€&e li&ratp at tt>e Onitoergitp of Jl3ortib Carolina GEMiofcoeti hy JTheir religion, although so mixed up with superstition, was very real, and many were the words of comfort I got from them. One day, when I was crying, an old woman put her arms round me and said, ' Missus, don't cry ; it vex de Lord. I had tirteen children, and I ain't got one left to put even a coal in my pipe, and if I did not trust de Lord Jesus, what would become of me ? ' I am sorry to say, however, that finding my intention was to alter nothing that my father had arranged, some of them tried to take advantage of it, one man assuring me his master had given him a grove of orange trees, another several acres of land, and so on, always embellished with a story of his own long and useful services, for which ' Massa say, Boy, I gib you dis for your own.' Notwithstanding their dissatisfaction at the settlement, six thousand dollars was paid A lone. 79 out among them, many getting as much as two or three hundred apiece. jThe result was that a number of them left me and bought land of their own, and at one time it seemed doubtful if I should have hands at all left to work. The land they bought, and paid forty, fifty dollars and even more for an acre, was either within the town limits, for which they got no titles, and from which they were soon turned off, or out in the pine woods, where the land was so poor they could not raise a peck of corn to the acre. These lands were sold to them by a common class of men, principally small shopkeepers and Jews (the gentlemen refusing to sell their land to the negroes, although they occasion- ally rented it to them), and most frightfully cheated the poor people were. -4 But they had o-ot their land, and were building their little log cabins on it, fully believing that they were to live on their property and incomes the rest of their lives, like gentlemen. The baneful leaven of politics had begun 8o A Georgia Plantation. working among them, brought to the South by the lowest set of blackguards who ever undertook the trade, making patriotism in truth the ' last refuge of a scoundrel,' as Dr. Johnson facetiously defines it, and themselves ' factious disturbers of the Government,' according to his equally pleasant definition of a patriot. Only in this case they came accredited from the Government, and the agent of the Freedmen's Bureau was our master, one always ready to believe the wildest complaints from negroes, and to call the whites to account for the same. A negro carpenter complained that a gentleman owed him fifty dollars for work done, so without further inquiry or any trial, the agent sent the gentleman word to pay at once, or he would have him arrested, the sheriff at that time being one of his own former slaves. My brother-in-law, who was with me this year, for a short time was a Northern man and a strong Republican in his feelings, this being the. first visit he had ever Alone. 8r paid to the South. But such a high-handed proceeding as this astonished hirn, and he ex- pressed much indignation at it, and declared he would send an account of it to a Republi- can paper in Philadelphia, as the people at the North had no idea of the real state of things at the South. He had also expressed himself surprised and pleased at the courteous recep- tion he had received, although known to be a Northerner, and also at the quietness of the country generally. I told him they would not publish his letter in the Philadelphia paper, and I was right, they did not. A rather amusing incident occurred while he was with me. Having been in quiet possession of our property on St. Simon's Island for two years, we were suddenly notified one day, I never quite knew by whom, and in those days it was not easy always to know who our lawgivers were, that St. Simon's Island came under the head of abandoned property, being occupied by former owners, who, through contempt of G 82 A Georgia Plantation. the Government and President's authority, had refused to make application for its restor- ation under the law. ' Therefore,' so ran the order, 'such property shall be confiscated on the first day of January next, unless before that date the owners present them- selves before the authorities (?), take the required oath of allegiance to the Govern- ment, and ask for its restoration.' This nothing would induce me to do, the whole thing was so preposterous, but my brother-in-law decided that under the circumstances it was better to obey. So he, a strong Republican, who had first voted for Lincoln and then for Grant, had never been at the South before in his life, and during the war had done all in his power to aid and support the Northern Government, even gallantly offering his services to his country when Pennsylvania was threatened by General Lee before the battle of Gettys- burgh, had to go and take the oath of alle- giance to the United States Government on Alone. 83 behalf of his wife's property, she also having always sympathised with the. Northern cause, and having been so bitter in her feelinos at first as to refuse to receive a Southerner in her house. What a farce it was ! My brother-in-law could not help being amused, it was such an absurd position to find himself in, and he declared it all came of ever putting his foot in this miserable Southern country at all, and he had no doubt the result would be that on his return to the North he would find all his Northern property confiscated, and be hung as a rebel He soon after left me, and then my real troubles began. It seemed quite hopeless ever to get the negroes to settle down to steady work, and although they still professed the greatest affection for and faith in me, it certainly did not show itself in works. My new agent assured me that there must be a contract made and signed with the negroes, binding them for a year, in order to have any hold upon them at all, and g 2 84 A Georgia Plantation. f I am not sure that the Freeclmen's Bureau agent did not require such an agreement to be drawn up and submitted to him for approval before having it signed. Whether they were right or not as regarded the hold it gave us over the labourers I cannot say. I think possibly it impressed them a little more with the sense of their obligations, but after having two of them run off in spite of the solemnity of the contract, and having to pay something like twenty dollars to the authorities to fetch them back, we didn't trouble ourselves much about enforcing it after that, At first the negroes flatly refused to sign any contract at all, having been advised by some of their Northern friends not to do so, as it would put them back to their former condition of slavery, and my agents were quite powerless to make them come to any terms. So I determined to try what my personal influence would accom- plish. The day before I was to have my inter- Alone. 85 view with the Butler's Island people, I received a most cheerful note from Major D -, saying that he had paid off all the hands at St. Simon's, who seemed perfectly satisfied, and were quite willing to contract again for another year. I felt a little sur- prised at this, as it is not the negro's nature to be satisfied with anything but plenty to eat and idleness, but was rejoicing over the news, when I was summoned to the office to see six of the Hampton Point people who had just arrived from St. Simon's. There they were, one and all with exactly the same story as the people here, reserved for my benefit as their proper mistress and protector ; ' that they had not received full credit for their day's work, had been underpaid and over- charged,' &c. &c, winding up with, ' Missus, de people wait to see you down dere, and dey won't sign de contract till you come.' ' But,' said I, in despair, ' I can't possibly leave here for a week at least, and the work must begin there at once, or we shall get in no crop 86 A Georgia Plantation. this year.' But in vain ; they merely said, ' We wait, missus, till you come.' ' Very well/ I said, ' I'll go to-morrow. Only, mind you are all there, for I must be back here the next day to have this contract signed.' The next morninp- at a little after seven, I started for St. Simon's in my small boat, rowed by my two favourite men, reaching there about ten, and taking Major D . utterly by surprise, as he knew nothing of what had happened. From the way the negroes spoke the day before, one would have supposed the mere sight of my face would have done ; but not one signed the contract without a long - aro-ument on the subject, most of them refusing to sign at all, though they all assured me they wished to work for me as long ' as de Lord spared dem.' I knew, however, too well, that this simply meant that they were willing to con- tinue to live on St. Simon's as long as. the Lord spared them, but not to work, so I was firm, and said, ' No, you must sign or go Alone. 87 away.' So one by one, with groans and sighs, they put their marks down opposite to their names, and by five I had them all in. At nine o'clock, on the first of the flood tide, I started back, reaching Butler's Island at midnight, nearly frozen, but found my maid, who really was everything to me that year, waiting for me with a blazing fire and hot tea ready to warm me. The next morning at ten, I had the big mill bell rung to summon the people here to sign the contract, and then my work began in earnest For six mortal hours I sat in the office without once leaving my chair, while the people poured in and poured out, each one with long explanations, objections, and demonstrations. I saw that even those who came fully intending to sign would have their say, so after interrupting one man and having him say gravely, ' 'Top, missus, don't cut my discourse,' I sat in a state of dogged patience and let everyone have his talk out, reading the contract over and over again as 88 A Georgia Plantation. each one asked for it, answering their many questions and meeting their many objections as best I could. One wanted this altered in the contract, and another that. One was willing- to work in the mill but not in the field. Several would not agree to sign un- less I promised to give them the whole of Saturday for a holiday. Others, like the St. Simon's people, would ' work for me till they died,' but would put their hand to no paper. And so it went on all day, each one ' making me sensible,' as he called it. But I was immovable. ' No, they must sign the contract as it stood.' ' No, I could not have anyone work without signing.' ' No, they must work six days and rest on Sunday,' &c, &c. Till at last, six o'clock in the evening came and I closed the books with sixty-two names down, which was a good deal of a triumph, as my agent told me he feared none would sign the contract, they were so dissatisfied with last year's settle- ment. Even old Henry, one of the captains, Alone. 89 and my chief friend and supporter, said in the morning, ' Missus, I bery sorriful, for half de people is going to leave.' ' Oh no, they won't, Henry,' said I. But I thought sixty- two the first day, good work, though I had a violent attack of hysterics afterwards, from fatigue and excitement. Only once did I lose my temper and self-control, and that was when one man, after showing decided signs of insolence, said, ' Well, you sign my paper first, and then I'll sign yours.' ' No,' I replied in a rage, ' I'll neither sign yours nor you mine. Go out of the room and off the place instantly.' But I soon saw how foolish I was, for looking up five minutes after, I beheld the same man standing against the door with a broad grin on his face, who, when I looked at him in perfect astonishment, said with the most perfect good nature, ' I'se come back to sign, missus/ The next day, Sunday, I tried to keep clear of the people, both for rest and because I wanted to make some arrangements for my 90 A Georgia Plantation. school, the young teacher having arrived on Friday. Monday morning the bell again rang, and though I did not see more than twenty-five people, I was again in the office from ten a.m. to six p.m., and found it far more unpleasant than on Saturday, as I had several trouble- some, bad fellows to deal with. One man, who proposed leaving the place without pay- ing his debts, informed me, when I told him he must pay first, ' he'd see if he hadn't a law as well as I ; ' and another positively refused to work or leave the place, so he had to be informed that if he was not gone in three days he would be put off, which had such an effect that he came the next day and signed, and worked well afterwards. Tuesday and Wednesday my stragglers came dropping in, the last man arriving under a large cotton umbrella, very defiant that he would not sign unless he could have Satur- day for a holiday. ' Five days I'll work, but (with a flourish of the umbrella) I works Alone. 91 for no man on Saturday.' ' Then,' said I, ' William, I am sorry, but you can't work for me, for any man who works for me must work on Saturday.' ' Good morning, den, missus,' says my man, with another flourish of the umbrella, and departs. About an hour afterwards he returned, much subdued, with the umbrella shut, which I thought a good sign, and informed me that after ' much consideration wid himself/ he had returned to sign. So that ended it, and only two men really went — one from imagined ill-health, and one I dismissed for insubordination. The gentlemen seemed to think I had done wonders, and I was rather astonished at myself, but nothing would ever induce me to do such a thin"" acrain. The backbone of the opposition thus broken, and the work started more or less steadily, I turned my thoughts to what I considered my principal work, and belonging more to my sphere than what I had been engaged in up to that time. I was anxious 92 A Georgia Plantation. to have the negroes' houses, which were terribly dilapidated, repaired and white- washed, a school opened, and the old hospital building repaired and put in order for the following purposes. One of the four big rooms the people had taken possession of for a church, the old one being some three miles distant, at one of the upper settlements, and this I determined to let them keep, and to use one of the others for the school ; one for the old women who couldn't work, and the other for the young married women to be confined in, as, since the war, they bring their children into the world anyhow and anywhere, in their little cabins, where men, women, and children run in and out indis- criminately, so that it is both wretched and improper. The people did not seem to like either of my proposals too much ; especially the old plantation midwife, who is indignant at her work being taken away from her. But as I find she now makes the charge of five dollars Alone. 