USA > Georgia > Ten years on a Georgia plantation since the war > Part 7
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a young English clergyman, whom she established on the place; she then built a beautiful little church of stone, with coloured glass windows, at great expense; and their own houses, Mrs. W --- told me, were far better than English labourers' cottages.
' Well, for forty years she and her clergy- man worked together among them. She never allowed one to be sold from the estate, and devoted herself to them as if they were her children. Then came the war, and in no part of the country did the negroes behave so badly as hers. They murdered the overseer, tore down the church, set up as a goddess a negro woman whom they called ' Jane Christ,' and now are in all respects as entire heathens as if they had never heard God's name mentioned, worshipping Obi, preaching every sort of heathen superstition, and a terror to the neighbourhood.1 Mrs. W-, broken- hearted, returned to England, where she had property, and the clergyman, a Mr. G .-- ,
1 I now doubt a good deal of this story (1881).
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her fellow-worker, on being asked some time ago to go to some gentleman's plantations to preach to the negroes, shook his head, and with his eyes full of tears said he would never preach again, his whole work and preaching for forty years having proved such a failure. And our own clergyman at Darien told me he had been working among the negroes all his life to the best of his powers, but felt now that not one seed sown among them had borne any good fruit.
' I confess thinking of these things makes me heartsick. I don't understand why really good men doing God's work should have failed so utterly, because although, in- tellectually, I feel sure the negroes are in- capable of any high degree of improvement, morally, I have always thought their standard wonderfully high, considering their ignor- ance.'
I remained at the South until the harvest was well under way, my own interest being intensified by my friends, and we lived in a
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perpetual state of excitement, fearing from day to day that something would happen to destroy our hardly-made crops. First it blew hard and we feared a gale, and then the rice birds appeared in such swarms we feared the crops would be eaten up. Then it rained, and we feared the cut rice would be wetted and sprout. And so on, until one day Mrs. P_ exclaimed, ' What a state of excite- ment and alternate hope and fear we live in ! Why, the life of a gambler is nothing to it.' The news that reached me of the rice from Butler's Island was sufficiently good to re- assure me, but from St. Simon's it was terrible. Major D -- wrote me that the caterpillars had again attacked the cotton, and that for the third time we should probably see the entire crop eaten up before our eyes, within three weeks of perfection. Such beautiful crops as they were, too! This gave the deathblow to the Sea Island cotton, at least as far as I was concerned, for I had not capital enough to plant again after losing
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three crops, and the place has never been planted since, but is rented out to the negroes for a mere nominal rent, and they keep the weeds down and that is about all. Some day I hope to see it turned into a stock farm, for which it is admirably suited, and would pay well.
Before leaving the history of the South for this year, I cannot help saying a few words upon a subject which did not strike me as strange then, but does now, in looking back, as very significant of the way politics were regarded and treated by Southerners at the time. There I was, in South Carolina, ' the hot-bed of Secession,' among some of the oldest South Carolina families, considered by most Northern people as the deepest-dyed rebels, whose time was still spent in devising schemes to overthrow the Government, who therefore could not be trusted with the rights of free citizens, and whose negroes it was necessary to protect in their rights by Northern troops, and yet neither in my letters
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nor in my memory can I find one single instance of political discussion, or attempts to rebel against the new state of things, or desire to interfere with the new rights of the negroes. Night after night gentlemen met at one house or another, and talked and . discussed one, and only one subject, and that was rice, rice, rice.
Farmers are supposed never to exhaust the two subjects of weather and the crops; and we certainly never did, until one evening the daughter of the lady with whom I was staying burst out with, 'Do-do talk of something else; I am so tired of rice, rice, from morning till night, and day after day.' We might all have been aliens and foreigners, so little interest did we any of us take in any public questions, and I never heard it suggested to prevent the negroes voting, but only to get rid of them and get reliable labour in their place. The war was over, the negroes free, and voters, and the South conquered ; and never by the smallest word
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did I hear any suggestions made to try to alter the new condition of things, or to wish to do so, each man's motto being 'Sauve qui peut.'
