DOCTOR RAVENEL COMMENCES THE ORGANIZATION OF SOUTHERN LABOR.
For some time previous to the marriage Doctor Ravenel had been plotting
the benefit of the human race. He was one of those philanthropic
conspirators, those humanitarian Catilines, who, for the last thirty
years have been rotten-egged and vilified at the North, tarred and
feathered and murdered at the South, under the name of abolitionists. It
is true that until lately he has been a silent one, as you may infer
from the fact that he was still in the land of the living. If the
hundred-headed hydra had preached abolition in New Orleans previous to
the advent of Farragut and Butler, he would have had every one of his
skulls fractured within twenty-four hours after he had commenced his
ministry. Nobody could have met the demands of such a mission except
that gentleman of miraculous vitality mentioned by Ariosto, who, as fast
as he was cut in pieces, picked himself up and grew together as good as
new.
The Doctor was chiefly intent at present upon inducing the negroes to
work as freemen, now that they were no longer obliged to work as slaves.
He talked a great deal about his plan to various influential
personages, and even pressed it at department headquarters in a lengthy
private interview.
"You are right, sir," said Authority, with suave dignity. "It is a
matter of great instant importance. It may become a military necessity.
Suppose we should have a war with France, (I don't say, sir, that there
is any danger of it,) we might be cut off from the rest of the Union.
Louisiana would then have to live on her own resources, and feed her own
army. These negroes _must_ be induced to work. They must be put at it
immediately; they must have their hoes in the soil before six weeks are
over; otherwise we are in danger of a famine. I have arranged a plan,
Doctor. The provost-marshals are to pick up every unemployed negro, give
him his choice as to what plantation he will work on, but see that he
works somewhere. There is to be a fixed rate of wages,--so much in
clothes and so much in rations. Select your plantation, my dear sir, and
I will see that it is assigned to you. You will then obtain your
laborers by making written application to the Superintendent of Negro
Labor."
The Doctor was honestly and intelligently delighted. He expressed his
admiration of the commanding general's motives and wisdom in such terms
that the latter, high as he was in position and mighty in authority,
felt flattered. You could not possibly talk with Ravenel for ten minutes
without thinking better of yourself than before; for, perceiving that
you had to do with a superior man, and that he treated you with
deference, you instinctively inferred that you were not only a person
but a personage. But the compliments and air of respect which he
accorded the commanding general were not mere empty civilities, nor
well-bred courtesies, nor expressions of consideration for place and
authority. Ravenel's enthusiasm led him to believe that, in finding a
man who sympathised with him in his pet project, he had found one of the
greatest minds of the age.
"At last," he said to his daughter when he reached home, "at last we
are likely to see wise justice meted out to these poor blacks."
"Is the Major-General pleasant?" asked Lillie, with an inconsequence
which was somewhat characteristic of her. She was more interested in
learning how a great dignitary looked and behaved than in hearing what
were his opinions on the subject of freemen's labor.
"I don't know that a major general is obliged to be pleasant, at least
not in war time," answered the Doctor, a little annoyed at the
interruption to the train of his ideas. "Yes, he is pleasant enough; in
fact something too much of deportment. He put me in mind of one of my
adventures among the Georgia Crackers. I had to put up for the night in
one of those miserable up-country log shanties where you can study
astronomy all night through the chinks in the roof, and where the man
and wife sleep one side of you and the children and dogs on the other.
The family, it seems, had had a quarrel with a neighboring family of
superior pretensions, which had not yet culminated in gouging or
shooting. The eldest daughter, a ragged girl of seventeen, described to
me with great gusto an encounter which had taken place between her
mother and the female chieftain of the hostile tribe. Said she, "Miss
Jones, she tried to come the dignerfied over mar. But thar she found her
beater. My mar is hell on dignerty."--Well, the Major-General runs
rather too luxuriantly to dignity. But his ideas on the subject of
reorganizing labor are excellent, and have my earnest respect and
approbation. I believe that under his administration the negroes will be
allowed and encouraged to take their first certain step toward
civilization. They are to receive some remuneration,--not for the bygone
centuries of forced labor and oppression,--but for what they will do
hereafter."
"I don't see, papa, that they have been treated much worse than they
might expect," responds Lillie, who, although now a firm loyalist, has
by no means become an abolitionist.
"Perhaps not, my dear, perhaps not. They have no doubt been better off
in the Dahomey of America than they would have been in the Dahomey of
Africa; and certainly they couldn't expect much from a Christianity
whose chief corner-stone was a hogshead of slave-grown sugar. The
negroes were not foolish enough to look for much good in such a moral
atrocity as that. They have put their trust in the enemies of it; in
Frémont a while ago, and in Lincoln now. At present they do expect
something. They believe that 'the year of jubilo am come.' And so it is.
