"Send 'em to school, Sir."
"Well, who'll pay the teacher?"
"We's pays him."
One who listens to such answers can hardly think that there is any
natural incapacity in these children to acquire with maturity of years
the ideas and habits of good citizens.
The children are cheerful, and, in most of the schools, well-behaved,
except that it is not easy to keep them from whispering and talking.
They are joyous, and you can see the boys after school playing the
soldier, with corn-stalks for guns. The memory is very susceptible in
them,--too much so, perhaps, as it is ahead of the reasoning faculty.
The labor of the season has interrupted attendance on the schools, the
parents being desirous of having the children aid them in planting and
cultivating their crops, and it not being thought best to allow the
teaching to interfere in any way with industrious habits.
A few freedmen, who had picked up an imperfect knowledge of reading,
have assisted our teachers, though a want of proper training materially
detracts from their usefulness in this respect. Ned and Uncle Cyrus have
already been mentioned. The latter, a man of earnest piety, has died
since my visit. Anthony kept four schools on Hilton Head Island last
summer and autumn, being paid at first by the superintendents, and
afterwards by the negroes themselves; but in November he enlisted in the
negro regiment. Hettie was another of these. She assisted Barnard at
Edisto last spring, continued to teach after the Edisto people were
brought to St. Helena village, and one day brought some of her pupils to
the school at the Baptist Church, saying to the teachers there that she
could carry them no farther. They could read their letters and words of
one syllable. Hettie had belonged to a planter on Wadmelaw Island, a
kind old gentleman, a native of Rhode Island, and about the only citizen
of Charleston who, when Samuel Hoar went on his mission to South
Carolina, stood up boldly for his official and personal protection.
Hettie had been taught to read by his daughter; and let this be
remembered to the honor of the young woman.
Such are the general features of the schools as they met my eye. The
most advanced classes, and these are but little ahead of the rest, can
read simple stories and the plainer passages of Scripture; and they
could even pursue self-instruction, if the schools were to be suspended.
The knowledge they have thus gained can never be extirpated. They could
read with much profit a newspaper specially prepared for them and
adapted to their condition. They are learning that the world is not
bounded north by Charleston, south by Savannah, west by Columbia, and
east by the sea, with dim visions of New York on this planet or some
other,--about their conception of geography when we found them. They are
acquiring the knowledge of figures with which to do the business of
life. They are singing the songs of freemen. Visit their schools;
remember that a little more than a twelve-month ago they knew not a
letter, and that for generations it has been a crime to teach their
race; then contemplate what is now transpiring, and you have a scene
which prophets and sages would have delighted to witness. It will be
difficult to find equal progress in an equal period since the morning
rays of Christian truth first lighted the hill-sides of Judea. I have
never looked on St. Peter's, or beheld the glories of art which Michel
Angelo has wrought or traced; but to my mind the spectacle of those poor
souls struggling in darkness and bewilderment to catch the gleams of the
upper and better light transcends in moral grandeur anything that has
ever come from mortal hands.
* * * * *
Next as to _industry_. The laborers, during their first year under the
new system, have acquired the idea of ownership, and of the security of
wages, and have come to see that labor and slavery are not the same
thing. The notion that they were to raise no more cotton has passed
away, since work upon it is found to be remunerative, and connected with
the proprietorship of land. House-servants, who were at first
particularly set against it, now generally prefer it. The laborers have
collected the pieces of the gins which they destroyed on the flight of
their masters, the ginning being obnoxious work, repaired them, and
ginned the cotton on the promise of wages. Except upon plantations in
the vicinity of camps, where other labor is more immediately
remunerative, and an unhealthy excitement prevails, there is a general
disposition to cultivate it. The culture of the cotton is voluntary, the
only penalty for not engaging in it being the imposition of a rent for
the tenement and land adjacent thereto occupied by the negro, not
exceeding two dollars per month. Both the Government and private
individuals, who have become owners of one-fourth of the land by the
recent tax-sales, pay twenty-five cents for a standard day's-work, which
may, by beginning early, be performed by a healthy and active hand by
noon; and the same was the case with the tasks under the slave-system on
very many of the plantations. As I was riding through one of Mr.
