“Unionism”—Black and White, in Charleston and Through South Carolina.
A very few Union men could be seen. Perhaps it would be more accurate to
say, a few could be found less treasonable than the majority of South
Carolinians.
“To be frank with you,” said one of these men, a sallow-faced country
lawyer, from the mountain district, “to be frank with you, we were all
Rebels. The North has never understood, and I doubt if it ever will
understand, the absolute unanimity with which, after the war was begun,
we all supported it. While there was any use in it, we resisted
secession; but after the State seceded, our district, which was always
strongly Union, sent more and better volunteers to the war than any
other.”
“You mean, then, that after secession was accomplished, the former
Unionists became more violent Rebels than the rest; and that,
practically, not a soul in the State remained true to the Union, except
the negroes?”
“Well, I suspect you’re a little mistaken about the negroes. They’re
very ignorant, and most of them were, and are, governed by their
masters’ notions.”
“What security have we, in restoring political power to a community
disposed toward us as yours was, and still feeling as you now
represent?”
“Oh, our people are impulsive, and they are always decided, one way or
the other!”
“Suppose Representatives should be admitted to Congress, and South
Carolina should thus be clothed with all her old power. You who, before
secession, were the Union men, will be the only voters now; but in two
or three years, of course, everybody will vote again. Will not you
original Union men be again outnumbered by the original secessionists?”
“I don’t believe we ever were outnumbered. I don’t believe there ever
was a majority for secession in South Carolina.”
“The poll books tell a different story.”
“Yes; but remember we had been fighting secession for thirty years, and
had got tired of it. Men said these restless spirits will never be quiet
until they have tried secession. If we don’t let them try it now,
they’ll keep us in a constant turmoil until we do. It is bound to come
some time, and we may as well spare ourselves further trouble and let it
come now.”
“In other words, then, men said, let the Union be destroyed, with
whatever attendant horrors, rather than one should be bothered to keep
up this perpetual struggle.”
“Well, not exactly that. You must remember there was a tremendous
pressure. I myself had my house surrounded by a hundred and fifty armed
men, one night, before the election, because they thought I was a Union
man. There was no making head against the current.”
“By your showing, then, the rebel element was resistless before the
passage of the secession ordinance, and universal after it. As you
frankly say, you were all rebels. We have incurred an enormous debt in
subduing you, and we know that there is a small party at the North
openly, and a larger one secretly, desirous of repudiating that debt, in
order to shake off the burden of heavy taxation. Now, if South Carolina,
and other States occupying her position, are restored to power in the
nation, what security have we that all you rebels would continue voting
for heavy taxation to pay the debt incurred in whipping you? Would there
not be very great danger of your uniting with this minority at the
North, and thus securing a national majority in favor of repudiation?”
“Well, our attention has never been called to that subject, and we were
not aware that there was likely to be any portion whatever of your
people favorable to repudiation. I can’t say, however, what our more
violent people would do. There has been very little comparison of views;
and all our efforts must first be given to getting our civil authority
and power restored, without considering what questions may come up back
of that.”
“With what political party at the North, then, would your people be more
likely to affiliate?”
“Of course with the Democratic. We have understood all along that it
sympathized more with us than any other; that it was more opposed to the
war, more disposed to leave us alone with our slaves, more ready for
favorable terms of peace.”
“And if any considerable portion of that party were to propose
lightening the taxes by repudiating (in reduction of interest or
otherwise) part of the debt incurred in subduing you, you would be very
apt to unite with them?”
“I don’t know but we would; but I can’t say; for, as yet, we are giving
no attention to anything excepting reorganization!”
Recurring to his admissions concerning the bitterness of the original
secessionists, I asked: “What security will we have, if political power
should be fully restored to South Carolina, that the secessionists may
not regain control of the State Government, and prove as pestilent as
ever, if not in the field, then in Congress, and in the old expedients
of obnoxious State legislation?”
“Oh, a barrel of cider never ferments twice.”
I asked about the popular feeling toward Jeff. Davis, curious to see if
the hatred to him, of which we have heard at the North, really exists
among any class in South Carolina except the negroes. My Union man
replied: “There is a very general feeling of great kindness to him, and
great sympathy for his present misfortunes. One party in the South
assailed his administration very bitterly; but the feeling was not, to
any extent, a personal one. He is greatly admired and loved by our
people.”
