I don't reckon I'll want fur nothing dis yer winter; and when de wa'm season cum agin, mebbe I go back to town ter live."

"What did you leave the old place for, Auntie, any way?"

"What fur? 'Joy my freedom!"

The directness and exultation of this answer half puzzled and half disconcerted me. I knew how this old woman had lived, - knew what a favorite she had been in the family in which she had formerly been owned, - knew what large liberty had been always given her in everything. What is the "freedom" that war has brought this dusky race?

A

XL.

MATTERS IN EASTERN GEORGIA.

X

AUGUSTA, November 28, 1865.

UGUSTA is a fine point for business; and when it is once more brought in connection with Charleston and Savannah by railroad, Atlanta, busy as she is now, and confident as she is of the future, will need to have sharper eyes and even yet more restless energy if she would not be distanced.

The close of the war found more cotton, probably, stored in and about this city than at any other point in the South. One feels justified, from all that is said, in estimating the amount at fully fifty thousand bales; and many dealers put the figure at sixty thousand, while a few even fix it as high as sixty-five thousand. Very little of this was burned, and most of it was in the hands of private parties. Consequent ly, there has been a large business here in the article all the fall, in which there is not yet very much abatement.

W

In this Congressional District, the Fifth, the contest at the recent election was more animated than in any other district in the State, and one of the worst Rebels in the district carries the day.

Colonel James D. Matthews, of Oglethorpe County, is a lawyer by profession, and was a colonel in the Rebel army. He is the most uncompromising malcontent in the congressional delegation from this State, was by all odds the noisiest and bitterest Rebel in the late Convention, and is about as badly disposed toward the government and the new order of things as any man I have met in all my tour. He is of very cold, hard, severe, inflexible cast of countenance, has a taunting and aggressive manner, and speaks in a high, falsetto, sarcastic, impassioned tone of voice. His appearance, his manner, and his voice alike attest his individuality. He made many speeches during the Convention, and each of them was galling and venomous. He was the most audacious of those who demanded pardon for Jeff Davis, the most haughty of those who advocated the dogma of State sovereignty, the most galling of those who sneered at the supremacy of the nation, the most insolent of those who denounced the government for requiring a repudiation of the Rebel war debt, the most domineering of those who fought everything looking toward a recognition of the legal rights of the negro, the most stubborn of those who resisted the effort to establish co-operative action between the people and the Freedmen's Bureau.

The moral of this election is so plain that he who runs may read. And the city of Augusta, which would have General Steedman believe she is loyal, cast three fourths of her vote for this malignant Matthews!

In the stage between here and Milledgeville I rode a month ago with two gentlemen of considerable local weight and prominence, who were both anti-Secessionists in 1860-61. They talked of the approaching Convention, and of its prob

able action in redistricting the State for representatives. "Well, Colonel," said the younger, himself a man of over forty years, "well, Colonel, what will be our proper course when we are once more fully restored to the Union?" The answer came, after a moment's consideration, “We must strike hands with the Democratic party of the North, and manage them as we always have.” There was a pause while we rattled down the hill, and then the questioner responded, "That 's just it; they were ready enough to give us control if we gave them the offices; and I reckon they've not changed very much yet." There was then conversation on other matters; but half an hour later, after a mile or so of silence, the Colonel suddenly resumed, "Yes, sir, our duty is plain; we shall be without weight now that slavery 's gone, unless we do join hands with them. Andy Johnson will want a re-election, and the united Democratic party must take him up; it shall be a fair division,— we want the power and they want the spoils."

"I hate the Yankees with my whole heart," said a genteely dressed woman who sat just behind me in the cars the other day coming to the city. "And I hate them so bad that I'm going off to Texas to live," answered the gentleman with whom she talked.

At Atlanta I saw a family of seven persons, from the county above this, on their way to that region; at Greensboro I saw a family of thirteen, including the old folks, with daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren, and having a wagonload of trunks, bound for that State; at Berzelia, twenty miles west of here, I fell in with a man who had just returned from an inspection tour, and would start for there next week at the head of a company of twenty. I asked him if he did n't like it in this State. To which he answered, "I am going to see if I can't get shet of the Yankees." A man whom I sat opposite at breakfast this morning told his neighbor that a common acquaintance from Athens left last

week, and he knew of another family near Washington who would go in a few days. I have heard of very few persons who fall in with the Alabama scheme for emigrating to Brazil; but I am convinced that in the Central and Eastern sections of Georgia there are many who purpose moving to Texas, and only in one or two instances have I heard any reason assigned but a desire to get away from the Yankees.

Yet not all the people of this section are of such antagonistic spirit, not all of them are so at war with common sense and the conquering Yankee.

"I don't believe I'll ever vote again in my life," said a young man from Athens to me; "the first vote and the only vote I ever cast was for the revolution candidates from our county to the Convention of 1861. I left college and went into service two days after Sumter was fired on, and I stayed in the army to the bitter end. I've got enough of war, and if there is ever another in this country I shall emigrate."

"I'm d―n glad the war 's over, any how," said a Madison gentleman to me. He was dressed like a gentleman and mostly spoke like one, but profanity is much more common down here than in the North. "I did all I could for the revolution, and now I'm going to do all I can for the Union. You must n't ask me to give up my idea of State rights, that's in my bones, and never can be got out; but I assure you it shall never give any more trouble, so far as I am concerned."

When Federal soldiers died in the South, while held as prisoners, they were very rarely given burial in the cemeteries of the town or city in which they died, but were generally packed away outside the walls, if, indeed, their bodies were not ignominiously buried in by-places. Here, however, the bodies of such men were all given decent burial in the large and beautiful city cemetery, - a fact which must be infinitely grateful to the friends and relatives of the two hundred boys who finished their warfare in this city. They

lie in three long rows in the southeastern corner of the cemetery, and can readily be identified by a reference to the sexton's books. When the first ones were laid there, now two years ago, some of the extra-finished Rebels of the city were very much offended, and complained of the sexton for his action in the matter, saying that it was an insult to bury Yankees there. With gratitude and admiration I set down the answer of the sexton: "If you ever get to heaven, 'll find plenty of Yankees there; and 't wont hurt anybody to lie alongside a Yankee in here, I reckon."

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Down on the river-bank yesterday afternoon I had some talk with a middle-aged gentleman, who said he had always been a Union man. He kept out of the war, but only at the expense of all his property. He thought there were not over one hundred men in this whole county who could be. trusted as Union men; he was very certain the President ought not to pardon Howell Cobb, and reckoned it would have been a good thing if General Wilson had strung him up the first time he got eyes on him; he wanted South Carolina blotted out of existence as a State, and allowed it would suit every Union man in the South if she was turned over to the niggers; he could never vote for a man who was a Secessionist, and had n't voted at the recent congressional election; he was glad the President had paroled Alexander Stephens, though he wanted a man to be one thing or t'other, not half Union and half Secesh, and he hoped C. C. Clay would soon be paroled; as for Jeff Davis, he did n't know, though he reckoned the old fellow might as well be set loose on t'other side the ocean; and, finally, he thought we should have more peace in the country if each side, the North and the South, just hung about a thousand parsons!

The people of this city and vicinity are unusually exercised about the pardon of Jeff Davis. There are two classes. A young man, representative of one class, who had been a major in the Rebel service, said to me last evening, “I be