door, and petitions for sugar, rice, and baby clothes, from a group of
women who had done their tasks at three o'clock in the afternoon, and had
come to say, 'Ha do missis?' (How do you do?), and beg something on their
way to their huts. Observing one among them whose hand was badly maimed,
one finger being reduced to a mere stump, she told me it was in
consequence of the bite of a rattlesnake, which had attacked and bitten
her child, and then struck her as she endeavoured to kill it; her little
boy had died, but one of the drivers cut off her finger, and so she had
escaped with the loss of that member only. It is yet too early in the
season for me to make acquaintance with these delightful animals; but the
accounts the negroes give of their abundance is full of agreeable promise
for the future. It seems singular, considering how very common they are,
that there are not more frequent instances of the slaves being bitten by
them; to be sure, they seem to me to have a holy horror of ever setting
their feet near either tree or bush, or anywhere but on the open road, and
the fields where they labour; and of course the snakes are not so frequent
in open and frequented places, as in their proper coverts. The Red Indians
are said to use successfully some vegetable cure for the bite, I believe
the leaves of the slippery ash or elm; the only infallible remedy,
however, is suction, but of this the ignorant negroes are so afraid, that
they never can be induced to have recourse to it, being of course
immovably persuaded that the poison which is so fatal to the blood, must
be equally so to the stomach. They tell me that the cattle wandering into
the brakes and bushes are often bitten to death by these deadly creatures;
the pigs, whose fat it seems does not accept the venom into its tissues
with the same effect, escape unhurt for the most part--so much for the
anti-venomous virtue of adipose matter--a consolatory consideration for
such of us as are inclined to take on flesh more than we think graceful.
_Monday morning, 25th._--This letter has been long on the stocks, dear
E----. I have been busy all day, and tired, and lazy in the evening
latterly, and, moreover, feel as if such very dull matter was hardly worth
sending all the way off to where you are happy to be. However, that is
nonsense; I know well enough that you are glad to hear from me, be it what
it will, and so I resume my chronicle. Some of my evenings have been spent
in reading Mr. Clay's anti-abolition speech, and making notes on it, which
I will show you when we meet. What a cruel pity and what a cruel shame it
is that such a man should either know no better or do no better for his
country than he is doing now!
Yesterday I for the first time bethought me of the riding privileges of
which Jack used to make such magnificent mention when he was fishing with
me at the rice-island; and desiring to visit the remoter parts of the
plantation and the other end of the island, I enquired into the resources
of the stable. I was told I could have a mare with foal; but I declined
adding my weight to what the poor beast already carried, and my only
choice then was between one who had just foaled, or a fine stallion used
as a plough horse on the plantation. I determined for the latter, and
shall probably be handsomely shaken whenever I take my rides abroad.
_Tuesday, the 26th._--My dearest E----. I write to you to-day in great
depression and distress. I have had a most painful conversation with
Mr. ----, who has declined receiving any of the people's petitions
through me. Whether he is wearied with the number of these prayers and
supplications which he would escape but for me, as they probably would
not venture to come so incessantly to him, and I of course feel bound to
bring every one confided to me to him; or whether he has been annoyed at
the number of pitiful and horrible stories of misery and oppression under
the former rule of Mr. K----, which have come to my knowledge since I
have been here, and the grief and indignation caused, but which cannot by
any means always be done away with, though their expression may be
silenced by his angry exclamations of 'Why do you listen to such stuff?'
or 'Why do you believe such trash; don't you know the niggers are all
d----d liars?' &c. I do not know; but he desired me this morning to bring
him no more complaints or requests of any sort, as the people had
hitherto had no such advocate, and had done very well without, and I was
only kept in an incessant state of excitement with all the falsehoods
they 'found they could make me believe.' How well they have done without
my advocacy, the conditions which I see with my own eyes even more than
their pitiful petitions demonstrate; it is indeed true, that the
sufferings of those who come to me for redress, and still more the
injustice done to the great majority who cannot, have filled my heart
with bitterness and indignation that have overflowed my lips, till, I
suppose, ---- is weary of hearing what he has never heard before, the
voice of passionate expostulation, and importunate pleading against
wrongs that he will not even acknowledge, and for creatures whose common
humanity with his own I half think he does not believe;--but I must
return to the North, for my condition would be almost worse than
theirs--condemned to hear and see so much wretchedness, not only without
the means of alleviating it, but without permission even to represent it
for alleviation--this is no place for me, since I was not born among
slaves, and cannot bear to live among them.