93 for each case, the negroes naturally decline employing her on their own account. I hoped by degrees to bring them to approve of my arrangements, by showing them how much more comfortable they would be in my hospital, and by presenting the babies born there with some clothes, and the old women who lived there with blankets, to make them like it. (I never did succeed, how- ever, and after several attempts, had to give it up.) I had one or two pupils at the same time, and found the greatest difference between the genuine full-blooded African and the mulattoes. The first, although learning to repeat quickly, like a clever parrot, did not really take in an idea, while the other was as intelligent as possible. I felt sure then, and still think, the pure negro incapable of advancement to any degree that would enable him to cope with the white race, in- ~~ tellectually, morally, or even physically. My white maid took infinite pains to show them 94 A Georgia Plantation. the best, quickest, as well as simplest way of doing the house-work, absolutely taking their breath away by the way she worked herself, but without much effect, as the instant her back was turned they went back to their old lazy, slipshod ways of doing things. Her efforts to make them tidy in their dress were very amusing, and one morning, finding my young housemaid working with her sun- bonnet on, I said, ' Why do you keep your bonnet on, Christine ? ' Upon which, without any reply, she pulled the said bonnet down over her eyes, and my maid informed me she had come to work in the morning with- out brushing her hair, so for punishment had to wear her sun-bonnet. The women showed a strong inclination to give up wearing their pretty, picturesque head handkerchiefs, ' be- cause white people didn't,' but I was very strict about the house servants never coming without one on, for their black woolly heads did look too ugly without their usual cover- ing, which in itself was so handsome, and Alone. 95 gave them so much style, and in some cases beauty. A few days after the contract was signed I started the school, which I hoped would be a success. The teacher was a young country lad just fresh from college ; clever enough, but very conceited, with no more manners than a young bear, which, however, I hoped he might learn in time from the negroes in return for some book learning, as they generally are singularly gentle and courteous in their manners. I had school in the morning for the children, and in the evening for the young people who worked in the fields. This is decidedly the most popular, and we have over fifty scholars, some of them quite old men — much too old to learn, and much in the way of the younger ones, but so zealous that I could not bear to turn them away. Besides teaching school, my young man was to take charge of the store, which I found too much for rne. My father's object in 96 A Georgia Plantation. opening the store was to give the negroes good things at cost price, in order to save them from paying three times the price for most inferior goods in Darien, where a number of small shops had been opened. But we did not take into consideration the heavy loss it must entail upon us not to put even profit enough on the things to cover our own expenses, and we sold them to the negroes at exactly what we paid for them in Philadelphia, bearing all the cost of transpor- tation and spoilt goods, so that at the end of the following year I found the store just three thousand dollars out of pocket, and so decided to shut it up, especially as I found that, not- withstanding our giving the negroes the very best things at cost price, they much preferred going to Darien to spend their money on inferior goods and at greatly increased rates. I suppose, poor people, it was natural they should like to swagger a little, and spend their newly, but certainly not hardly-earned money freely, and it was an immense relief Alone. 97 to my pocket and labours to give up shop- keeping, although we only had it open for about two hours every afternoon. But all this time, while we were getting things more and more settled on the place, the troubles from outside were drawing nearer and nearer as the day for voting approached, and in March burst upon us in the shape of political meetings and excitement of all kinds. Two or three Northern political agents arrived in Darien, and summoned all the negroes to attend meetings, threatening them with various punishments if they stayed away. I in vain reasoned with the negroes, and did all in my power to prevent their attending these meetings, and told them no one could punish them for not going : not because I cared in the least which way they voted, but because it interfered so terribly with their work. I doubled the watchmen at night, and did all I could to prevent strangers land- ing on the Island ; but one morning found that during the night a notice had been put H 93 A Georgia Plantation. up on the wharf, calling upon all the people to attend a political meeting on pain of being fined five hundred dollars, or exiled to a foreign land. As the meeting was some way off, and the election followed in a few days, I knew that if the people once broke off, no more work would be done for at least a week, and this was just the time one of our plant- ings had to be put in, which, as we can only do it on the spring tides, would have cost me just two hundred acres of rice. So I argued and threatened, and told them it was all rubbish — no one could either exile or fine them, and that they must not go to the meeting at all, and when the day for voting came must do all their day's work first and vote afterwards ; which they easily could have done, having always finished their day's work by three o'clock, and the voting place not being half a mile off. It was useless, however. My words were powerless, the negroes naturally thinking that the people who had freed them could Political Difficulties. 99 do anything they liked, and must be obeyed ; so they not only prepared to go to the meet- ing, but, I knew, would not do a stroke of work on the voting days. At last, in despair, I wrote to General Meade, who was then the military commander of our district, and a personal acquaintance of mine, to tell him what was going on, and ask him if it was impossible that the planters should be pro- tected from these political disturbers and agitators. I received the following answer and order from him almost immediately : — Head-quarters, Third Military District. (Department of Georgia, Florida, and Alabama.) Atlanta, Georgia : April 11, 1868. My dear Miss B , — I have to ac- knowledge the receipt of your letter, reporting that certain persons are ordering the labourers under your employment to attend political meetings, and threatening, in case of refusal, to punish them with fines or exile them to a foreign country ; and have to state in reply, that no interference of any kind with the h 2 ioo A Georgia Plantation. just rights of employers is authorised by existing laws or orders, and that, on the contrary, you will see, from the enclosed order, which was being prepared at the time your letter was received, that such inter- ference is positively prohibited, and is punish- able on conviction before a military tribunal with fine and imprisonment. If you will furnish these Head-quarters with the names of parties thus attempting to interfere with your rights as an employer, together with the names of reliable witnesses, I shall not hesitate to investigate the case, and bring the offenders to trial and punishment. Very respectfully yours, George G. Meade, Major-General. The order was as follows : — Head-quarters, Third Military District. (Department of Georgia, Florida, and Alabama.) General Orders, No. 58. — The uncer- tainty which seems to exist in regard to Political Difficulties. ioi holding- municipal elections on the 20th inst., and the frequent inquiries addressed to these Head-quarters, renders it necessary for the commanding General to announce that said elections are not authorised by any orders from these Head-quarters. Managers of elections are hereby prohibited from receiving any votes, except such State and county offices as are provided for in the constitution, to be submitted for ratification, the voting for which offices is authorised by General Orders, Nos. 51 and 52. No. 2. Complaints having been made to these Head-quarters, by planters and others, that improper means are being used to compel labourers to leave their work to attend political meetings, and threats being made that in case of refusal penalties will be attached to said refusal, the Major-General Commanding announces that all such attempts to control the movements of labourers and interfere with the rights of employers are strictly forbidden and will be considered, 102 A Georgia Plantation. and, on conviction, will be punished, the same as any attempt to dissuade voters from going to the polls, as referred to in paragraph n, General Orders, No. 57. No. 3. The Major-General Command- ing also makes known that, while he ac- knowledges, and will require to be respected, the right of labourers to peacefully assemble at night to discuss political questions, yet he discountenances and forbids the assembling of armed bodies, and requires that all such assemblages shall notify either the civil or military authorities of these proposed meet- ings, and said military and civil authorities are enjoined to see that the right of electors to peaceably assemble for legitimate purposes is not disturbed. No. 4. The wearing or carrying of arms, either concealed or otherwise, by persons not connected with the military service of the Government, or such civil officers whose duties under the laws and orders is to preserve the public peace, at or Political Difficulties. 103 in the vicinity of the polling places, on the days set apart for holding the election in the State of Georgia, is positively forbidden. Civil and military officers will see that this order, as well as all others relative to the preservation of the peace and quiet of the counties in which they are acting, is strictly observed. By order of Major-General Meade, R. C. Drum, A.A.G. These orders were accompanied by a private letter, which was as follows : — Easter Sunday : April n, 1868. My dear Miss B , — You will see by my writing you to-day how much I feel flattered by your appeal to me, and how ready I am to respond to it. I regret very much to learn the state of affairs as de- scribed by you ; they are certainly un- authorised by any laws or orders from these Head-quarters, and, since the receipt of your letter I have had prepared an order to cover 104 A Georgia Plantation. such case, and forbidding the interference of political agents with the rights of em- ployers. I will have a copy sent to you officially, which you can make use of to correct this evil in future. I have been twice in Savannah, on my way to Florida ; have both times thought of you and inquired after you. If you had been a little more accessible, and had I not feared to compromise you by a visit from the awful military satrap and despot who rules so tyrannically over you, Miss W- will tell you that I, as well as the Colonel (my son), were both desirous of visiting you. I am very much gratified to learn that you acknowledge being my subject, and beg you to remember the acknowledgment is re- ciprocal, as I acknowledge my allegiance to you — an allegiance founded on respect, kindly regard, and many pleasant recollections of former times. Let me assure you I shall be ready at all times to aid and encourage you in your Political Difficulties. 105 labours, and that you must not hesitate to appeal to me ; for, though many people will not believe it, I am trying to act impartially, and to do justice to all. Very truly and sincerely yours, George G. Meade. P.S. — Your letter being marked private, I have not deemed myself justified in acting on it, but you will see from my official letter that, if you will send me evidence and names of witnesses in Mr. Campbell's case, I will attend to that gentleman. Official letter goes by to-day's mail with this. Let me know if it does not reach you. I was, of course, much pleased and very triumphant when I received these letters, although it was impossible to comply with General Meade's request that we would report the offenders, as the notices served on the negroes were never signed — which convinced us of their illegality, but did not in the least take away from their importance 106 A Georgia Plantation. to the negroes. Still, I not only read my order to them, but had it posted up in Darien, and, on the strength of it, repeated my previous orders to my negroes that, if one of them neglected his work to attend political meetings or to vote, I would dismiss him from the place ; adding, at the same time, ' there is no difficulty about your voting after your work is over.' My surprise and disgust were therefore extreme when I received the following day a second letter from General Meade, as follows : — Atlanta : April 13, 1868. My dear Miss B , — I wrote yOu very hastily yesterday on my return from church, not wishing to lose a mail, advising you of my views and action. I find to-day, on a careful re-perusal of your letter, that you are in error in one particular. You seem to think you have the right to decide when your people shall vote, and that as there is time for them after three o'clock, the end of their day's work, that you are authorised to pro- Political Difficulties. 107 hibit their leaving at an earlier hour. This is not so, and I would advise you not to insist on it. The theory of my order is that no restraint is to be put on the labourer to prevent his voting. Now as it is sometimes difficult for a person to vote as soon as he reaches the polls, some having to wait days for their turn, and as, often, examination has to be made of the registration books, and the voter in addition to the delay of awaiting his turn after getting up to the polls, may find some error in the spelling of his name or omission to put his name on the list, and in conse- quence of these obstacles lose his turn to have the error corrected and then again take his chance, more time must be allowed than your rule would admit. I think you will have to make up your mind that the election will be a great nuisance, and that you will not get much out of your people during its continuance. If they are reasonable and the facilities good at Darien, they should not io8 A Georgia Plantation. require any more time than is absolutely necessary, but as I know that voting is a work of time, for which reason we give four days, I fear these plausible, and perhaps actual obstacles, will be taken advantage of to spend the time in idleness and frolicking, on the plea that ' they could not get a chance to vote.' I take the liberty of writing this to you because my letter of yesterday might lead you astray. Again assuring you of my warm regard, I remain, Yours very truly, George G. Meade. I naturally felt indignant at this letter, for I had told General Meade that I did not intend to interfere with my negroes voting, but only to save myself from loss, and in my case no difficulty existed about their reaching the polls, which were not a mile from the house. And this second letter undid all the good of Political Difficulties. 