FIFTY YEARS AGO.
GOVERNOR MATHEWS--INDIANS--TOPOGRAPHY OF MIDDLE GEORGIA--A NEW COUNTRY
AND ITS SETTLERS--BEAUX AND BELLES--EARLY TRAINING--JESUIT TEACHERS--A
MOTHER'S INFLUENCE--THE JEWS--HOMELY SPORTS--THE COTTON GIN--
CAMP-MEETINGS.
Immediately subsequent to the Revolution, all the country northwest of
the Ogeechee River, in the middle portion of the State of Georgia, was
divided into two counties, Franklin and Wilkes. It was a wilderness,
and contiguous to both the Creek and Cherokee Indian nations. No
country in the world was more beautiful in its topography, and few more
fertile in soil. Governor Mathews had purchased a home in this region;
and being at this time the principal man in the up-country, attracted
to his neighborhood the emigrants who began to come into the country.
Mathew's Revolutionary services in the command of a regiment in the
Virginia line were eminent; and his character for intrepidity naturally
made him a leader among such men as were likely to seek and make homes
in a new country.
Surrounded not only with all the difficulties presented to him by the
unsubdued wilderness, but the perils of savage warfare, he
unflinchingly went forward in his enterprise, daring and conquering
every obstacle nature and the savages interposed. He was an uneducated
man; but of strong mind, ardent temperament, and most determined will.
Many anecdotes are related of his intrepidity, self-respect, and
unbending will. He was a native of Augusta County, Virginia, and
emigrated to Georgia about the same time that Elijah Clarke came from
North Carolina and settled in that portion of the new territory now
known as Clarke County.
These two remarkable men formed a nucleus for those of their respective
States who came at subsequent periods to make a home in Georgia. They
were models to the youth of their respective neighborhoods, and gave
tone to the character of the population for many years after they were
in their graves. About the same time, the Earlys came from Virginia,
and the Abercrombies from North Carolina, and located respectively in
the new counties of Greene and Hancock. They were all men of strong
character, and all exercised great influence with those who accompanied
or came to them at a subsequent period.
Among the very first to locate in Greene County was Colonel David Love,
from North Carolina, and soon after came the Nesbits, Jacksons, and
Hortons; all of whom settled upon the head-waters of the Ogeechee and
upon Shoulderbone Creek.
The country was very attractive, the soil very generous, the water
good, and the health remarkable. The general topography of Middle
Georgia (as that portion of Georgia is now termed) is unsurpassed by
any other portion of the State for beauty--hill and dale, the one not
rising many feet above the other, generally with beautiful slopes, and
scarcely at any place with so much abruptness as to forbid cultivation.
Upon these lovely acclivities were built the cabins of the emigrants,
at the base of which, and near the house, was always to be found a
fountain of pure, sweet water, gushing and purling away over sand and
pebbles, meandering through a valley which it fertilized, and which
abounds in shrubs flowering in beauty, and sheltered by forests of oak,
hickory, pine, and gum.
Those who first came were frequently compelled to unite in a settlement
at some selected point, and, for defence against the inroads of the
savages, were obliged to build stockade forts, with blockhouses.
Nature seems to have prepared, during the Revolution, men for subduing
the wilderness and its savage inhabitants. They cheerfully encountered
all the difficulties and hazards thus presented, and constantly pursued
their object to its consummation. They came from every section of the
older communities, and all seemed animated with the same spirit. They
were orderly, but rude; and though beyond the pale of the law, they
were a law unto themselves; and these laws were strictly enforced by a
public opinion which gave them being and efficiency. With remarkably
simple habits and very limited opportunities, their wants were few; and
these were supplied by their own industry and frugality upon the farm.
Their currency was silver coin, Spanish milled, and extremely limited
in quantity. The little trade carried on was principally by barter, and
social intercourse was confined almost exclusively to the Sabbath. The
roads were rough and uneven, consisting almost entirely of a way
sufficiently wide for an ox-cart to pass, cut through the forest, where
the stumps and stones remained; and in soft or muddy places, the bodies
of small trees or split rails were placed side by side, so as to form a
sort of bridge or causeway, so rough as to test and not unfrequently to
destroy the wheels of the rude vehicles of the country. These obtained
and to this day receive the sobriquet of Georgia railroads or corduroy
turnpikes.
Very few of these immigrants were independent of labor; and most of
them devoted six days of the week to the cultivation of a small farm
and its improvement. Children learned early to assist in this labor,
and those who were sent to school, almost universally employed the
Saturday of each week in farm-work.
Man's social nature induces aggregation into communities, which
stimulates an ambition to excel in every undertaking. From this
emulation grows excellence and progress in every laudable enterprise.
These small communities, as they grew from accessions coming into the
country, began to build rude places for public worship, which were
primitive log-cabins, and served as well the purposes of a
school-house. Here the adult population assembled on the Sabbath, and
the children during the week. This intercourse, together with the
dependence of every one at times for neighborly assistance, was greatly
promotive of harmony and mutual confidence. Close and familiar
acquaintance revealed to all the peculiar character of every one--the
virtuous and the vicious, the energetic or the indolent, the noble and
the ignoble--and all very soon came to be appreciated according to
their merit.
Rude sports constituted the amusements of the young--wrestling,
leaping, and hunting; and he who was most expert at these was the
neighborhood's pride: he rode from church with the prettiest girl, and
was sure to be welcomed by her parents when he came; and to be selected
by such an one was to become the neighborhood's belle. At log-rollings,
quiltings, and Saturday-night frolics, he was the first and the most
admired.
The girls, too, were not without distinction--she who could spin the
greatest number of cuts of cotton, or weave the greatest number of
yards of cloth, was most distinguished, and most admired; but
especially was she distinguished who could spin and weave the neatest
fabric for her own wear, of white cloth with a turkey-red stripe--cut,
and make it fit the labor-rounded person and limbs--or make, for
father's or brother's wear, the finest or prettiest piece of jean--cook
the nicest dinners for her beau, or dance the longest without fatigue.