Perhaps after all what he says is true: when I am gone they will fall back
into the desperate uncomplaining habit of suffering, from which my coming
among them, willing to hear and ready to help, has tempted them; he says
that bringing their complaints to me, and the sight of my credulous
commiseration, only tend to make them discontented and idle, and brings
renewed chastisement upon them; and that so, instead of really befriending
them, I am only preparing more suffering for them whenever I leave the
place, and they can no more cry to me for help. And so I see nothing for
it but to go and leave them to their fate; perhaps, too, he is afraid of
the mere contagion of freedom which breathes from the very existence of
those who are free; my way of speaking to the people, of treating them, of
living with them, the appeals I make to their sense of truth, of duty, of
self-respect, the infinite compassion and the human consideration I feel
for them,--all this of course makes my intercourse with them dangerously
suggestive of relations far different from anything they have ever known,
and as Mr. O---- once almost hinted to me, my existence among slaves was
an element of danger to the 'institution.' If I should go away, the human
sympathy that I have felt for them will certainly never come near them
again.
I was too unhappy to write any more, my dear friend, and you have been
spared the rest of my paroxysm, which hereabouts culminated in the blessed
refuge of abundant tears. God will provide. He has not forgotten, nor will
He forsake these His poor children; and if I may no longer minister to
them, they yet are in His hand, who cares for them more and better than I
can.
Towards the afternoon yesterday, I rowed up the river to the rice-island,
by way of refreshment to my spirits, and came back to-day, Wednesday the
27th, through rather a severe storm. Before going to bed last night I
finished Mr. Clay's speech, and ground my teeth over it. Before starting
this morning I received from head-man Frank a lesson on the various
qualities of the various sorts of rice, and should be (at any rate till I
forget all he told me, which I 'feel in my bones' will be soon) a
competent judge and expert saleswoman. The dead white speck, which shows
itself sometimes in rice as it does in teeth, is in the former, as in the
latter, a sign of decay; the finest quality of rice is what may be called
flinty, clear and unclouded, and a pretty clean sparkling-looking thing it
is.
I will tell you something curious and pleasant about my row back. The wind
was so high and the river so rough when I left the rice-island, that just
as I was about to get into the boat I thought it might not be amiss to
carry my life-preserver with me, and ran back to the house to fetch it.
Having taken that much care for my life, I jumped into the boat, and we
pushed off. The fifteen miles' row with a furious wind, and part of the
time the tide against us, and the huge broad turbid river broken into a
foaming sea of angry waves, was a pretty severe task for the men. They
pulled with a will, however, but I had to forego the usual accompaniment
of their voices, for the labour was tremendous, especially towards the end
of our voyage, where, of course, the nearness of the sea increased the
roughness of the water terribly. The men were in great spirits, however
(there were eight of them rowing, and one behind was steering); one of
them said something which elicited an exclamation of general assent, and I
asked what it was; the steerer said they were pleased because there was
not another planter's lady in all Georgia who would have gone through the
storm all alone with them in a boat; i.e. without the protecting presence
of a white man. 'Why,' said I, 'my good fellows, if the boat capsized, or
anything happened, I am sure I should have nine chances for my life
instead of one;' at this there was one shout of 'So you would, missis!
true for dat, missis,' and in great mutual good-humour we reached the
landing at Hampton Point.
As I walked home I pondered over this compliment of Mr. ----'s slaves to
me, and did not feel quite sure that the very absence of the fear which
haunts the southern women in their intercourse with these people and
prevents them from trusting themselves ever with them out of reach of
white companionship and supervision was not one of the circumstances which
makes my intercourse with them unsafe and undesirable. The idea of
apprehending any mischief from them never yet crossed my brain; and in the
perfect confidence with which I go amongst them, they must perceive a
curious difference between me and my lady neighbours in these parts; all
have expressed unbounded astonishment at my doing so.
The spring is fast coming on; and we shall, I suppose, soon leave
Georgia. How new and sad a chapter of my life this winter here has been!