Before this year closes, many of these poor creatures will receive what
they never did before--wages for their labor. For the first time in
their lives they will be led to realize the idea of justice. Justice,
honesty, mercy, and nearly the whole list of Christian virtues, have
hitherto been empty names to them, having no practical signification,
and in fact utterly unknown to their minds except as words that for some
unexplained purpose had been inserted in the Bible. How could they
believe in the things themselves? They never saw them practiced; at
least they never felt their influence. Of course they were liars and
hypocrites and thieves. All constituted society lied to them by calling
them men and treating them as beasts; it played the hypocrite to them by
preaching to them the Christian virtues, and never itself practising
them; it played the thief by taking all the earnings of their labor,
except just enough to keep soul and body together, so that they might
labor more. Our consciences, the conscience of the nation, will not be
cleared when we have merely freed the negroes. We must civilize and
Christianize them. And we must begin this by teaching them the great
elementary duty of man in life--that of working for his own subsistence.
I am so interested in the problem that I have resolved to devote myself
personally to its solution."
"What! And give up your hospital?"
"Yes, my dear. I have already given it up, and got my plantation
assigned to me."
"Oh, papa! Where?"
Of course Lillie feared that in her new home she might not be able to
see her husband; and of course the Doctor divined this charming anxiety,
and hastened to relieve her from it.
"It is at Taylorsville, my dear. Taylorsville forms a part of Colonel
Carter's military jurisdiction, and the fort there is garrisoned by a
detachment from his brigade. He can come to see us without neglecting
his duties."
Lillie colored, and said nothing for a few minutes. She was so unused as
yet to her husband, that the thought of being visited by him thrilled
her nerves, and took temporary possession of all her mind.
"But, papa," she presently inquired, "will this support you as well as
the hospital?"
"I don't know, child. It is an experiment. It may be a failure, and it
may be a pecuniary success. We shall certainly be obliged to economize
until our autumn crops are gathered. But I am willing to do that, if I
meet with no other reward than my own consciousness that I enter upon
the task for the sake of a long oppressed race. I believe that by means
of kindness and justice I can give them such ideas of industry and other
social virtues as they could not obtain, and have not obtained, from
centuries of robbery and cruelty."
Lillie was lost in meditation, not concerning the good of the blacks,
but concerning the probable visits of Colonel Carter at Taylorsville.
Affectionately selfish woman as she was, she would not have given up the
alarming joy of one of those anticipated interviews for the chance of
civilizing a capering wilderness of negroes.
Taylorsville, a flourishing village before the war, is situated on the
Mississippi just where it is tapped by Bayou Rouge, which is one of the
dozen channels through which the Father of Waters finds the Gulf of
Mexico. It is on the western bank of the river, and for the most part on
the southern bank of the bayou; and is protected from both by that
continuous system of levees which alone saves southern Louisiana from
yearly inundations. At the time of which I speak, a large portion of the
town consisted of charred and smoke-blackened ruins. Its citizens had
been mad enough to fire on our fleet, and Farragut had swept it with his
iron besoms of destruction. On the same bank of the Mississippi, but on
the northern bank of the bayou, at the apex of the angle formed by the
diverging currents, is Fort Winthrop, a small star-shaped earth-work,
faced in part with bricks, surrounded by a ditch except on the river
side, and provided with neither casemate nor bombproof. Ordered by
Butler and designed by Weitzel, it had been thrown up shortly after the
little victory of Georgia Landing. It was to be within reach of this
fort in case of an attack from raiding rebels, that Ravenel had selected
a plantation for his philanthropic experiment in the neighborhood of
Taylorsville. Haste was necessary to success, for the planting season
was slipping away. Within a week or so after the marriage he had bought
a stock of tools and provisions, obtained a ragged corps of negroes from
the Superintendent of Colored Labor, shipped every thing on board a
Government transport, and was on the spot where he proposed to initiate
the re-organization of southern industry.