109 the first, besides which I could not help feeling the gross injustice of coolly telling me that for four whole days I must not expect any work, for it would really just in that week have entailed a loss of two hundred acres, as I told General Meade in my letter. And what Northern farmer or manufacturer would have submitted for one moment to an order from the Government, directing him to give his employes four whole days for voting, just at the busiest season ? I was both hurt and angry, and never have to this day understood this afterthought of General Meade. He was always so kind and courteous, and had been a personal friend of my father, and could not really have dis- believed my statements. I suppose that he thought in fact I was not my own mistress, but acting under orders and advice from my Southern neighbours. But I can solemnly assert that neither then nor since, to my knowledge, have my negroes been influenced in their way of voting by the planters, beyond no A Georgia Plantation. a mere joking remark as to whether they felt sure that they had the right ticket, or some such thing. I think most of the gentlemen felt as I did, that the negroes voting at all was such a wicked farce that it only deserved our contempt. I do not say that no outside influence was ever used afterwards, although I do not know of any personally, and cer- tainly, no intimidation, as I think I can most clearly and satisfactorily prove by a statement as to how matters stand with us politically at present, vrrom first to last all our political disturbances arose from agents belonging to the Republican party, mostly Northern ad- venturers, of whom, thank God, we are now rid. After thinking the matter over I deter- mined to pay no attention to General Meade's second letter, as I felt I was justified in doing by the facts of the case. So I put the letter in my pocket, and repeated my orders that the negroes were to do their work first, and vote afterwards. Political Difficulties. hi The election day came, and my agent, who was not very judicious and was very excitable, had me awaked at six o'clock in the morning to tell me that there was not a negro in the field, all having announced their inten- tion of going over to Darien to vote. By ten o'clock there was not a man left on the place, even the old half-idiot, who took care of the cows, having gone to vote with the rest ; and my agent, who was much excited over it all, said, ' Now, Miss B , what will you do ? You can't dismiss the whole plantation.' I confess for a moment I felt checkmated, and did not know what to do, but as I had in- tended to go down to St. Simon's that day I determined to carry out my intention, which would give me time to think quietly and coolly over the situation. So I sent word to my two boat hands that they must cast their votes as soon as possible and return to take me down, an order they promptly obeyed. The next day I received a note from my agent, saying that the hands had all returned ii2 A Georgia Plantation. to their work early in the day after voting, and had all finished the entire task with the exception of two or three, who promised to do double work the next day. Here was an unexpected triumph, and I truly believe that my plantation was almost the only one in the whole State of Georgia where any work was done during those four days, and apart from the actual loss of labour, four days of idleness would have made it doubly difficult to get the people in hand again. Down on St. Simon's their ardour about voting was con- siderably cooled by the fact that they had twelve miles to walk to the polls, and besides had not been visited by any political agents to stir them up. So only a few out of the whole number went, and we had no trouble about it. This ended our political troubles for this year, but the work was still anything but steady or satisfactory, and hardly a day passed without difficulty in some shape or other. In a letter written at the end of April I say : — Fresh Difficulties. 113 All winter I have had a sort of feeling that before long" I should get through and have things settled ; but I am beginning to find out that there is no getting through here, for just as you are about getting through, you have to begin all over again. I have had a good deal of trouble this last week with my people — not serious, but desperately wearisome. They are the most extraordinary creatures, and the mixture of leniency and severity which it is requisite to exercise in order to manage them is beyond belief. Each thing is explained satisfactorily to them and they go to work. Suddenly some one, usually the most stupid, starts an idea that perhaps by-and-by they may be expected to do a little more work, or be deprived of some privilege ; upon which the whole field gets in the most excited state, they put down their hoes and come up to the house for another explanation, which lasts till the same thing happens again. They are the most effervescent people in the world, and to see them in one of their I ii4 ^ Georgia Plantation. excitements, gesticulating wildly, talking so violently that no one on earth can understand one word they say, you would suppose they never could be brought under control again. But go into the field the next morning, and there they are, as quiet, peaceable, and cheerful as if nothing had happened. At first I used to talk too, but now I just stand perfectly quiet until they have talked them- selves out, and then I ask some simple question which shows them how foolish they have been, and they cool down in a moment. The other day, while I was at dinner, I heard tramp, tramp, outside, and a gang of fifty arrived, the idea having occurred to them that, while I was gone in harvest time, they might be overworked. They talked and they raved ' that they had contracted to do two tasks and no more,' going from one imaginary grievance to another, until one man suddenly broke out with, ' And, missus, when we work night and day, we ought to be paid extra.' Upon which they all took it up, Fresh Difficulties. 115 ' Yes, missus, when we tired with working hard all day, den to work all night for nothing is too much.' Not having spoken before, I then said very quietly, ' Have you ever been asked to work -at night ? ' There was a dead pause for a moment, and then one man said rather sheepishly, ' No.' 'Well,' said I, ' when you are, you will certainly be paid extra, and now, as you seem to have for- gotten the contract, I will read it to you over again.' So I brought it out and read it slowly and solemnly, dwelling particularly on the part in which it said, ' The undersigned freed men and women agree to obey all orders and to do the work required of them in a satis- factory manner, and in event of any violation of this contract, they are to be dismissed the place and to forfeit all wages due to them.' This cooled them considerably, and when I added, ' Now understand, your work is just what you are told to do, and if one bushel of rice is lost through your disobedience 1 2 u6 A Georgia Plantation. or carelessness, you shall pay for it,' this quenched them utterly, and they went to work the next morning with the greatest possible good-will, and all will go on well until the next time, whenever that may be. But what with troubles without and troubles within, life is a burden and rice a difficult crop to raise. As for Mr. D s and Mr. W 's opinions about the glorious future of our Sea Island cotton plantations, they are worth just as much as the paper on which their calcula- tions are made, and are theoretical entirely. Mr. G , another rich New York man, who figured it all out on paper there, came here two years ago to make his fortune, and he told me the other day that he was perfectly convinced that Sea Island cotton never would pay again. Rice, he said, might, but this fine cotton, never. The expense and risk of rais- ing it was too great, and the price too much lowered by foreign competition. The labour is too uncertain, and anyone who knows, as I Fresh Difficulties. i i 7 do, that after all my hard work the crop may be lost at any moment by the negroes eoinQf off or refusing to work, knows how useless it is to count on any returns with certainty. Wherever white labour can be introduced, other crops will be cultivated, and wherever it can't, the land will remain uncultivated. Rice lands now rent at ten dollars an acre, and cotton from two to three, so you can judge what the people here think about it ; and, after all, I suppose they must know best. The orange trees are all in full bloom now, and smell most deliciously sweet, and the little place looks its prettiest, which is not say- ing much for it, it is true. Another year I hope to improve it by removing the negro houses away from where they now are, close to this house, to where I can neither see, hear, nor smell them. I shall then run my own fence out a little further, taking in a magnifi- cent magnolia and some large orange trees, which, with the quantities of flowers I have n8 A Georgia Plantation. set out everywhere, will at any rate make the garden round the house pretty. A little later on, the Island being sub- merged by a sudden overflow and rise of the river, I accepted an invitation from some friends in South Carolina, also rice-planters, to visit them. From there I write as follows : — Mrs. P.'s family consists of a very nice girl about my own age, clever and well- educated, and two sons, one about twenty- seven and the other about twenty-four, both of whom were educated abroad, and are well- informed and intelligent. So altogether it is a pleasant family to be in, and as we are all trying to make our fortunes as rice-planters, we have everything in common, and talk ' rice ' all day. I have ridden every day since I have been here, and on Friday went deer-hunting, which, of course, I enjoyed very much. We started at eight o'clock in the morning, and Fresh Difficulties. 119 did not return till five o'clock in the afternoon, having seen six deer and killed two, one of whichwe lost, after a short run, in the river. V^This part of the country has suffered more heavily than any other from the war. Hun- dreds of acres of rice land, which yielded millions before the war, are fast returning to the original swamp from which they were reclaimed with infinite pains and expense, simply because their owners are ruined, their houses burnt to the ground, and their negroes made worthless as labourers. It is very sad to see such wide-spread ruin, and to hear of girls well-educated, and brought up with every luxury, turned adrift as dressmakers, school- teachers, and even shop girls, in order to keep themselves and their families from starvation. One of Mrs. F 's nieces paddles her old father over to the plantation every morning herself, and while he is giving his orders in the fields, sits on a heap of straw, making under- clothes to sell in Charleston. It is wonderful to me to see how bravely and cheerfully they 120 A Georgia Plantation. do work, knowing as I do how they lived before the war. I was agreeably surprised with the beauty of this place, for I thought all rice plantations, like Butler's Island, were ugly and uninter- esting. Here the rice fields are quite out of sight. The garden, which is very large, is enclosed by a lovely hedge of some sweet- smelling shrub and roses ; in it are clematis and sweet olea bushes thirty feet high, with quantities of violets and all sorts of sweet things besides. Then there are three superb live oak trees, from under which we look out on the river, which runs clear and deep in front of the house. The house itself is a good- sized building, with remains of great elegance about it, and with some nice old family pic- tures and china in it. Mrs. P is very proud of having saved these things, which she did by remaining with her daughter in the house during a raid, when all her neigh- bours fled, leaving their houses to be literally emptied of their contents by the soldiers of Fresh Difficulties. 121 the Northern army who visited this section of the country, M told me a funny story of a visit she received from a tipsy Yankee captain, to whom she and her mother were, from in- terested motives, most civil, and who became so affected by her charms that he presented her with a silver pitcher to which he had just helped himself from a neighbouring house, which she gratefully accepted, and returned as soon as possible to its rightful owner. \S\. leave here this evening, as my agent writes me the waters have subsided from the face of the earth. So I must get back to my work and to my new planting machine, which I am very anxious to try, being the first step to- wards freeing ourselves from negro labourers. On my return, the season being well ad- vanced and the rice place no longer healthy, I went down at once to the cotton plantation, of which my final letter written from the South this year gives this account : — V 122 A Georgia Plantation. Hampton Point : May 5, 186S. I came down here last Tuesday, as, before I return to the North I want to get a little sea air, as well as to have the house re- shingled, the rain now coming through the old roof in plentiful showers. The main body of the house, I am glad to find, is per- fectly good, so that repairing the roof and piazzas will put it in thorough order ; and as I have brought my whole force of eight carpenters down, the work is going briskly forward. This place, always lovely, is now looking its best, with all the young spring greens and flowers lighting up the woods, and I long to cut and trim, lay out and take up, making the place as beautiful as it is capable of being made. It is a great contrast in every way to Butler's Island, the place as well as people. The proximity of the other place to Darien has a very demoralising effect upon the negroes there. Here everything moves on steadily and quietly, as it used to do in old Fufsh Difficulties. 123 times. Bram still has charge, and with his three nice grown sons, gives the tone to the place. We have planted about a hundred and twenty-five acres of cotton, all of which are coming up well and healthy. But this time last year, it looked well too, and then, alas ! alas ! was totally destroyed by the army- worm, so who can tell if it may not again be swept from off the face of the earth in a single night, as it was last year. Your notion, and Miss F 's, that the negroes ouo-ht at once to be made to realise their new condition and position, is an im- possibility, and you might just as well expect children of ten and eleven to suddenly realise their full responsibilities as men and women, as these people. That they will come to it in time I hope and believe, and for that purpose I am having them educated, trying to increase their desire for comforts, and excite their ambition to furnish their houses and make them neat and pretty. But the change was too great to expect them to adopt 124 A Georgia Plaxt.it/oa 7 . the new state of thing's at once, and they must come to it by degrees, during which time my personal influence is necessary to keep them up in their work, and to prevent them falling into habits of utter worthlessness, from 7 which they can never be reclaimed. VFrom the first, the fixed notion in their minds has been that liberty meant idleness, and they must be forced to work until they become intelligent enough to know the value of labour. As for starving them into this, that is impossible too, for it is a well-known fact that you can't starve a negro. At this moment there are about a dozen on Butler's Island who do no work, consequently get no wages and no food, and I see no difference whatever in their condition and those who get twelve dollars a month and full rations. They all raise a little corn and sweet potatoes, and with their facilities for catching fish and oysters, and shooting wild game, they have as much to eat as they want, and now are quite satisfied with that, not yet having Fresh Difficulties. 