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CHAPTER V. 1870.
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LATE in the winter of 1869 I returned to the South, having quite made up my mind that I must change my agent. The expenses were enormous ; so large, that even remark- ably good crops could not make the two ends meet, while there were no improvements made and no work done to justify such heavy expenditure, and not even accounts to show on what the money had been spent. The negroes were almost in a state of mutiny, and work for another year under existing circumstances was impossible. So I got rid of one agent and engaged another, the son of a
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former neighbouring planter, whom I liked personally and with whom the negroes professed themselves content. But owing to the mismanagement and want of firmness on the part of his predecessor, they were in an utterly demoralised and disorganised con- dition. Many of them left, not to work for anyone else, but to settle on their own properties in the pine woods ; and the others seemed inclined to be very troublesome. So for a time, until the effects of being paid, and Christmas, had worn off, I left them pretty much to themselves, giving the children another pretty tea and feast, which put the older ones somewhat in a good humour.
Mr. N __ certainly did not want either courage or firmness, and I was rather startled one day to have a young man named Liver- pool, who had always been a troublesome subject, burst into the room in which I was sitting, and pointing to a wound in his fore- head which was bleeding pretty freely, say, ' Missus, do you allow this kind of treatment ?'
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I smothered my exclamation of horror and indignant denial, and said, ‘How did it happen ? ' ' Why,' replied the lad, ' Mr. N- knocked me down and cut my head like this.' ' Well,' I said, ' before I decide, I must know what you have done.' 'Very well,' he said, ' very well ;' and turning on his heel, left the room. I was horribly frightened for fear, in his anger, he would shoot my agent, and throwing on my shawl, I ran out to find him and put him on his guard. He told me that Liverpool had been very insolent and in- subordinate to both the negro captain, who reported him, and to himself, and he had simply knocked him down, and cut his head slightly. My fears were, I believe, needless, for Liverpool's revenge was to try to sue Mr. N --- for damages, which however never came to anything, and so the trouble ended, although the man was of course dismissed from the place, being a really troublesome, bad fellow.
One of my captains also had his head cut
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open by another lad who was drunk, and who was flourishing a rice-hook about, which the old man tried to get from him, and was cut badly across the forehead. He came to me to have it plastered up, and was very anxious to know whether de brain was cut,' which I assured him was not the case, and being only a flesh wound it soon healed.
By degrees things settled down, and the work began. My school seemed flourishing under a new teacher I had got from the North (the other young man having left). This was a young negro, who had been at a Theological Seminary near Philadelphia, preparing him- self for the ministry ; but his old father, a Massachusetts Baptist preacher, not wishing his son to become an episcopal minister, refused to give him any more money to con- tinue his studies, and so he was obliged to leave, and was anxious to get some employ- ment by which he could earn enough money to finish his studies. This story the Bishop
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told me, adding that if I could get him some theological books, and let him read with some clergyman in the village, he would lose no time and could take up the course at the school again just where he had been obliged to leave off. Much interested, I at once got him several theological standard works which he asked for, and made arrangements with our Darien clergyman to let him read with him. How it ended belongs to next year's history. He certainly got the children on in a wonderful way ; but seeing how soon they forgot all he taught them, I doubt its having been more than a quick parrot-like manner of repeating what they had heard once or twice, which the negroes all have. But it sounded very startling to hear them rattle off the names of countries, lengths of rivers, and heights of mountains, as well as complicated answers in arithmetic. The little ones he taught to sing everything they learned, and they always began with a little song, that amused me very much, about the necessity
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of coming to school and learning, the chorus of which ran :-
For we must get an education Befitting to our station In the rising generation Of the old Georg-i-ā :
a thing I fear, however, they failed to do. One day I heard one boy say to another, ' Carolina, can you spell "going in" ?'' Gwine in,' promptly replied Carolina, that being their negro way of pronouncing it. On one point I and this teacher never agreed, and that was about the head handkerchiefs and bead necklaces of the girls. About the last perhaps he was right, although their love of coloured beads was a very harmless little bit of vanity, and I always used to give them the handsomest I could find for their Christmas presents ; but the head handkerchief was not only pretty and becoming, but made them look far neater than either their uncovered woolly heads, or the absurd little hats they bought and stuck on in order to follow the
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fashions of their white sisters. Now that ladies everywhere have taken to wearing silk handkerchiefs made into turban-shaped caps, I suppose the negro women may be- come reconciled to their gay bandanas.
