THE NEGRO HUNTER.
Alighting from the carriage, I entered, with my host, the cabin of the
negro-hunter. So far as external appearance went, the shanty was a
slight improvement on the "Mills House," described in a previous
chapter; but internally, it was hard to say whether it resembled more a
pig-sty or a dog-kennel. The floor was of the bare earth, covered in
patches with loose plank of various descriptions, and littered over with
billets of "lightwood," unwashed cooking utensils, two or three cheap
stools, a pine settee--made from the rough log and hewn smooth on the
upper side--a full-grown bloodhound, two younger canines, and nine
half-clad juveniles of the flax-head species. Over against the
fire-place three low beds afforded sleeping accommodation to nearly a
dozen human beings (of assorted sizes, and dove-tailed together with
heads and feet alternating), and in the opposite corner a lower couch,
whose finer furnishings told plainly it was the peculiar property of the
"wee ones" of the family--a mother's tenderness for her youngest thus
cropping out even in the midst of filth and degradation--furnished
quarters for an unwashed, uncombed, unclothed, saffron-hued little
fellow about fifteen months old, and--the dog "Lady." She was of a dark
hazel color--a cross between a pointer and a bloodhound--and one of the
most beautiful creatures I ever saw. Her neck and breast were bound
about with a coarse cotton cloth, saturated with blood, and emitting a
strong odor of bad whiskey; and her whole appearance showed the
desperate nature of the encounter with the overseer.
The nine young democrats who were lolling about the room in various
attitudes, rose as we entered, and with a familiar but rather
deferential "How-dy'ge," to the Colonel, huddled around and stared at me
with open mouths and distended eyes, as if I were some strange being,
dropped from another sphere. The two eldest were of the male gender, as
was shown by their clothes--cast-off suits of the inevitable
reddish-gray, much too large, and out at the elbows and the knees--but
the sex of the others I was at a loss to determine, for they wore only a
single robe, reaching, like their mother's, from the neck to the knees.
Not one of the occupants of the cabin boasted a pair of stockings, but
the father and mother did enjoy the luxury of shoes--coarse, stout
brogans, untanned, and of the color of the legs which they encased.
"Well, Sandy, how is 'Lady?'" asked the Colonel, as he stepped to the
bed of the wounded dog.
"Reckon she's a goner, Cunnel; the d---- Yankee orter swing fur it."
This intimation that the overseer was a countryman of mine, took me by
surprise, nothing I had observed in his speech or manners having
indicated it, but I consoled myself with the reflection that Connecticut
had reared him--as she makes wooden hams and nutmegs--expressly for the
Southern market.
"He _shall_ swing for it, by ----. But are you sure the slut will die?"
"Not shore, Cunnel, but she can't stand, and the blood _will_ run. I
reckon a hun'red and fifty ar done for thar, sartin."
"D---- the money--I'll make that right. Go to the house and get some
ointment from Madam--she can save her--go at once," said my host.
"I will, Cunnel," replied the dirt-eater, taking his broad-brim from a
wooden peg, and leisurely leaving the cabin. Making our way then over
the piles of rubbish and crowds of children that cumbered the apartment,
the Colonel and I returned to the carriage.
"Dogs must be rare in this region," I remarked, as we resumed our seats.
"Yes, well-trained bloodhounds are scarce everywhere. That dog is well
worth a hundred and fifty dollars."
"The business of nigger-catching, then, is brisk, just now?"
"No, not more brisk than usual. We always have more or less runaways."
"Do most of them take to the swamps?"
"Yes, nine out of ten do, though now and then one gets off on a trading
vessel. It is almost impossible for a strange nigger to make his way by
land from here to the free states."
"Then why do you Carolinians make such an outcry about the violation of
the Fugitive Slave Law?"
"For the same reason that dogs quarrel over a naked bone. We should be
unhappy if we couldn't growl at the Yankees," replied the Colonel,
laughing.
"_We_, you say; you mean by that, the hundred and eighty thousand nabobs
who own five-sixths of your slaves?"[I]
"Yes, I mean them, and the three millions of poor whites--the ignorant,
half-starved, lazy vermin you have just seen. _They_ are the real basis
of our Southern oligarchy, as you call it," continued my host, still
laughing.
"I thought the negroes were the serfs in your feudal system?"
