MY BROTHER’S NARRATIVE
My holiday, the months of December, 1863, and January, 1864, were passed
with my father on the coast, where he had planting, salt boiling, and
freighting up the rivers, to look after. Salt was a very scarce article
at that time, and my father had it boiled from sea-water on the salt
creeks of the Waccamaw seashore, behind Pawley’s Island. The vats were
made chiefly of old mill boilers, cut in half and mounted on brick, with
furnace below for wood, and a light shed above, to protect from the
weather. A scaffold was built out in the salt creek, and a pump placed
there to lift the water about twenty feet, and from the pump a wooden
trough carried the water to the boilers, some 300 yards away, in the
forest. At flood-tide, when the water came in from the sea, was the best
time to pump, as the water had then more salt and less of the seepage
water from the marshlands. Sometimes, when a man was upon the scaffold,
pumping, a federal gunboat, lying off the coast, would throw a shell
over the island, which cut off the sight of the works, in the direction
of the smoke from the boiling vats; when this happened the man came down
in wild haste and made for the brush. These interruptions became so
frequent that finally the boiling had to be done at night, when the
smoke was not visible. My father sent me over to inspect the salt-works
and report to him more than once, so that I was familiar with the
situation. Wagons came long distances from the interior to buy or barter
for salt. This work was carried on entirely by negroes, without any
white man in charge. My father had the faculty for organization, and his
negro men were remarkably well trained, intelligent, and self-reliant.
Another work which he instituted and developed was the transporting of
rice and salt up the rivers to the railroad. The ports, being blockaded,
and no railroad within forty miles, it became necessary to make some
outlet for the rice-crop to get to market and to the army. He had two
lighters built, which were decked over and secured from weather, and
carried from 150 to 200 tierces (600 pounds each) of clean or marketable
rice. On each lighter he put a captain, with a crew of eight men. These
lighters were loaded at the rice-mill and taken up the Pee Dee River,
to the railroad bridge near Mars Bluff, to Society Hill, and sometimes
to Cheraw. It was a long, hard trip, and when the freshet was up it
seemed sometimes to be impossible to carry a loaded barge against the
current, by hand--but it was done. At such times the only progress was
made by carrying a line ahead, making fast to a tree on the river-bank,
and then all hands warping the boat up by the capstan; then make fast
and carry the line ahead again. The crew were all able men. They had
plenty to eat and seemed to enjoy themselves. I have often been with my
father when the boats returned from a trip and the captain came to make
his report; it was worth listening to; the most minute account of the
trip, with all its dangers and difficulties. There was seldom a charge
of any serious character against any of the crew; each knew that such a
charge made by the captain meant the immediate discharge from the crew
and a return to field work.
My father also sent rice up the Black River to the Northeastern Railroad
at Kingstree, and finally built a warehouse, making a new station, which
is now Salter’s; here he put a very intelligent negro, Sam Maham, in
charge; he received the rice from the captains of the river-craft, and
delivered it to the railroad on orders, and I have never heard a word of
complaint against him. Black River, however, had to be navigated by
smaller craft than the Pee Dee, open flats, boats square at each end,
and 50 feet long by 12 feet wide. I well remember the report made by the
captain of the first crew sent up Black River. It was thrilling in
parts. He had to cut his way through after leaving the lower river,
which was open for navigation. The river had never been used high up for
that sort of craft, and was full of logs, etc.; besides, in places it
was difficult to find the right channel, and his description of going
through a section where the river was broken up by low islands, or
shoals into several apparent channels, all of which were shallow, except
one, was most exciting. None of these men had ever been on this river or
in that locality before, and only the drilling and direction given them
by my father could have carried them through; but they went through, and
after that there was a regular line going. But these flats being smaller
and open and no decks, were much more liable to damage the cargo; still
very little was lost, strange to say. They had good sailcloth covers,
and the crews took an interest in the work. The captain and crew making
the best record were always well rewarded.
I became familiar with all this work during the winter of 1863-64. My
father wanted me to learn as much as possible of each branch of the
work, and knew how to direct my attention to the chief details to be
studied and worked out.