We had a great many marriages this winter, and wishing to encourage the girls to become moral and chaste, we made the cere. mony as important as possible, that is, if a grand cake and white wreath and veil could make it so, for the ceremony, as performed by our old black minister, could hardly be said to be imposing, and I think I have gone through more painful agonies to keep from laughing at some of these weddings than from any physical suffering I ever experi- enced. The girls were always dressed in white, with our present of the wreath and veil to finish the costume, and the brides- maids in white or light dresses, while the bridegroom and groomsmen wore black frock coats, with white waistcoats and white gloves, all looking as nice as possible. The parson,
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old John, received them at the reading-desk of the little church, and after much arranging of the candles, his book, and his big-rimmed specs, would proceed and read the marriage service of the Episcopal Church, part of which he knew by heart, part of which he guessed at, and the rest of which he spelt out with much difficulty and many absurd mistakes. Not satisfied with the usual text appointed for the minister to read, he usually went through all the directions too, explaining them as he went along thus : '"Here the man shall take the woman by the right hand,"' at which he would pause, look up over his spectacles and say, 'Take her, child, by de right hand and hold her,' and would then proceed. On one occasion, after he had read the sentence, '"Whereof this ring is given and received as a token and pledge,"' he said with much emphasis, 'Yes, children, it is a plague, but you must have patience.' When it was all over he would say to the bridegroom with great solemnity and a wave
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of his hand, 'Salute de bride,' upon which the happy man would give her a kiss that could be heard all over the room. The worst of John's readings and explanations was that they differed every time, so we never could be prepared for what was coming, which made it all the more difficult not to laugh.
On one occasion something happened which made the people titter,-not what he said, for that was always received most reverently, but some mistake on the part of the bridegroom, upon which he closed the book and in a severe tone said, 'What you larf for ? dis not trifling, dis business ;' which admonition effectually sobered us all. Poor old John Bull-he was a good old man, and had an excellent influence over the people, who obeyed him implicitly, and I was really sorry when he was no longer allowed to per- form the service. The Government passed a law that no unlicensed minister or magis- trate could perform the marriage service, which, of course, was quite right ; but not
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wishing to lose my parson, or to have my people go off the place to be married, I sent him up to Savannah to have him licensed. But they found him too ignorant, and refused to do so, which I dare say was quite right too ; but it spoilt all my weddings and obliged John to retire into private life.
The negroes had their own ideas of morality, and held to them very strictly ; they did not consider it wrong for a girl to have a child before she married, but afterwards were extremely severe upon anything like infidelity on her part. Indeed, the good old law of female submission to the husband's will on all points held good, and I once found a woman sitting on the church steps, rocking herself backwards and forwards in great distress, and on inquiring the cause I was told she had been turned out of church be- cause she refused to obey her husband in a small matter. So I had to intercede for her, and on making a public apology before the whole congregation she was re-admitted.
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To raise the tone among our young un- married women was our great object, and my friend and I dwelt much on this in teaching them, and encouraged their marrying young, in which, indeed, they did not need much encouragement, for they both marry very young, and as often as they are left widows. The funeral service was generally performed. about three weeks after the person was buried, in order to have a larger gathering than was possible to get together on a short notice, and on one occasion I was rather startled to hear a man's second engagement announced on the day of his first wife's funeral. The following morning he came to me, and with many blushes and much stammering said, ' Missus, I'se come to tell you something.' Not choosing to acknowledge that I had heard the gossip, I said, ' Well, Quash, what is it?' After a very long pause and much hesitation, he informed me he was going to be married again. 'Don't you think it is rather soon after Betsy's death, Quash ?' I asked ;
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upon which he replied, ' Well, yes, missus, it is, but I thought if I waited, maybe I not get a gal suit me so well as Lizzie.' This was so unanswerable a reason that after consulting with my friend as to whether Quash's con- duct could be countenanced under our code of morality, we agreed to allow it“; and a very gay, fine wedding it was, for he being a good- looking carpenter and she a pretty house- servant and a great favourite of ours, we exerted ourselves especially to give them a grand wedding.