* * * * *
Dear E----. I cannot give way to the bitter impatience I feel at my
present position, and come back to the north without leaving my babies;
and though I suppose their stay will not in any case be much prolonged in
these regions of swamp and slavery, I must, for their sakes, remain where
they are, and learn this dreary lesson of human suffering to the end. The
record, it seems to me, must be utterly wearisome to you, as the instances
themselves I suppose in a given time (thanks to that dreadful reconciler
to all that is evil--habit) would become to me.
This morning I had a visit from two of the women, Charlotte and Judy, who
came to me for help and advice for a complaint, which it really seems to
me every other woman on the estate is cursed with, and which is a direct
result of the conditions of their existence; the practice of sending women
to labour in the fields in the third week after their confinement is a
specific for causing this infirmity, and I know no specific for curing it
under these circumstances. As soon as these poor things had departed with
such comfort as I could give them, and the bandages they especially begged
for, three other sable graces introduced themselves, Edie, Louisa, and
Diana; the former told me she had had a family of seven children, but had
lost them all through 'ill luck,' as she denominated the ignorance and ill
treatment which were answerable for the loss of these, as of so many other
poor little creatures their fellows. Having dismissed her and Diana with
the sugar and rice they came to beg, I detained Louisa, whom I had never
seen but in the presence of her old grandmother, whose version of the poor
child's escape to, and hiding in the woods, I had a desire to compare with
the heroine's own story. She told it very simply, and it was most
pathetic. She had not finished her task one day, when she said she felt
ill, and unable to do so, and had been severely flogged by Driver Bran, in
whose 'gang' she then was. The next day, in spite of this encouragement to
labour, she had again been unable to complete her appointed work; and Bran
having told her that he'd tie her up and flog her if she did not get it
done, she had left the field and run into the swamp. 'Tie you up, Louisa!'
said I, 'what is that?' She then described to me that they were fastened
up by their wrists to a beam or a branch of a tree, their feet barely
touching the ground, so as to allow them no purchase for resistance or
evasion of the lash, their clothes turned over their heads, and their
backs scored with a leather thong, either by the driver himself, or if he
pleases to inflict their punishment by deputy, any of the men he may
choose to summon to the office; it might be father, brother, husband, or
lover, if the overseer so ordered it. I turned sick, and my blood curdled
listening to these details from the slender young slip of a lassie, with
her poor piteous face and murmuring pleading voice. 'Oh,' said I, 'Louisa;
but the rattlesnakes, the dreadful rattlesnakes in the swamps; were you
not afraid of those horrible creatures?' 'Oh, missis,' said the poor
child, 'me no tink of dem, me forget all 'bout dem for de fretting.' 'Why
did you come home at last?' 'Oh, missis, me starve with hunger, me most
dead with hunger before me come back.' 'And were you flogged, Louisa?'
said I, with a shudder at what the answer might be. 'No, missis, me go to
hospital; me almost dead and sick so long, 'spec Driver Bran him forgot
'bout de flogging.' I am getting perfectly savage over all these doings,
E----, and really think I should consider my own throat and those of my
children well cut, if some night the people were to take it into their
heads to clear off scores in that fashion.
The Calibanish wonderment of all my visitors at the exceedingly coarse and
simple furniture and rustic means of comfort of my abode is very droll. I
have never inhabited any apartment so perfectly devoid of what we should
consider the common decencies of life; but to them my rude chintz-covered
sofa and common pine-wood table, with its green baize cloth, seem the
adornings of a palace; and often in the evening, when my bairns are
asleep, and M---- up-stairs keeping watch over them, and I sit writing
this daily history for your edification,--the door of the great barn-like
room is opened stealthily, and one after another, men and women come
trooping silently in, their naked feet falling all but inaudibly on the
bare boards as they betake themselves to the hearth, where they squat down
on their hams in a circle,--the bright blaze from the huge pine logs,
which is the only light of this half of the room, shining on their sooty
limbs and faces, and making them look like a ring of ebony idols
surrounding my domestic hearth. I have had as many as fourteen at a time
squatting silently there for nearly half an hour, watching me writing at
the other end of the room. The candles on my table give only light enough
for my own occupation, the fire light illuminates the rest of the
apartment; and you cannot imagine anything stranger than the effect of all
these glassy whites of eyes and grinning white teeth turned towards me,
and shining in the flickering light. I very often take no notice of them
at all, and they seem perfectly absorbed in contemplating me. My evening
dress probably excites their wonder and admiration no less than my rapid
and continuous writing, for which they have sometimes expressed
compassion, as if they thought it must be more laborious than hoeing;
sometimes at the end of my day's journal I look up and say suddenly,
'Well, what do you want?' when each black figure springs up at once, as if
moved by machinery, they all answer, 'Me come say ha do (how d'ye do),
missis;' and then they troop out as noiselessly as they entered, like a
procession of sable dreams, and I go off in search, if possible, of whiter
ones.