125 learned to want things that money alone can give. The proof that my theory about personal influence is the only means at present by which the people can be managed, is that my father, by his strong influence over them last year, made the best crop that was raised in the country, and this year our people are working far better than others in the neigh- bourhood, and we have again the prospect of a large crop, while our neighbours are in despair, their hands running off, refusing to work, and even in some places raising riots in the place. Not that their masters are not paying them their wages, for in some cases they are giving them more than we do ; but because they just pay them off so much a month and trouble their heads no more about them, just as if they were white labourers. Now, my desire and object is to put them on this footing as soon as possible, but they must be kept in leading-strings until they are able to stand alone. 126 A Georgia Plantation. CHAPTER IV. T868-1869. RECONSTRUCTION. In November of the same year I again visited the South, having received during the summer one or two sensational telegrams from my agent, who was apt to lose his head, and although they sounded very alarming, they proved to be the creation of a vivid imagina- tion or unfounded reports, and on the whole the people had done very well, and we had a large crop for the acreage planted. This year I took a friend with me, and my maid. ^ Christmas, politics, and paying-off had again upset all the negroes, and many of them said they intended to leave the place, and some Reconstruction. 127 did. We were now giving 1 2 dollars a month, with rations, half the money being paid at the end of every month, and the rest, at the end of the year. Knowing that it was quite use- less to try and get them to settle down until after the first of the year, I let them alone and devoted myself to the children, for whom I had a beautiful Christmas tree. I wrote on Christmas evening an account of it all. Christmas 1S68. Dearest M , You have heard of our safe arrival, and how much more comfortable the travelling was than last year. We arrived about a month ago, and I have been hard at work ever since. The negroes do not seem to be in a very satisfactory condition, but it is owing in a great measure, I think, to its being Christmas time. They are all prepared again to make their own, and different, terms for next year, but except for the bother and trouble I don't feel very anxious about it, for we have a gang of Irishmen doing" the 1 28 A Georgia Plantation. banking and ditching, which the negroes utterly refuse to do any more at all, and therefore, until the planting begins, we can do without the negro labour. -x/Last year they humbugged me completely by their expressions of affection and desire to work for me, but now that the novelty of their getting back once more to their old home has entirely worn off and they have lost their old habits of work, the effects of freedom are beginning to tell, and everywhere sullen unwillingness to work is visible, and all round us people are discussing how to get other labourers in the place of negroes. s/ . But alas ! on the rice lands white labour is impos- sible, so that I really don't know what we shall do, and I think things look very gloomy for the planters. Our Northern neighbours on St. Simon's, the D -s, who were most hopeful last year, are now perfectly discouraged with the difficulties they have to encounter with their labour, and of course having to lose two or three months every year while the negroes Re const j? uction. 129 are making up their minds whether they will work or not, obliges us to plant much less ground than we should otherwise do. How- o ever, there is no use taking evil on account, and when we are ruined will be time enough to say free labour here is a failure, and I still hope that when their Christmas excite- ment is over, the people will settle down to work. My Chrirtmas tree this afternoon was a great success ; it was really very pretty. I had three rooms packed full of people, the women begging me to give them dolls and the toys, which I had brought of course for the children alone. The orange trees are a miracle of beauty ; many of the branches touch the ground from the weight of the fruit, and you cannot walk under them with- out knocking the oranges with your head. Several of the trees have yielded two thou- sand, and the whole crop is estimated at sixteen thousand. We had a small excitement about this K 130 A Georgia Plantation. time, owing to a report which went the round of the plantations, that there was to be a general negro insurrection on the ist of the year. I did not much believe it, but as I had promised my friends at the North, who were very anxious about me, to run no risks and to take every precaution against danger, I thought it best to seek some means of pro- tection. I first asked my friend whether she felt nervous and would rather leave the Island, but she, being a true soldier's daughter, said no, she would stay and take her chance with me. We then agreed to say nothing about it to my maid, who was a new English maid, thinking that if we did not mind having our throats cut, neither need she — particularly as she now spent most of her time weeping at the horrors which sur- rounded her. I wrote therefore to our nearest military station and asked that a guard of soldiers might be sent over for a day or two, which was done. But as they came without any Reconstruction. i 3 1 officer, and conducted themselves generally disagreeably, stealing the oranges, worrying the negroes, and making themselves entirely at home even to the point of demanding to be fed by me, I packed them off, preferring to take my chance with my negroes than with my protectors. I don't believe that there was the least foundation for the report of the insurrection, but we had trouble enough the whole winter in one form or other. The negroes this year and the following seemed to reach the climax of lawless in- dependence, and I never slept without a loaded pistol by my bed. Their whole manner was changed ; they took to calling their former owners by their last name with- out any title before it, constantly spoke of my agent as old R , dropped the pleasant term of ' Mistress,' took to calling me ' Miss Fanny,' walked about with guns upon their shoulders, worked just as much and when they pleased, and tried speaking to me with 132 A Georgia Plantation. their hats on, or not touching them to me when they passed me on the banks. This last rudeness I never permitted for a moment, and always said sharply, ' Take your hat off instantly,' and was obliged to take a tone to them generally which I had never done before. One or two, who seemed rather more inclined to be insolent than the rest, I dismissed, always saying, ' You are free to leave the place, but not to stay here and behave as you please, for I am free too, and moreover own the place, and so have a right to give my orders on it, and have them obeyed.' I felt sure that if I relaxed my discipline for one moment all was up, and I never could control the negroes or plant the place again ; and to this unerring rule I am sure I owe my success, although for that year, and the two following, I felt the whole time that it was touch-and-go whether I or the negroes got the upper hand. A new trouble came upon us too, or Reconstruction. 133 rather an old trouble in a new shape. HNegro adventurers from the North, finding- that politics was such a paying trade at the South, began pouring in, and were really worse than the whites, for their Southern brethren looked upon their advent quite as a proof of a new order of things, in which the negroes were to rule and possess the land. We had a fine specimen in one Mr. Tunis Campbell, whose history is rather peculiar. Massachusetts had the honour of giving him birth, and on his first arrival in Georgia he established himself, whether with or without permission I know not, on St. Catherine's Island, a large island midway between Savannah and Darien, which was at that time deserted. The owner, without returning, rented it to a Northern party, who on coming to take possession found Mr, Campbell established there, who declined to move, on some pretended permission he had from the Government to occupy it, and it was neces- sary to apply to the authorities at Darien to 134 A Georgia Plantation. remove him, which was done by sending- a small armed force. He then came to Darien, and very soon became a leader of the negroes, over whom he acquired the most absolute control, and managed exactly as he pleased, so that when the first vote for State and county authorities was cast, he had no diffi- culty in having himself elected a magistrate, and for several years administered justice with a high hand and happy disregard of law, there being no one to oppose him. Happily, he at last went a little too far, and arrested the captain of a British vessel, which had come to Darien for timber, for assault and battery, because he pushed Campbell's son out of the way on the deck of his own ship. The captain was brought before Campbell, tried, and sentenced to pay a heavy fine, from which he very naturally appealed to the English Consul in Savannah, who of course ordered his release at once. This and some other equally lawless acts by which Mr. Campbell was in the habit of Reconstr uction. i 3 5 filling his own pockets, drew the attention of the authorities to him, and a very good young judge having just been put on our circuit, he was tried for false imprisonment, and sen- tenced to one year's imprisonment himself, which not only freed us from his iniquitous rule, against which we had had no appeal, but broke the spell which he held over the negroes, who up till the time of his downfall, had believed his powers omnipotent, and at his instigation had defied all other authority ; which state of things had driven the planters to despair, for there seemed to be no remedy for this evil, the negroes throwing all our authority to the wind, and following Campbell wherever he chose to lead them. So desperate were some of the gentlemen, that at one time they entertained the idea of seeing if they could not buy Campbell over, and induce him by heavy bribes to work for us, or rather to use his influence over our negroes to make them work for us. And this proposition was made to me, but I could not 136 A Georgia Plantation. consent to such a plan. In the first place it was utterly opposed to my notions of what was right, and my pride revolted from the idea of making any such bargain with a crea- ture like Campbell ; besides which I felt sure it was bad policy, that if we bought him one day he would sell us the next. So I re- fused to have anything to do with the project, and it was fortunately never carried out, for although during the next three or four years Campbell gave us infinite trouble, he would have given us far more had we put ourselves in his power by offering him a bribe. My agent unfortunately was not much assistance to me, being nervous, timid, and irresolute. Naturally his first thought was to raise the crops by any means that he could, but feeling himself powerless to enforce his orders, owing to the fact that we had no proper authorities to appeal to, should our negroes misbehave themselves, these repre- sentatives of the Government pandering to the negroes in every way, in order to Re constr uction. i 3 7 secure their votes for themselves, he was obliged to resort to any means he could, to get any work out of the negroes at all, often changing his tactics and giving different orders from day to day. In vain I implored him to be firm, and if he gave an order to stand to it ; but the invariable answer was, ' It's of no use, Miss B , I should only get myself into trouble, and have the negro sheriff sent over by Campbell to arrest me.' And everyone went on the same principle. One of the negroes committed a brutal murder, but no notice was taken of it by any of the authorities, until, with much personal trouble, I had him arrested and shut up. Shortly afterwards, greatly to my astonish- ment and indignation, I met him walking about the place, and on inquiring how he had got out, was coolly informed that ' a gentle- man had hired him, from the agent of the Freedmen's Bureau, to work on his planta- tion.' I went at once to the agent, and told him that if the man was not re-arrested at 138 A Georgia Plantation. once and kept confined, I would report him to the higher authorities. A few days afterwards I visited the same negro in his prison (!) which turned out to be a deserted warehouse, with no fastening upon the door, and here I found him playing the fiddle to a party who were dancing. He did meet his fate however, poor fellow, at last, but not for three years, when our own courts were re-established, and he was tried, sen- tenced, and hanged. On another occasion I had to insist upon two of my own negroes being sent off the place, as they had been caught stealing rice. No one would try them, and my agent pro- posed to let them off for the present, as he needed their labour just then. Finding things so unsettled and unsatis- factory, I determined to remain at the South during the summer, fearing that we might after all lose the crops we had with so much difficulty got planted ; and part of the hot weather I passed at St. Simon's, and part in Reconstruction. 139 South Carolina, with the same friends I had been with the winter before. On St. Simon's I found as usual a very different state of things from that on Butler's Island. The people were working like machinery, and gave no trouble at all, which was owing perhaps somewhat to the fact that there were only fifty, instead of three hundred, and at the head of the fifty was Bram, with eight of his family at work under him. He was really a remarkable man, and gave the tone to the whole place. And oh ! the place was so beautiful ; each day it seemed to me to grow more so. All the cattle had come down, and it was a pretty sight to see first the thirty cows, then the sheep, of which there were over a hundred, with their lambs, come in for the night, and then the horses led out to water before going to bed. I used to go round every evening to visit them in their different pens and places, where they were all put up for the night, The stable I visited several times a day, as I 140 A Georgia Plantation. had not much faith in my groom, and once when I was telling him how to rub one of the horses down with a wisp of straw when he came in hot, he said, ' Yis, so my ole missus (my mother) taught me, and stand dere to see it done.' To which I could only say, ' You seem to have forgotten the lesson pretty thoroughly.' In July I went to South Carolina, and found my friends moved from the rice plan- tation to a settlement about fifteen miles distant in the pine woods, which formerly had been occupied entirely by the overseers, when the gentlemen and their families could afford to spend their summer at the North, a thing they no longer could afford, nor wished to do. The place and the way of living were altogether queerer than anything I had ever imagined. The village consisted of about a dozen houses, set down here and there among the tall pine trees, which grew up to the very doors, almost hiding one house from another. The place was very Reconstruction. 