The plantation house was a large, plain wooden mansion, very much like
those which the country gentility of New England built about the
beginning of this century, except that the necessities of a southern
climate had dictated a spacious veranda covering the whole front, two
stories in height, and supported by tall square wooden pillars. In the
rear was a one-storied wing, containing the kitchen, and rooms for
servants. Farther back, at the extremity of a deep and slovenly yard,
where pigs had been wont to wander without much opposition, was a
hollow square of cabins for the field-hands, each consisting of two
rooms, and all alike built of rough boards coarsely whitewashed. Neither
the cabins nor the family mansion had a cellar, nor even a foundation
wall; they stood on props of brick-work, leaving room underneath for the
free circulation of air, dogs, pigs and pickaninnies. On either side of
the house the cleared lands ran a considerable distance up and down the
bayou, closing in the rear, at a depth of three or four hundred yards,
in a stretch of forest. An eighth of a mile away, not far from the
winding road which skirted the sinuous base of the levee, was the most
expensive building of the plantation, the great brick sugar-house, with
vast expanses of black roof and a gigantic chimney. No smoke of industry
arose from it; the sound of the grinding of the costly steam machinery
had departed; the vats were empty and dry, or had been carried away for
bunks and fire-wood by foraging soldiers and negroes.
There was not a soul in any of the buildings or about the grounds when
the Ravenels arrived. The Secessionist family of Robertson had fled
before Weitzel's advance into the Lafourche country, and its chief, a
man of fifty, had fallen at the head of a company of militia at the
fight at Georgia Landing. Then the field-hands, who had hid in the
swamps to avoid being carried to Texas, came upon the house like locusts
of destruction, broke down its doors, shattered its windows, plundered
it from parlor to garret, drank themselves drunk on the venerable
treasures of the wine closet, and diverted themselves with soiling the
carpets, breaking the chairs, ripping up the sofas, and defacing the
family portraits. Some gentle sentiment, perhaps a feeble love for the
departed young "missus," perhaps the passion of their race for music,
had deterred them from injuring the piano, which was almost the only
unharmed piece of furniture in the once handsome parlor. The single
living creature about the place was a half-starved grimalkin, who
caterwauled dolefully at the visitors from a distance, and could not be
enticed to approach by the blandishments of Lillie, an enthusiastic
cat-fancier. To the merely sentimental observer it was sad to think that
this house of desolation had not long since been the abode of the
generous family life and prodigal hospitality of a southern planter.
"Oh, how doleful it looks!" sighed Lillie, as she wandered about the
deserted rooms.
"It _is_ doleful," said the Doctor. "As doleful as the ruins of
Babylon--of cities accursed of God, and smitten for their wickedness. My
old friend Elderkin used to say (before he went addled about southern
rights) that he wondered God didn't strike all the sugar planters of
Louisiana dead. Well He _has_ stricken them with stark madness; and
under the influence of it they are getting themselves killed off as fast
as possible. It was time. The world had got to be too intelligent for
them. They could not live without retarding the progress of
civilization. They wanted to keep up the social systems of the middle
ages amidst railroads, steamboats, telegraphs, patent reapers, and under
the noses of Humboldt, Leverrier, Lyell, and Agassiz. Of course they
must go to the wall. They will be pinned up to it _in terrorem_, like
exterminated crows and chicken-hawks. The grand jury of future centuries
will bring in the verdict, 'Served them right!' At the same time one
cannot help feeling a little human sympathy, or at any rate a little
poetic melancholy, on stepping thus into the ruins of a family."
Lillie, however, was not very sentimental about the departed happiness
of the Robertsons; she was planning how to get the house ready for the
expected visit of Colonel Carter; in that channel for the present ran
her poesy.
"But really, papa, we must go to work," she said. "The nineteenth
century has turned out the Robertsons, and put us in--but it has left
these rooms awfully dirty, and the furniture in a dreadful condition."
In a few minutes she had her hat off, her dress pinned up to keep it
out of the dust, her sleeves rolled back to her elbows, and was flying
about with remarkable emphasis, dragging broken chairs, etc., to the
garret, and brooming up such whirlwinds of dust, that the Doctor flew
abroad for refuge. What she could not do herself she set half a dozen
negroes, male and female, to doing. She was wild with excitement and
gayety, running about, ordering and laughing like a threefold creature.
It was delightful to remember, in a sweet under-current of thought which
flowed gently beneath her external glee, that she was working to welcome
her husband, slaving for him, tiring herself out for his dear sake. In a
couple of hours she was so weary that she had to fling herself on a
settee in the veranda, and rest, while the negroes continued the labor.
Women in general, I believe, love to work by spasms and deliriums,
doing, or making believe do, a vast deal while they are at it, but
dropping off presently into languor and headache.
"Papa, we shall have five whole chairs," she called. "You can sit in
one, I in another, and that will leave three for Mr. Carter. Why don't
you come and do something? I have fagged myself half to death, and you
haven't done a thing but mope about with your hands behind your back.