I had visits from several friends that year, and among others three Englishmen, one of whom was Mr. Leigh. I mention this because of rather a curious circumstance con- nected with his visit. The first Sunday after his arrival we sent him up to preach to the negroes, and he took for his text, 'And Philip said to the eunuch, Understandest thou what thou readest ?' telling them that the eunuch was some Ethiopian, and was the first individual conversion to Christianity.
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mentioned in the Bible. After church, one of the negroes came up to him and, after thank- ing him, said Philip was come again to the Ethiopians ; and another, called Commodore Bob, told him he had been expecting him for three weeks. And when Mr. Leigh said, ' You never saw me before, how did you know I was coming ? ' replied, ' Oh yes, sir, I saw you in de spirit. A milk-white gentle- man rise out of the wild rushes and came and preached to us, and I said to my wife, " Katie, der will be a great movement in our church on dis Island." So I knew you in the spirit.' Of course when I told the negroes afterwards I was going to marry Mr. Leigh, old Commodore Bob was more convinced than ever that the mantle of prophecy had fallen upon his shoulders, and that the 'great movement' was my marriage to their preacher.
While I was receiving guests, and marry- ing and giving in marriage, the work on the plantation was going on pretty smoothly.
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After the first of the year, when about twenty of the hands left, and frightened me with the idea that all were going, then the exodus stopped, and after several attempts to get the upper hand of Mr. N-, my new agent, they gave in and settled down to work. But, of course, the loss of time and hands obliged us to cut down the quantity of land planted about one-third, and the idea that each year was to begin in this way was not encourag- ing. So we still talked of Chinese labour and machinery (my dream just then was a steam plough which was to accomplish everything), the want of capital being our only difficulty. I adopted a new plan with the negroes this year too, and would see and speak to no one but the head men, and if anyone still insisted on coming to me directly with complaints, I simply told him he might leave the place, finding that this silenced them, but did not make them leave one whit more than when I tried to persuade them to stay.
Just before we left we had a narrow
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escape from drowning, and I have always believed that I owed my life to the presence of mind and coolness of the negroes. We had gone down to the cotton place to pay a fare- well visit, and in coming back, crossing the Sound, which one is obliged to do for about five miles, we were caught in a furious gale and cross sea. Our boat, being cut out of one log-a regular 'dug out'-did not rise the least to the waves, and was made doubly heavy by having all our trunks piled in the bow. Then, besides the four carsmen, there was my maid, my friend, and her sister, a little girl of fourteen, and lastly, in the stern steering, myself. The sea was running so high that the boat would hardly mind the rudder at all, and suddenly the tiller rope broke, and I was just in time to catch the rudder with my hand to keep it from swinging round, and holding it so I had to steer the rest of the way.
Not being used to steering in a rough sea, I did not understand that the right thing
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to do was to head the boat right at the waves, and could not help instinctively trying to dodge them, so that they struck us on the side and deluged us with wet besides very nearly capsizing us, and we were soon ankle deep in water. The negroes rowed with might and main, but seemed to make no pro- gress, and the wind was blowing such a gale they could not hear me when I shouted to them at the top of my voice. About half-way across the Sound some large piles or booms had been driven during the war to prevent the Northern gunboats entering, and on these we were rapidly being driven, and I, powerless to steer against the furious wind, felt sure a few moments more would dash us against them, and we should be drowned. I in vain shouted to the men, who of course, sitting with their backs to the bow, did not see what was before them, but my voice could not reach them, so I shut my eyes and held my breath, expecting each moment to feel the blow that would send us into eternity. Just as
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we were literally on the piles, a huge wave struck us and drove the boat a little to one side, so that instead of striking the booms with our bow we slid between two of them, scraping each side of the boat as we did so- but were safe! Utterly exhausted, I felt I could hold on to my helm no longer, and I told my friend, who was sitting directly in front of me, to pass the order on to the men to let us drift into the marsh, where we would lie until sunset, when perhaps the wind would go down. So we beat across and reached the marsh, where we rested for a few moments, holding on by the tall rushes, but found even there the wind and waves so violent we could not remain.