Philbrick's fields one morning, I counted fifty persons at work who
belonged to one plantation. This gentleman, who went out with the first
delegation, and at the same time gave largely to the benevolent
contributions for the enterprise, was the leading purchaser at the
tax-sales, and combining a fine humanity with honest sagacity and close
calculation, no man is so well fitted to try the experiment. He bought
thirteen plantations, and on these has had planted and cultivated eight
hundred and sixteen acres of cotton where four hundred and ninety-nine
and one twelve-hundredth acres were cultivated last year,--a larger
increase, however, than will generally be found in other districts, due
mainly to prompter payments. The general superintendent of Port Royal
Wand said to me,--"We have to restrain rather than to encourage the
negroes to take land for cotton." The general superintendent of Hilton
Head Island said, that on that island the negroes had, besides adequate
corn, taken two, three, and in a few cases four acres of cotton to a
hand, and there was a general disposition to cultivate it, except near
the camps. A superintendent on St. Helena Island said, that, if he were
going to carry on any work, he should not want bettor laborers. He had
charge of the refugees from Edisto, who had been brought to St. Helena
village, and who had cleared and fenced patches for gardens, felling the
trees for that purpose.
The laborers do less work, perhaps, than a Yankee would think they might
do; but they do about as much as he himself would do, after a residence
of a few years in the same climate, and when he had ceased to work under
the influence of Northern habits. Northern men have sometimes been
unjust to the South, when comparing the results of labor in the
different sections. God never intended that a man should toil under a
tropical sun with the same energy and constancy as in our bracing
latitude. There has been less complaint this year than last of "a pain
in the small of the back," or of "a fever in the head,"--in other words,
less _shamming_. The work has been greatly deranged by the draft, some
features of which have not been very skilfully arranged, and by the
fitfulness with which the laborers have been treated by the military
authorities. The work both upon the cotton and the corn is done only by
the women, children, and disabled men. It has been suggested that
field-work does not become women in the new condition; and so it may
seem to some persons of just sympathies who have not yet learned that no
honest work is dishonorable in man or woman. But this matter may be left
to regulate itself. Field-work, as an occupation, may not be consistent
with the finest feminine culture or the most complete womanliness; but
it in no way conflicts with virtue, self-respect, and social
development. Women work in the field in Switzerland, the freest country
of Europe; and we may look with pride on the triumphs of this
generation, when the American negroes become the peers of the Swiss
peasantry. Better a woman with the hoe than without it, when she is not
yet fitted for the needle or the book.
The negroes were also showing their capacity to organize labor and apply
capital to it. Harry, to whom I referred in my second report, as "my
faithful guide and attendant, who had done for me more service than any
white man could render," with funds of his own, and some borrowed money,
bought at the recent tax-sales a small farm of three hundred and
thirteen acres for three hundred and five dollars. He was to plant
sixteen and a half acres of cotton, twelve and a half of corn, and one
and a half of potatoes. I rode through his farm on the 10th of April, my
last day in the territory, and one-third of his crop was then in.
Besides some servant's duty to an officer, for which he is well paid, he
does the work of a full hand on his place. He hires one woman and two
men, one of the latter being old and only a three-quarters hand. He has
two daughters, sixteen and seventeen years of age, one of whom is
likewise only a three-quarters hand. His wife works also, of whom he
said, "She's the best hand I got"; and if Celia is only as smart with
her hoe as I know her to be with her tongue, Harry's estimate must be
right. He has a horse twenty-five years old and blind in both eyes, whom
he guides with a rope,--carrying on farming, I thought, somewhat under
difficulties. Harry lives in the house of the former overseer, and
delights, though not boastingly, in his position as a landed proprietor.
He has promised to write me, or rather dictate a letter, giving an
account of the progress of his crop. He has had much charge of
Government property, and when Captain Hooper, of General Saxton's staff,
was coming North last autumn, Harry proposed to accompany him; but at
last, of his own accord, gave up the project, saying, "It'll not do for
all two to leave together."
Another case of capacity for organization should be noted. The
Government is building twenty-one houses for the Edisto people, eighteen
feet by fourteen, with two rooms, each provided with a swinging
board-window, and the roof projecting a little as a protection from
rain. The journey-carpenters are seventeen colored men, who have fifty
cents per day without rations, working ten hours. They are under the
direction of Frank Barnwell, a freedman, who receives twenty dollars a
month. Rarely have I talked with a more intelligent contractor. It was
my great regret that I had not time to visit the village of improved
houses near the Hilton Head camp, which General Mitchell had
extemporized, and to which he gave so much of the noble enthusiasm of
his last days.
