and Beaufort—Black and White. Shortly after our arrival in the harbor, the military authorities had provided a special train for us—that is to say, a train composed of a wheezy little locomotive and an old mail agent’s car, with all the windows smashed out and half the seats gone. By this means we were enabled, an hour after our visit to Beaufort, to be whirling over the military railroad from the little collection of Government warehouses on the opposite side of the harbor, called Morehead City, to Newbern. The whole way led through the exhausted turpentine forests of North-eastern North Carolina, which the turpentine growers have for many years been abandoning for the more productive forests of upper South Carolina. Here and there were swamps which Yankee drainage would soon convert into splendid corn land; and it is possible that Yankee skill might make the exhausted pineries very profitable; but, for the present, this country is not likely to present such inducements as to attract a large Northern emigration. The poorer people seem to be quietly living in their old places. Where the paroled rebel soldiers have returned, they have sought their former homes, and evince a very decided disposition to stay there. Throughout this region there is, as we learned, comparatively little destitution. The ocean is a near and never-failing resource; and from Newbern and Beaufort (both of which have been in our possession during the greater part of the war) supplies have gone through the lines by a sort of insensible and invisible perspiration,
- 36. which it would be unkind, to the disinterested traders who follow in the wake of an army, to call smuggling. Passing the traces of the works thrown up at the point where Burnside had his fight, we entered the remarkable city of log cabins, outside the city limits, which now really forms the most interesting part of the ancient town of Newbern. Before the war, it had between five and six thousand inhabitants; now, these newly-built cabins on the outskirts, alone, contain over ten thousand souls.[3] Yet, withal, there are few old residents here. The city proper is, to a considerable extent, deserted by its former inhabitants, and filled by Union refugees from all parts of the State; while these squares of crowded cabins contain solely Union refugees—of another color, but not less loyal. Within a few days back, however, men, whose faces have not been seen in Newbern for nearly four years, are beginning to appear again, with many an anxious inquiry about property, which they think ought to have been carefully preserved for them during their hostile absence. Sometimes they have kept an aged mother, or an aunt, or a widowed sister, in the property, to retain a claim upon it; and in these cases they seem to find little difficulty in quietly resuming possession. But, in more instances, they are forced to see others in an occupancy they can not conveniently dispute, and to learn of fortunes made from the property they abandoned. The hotel keeper, for example, has returned. He finds here a Yankee, who, seeing the house deserted when we occupied the city, and being told by the officers that they wanted a hotel, determined to keep it. The Yankee has paid no rent; he has been at no expense, and he has made a sum reckoned at over a hundred thousand dollars, by his hotel keeping and a little cotton planting which he was able to combine with it. Naturally, he is in no haste to give up his rent-free establishment, and the Rebel owner has the satisfaction of contemplating the Yankee in possession, and calculating the profits which might have gone into his own pockets but for the frantic determination, four years ago, never to submit to the tyrannical rule
- 37. of the Illinois gorilla. Returning merchants find sutlers behind their counters, reckoning up gains such as the old business men of Newbern never dreamed of; all branches of trade are in the hands of Northern speculators, who followed the army; half the residences are filled with army officers, or occupied by Government civil officials, or used for negro schools, or rented out as “abandoned property.” Yankee enterprise even made money out of what had been thrown away long before the war. In the distillation of turpentine a large residuum of the resin used to be carted away as rubbish, not worth the cost of its transportation to market. The mass thus thrown out from some of the Newbern distilleries, had gradually been buried under a covering of sand and dirt. A couple of Yankee adventurers, digging for something on the bank of the river, happened to strike down upon this resin, quietly had it mined and shipped to a Northern market. I am afraid to tell how many thousands of dollars they are said to have made by the lucky discovery. The negro quarter has been swelled to a size greater than that of almost any city on the coast, by accessions from all parts of the State. They came in entirely destitute. The Government furnished them rations, and gave the men axes, with which they cut down the pine trees and erected their own cabins, arranging them regularly in streets, and “policing” them as carefully as a regiment of veteran soldiers would do. Every effort was then made to give them work in the Quartermaster’s Department, to keep them from being simply an expense to the Government; but the close of the war necessarily cuts off this source of employment, and the General commanding is now looking with no little uneasiness to the disposition to be made of this great collection of negroes, for scarcely a tithe of whom can the natural wants of the town itself supply employment. Some have rented a large rice plantation in the vicinity—contrary to the currently-received theory that no human being, white or black, will work on rice grounds except when driven to it—and they are doing exceedingly well. Others could go further into the interior and
