USA > Georgia > Ten years on a Georgia plantation since the war > Part 8
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I was very unhappy about my stroke oar,
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Peter Mack, who behaved so splendidly last spring in that gale on the Sound, and who had also made up his mind to leave. I did not say one word to him, thinking that the best course to pursue in his case ; but when yesterday he came in to report himself ready for work, I said, ' Well, Peter, I am glad you are going to stay. I was sorry to hear you were so anxious to leave me.' 'No, missus,' he said, ' I not so anxious to leave you, else I done gone, but if you had not come I should have gone.' This being obliged to use personal influence in every individual case was rather troublesome, and yet it was very pleasant to have them affectionate in their manner to me, and influenced by my presence into doing what I wanted.
Not being able at once to find anyone in Mr. N -- 's place, I determined to try working with the negro captains alone, and endeavoured to excite their ambition and pride by telling them that everything de- pended upon them now, and I expected them
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to show me how well they could manage, and what a fine crop they would raise for me. My friend Major D _- , who, after six years of failure at cotton-planting had determined to give it up, but was anxious to remain at the South, consented to take charge of the financial part of the work for me, which was a great relief to my mind, and things seemed really for a time as if they would work smoothly.
My school arrangements were not going well at all, and I soon found that the teacher I had was a very different person from what I had hoped and believed him to be. He also had got bitten with the political mania, and asked my permission to accept some small office in Darien, assessor of taxes I think it was, which would not in any way interfere with his work for me, but greatly increase his income. So I could not well refuse, although I did not like it, and it was on my first return that he asked me, before I had found out other things about him. I after-
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wards found that he had entirely given up teaching Sunday school, or holding any services for the people on Sunday, and when I asked him why, merely said the people and children would not attend ; then, that he had quite given up all attempts at carrying on his own studies, and was no longer reading divinity with our Darien clergyman, but instead, was mixing himself up with all the local Darien politics ; and, lastly, bore but a very indifferent character there for morality, which at first I was inclined to disbelieve, until a disastrous affair proved the correctness of the reports. But this did not happen till the following year.
Either I am right in believing the negro incapable of any high degree of intellectual training, or of being raised to a position of equality with the white race without deterio- rating morally, or my experience has been very unfortunate. This man was one proof of it, another was a negro clergyman, born in one of the British Colonies, educated in an
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English college, and ordained deacon by an English Colonial bishop, so that never at any period of his life was he affected by having been a slave or held an inferior position. He had a church in Savannah, and conducted the service as he had been used to hearing it done, which was chorally; he had a fine voice, and chanted and intoned very well himself, and had trained a choir of little negroes, whom he put in surplices, extremely well. I was much interested in all the accounts I had heard of him, and when I reached Savannah I went to his church, be- lieving that at last my question of whether a full-blooded negro was capable of moral and intellectual elevation, was affirmatively answered. A full-blooded African he cer- tainly was, and was so black you could hardly see him. The service was beautifully done, and his part of it was well and effectively rendered, so that I was wrought up to the highest pitch of excitement and enthusiasm when the sermon came, for which I had been
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anxiously waiting. It was on a religious life, and from beginning to end was highflown, and mere fine talk ; and when he mentioned the 'infidel Voltaire and the licentious Earl of Rochester ' (his audience being composed, with the exception of my friend and myself, of the most ignorant and simple negroes), my enthusiasm and excitement collapsed with a crash, and I could have cried with grief and disappointment. Here were just the same old predominating negro traits-vanity, con- ceit, and love of showing off. About that man, too, there were stories told very unbe- coming a clergyman, and though I believe none of them were ever directly proved, he lost caste generally, and later on left Savan- nah.