Two days ago I had a visit of great interest to me from several lads from
twelve to sixteen years old, who had come to beg me to give them work. To
make you understand this you must know, that wishing very much to cut some
walks and drives through the very picturesque patches of woodland not far
from the house, I announced, through Jack, my desire to give employment in
the wood-cutting line, to as many lads as chose, when their unpaid task
was done, to come and do some work for me, for which I engaged to pay
them. At the risk of producing a most dangerous process of reflection and
calculation in their brains, I have persisted in paying what I considered
wages to every slave that has been my servant; and these my labourers
must, of course, be free to work or no, as they like, and if they work for
me must be paid by me. The proposition met with unmingled approbation from
my 'gang;' but I think it might be considered dangerously suggestive of
the rightful relation between work and wages; in short, very involuntarily
no doubt, but, nevertheless, very effectually I am disseminating ideas
among Mr. ----'s dependents, the like of which have certainly never before
visited their wool-thatched brains.
_Friday, March 1._--Last night after writing so much to you I felt weary,
and went out into the air to refresh my spirit. The scene just beyond the
house was beautiful, the moonlight slept on the broad river which here is
almost the sea, and on the masses of foliage of the great southern oaks;
the golden stars of German poetry shone in the purple curtains of the
night, and the measured rush of the Atlantic unfurling its huge skirts
upon the white sands of the beach (the sweetest and most awful lullaby in
nature) resounded through the silent air.
I have not felt well, and have been much depressed for some days past. I
think I should die if I had to live here. This morning, in order not to
die yet, I thought I had better take a ride, and accordingly mounted the
horse which I told you was one of the equestrian alternatives offered me
here; but no sooner did he feel my weight, which, after all, is mere
levity and frivolity to him, than he thought proper to rebel, and find the
grasshopper a burthen, and rear and otherwise demonstrate his disgust. I
have not ridden for a long time now, but Montreal's opposition very
presently aroused the Amazon which is both natural and acquired in me, and
I made him comprehend that, though I object to slaves, I expect obedient
servants; which views of mine being imparted by a due administration of
both spur and whip, attended with a judicious combination of coaxing pats
on his great crested neck, and endearing commendations of his beauty,
produced the desired effect. Montreal accepted me as inevitable, and
carried me very wisely and well up the island to another of the slave
settlements on the plantation, called Jones's Creek.
On my way I passed some magnificent evergreen oaks,[5] and some thickets
of exquisite evergreen shrubs, and one or two beautiful sites for a
residence, which made me gnash my teeth when I thought of the one we have
chosen. To be sure, these charming spots, instead of being conveniently in
the middle of the plantation, are at an out of the way end of it, and so
hardly eligible for the one quality desired for the overseer's abode, viz.
being central.
[Footnote 5: The only ilex trees which I have seen comparable in size and
beauty with those of the sea-board of Georgia are some to be found in the
Roman Campagna, at Passerano, Lunghegna, Castel Fusano, and other of its
great princely farms, but especially in the magnificent woody wilderness
of Valerano.]
