The Southern “Ultima Thule” of the United States.
Along the Florida coast there were occasional glimpses of solitary
light-houses and barren beaches; once we got aground where there ought
to have been deep water, and were pleasantly assured that, if we had to
take to the land, we would be among the everglades, with no chance of
finding any inhabitants but moccasin snakes, and possibly a stray
Seminole; for the rest, we had schools of porpoises plunging about our
feet, the superb phosphorescence of the waters, and fine fishing—each
haul of a dolphin or a Spanish mackerel from our stern line creating as
much sensation on deck as one would have expected from the _Stonewall_.
And so, with favoring breezes and the most delicious weather, we coasted
among the keys, and finally steamed into the harbor of Key West.
The United States District Attorney, pleasantly known in Washington,
where he occupied a responsible position in the Treasury Department,
during the dark days of the war, as “Plantz, of Florida,” came aboard
the “Wayanda” as soon as she touched the wharf. He was full of the
glories of Florida, and the hopes of the re-organizing State; but, in
this climate, there were things more important than politics. “It’s your
sacred duty, you know, to take care of your health in this tropical
country; and there’s nothing so good to begin with as our acclimatizing
drink, which is the greatest of all the institutions of Key West.”
“Champerou,” it appeared, was the name of this acclimatizer. Its
concoction appeared a miracle of the powers of combination. Curacoa was
taken as the base; Absinthe, Maraschino and other _liqueurs_ were added,
with sugar and eggs thrown in, till an analytical chemist would have
been hopelessly puzzled by the compound. But it proved acclimatizing;
and I observed that even the natives still thought it wise to take
prudent precautions—such as a glass of Champerou—against the effects of
the climate.
As a coaling station at the entrance of the Gulf, and the location of
the United States civil officers for the Southern District of Florida,
Key West had attained such importance before the war as to have
attracted, according to the census of 1860, a population of two thousand
eight hundred and thirty-two. Notwithstanding the departure of many
rebels, the town has increased during the war to a population of about
three thousand five hundred. It is neatly built, and better paved than
most Southern places of like size. There is a street of good-looking
frame business houses; a large hotel offers naval officers and others,
who happen in port, a variation from ship fare; and a club house,
sustained by the civil, military and naval services, supplies many of
the comforts that would hardly be expected on this last desolate sand
bank of Florida, and extreme Southern possession of the United States.
Yet it took all the familiar sights and conveniences to enable one to
realize that it was an American town. Bananas were for sale in the shops
nearly four months earlier than we expect at the North the unripe,
leathery fruit, which is all Northern people can get for the banana;
limes, and sapadillos, and “sour sops,” were the common fruits of the
season; the houses were here and there hedged in, not with arbor vitæ,
or box, or even Cherokee rose, but with great, branching, luxuriant
cactus, as high as a man’s head; for shade trees in the front yards,
they had the palm-like cocoa.
* * * * *
The Spanish Consul sent down his carriage, and the supply of other
vehicles in the little island was pretty well exhausted in providing
conveyances for the party. Our drive took us around the whole island.
Spots of dark green constantly dotted the water near the beach—the
uninhabited “keys.” Some of them did not seem to be more than half an
acre in extent; others would make nice little farms, but for snakes, and
sharks, and storms, in which the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico would
combine in washing over the crops. The stunted shrubbery (which, my fair
companion in the ride told me she had learned, after a year’s residence,
to call the “Forests of Key West”), was, apparently, no where more than
ten or twelve feet high. Wild cocoas were abundant. Gigantic, and not
attractive looking, cactus covered the rocks, and forbade strolls out of
the beaten track. Tamarinds, hibiscus, sugar-apples, pawpaws, (totally
different from the Northern tree of that name,) sapadillos, lime trees,
buttonwoods, mastics, with lignum vitæ, gum elemi and sal soda plant,
made up a vegetation as varied as it was novel to Northern eyes.