The sexes universally associated at the same school, (a system
unfortunately grown out of use,) and grew up together with a perfect
knowledge of the disposition, temperament, and general character of
each other. And, as assuredly as the boy is father to the man, the girl
is mother to the woman; and these peculiarities were attractive or
repulsive as they differed in individuals, and were always an influence
in the selection of husbands and wives. The prejudices of childhood
endure through life, particularly those toward persons. They are
universally predicated upon some trait of manner or character, and
these, as in the boy perceived, are ever prominent in the man. So, too,
with the girl, and they only grow with the woman. This is a paramount
reason why parties about contracting marriage-alliances should be well
aware of whom they are about to select. The consequence of this
intercommunication of the sexes from childhood, in the primitive days
of Georgia's first settlement, was seen in the harmony of families. In
the age which followed, a separation or divorce was as rare as an
earthquake; and when occurring, agitated the whole community. For then
a marriage was deemed a life-union, for good or for evil, and was not
lightly or inconsiderately entered into.
The separation of the sexes in early youth, and especially at school,
destroys or prevents in an eminent degree the restraining influences
upon the actions of each other, and that tender desire for the society
of each other, which grows from childhood's associations. Brought
together at school in early life, when the mind and soul are receiving
the impressions which endure through life, they naturally form
intimacies, and almost always special partialities and preferences.
Each has his or her favorite, these partialities are usually
reciprocal, and their consequence is a desire on the part of each to
see the other excel. To accomplish this, children, as well as grown
people, will make a greater effort than they will simply to succeed or
to gratify a personal ambition to that effect. Thus they sympathize
with and stimulate each other. Every Georgia boy of fifty years ago,
with gray-head and tottering step now, remembers his sweetheart, for
whom he carried his hat full of peaches to school, and for whom he made
the grape-vine swing, and how at noon he swung her there.
'T is bonny May; and I to-day
Am wrinkled seventy-four,
Still I enjoy, as when a boy,
Much that has gone before.
Is it the leaves and trees, or sheaves
Of yellow, ripened grain,
Which wake to me, in memory,
My boyhood's days again?
These seem to say 't is bonny May,
As when they sweetly grew,
And gave their yield, in wood and field,
To me, when life was new.
But nought beside--ah, woe betide!--
Which grew with me is here--
The home, the hall, the mill, the all
Which young life holds so dear.
The school-house, spring, and little thing,
With eyes so bright and blue,
Who'd steal away with me and play
When school's dull hours were through,
Are memories now; and yet, oh! how
It seems but yesterday
Since I was there, with that sweet dear,
In the wild wood at play.
The hill was steep where we would leap;
The grape-vine swing hung high,
And I would throw the swing up so
That, startled, she would cry.
But though she cried, she still relied
(And seemed to have no fear)
On me to hold the swing, and told
Me "not to frighten her."
But I was wild, and she no child,
And not afraid, I deemed;
So tossed as high the swing as I
Could--when she fell and screamed.
She was not harmed; but I, alarmed,
Ran quickly to assist,
And lifted her, all pale with fear,
Within my arms, and kissed
Her pallid cheek, ere she could speak:
But I had seen, you know,
(Ah! what of this? that sight and kiss
Was fifty years ago,)
That little boot and pretty foot,
So neatly formed and small--
The swelling calf, and stifled laugh--
How I remember all!
That lovely one has long since gone,
Is dust, and only dust, now;
Yet I recall that swing and fall,
As though it had been just now.
Take these lines, reader, if you please, as an evidence of how the
memories growing out of the associations of boyhood's school-days
endure through life. This association of the sexes operates as a
restraint upon both, salutary to good conduct and good morals. Such
restraints are far more effective than the staid lessons of some old,
wrinkled duenna of a school-mistress, whose failure to find a
sweetheart in girlhood, or a husband in youthful womanhood, has soured
her toward every man, and filled her with hatred for the happiness she
witnesses in wedded life, and which is ever present all around her. Her
warnings are in violation of nature. She has forgotten she was ever
young or inspired with the feelings and hopes of youth. Men are
monsters, and marriage a hell upon earth. Girls will not believe this,
and will get married. How much better, then, that they should
cultivate, in association, the generous and natural feelings of the
heart, and during the period allotted by nature for the growth of the
feelings natural to the human bosom, as well as to the growth of the
person and mind, than to be told what they should be by one
disappointed of all the fruits of them, and hating the world because
she is! It is the mother who should form the sentiments and direct the
conduct of daughters, and in their teachings should never forget that
nature is teaching also. Let their lessons always teach the proper
indulgences of nature, as well as the proper and prudent restraints to
the natural feelings of the human heart, and so deport themselves
toward their daughters from infancy as to win their confidence and
affection. The daughters, when properly trained, will always come with
their little complaints in childhood, and seek consolation, leaning
upon the parent's knee, and, with solicitude, look up into the parental
face for sympathy and advice. Home-teaching and home-training makes the
proper woman. When this is properly attended to, there needs no
boarding-school or female-college finish, which too frequently uproots
every virtuous principle implanted by the careful and affectionate
teaching of pious, gentle, and intelligent mothers. But few mothers,
who are themselves properly trained, forget nature in the training and
education of their daughters; and a truly natural woman is a blessing
to society and a crown of glory to her husband. I mean by a natural
training a knowledge of herself, as well as a knowledge of the offices
of life and the domestic duties of home. Every woman in her girlhood
should learn from her mother the mission and destinies of woman, as
well as what is due to society, to their families, to themselves, and
to God. The woman who enters life with a knowledge of what life is, and
what is due to her and from her in all the relations of life, has a
thousand chances for happiness through life unknown to the belle of the
boarding-school, who, away from home influences, is artificially
educated to be in all things prominent before the world, and entirely
useless in the discharge of domestic duties. She may figure as the
lady-president or vice-president of charitable associations, or the
lady-president of some prominent or useless society; but never as a
dutiful, devoted wife, or affectionate, instructive mother to her
children. Her household is managed by servants, and about her home
nothing evinces the neat, provident, and attentive housewife.