* * * * *
Next as to the _development of manhood_. This has been shown, in the
first place, in the prevalent disposition to acquire land. It did not
appear upon our first introduction to these people, and they did not
seem to understand us when we used to tell them that we wanted them to
own land. But it is now an active desire. At the recent tax-sales, six
out of forty-seven plantations sold were bought by them, comprising two
thousand five hundred and ninety-five acres, sold for twenty-one hundred
and forty-five dollars. In other cases the negroes had authorized the
superintendent to bid for them, but the land was reserved by the United
States. One of the purchases was that made by Harry, noted above. The
other five were made by the negroes on the plantations combining the
funds they had saved from the sale of their pigs, chickens, and eggs,
and from the payments made to them for work,--they then dividing off the
tract peaceably among themselves. On one of these, where Kit, before
mentioned, is the leading spirit, there are twenty-three field-hands,
who are equivalent to eighteen full hands. They have planted and are
cultivating sixty-three acres of cotton, fifty of corn, six of potatoes,
with as many more to be planted, four and a half of cow-peas, three of
pea-nuts, and one and a half of rice. These facts are most significant.
The instinct for land--to have one spot on earth where a man may stand,
and whence no human being can of right drive him--is one of the most
conservative elements of our nature; and a people who have it in any
fair degree will never be nomads or vagabonds.
This developing manhood is further seen in their growing consciousness
of rights, and their readiness to defend themselves, even when assailed
by white men. The former slaves of a planter, now at Beaufort, who was a
resident of New York when the war broke out, have generally left the
plantation, suspicious of his presence, saying that they will not be his
bondmen, and fearing that in some way he may hold them, if they remain
on it. A remarkable case of the assertion of rights occurred one day
during my visit. Two white soldiers, with a corporal, went on Sunday to
Coosaw Island, where one of the soldiers, having a gun, shot a chicken
belonging to a negro. The negroes rushed out and wrested the gun from
the corporal, to whom the soldier had handed it, thinking that the
negroes would not take it from an officer. They then carried it to the
superintendent, who took it to head-quarters, where an order was given
for the arrest of the trespasser. Other instances might be added, but
these are sufficient.
Another evidence of developing manhood appears in their desire for the
comforts and conveniences of household life. The Philadelphia society,
for the purpose of maintaining reasonable prices, has a store on St.
Helena Island, which is under the charge of Friend Hunn, of the good
fellowship of William Penn. He was once fined in Delaware three thousand
dollars for harboring and assisting fugitive slaves; but he now harbors
and assists them at a much cheaper rate. Though belonging to a society
which is the advocate of peace, his tone is quite as warlike as that of
the world's people. In this store alone--and there are others on the
island, carried on by private enterprise--two thousand dollars' worth of
goods are sold monthly. To be sure, a rather large proportion of these
consists of molasses and sugar, "sweetening," as the negroes call it,
being in great demand, and four barrels of molasses having been sold the
day of my visit. But there is also a great demand for plates, knives,
forks, tin ware, and better clothing, including even hoop-skirts.
Negro-cloth, as it is called, osnaburgs, russet-colored shoes,--in
short, the distinctive apparel formerly dealt out to them, as a uniform
allowance,--are very generally rejected. But there is no article of
household-furniture or wearing apparel, used by persons of moderate
means among us, which they will not purchase, when they are allowed the
opportunity of labor and earning wages. What a market the South would
open under the new system! It would set all the mills and workshops
astir. Four millions of people would become purchasers of all the
various articles of manufacture and commerce, in place of the few
coarse, simple necessaries, laid in for them in gross by the planters.
Here is the solution of the vexed industrial question. The indisposition
to labor is overcome in a healthy nature by instincts and motives of
superior force, such as the love of life, the desire to be well clothed
and fed, the sense of security derived from provision for the future,
the feeling of self-respect, the love of family and children, and the
convictions of duty. These all exist in the negro, in a state of greater
or less development. To give one or two examples. One man brought
Captain Hooper seventy dollars in silver, to keep for him, which he had
obtained from selling pigs and chickens,--thus providing for the future.