"Both the negroes and the poor whites are the serfs, but the white trash
are its real support. Their votes give the small minority of
slave-owners all their power. You say we control the Union. We do, and
we do it by the votes of these people, who are as far below our niggers
as the niggers are below decent white men. Who that reflects that this
country has been governed for fifty years by such scum, would give a
d---- for republican institutions?"
"It does speak badly for _your_ institutions. A system that reduces
nearly half of a white population to the level of slaves cannot stand in
this country. The late election shows that the power of your 'white
trash' is broken."
"Well, it does, that's a fact. If the states should remain together, the
West would in future control the Union. We see that, and are therefore
determined on dissolution. It is our only way to keep our niggers."
"The West will have to consent to that project. My opinion is, your
present policy will, if carried out, free every one of your slaves."
"I don't see how. Even if we are put down--which we cannot be--and are
held in the Union against our will, government cannot, by the
constitution, interfere with slavery in the states."
"I admit that, but it can confiscate the property of traitors. Every
large slave-holder is to-day, at heart, a traitor. If this movement goes
on, you will commit overt acts against the government, and in
self-defence it will punish treason by taking from you the means of
future mischief."
"The Republicans and Abolitionists might do that if they had the power,
but nearly one-half of the North is on our side, and will not fight us."
"Perhaps so; but if _I_ had this thing to manage, I would put you down
without fighting."
"How would you do it--by preaching abolition where even the niggers
would mob you? There's not a slave in all South Carolina but would shoot
Garrison or Greeley on sight."
"That may be, but if so, it is because you keep them in ignorance. Build
a free-school at every cross-road, and teach the poor whites, and what
would become of slavery? If these people were on a par with the farmers
of New England, would it last for an hour? Would they not see that it
stands in the way of their advancement, and vote it out of existence as
a nuisance?"
"Yes, perhaps they would; but the school-houses are not at the
cross-roads, and, thank God, they will not be there in this generation."
"The greater the pity; but that which will not flourish alongside of a
school-house, cannot, in the nature of things, outlast this century. Its
time must soon come."
"Enough for the day is the evil thereof. I'll risk the future of
slavery, if the South, in a body, goes out of the Union."
"In other words, you'll shut out schools and knowledge, in order to keep
slavery in existence. The Abolitionists claim it to be a relic of
barbarism, and you admit it could not exist with general education among
the people."
"Of course it could not. If Sandy, for instance, knew he were as good a
man as I am--and he would be if he were educated--do you suppose he
would vote as I tell him, go and come at my bidding, and live on my
charity? No, sir! give a man knowledge, and, however poor he may be,
he'll act for himself."
"Then free-schools and general education would destroy slavery?"
"Of course they would. The few cannot rule when the many know their
rights. If the poor whites realized that slavery kept them poor, would
they not vote it down? But the South and the world are a long way off
from general education. When it comes to that, we shall need no laws,
and no slavery, for the millennium will have arrived."
"I'm glad you think slavery will not exist during the millennium," I
replied, good-humoredly; "but how is it that you insist the negro is
naturally inferior to the white, and still admit that the 'white trash,'
are far below the black slaves?"
"Education makes the difference. We educate the negro enough to make him
useful to us; but the poor white man knows nothing. He can neither read
nor write, and not only that, he is not trained to any useful
employment. Sandy, here, who is a fair specimen of the tribe, obtains
his living just like an Indian, by hunting, fishing, and stealing,
interspersed with nigger-catching. His whole wealth consists of two
hounds and pups; his house--even the wooden trough his miserable
children eat from--belongs to me. If he didn't catch a runaway-nigger
once in a while, he wouldn't see a dime from one year to another."
"Then you have to support this man and his family?"
"Yes, what I don't give him he steals. Half a dozen others poach on me
in the same way."
"Why don't you set them at work?"
"They can't be made to work. I have hired them time and again, hoping to
make something of them, but I never got one to work more than half a day
at a time. It's their nature to lounge and to steal."
"Then why do you keep them about you?"
"Well, to be candid, their presence is of use in keeping the blacks in
subordination, and they are worth all they cost me, because I control
their votes."
"I thought the blacks were said to be entirely contented?"
"No, not contented. I do not claim that. I only say that they are unfit
for freedom. I might cite a hundred instances in which it has been their
ruin."
"I have not heard of one. It seems strange to me that a man who can
support another cannot support himself."