Come in now, and go to work."
"My dear, there are so many negroes in there that I can't get in."
"Then come up and talk to me," commanded the young lady, who had meant
that all the while. "You needn't think you can find any Smithites or
Robinsonites. There isn't a mineral in Louisiana, unless it is a
brickbat. Do come up here and talk to me. I can't scream to you all the
afternoon."
"I am so glad you can't," grinned papa, and strolled obstinately away in
the direction of the sugar-house. He was studying the nature of the
soil, and proposing to subject it to a chemical analysis, in order to
see if it could not be made to produce as much corn to the acre as the
bottom lands of Ohio. Indian corn and sweet potatoes, with a little
seasoning of onions, beets, squashes, and other kitchen garden
vegetables, should be his only crop that season. Also he would raise
pigs and chickens by the hundred, and perhaps three or four cows, if
promising calves could be obtained in the country. What New Orleans
wanted, and what the whole department would stand in desperate need of,
should a war break out with France, was, not sugar, but corn and pork.
All that summer the possibility of a war with France was a prominent
topic of conversation in Louisiana, so that even the soldiers talked in
their rough way of "revelling in the halls of the Montezumas, and
filling their pockets with little gold Jesuses." As for making sugar,
unless it might be a hogshead or so for family consumption, it was out
of the question. It would cost twenty thousand dollars merely to put the
sugar-house and its machinery to rights--and the Doctor had no such
riches, nor any thing approaching to it, this side of heaven.
Nevertheless he was perfectly happy in strolling about his unplanted
estate, and revolving his unfulfilled plans, agricultural and
humanitarian. He proposed to produce, not only a crop of corn and
potatoes, but a race of intelligent, industrious and virtuous laborers.
He would make himself analytically acquainted, not only with the
elements and possibilities of the soil, but with those of the negro
soul. By the way, I ought to mention that he was not proprietor of the
plantation, but only a tenant of it to the United States, paying a rent
which for the first year was merely nominal, so anxious was Authority to
initiate successfully the grand experiment of freedmen's labor.
When he returned to the house from a stroll of two hours Lillie favored
him with a good imitation of a sound scolding. What did he mean by
leaving her alone so, without anybody to speak a word to? If he was
going to be always out in this way, they might as well live in New
Orleans where he would be fussing around his hospital from morning till
night. She was tired with overseeing those stupid negroes and trying to
make them set the chairs and tables right side up.
"My dear, don't reproach them for being stupid," said Ravenel. "For
nearly a century the whole power of our great Republic, north and south,
has been devoted to keeping them stupid. Your own State has taken a
demoniac interest in this infernal labor. We mustn't quarrel with our
own deliberate productions. We wanted stupidity, we have got it, and we
must be contented with it. At least for a while. It is your duty and
mine to work patiently, courteously and faithfully to undo the horrid
results of a century of selfishness. I shall expect you to teach all
these poor people to read."
"Teach them to read! what, set up a nigger school!"
"Yes, you born barbarian,--and daughter of a born barbarian,--for I felt
that way myself once. I want you in the first place to teach them, and
yourself too, how to spell negro with only one _g_. You must not add
your efforts to keep this abused race under a stigma of social contempt.
You must do what you can to elevate them in sentiment, and in
knowledge."
"But oh, what a labor! I would rather clean house every day."
"Not so very much of a labor--not so very much of a labor," insisted the
Doctor. "Negro children are just as intelligent as white children until
they find out that they are black. Now we will never tell them that they
are black; we will never hint to them that they are born our inferiors.
You will find them bright enough if you won't knock them on the head.
Why, you couldn't read yourself till you were seven years old."
"Because you didn't care to have me. I learned quick enough when I set
about it."
"Just so. And that proves that it is not too late for our people here to
commence their education. Adults can beat children at the alphabet."
"But it is against the law, teaching them to read."
The Doctor burst into a hearty laugh.
"The laws of Dahomey are abrogated," said he. "What a fossil you are!
You remind me of my poor doting old friend, Elderkin, who persists in
declaring that the invasion of Louisiana was a violation of the
Constitution."
By this time the dozen or so of negroes had brought the neglected
mansion to a habitable degree of cleanliness, and decked out two or
three rooms with what tags and amputated fragments remained of the once
fine furniture. A chamber had been prepared for Lillie, and another for
the Doctor. A tea-table was set in a picnic sort of style, and crowned
with corn cake, fried pork, and roasted sweet potatoes.