- 38. do the same, if they were sure of protection; but till some understanding with the planters is reached, and the status of the Rebel planters themselves is defined, this is almost impracticable. Something, however, must be done to disperse this unwholesome gathering at Newbern, or the tumor, thus neglected, may do serious injury. A dispatch from General Sherman (on his way north from Savannah, and forced by bad weather to put in at Beaufort) had reached Newbern, while we were there, expressing a very earnest desire to see Chief Justice Chase; and on the return of the party, General Sherman’s vessel was lying at the wharf, opposite the railroad terminus, awaiting us. Nervous and restless as ever, the General looked changed (and improved) since the old campaigns in the South-west. He was boiling over with pride at the performances of his army through the winter, and all the more indignant, by consequence, at the insults and injustice he imagined himself to have received, in consequence of his arrangement with Johnston. “I fancied the country wanted peace,” he exclaimed. “If they don’t, let them raise more soldiers.” The General complained, and, doubtless, with some truth, if not justice, that the Government had never distinctly explained to him what policy it desired to have pursued. “I asked Mr. Lincoln explicitly, when I went up to City Point, whether he wanted me to capture Jeff. Davis, or let him escape, and in reply he told me a story.” That “story” may now have a historical value, and I give it, therefore, as General Sherman said Mr. Lincoln told it—only premising that it was a favorite story with Mr. Lincoln, which he told many times, and in illustration of many points of public policy. “I’ll tell you, General,” Mr. Lincoln was said to have begun, “I’ll tell you what I think about taking Jeff. Davis. Out in Sangamon county there was an old temperance lecturer, who was very strict in the doctrine and practice of total abstinence. One day, after a long ride in the hot sun, he stopped at the house of a friend, who proposed
- 39. making him a lemonade. As the mild beverage was being mixed, the friend insinuatingly asked if he wouldn’t like just the least drop of something stronger, to brace up his nerves after the exhausting heat and exercise. ‘No,’ replied the lecturer, ‘I couldn’t think of it; I am opposed to it on principle. But,’ he added, with a longing glance at the black bottle that stood conveniently at hand, ‘if you could manage to put in a drop unbeknownst to me, I guess it wouldn’t hurt me much!’ Now, General,” Mr. Lincoln concluded, “I’m bound to oppose the escape of Jeff. Davis; but if you could manage to let him slip out unbeknownst-like, I guess it wouldn’t hurt me much!” “And that,” exclaimed General Sherman, “is all I could get out of the Government as to what its policy was, concerning the Rebel leaders, till Stanton assailed me for Davis’ escape!” A heavy gale blew on the coast all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and neither General Sherman’s Captain nor our own thought it wise to venture out. Meanwhile, delegations of the Beaufort people came off in little sail-boats to visit the “Wyanda,” bring us flowers and strawberries, and talk politics. Since their last demonstrations, a few days ago, they had toned down their ideas a good deal; and the amount of their talk, stripped of its circumlocution and hesitation, was simply this: that they were very anxious to re-organize, and would submit to anything the Government might require to that end. They said less against negro suffrage than before—frankly said it would be very obnoxious to the prejudices of nearly the whole population, but added, that if the Government insisted on it, they would co-operate with the negroes in reorganization. “But the poor, shiftless creatures will never be able to support themselves in freedom. We’ll have half of them in poor-houses before a year!”[4] Nothing could overcome this rooted idea, that the negro was worthless, except under the lash. These people really believe that, in submitting to the emancipation of the slaves, they have virtually saddled themselves with an equal number of idle paupers. Naturally, they believe that to add a requirement that these paupers must
- 40. share the management of public affairs with them is piling a very Pelion upon the Ossa of their misfortunes. My room-mate, the Doctor, appointed me a “deacon for special service”—even he had absorbed military ways of doing things from our neighbors—and I arranged for his preaching in Beaufort, Sunday morning. The people were more than glad to welcome him, and he had a big congregation, with a sprinkling of black fringe around its edges, to appreciate his really eloquent discourse; while the trees that nodded at the pulpit windows shook out strains of music, which the best-trained choristers could never execute, from the swelling throats of a whole army of mocking-birds. An old Ironsides-looking man, who had occupied an elder’s seat beside the pulpit, rose at the close, and said he little expected to have ever seen a day like this. Everybody started forward, anticipating a remonstrance against the strong Unionism and anti-slavery of the Doctor’s sermon, but instead there came a sweeping and enthusiastic indorsement of everything that had been said. He saw a better day at hand, the old man said, and rejoiced in the brightness of its coming. How many an old man, like him, may have been waiting through all these weary years for the same glad day! At other times there were fishing parties which caught no fish, though General Sherman sent them over enough fine ocean trout to enable them to make a splendid show on their return; and riding parties that got no rides, but trudged through the sand on foot, to the great delectation of the artist who sketched, con amore, the figures of gentlemen struggling up a sandy hill, eyes and ears and mouth full, hands clapped on hat to secure its tenure, and coat tails manifesting strong tendencies to secede bodily, while in the distance, small and indistinct, could be perceived the ambulance that couldn’t be made to go, and underneath was written the touching inscription, “How Captain Merryman and Mr. R. accepted Mrs. W.’s invitation, and took a ride on the beach at Fort Macon.”
