Somehow, after Joe Maxwell's experience with Mr. Deometari, Mr.
Blandford, and the rest, events of importance seemed to follow each
other more rapidly. Some of them were surprising, and all confusing. It
was in the month of July that Atlanta was taken by General Sherman.
A few weeks afterward, Harbert, while cleaning and oiling the old
Washington No. 2 hand-press in _The Countryman_ office, told Joe that
the Federal army would come marching through the county before long.
“Who told you?” asked Joe.
“De word done come,” replied Harbert “Hit bleeze ter be so, kaze all
de niggers done hear talk un it. We-all will wake up some er deze
odd-come-shorts an' fin' de Yankees des a-swarmin' all 'roun' here.”
“What are you going to do?” Joe inquired, laughing.
“Oh, you kin laugh, Marse Joe, but deyer comin'. What I g wine do? Well,
suh, I'm gwine ter git up an' look at um, an' may be tip my hat ter some
er de big-bugs 'mongst um, an' den I'm gwine on 'bout my business. I
don't speck deyer gwine ter bodder folks what don't bodder dem, is dey?”
Joe had forgotten this conversation until it was recalled to his mind
one morning shortly after his night ride to Hillsborough. General
Sherman had swung loose from Atlanta, and was marching down through
middle Georgia. The people that Joe saw went about with anxious faces,
and even the negroes were frightened.
[Illustration: 0246]
Before this vast host all sorts of rumors fled, carrying fear and
consternation to the peaceful plantations. At last, one cold, drizzly
day in November, Joe Maxwell, trudging along the road on his way to the
printing-office, heard the clatter of hoofs behind him, and two horsemen
in blue came galloping along. They reined up their horses, and inquired
the distance to Hillsborough, and then went galloping on again. They
were couriers carrying dispatches from the Twentieth Army Corps to
General Sherman.
There was hurrying to and fro on the plantation after this. The horses
and mules were driven to a remote field in which there was a large
swamp. Joe carried Butterfly and tethered him in the very middle of the
swamp, where he could get plenty of water to drink and young cane
to eat. During the next ten hours the plantation, just as Harbert
predicted, fairly swarmed with foraging parties of Federals. Guided by
some of the negroes, they found the horses and mules and other stock and
drove them off; and, when Joe heard of it, he felt like crying over the
loss of Butterfly. The horse did not belong to him, but he had trained
it from a colt, and it was his whenever he wanted to use it, day or
night. Yet Butterfly was soon forgotten in the excitement and confusion
created by the foragers, who swept through the plantations, levying
in the name of war on the live-stock, and ransacking the not too
well-filled smoke-houses and barns in search of supplies.
Joe Maxwell saw a good deal of these foragers, and he found them all,
with one exception, to be good-humored. The exception was a German, who
could scarcely speak English enough to make himself understood. This
German, when he came to the store-room where the hats were kept, wanted
to take off as many as his horse could carry, and he became very angry
when Joe protested. He grew so angry, in fact, that he would have fired
the building. He lit a match, drew together a lot of old papers and
other rubbish, and was in the act of firing it, when an officer ran in
and gave him a tremendous paddling with the flat of his sword. It was
an exhibition as funny as a scene in the circus, and Joe enjoyed it
as thoroughly as he could under the circumstances. By night, all the
foragers had disappeared.
[Illustration: 0249]
The army had gone into camp at Denham's Mill, and Joe supposed that it
would march on to Hillsborough, but in this he was mistaken. It turned
sharply to the left the next morning and marched toward Milledgeville.
Joe had aimlessly wandered along this road, as he had done a hundred
times before, and finally seated himself on the fence near an old
school-house, and began to whittle on a rail. Before he knew it the
troops were upon him. He kept his seat, and the Twentieth Army Corps,
commanded by General Slocum, passed in review before him. It was an
imposing array as to numbers, but not as to appearance! For once and for
all, so far as Joe was concerned, the glamour and romance of war were
dispelled. The skies were heavy with clouds, and a fine, irritating
mist sifted down. The road was more than ankle-deep in mud, and even
the fields were boggy. There was nothing gay about this vast procession,
with its tramping soldiers, its clattering horsemen, and its lumbering
wagons, except the temper of the men. They splashed through the mud,
cracking their jokes and singing snatches of songs.