“Was the South exhausted of men when the rebellion broke down? Was it
really impossible to re-enforce Lee’s army, and, if so, what citizens
have you now for re-organizing State government except the rebel
soldiers, unless, indeed, you reckon the negroes?”
“The South never was exhausted of men, sir; there were plenty of them
everywhere. Disaffection, weariness, indisposition to the long strain of
an effort that took more than four years to accomplish its purpose; that
was what broke down the Confederacy. There were plenty of men all the
time, but they dodged the conscripting officer, or deserted at the first
chance they got. Of course, our losses by death and disabling wounds
have been terribly great; but the race of arms-bearing men in South
Carolina is not extinct.”[14]
* * * * *
On the afternoon of our last day’s stay in Charleston, a meeting, in one
of the negro churches, afforded me the first opportunity of the trip to
see large masses of negroes together. It was called a week or two ago by
General Saxton, who stands in the light of a patron saint to all these
people; but it was doubtless swelled by the hope that Chief Justice
Chase, whom General Saxton had earnestly invited, might consent to be
present. He had emphatically refused, the evening before, and had
forbidden any announcement of his name; but had finally said that, if he
could go unheralded, he would like to see the negroes together.
The church is of the largest size, and belongs exclusively to the
negroes, who have their own negro pastor, occupy pews in the body of the
building, and send the poor people to the galleries, very much after the
fashion of their white brethren. The pavement in front was crowded, and
the steps were almost impassable. A white-wooled old deacon saw my
difficulty in forcing my way up the steaming aisle, and, crowding the
negroes and negresses aside with little ceremony, led me to a seat
almost under the pulpit, where I found, perhaps, a dozen whites, all
told. Among them was Colonel Beecher—a brother of Henry Ward Beecher—and
at the table sat the inevitable reporter. If the people of Timbuctoo
were to have a great meeting to consider the subject of their rights,
and were to give a week’s notice of it, I believe some gentleman with a
pocket full of sharpened lead pencils, and a phonographic red-ruled
note-book under his arm, would come walking up at the last moment and
announce himself as the special reporter for some enterprising American
journal.
A Major-General, in full uniform, occupied the desk and was addressing
the crammed audience of negroes in a plain, nervous, forcible manner. It
was an odd sight, but General Saxton certainly adorns the pulpit. Ladies
would call him a handsome man; and his black hair and luxurious English
whiskers and mustache would be their especial admiration. He looks—to
judge of his intellect by his face and head—narrow, but intense; not
very profound in seeing the right, but energetic in doing it when seen;
given to practice, rather than theory; and, withal, good and true. He is
the first regular army officer who was found willing to undertake this
work of caring for and superintending the freedmen; and he has done it
faithfully, under all manner of slights and obloquy from brother
officers, who thought his work unworthy of West Point. And yet he
undertook it, not from any special love of the negro, but because he was
ordered. “I would have preferred being in the field,” he said simply,
last night, “but I was ordered to do this thing, and I have tried to do
it faithfully, till the Government gave me something else to do. I was
educated in its school and for its service, and I thought it my business
to do whatever it required.” The Government has rarely been so fortunate
in selecting its agents for tasks that required peculiar adaptability.
The audience was a study. Near the pulpit sat a coal-black negro, in the
full uniform of a Major of the army, with an enormous regulation hat—be
sure there was no lack of flowing plume, or gilt cord and knots—disposed
on the table beside him. At every emphatic sentence in the General’s
speech he shouted, “Hear, hear,” and clapped his hands, with the unction
and gravity of an old parliamentarian. Near him were two others in
uniform, one a mulatto, the other scarcely more than a quadroon, and
both with very intelligent faces, and very modest and graceful in their
bearing. One was a First Lieutenant, the other a Major.
Around them was a group of certainly the blackest faces, with the
flattest noses and the wooliest heads, I ever saw—the mouths now and
then broadening into a grin or breaking out into that low, oily,
chuckling gobble of a laugh which no white man can ever imitate. Beyond
them ranged all colors and apparently all conditions. Some, black and
stalwart, were dressed like quiet farm laborers, and had probably come
in from the country, or had been field hands before the war. Others,
lighter in color and slighter in build, were dressed in broadcloth, with
flashy scarfs and gaudy pins, containing paste, or Cape May diamonds.