- 41. At last the gale subsided a little, and we got off. Another salute was fired as we steamed out; the “Wayanda” returned a single shot in acknowledgment, and all too soon we were among the breakers, pitching and writhing, fore and aft, starboard and larboard, diagonally crosswise and backward, up to the sky and down, till the waves poured over the deck, and the masts seemed inclined to give the flags and streamers at their tops a bath. But for some of us, at least, the seasickness was gone. Io Triumphe! 3. The census of 1860 gave the population of Newbern at, whites, 2,360; blacks, 3,072; aggregate, 5,432. The Newbern people are now setting forth, as a reason for inducing emigration, that the city is the largest in the State, and has a population of between twenty and thirty thousand. The increase is mainly made up of negroes. 4. And yet an official report, since published in the newspapers, shows that out of three thousand whites in Beaufort last winter, between twelve and fourteen hundred were applicants for the charity of Government rations. Out of about an equal number of negroes, less than four hundred were dependent on the Government! The secret of the disparity was, that the negroes took work when they could get it; the whites were “ladies and gentlemen,” and wouldn’t work. A Richmond letter, of June 30th, in the Boston Commonwealth, testifies to the same feeling among the Virginians. Describing the charities of the Sanitary Commission, it says: “The most fastidious, though not too dainty to beg, were yet ludicrously exacting and impatient. They assumed, in many ways, the air of condescending patrons. ‘Do you expect me to go into that dirty crowd?’ ‘Haven’t you some private way by which I could enter?’ ‘I can never carry that can of soup in the world!’ they whined. The sick must suffer, unless a servant was at command to ‘tote’ a little box of gelatine; and the family
- 42. must wait till some alien hand could take home the flour. The aristocratic sometimes begged for work. Mr. Williams, of the Sanitary Commission, when asked by a mother to furnish work for her daughters, said: ‘If they will serve as nurses to the suffering men in your own army hospitals, I will secure pay for them.’ ‘My daughters go into a hospital!’ exclaimed the insulted mother. ‘They are ladies, sir!’ ‘Our Northern ladies would rather work than beg,’ quietly remarked Mr. Williams. Another mother begged Mr. Chase, of the Union Commission, to give her daughters ‘something to do.’ ‘Anything by which they can earn something, for we have not a penny in the world.’ ‘They shall help me measure flour,’ said Mr. Chase. ‘My daughters are ladies, sir,’ replied the mother.”
- 43. CHAPTER V. Fort Fisher. On the morning of the 8th of May we came in sight of a long, low line of sand banks, dotted with curious hillocks, between which the black muzzles of heavy guns could be made out, and fringed with a perfect naval chevaux-de-frise of wrecked blockade runners, whose broken hulls and protruding machinery gave an ill-omened look to the whole coast. As we were closely studying the bleak aspect of this entrance to the great smuggling entrepôt of the Southern Confederacy, the glasses began to reveal an unexpected activity along the line of the guns, which our signal shot for a pilot by no means diminished. Our ship drew too much water to cross the bar, excepting at high tide, and we were, consequently, compelled to go over in the Captain’s gig to the pilot boat—a proceeding that the rough sea made very difficult and even dangerous. Leaving those who could not venture the transhipment, to roll wearily among the breakers till evening, we headed straight through the narrow and difficult channel for Fort Fisher, and learned that we had been mistaken for the Rebel pirate “Stonewall,” and that the guns had been shotted ready to open fire the moment we should show signs of a disposition to run in.[5] Ah! that weary day at Fort Fisher! To see a fort is naturally supposed to be not the most formidable of undertakings; but to see Fort Fisher means a ride of miles over the bleakest of sand bars; means the climbing of great heaps of sand, under the hottest of suns; means a scrambling over irregular chasms and precipices of sand, where the
- 44. explosions have destroyed at once every semblance of fortification and every foot of solid earth—means all this, prolonged for hours, under the penalty of the consciousness that otherwise you would be pretending to see Fort Fisher, when you were doing nothing of the sort. We began by climbing Battery Buchanan, near the landing, and inside the main line of works. Trenches, embrasures, casemate and barbette guns, bomb-proofs, gabions, riflemen’s pits, all in sand that no rifle projectiles could breach, and bombardment could only render stronger, seemed to assure absolute impregnability to this work alone, except against regular siege operations. Yet it was but protection for one flank of the long line before which Weitzel turned back, and which no soldiers but ours would ever have stormed. To this battery (so called, although a perfect and very strong fort in itself) the Rebels made their last retreat, after that long, hand-to- hand fight through the sea front of the fort, which stretched far into the night, and seemed doubtful to the last. But Battery Buchanan, though impregnable, as a flank to the sea line, is itself commanded by the last work of that sea line; and so when the Mound Battery fell into our hands, its guns had only to be turned, and Buchanan fell almost without a struggle. The Mound Battery is a vast heap of sand, uplifting its guns and embrazures from a flat and desert beach against the sky, and commanding perfectly the whole northern entrance to the river. It contained one of the finest specimens of heavy ordnance ever seen in this country, the famous Armstrong rifle, presented by British sympathizers to the Confederacy. Imagine a long line of batteries, connected by traverses in the sand, separated by huge hillocks of sand, and fronted by deep trenches in the sand, stretching away almost interminably along the coast toward the North, and ending in another strong work, which was supposed to protect that flank as perfectly as Buchanan did the other; put in magazines and bomb-proofs, at convenient points, and a very heavy armament; then conceive muzzles of the guns knocked