Another instance of disappointment was the son of one of our own head men, whom my sister and myself tried to have educated at the North, hoping he might become a teacher on the Island. His father is one of the best, most intelligent, and trustworthy
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men I ever knew, and with much more firm- ness of character than the negroes generally possess, so much so that being now our head man he controls everything, and the gang of Irishmen who come to us regularly every winter obey his orders and work under him with perfect good temper and willingness-the only case of the sort I know ; and this man can neither read nor write, and is totally ignorant about everything but his work. He comes of a good stock ; his great-grand- father was my great-grandfather's foreman, and of his uncle, who died in 1866, my father, then alive, writes as follows: 'It is with very sad feelings that I write to tell you of the death of Morris, the head man of General's Island ; he was attacked with fever, and died in four days. Dr. Kenan attended him and I nursed him, but his disease was malignant in its character, and the medicines produced no effect. To me his loss is irreparable; he was by far the most intellectual negro I have ever known
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among our slaves. His sense and judgment were those of the white race rather than the black, and the view he took of the present position of his race was sensible and correct. He knew that freedom entailed self-depend- ence and labour, not idleness, and he set an example to those whose labours he directed by never sparing himself in any way where work was to be done. These qualities were inherited ; his grandfather, likewise named Morris, was my grandfather's driver, and on one occasion was working on that exposed cotton tract situated on the small island opposite St. Simon's, and in consequence of the situation being so much exposed to the autumn gales, which are often tropical in their fury, no settlement was ever made on this tract, the negroes who worked it going over daily in boats from their houses on St. Simon's. The only building was the hurri- cane house, which was constructed of suffi- cient strength to withstand the force of the gales, and in one of the years-1804 I think
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it was-when a terrific gale visited the coast and the negroes were at work on this place, old Morris, seeing signs of an approach- ing storm, ordered the people into that hur- ricane house. They, not wishing to take refuge there, preferred to make the attempt of reaching St. Simon's before the storm burst ; but old Morris, knowing that there was no time for this, drove them with the lash into the house, where they were hardly secured when the storm broke, and turned out to be one of the most terrible ever known on the southern coast. Of our negroes not a life was lost, though upwards of a hundred were drowned from a neighbouring island, who had rushed into their boats and tried to reach the mainland. My grandfather, wish- ing to reward Morris for his praiseworthy conduct, offered him his freedom, which, however, he declined, as he had a wife and family on the island, and preferred remaining. My grandfather then presented him with a considerable sum of money and a silver
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goblet, on which was engraved the following inscription :-
TO MORRIS,
FROM
P. BUTLER,
For his faithful, judicious, and spirited conduct in the hurricane of September 8, 1804, whereby the lives of more than 100 persons were, by Divine permission, saved.
' This passed to his son, also a superior man, and from him to his grandson, Morris, who possessed it at the time of his death. He left no son to succeed him, but his nephew, Sey, I think, promises to turn out a worthy descendant.'
This man, Sey, quite fulfilled my father's expectations, and was soon placed in a position of trust, from which he rose to be my foreman, the post he now holds. My sister and myself thought, therefore, that we could not do better than choose his son to be educated as a teacher, hoping that he would inherit his father's good qualities, moral and intellectual, and being glad to
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show our appreciation of his father in this way. We accordingly sent him to a large negro school or college in Philadelphia, which was under the direction of the Quakers, and in every way admirably managed, except that unless all the students were instructed for teachers, the course of education, which comprised Greek and Latin, algebra and trigonometry, was rather unsuited to fit them for any manual labour by which they might have to earn their bread. But this fault would apply to all American schools, I think, of this order. We made arrangements that little Abraham should lodge with the lady superintendent of the school, and nothing could have been more promising or more satisfactory than his start.
For the first six months or year every- thing went well, and he learnt fast. Then the reports became less and less satisfactory, until, at the end of the second year, we were requested to remove him, as he was incor- rigibly bad-had broken open the teacher's
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desk, and climbed over the wall and in at the window of the school-house to steal, and otherwise so misbehaved himself as to make it impossible for them to keep him. I was dreadfully sorry to have to break this news to Sey, and I told him as gently as I could, but he felt the disgrace of having his son returned to him under such circumstances most keenly.
The lad returned to the plantation, and his father at once set him to work in the field; but time after time he ran off, twice stealing his father's money, until at last Sey begged that his name might be struck from off the books, as he himself would no longer have anything to do with him. Of course I don't pretend to say that having him educated was the entire cause of his turning out so badly, but I do believe that, had we never taken him from the South, and he had grown up under his father's severe and high standard of right, he would probably have turned out very differently. I think most likely
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that he was taught and encouraged in his bad ways by the town boys, who, finding him on his first arrival a simple and easy tool to manage, made a cat's-paw of him ; for, as I told his teacher, he certainly did not learn to climb walls and break in windows on the plantation, for there were no walls to climb or windows to break open there.
Last winter, when my husband returned to the South for a short time, he found Abraham there again, at work under his father once more, having been to the North and elsewhere to look for work, but without success. I fear, however, that he was not much improved, from a story my husband told me of him. He said he was standing near the mill one day, where all the people were at work, when he saw several of the negroes running towards him, crying out, ' Crazy man !' 'crazy man !' and perceived that Abraham-now grown into a powerful, large man-was rushing after them, brandish- ing an axe. He was followed by his father,
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who was trying to disarm him, but whenever he approached near, Abraham threatened to brain him, so Sey could not get at him. He rushed past Mr. Leigh and into the mill, where the terrified women and children at work scattered in all directions ; then, going out on the wharf and throwing his arms up, made a tragical speech and prepared to jump into the river. This my husband at once called to his father and the others to let him do, and when he had taken the wild plunge, had him pulled into a boat, brought in, rubbed down, put to bed, and left to recover, which he did after a long sleep, being appa- rently quite well the next day. Sey's ex- planation was that he had trouble in his head, and had been like this before ; but whether he really did not know, or was ashamed to confess, that his son had been drinking, I do not know, but I believe that was undoubtedly the case.