At night we sat together and had milk and potatoes, with sassafras tea
for supper, and it was very good. One who has never had to depend on
sassafras tea does not know how good it is. My father had many
opportunities for getting in all the supplies that he wanted, as well as
for making a good deal of money by exchanging his rice and salt for
cotton, and then sending the cotton out by the blockade-runners to
Nassau; but he was opposed to the running of the blockade for private
gain. How often as we sat by the fire in the evenings did he talk to me
on that and other subjects of public interest. His idea was that the
Confederate Government should control the cotton; buy it up at home, pay
for it in gold, ship it out by blockade-runners, sell it in Europe for
the government, and bring in such supplies as were most
needed--medicines, shoes, clothes, as well as arms, etc. In this way,
he said, the government would be free from the horde of speculators who
were making fortunes out of our misfortunes, and thus be able to build
up a financial standing in Europe that would go far toward deciding the
status of the Confederate States. He was most earnest on this subject,
and I know that he made more than one trip to Richmond for the purpose
of urging some such measure on President Davis, but he returned
disappointed, and I remember after one trip he seemed entirely hopeless
as to the outcome. Feeling, as he did, he would never avail himself of
the many opportunities which offered, except to get such things as were
prime necessities. In February, 1864, I returned to my school in
Abbeville district. I drove away from the Chicora house on my way to the
railroad, forty miles distant, leaving my father standing on the
platform at the front door. That was my last sight of him. He died in
April, 1864, and though I was written for, the mails and transportation
were so slow that he was buried before I got home.
I returned to school after being at home a few weeks in April, and
remained until the following October, when the school was dismissed.
The call for recruits for the army was now from sixteen years up, and
would include many who were at the school. I went to my mother at
Society Hill and was to get ready to join the corps of State Cadets.
While I was at Society Hill my mother heard from the overseer at Chicora
Wood, that he had some trouble about repairing the freight-lighters.
This being a most important matter and requiring to be promptly attended
to, my mother decided to send me down to see if I could help the
overseer. So I started off on a little brown horse to ride the ninety
miles down to the rice country. I arrived safely, and after a few days
began to make headway with the work. The largest lighter had been in the
water a good long time and was very heavy to haul out, but was badly in
need of repairing. It was my first experience of unwilling labor; the
hands were sulky. My father’s talks and teaching now came in to the aid
of my own knowledge of the negro nature, and before long I had the big
lighter hauled up, high and dry. We had and could get no oakum for
calking, but my father had devised a very respectable substitute in
cypress bark; it was stripped from the tree and then broken, somewhat
as flax is, and then worked in the hands until quite pliable; this did
wonderfully well, though it did not last as well as oakum. If pitch was
freely applied to the freshly calked seams a very good job was made. We
got the lighter calked and cleaned and simply painted, and put back in
the water ready for work.
I then returned to my mother at Society Hill and remained there until I
joined the Arsenal Cadets, and we entered the active service.
My father’s eldest brother, Joseph, while a student at the South
Carolina College was appointed lieutenant in the United States army by
President Madison and served in Florida in the War of 1812. He attained
the rank of general, and all his life was given that title. Though he
died at forty-five he had been married three times, his last wife, Mary
Allan, only, having children. She had two sons, Joseph Blyth and William
Allan. She lived only a few years after her husband, and the little boys
were left to the guardianship of my father and the care of my mother,
and Chicora Wood was their home until they grew up. Joseph Blyth Allston
was a gifted man, a clever lawyer and eloquent pleader. His literary
talent was above the ordinary; he has written some poems of great
beauty; “Stack Arms” and the longer poem, “Sumter,” deserve a high place
in the war poetry of the South. By the merest chance a sketch of my
father, written by him, at the request of some one whose individuality
is unknown to me, has fallen into my hands at this moment, and I gladly
quote from it here, leaving out only the repetitions of facts already
stated:
“All the offices held by Robert F. W. Allston in the State were filled
by him with credit to himself and usefulness to the country, but his
private virtues gave him a much more enduring claim to the regard of his
contemporaries and of posterity. In the forties he had been offered the
office of governor and had peremptorily declined it. This was not for
want of ambition, but because he had dined at Colonel Hampton’s a few
days before, in company with Mr. Hammond, who aspired to that office,
and without formally pledging himself, had tacitly acquiesced in his
candidacy. A liberal economy marked his expenditures, and a cultivated
hospitality made his home the centre of a large circle of friends. The
rector of the parish (Prince Frederick’s) dined with him every Sunday,
with his wife. At dessert the Methodist minister generally arrived from
some other appointment, took a glass of wine, and then preached to the
negroes in the plantation chapel in the avenue, constructed in the
Gothic style by his negro carpenters, under his direction.