- 45. off, guns dismounted, carriages shattered, the parapets plowed with shells, a great crater in the sand where a magazine had exploded, all shape and symmetry battered out of the works, and only their rude strength remaining; and you have Fort Fisher. The ground was covered with showers of musket balls. Behind every traverse could be found little heaps of English-made cartridges, which the Rebel sharpshooters had laid out for the convenience of rapid firing, as they defended line after line of the successive batteries, along which they were driven. Fragments of shells lay everywhere over the works. Behind them were great heaps of shells, bayonets, broken muskets, and other fragments of iron, which were being dug out and collected to be sold for old iron. Hundreds on hundreds of acres were under negro cultivation, producing this valuable crop. No man, I think, will ride along the coast line, which, by an inconceivable amount of labor, has been converted into one immense fort, without sympathizing with the officers who refused to assault it, and marveling at the seeming recklessness which success converted into the splendid audacity of the final attack.[6] The pilot boat was again placed at the disposal of our party, after some hours spent at Fort Fisher, and we ran over to Fort Caswell, one of the main defenses of the other entrance. It was originally a regularly-built brick fortification, with casemate and barbette guns, salients, ditch and interior castle, pierced with loopholes, for a last defense with musketry. Like Fort Macon, at Beaufort (and like Sumter), this has been converted into an infinitely stronger work, by having earthen fortifications thrown up outside and against it. The Rebels blew it up after the surrender of Fort Fisher, and we shall probably be making appropriations, every Congress, for the next dozen years to rebuild it. The labor here, as well as the vast amount involved in the construction of Fort Fisher, was all performed by slaves, impressed from time to time by the Rebel authorities. Both works were completed—Wilmington had grown rich on the profits of blockade-
- 46. running; Nassau had risen to first-class commercial importance, and the beach under these guns was strewn with the wrecks, which spoke more loudly than could any balance sheet, of the profits of a business that could afford such losses—before our Congress had done disputing whether the Constitution, and a due regard for the rights of our Southern brethren, would permit us to use negroes as teamsters! 5. The Stonewall seems indeed to have produced about this time an excitement along the whole coast, amounting, in some places, to panic. The naval officer at Key West, for example, issued orders to extinguish the lights in the light-houses along the coast, lest the Stonewall should run into some of the harbors and destroy the shipping. 6. The joint Committee of Congress on the Conduct of the War, after examining Generals Grant, Butler, Weitzel and Terry, and Admiral Porter, as well as the Rebel commander of the Fort, and after a careful inspection of the fortifications themselves, have, in a report published since the above was written, reached substantially the same conclusions. They attach no blame to any one for the failure to attack, in the first movement upon the Fort.
- 47. CHAPTER VI. Wilmington—Unionism—Blockade Running—Destitution—Negro Talk— Land Sales. General Hawley, commanding at Wilmington, had come down to Fort Fisher, on hearing of the arrival of our party, accompanied by General Abbott, General Dodge, and a number of prominent citizens of North Carolina. They were all transferred to our vessel, and, with the tide in her favor, and under sail, the “Wayanda” astonished us all by steaming up the river at the rate of fourteen knots an hour. Captain Merryman, however, insisted she could do as much any time, only it wasn’t always convenient to get her best speed out of her! And, of course, we were bound to believe the Captain. Do we not make it a point of patriotic duty to believe all the brilliant reports of the running capacity displayed by our iron-clads and double- enders? Blockade runners had been sunk for miles up the river, and in some places the hulls and machinery still formed a partial obstruction to navigation. Torpedoes, fished out by the navy, lay here and there along the banks, and a few, it was said, were still in the channel, unless, as was hoped, the tide had washed them away. Among the North Carolinians accompanying General Hawley, were a couple of gentlemen from Raleigh—Mr. Moore, a leading lawyer there, and Mr. Pennington, the editor of the Raleigh Progress—who had come down to Wilmington to see Chief Justice Chase. Another gentleman in the company, introduced as “Mr.” Baker—a tall, slender
- 48. man, of graceful manners, and evident culture and experience—had been through nearly the whole war as Colonel of a North Carolina Rebel regiment. Strangely enough, Colonel Baker claimed to have been a Union man all the time, from which some idea may be had of the different phases Unionism in the South has assumed. His father had been a Unionist of unquestioned firmness; but the son, returning from Europe in the midst of the secession enthusiasm, found the social pressure of his circle too much to withstand. “I was forced,” he naively said, “to raise a regiment in order to retain my influence in the community!” And, with equal naïveté, he added, that if he had not thus retained his influence, he could now have been of no use in aiding to compose these difficulties! He pointed out a fine rice plantation on the bank of the river, which he had owned, but about his title to which, now, he seemed to have some doubts. He claimed, and other Wilmingtonians agreed with him, that the rice grown here is superior to that of South Carolina and Georgia, and that its culture, in spite of the latitude, is quite as profitable.[7] The gentlemen from Raleigh and Colonel Baker seemed each to be a representative of a different phase of North Carolina Unionism. The editor had always opposed secession till it was accomplished. Then he was compelled to go with the current, but as soon as the first fury was over, and the reaction began, he became openly anti-Davis, and as much anti-war as he dared. He was an enthusiastic admirer of General Sherman; thought the censure by the Northern press, of his arrangement with Johnston, very unjust; was anxious now for the speediest possible restoration of civil authority, and believed the people stood willing to acquiesce in whatever basis of reorganization the President would prescribe. If he had his way, he would have no negro suffrage; even that would be preferable to remaining unorganized, and would be accepted by the people, though it would cause great dissatisfaction.