Soldiers of Colonel Higginson's regiment, having confidence in the same
officer, intrusted him, when they were paid off, with seven hundred
dollars, to be transmitted by him to their wives, and this besides what
they had sent home in other ways,--showing the family-feeling to be
active and strong in them. They have also the social and religious
inspirations to labor. Thus, early in our occupation of Hilton Head,
they took up, of their own accord, a collection to pay for the candles
for their evening meetings, feeling that it was not right for the
Government longer to provide them. The result was a contribution of two
dollars and forty-eight cents. They had just fled from their masters,
and had received only a small pittance of wages, and this little sum was
not unlike the two mites which the widow cast into the treasury. Another
collection was taken, last June, in the church on St. Helena Island,
upon the suggestion of the pastor that they should share in the expenses
of worship. Fifty-two dollars was the result,--not a bad collection for
some of our Northern churches. I have seen these people where they are
said to be lowest, and sad indeed are some features of their lot, yet
with all earnestness and confidence I enter my protest against the
wicked satire of Carlyle.
Is there not here some solution of the question of prejudice or caste
which has troubled so many good minds? When these people can no longer
be used as slaves, men will try to see how they can make the most out of
them as freemen. Your Irishman, who now works as a day-laborer, honestly
thinks that he hates the negro; but when the war is over, he will have
no objection to going South and selling him groceries and
household-implements at fifty per cent. advance on New-York prices, or
to hiring him to raise cotton for twenty-five or fifty cents a day. Our
prejudices, under any reasonable adjustment of the social system,
readily accommodate themselves to our interests, even without much aid
from the moral sentiments.
Let those who would study well this social question, or who in public
trusts are charged with its solution, be most careful here. Every motive
in the minds of these people, whether of instinct, desire, or duty, must
be addressed. All the elements of human nature must be appealed to,
physical, moral, intellectual, social, and religious. Imperfect indeed
is any system which, like that at New Orleans, offers wages, but does
not welcome the teacher. It is of little moment whether three dollars or
thirty per month be paid the laborer, so long as there is no school to
bind both parent and child to civil society with new hopes and duties.
There are some vices charged upon these people, or a portion of them,
and truth requires that nothing be withheld. There is said to be a good
deal of petty pilfering among them, although they are faithful to
trusts. This is the natural growth of the old system, and is quite
likely to accompany the transition-state. Besides, the present
disturbed and unorganized condition of things is not favorable to the
rigid virtues. But inferences from this must not be pressed too far.
When I was a private soldier in Virginia, as one of a three-months'
regiment, we used to bide from each other our little comforts and
delicacies, even our dishes and clothing, or they were sure to
disappear. But we should have ridiculed an adventurous thinker upon the
characteristics of races and classes, who should have leaped therefrom
to the conclusion that all white men or all soldiers are thieves. And
what inferences might not one draw, discreditable to all traders and
manufacturers, from the universal adulteration of articles of food!
These people, it is said, are disposed to falsehood in order to get
rations and small benefits,--a natural vice which comes with slavery,
and too often attends on poverty without slavery. Those of most
demonstrative piety are rarely better than the rest, not, indeed,
hypocritical, but satisfying their consciences by self-depreciation and
indulgence in emotion,--psychological manifestations which one may find
in more advanced communities. They show no special gratitude to us for
liberating them from bonds. Nor do they ordinarily display much
exhilaration over their new condition,--being quite unlike the Italian
revolutionist who used to put on his toga, walk in the forum, and
personate Brutus and Cassius. Their appreciation of their better lot is
chiefly seen in their dread of a return of their masters, in their
excitement when an attack is feared, in their anxious questionings while
the assault on Charleston was going on, and in their desire to get their
friends and relatives away from the Rebels,--an appreciation of freedom,
if not ostentatious, at least sensible.
But away with such frivolous modes of dealing with the rights of races
to self-development! Because Englishmen may be classified as hard and
conceited, Frenchmen as capricious, Austrians as dull, and the people of
one other nation are sometimes thought to be vainglorious, shall these
therefore be slaves? And where is that model race which shall sway them
all? A people may have grave defects, but it may not therefore be
rightfully disabled.
* * * * *
During my recent visit, I had an opportunity, on three different
occasions, to note carefully Colonel T.W. Higginson's colored regiment,
known as the First Regiment of South-Carolina Volunteers. Major-General
Hunter's first regiment was mainly made up of conscripts, drafted May
12th, 1862, and disbanded August 11th, three months afterwards, there
being no funds wherewith to pay them, and the discharged men going home
to find the cotton and corn they had planted overgrown with weeds. On
the 10th of October, General Saxton, being provided with competent
authority to raise five thousand colored troops, began to recruit a
regiment. His authority from the War Department bore date August 25th,
and the order conferring it states the object to be "to guard the
plantations, and protect the inhabitants from captivity and murder."