“He did much to improve the breeds of cattle, sheep, and swine in his
neighborhood, and was a constant correspondent of the Bureau of
Agriculture at Washington. He was an active member of the South Carolina
Jockey Club, of the St. Cecilia Society, and of the South Carolina
Historical Society of Charleston; of the Winyah Indigo Society of
Georgetown, of which he was long president; of the Hot and Hot Fish Club
of Waccamaw; the Winyah and All Saints Agricultural Society, and the
Agricultural Association of the Southern States. He was also a member of
the Order of Masons.
“He was an eminently successful rice-planter and made many improvements
in the cultivation of that crop and the drainage of the rice-lands.
“‘Allston on Sea-Coast Crops’ is the title of a valuable treatise on
this subject, which unfortunately is now out of print. Yet one of his
best overseers, when asked if he was not a great planter, replied:
“‘No, sir, he is no planter at all.’
“‘To what, then, do you attribute his great success?’
“‘To his power of organization, sir, and the system and order which he
enforces on all whom he controls.’
“That was indeed the keynote of his character. He was most regular in
his own habits, and all within his reach felt the influence of his
example. Especially marked was it upon the negroes whom he owned. Even
at this day (1900) they show by their thrift and industry the influence
of his training and speak of him with pride and affection.
“Political matters and his duty as a member of the Protestant Episcopal
Church often called him to the North, and sometimes he took a trip there
with his family for pleasure. In 1855 he took his wife and eldest
daughter abroad, and they travelled all over the Continent. He took a
prize at the Paris Exposition that year for rice grown on his
plantation, Chicora Wood, Pee Dee--a silver medal. The rice was
presented to the war office, Department of Algeria, in the autumn, and
was in such perfect preservation (in glass jars) that in the succeeding
year it was again exhibited under the auspices of the Department of War,
and was adjudged worthy of a gold medal [which has been placed in the
National Museum in Washington for the present.--E. W. A. P.].
“Usually, however, he spent the summers on the sea-beach of Pawley’s
Island, and enforced by example as well as precept the duty of the
land-owner to those dependent on him. Here he fished and hunted deer, of
which he has been known to send home two by 10 A.M., shot on his way to
the plantation. Here he was within easy reach of his estates, and could
exercise an intelligent and elevating control over the 600 negroes who
called him master. This beautiful and bountiful country, watered by the
noble stream of the Waccamaw and the Pee Dee, and washed by the waves of
the Atlantic Ocean, was very near to his heart. And here, amid the
scenes in which he had spent his life, he died at his home, Chicora
Wood, April 7, 1864, and lies buried in the yard of the old Church of
Prince George, Winyah, at Georgetown, South Carolina.”--(_Extract from
paper by Jos. Blyth Allston._)
* * * * *
And now I must leave this imperfect portrait of my father. Of his
illness and death I shall tell elsewhere.
His taking away was softened to me afterward by the feeling that he did
not live to see the downfall of the hopes he had cherished for the
success of the Confederacy, nor the humiliation of the State he had so
loved, when its legislative halls were given up to the riotous
caricature of State government by the carpetbaggers and negroes, who
disported themselves as officials of the State of South Carolina, from
the surrender of Lee until 1876, when Wade Hampton redeemed the State
from its degradation.
It was only Hampton’s wonderful power and influence over the men, brave
as lions, whom he had led in battle, that prevented awful bloodshed and
woe. In 1876 I heard a high-spirited, passionate man, who had been one
of Butler’s most daring scouts, say, when hearing of a youth whose front
teeth had been knocked out by a negro on the street: “Why, I would let a
negro knock me down and trample on me, without lifting a hand, for
Hampton has said: ‘Forbear from retaliation, lift not a hand, no matter
what the provocation; the State must be redeemed!’” And, thank God, it
was redeemed! Those brave men did not suffer and bear insult and assault
in vain. My faith in my father is so great that I cannot help feeling
that if he had lived he would have been able to prevent things from
reaching the depths they did. Of one thing I am certain, that if his
life had been spared until after the war we as a family would not have
been financially ruined. He would have been able to evolve some system
by which, with his own people, he could have worked the free labor
successfully and continued to make large crops of rice and corn, as he
had done all through the war. His was a noble life, and Milton’s words
come to my mind:
“There’s no place here for tears or beating of the breast.”
_PART II_
MY MOTHER