- 49. The lawyer, on the other hand, insisted that none would revolt, with more loathing, from the bare idea of negro suffrage, than the best Union men in the State, who had suffered the most for their devotion to the Government and opposition to the war. “It would not even be satisfactory,” he insisted, “to leave the negroes, like other non-voting classes, to take care of themselves. To leave them absolutely without any control, save such as the law extends to white people, also, would be unendurable. Either you must take pity,” he exclaimed, “on those of us who, for four years, have endured everything for the sake of the old flag, and send the negroes out of the country altogether, or you must place them under the control of the Legislature.” “What policy toward them would the Legislature be apt to adopt?” “It ought to provide against vagrancy; adopt measures to require them to fulfill their contracts for labor, and authorize their sale, for a term of years, for breaches of order.[8] Either do that, and so protect us against an intolerable nuisance, or colonize them out of the country.” The Colonel was not so emphatic in favor of this virtual re- enslavement of the negroes, nor so peremptory in his condemnation of negro suffrage; but he thought it would be wise to conciliate as much as possible, and to avoid deep-seated prejudices. It was easy to see that he was looking to what would be the least unpopular with the people of North Carolina; and, indeed, I heard later in the evening, that he was not unwilling to ask them to send him to Congress. Clearly enough, few Union men in the South, who have political aspirations, can be safely expected to advocate justice, much less generosity, to the negro, or severity to the Rebels. The latter are sure to be voters—many of them now, after carelessly taking oaths of allegiance—all of them some day; and politicians are not likely to make haste in doing that which they know to be odious to the men whose votes they want. At a dinner party at General Hawley’s, and subsequently at a little party, later in the evening, we saw and heard a good deal of the
- 50. feelings of the people. The women are very polite to Yankee officers in particular, but very bitter against Yankees in general. Negro troops are their especial detestation; and for the monstrosity of attempting to teach negroes to read and write, they could find no words to express their scorn. A young officer told me that he had been “cut” by some ladies, with whom he had previously been on very cordial terms, because they had seen him going into one of the negro schools! The men of North Carolina may be “subjugated,” but who shall subjugate the women? Governor Vance has been very unpopular, and the people seem to take kindly enough to the idea that his authority will not be recognized. They say he was a Union man in feeling and conviction, but that Jeff. Davis, alarmed by the dissatisfaction in North Carolina, sent for him about the time of his last election, and persuaded him that he could be the next President of the Confederacy! The Presidential idea was as baneful in Rebeldom, as it has proved to so many Northern statesmen, and Vance was destroyed. Every Northern man in Wilmington lives in the very best style the place affords, no matter how slender his visible resources. I was the guest of a civil officer whose salary can not be over two thousand dollars. His home was a spacious three-story double structure, that would have done no discredit to Fifth Avenue. You approach it through a profusion of the rarest shrubbery; it was in the most aristocratic quarter of the city, was elegantly furnished, and filled with servants—all on two thousand dollars a year, less the Government tax. But this is modest and moderate. The officer at least made the one house serve all his purposes. Another—a Colonel on duty here—is less easily satisfied. He has no family, but he finds one of the largest and best-furnished double houses in the town only sufficient for his bachelor wants, as a private residence. Another house, equally spacious and eligible, is required for the uses of his office! And, in general, our people seem to go upon the theory that, having conquered the country, they are entitled to the best it has, and in duty bound to use as much of it as possible.