This was the first clear authority ever given by the Government to raise
a negro regiment in this war. There were, indeed, some ambiguous words
in the instructions of Secretary Cameron to General Sherman, when the
original expedition went to Port Royal, authorizing him to organize the
negroes into companies and squads for such services as they might be
fitted for, but this not to mean a general arming for military service.
Secretary Stanton, though furnishing muskets and red trousers to General
Hunter's regiment, did not think the authority sufficient to justify the
payment of the regiment. The first regiment, as raised by General
Saxton, numbered four hundred and ninety-nine men when Colonel Higginson
took command of it on the 1st of December; and on the 19th of January,
1863, it had increased to eight hundred and forty-nine. It has made
three expeditions to Florida and Georgia,--one before Colonel Higginson
assumed the command, described in Mrs. Stowe's letter to the women of
England, and two under Colonel Higginson, one of which was made in
January up the St. Mary's, and the other in March to Jacksonville, which
it occupied for a few days until an evacuation was ordered from
head-quarters. The men are volunteers, having been led to enlist by duty
to their race, to their kindred still in bonds, and to us, their allies.
Their drill is good, and their time excellent. They have borne
themselves well in their expeditions, quite equalling the white
regiments in skirmishing. In _morale_ they seemed very much like white
men, and with about the same proportion of good and indifferent
soldiers. Some I saw of the finest metal, like Robert Sutton, whom
Higginson describes in his report as "the real conductor of the whole
expedition at the St. Mary's," and Sergeant Hodges, a master-carpenter,
capable of directing the labors of numerous journeymen. Another said,
addressing a meeting at Beaufort, that he had been restless, nights,
thinking of the war and of his people,--that, when he heard of the
regiment being formed, he felt that his time to act had come, and that
it was his duty to enlist,--that he did not fight for his rations and
pay, but for wife, children, and people.
These men, as already intimated, are very much like other men, easily
depressed, and as easily reanimated by words of encouragement. Many have
been reluctant to engage in military service,--their imagination
investing it with the terrors of instant and certain death. But this
reluctance has passed away with participation in active service, with
the adventure and inspiration of a soldier's life, and the latent
manhood has recovered its rightful sway. Said a superintendent who was
of the first delegation to Tort Royal in March, 1862,--a truthful man,
and not given to rose-colored views,--"I did not have faith in arming
negroes, when I visited the North last autumn, but I have now. They will
be not mere machines, but real tigers, when aroused; and I should not
wish to face them." One amusing incident may be mentioned. A man
deserted from the regiment, was discovered hidden in a chimney in the
district where he had lived, was taken back to camp, went to Florida in
Higginson's first expedition, bore his part well in the skirmishes,
became excited with the service, was made a sergeant, and, receiving a
furlough on his return, went to the plantation where he had hid, and
said he would not take five thousand dollars for his place.
But more significant, as showing the success of the experiment, is the
change of feeling among the white soldiers towards the negro regiment, a
change due in part to the just policy of General Saxton, in part to the
President's Proclamation of January 1st, which has done much to clear
the atmosphere everywhere within the army-lines, but more than all to
the soldierly conduct of the negroes themselves during their
expeditions. I had one excellent opportunity to note this change. On the
6th of April, Colonel Higginson's regiment was assigned to picket-duty
on Port Royal Island,--the first active duty it had performed on the Sea
Islands,--and was to relieve the Pennsylvania Fifty-Fifth. When, after a
march of ten miles, it reached the advanced picket-station, there were
about two hundred soldiers of the Pennsylvania Fifty-Fifth awaiting
orders to proceed to Beaufort. I said, in a careless tone, to one of the
Pennsylvania soldiers, who was looking at Higginson's regiment as it
stood in line,--
"Isn't this rather new, to be relieved by a negro regiment?"
"All right," said he. "They've as much right to fight for themselves as
I have to fight for them."
A squad of half a dozen men stood by, making no dissent, and accepting
him as their spokesman. Moving in another direction, I said to a
soldier,--
"What do you think of that regiment?"