141 healthy and the sanitary laws very strict. No two houses were allowed to be built in a line, no one was allowed to turn up the soil, even for a garden, and no one, on pain of death, to cut down a pine tree ; in which way they succeeded in keeping it perfectly free from malaria, and the air one breathed was full of the delicious fragrance of the pines, which in itself is considered a cure for most ills. In front of each house was a high mound of sand, on which at night a blazing pine fire was lit to drive away malaria that might come from the dampness of the night. These fires had the most picturesque effect, throwing their glare upon the red trunks of the pines and lighting the woods for some distance around. The houses were built in the roughest possible manner, many of them being mere log-houses. The one we were in was neither plastered nor lined inside, one thick- ness of boards doing for both inside and outside walls. M and I slept literally 142 A Georgia Plantation. under the shingles, between which and the walls of the house, we could lie and watch the stars ; but I liked feeling the soft air on my face, and to hear it sigh softly through the tall pines outside, as I lay in bed. Occa- sionally bats came in, which was not so pleasant, and there was not one room in the house from which you could not freely dis- course with anyone in any other part of the building. Hampton Point, which I had always regarded as the roughest specimen of a house anyone could live in, was a palace compared with this. We were nevertheless perfectly comfortable, and it was really pretty, with numbers of easy-chairs and comfortable sofas about, and the pretty bright chintz curtains and covers, which looked very well against the fresh whitewashed boards ; and there was an amusing incongruity between a grand piano and fine embroidered sheets and pillow cases, relics of past days of wealth and luxury, and our bare floors and walls. Most of the people were very poor, which Reconstruction. 143 created a sort of commonwealth, as there was a friendly feeling among them all, and desire to share anything good which one got with his neighbours ; so that, constantly through the day, negro servants would be seen going about from one house to another, carrying a neatly covered tray, which contained pre- sents of cakes or fruit, or even fresh bread that some one had been baking. There was a meat club, which everyone belonged to, and to which everyone contributed in turn, either an ox or a sheep a week, which was then divided equally, each house re- ceiving in turn a different part, so that all fared alike, and one week we feasted sump- tuously off the sirloin, and the next, not so well, from the brisket. Mrs. P was most energetic, direct- ing the affairs of the estate with a masterly hand, and at the same time devoting her- self to the comfort and happiness of her children ; reading French or German, or practising music with her daughter in the 144 -A Georgia Plantation. mornings, and being always ready to re- ceive her boys on their return from their hard day's work on the plantation, to which they rode fifteen miles every morning, and back the same distance in the evening, with interest and sympathy in the day's work, and a capital good dinner, which especially ex- cited my admiration, as half the time there really seemed nothing to make it of. But they were better off than most of the people, who were very wretched. Many of them had their fine plantation houses, with everything in them, burnt to the ground during the war, and had no money and very little idea of how to help themselves. In the next house to us was Mrs. M , an elegant, refined, and cultivated old lady, with soft silver grey hair and delicate features that made her look like a picture on Sevres china, and as unable as a Sevres cup to bear any rough handling, but who lived without many of the ordinary necessaries of life, and was really starving to death because she could Reconstruction. 145 not eat the coarse food which was all she could get. Poor people ! they were little used to such hardships, and seemed as helpless as children, but nevertheless were patient and never complained. The woods around were full of deer, and the gentlemen hunted very often — not for sport so much as for food. They generally started about five o'clock in the morningf and were aroused by a horn which was sounded in the centre of the village by the hunts- man. As soon as it was heard, the hounds began to bay from the different houses, at each of which two or three were kept, no one being rich enough to keep the whole pack ; but being always used to hunt to- gether, they did very well, and made alto- gether a very respectable pack. One day they brought home three deer, having started ten ; so for the next few days we had a grand feast of venison. Among other subjects connected with L 146 A Georgia Plantation. our rice plantations was one which interested us all very much at that time — the ques- tion of introducing Chinese labour on our plantations in the place of negro labour, which just then seemed to have become hopelessly unmanageable. There seemed to be a general move in this direction all through the Southern States, and I have no doubt was only prevented by the want of means of the planters, which, as far as I personally am concerned, I am glad was the case. Just then, however, we were all very keen about it, and it sounded very easy, the Pacific Railway having opened a way for them to reach us. One agent actually came for orders, and I, with the others, engaged some seventy to try the experiment with, first on General's Island. I confess I felt a little nervous about the result, but agreed with my neighbours in not being willing to see half my property uncultivated and going to ruin for want of labour. It was not only that negro labour could no longer be de- Reconstr uction. i 47 pended upon, but they seemed to be dying out so fast, that soon there would be but few left to work. This new labour would of course have sealed their doom, and in a few years none would have been left. I wrote about it at the time : — ' Poor people ! it seems impossible to arouse them to any good ambition, their one idea and desire beings — not to work. Their newspaper in Charlestown, edited by a negro, published an article the other day on the prospect, and said it would be the best thing that could happen to the negroes if the Chinese did come, as then they too could get them as servants, and no longer have to work even for themselves. I confess I am utterly unable to understand them, and what God's will is concerning them, unless He intended they should be slaves. This may shock you ; but why in their own country have they no past history, no monuments, no literature, never advance or improve, and here, now that they are free, are going L 2 148 A Georgia Plantation. steadily backwards, morally, intellectually, and physically. I see it on my own place, where, in spite of school and ministers, and every inducement offered them to improve their condition, they are steadily going down- wards, working less and worse every year, until, from having come to them with my heart full of affection and pity for them, I am fast growing weary and disgusted. ' Mrs. P , who when she first married and came to the South was a strong aboli- tionist, an intimate friend of Charles Summers and believer in Mrs. Stowe, says that she firmly believes them incapable of being raised now; and a few days ago I had a long talk with Mrs. W , the cousin of an Englishwoman who married and came out here with all the English horror of, and ideas about, slavery. Her husband dying shortly after, left her in- dependent and very rich, so she determined to devote her life and means to the people who were thus thrown on her for help and protection. She first sent out to England for Rmconstr uction. i 49 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). 150 A Georgia Plantation. 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 amono- 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 Reconstruction. a 53 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 l 5°s A Georgia Plantation. 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 Reconstruction. i 5 3 nor in my memory can I find one single 7nstan^e~^T^omScaT~Hisciission, or attempts^, to rebeTa^mst tHe new state of things, or desireto inter! ere with the iTewrights of the negroesT" KTIght after mgh~t gentlemen met at one~fioTrse- 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 01 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 t£& 154 A Georgia Plantation. 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.' 155 CHAPTER V, 1870. UNDER WAY. 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 156 A Georgia Plantation. 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 ? ' Under Way. 157 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 158 A Georgia Plantation. 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 Under Way. 159 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 160 A Georgia Plantation. 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 — a : 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 Under Wa y. i 6 i 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, M 1 62 A Georgia Plantation. 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 Under Way. 163 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 m 2 164 A Georgia Plantation. 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. Under Way. 165 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 ; 1 66 A Georgia Plantation. 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 Under Way, \6y 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. 1 68 A Georgia Plantation. 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 Under Wa y. i 6g 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 170 A Georgia Plantation. to do was to head the boat riodit 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 Under Way. lyi 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 172 A Georgia Plantation. 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 Under Way. 173 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 174 A Georgia Plantation. 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 ! i75 CHAPTER VI. FRESH DIFFICULTIES — NEGRO TRAITS ABDICATION. 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- 176 A Georgia Plantation. 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. I was very unhappy about my stroke oar, Fresh Difficulties. 177 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 N 178 A Georgia Plantation. 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- Negro Traits. 179 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. V 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 N 2 180 A Georgia Plantation. 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 Negro Traits. 181 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 stones 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 1 82 A Georgia Plantation. 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 r ather, 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 neero I have ever known Negro Traits. 183 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 184 A Georgia Plantation. 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 Negro Traits. 185 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 1 86 A Georgia Plantation. 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 Negro Traits. 187 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 oat 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 1 88 A Georgia Plantation. 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, Negj?o Traits. 189 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 iqo A Georgia Plantation. 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 Negro Traits. 191 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 192 A Georgia Plantation. 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 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 Abdication. 193 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 rouofh 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 : — Butlers 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 194 A Georgia Plantation. 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 be^an 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 Abdication. 195 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 o 2 196 A Georgia Plantation. 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. A BDICA TION. 1 97 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 198 A Georgia Plantation. 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 . 199 CHAPTER VII. 187 1, 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 200 A Georgia Plantation, 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' Absentees. 201 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 202 A Georgia Plantation. 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- A New Master. 203 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 1 we followed, and I was most warmly greeted by all the negroes, who at once accepted my husband as ' massa.' Our own people seemed pretty well settled, and Major D said gave but little trouble, the greatest improvement being in their acceptance of their wages every Saturday night without the endless disputes and arguments in which they used formerly to indulge whenever they were paid. But there were still a great many idle worthless ones hanging about Darien, and when we arrived the wharf was crowded with as dirty and demoralised a looking lot of negroes as I ever saw, and these gave the town a bad name. 204 A Georgia Plantation. Our Englishmen we found settled in the old hospital building which I had assigned to them, and which had been unoccupied since the school had been broken up, with the exception of one room which the people still used as their church. Besides this there were three others, about twenty feet square, nicely ceiled and plastered, into which I had directed the Englishmen should be put, and in one of these we found them all, eight men sleeping, eating, and living in the same room, from preference. They had not made the least effort to make themselves decently comfortable, and were lying upon the floor like dogs, although Major D had advised them to put up some bedsteads, offering the carpenter of the party lumber for the purpose, and an old negro woman to make them some straw mattresses, giving them a week to get things straight before they began their work. Two of them fell ill soon after, and then we insisted upon their dividing, half the number using one sleeping room and the rest the White Labourers. 