- 51. These houses are generally such as were shut up by their rich Rebel owners on the approach of our troops below the city. The proprietors have retired to adjacent country places, to be out of harm’s way till they see how Rebels are to be treated, and already they are making their calculations about returning in the fall, with a coolness almost disconcerting to their self-appointed tenants. Mrs. General Hawley tells a piquant story of a visit from the wife of a runaway Rebel, whose showy but uncomfortable house the General has seized for quarters and private residence. The lady made herself as agreeable as possible, spoke of the General’s occupancy and her own absence, much as people who had gone off to the sea-shore for the summer might speak of renting their town house till their return; intimating that she wouldn’t hurry the General commanding for the world, and hoped that he would remain with his family until it was entirely convenient to remove, but suggested that she and her husband thought they would probably return in a couple or three months, when, of course, they supposed their house would be ready for them! Confiscation seemed to have no terrors for her; or, if it had, they were dexterously concealed under an air of smiling and absolute assurance. The loosest ideas prevail as to the execution of the “abandoned- property” act of the Thirty-seventh Congress. Deserted houses, not absolutely needed for military purposes, can be rented for handsome sums, and to whatever amounts can be thus realized the Government has an equitable as well as legal claim. But here, and report says everywhere throughout the South, are evidences of the old clashing betwixt War and Treasury Department officials; and between them, the revenue the Government ought to derive from the abandoned property, is sadly reduced. The practice of regarding everything left in the country as legitimate prize to the first officer who discovers it, has led, in some cases, to performances little creditable to the national uniform. What shall be thought of the officer who, finding a fine law library, straightway packed it up and sent it to his office in the North? Or what shall be said of the taste of that other officer who, finding in an old country
- 52. residence a series of family portraits, imagined that they would form very pretty parlor ornaments anywhere, and sent the entire set, embracing the ancestors of the haughty old South Carolinian for generations back, to look down from the walls of his Yankee residence? One sees, at first, very little in the mere external appearance of Wilmington to indicate the sufferings of war. The city is finely built (for the South); the streets are lined with noble avenues of trees; many of the residences are surrounded with elegant shrubbery; there is a bewildering wealth of flowers; the streets are full, and many of the stores are open. Sutlers, however, have taken the places of the old dealers; and many of the inhabitants are inconceivably helpless and destitute. While I was riding over the city with Captain Myers, a young Ohio artillerist, a formerly wealthy citizen approached him to beg the favor of some means of taking his family three or four miles into the country. The officer could only offer the broken “Southron” a pair of mules and an army wagon; and this shabby outfit, which four years ago he would not have permitted his body servant to use, he gratefully accepted for his wife and daughter! Struggling through the waste of sand which constitutes the streets, could be seen other and more striking illustrations of the workings of the war: a crazy cart, with wheels on the eve of a general secession, drawn generally by a single horse, to which a good meal of oats must have been unknown for months, loaded with tables, chairs, a bedstead, a stove and some frying-pans, and driven by a sallow, lank, long-haired, wiry-bearded representative of the poor white trash, who had probably perched a sun-bonneted, toothless wife, and a brace of tow-head children among the furniture; or a group, too poor even for a cart, clothed in rags, bearing bundles of rags, and, possibly, driving a half-starved cow. These were refugees from the late theater of military operations. They seemed hopeless, and, in some cases, scarcely knew where they wanted to go.
- 53. Few of the old residents of Wilmington are believed to have profited by the blockade running. It was always considered a disreputable business, in which a high-minded Rebel would not care to be thought concerned; and so it fell chiefly into the hands of foreigners, and particularly of Jews. A few prominent Richmond people were believed to be deeply engaged in it—Trenholm, Governor Smith, Benjamin and Jeff Davis are all named—but wherever the profits went, they did not go to a general diffusion of property among the Wilmingtonians themselves. Jay Cooke was under the impression that there must be a great deal of gold throughout the Southern cities, and especially in this center of blockade running, that ought to be available for the 7.30 loan; but the testimony here goes to show that the wealthy people have most of their gold abroad, and that they do not have a great deal of it anywhere. Undoubtedly nothing would more tend to tie these people to the Union than such a cord as a United States bond, connecting their pockets with national permanence and prosperity, but they seem now hard enough pressed to buy the necessaries of life; and money for investments in national securities, is not likely to flow northward, for the simple reason that it is not in the country. Negroes are already beginning to congregate here from the surrounding country. They do not wish to trust their old masters on the plantations; and, without any definite purpose or plan, they have a blind, but touching instinct, that wherever the flag is floating it is a good place for friendless negroes to go. Others are hunting up children or wives, from whom they have long been separated. Quite a number have been located on plantations, and these are working better than could be expected; but the uncertainty of their tenure of the land, the constant return of the old proprietors, and the general confusion and uncertainty as to the ownership of real estate, under the confiscation and abandoned-property laws, combine to unsettle both them and the Superintendents of Freedmen, who are trying to care for them.