The whole system of education, as practised by the Protestants of the
United States, is wrong; religious prejudice prevents their learning
from the Catholics, and particularly from the Jesuit Catholics, who are
far in advance of their Protestant brethren. They learn from the child
as they teach the child. In the first place, none are permitted to
teach who are not by nature, as well as by education, qualified to
teach; nature must give the gentleness, the kindness, and the patience,
with the capacity to impart instruction. They learn, first, the child's
nature, the peculiarities of temper, and fashion these to obedience and
affection; they first teach the heart to love--not fear; they warn
against the evils of life--teach the good, and the child's duties to
its parents, to its brothers and sisters, to its teachers, to its
playmates, and to its God. When the heart is mellowed and yields
obedience in the faithful discharge of these duties, and the brain
sufficiently matured to comprehend the necessity of them, then
attention is directed to the mind; its capacities are learned and
known, and it is treated as this knowledge teaches is proper: it is, as
the farmer knows, the soil of his cultivation, and is prepared by
careful tillage before the seed is sown. The vision of the child's mind
is by degrees expanded; the horizon of its knowledge is enlarged, and
still the heart's culture goes on in kindness and affection. The pupil
has learned to love the teacher, and receives with alacrity his
teaching; he goes to him, without fear, for information on every point
of duty in morals, as on every difficult point of literary learning. He
knows he will be received kindly, and dealt with gently. Should he err,
he is never rebuked in public, nor harshly in private; the teacher is
aggrieved, and in private he kindly complains to the offender, whose
love for his preceptor makes him to feel, and repent, and to err no
more. All this is only known to the two; his school-fellows never know,
and have no opportunity for triumph or raillery. Thus taught from the
cradle, principles become habits; and on these, at maturity, he is
launched upon the world, with every safeguard for his future life. So
with the girl. With the experience of forty-five years, the writer has
never known a vicious, bad woman, wife, or mother trained in a Jesuit
convent, or reared by an educated Catholic mother.
The daughters of the pioneers of Georgia's early settlements received a
home education; at least, in the duties of domestic life. In the
discharge of these duties, they gained robust constitutions and
vigorous health; they increased the butcher's bill at the expense of
the doctor's; and such women were the mothers of the men who have made
a history for their country, for themselves and their mothers. I may be
prolix and prosaic, but I love to remember the mothers of fifty years
ago--she who gave birth to Lucius Q.C. and Mirabeau B. Lamar, to
William C. Dawson, Bishop George Pierce, Alexander Stuart, Joseph
Lumpkin, and glorious Bob Toombs. I knew them all, and, with
affectionate delight, remember their virtues, and recall the social
hours we have enjoyed together, when they were matrons, and I the
companion of their sons. And now, when all are gone, and time is
crowding me to the grave, the nobleness of their characters, the
simplicity of their bearing in the discharge of their household duties,
and the ingenuousness of their manners in social intercourse, is a
cherished, venerated memory. None of these women were ever in a
boarding-school, never received a lesson in the art of entering a
drawing-room or captivating a beau. They were sensible, modest, and
moral women, and their virtues live after them in the exalted character
of their illustrious sons. Their literary education in early life was,
of necessity, neglected, because of the want of opportunities; but in
the virtues and duties of life, they were thoroughly educated; and none
of these, or any of their like, was ever Mrs. President or Secretary of
any pretentious or useless society or association.
The little education or literature they acquired was in the old log
school-house, where boys and girls commingled as pupils under the
teaching of some honest pedagogue, who aspired to teach only reading,
writing, and arithmetic, in a simple way. It must not be supposed, from
the foregoing remarks, that I object to female education; on the
contrary, I would have every woman an educated woman. But I would have
this education an useful and proper education; one not wholly
ornamental and of no practical use, but one obtained at home, and under
the parental care and influence--such an one as made Mrs. Ripley, of
Concord, Massachusetts, the wonder and admiration of every sensible
man. She who studied La Place's _Mécanique Céleste_ when she was making
biscuit for her breakfast, and who solved a problem in the higher
mathematics when darning her stockings; an education where the useful
may be taught and learned to grace the ornamental--where the harp and
piano shall share with the needle and the cooking-stove, and the
pirouettes of the dancing-master shall be only a step from the laundry
and the kitchen.
The duties of wives and mothers are to home, husband, and children; and
this includes all of woman's duty to the country, and in the
intelligent and faithful discharge of which the great ends of life are
subserved. Good neighborhood, good government, and happy communities
secure the implanting and cultivation of good principles, and the
proper teaching of proper duties. The wise direction of literary
education to sons and to daughters, all comes within the range of home,
and home duties especially incumbent upon mothers. The domestic duties
and domestic labors should be a prime consideration in the education of
daughters. The association of the mother and child from birth, until
every principle which is to guide and govern it through life is
implanted, makes it the duty of the mother to know the right, and to
teach it, too. Example and precept should combine; and this necessity
compels a constant watch, not only over the child's, but over the
mother's language and conduct. All these duties imply a close devotion
to home: for here is the germ which is to grow into good or into evil,
as it is nursed and cultivated, or wickedly neglected. Begin at the
beginning, if you would accomplish well your work; and to do this,
application and assiduity are indispensable; and these are duties only
to be discharged at home. They admit of a relaxation of time sufficient
for every social duty exacted by society, if that society is such as it
should be; and if not, it should neither occupy time not attention.
In this is comprised all woman's duties, and they are paramount; for
upon their successful application depend the well-being of society and
the proper and healthful administration of wise and salutary laws. The
world is indebted to woman for all that is good and great. Let every
woman emulate Cornelia, the Roman mother, and, when a giddy, foolish
neighbor runs to her to exhibit newly purchased jewels, be found, like
the Roman matron, at her tambour-work; and like her, too, when her boys
from school shall run to embrace her, say to the thoughtless one,
"These are my jewels!" and Rome will not alone boast of her Gracchi and
their incomparable mother.