205 other, keeping the third for a general living room, kitchen, &c. At first they seemed in good spirits and well satisfied, but nothing can describe their helplessness and want of adaptability to the new and different circum- stances in which they found themselves. They were like so many troublesome chil- dren, and bothered me extremely by coming to the house the whole time to ask for some- thing or other, until at last, one Saturday evening when they came to know if I would let them have a little coffee for Sunday, as they had forgotten to buy any, the shop being only half a mile distant across the river, I flatly refused, and said they must learn to take care of themselves. One was afterwards very ill, and I really thought he would die from want of heart, as from the first moment he was taken ill he made up his mind he should not recover, and I had to nurse him like a baby, giving him his medicine and food with my own hands, and finally when he was really well, only weak, 206 A Georgia Plantation. we had to insist upon his getting up and trying to move about a little, or I think he would have spent the rest of his life in bed. To make a long story short, they soon began to get troublesome and discontented, were constantly drunk, and shirked their work so abominably, that our negro foreman Sey begged that they might not be allowed to work in the same fields with his negroes, to whom they set so bad an example, by leaving before their day's work was finished, that they demoralised his gang completely, and made them grumble at being obliged to go on with their work after the ' white men ' had left. So when the end of their second year came we were most thankful to pay their way back to England and get rid of them. All left except one, who after starting rather badly settled down and became a useful hard-working man, and is still with us as head ploughman, in which capacity he works for about eight months of the year, spending the other three or four on our White Labourers. 207 deserted cotton place, as the unhealthiness of the rice plantation prevents his remaining there durino- the summer months. During this time he plants a good vegetable garden for himself, spends most of his time fishing, and is taken care of by an old negro woman, who he assured my husband worked harder and was worth more than any white woman he had ever seen. But I am afraid his experience had been unfortunate, for he was the only married man in the party we brought out, and his being the only one who did not wish to return made us suspect domestic troubles might have had something to do with his willingness to stay. We had for several years employed a gang of Irish labourers to do the banking and ditching on the Island, and although we made no agreement with them about return- ing in the spring when we dismissed them, they came down each succeeding autumn, taking the risk of either being engaged again by us or by some of our neighbours, and 208 A Georgia Plantation. hitherto we had always been ready to do so. But the winter we first had our Englishmen we decided not to have the additional heavy expense of the Irishmen, and so told them we did not want them. The result was that they were very indignant with the English- men, whom they regarded as usurpers and interlopers, and whose heads they threatened to break in consequence. Major D , half in fun, said to them, ' Why, you shouldn't hate them ; you all come from the same country.' To which Pat indig- nantly replied, ' The same country, is it ? Ah, thin, jist you put them in the ditch along wid us, and ye'll soon see if it's the same country we come from.' A test they were quite safe in proposing, for the Englishmen certainly could not hold a spade to them, and after trying the latter in the ditch we were glad enough to engage our Irishmen again, which quite satisfied them, so that after that they got on very well with their ' fellow country- men,' only occasionally indulging in a little White Labourers. 209 Irish wit at their expense. They certainly were a very different lot of men, and while the Englishmen were endless in their com- plaints, wants, and need of assistance, the Irishmen turned into a big barn at the up- per end of the plantation, got an old negro woman to cook for them, worked well and faithfully, were perfectly satisfied, and with the exception of occasionally meeting them going home from their work of an evening when I was walking, I never should have known they were on the place. I must record one act to their honour, for which I shall ever feel grateful. Two years after the one of which I am now writing I was very ill on the plantation, and the white woman I had taken from the North as cook was lying dangerously ill at the same time, so that the management and direction of every- thing fell upon my nurse, an excellent Scotch- woman, who found some difficulty in pro- viding for all the various wants of such a sick household. The Irishmen hearing her say P 210 A Georgia Plantation. one day that she did not know where she should get anything that I could eat, brought her down some game they had shot for themselves, and, being told that I liked it, every Monday morning regularly, for the rest of the winter, sent me in either hares, snipe, or ducks by one of the servants, without even waiting to be thanked, the game they shot being what they themselves depended upon for helping out their scanty larder. I felt a little anxious at first about the effect such a new life and strange surround- ings might have upon my husband, for although he had seen it before, it was a very different matter merely looking at it from a visitor's point of view, and returning to live there as owner, when all the differences between it and his life and home in England would be so apparent. However, I soon found that I need not be uneasy upon that score, as he at once became deeply interested in it, and set about learning all the details of the work and peculiarities of both place and Mass a. 2 1 1 people, which he mastered in a wonderfully short time, showing a quick appreciation of the faults and mistakes in the previous system of planting which he had followed since the war, and which he very soon tried on an entirely different plan. This was so success- ful that in a year the yield from the place was doubled and the whole plantation bore a different aspect, much to the astonishment of our neighbours, who could not understand how an Englishman, and English parson at that, who had never seen a rice field before in his life, should suddenly become such a good planter. The negroes, after trying what sort of stuff he was made of, became very devoted to him, and one of the old men, after informing my sister some little time afterwards how much they liked him and how much good he had done them all, wound up with 'Miss Fanny (me) made a good bargain dat time.' My husband wrote a number of letters to England from the plantation during the time p 2 212 A Georgia Plantation. we remained there, which were published in a little village magazine for the amusement of the parishioners who knew him, and which I think I cannot do better than add to this account of mine, as they will show how every- thing at the South struck the fresh and unbiassed mind of a foreigner who had no traditions, no old associations, and no preju- dices, unless indeed unfavourable ones, to in- fluence him. After having spent the summer at the North, we again returned to the plantation in November, taking with us this time an addi- tion to the family in the shape of a little three- months-old baby, who was received most warmly by the negroes, and christened at once ' Little Missus,' many of them telling me, with grins of delight, how they remem- bered me 'just so big.' I very soon found that the arrival of ' young missus ' had advanced me to the questionable position of ' old missus,' to which however I soon became reconciled when I found how tenderly ' Little ' Little Missus! 213 Missus ' was treated by all her devoted sub- jects. Oddly enough, the black faces never seemed to frighten her, and from the first she willingly went to the sable arms stretched out to take her. It was a pretty sight to see the black nurse, with her shining ebony face, surmounted by her bright- coloured turban, holding the little delicate white figure up among - the branches of the orange trees to let her catch the golden fruit in her tiny hands ; and the house was kept supplied almost the whole winter with eggs and chickens, brought as presents to ' Little Missus.' Another summer at the North and back again to the South, from whence nothing but good reports had reached us of both harvest and people. Indeed our troubles of all sorts seemed to be at an end, at least such as arose from 'reconstruction.' It came in another shape, however, and in January 1876 I was taken very ill, and for five days lay at the point of death, during which time the anxiety 214 A Georgia Plantation. and affection shown by my negroes was most profound, all work stopped, and the house was besieged day and night by anxious inquirers. My negro nurse lay on the floor outside my door all night, and the morning I was pro- nounced out of danger she rushed out, and throwing up her arms, exclaimed, ' My missus'll get well ; my missus'll get well ! I don't care what happens to me now.' And when at last I was able to get about once more, the expressions of thankfulness that greeted me on all sides were most touching. One woman, meeting me on the bank, flung herself full length on the ground, and catching me round the knees, exclaimed, ' Oh, tank de Lord, he spared my missus.' A man to whom something was owing: for some chickens he had furnished to the house during my ill- ness refused to take any money for them, saying when I wished to pay him, ' No, dey tell me de chickens was for my missus, and I'se so glad she's got well I don't want no money for clem.' My dear people ! Northern Ideas. 215 Our poor old housekeeper, less fortunate than myself, did not recover, but died just as I was getting better, and in looking over her letters after her death, in order to find out where her friends lived, so as to let them know of her death, I found to my astonish- ment that she had been in terror of the negroes from the first, and had a perfect horror of them. Being so fond of them my- self, and feeling such entire confidence in them as not even to lock the doors of the house at night, it never occurred to me that perhaps a New England woman, who had never seen more than half-a-dozen negroes together in her life, might be frightened at finding herself surrounded by two or three hundred, and it was only after her death that I found from the letters written to her by different friends at the North, in answer to hers, what her state of mind had been. There were such expressions as these : ' I don't wonder you are frightened and think you hear stealthy steps going about the house at 216 A Georgia Plantation. night' ' How horrible to be on the Island with all those dreadful blacks.' ' The idea of there being only you three white people on the Island with two hundred blacks!' &c„ She had apparently forgotten, in making her statement, the eight Irish and six English labourers who were living on the Island, but still the negroes certainly did greatly out- number the whites, and could easily have murdered us all had they been so inclined. But there was not the least danger then, whatever there might have been the first year or two after the war, and even at that time I never felt afraid, for had there been a general negro insurrection, although my own negroes would of course have joined it, there were at least a dozen, I am sure, who would have warned me to leave the place in time. My sister paid me a visit this winter — her first to the South since the war, except in "(867, when she spent a month with us, but on St. Simon's Island, where she saw little or nothing of the negroes — and she was greatly Church Work. 217 struck with their whole condition and demeanour, in which she said she could not perceive that freedom had made any differ- ence. In answer to this I could only say that if she had been at the South the first three years after the war, she would have seen a great change in their deportment, but that since that they had gradually been coming back to their senses and ' their manners.' This winter we had the pleasure of seeing a very nice church started in Darien for the negroes. For three years my husband had been holding services for them regularly on the Island in a large unoccupied room which we had fitted as a chapel ; but we found this hardly large enough to accommodate out- siders, and as many wished to attend who were not our own people, we thought Darien the best place for the church. While it was being built, service was held in a large barn or warehouse, which was kindly lent for the purpose by a coloured man of consider- 2i 8 A Georgia Plantation. able property and good standing in the com- munity, who although a staunch supporter of the Presbyterian Church himself, was liberal-minded enough to lend a helping hand to his brethren of a different persuasion. The following extract from the report of our Bishop came to me somewhat later : — April 9. — Held evening service, assisted by the Rev. J. W. Leigh, of England, and the Rev. Dr. Clute. Confirmed twenty-one coloured persons, and addressed the candi- dates in St. Philip's Mission Chapel, Butler's Island. I desire publicly to express my thanks to the Rev. Mr. Leigh, for the faith- ful and efficient service he has rendered the Church in Georgia during his stay in America. He has trained the coloured people on Butler's Island in the doctrines, and has brought to bear upon them the elevating influence, of the Church, with a thoroughness and kindness which must, under God, be fraught with good to those poor people who for so many years Church Work. 219 have been the victims of so-called religious ex- citements and fancied religious experiences. April 1 1. — Held morning service, assisted by the Rev. Dr. Clute. Preached, and con- firmed six in St. Andrew's, Darien. In the afternoon I held service for coloured people in Darien, assisted by the Rev. Dr. Clute, who presented seven coloured candidates for confirmation, and the Rev. Mr. Leigh, who presented one. After confirmation I ad- dressed the candidates. In the evening I held service in the Methodist Church, assisted by the same brethren. Preached, and confirmed three coloured persons in Darien. The Church is taking a strong hold upon the coloured people in Darien, as also upon Butler's Island. The Rev. Dr. Clute had twenty-eight candidates whom he expected to present, but they were prevented from coming by a storm. Also in the appendix is added the follow- ing paragraph : — 220 A Georgia Plantation. The Rev. the Hon. J. W. Leigh, M.A., reports from Butler's Island that he has had fourteen baptisms, twenty-two candidates con- firmed, twenty-nine communicants, and three marriages. It is also announced that the frame of the Chapel (St. Athanasius) for the coloured mission in Darien has been erected, and will be enclosed as soon as money can be obtained for the expense. The confirmed, as well as many candidates who were absent from the rite because of a rain-storm and change of the day of appointment, have had no opportunity to communicate. This winter was destined to be the last I was to spend at the South, as my husband had made up his mind finally to return to his own country to live. Before leaving I had broken up my little plantation establishment, selling the principal part of the furniture, carpets, and so forth, and I consider it a sig- nificant proof of the well-to-do condition of the negroes, that the best and most expensive GOOD-BYE. 221 things were bought and paid for on the spot by negroes. The drawing-room carpet, a handsome Brussels one, was bought by a rich coloured man in Darien, the owner of a large timber mill there, a man universally respected by everyone, and, if I am not mistaken, who has for years held an official position of some importance in Darien. He was not a slave before the war, but owned slaves him- self. The following November my husband returned to the plantation for a couple of months alone, in order to settle up everything finally, before we sailed in January for Eng- land. This was the winter of the Presidential election, when our part of the country was, like every other section, violently agitated and excited by politics. But with us, while of course everyone did the best he could for his party, there was not the least ill-feeling between the blacks and the whites, and the election passed off without any trouble of any sort, which is a noteworthy fact in itself, 222 A Georgia Plantation. as our county is one of the two in Georgia where the negroes outnumber the whites ten to one, and in more than one instance a negro was elected to office by the white democratic votes. 