Others looked like the more intelligent class of city laborers; and
there were a few old patriarchs who might recollect the days of Denmark
Vesey. On the other side of the church was a motley, but brilliant army
of bright-colored turbans, wound around wooly heads, and tawdry
bandanas, and hats of all the shapes that have prevailed within the
memory of this generation, and bonnets of last year’s styles, with
absolutely a few of the coquettish little triangular bits of lace and
flowers which the New York milliners have this year decreed. Some of
them wore kid gloves, all were gaudily dressed, and, a few, barring the
questionable complexion, had the air and bearing of ladies.
They were all enthusiastic, the women even more than the men. Some of
the ancient negresses sat swaying to and fro, with an air of happy
resignation, only broken now and then by an emphatic nod of the head,
and an exclamation, “Dat’s true, for shore.” The younger ones laughed
and giggled, and when the great cheers went up, clapped with all their
might, and looked across to see how the young men were doing, and
whether their enthusiasm was observed. Ah, well! Who is there who
doesn’t want to know whether his world, be it a big one or a little one,
is noticing him?
But the noteworthy point in all this enthusiasm was, that it was
intelligent. Bulwer makes Richelieu relent toward a young man who
applauded his play at the proper places. General Saxton had equal
occasion to be gratified with his auditors. On taking his seat, he was
followed by the gorgeous Major (who turned out to be the same negro
about whom Lord Brougham raised that beautiful little diplomatic muddle
with United States Minister Dallas, at a meeting of the Royal
Geographical Society in London). The Major was not happy in his remarks,
and elicited very little applause, till, suddenly, he was astounded by a
thundering burst of it. He began acknowledging the compliment, but the
tumult burst out louder than ever; and the orator finally discovered
that it was not for him, but for Major-General Gillmore, commanding the
department, who was advancing up the aisle, escorting Chief Justice
Chase.
Presently General Saxton introduced the Chief Justice, and the whole
audience rose and burst out into cheer after cheer, that continued
unintermittedly till we had counted at least nine, and possibly one or
two more. The negroes may be very ignorant, but it is quite evident that
they know, or think they know, who their friends are. The little “talk”
that followed was like its author, simple, straightforward and weighty,
till, at the close, it rose into a strain of unaffected eloquence that
almost carried the excitable audience off their feet. “’Tisn’t only what
he says,” whispered an enthusiastic negro behind me to his neighbor,
“but it’s de man what says it. He don’t talk for nuffin, and his words
hab weight.”[15]
After more tumultuous cheering, the audience called for Gillmore, till
the great artillerist absolutely blushed in his embarrassment. _His_
speeches for Charleston were made from the muzzle of the Swamp Angel.
* * * * *
I spent the evening in the Charleston _Courier_ office. The old library
remained, and _Congressional Globes_ and arguments on the divine right
of slavery stood side by side with Reports of the Confederate Congress,
and official accounts of battles, while on the wall was pasted one of
the most bombastic proclamations of the runaway Governor. Several of the
old _attaches_ of the concern remain, among them a phonographic reporter
and the cashier. The circulation of this most flourishing Southern paper
in the seaboard States, had dwindled down to less than a thousand. “We
wrote our reports,” said the phonographer, “on the backs of old grocery
bills, and in blank pages torn out of old account books.” “We deserved
all we got,” he continued, “but you ought not to be hard on us now. The
sun never shone on a nobler or kinder-hearted people than the South
Carolinians, and this was always the nicest town to live in, in the
United States.”
Encountering a so-called South Carolina Unionist, from the interior, I
asked about the relations between the negroes and their old masters. “In
the main, the niggers are working just as they used to, not having made
contracts of any sort, because there was no competent officer accessible
before whom the contracts could be approved. A few have been hired by
the day; and some others have gone to work for a specified share in the
crops. In a great many cases the planters have told them to work ahead,
get their living out of the crops, and what further share they were
entitled to should be determined when the officers to approve contracts
came. Then, if they couldn’t agree, they could separate.”