The duties of home cultivate reflection and stimulate to virtue. For
this reason, women are more pious than men; and for this reason, too,
they are more eminent in purity. Contact with the domestic circle does
not contaminate or corrupt, as the baser contact with the world is sure
to do.
The home circle is select and chaste--the promiscuous intermingling
with the world meretricious and contaminating. The mother not trained
to the appreciation and discharge of the domestic duties, was never the
mother of a great representative mind; because she is incapable of
imparting those stern principles of exalted morality and fixity of
purpose essential in forming the character of such men. The mother of
Cincinnatus was a farmer's wife; of Leonidas, a shepherdess; and the
mothers of Washington, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, William H, Crawford, and
Andrew Jackson were all the wives of farmers--rural and simple in their
pursuits, distinguished for energy and purity; constant in their
principles, and devoted to husband, home, and children. They never
dreamed it was woman's vocation or duty to go out into the world and
mingle in its strifes and contentions--but at home, to view them,
reflect upon their consequences to society, and upon the future of
their sons and daughters, and warn them what to emulate and what to
shun. They, as did their husbands, felt the necessity of preserving
that delicacy of thought and action which is woman's ornament, and
which is more efficient in rebuking licentiousness and profligacy in
the young and the old than all the teaching of the schools without such
example. Such were the mothers of the great and the good of our land,
and such the mothers of those men now prominent and distinguished in
the advocacy and support of the great principles of natural rights and
humanity.
It is a mooted question whether the purposes of human life demand a
high, classical education among the masses; or whether the general
happiness is promoted by such education. In the study of the human mind
in connection with human wants, we are continually met with
difficulties arising from the want of education; and quite as
frequently with those resulting from education. So much so, that we
hear from every wise man the declaration that as many minds are ruined
by over-education as from the want of education.
Man's curse is to labor. This labor must of necessity be divided to
subserve the wants of society--and common sense would teach that each
should be educated as best to enable him to perform that labor which
may fall to his lot in life. But who shall determine this lot? Every
day's experience teaches the observant and thinking man that no one
individual is uselessly born. To deny this proposition would be to call
in question the wisdom and goodness of the Creator. Every one possesses
proclivities for some one avocation, and should be educated for its
pursuit. This is manifested in very early life; in some much more
palpably than in others. This is always the case when the aptitude is
decisive. In such cases this idiosyncrasy will triumph over every
adverse circumstance, educational or otherwise; but in the less
palpable, it will not; and the design of nature may, and indeed
constantly is, disappointed, and improper education and improper
pursuits given. In these pursuits or callings, the person thus
improperly placed there never succeeds as he would had his bent or
mental inclination been observed, and his education directed to it, and
he given to its pursuit. Such persons labor through life painfully;
they have no taste or inclination for the profession, business, or
trade in which they are engaged; its pursuit is an irksome, thankless
labor; while he who has fallen into nature's design, and is working
where his inclinations lead, labors happily, because he labors
naturally. These inclinations the parent or guardian should observe;
and when manifested, should direct the education for the calling nature
has designed. Idiosyncrasies are transmissible or inherited. In old and
populous communities, where every pursuit or profession is full, the
father generally teaches his own to his son or sons. Where this has
extended through three or four generations, the proclivity is generally
strongly marked, and in very early childhood made manifest. Thus, in
the third or fourth generation, where all have been blacksmiths, the
child will be born with the muscles of the right arm more developed
than those of the left, and the first plaything he demands is a hammer.
So, where a family have been traders, will the offspring naturally
discover an aptness for bargaining and commerce. This is illustrated in
the instincts of the Jews, a people of extraordinary brain and
wonderful tenacity of purpose. Five thousand years since, a small
fragment of the Semitic race, residing in Mesopotamia between the
waters of the Euphrates and the Tigris, consisting of two families,
came into the land of Canaan, in Asia Minor; from them have descended
the people known as Jews. The country over which they spread, and which
is known as Judea, is not more than four hundred miles long by two
hundred and fifty in breadth, situated between two populous and
powerful empires, the Assyrian and Egyptian, who, waging war too
frequently, made the land of Judea their battle-field, and its people
the objects of persecution and oppression. The earnings of their labor
were deemed legitimate prey by both, and taken wherever found: they
were led into captivity by the Assyrians and by the Egyptians,
enslaved, and denied the legal right to possess the soil--which, to the
everlasting disgrace of Christian Europe, was a restriction upon this
wonderful people until within the present century. A blind bigotry
would have blotted them from the face of the earth, but for that
energy, talent, and enterprise possessed by them in a superior degree
to any people upon the globe. Inspired by a sublime belief that they
were the chosen people of God, no tyranny nor oppression could subdue
their energies. They prayed and labored, went forward with untiring
determination, upheld by their faith, and always, under the direst
distress, found comfort from this belief and the fruits of incessant
labor. The soil of their loved Canaan was barren, and yielded
grudgingly to the most persistent labor. This drove them to trade, and
an extended intercourse with the world. Without a national government
of sufficient power to protect them when robbed by the people or the
governments surrounding their own, they were compelled, for
self-protection, to resort to every means of concealing the earnings of
their enterprise and superior knowledge and skill from Christian and
pagan alike. They gave value to the diamond, that in a small stone,
easy of concealment, immense wealth might be hidden. They invented the
bill of exchange, by which they could at pleasure transfer from one
country to another their wealth, and avoid the danger of spoliation
from the hand of power and intolerance. Without political or civil
rights in any but their own country, they were compelled to the
especial pursuit of commerce for centuries, and we now see that
seven-tenths of all Jews born, as naturally turn to trade and commerce
as the infant to the breast. It has become an instinct.
To these persecutions the world is probably indebted for the
developments of commerce--the bringing into communication the nations
of the earth for the exchange of commodities necessary to the use and
comfort of each other, not of the growth or production of each,
enlarging the knowledge of all thus communicating, and teaching that
civilization which is the enlightenment and the blessing of
man--ameliorating the savage natures of all, and teaching that all are
of God, and equally the creatures of His love and protection; and
leading also to that development of mind in the Israelite which makes
him conspicuous to-day above any other race in the great attributes of
mind--directing the policy of European governments--first at the Bar,
first in science, first in commerce, first in wealth--preserving the
great traits of nationality without a nation, and giving tone, talent,
wealth, and power to all.