There was another half-descendant of old Morris-a son of a daughter of his by a
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white man whom she had met while in the interior during the war. Whatever became of the father is not known, as is usually the case in such instances, and the mother dying before the end of the war, old Morris took the little boy and his sister (whose father had undoubtedly been black, for she was as black as a little coal, while Dan, the boy, showed his white blood very plainly, and was extremely pretty), and it was with Morris's widow, old Cinda, that I found the two children living when I first took charge of the place, my father having allowed all three rations. My husband, who opened a night school the first year of our return after our marriage, soon picked Dan out as a favourite and begged me to give him employment about the house, which I did. I then took him to the North for the summer, and finally brought him to England. Having when I first married brought over a negro servant who gave me a good deal of trouble, al- though perhaps he was hardly to be blamed
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for having his head turned, considering how much all the English maid-servants preferred him to a white man, and that my lady's maid finally preferred to marry him-a pen- chant I could neither understand nor sym- pathise with-I had declared I would never bring another negro over; but the desire to have one of my own people about me, Dan's youth, and my fondness for the boy, pre- vailed, and I brought him. He was made the greatest pet by everyone-his pretty face, gentle voice, and extreme civility making everyone his friend. The butlers at all the large houses I took him to said he was worth a dozen white boys. My own cook, who was old enough to be his mother, kept all the tit-bits and nice morsels for him, all the women servants spoilt and petted him, and I foresaw that very soon he would be utterly ruined, as no one kept him up to his work, and everyone let him do pretty much as he pleased.
I was therefore greatly surprised to have
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him come to me one day and say he wished to be sent home, as he did not like his life in England ; the work was too hard. I had been scolding him for some neglect of duty the day before, and supposed he was a little put out and would soon get over it, as his work was certainly not hard, although it was of course regular, a thing I am sure a negro ยท finds more irksome than anything else, as they seem to require at least half the day to lounge. Dan, however, never altered his desire, although I spoke to him several times about it, and after being over two years in England, not only well fed and clothed, but petted and spoilt, he returned to the planta- tion last winter. The boy had so much good in him and was so clever, besides having had such advantages, that I could not bear to let him go back to the South just to run wild and go to the bad, so I had a serious talk with him before he left, and made him promise that he would really take up some regular trade, and as he chose carpentering, my
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husband, who took him out, apprenticed him to our head carpenter, and I have hopes of his turning out well yet. But why he pre- ferred returning to his rough and uncom- fortable plantation life after having lived on the fat of the land in England, I never have understood, unless it be that the restraints of civilised life and regular habits were irksome and disagreeable to him.
Meanwhile the winter wore on, the last I was ever to spend on the place as mistress, or rather supreme dictator, whose acts had hitherto been controlled by neither master nor partner. My last letter written before leaving is as follows :-
Butler's Island : March 1871.
Dearest M-, My little place never looked so lovely, and the negroes are behaving like angels, so that my heart is very sad at the thought of leaving ; for although I suppose I shall come back some day, it will not be for some time, and no one knows what changes. may take place meanwhile, and notwithstand-
O
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ing all the trouble I have had I do love my home and work here so dearly. I never worked so hard as I have this winter, but never has my work been so satisfactory. I wrote you in my last how well my negroes were doing under my management, and I find the news of my success has spread far and wide. Every- one on the river started before I did, yet now I am far ahead of them all, being the only planter on the river who was ready to plant on the first tides. I began to feel a little anxious, however, at the idea of leaving the place entirely in charge of the negro captains as the time for my departure drew near, and so was greatly relieved when they came to me a few weeks ago, and begged that I would leave some one over them in my place when I left, saying, ' Missus, we must have a white man to back us when you gone; de people not mind what we say :' which is one of the many proofs of how incapable of self-govern- ment these people are, and how dependent upon the white race for support. I therefore
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looked out for an overseer to take charge of the planting (Major D- acting only as my financial manager), and have engaged a Mr. S-, formerly an overseer at Altama, of whom both Mr. C -- and the other gentle- men on the river who know him speak very highly in every way. He has been here about a week now, and so far has got on very well with the negroes, who usually try all sorts of pranks with a new-comer to see how much they can make out of him. He told Major D- yesterday that he was utterly surprised at the condition of the place, as never since the war had he seen one in such good order, work so well done, and so orderly, obedient, and civil a set of negroes.
Dear M-, don't laugh at my boasting. I have worked so hard and cared so much about it, that it is more to me than I can express to know that I have succeeded. Major D- too has straightened out all the accounts, so far as he can, of the past three years, so that I now see exactly what money
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has been made and what spent, and although I am not quite prepared to say that anyone has cheated me, the reckless expenditure and extravagance that has been going on, with the absolute want of conscientious responsi- bility shown by my agents, makes me ill to think of. However, it is all over now, thank goodness ! and I can not only hope to at last make something out of the place, but leave it with a feeling of perfect security.