- 54. The native negroes of Wilmington, however, are doing well. They are of a much higher order of intelligence than those from the country; are generally in comfortable circumstances, and already find time to look into politics. They have a Union League formed among themselves, the object of which is to stimulate to industry and education, and to secure combined effort for suffrage, without which they insist that they will soon be practically enslaved again. A delegation of them waited on Mr. Chase; and certainly looked as well and talked as lucidly as any of the poor whites would have done. There are a very few of the whites who encourage them; but, in general, the bitterest prejudice against these black Unionists, is still among those who have been the only white Unionists—the often- described poor white trash. The Wilmington negroes have no faith in the ready assent to the proposition that slavery is dead, which all the old slaveholders give. They say—and the negro refugees, all, and some of the whites bear them out in it—that in the country slavery still practically exists. The masters tell them that slavery is to be restored as soon as the army is removed; that the Government is already mustering the army out of service; that next year, when the State is reorganized, the State authorities will control slavery. Meantime, the negroes are worked as hard as ever—in some cases a little harder—and they have no more protection from the cruelty of the whites than ever.[9] “I tell you, sah” said a very intelligent negro, who had been reciting the present troubles of his people, “we ain’t noways safe, ‘long as dem people makes de laws we’s got to be governed by. We’s got to hab a voice in de ‘pintin’ of de law-makers. Den we knows our frens, and whose hans we’s safe in.” The war, according to these negroes, had, in some respects, made slavery harder for them than before. They were naturally trusted less, and watched more. Then, when provisions became scarce, their rations, on the large plantations, were reduced. On one, for example, the field hands got no meat at all, and their allowance consisted of a peck of unsifted corn-meal and a pint of molasses per
- 55. week. On another, they got two pounds of meat, a peck of meal, and a quart of molasses per week. Before the war, they had double, as much meat, and a peck and a-half of meal. Thus fed, they were expected to begin work in the fields at daybreak, and continue, with only the intermission of half an hour at noon, till dark. In some cases the negroes, understanding that they are freed, have refused to work without a contract for wages. Some of them have been promised their board, and a quarter of the corn crop; others three dollars for a season’s work; others a dollar and a-half or two dollars a month. But the town negroes, especially those of the League, say they have but little faith that the contracts will be kept. Further conversation with the people led me to think that, in the main, they might be divided into three classes. One, embracing, I think, a majority of the people, is thoroughly cowed by the crushing defeat, has the profoundest respect for the power that has whipped them so badly, and, under the belief of its necessity, will submit to anything the Government may require—negro suffrage, territorial pupilage—anything. A smaller class are Union men, if they can have the Union their way—if the negroes can be kept under, and themselves put foremost. And another class are violent and malignant Rebels, enraged at their defeat, and hardly yet willing to submit to the inevitable. The loss of life has been frightful. Half the families are in mourning. I hear of a Danville regiment, twelve hundred strong, of whom less than fifty survive. Not less than eighty thousand arms-bearing men of the State are believed to have been killed or disabled. This, and the disorganization of the labor system, have naturally left thousands of families through the State utterly destitute. Mr. Pennington, the editor of the Raleigh Progress, predicts great distress next winter. In fact, the Government is already issuing rations to thousands of destitute whites. As yet, notwithstanding their poverty and destitution, few of the large landowners have put their estates in the market. No such
- 56. feeling exists here, however, as in Virginia, where the farmers are said to hold on with a death grip to their lands, and to consider it discreditable to sell to a Yankee. Many of the most violent Rebels here will sell at exceedingly low rates, in order to get out of the country, where everything reminds them of their mortifying defeat and disgrace. And of those who remain, large numbers will be forced to sell part of their lands, to get means for living comfortably on the remainder.[10] The new blood, likely thus to be infused into North Carolina, will be its salvation; and the capital which is now seeking openings for trade, will presently find vastly more profitable returns from investments in lands. General Hawley, General Abbott and their wives, the Collector, the Treasury Agent, a party of staff officers and others, pursued us with kindness till our vessel had absolutely pushed off from the almost deserted wharf, which, four years ago, was crowded with the keels of a thriving commerce, and even a year ago bustled with scores of adventurous blockade runners. Trade, indeed, follows the flag; but for trade you must have money; and of this there is far too little in the exhausted country to bring back business into its old channels, as speedily as Northern speculators are imagining. Some of the officers and their wives came down with us in the river steamer, to the bar, whither the “Wayanda” had returned to await us; and kindly good-byes and fluttering handkerchiefs could still be heard and seen after the vessels had each begun moving. At the North we think little of loyalty; here loyal men, and especially those in the service of the Government, seem drawn toward each other, as are men who serve under the same flag in a foreign country. 7. The farther north you can grow any grain, or other crop, and mature it, the better it is—according to the theory of the North Carolina planters. The rice crop is more profitable here, they claim, than on the best plantations about Savannah.
- 57. 8. In other words, call them freedmen, but indirectly make them slaves again. The same idea seems to pervade the State, and, indeed, the entire South. Colonel Boynton, a very intelligent and trustworthy officer, writing from Danville, North Carolina, on the 21st of June, said: “The belief is by no means general here, that slavery is dead, and a hope that, in some undefined way, they will yet control the slaves, is in many minds, amounting with some to a conviction. They look for its restoration through State action— not yet comprehending that the doctrine of State sovereignty has been somewhat shattered by the war. Here, as in Richmond, the people, instead of grappling with the fact that the war has liberated the slaves, are very busy proving the utter worthlessness of the negroes, and treating them with additional cruelty and contempt—neither offering them fair inducements to work, or working themselves.” 9. Numerous instances were told, while I was at Wilmington, but the following case, related by Colonel Boynton, occurred farther in the interior: “Here in Salisbury, two prominent men are on trial by a military court, for killing a negro, and one of the wealthiest, most refined and respectable young ladies in all this section, is under twenty thousand dollars bonds to appear and answer for shooting a negro woman with her own hands. Miss Temple Neeley is considered one of the belles of the State. The family is very wealthy, aristocratic, and all that, and stands at the very top in this section. Her mother was flogging a little negro child, when the mother of the child interfered to protect it. Miss Neeley stepped up, and, drawing a revolver from her pocket, shot the negro woman dead, firing a second ball into the body. She was arrested, and will be tried by a military court. The papers here are defending her, and trying to stir up the old feeling toward the slaves, and excusing her under the black laws of the State.”