A few men only are born to think. Their minds expand with education,
and their usefulness is commensurate with it. This few early evince a
proclivity so strong for certain avocations as to enable those who have
the direction of their future to educate them for this pursuit. This
proclivity frequently is so overpowering as to prompt the possessor,
when the early education has been neglected, to educate himself for
this especial idiosyncrasy. This was the case with Newton--with
Stevenson, the inventor of the locomotive-engine, who, at twenty years
of age, was ignorant even of his letters. Arkwright was a barber, and
almost entirely illiterate when he invented the spinning-jenny. Train,
the inventor of the railroad, was, at the time of its invention, a
coal-heaver, and entirely illiterate.
These cases are rare, however. The great mass of mankind are born to
manual labor, and only with capacities suited for it. To attempt to
cultivate such minds for eminent purposes would be folly. Even
supposing they could be educated--which is scarcely supposable, for it
would seem a contravention of Heaven's fiat--they could no more apply
this learning, which would simply be by rote, than they could go to the
moon. Such men are not unfrequently met with, and are designated, by
common consent, learned fools. Nature points out the education they
should receive. In like manner with those of higher and nobler
attributes, educate them for their pursuits in life. It requires not
the same education to hold a plough, or drive an ox, that it does to
direct the course of a ship through a trackless sea, or to calculate an
eclipse; and what is essential to the one is useless to the other.--But
I am wandering away from the purpose of this work. Turning back upon
the memories of fifty years ago, and calling up the lives and the
histories of men, and women too, I have known, I was led into these
reflections, and ere I was aware they had stolen from my pen.
The rude condition of a country is always imparted to the character of
its people, and out of this peculiarity spring the rough sports and
love of coarse jokes and coarse humor. No people ever more fully
verified this truth than the Georgians, and to-day, even among her best
educated, the love of fun is a prevailing trait. Her traditions are
full of the practical jokes and the practical jokers of fifty years
ago. The names of Dooly, Clayton, Prince, Bacon, and Longstreet will be
remembered in the traditions of fun as long as the descendants of their
compatriots continue to inhabit the land. The cock-fight, the
quarter-race, and the gander-pulling are traditions now, and so is the
fun they gave rise to; and I had almost said, so is the honesty of
those who were participants in these rude sports. Were they not more
innocent outlets to the excessive energies of a mercurial and
fun-loving people than the faro-table and shooting-gallery of to-day?
Every people must have their amusements and sports, and these,
unrestrained, will partake of the character of the people and the state
of society. Sometimes the narrow prejudices of bigoted folly will
inveigh against these, and insist upon their restraint by law; and
these laws, in many of the States, remain upon the statute-book a
rebuking evidence of the shameless folly of fanatical ignorance. Of
these, the most conspicuous are the blue-laws of Connecticut, and the
more absurd and criminal laws of Massachusetts against amusements not
only necessary, but healthful and innocent. Even in the present
advanced state of knowledge and civilization, do we occasionally hear
ranted from the pulpit denunciations of dancing, as a sinful and
God-offending amusement. Such men should not be permitted to teach or
preach--it is to attenuate folly and fanaticism, to circumscribe the
happiness of youth, and belie the Bible.
The emigrants to Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia were all persons of
like character, combining a mixture of English, Irish, and Scotch
blood. They were enterprising, daring, and remarkable for great good
sense. Rude from the want of education and association with a more
polished people, they were nevertheless high-principled and full of
that chivalrous spirit which prompts a natural courtesy, courts danger,
and scorns the little and mean--open-handed in their generosity, and
eminently candid and honest in all their intercourse and dealings with
their fellow-men. These elements, collected from various sections,
combined to form new communities in the wild and untamed regions. In
their conflicts with the savages were shown a daring fearlessness and a
high order of military talent in very many of the prominent leaders of
the different settlements. They had no chronicler to note and record
their exploits, and they exist now only in the traditions of the
country.
The names of Shelby and Kenton, of Kentucky; of Davidson and Jackson,
of Tennessee; of Clarke, Mathews, and Adams, of Georgia; Dale, of
Alabama, and Claiborne, of Mississippi, live in the memory of the
people of their States, together with those of Tipton, Sevier, Logan,
and Boone, and will be in the future history of these States, with
their deeds recorded as those whose enterprise, energy, and
fearlessness won from the wilderness and the savage their fertile and
delightful lands, to be a home and a country for their posterity.
The children of such spirits intermarrying, could but produce men of
talent and enterprise, and women of beauty, intelligence, and virtue.
In the veins of these ran only streams of blue blood--such as filled
the veins of the leaders of the Crusades--such as warmed the hearts of
the O'Neals and O'Connors, of Wallace and Bruce, and animated the
bosoms of the old feudal barons of England, who extorted the great
charter of human liberty from King John. There was no mixture of the
pale Saxon to taint or dilute the noble current of the Anglo-Norman
blood which flowed through and fired the hearts of these descendants of
the nobility and gentry of Britain. They were the cavaliers in chivalry
and daring, and despised, as their descendants despised, the Roundheads
and their descendants, with their cold, dissembling natures,
hypocritical in religion as faithless in friendship, without one
generous emotion or ennobling sentiment.
It is not remarkable that conflict should ensue between races so
dissimilar in a struggle to control the Government: true to the
instincts of race, each contended for that which best suited their
genius and wants; and not at all remarkable that all the generous
gallantry in such a conflict should be found with the Celt, and all the
cruel rapacity and meanness with the Saxon. Their triumph, through the
force of numbers, was incomplete, until their enemies were tortured by
every cruelty of oppression, and the fabric of the Government dashed to
atoms. This triumph can only be temporary. The innate love of free
institutions, universal in the heart of the Celtic Southerner, will
_yet_ unite all the races to retrieve the lost. This done, victory is
certain.