Old salt vats, where, before the war, the slaves, in the rude, shiftless
way which slavery perpetuated, made salt enough for the consumption of
Key West, by letting in sea water and evaporating it, lined the coast
for perhaps a mile.
Elsewhere there was nothing but the dwarfed vegetation to be seen, till
we came to what had been spoken of at the outset as the main feature of
the ride around the island—“Old Sandie’s farm.” A rude fence separated
this from the surrounding waste land, but the soil was equally stony,
and apparently sterile; and it was hard to see how any exertions could
make it productive. So everybody in Key West had always thought, and
till “Sandie” came the islanders didn’t grow their own vegetables.
The carriages drew up at a little hut with two rooms, which was
announced as “Sandie’s house,” and “Auntie” (his wife), who came to the
door, led us to a little, open “lean-to,” which she called a piazza.
Presently there came hurrying up a stalwart negro, with the _physique_
of a prize fighter; body round as a barrel, arms knotted, with muscles
that might have belonged to a race-horse’s leg, chest broad and deep,
with room inside for the play of an ox’s lungs. So magnificent a
physical development I have never seen, before or since. The head was
large, but the broad forehead was very low. Above it rose the crisp,
grizzled wool, almost perpendicularly, for a hight quite as great as
that of the exposed part of the forehead; and the bumps above the ears
and at the back of the head were of a corresponding magnitude. The face
was unmistakably African, glossy black, with widely-distended nostrils,
thick lips and a liquid but gleaming eye. This was Sandie himself, an
old man—“now in my sebenty-tree yeah, sah,” he said—yet the strongest
man on the island, the richest of the negroes, the best farmer here, and
with a history as romantic as that of any Indian whom song and story
have combined to make famous.
He was a native of Maryland; had bought himself for three thousand two
hundred dollars from his master, and had earned and paid over the money;
had removed to Florida, and been engaged at work on a railroad, where he
had already accumulated what for him was a handsome competence, when his
little house burned down, and his free papers were lost in the fire. A
gang of unprincipled vagabonds at once determined, there being no
accessible evidence of his freedom to be produced against them, to seize
him, sell him in the New Orleans market and pocket the proceeds. He
frustrated their attempt by whipping the whole party of six; then
hearing that they were to be re-enforced and were to try it again, he
deliberately proceeded to the public square, accompanied by his wife,
cut the muscles of his ankle joint, plunged a knife into the hip joint
on the other side, and then, sinking down on a wheel-barrow, finished
the work by chopping off with a hatchet the fingers of his left hand!
Meanwhile, an awe-struck crowd of white men gathered around, but made no
attempt at interference. Finally, brandishing the bloody knife, Sandie
shouted to the crowd that if they persisted in their effort to sell a
free man into slavery after he had once, at an extortionate price,
bought himself out of it, his right arm was yet strong, and he had one
blow reserved, after which they were welcome to sell him for whatever he
would bring.
That the essentials of this story are true, there is unquestionable
evidence. The fingers on his left hand are mutilated, and the scars on
the hip and ankle are still fearfully distinct, while besides there are
still white eye-witnesses to testify to the main facts. Sandie’s
powerful constitution brought him through; he was confined to bed six
months; then he began to hobble about a little, and at the end of the
year was again able to support himself.
[Illustration]
He showed us through what he proudly called his plantation. Ripe
sapadillos hung from the trees; and a particularly large “sour-sop” was
pointed out as specially intended for our dinner. He had a little patch
of tobacco; green cocoanuts rested at the tops of the palm-like stems,
and tamarinds were abundant; the African cayenne pepper berry was
hanging on little bushes, and one or two of the party, who had been
promiscuously experimenting on Sandie’s fruit, came to grief when they
reached it, and were heard complaining that their “mouths were on fire.”
Plucking two or three berries of another kind, Sandie handed them to the
Chief Justice, “Take dem home and plant ’em in your garden, and you’ll
hab you own coffee aftah while.” “But coffee won’t grow, Sandie, where I
live.” “Don’t know bout dat, sah. Dat’s just what dey told me heah; but
you see it does. I didn’t know no reason why it shouldn’t, and so I try.
