the thousands of Northern men who overcame the reluctance of the Southerners
to social intercourse, little was heard. Many a Southern planter secured a
Northern partner or sold him half his plantation to get money to run the other
half. For the irritations of 1865, each party must take its share of
responsibility.

Had the South assisted in a skillful and adequate publicity, much disastrous
misunderstanding might have been avoided. The North knew as little of the
South as the South did of the North, but the North was eager for news. Able
newspaper correspondents like Sidney Andrews of the Boston Advertiser and the
Chicago Tribune, who opposed President Johnson's policies, Thomas W. Knox of
the New York Herald, who had given General Sherman so much trouble in
Tennessee, Whitelaw Reid, who wrote for several papers and tried cotton
planting in Louisiana, and John T. Trowbridge, New England author and
journalist, were dispatched southwards. Chief of the President's investigators
was General Carl Schurz, German revolutionist, Federal soldier, and soon to be
radical Republican, who held harsh views of the Southern people; and there
were besides Harvey M. Watterson, Kentucky Democrat and Unionist, the father
of "Marse" Henry; Benjamin C. Truman, New England journalist and soldier,
whose long report was perhaps the best of all; Chief Justice Chase, who was
thinking mainly of "How soon can the Negro vote?"; and General Grant, who made
a report so brief that, notwithstanding its value, it attracted little
attention. In addition a constant stream of information and misinformation was
going northward from treasury agents, officers of the army, the Freedmen's
Bureau, teachers, and missionaries. Among foreigners who described the
conquered land were Robert Somers, Henry Latham, and William Hepworth Dixon.
But few in the South realized the importance of supplying the North with
correct information about actual conditions. The letters and reports, they
thought, humiliated them; inquiry was felt to be prying and gloating.
"Correspondents have added a new pang to surrender," it was said. The South