Joe Maxwell, sitting on the fence, was the subject of many a jest, as
the good-humored men marched by.
“Hello, Johnny! Where's your parasol?”
“Jump down, Johnny, and let me kiss you good-by!”
“Johnny, if you are tired, get up behind and ride!”
“Run and get your trunk, Johnny, and get aboard!”
“He's a bushwhacker, boys. If he bats his eyes, I'm a-goin' to dodge!”
“Where's the rest of your regiment, Johnny?”
“If there was another one of 'em a-settin' on the fence, on t'other
side, I'd say we was surrounded!”
These and hundreds of other comments, exclamations, and questions, Joe
was made the target of; and, if he stood the fire of them with unusual
calmness, it was because this huge panorama seemed to him to be the
outcome of some wild dream. That the Federal army should be plunging
through that peaceful region, after all he had seen in the newspapers
about Confederate victories, seemed to him to be an impossibility. The
voices of the men, and their laughter, sounded vague and insubstantial.
It was surely a dream that had stripped war of its glittering' trappings
and its flying banners. It was surely the distortion of a dream that
tacked on to this procession of armed men droves of cows, horses, and
mules, and wagon-loads of bateaux! Joe had read of pontoon bridges, but
he had never heard of a pontoon train, nor did he know that bateaux were
a part of the baggage of this invading army.
But it all passed after a while, and then Joe discovered that he had
not been dreaming at all. He jumped from the fence and made his way home
through the fields. Never before, since its settlement, had such peace
and quiet reigned on the plantation. The horses and mules were gone, and
many of the negro cabins were empty. Harbert was going about as busy as
ever, and some of the older negroes were in their accustomed places, but
the younger ones, especially those who, by reason of their fieldwork,
had not been on familiar terms with their master and mistress, had
followed the Federal army. Those that remained had been informed by the
editor that they were free; and so it happened, in the twinkling of an
eye, that the old things had passed away and all was new.
In a corner of the fence, not far from the road, Joe found an old
negro woman shivering and moaning. Near her lay an old negro man, his
shoulders covered with an old ragged shawl. “Who is that lying there?”
asked Joe.
“It my ole man, suh.”
“What is the matter with him?”
“He dead, suh! But, bless God, he died free!” *
It was a pitiful sight, and a pitiable ending of the old couple's dream
of freedom. Harbert and the other negroes buried the old man, and the
old woman was made comfortable in one of the empty cabins; she never
ceased to bless “little marster,” as she called Joe, giving him all the
credit for everything that was done for her. Old as she was, she and
her husband had followed the army for many a weary mile on the road to
freedom. The old man found it in the fence corner, and a few weeks later
the old woman found it in the humble cabin.
The next morning, as Joe Maxwell was loitering around the
printing-office, talking to the editor, Butterfly came galloping up,
ridden by Mink, who was no longer a runaway.
* This incident has had many adaptations. It occurred just
as it is given here, and was published afterward in _The
Countryman_.
“I seed you put 'im out in de swamp dar, Mars' Joe, an' den I seed some
er de yuther niggers gwine dar long wid dem Yankee mens, an' I say ter
myse'f dat I better go dar an' git 'im; so I tuck 'im down on de river,
an' here he is. He mayn't be ez fatez he wuz, but he des ez game ez he
yever is been.”
Joe was pleased, and the editor was pleased; and it happened that Mink
became one of the tenants on the plantation, and after a while he bought
a little farm of his own, and prospered and thrived.
But this is carrying a simple chronicle too far. It can not be spun out
here and now so as to show the great changes that have been wrought--the
healing of the wounds of war; the lifting up of a section from ruin
and poverty to prosperity; the molding of the beauty, the courage,
the energy, and the strength of the old civilization into the new; the
gradual uplifting of a lowly race. All these things can not be told of
here. The fire burns low, and the tale is ended.
The plantation newspaper was issued a little while longer, but in a land
filled with desolation and despair its editor could not hope to see it
survive. A larger world beckoned to Joe Maxwell, and he went out into
it. And it came about that on every side he found loving hearts to
comfort him and strong and friendly hands to guide him. He found new
associations and formed new ties. In a humble way he made a name for
himself, but the old plantation days still live in his dreams.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's On the Plantation, by Joel Chandler Harris