The stroke oar, a man I was particularly fond of, though he was rather morose and suspicious, stood up, and holding on to the land by burying his oar in the mud, said, ' Missus, we can't stay here, the boat will be overturned. Trust me, and I will take you home safely. Only keep the head of the boat
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right at the waves, and don't let them strike us sideways.' So bracing myself up I took hold of my helm again, to do which I was obliged to stretch my arm as far back as possible, having no tiller rope, and we turned our head to the waves once more. The men started a favourite hymn of mine as they began to row, but the wind of heaven soon knocked the wind out of them, and they were not only obliged to stop singing, but before long were absolutely groaning at each stroke they made with the oars. Peter's speech and the attempt at a song had, however, quieted me, and enabled me to recover my pre- sence of mind, so I kept the boat headed steadily straight at the waves, and after four hours' more hard work we landed safe on Butler's Island, the river even there being lashed into such fury by the gale that we found it difficult to get out of the boat.
The agent and negroes were terrified at the mere idea of our having attempted to cross the Sound in such weather, and advised
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me, as I valued my life, not to do it again, which was certainly a needless piece of advice. We afterwards compared notes, my friend saying, like a true soldier's daughter, that she felt sure we should be drowned, and had made up her mind to it; the little sister had only thought it very disagreeable, and had not known there was any danger. And my maid said that when the first wave came she thought of her new bonnet, and put up her arm to save it (a very hopeless protection) ; that then, when she had seen we were rushing on the pilings, she had felt sure we should be drowned and was very much frightened. Still she thought of us, and said to herself, ' Well, if we are drowned, there will be far more to mourn them than me,' which we thought rather touching. On one point we all agreed, and that was that the effort the men had made to sing was done to reassure me ; and as a proof of how exhausted they were with their work, when I sent up for them, not an hour after our arrival on the Island, to
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give them some whisky, they were all lying on the floor before the fire, sound asleep. My arm, with which I had held the helm, ached and trembled so for four days after- wards that I could not use it; but thank God we were safe, and in less than a week after- wards on our way to the North.
A month later I went to England with my sister, hoping things would work smoothly enough at the South to enable me to stay abroad all winter. . . . Vain hope!
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CHAPTER VI.
FRESH DIFFICULTIES-NEGRO TRAITS-
ABDICATION. 51970
IN December I returned to the United States and the South, the reports I had received of the condition of things during my absence not being satisfactory, and they certainly did not improve on closer examination. There were no accounts at all at this time, but much money spent, and what my agent had done to set things so by the ears I never could make out, but by the ears they undeniably were. He had been very injudicious, and was far too hot-tempered to manage any people. The whole plantation was up in arms; half the people had gone and the other half were ready to go when I arrived, and it was desperately hard work to restore any-
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thing like order. Even as late as the end of January I thought I should have to give up all idea of planting the larger Island. I merely put in about two hundred acres on General's Island, but by dint of bullying, scolding, and a little judicious compromising, I kept those who were going and brought back some who had left. One man, who had been a favourite of mine, tried to get off without seeing me ; but, hearing he was going, I went up to his house and asked him what he was about, to which he replied, ' Moving, missus, but I did not mean to let you catch me;' to which I said, ' Well, I have caught you, and you can just stop moving, for I don't intend you to leave the place,' which settled him, and he has been ploughing now steadily for three days. To-night the last man came in, and told me he would go to work in the morning. So now the machine is fairly started again, and will run for the year, the getting off being the only difficulty.
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