"Are you not going to ask in our colored friends?" inquired Lillie,
mischievously.
"Why no. I don't see the logical necessity of it. I always have claimed
the right of selecting my own intimates. I admit, however, that I have
sat at table with less respectable people in some of the most
aristocratic houses of New Orleans. Please to drop the satire and put
some sugar in my tea."
"Mercy! there is no sugar on the table. The stupid creatures! How can
you wonder, papa, that I allow myself to look down on them a little?"
"I don't believe it is possible to get all the virtues and all the
talents for nothing a year, or even for ten dollars a month. I will try
to induce the Major-General commanding to come and wait on table for us.
But I am really afraid I sha'n't succeed. He is very busy. Meantime
suppose you should hint to one of the handmaidens, as politely as you
can, that I am accustomed to take sugar in my tea."
"Julia!" called Lillie to a mulatto girl of eighteen, who just then
entered from the kitchen. "You have given us no sugar. How could you be
so silly?"
"Don't!" expostulated the Doctor. "I never knew a woman but scolded her
servants, and I never knew a servant but waited the worse for it. All
that the good-natured creature desired was to know what you wanted. It
didn't clear her head nor soften her heart a bit to call her silly; nor
would it have helped matters at all if you had gone on to pelt her with
all the hard names in the English language. Be courteous, my dear, to
everything that is human. We owe that much of respect to the fact that
man is made in the image of his Maker. Politeness is a part of piety."
"When would Mr. Carter be able to visit them?" was Lillie's next spoken
idea. Papa really could not say, but hoped very soon--whereupon he was
immediately questioned as to the reasons of his hope. Having no special
reason to allege, and being driven to admit that, after all, the visit
could not positively be counted upon, he was sharply catechised as to
_why_ he thought Mr. Carter would not come, to which he could only reply
by denying he had entertained such a thought. Then followed in rapid
succession, "Suppose the brigade leaves Thibodeaux, where will it go to?
Suppose General Banks attacks Port Hudson, won't he be obliged to leave
Colonel Carter to defend the Lafourche Interior? Suppose the brigade is
ordered into the field, will it not, being the best brigade, be always
kept in reserve, out of the range of fire?"
"My dear child," deprecated the hunted Doctor, "what happy people those
early Greeks must have been who were descended from the immortal gods!
They could ask their papas all sorts of questions about the future, and
get reliable answers."
"But I am _so_ anxious!" said Lillie, dropping back in her chair with a
sob, and wiping away her tears with her napkin.
"My poor dear little girl, you must try to keep up a better courage,"
urged papa in a compassionate tone which only made the drops fall
faster, so affecting is pity.
"Nothing has happened to him yet, and we have a right to hope and pray
that nothing will."
"But something _may_," was the persevering answer of anxiety.
As soon as supper was over she hurried to her room, locked the door,
knelt on the bit of carpet by the bedside, buried her face in the
bed-clothes, and prayed a long time with tears and sobs, that her
husband, her own and dear husband, might be kept from danger. She did
not even ask that he might be brought to her; it was enough if he might
only be delivered from the awful perils of battle; in the humility of
her earnestness and terror she had not the face to require more. After a
while she went down stairs again with an expression of placid
exhaustion, rendered sweeter by a soft glory of religious trust, as the
sunset mellowness of our earthly atmosphere is rayed by beams from a
mightier world. Sitting on a stool at her father's feet, and laying her
head on his knee, she talked in more cheerful tones of Carter, of their
own prospects, and then again of Carter--for ever of Carter.
"I _will_ teach the negroes to read," she said. "I will try to do
good--and to be good."
She was thinking how she could best win the favor and protection of
Heaven for her husband. She would teach the negroes for Carter's sake;
she had not yet learned to do it for Jesus Christ's sake. She was not a
heathen; she had received the same evangelical instruction that most
young Americans receive; she was perfectly well aware of the doctrine of
salvation by faith and not by works. But no profound sorrow, no awful
sense of helplessness under the threatening of dangers to those whom she
dearly loved, had ever made these things matters of personal experience
and realizing belief.
When the Doctor called in the negroes at nine o'clock, and read to them
a chapter from the Bible, and a prayer, Lillie joined in the devotions
with an unusual sense of humility and earnestness. In her own room,
before going to bed, she prayed again for Carter, and not for him only,
but for herself. Then she quickly fell asleep, for she was young and
very tired. How some elderly people, who have learned to toss and count
the hours till near morning, envy these infants, whether of twenty
months or twenty years, who can so readily cast their sorrows into the
profound and tranquil ocean of slumber!