The descendants of these pioneers have gone out to people the extended
domain reaching around the Gulf, and are growing into strength, without
abatement of the spirit of their ancestors. Very soon time and their
energies will repair the disasters of the recent conflict; and
reinvigorated, the shackles of the Puritan shall restrain no longer,
when a fierce democracy shall restore the Constitution, and with it the
liberty bequeathed by their ancestors.
With this race, fanaticism in religion has never known a place.
Rational and natural, they have ever worshipped with the heart and the
attributes of their faith. Truth, sincerity, love, and mercy have ever
marked their characters. Too honest to be superstitious, and too
sincere to be hypocrites, the concentrated love of freedom unites the
race, and the hatred of tyranny will stimulate the blood which shall
retrieve it from the dominion of the baser blood now triumphant and
rioting in the ruin they have wrought.
In the beginning of the settlements, and as soon as fears of the
inroads from the savages had subsided, attention was given to the
selection of separate and extended homes over the country, to the
opening of farms, and their cultivation. The first consideration was
food and raiment. All of this was to be the production of the farm and
home industry: grain enough was to be grown to serve the wants of the
family for bread, and to feed the stock; for this was to furnish the
meat, milk, and butter. Cotton enough to serve the wants of families,
together with the wool from the flock, and some flax, were of prime
consideration. All of this was prepared and manufactured into fabrics
for clothing and bedding at home. The seed from the cotton was picked
by hand; for, as yet, Whitney had not given them the cotton-gin. This
work was imposed most generally upon the children of families, white
and black, as a task at night, and which had to be completed before
going to bed; an ounce was the usual task, which was weighed and spread
before the fire; for it was most easily separated from the seed when
warm and dry. Usually some petty rewards stimulated the work. In every
family it was observed and commented upon, that these rewards excited
the diligence of the white children, but were without a corresponding
effect upon the black; and any one who has ever controlled the negro
knows that his labor is only in proportion to the coercion used to
enforce it. His capacity, physically, is equal to the white; but this
cannot be bought, or he persuaded to exert it of himself, and is given
only through punishment, or the fear of it. The removal of restraint is
to him a license to laziness; and the hope of reward, or the cravings
of nature, will only induce him to labor sufficiently to supply these
for immediate and limited relief.
Stock of every kind except horses was left to find a support in the
forest, and at that time, when their range was unlimited, they found it
in abundance. Increasing wants stimulated the cultivation of a market
crop to supply them, and indigo and tobacco were first resorted to.
Tobacco was the principal staple, and the method of its transportation
was extraordinary. As at the present day in Kentucky, it was pressed
into very large hogsheads. Upon these were pinned large wooden felloes,
forming the circle of a wheel around the hogshead at either end, and in
the centre of each head a large pin was inserted. Upon these pins were
attached shafts or thills, as to a cart, and to these teams, and thus
the hogshead was rolled along rough roads and through streams for
sometimes ninety miles to Augusta, for a market. When sold, the shafts
were reserved, and upon these was then erected a sort of box, into
which the few articles purchased were placed, and dragged home. These
articles almost universally consisted of some iron and steel, and a
little coffee and sugar, and sometimes a quarter of a pound of
tea--universally termed store-tea, to distinguish it from that made
from the root of the sassafras and the leaf of the cassia or
tepaun-bush.
Cotton was, to some little extent, cultivated near the seaboard in
Georgia and South Carolina, and cleaned of the seeds by a machine
similar to that used at the present day for preparing the sea-island
cotton for market. This was a tedious and troublesome method, and was
incapable of doing the work to any very great extent. Indigo, of a
superior quality to the American, was being produced in British India
and Central America, and the competition was reducing the price to the
cost of production. The same difficulty attended the growing of
tobacco. Virginia and Maryland, with their abundance of labor, were
competing, and cheapening the article to a price which made its
production unprofitable. At this juncture, Whitney invented the
cotton-gin, and the growth of cotton as a marketable crop commenced
upon a more extended scale. In a few years it became general--each
farmer growing more or less, according to his means. Some one man, most
able to do so, erected a gin-house, first in a county, then in each
neighborhood. These either purchased in the seed the cotton of their
neighbors, or ginned it and packed it for a certain amount of toll
taken from the cotton. This packing was done in round bales, and by a
single man, with a heavy iron bar, and was a most laborious and tedious
method; and the packages were in the most inconvenient form for
handling and transportation.
Up to this time the slave-trade had been looked upon most unfavorably
by the people of the South. Among the first sermons I remember to have
heard, was one depicting the horrors of this trade. I was by my
grandmother's side at Bethany, in Greene county, and, though a child, I
remember, as if of yesterday, the description of the manner of
capturing the African in his native wilds--how the mother and father
were murdered, and the boys and the girls borne away, and how England
was abused for the cruel inhumanity of the act. Although unused to the
melting mood, the old lady wiped from her eyes a tear, whether in
sorrow or sympathy for outraged humanity, or in compliment to the
pathos and power of her favorite preacher, I was too young to know or
have an opinion. I remember well, however, that she cried, for she
pinched me most unmercifully for laughing at her, and at home spanked
me for crying. Dear old grandmother! but yesterday I was at your grave,
where you have slept fifty-two years, and if I laughed above thy mould
at the memory of the many bouts we had more than sixty years ago, and,
from the blue bending above, thy spirit looked down in wrath upon the
unnatural outrage, be appeased ere I come; for I should fear to meet
thee, even in heaven, if out of humor! The roses bloomed above
you--sweet emblems of thy purity and rest--and there, close by you,
were the pear-trees, planted by your hands, around the roots of which
you gathered the rods of my reformation; for I was a truant child. You
meant it all for my good, no doubt; but to me it was passing through
purgatory then, to merit a future good in time. Ah! how well I remember
it--all of it. _Requiescat in pace_. I had almost irreverently said,
"Rest, cat, in peace."
It was at this period that the competition for accumulating money may
be said to have commenced in Middle Georgia. Labor became in great
demand, and the people began to look leniently upon the slave-trade.