223 CHAPTER VIII. 1877, 1878, 1879, OVER THE WATER. And now I have come to these last three years of my history, which are so much the same, and marked by so few incidents, that a few pages will suffice for them. In the autumn of 1877, not a year after our return_Lo, England, our old friend and agent Major D died, and in many ways his loss was an irreparable one to us, but nothing showed the changed and improved condition of the negroes more than the fact that his death did not in the least unsettle them, and that the work went steadily on just the same. A few years before, a sort of 224 A Georgia Plantation. panic would have seized them, and the idea taken possession of them that a new man would not pay them, or would work them too hard, or make new rules, &c. &c, and it would have been months before we eot them quieted and settled down again. But now, although Major D was much liked and respected by them, as indeed he was by the whole community, Northern man though he was, and Northern soldier though he had been, they knew that whoever was put in his place would carry out the old rules, and pay them their wages as regularly as before. In September of the year 1878 a terrible storm visited the Southern coast. The hur- ricane swept over the Island just in the middle of the harvest, and quite half the crop was entirely destroyed, and the rest injured. What was saved was only rescued by the most energetic and laborious efforts on the part of the negroes, who did their utmost. Day after day they did almost double their usual task, several times working right Over the Water. 225 through the night, and twice all Sunday ; cheerfully and willingly, not as men who were working for wages, but as men whose heart was in their work, and who felt their interests to be the same as their employer's. Later on in the same, year my husband returned to the United States and revisited the property, but finding everything working well and satisfactorily, only remained about six weeks. Our present manager is the son of a former neighbour of ours, whom the negroes have known from childhood, ancl to whose control they willingly submit. 1/1 n engaging a person to manage such a property two things are necessary : first, that he should be a Southern man, because no one not brought up with the negroes can understand their peculiarities, and a Northern man, with every desire to be just and kind, invariably fails from not understanding their character. Even Major D felt this, although he had been so long among them, and latterly never O 226 A Georgia Plantation. would take charge of any but the financial part of the business. -And secondly, the person put over them must be a gentleman born and bred, for they have the most comical contempt for anyone they do not consider ' quite the thing,' and they perceive instinctively the difference. This I suppose is a remnant of slave times, when there were the masters, the slaves, and the poor white class, regarded with utter contempt by the negroes, who called them ' poor white trash.' To a gentleman's rule they will submit, but to no other, and it is useless to put a person holding an inferior social position over them. The only plantations near us which are well and successfully worked, are managed either by their old masters, or gentlemen irom the neighbourhood. We all pay wages either weekly or monthly, finding that the best plan now. It is far the easiest for our- selves, as well as satisfactory to the negroes, who can't think they are cheated when every- thing is paid in full every Saturday night, Over the Water. 227 nor can they forget in that short time what days they have been absent or missed work. I do not believe they put by one penny out of their good wages, but they like to have a little money always in hand to spend, and much prefer this system of payments to a share in the crop or to being paid in a lump at the end of the year. I have tried all three plans, and do not hesitate to say this is the best.Ny/And so, with good management, good wages paid regularly, and no outside inter- ference, there need be no trouble whatever with Southern labour. But of the three I con- sider outside interference by far the worst evil Southern planters have to contend against. vjlhe negroes are so like children, so un- reasoning and easily influenced, that they are led away by any promise that sounds fair, or inducement which is offered. And although I confidently assert that nowhere in the world are agricultural labourers in a better condi- tion, or better paid, than our negroes, and that though for twelve years they have been Q 2 228 A Georgia Plantation. well paid, and never have known us to break our promises to them, yet I am perfectly sure that if anyone should visit Butler's Island to- morrow, absolute stranger though he might be, and promise the negroes houses, or land, or riches in Kansas or in Timbuctoo, they would leave us without a moment's hesitation, or doubt in their new friend's trustworthiness, just as my child might be tempted away from me by any stranger who promised her a new toy. Children they are in their nature and character, and children they will remain until the end of the chapter. Oh, bruders, let us leave Dis buckra land for Hayti, Dah we be receive Grand as Lafayetty. Make a mighty show When we land from steamship, You'll be like Monro, Me like Lewis Philip. O dat equal sod, Who not want to go-y, Dah we feel no rod, Dah we hab no foe-y, Over the Water. 229 Dah we lib so fine, Dah hab coach and horsey, Ebbry day we dine, We hab tree, four coursey. No more our son cry sweep, No more he play de lackey, No more our daughters weep, 5 Kase dey call dem blacky. No more dey servants be, No more dey scrub and cook-y, But ebbry day we'll see Dem read de novel book-y. Dah we sure to make Our daughter de fine lady, Dat dey husbands take 'Bove de common grady ; And perhaps our son He rise in glory splendour, Be like Washington, His country's brave defender.' ' Put Kansas for Hayti, and 1879 for 1840, and haven't we exactly the same story ? 1 This delightful song was composed somewhere about 1840, at the time of one of the Haytian revolutions, when the negroes, imagining that they would have no more work to do, but all be ladies and gentlemen, took the most absurd airs, and went about calling themselves by all the different dis- tinguished names they had ever heard. 230 A Georgia Plantation. ADDENDA. x * Having written the foregoing pages some years ago, and having just returned from another visit to the South, after an absence of six years, I cannot refrain from adding a few words with regard to the condition of the negroes now and formerly, and their own manner of speaking of their condition as slaves. VThe question whether slavery is or is not a moral wrong I do not wish or intend to discuss ; but in urging the injustice of requiring labour from people to whom no wages were paid, which was formerly one of the charges brought against the masters, it seems strange that wages were always thought of as mere money payments, and the Old Times. 231 fact that the negroes were fed, clothed, and housed at their masters' expense was never taken into account as wages, although often taking more money out of the owner's pocket than if the ordinary labourers' wages had been paid in hard money. Besides these items, a doctor's services were furnished, one being paid a certain yearly salary for visiting the plantation, three times a week I think it was, and of course all medicines were given to them free of charge. They were, besides, allowed to raise poultry to sell, and chickens, eggs, and the pretty baskets they used to make often brought the industrious ones in a nice little income of their own. At Christ- mas all the head men received a present of money, some being as high as ten pounds, and every deserving negro was similarly rewarded. These facts I learned accidentally in look- ing over the old plantation books which fell into my hands about a year ago. I also found from old letters how particular the owners 232 A Georgia Plantation. always were to have the best goods fur- nished for the people's clothing. The winter material was a heavy woollen cloth called Welsh plains, which was imported from England, and many of the letters contained apologies and explanations from the Liver- pool firm who furnished the goods about the quality, which had evidently been found fault with. The character of the goods was also confirmed by the testimony of the negroes themselves, my housemaid saying one day apropos of the heavy blankets on my bed, ' Ah, in de old time we hab blankets like dese gib to us, but now we can only buy such poor ones dey no good at all ; ' and another, not one of our people, meeting us in a shop in Darien, turned from the rather flimsy cloth he was bargaining for, and taking hold of the dark blue tweed of my husband's coat, said, ' Sar, ware you git dis stuff ? We used to git dis kind before the war, but now we neber sees it.' Two extracts from letters written by Old Times. 233 former agents to my great-uncle about the negroes bear such strong testimony to the way in which the slaves were thought of, spoken of, and treated ' in de old time,' that I cannot resist copying them, especially as it was with a feeling of real pleasure that I read them myself. One was written in 1827 and the other in 1828. In the first the overseer writes : ' I killed twenty-eight head of beef for the people's Christmas dinner. I can do more with them in this way than if all the hides of the cattle were made into lashes ! ' In the other he says, ' You justly observe that if punishment is in one hand, reward should be in the other. There is but one way of managing negroes, particu- larly with so large a gang as I have to do with, and many of them in point of intellect far superior to the mass of common whites about us. A faithful distribution of rewards and punishments, and different modes of punishment ; not always resorting to the lash, but confinement at home, cutting short some 234 A Georgia Plantation. privilege, and never inflicting punishment without regular trial. We save many tons of rice by giving one to each driver ; it makes them active and watchful.' So much for their treatment as slaves, and surely food, clothing, medicine and medi- cal attendance, to say nothing of the twenty- eight head of beef killed for their Christmas dinner, might justly be regarded as wages or an equivalent for their labour. It is quite true they were not free to leave the place or choose their masters, but, until a very few years ago, were the majority of English la- bourers able to change their places or better their condition ? Far less well off in point of food, clothing, and houses, the low wages and large families of the English labourer tied him to the soil as effectually as ever slavery did the negroes • and I doubt our slaves being will- ing to change places with the free English labourer of those days, had the change been offered him. Now with regard to their own views o Old Times. . 235 regarding their condition. ^./They were always represented, and supposed to be by the Abolitionists, as pining for freedom, thirsting for education, and breaking their hearts over ill-treatment, separation from their children, and so on. Now in answer to this, which still stands as a reproach against those who ever owned slaves, I give one or two stories from the lips of the negroes themselves, and also a few facts of the present state of things twenty years after the emancipation of the slaves. One of our former drivers was robbed by one of the other nesroes of two hundred dollars he had laid by, and in speaking of it he said with a sigh, ' Ah, missus, in de ole time de people work all day and sleep all night, and hab no time for 'teal ; ' evidently thinking that state better than the present condition of freedom to be idle, and its natural consequence, dishonesty. Another poor old man, who had had his house burnt down and lost all his little savings, chickens, 236 A Georgia Plantation. and pigs, happened to mention that his wife had died shortly before. I had not heard it, and told him so, expressing my sorrow at the same time. ' You didn't know it, missus ! ' said the old man, in a tone of indignant sur- prise. ' Ah, tings different now from de ole times; den if any of de people die, de ober- seer hab to write to Massa John or Massa Peirce, and tell 'em so-and-so's dead, but now de people die and dey buried, and nobody know noting about it.' Another amused me very much by regretting that he was no longer allowed to correct the young people indiscriminately, and said that formerly if you ' fl°&S e d de children de parents much obliged to you, but now de young people 'lowed to grow up wid no principle.' One old man, who had been sold many years ago, had found his way back after all this time to the old home, and was full of affec- tionate gratitude at being allowed once more to see us. When I said, ' I hope you found some of your own people left, Bristol,' he said, New Times. 237 ' I not come to see dem, missus, I come to see my ole massa's family, and it rejoiced my heart to see you and dear little missus.' V'These it may be said are the old people, but I found the young ones had just the same feeling of belonging to the same place and family as their fathers, constantly saying, when I met them off the place and did not recognise them, ' We your people, missus ; ' and these, many of them, were not even born in slavery, and were not working for us now. So much for their own feeling as regards their past condition of servitude. I don't for one moment pretend that they would willingly return to slavery, any more than we would have them slaves again, but I merely give these instances to show that they did not suffer under the system or regard it with the horror they were supposed to do by all the advocates of abolition. Now for their present moral, physical, and intellectual condition, their own people will tell you of each other, that they will not 238 A Georgia Plantation. only steal money when they get the chance, but their neighbours' poultry, and in feet nearly all they can lay their hands on.