“Have there been no disturbances between the negroes and their former
masters, no refusals to recognize the destruction of slavery?”
“In our part of the State, none. Elsewhere I have heard of them. With
us, the death of slavery is recognized, and made a basis of action by
everybody. But we don’t believe that because the nigger is free he ought
to be saucy; and we don’t mean to have any such nonsense as letting him
vote. He’s helpless, and ignorant, and dependent, and the old masters
will still control him.[16] I have never been a large slaveholder
myself—for the last year or two I have had but twelve, little and big.
Every one of them stays with me, just as before, excepting one, a
carpenter. I told him he’d better go off and shift for himself. He comes
back, every two or three nights, to tell me how he is getting along; and
the other day he told me he hadn’t been able to collect anything for his
work, and I gave him a quarter’s provisions to get started with.”
“I had to give him,” he significantly added, “a sort of paper—not, of
course, pretending to be legal—certifying that he was working for
himself, with my consent, in order to enable him to get along without
trouble.” There was a world of meaning in the phrase, “To enable him to
get along without trouble,” though he was as free as the man that gave
the paper.
I asked what they would do with the negroes, if they got permission to
re-organize.
“Well, we want to have them industrious and orderly, and will do all we
can to bring it about.”
“Will you let any of them vote?”
“That question has not been discussed. Nobody could stand up in the
State who should advocate promiscuous negro suffrage. It is possible
that a few might be willing to let the intelligent negroes vote—after
some years, at any rate, if not now.”
“I believe you let the sandhillers vote. Don’t you know that these
disfranchised negroes of Charleston are infinitely their superiors, in
education, industry, wealth and good conduct?”
“Well, they’re pretty bad, it’s true—those sandhillers—but there isn’t
the same prejudice against them.”
* * * * *
The moon lit up, with a softened effulgence, all the beauties, and hid
all the scars of Charleston, as, late at night, I walked, through its
desolate streets, and by its glorious shrubbery, to the landing, and
hailed the “Wayanda.” A boat shot out of the shadow for me; and before I
had joined the Doctor, below deck, the anchor had been hoisted and the
vessel was under way.
-----
Footnote 14:
This man now holds an office under the National Government in South
Carolina.
Footnote 15:
This was Mr. Chase’s single “speech” during the entire trip. Ten
minutes, or less, of familiar and fatherly talk to helpless negroes,
advising them to industry, economy and good order, telling them he
thought they should vote, but didn’t know whether the Government would
agree with him, and advising that, if the right of suffrage should be
refused them, they should behave so well, educate themselves so fast,
and become so orderly and prosperous, that the Government should see
they deserved it; this was what subsequently became, in certain
Northern newspapers, “Chief-Justice Chase’s endless stump speeches,
and shameless intriguing with old political leaders, in his
electioneering tour through the South.” The speech is given in full in
the appendix (A).
Footnote 16:
The disposition to “control” the negroes after the old fashion,
subsequently developed itself in Eastern South Carolina, to such an
extent that the military commandant considered the following order
necessary:
“HEADQUARTERS NORTHERN DISTRICT, D. S., }
CHARLESTON, S. C., June 24. }
“General Orders, No. 62.
“It has come to the knowledge of the district commander that, in some
of the contracts made between planters and freedmen, a clause has been
introduced establishing a system of _peonage_—the freedman binding
himself to work out any debt he may hereafter incur to his employer.
All contracts, made under authority from these headquarters, will be
understood as merely temporary arrangements, to insure the cultivation
of the ground for the present season. Any contract made under the
above authority, which contains provisions tending to _peonage_, will
be considered null. The officers having charge of contracts, will
examine them carefully; and when they are found to contain such a
clause, will notify the planters that new contracts must be made, in
which the objectionable feature will be omitted. Contracts will be
simply worded. Whilst acknowledging the freedom of the colored man,
such expressions as ‘_freed by the acts of the military forces of the
United States_’ will not be permitted. The attempt to introduce
anything into the contract which may have the appearance of an
intention, at some future day, to contest the question of the
emancipation of the negroes, will be reported to the commander of the
sub-district, who will examine into the antecedents of the person
making the attempt, and report upon the case to district headquarters.
“By command of
“Brevet Major-General JOHN P. HATCH.”