"Oh! no, it's not at all strange. The slave has hands, and when the
master gives him brains, he works well enough; but to support himself he
needs both hands and brains, and he has only hands. I'll give you a case
in point: At Wilmington, N. C., some years ago, there lived a negro by
the name of Jack Campbell. He was a slave, and was employed, before the
river was deepened so as to admit of the passage of large vessels up to
the town, in lightering cargoes to the wharves. He hired his time of his
master, and carried on business on his own account. Every one knew him,
and his character for honesty, sobriety, and punctuality stood so high
that his word was considered among merchants as good as that of the
first business-men of the place. Well, Jack's wife and children were
free, and he finally took it into his head to be free himself. He
arranged with his master to purchase himself within a specified time, at
eight hundred dollars, and he was to deposit his earnings in the hands
of a certain merchant till they reached the required sum. He went on,
and in three years had accumulated nearly seven hundred dollars, when
his owner failed in business. As the slave has no right of property,
Jack's earnings belonged by law to his master, and they were attached by
the Northern creditors (mark that, _by Northern creditors_), and taken
to pay the master's debts. Jack, too, was sold. His new owner also
consented to his buying himself, at about the price previously agreed
on. Nothing discouraged, he went to work again. Night and day he toiled,
and it surprised every one to see so much energy and firmness of
purpose in a negro. At last, after four more years of labor, he
accomplished his purpose, and received his free-papers. He had worked
seven years--as long as Jacob toiled for Rachel--for his freedom, and
like the old patriarch he found himself cheated at last. I was present
when he received his papers from his owner--a Mr. William H. Lippitt,
who still resides at Wilmington--and I shall never forget the ecstasy of
joy which he showed on the occasion. He sung and danced, and laughed,
and wept, till my conscience smote me for holding my own niggers, when
freedom might give them so much happiness. Well, he went off that day
and treated some friends, and for three days afterward lay in the
gutter, the entreaties of his wife and children having no effect on him.
He swore he was free, and would do as he 'd---- pleased.' He had
previously been a class-leader in the church, but after getting his
freedom he forsook his previous associates, and spent his Sundays and
evenings in a bar-room. He neglected his business; people lost
confidence in him, and step by step he went down, till in five years he
sunk into a wretched grave. That was the effect of freedom on _him_, and
it would be the same on all of his race."
"It is clear," I replied, "_he_ could not bear freedom, but that does
not prove he might not have 'endured' it if he had never been a slave.
His overjoy at obtaining liberty, after so long a struggle for it, led
to his excesses and his ruin. According to your view, neither the black
nor the poor white is competent to take care of himself. The Almighty,
therefore, has laid upon _you_ a triple burden; you not only have to
provide for yourself and your children, but for two races beneath you,
the black and the clay-eater. The poor nigger has a hard time, but it
seems to me you have a harder one."
"Well, it's a fact, we do. I often think that if it wasn't for the color
and the odor, I'd willingly exchange places with my man Jim."
The Colonel made this last remark in a half-serious, half-comic way,
that excited my risibilities, but before I could reply, the carriage
stopped, and Jim, opening the door, announced:
"We's har, massa, and de prayin' am gwine on."
[Footnote I: The foregoing statistics are correct. That small number of
slave-holders sustains the system of slavery, and has caused this
terrible rebellion. They are, almost to a man, rebels and secessionists,
and we may cover the South with armies, and keep a file of soldiers upon
every plantation, and not smother this insurrection, unless we break
down the power of that class. Their wealth gives them their power, and
their wealth is in their slaves. Free their negroes by an act of
emancipation, or confiscation, and the rebellion will crumble to pieces
in a day. Omit to do it, and it will last till doomsday.
The power of this dominant class once broken, with landed property at
the South more equally divided, a new order of things will arise there.
Where now, with their large plantations, not one acre in ten is tilled,
a system of small farms will spring into existence, and the whole
country be covered with cultivation. The six hundred thousand men who
have gone there to fight our battles, will see the amazing fertility of
the Southern soil--into which the seed is thrown and springs up without
labor into a bountiful harvest--and many of them, if slavery is crushed
out, will remain there. Thus a new element will be introduced into the
South, an element that will speedily make it a loyal, prosperous, and
_intelligent_ section of the Union.
I would interfere with no one's rights, but a rebel in arms against his
country has no rights; all that he has "is confiscate." Will the loyal
people of the North submit to be ground to the earth with taxes to pay
the expenditures of a war, brought upon them by these Southern
oligarchists, while the traitors are left in undisturbed possession of
every thing, and even their slaves are exempted from taxation? It were
well that our legislators should ask this question now, and not wait
till it's asked of them by THE PEOPLE.]