\/Vet before the war absolute confidence was placed in their trustworthiness, and that we were justified in so doing will be seen by some stories I have told in the foregoing" pages, of. their faithful guardianship of our property, and even money, during the trying war times. Formerly, the race was a most prolific one, and ten or fifteen children a common number to a family ; now two or three seem to be the usual allowance, and many of the young women at whose weddings I had assisted ten years or so ago, in answer to my question, ' Have you any children ? ' would answer, ' I had ' one, two, or three, as the case might be, ' but dey all dead.' Always inclined to be immoral, they have now thrown all semblance of chastity to the winds, and when I said to my old nurse how shocked and grieved I was to find how New Times. 239 ill-conducted the young girls were, so much worse than they used to be, she said, ' Missus, dere not one decent gal left in de place.' Their thirst for knowledge,, which made young and old go to school as soon as the war was over, seems to have been quenched entirely, for, with one or two laudable excep- tions, no one sends even their children to school now, and soon we shall have to intro- duce compulsory education. The only two negroes on the place who can write and add up accounts are the one we had educated at the North, and the one we had in England for three years. And yet it is twenty years since they were freed, and have been their own masters. What has become of their lono'ino' for better things, and what is to become of them, poor people, ignorant and degraded as they are, and, so far as one can see, becoming more and more so ? As far as the masters are concerned, they are far better off — re- lieved from the terrible load of responsi- 240 A Georgia Plantation. bility which slavery entailed, and I have always been thankful that before the pro- perty came into my hands, the slaves were freed. But for the negroes, I cannot help thinking things are worse than when they were disciplined and controlled by a superior race, notwithstanding the drawbacks to the system, and, in some cases, grave abuses attending it. If slavery made a Legree, it also made an Uncle Tom. A P P E N D I X. No. i. Our Island Home. Butler's Island, Georgia. Dear E , I feel anxious to tell you, as you no doubt also will be ready to learn, something concerning our island home in the South. Here we are then, safely settled down on a rice plantation in Georgia, about 4,000 miles away from our friends on your side of the water, and yet hearing every day the same language spoken, although it must be confessed in a very peculiar and hardly in- telligible manner, by our sable brethren (I believe ' brethren ' is the proper term in these free and enlightened days). R 242 Appendix. I am monarch of all I survey, which is an island of about t,6oo acres, surrounded by a muddy-looking river, called by the romantic- soundinof Indian name of the Altamaha. How far prettier these Indian names are than our Anoflo-Saxon. Take for instance, Chicago, Indiana, Ogeechee, Cincinnati, Omaha, &c. ; and what a pity they did not in every case retain the old names, and call New York Manhattan, which it really is. Our castle is a neat but not gaudy little frame house, with a piazza in front of it, from which you descend by six steps into a garden, or rather small grove of orange, trees, pal- mettoes, oleanders, and roses. The first- named are laden with golden fruit, of a quality unsurpassed anywhere in the world, I am bold to say, for size and sweet- ness. We are hard at work now packing them up for market, and shall have over 100 barrels for sale. The interior of the man- sion is in accordance with its modest exte- rior ; a small dining-room, a small drawing- Appendix. 243 room, a very small office or study, a small hall, a pantry, and two comfortable bed- rooms on the ground-floor, and two more comfortable bedrooms over the dining and drawing-rooms. At the rear of the house about twelve yards, is what is called the colony, where are situated the kitchen, ser- vants' sitting-room and bedrooms, the laundry and dairy, and in a corner of the yard is a turkey-house, full of prime Christmas fowl. Behind the colony is Settlement No. 1, where the coloured people (I believe this also is the correct term) reside. It consists of an avenue of orange trees, on each side of which are rows of wooden houses, and at the end of which, facing the avenue, is what was the old hospital, but which is now half of it the church and the other half the resi- dence of our English labourers, eight in number. Immediately in front of our garden is the Altamaha river, with the land- ing-place for the boats, and from which all the water-supply is drawn. On the left of us 244 Appendix. is the overseer's house, a larger and more imposing edifice, although not so comfortable as ours. On the rieht are the barns and the new threshing mill and engine, which are very nearly finished, and present a magnificent appearance from the river. The old mill, with all the valuable machinery, was burnt down a year ago. The rest of the Island con- sists of rice -fields, of which about 1,000 acres are under cultivation or cultivable, some marsh land covered with thick bamboo and reeds, in. which the wild duck do congregate, and some scrubby brushwood ; also Settle- ments Nos. 2 and 3, an old, rickety, but very large barn, a ruined mill, a ruined sugar-house. Of the rice plantation and method of culti- vating it, I shall hope to write at some future time when I know more about it. I shall also reserve my account of the liberated negro until I know more of him. I fear, however, that further acquaintance with that much-abused, and at the same time much over- rated specimen of humanity, will not Appendix, 245 tend to raise him much in my estimation. At present I have plenty to tell you about. And first I must say something about our Church Services. Last Sunday we met, at 1 1 a.m., in the room which has for some years been used as the Chapel for the negroes, but which is small and not orna- mented. I have in my eye a very good- sized room at the overseer's house, which I think I can make into quite a nice little Chapel. However, for the present we have to do with the little chamber at the old hos- pital, and here, on Sunday, I read through the service, and spoke to them on the sub- ject of the Gospel for the day, viz., the miraculous feeding of the multitude with the loaves and fishes. I try and speak to them in as simple language as I can, as I fear they (the negroes) are very ignorant, although they have a minister of their own, and ser- vices twice a week. Concerning their reli- gion and services I shall tell you more when I write to you on the subject of the negro. 246 Appendix. I found them very attentive, and we sang the Old Hundredth and another hymn out of the American Hymnal, which had been taught them. Sunday afternoon, at three p.m., I had school for the children, but which was also at- tended by quite old people. We commenced by singing, then I said a few prayers, next I heard the children the Catechism and ex- plained it to them, and after closing with hymns and prayers, we commenced practising chants and hymns. They are very quick at learning tunes, and I think in time we shall get a fair choir. Fancy a choir of small frizzle-headed little niggers in white sur- plices ! We shall have to have a regular little church built first before we get to that. They have their own service in the evening. I intend, as soon as we are quite settled down, to start a night school for them twice a week. Now I must tell you about a wedding which I performed last Saturday. The bridegroom was a grandfather, the bride a grandmother, both very respectable people. Appendix. 247 The hour appointed was nine in the evening. (It is quite the custom to be married in the evening all through the United States.) The little Chapel was crowded by a well-behaved congregation of blackies. The bride, although having reached years of discretion and having gone through the ceremony before, was as bashful and coy as blushing seventeen. She was literally supported by her bridesmaid (a lady of about the same age), who clutched her hard by the arm as if she was afraid she might escape. The bride's dress was simple and neat — a white apron over a stuff gown, and a white turban on, and white cotton gloves on her hands, one of which held a white hand- kerchief, folded in the form of a fan or dinner napkin in front of her face, to hide, I suppose, her blushes, if indeed she could have shown them on her jet-black face. The groom was dressed in a sober suit of black with a blue kerchief. When I put the all-important question, ' Chatham, wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife ? ' &c, the answer 248 Appendix. was promptly given, ' I will, massa, I will : ' and when I asked ' Who giveth this woman to be married to this man ? ' the father of the Island, old Angus, spoke out boldly, ' I do, massa, with all my heart' The behaviour of all, however, was reverent throughout, more so than on another occasion, three or four years ago, when the old black preacher came over from another island to marry a couple, and was requested by their mistress to use the Prayer Book Service, which (although he was able to read) he did not understand. Consequently, he would read through all the Rubrics, and was going on through the Service for Visitation of the Sick, when he was judiciously stopped. J. W. L. Appendix. 249 No. 2. Our Harvest Home. Dear E , — The 28th of November, 1873, will be likely to be long remembered by the inhabitants of Butler's Island, Georgia. Thursday, the 27th, was the day appointed by the President as the annual Thanksgiving Day, to be observed throughout the States ; and here let me observe by the way, that it would be well if our civil and ecclesiastical authorities in England would follow the example of America in this, and have one special day set apart for thanksgiving to the Almighty for the ingathering of the fruits of the earth. In the American Prayer Book there is moreover a Form of Prayer and Thanksgiving, to be used yearly on this occasion. Well, as I have said, the 27th was the day appointed, and we had made every preparation for the due observance of S 250 Appendix. that day, but the elements were nnpropitious. The rain fell in torrents, and when it does rain here, which is not often, it comes down in real earnest, and so we were forced to put off our festival to the 28th, and were well rewarded by doing so, as the sun once more shone brightly, and the wind, which had been so boisterous, sobered down, and the air was fresh and balmy. At twelve o'clock we assembled in the small room which does duty for our church, which was decorated with illuminated texts and branches of palmetto, red cedar, and other evergreens, while from the centre of the room was suspended a big orange branch, laden with the ripe fruit. The room was as full as it could hold of negroes, amongst whom here and there were a few white faces, the English- men we had brought with us, and the old doctor from the neighbouring town, being among the latter. The hymns selected were the Old Hundredth, and the Harvest Hymn, No. 224, from Hymns Ancient and Modern, Appendix. 251 which were heartily sung by our youthful black choir, all the people joining in the last two lines of the hymn— For his mercies still endure, Ever faithful, ever sure. At the close of the service I delivered a short address on the object of our gathering, and the necessity of preparing ourselves for the great harvest at the end of the world, Deut, viii. 10, n. Service ended, we marched in procession to the new barn, a youthful black leading the van with a banner (which I had brought with me from England), on which were inscribed the words, ' The Lord of the Harvest.' Behind the banner-bearer I walked, and then the three black captains or foremen of the gangs. After which, the men two and two ; and then the women, dressed in Sunday best, and with picturesque turbans on their heads. The barn which was to be the banquet- ing hall for the occasion is a large building which has only just been completed, and s 2 252 Appendix. which consists of two storeys, each 60 feet long by 25 broad. The feast was to take place in the upper storey, and here great preparations had been made in the way of decorations. The walls were draped round with old curtains, on which were texts and mottoes. On one side, in large letters formed of orange leaves, was ' Praise ye the Lord of the Harvest,' on the other side, ' Welcome to our Home,' and ' The Lord bless our Home.' Along the base of the wall was the fringe formed of the graceful fan-like palmetto, whilst stars formed of the same plant were fixed on each side of the texts. The cedar, the cypress, the orange, the hickory, and other evergreens were also brought into requisition, whilst suspended from the topmost beams of the hall were the Union Jack of Old England, and the Stars and Stripes of America, below which hung large bunches of oranges and ears of rice, representing the produce of the Island. About one hundred coloured people sat down to a substantial Appendix. 253 repast, consisting of stewed oysters, sweet potatoes, rice, rounds of beef, ham, bacon, hominy, oranges, and coffee, and it is need- less to say that they did ample justice to the good things that were set before them. There were no toasts after dinner, as the fashion of toast-giving has not yet reached this part of the world, and probably would not have been understood by the sable guests. Din- ner ended, we had, by way of sports, some excellent boat and canoe races along the broad river Altamaha, which flows at the foot of the barn. The way these negroes manage their small vessels is remarkable. The canoes are cut out of a single los: of cypress, and each nigger 'paddles his own canoe ' with great dexterity, using his paddle first on one side then on the other. The spectators were greatly excited, and ' Quash wins ' was heard on all sides, as the young, good-looking, dark-skinned carpenter shot past, showing his pearly teeth under his black moustache. The regatta ended, it was nearly 254 Appendix. dark, but the young people requested that they might shout for the new barn. This was not done, as you might be led to suppose, by loud hurrahs — much more systematic than that. The girls and boys assembled in the upper storey where we had feasted, and, hav- ing formed in a circle, commenced dancing or rather shuffling round (as they do not lift the heel), each one following close behind the other, and all singing as they danced a sort of dirge or hymn. As they continued they