Now, you just try, too!”
Finally, he asked for a picture of his guest, and the Chief Justice
handed him a one-dollar greenback. The scene that followed was curious.
Old Sandie, bareheaded and with his shirt thrown loosely back from his
brawny bosom, stooped down, spread the bill out on one knee, and gazed
from it to Mr. Chase and back to the bill again for some moments, in
perfect silence. “Now I knows you,” he broke out at last, “you’s Old
Greenback hisself. You mout come heah fifty yeah from now and I’d know
you just de same, and tell you all about sittin’ in dis yeah piazza
heah.”
* * * * *
In curious contrast with such impressions as Sandie’s farm and story
might leave, was the talk of another old man, like Sandie, “in his
sebenty-tree yeah,” and, like him, hale and hearty; but white, a native
of Connecticut, and, till the war, a slaveholder. He was the
harbor-master; and in the intervals of shouting at the negroes to hurry
up putting coal in the “Wayanda,” he wiped his brow and denounced “the
niggers.” The ungrateful creatures he had owned, had expected to live
with him and work for themselves after the emancipation, but he had told
them that if, after his care of them all their lives, they didn’t mean
to work for him now, they could just pack out of his house at once. They
were all saucy and worthless; wouldn’t work a bit more than enough to
keep soul and body together; charged two or three prices always, and
still would rather steal than work any day; would dance all night and be
good for nothing next day; were fearfully licentious; and, in short,
were an unmitigated nuisance. The island was over-populated with
runaways, too, from the main land, and before long there would be any
amount of suffering among them. Sandie was a great liar and swindler,
but managed—the black scoundrel—to make a better appearance than the
rest. It might, perhaps, be true, that he had once bought himself and
gone through some of the subsequent persecutions he was so fond of
talking about; but, for his part, he had his private doubts about the
whole story. If these worthless vagabonds were to be allowed to have a
share in the future government of the State, no man could tell what a
miserable future was before the whole community.
On the other hand, Judge Boynton, the United States District Judge,
District Attorney Plantz, and numerous other gentlemen, declared that
there was no unnecessary crowding of negroes from the main land; that
they were quite as industrious as could be expected, and that all who
were on the island could find work at remunerative prices. That they
make money the village itself attests. In driving about it, we passed
dozens of new frame houses, built and occupied by negroes, who had
bought, with their own earnings, the lots on which their dwellings
stood. As to the general character of the negroes, the common testimony
seemed to be that their behavior would compare favorably with that of
any other class of the laboring population.
Key West is so directly dependent upon the Government, that its public
sentiment is hardly a fair reflex of the feeling of the South
Floridians. Yet, as it practically manages the politics of the lower
half of the peninsula, it was worth notice that a large proportion of
the inhabitants seemed still to sympathize to a marked extent with the
fallen Rebels. All were looking eagerly forward to reorganization, and
it was plain that the contest then would lie between the new-comers and
the old citizens. Ranking themselves among the former were likely to be
the “Conks”—i. e., natives of the Bahama islands—who make a considerable
part of the business population. All regarded slavery as dead; the old
citizens thought the negroes ought to be put under State control, and
thus practically re-enslaved; the new-comers wanted emancipation
honestly carried out, and were willing for negro suffrage.
* * * * *
There were all manner of courtesies by the military and naval
authorities, salutes from the fort, drives about the spacious and airy
barracks, calls from Consuls and others, shells from Mr. Howe (the
Collector of the Port), beautiful pressed seaweeds, Florida crabtree
canes, dinners, fruits, etc. The visit was a delightful one, but it
wouldn’t bear repetition. It’s a very pleasant thing to stand on the
southernmost point of land on the continent over which the flag of the
Union floats, but once is enough. And so good-bye to “Plantz, of
Florida,” Judge Boynton and all the rest. May my feet never again be
turned to their homes, but may their’s be often turned to mine! And
every one of them get honors and profits from Florida.