The marching of Africans, directly imported, through the country for
sale, is a memory of sixty-five years ago. The demand had greatly
increased, and, with this, the price. The trade was to cease in 1808,
and the number brought over was daily augmenting, to hasten to make
from the traffic as much money as possible before this time should
arrive. The demand, however, was greater than could be supplied. From
house to house they were carried for sale. They were always young men
and women, or girls and boys, and their clothing was of the simplest
kind. That of the men and boys consisted of drawers, only reaching
midway the thigh, from the waist. The upper portions of the person and
the lower extremities were entirely nude. The females wore a chemise
reaching a few inches below the knee, leaving bare the limbs. This was
adopted for the purpose of exposing the person, as much as decency
would permit, for examination, so as to enable the purchaser to
determine their individual capacity for labor. This examination was
close and universal, beginning with an inspection of the teeth, which
in these young savages were always perfect, save in those where they
had been filed to a point in front. This was not uncommon with the
males. It was then extended to the limbs, and ultimately to the entire
person. They were devoid of shame, and yielded to this inspection
without the slightest manifestation of offended modesty. At first they
were indifferent to cooked food, and would chase and catch and eat the
grasshoppers and lizards with the avidity of wild turkeys, and seemed,
as those fowls, to relish these as their natural food.
From such is descended the race which our Christian white brothers of
the North have, in their devotion to their duty to God and their hatred
to us, made masters of our destiny. Our faith in the justice and
goodness of the same Divine Being bids us believe this unnatural and
destructive domination will not be permitted to endure for any lengthy
period. Could the curtain which veiled out the future sixty years ago,
have been lifted, and the vision of those then subduing the land been
permitted to pierce and know the present of their posterity, they would
then have achieved a separation from our puritanical oppressors, and
built for themselves and their own race, even if in blood, a separate
government, and have made it as nature intended it should be to this
favored land--a wise and powerful one.
Sooner or later these intentions of Divine wisdom are consummated. The
fallible nature of man, through ignorance or the foolish indulgence of
bad passions in the many, enable the few to delude and control the
many, and to postpone for a time the inevitable; but as assuredly as
time endures, nature's laws work out natural ends. Generations may pass
away, perhaps perish from violence, and others succeed with equally
unnatural institutions, making miserable the race, until it, like the
precedent, passes from the earth. Yet these great laws work on, and in
the end triumph in perfecting the Divine will.
To the wise and observant this design of the Creator is ever
apparent; to the foolish and wicked, never.
John Wesley had visited Savannah, and travelled through the different
settlements then in embryo, teaching the tenets and introducing the
simple worship of the church of his founding, after a method
established by himself, and which gave name and form to the sect, now,
and almost from its incipiency known as Methodist. This organization
and the tenets of its faith were admirably suited to a rude people, and
none perhaps could have been more efficient in forming and improving
such morals. Unpretending, simple in form, devoid of show or ceremony,
it appealed directly to the purer emotions of our nature, and through
the natural devotion of the heart lifted the mind to the contemplation
and inspired the soul with the love of God. Its doctrines, based upon
the purest morality, easily comprehensible, and promising salvation to
all who would believe, inspiring an enthusiasm for a pure life, were
natural, and naturally soon became wide-spread, and as the writer
believes, has done more in breaking away the shackles of ignorance and
debasing superstition from the mind, than any other system of worship
or doctrine of faith taught by man; and to this, in a great degree, is
due the freedom of thought, independence of feeling and action,
chivalrous bearing, and high honor of the Southern people. Inculcating
as it does the simple teachings of the gospel of Christ,--to live
virtuously--do no wrong--love thy neighbor as thyself, and unto all do
as you would be done by,--a teaching easy of comprehension, and which,
when sternly enforced by a pure and elevated public sentiment, becomes
the rule of conduct, and society is blessed with harmony and right.
This moral power is omnipotent for good, concentrating communities into
one without divisions or dissensions, to be wielded for good at once
and at all times. Nothing evil can result from such concentration of
opinions being directed by the vicious and wicked, so long as the moral
of this faith shall control the mind and heart.
Camp-meetings, an institution of this church, and which were first
commenced in Georgia, are a tradition there now. Here and there through
the country yet remains, in ruinous decay, the old stand or
extemporized pulpit from which the impassioned preacher addressed the
assembled multitude of anxious listeners; and around the square now
overgrown with brush-wood and forest-trees, prostrate and rotten, the
remains of the cabin tents may be seen, where once the hospitality of
the owners and worshippers was dispensed with a heartiness and
sincerity peculiar to the simple habits, and honest, kindly emotions of
a rude and primitive people.
How well do I remember the first of these meetings I ever witnessed! I
was a small lad, and rode behind my father on horseback to the ground.
It was sixty-five years ago. The concourse was large, consisting of the
people of all the country around--men, women, and children, white and
black. Around a square enclosing some six acres of ground, the tents
were arranged--arbors of green boughs cut from the adjoining forest
formed a shelter from the sun's rays. In front of all of these, shading
the entrance to the tent, under this friendly sheltering from the heat
of the sun, assembled the owners and the guests of each, in social and
unceremonious intercourse. This was strictly the habit of the young
people; and here, in evening's twilight, has been plighted many a vow
which has been redeemed by happy unions for life's journey, and to be
consummated when the cold weather came. In the rear of the tents were
temporary kitchens, presided over in most instances by some old,
trusted aunty of ebon hue, whose pride it was to prepare the meals for
her tent, and to hear her cooking praised by the preachers and the less
distinguished guests of master and mistress. The sermons were preached
in the morning, at noon, and at twilight, when all the multitude were
summoned to the grand central stand in the square of the encampment by
sounding a tin trumpet or ox-horn. My childish imagination was fired at
the sight of this assemblage. My wonder was, whence come all these
people? as converging from the radius around came the crowding
multitude, without order and without confusion--the farmer and his
brusque wife side by side, leading their flock and friends: he with an
ample chair of home manufacture slung by his side for the wife's
comfort as she devoutly listened to the pious brother's comforting
sermon--the guests and the young of the family following in respectful
silence, and at a respectful distance, all tending to the great arbor
of bushes covering the place of worship. Over all the space of the
encampment the under-brush had been carefully removed; but the great
forest-trees (for these encampments were always in a forest) were left
to shade as well as they might the pulpit-stand and grounds. All around
was dense forest, wild and beautiful as nature made it.