All the slaves' huts on St. Simon's are far less solid, comfortable, and
habitable than those at the rice-island. I do not know whether the
labourer's habitation bespeaks the alteration in the present relative
importance of the crops, but certainly the cultivators of the once
far-famed long staple sea-island cotton of St. Simon's are far more
miserably housed than the rice-raisers of the other plantation. These
ruinous shielings, that hardly keep out wind or weather, are deplorable
homes for young or aged people, and poor shelters for the hardworking men
and women who cultivate the fields in which they stand. Riding home I
passed some beautiful woodland with charming pink and white blossoming
peach and plum-trees, which seemed to belong to some orchard that had been
attempted, and afterwards delivered over to wildness. On enquiry I found
that no fruit worth eating was ever gathered from them. What a pity it
seems! for in this warm delicious winter climate any and every species of
fruit might be cultivated with little pains and to great perfection. As I
was cantering along the side of one of the cotton fields I suddenly heard
some inarticulate vehement cries, and saw what seemed to be a heap of
black limbs tumbling and leaping towards me, renewing the screams at
intervals as it approached. I stopped my horse, and the black ball bounded
almost into the road before me, and suddenly straightening itself up into
a haggard hag of a half-naked negress, exclaimed, with panting eager
breathlessness, 'Oh missis, missis! you no hear me cry, you no hear me
call. Oh missis! me call, me cry, and me run; make me a gown like dat. Do,
for massy's sake, only make me a gown like dat.' This modest request for a
riding habit in which to hoe the cotton fields served for an introduction
to sundry other petitions for rice and sugar and flannel, all which I
promised the petitioner, but not the 'gown like dat;' whereupon I rode
off, and she flung herself down in the middle of the road to get her wind
and rest.
The passion for dress is curiously strong in these people, and seems as
though it might be made an instrument in converting them, outwardly at any
rate, to something like civilisation; for though their own native taste
is decidedly both barbarous and ludicrous, it is astonishing how very soon
they mitigate it in imitation of their white models. The fine figures of
the mulatto women in Charleston and Savannah are frequently as elegantly
and tastefully dressed as those of any of their female superiors; and here
on St. Simon's, owing, I suppose, to the influence of the resident lady
proprietors of the various plantations, and the propensity to imitation in
their black dependents, the people that I see all seem to me much tidier,
cleaner, and less fantastically dressed than those on the rice plantation,
where no such influences reach them.
On my return from my ride I had a visit from Captain F----, the manager
of a neighbouring plantation, with whom I had a long conversation about
the present and past condition of the estate, the species of feudal
magnificence in which its original owner, Major ----, lived, the iron
rule of old overseer K---- which succeeded to it, and the subsequent
sovereignty of his son, Mr. R---- K----, the man for whom Mr. ----
entertains such a cordial esteem, and of whom every account I receive
from the negroes seems to me to indicate a merciless sternness of
disposition that may be a virtue in a slave-driver, but is hardly a
Christian grace. Captain F---- was one of our earliest visitors at the
rice plantation on our arrival, and I think I told you of his mentioning,
in speaking to me of the orange trees which formerly grew all round the
dykes there, that he had taken Basil Hall there once in their blossoming
season, and that he had said the sight was as well worth crossing the
Atlantic for as Niagara. To-day he referred to that again. He has resided
for a great many years on a plantation here, and is connected with our
neighbour, old Mr. C----, whose daughter, I believe, he married. He
interested me extremely by his description of the house Major ---- had
many years ago on a part of the island called St. Clair. As far as I can
understand there must have been an indefinite number of 'masters''
residences on this estate in the old Major's time; for what with the one
we are building, and the ruined remains of those not quite improved off
the face of the earth, and the tradition of those that have ceased to
exist, even as ruins, I make out no fewer than seven. How gladly would I
exchange all that remain and all that do not, for the smallest tenement
in your blessed Yankee mountain village!
Captain F---- told me that at St. Clair General Oglethorpe, the good and
brave English governor of the State of Georgia in its colonial days, had
his residence, and that among the magnificent live oaks which surround the
site of the former settlement, there was one especially venerable and
picturesque, which in his recollection always went by the name of General
Oglethorpe's Oak. If you remember the history of the colony under his
benevolent rule, you must recollect how absolutely he and his friend and
counsellor, Wesley, opposed the introduction of slavery in the colony. How
wrathfully the old soldier's spirit ought to haunt these cotton fields and
rice swamps of his old domain, with their population of wretched slaves! I
will ride to St. Clair and see his oak; if I should see him, he cannot
have much to say to me on the subject that I should not cry amen to.