My people had done so well that, feeling inclined for a little amusement myself, I thought I would reward them, and so gave them a holiday one day last week, and got up a boat race between my hands and Mr. C-'s, which was great fun. The river was crowded with boats of all sizes and shapes, in the midst of which lay the two elegant little race boats, manned by six of my men and six of the Altama negroes. Splendid fellows all of them, wild with excitement and showing every tooth in their heads, they were on such a broad grin.
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Major W-, who was staying with me, steered my boat, and Mr. C- the other, Major D- acting as starting judge, and at the crack of his pistol off they started, work- ing like men, perfectly cool and steady, row- ing down the river like the wind side by side, until they were within a few hundred feet of the wharf which was to be the goal, and on which Mr. C-, his son, Mrs. C-, Admiral T-, and F- and I were all assembled. Then my men made a mighty effort and shot ahead, winning by about four seconds. We had two races afterwards, one of which we beat, so that out of the three we won two. It was such fun, and I wish you could have heard the negroes afterwards, ' explaining matters.'
To-day, a poor blind woman, whose eyes F-and S-sometimes bathe, said to me, ' Missus, when we meet in heaven, and dey say to me, Tina, der's your missus, I not look for your face, missus, for I not know dat, but I shall look for your works, as I shall know
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dem.' I was very much touched, indeed my heart is altogether very sad, and full of love for my poor people here, and I can't bear to think that in two weeks I shall have left them for so long. Good-bye.
Yours affectionately, F.
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CHAPTER VII. 1871, 1872, AND 1873.
ABSENTEES-A NEW MASTER-WHITE LABOURERS -' MASSA '-' LITTLE MISSUS -NORTHERN IDEAS-CHURCH WORK-GOOD-BYE.
IN May of the same year I sailed for Europe, and in June was married. I remained in England until the autumn of 1873, when we returned to the United States. During the interval the accounts that reached us from the South were not satisfactory. The expenses, it is true, were cut down to nearly one-half what they had been before, and the negroes gave but little trouble, but one overseer turned out to be very incapable and entirely wanting in energy, making no fresh improve- ments and planting the same fields each year that had been under cultivation since the
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war, letting all the rest of the place grow into a complete wilderness. We also had a terrible loss during our absence in the destruction by fire of our mills and principal buildings. They were undoubtedly set on fire by one of the negroes to whom we had shown many and special favours, which had only had the effect of spoiling him to such an extent that he would not bear the slightest contradiction or fault found with his work. He had been reprimanded by the overseer and a dollar deducted from his wages for some neglect in his work, and this put him into such a passion that he refused to take his wages at all and went off, saying that it should cost us more than a dollar. This, and the fact that he was seen about the mill the morning of the fire, where he had no business to be, made us feel pretty sure that he was the incendiary, and although we never could prove it, it was a generally accepted idea that he was the man.
By this fire about fifteen thousand dollars'
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worth of property was destroyed, including all our seed rice for the coming planting, and had it not been for the efforts of the Irishmen who were at work on the place, the dwelling- houses and other buildings would have gone too. The sight of a large fire seems to arouse the savage nature of the negroes ; they shout and yell and dance about like fiends, and often become possessed by an incendiary mania which results in a series of fires. They never attempt to put it out, even if it is their own property burning.
Soon after this came the news that the teacher I had left on the Island to train and educate the people, not only intellectually but morally, had turned out very badly, and had led one of my nicest young servant girls astray, which, with the other disaster, so disheartened me as to make me feel unable to struggle any longer against the fate which seemed to frustrate all my efforts either to improve the property or the condition of the people, and I said I would do no more. My
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husband, however, took a more practical view of the matter, and decided that as we could not abandon the property altogether we must go on working it, so he telegraphed the agent to get estimates for a new mill and to buy seed, and in fact to go on, which he did, and in course of time a new mill was built and a fresh crop planted.
In the autumn of 1873 we determined to return to America, and the agitation among the agricultural labourers in England being then at its height, I thought we might advantageously avail ourselves of the rage among them for emigration, to induce a few to go out to Butler's Island and take the place of our Irish labourers there. It seemed a capital plan, but I did not know then what poor stuff the English agricultural labourer is made of as a general rule. Eight agreed to go, and a contract was made with them for three years, by which we bound ourselves to send them back at the end of the time should they desire to come, and have in the mean-
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time fulfilled their part of the agreement ; the wages we agreed to give them were the highest given in the United States, and about three times higher than what they had received at home. As we intended to stop some little time at the North we shipped them direct to the South, where they arrived about a month before we did. On Novem- ber I we followed, and I was most warmly greeted by all the negroes, who at once accepted my husband as ' massa.'
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