How well the scene and the worship accorded! There was congruity in
all--the woods, the tents, the people, and the worship. The impressions
made that day upon my young mind were renewed at many a camp-meeting in
after years; and so indelibly impressed as only to pass away with
existence.
The preacher rose upon his elevated platform, and, advancing to the
front, where a simple plank extending from tree to tree, before him,
formed a substitute for a table or desk, where rested the hymn-book and
Bible, commenced the service by reading a hymn, and then, line by line,
repeating it, to be sung by all his congregation.
Whoever has listened, in such a place, amidst a great multitude, to the
singing of that beautiful hymn commencing, "Come, thou fount of every
blessing," by a thousand voices, all in accord, and not felt the spirit
of devotion burning in his heart, could scarcely be moved should an
angel host rend the blue above him, and, floating through the ether,
praise God in song. In that early day of Methodism, very few of those
licensed to preach were educated men. They read the Bible, and
expounded its great moral truths as they understood them. Few of these
even knew that it had been in part originally written in the Hebrew
tongue, and the other portion in that of the Greeks; but he knew it
contained the promise of salvation, and felt that it was his mission to
preach and teach this way to his people, relying solely for his power
to impress these wonderful truths upon the heart by the inspiration of
the Holy Spirit. For this reason the sermons of the sect were never
studied or written, and their excellence was their fervor and
impassioned appeals to the heart and the wild imaginations of the
enthusiastic and unlearned of the land. Genius, undisciplined and
untutored by education, is fetterless, and its spontaneous suggestions
are naturally and powerfully effective, when burning from lips
proclaiming the heart's enthusiasm. Thus extemporizing orations almost
daily, stimulated the mind to active thought, and very many of these
illiterate young Methodist preachers became in time splendid orators.
It was the celebrated Charles James Fox who said to a young man just
entering Parliament, if he desired to become a great orator, and had
the genius and feeling from nature, all he had to do was to speak often
and learn to think on his feet. It is to this practice the lawyer and
the preacher owe the oratory which distinguish these above every other
class of men. And yet, how few of them ever attain to the eminence of
finished orators. Eloquence and oratory are by no means identical: one
is the attribute of the heart, the other of the head; and eloquence,
however unadorned, is always effective, because it is born of the
feelings; and there is ever a sympathy between the hearts of men, and
the words, however rude and original, which bubble up from the heart
freighted with its feelings, rush with electrical force and velocity to
the heart, and stir to the extent of its capacities. Oratory, however
finished, is from the brain, and is an art; it may convince the mind
and captivate the imagination, but never touches the heart or stirs the
soul. To awaken feelings in others, we must feel ourselves. Eloquence
is the volume of flame, oratory the shaft of polished ice; the one
fires to madness, the other delights and instructs.
Religion is the pathos of the heart, and must be awakened from the
heart's emotions. The imagination is the great attribute of the mind,
gathering and creating thought and inspiring feeling. Hence, the
peculiar system of the Methodists in their worship is the most
efficient in proselyting, and especially with a rude, imaginative
people.
The camp-meeting was an admirable device for this purpose, and its
abandonment by the sect is as foolish as would be that of a knight who
would throw away his sword as he was rushing to battle. Fashion is
omnipotent in religion, as in other things, and with the more general
diffusion of education, camp-meetings have come to be considered as
vulgar and unfashionable. To be vulgar, is to be common; to be common,
is to be natural. The masses, and especially in democratic communities,
must always be vulgar or common--must always be, in the main,
illiterate and rude; and it is for the conversion and salvation of
these multitudes the preacher should struggle, and in his efforts his
most efficient means should be used.
The camp-meeting, at night, when all the fire-stands are ablaze, and
the multitude are assembled and singing, is beyond description
picturesque: when, too, some eloquent and enthusiastic preacher is
stimulating to intense excitement the multitude around him with the
fervor of his words, and the wild, passionate manifestations of his
manner, to see the crowd swaying to and fro, to hear the groans and
sobs of the half-frenzied multitude, and, not unfrequently, the
maddened shriek of hysterical fear, all coming up from the
half-illuminated spot, is thrillingly exciting. And when the sermon is
finished, to hear all this heated mass break forth into song, the wild
melody of which floats, in the stillness of night, upon the breeze to
the listening ear a mile away, in cadences mournfully sweet, make the
camp-meeting among the most exciting of human exhibitions. In such a
school were trained those great masters of pulpit oratory, Pierce,
Wynans, Capers, and Bascomb. Whitfield was the great exemplar of these;
but none, perhaps, so imitated his style and manner as John Newland
Maffit and the wonderful Summerfield.
Like all that is great and enduring, the Methodist Church had its
beginning among the humble and lowly. Rocked in the cradle of penury
and ignorance, it was firmly fixed in the foundations of society,
whence it rose from its own purity of doctrine and simplicity of
worship to command the respect, love, and adoption of the highest in
the land, and to wield an influence paramount in the destinies of the
people and the Government. Its ministers are now the educated and
eloquent of the Church militant. Its institutions of learning are the
first and most numerous all over the South, and it has done for female
education in the South more than every other sect of Christians,
excepting, perhaps, the Roman Catholic. In the cause of education its
zeal is enlisted, and its organization is such as to bring a wonderful
power to operate upon the community in every section of the South and
West. That this will accomplish much, we have only to look to the
antecedents of the Church to determine. Like the coral insect, they
never cease to labor: each comes with his mite and deposits it; and,
from the humblest beginning, this assiduity and contribution builds up
great islands in the sea of ignorance--rich in soil, salubrious in
climate, and, finally, triumphant in the conceptions of the chief
architect--completing for good the work so humbly begun.