- 58. 10. On the 1st of August a single real estate firm in Raleigh advertised no less than sixty-three different tracts of North Carolina lands for sale at low rates, and on easy terms. Here are a couple of specimens: “We offer for sale one of the finest rice plantations in the State of North Carolina, known as ‘Lyrias,’ and situated on the north- west branch of Cape Fear river, three and a-half miles above Wilmington. This plantation contains 275 acres, 250 of which are cleared, and 25 are river swamp lands. There is also an upland settlement attached, with a dwelling-house, all necessary outhouses, comfortable quarters for fifty laborers, and an excellent well of water. “The rice lands, with the exception of about 20 acres, are of a clay soil, of unsurpassed and inexhaustible fertility, and capable of producing rice, corn, wheat, oats, peas and hay. “It is every way susceptible of being also made a good stock farm, for cattle and hogs, and an excellent market garden. “The entire plantation is in good order. It has on it two commodious barns, 100 by 40 and 75 by 60 feet, respectively. Also, a steam engine of ten-horse power, together with a powerful pump, or water elevator, worked by the engine, which throws out two thousand gallons of water per minute. Also, a threshing machine, in a building 25 by 85 feet.” “All that really baronial estate, known as William S. Pettigrew’s ‘Magnolia Plantation,’ for sale cheap.—1,000 acres improved!— Over 600 acres in a high state of cultivation!—50, or over, bushels of corn per acre!—Rich alluvial soils, suitable for farms and vegetable gardens!—Only ten hours from Norfolk!—Water transportation from the barn.—The far-famed ‘Scuppernong’ grape is a native of this county, and grows in a luxuriant abundance unsurpassed in any country. The residence, barns, out-buildings, groves, etc., etc., are very superior. Good well of water, etc., etc.
- 59. “This very large, and really magnificent estate, contains seven thousand acres of those rich alluvial Scuppernong river lands; one thousand acres already drained, and most of it in a high state of cultivation, and the whole of the rest can be easily and effectually drained; thus opening up large plantations scarcely surpassed in fertility by the Mississippi bottoms, which they greatly exceed in proximity to markets, having cheap and easy carriage, almost, if not quite, from the barn door to Norfolk, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston and the whole world! “Sea-going vessels can now come within a few miles of the barn door, and by deepening one canal, this desirable result can be obtained.”
- 60. CHAPTER VII. Charleston Harbor—Could Sumter have been Stormed—Negroes and Poor Whites. We steamed into Charleston Harbor early in the morning; and one by one, Sumter, Moultrie, Pinkney, and at last the City of Desolation itself rose from the smooth expanse of water, as the masts of ships rise from the ocean when you approach them. Where, four years ago, before the fatal attack on this now shapeless heap of sand and mortar, the flags of all nations fluttered, and the wharves were crowded with a commerce that successfully rivaled Savannah, Mobile and every other Southern city save New Orleans, and even aspired to compete with New York in the Southern markets, only transports and Quartermasters’ vessels were now to be seen, with here and there a passenger steamer, plying to and from New York for the accommodation of Yankee officers and their wives! The harbor itself was dotted with insignificant-looking iron clads, mingled with an occasional old ship of the line, and, in ampler supply, the modern “Yankee gunboats,” of the double-ender type, which formed so potent a cause for alarm in the councils of the privates in the Rebel armies. The elegant residences along the battery front retained the aristocratic seclusion of their embowering shrubbery, creepers and flowering plants; but even through these gracious concealments which Nature cast over them, the scars from the Swamp Angel could everywhere be seen. Pavements had been torn up from the principal business streets, to build the batteries that lined the shore; and
- 61. great embankments, crowned with Tredegar guns, shut out the prospect from many an aristocratic window. The unfinished Custom House was among the most conspicuous buildings, the white marble blocks lying scattered about it, as they were left by the workmen four years ago. “We’ll never finish it,” the fervid revolutionists said, as they began the war. “We’ve paid Yankee tariffs long enough; now, hurrah for free trade with our friends of France and Great Britain!” But the Custom House stands, and next winter Mr. Fessenden will be reporting to the Senate an item in the military appropriation bill for its completion. Admiral Dahlgren and Fleet Captain Bradford came alongside in the Admiral’s gig, soon after our arrival; and while our boatswain was piping his whistle as the Admiral came over the ship’s side, the guns of the “Pawnee” began a salute for the Chief Justice. The Treasury Agent and some other officials soon followed, and the Admiral took the party under his charge, transferred us to a comfortable and speedy little harbor steamer, and started toward that first goal of every man’s curiosity—Sumter. The rebellion has left its marks on the pale, thoughtful features of the Admiral, not less than upon the harbor he has been assailing. The terrible death of noble young Ulric Dahlgren, a martyr to the barbarism of slavery, might well grave deep traces on a father’s face; but the climate here, and the labors of the past have also been very trying, and one can readily believe, what used to be rather sarcastically urged by the Admiral’s enemies, that his health did not permit him to keep up in gunnery with General Gillmore. We passed a little sailing vessel manned by blacks. The Admiral told us that they had brought it down one of the rivers, the other day, and he had allowed them to keep it. They earn a livelihood bringing wood to the city. Recently there have been a number of outrages perpetrated on the blacks inland, by their late masters and some of the returning Rebel soldiers. Greatly infuriated, the blacks came to him begging for arms. “I have never before doubted their orderly
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