down, or anything, reckon he could nigh about pray us up—he’s right
smart at prayin’.”
“Well, I tell you, now, ole man can trot out as smart a prayer, when
he’s a mind to go in for’t, as any man I ever heerd, durned if he
can’t.”
The last ten miles we came over rapidly, smoothly, and quietly, by
a plank-road, reaching Fayetteville about twelve, of a fine, clear,
frosty night.
Entering the office or bar-room of the stage-house, at which I had been
advised to stay while in Fayetteville, I found it occupied by a group
of old soakers, among whom was one of perhaps sixteen years of age.
This lad, without removing the cigar which he had in his mouth, went to
the bar, whither I followed him, and, without saying a word, placed an
empty tumbler before me.
“I don’t wish anything to drink,” said I; “I am cold and tired, and
I would like to go to a room. I intend to stay here some days, and I
should be glad if you could give me a private room with a fire in it.”
“Room with a fire in it?” he inquired, as he handed me the
registry-book.
“Yes; and I will thank you to have it made immediately, and let my
baggage be taken up.”
He closed the book, after I had written my name, and returned to his
seat at the stove, leaving me standing, and immediately engaged in
conversation, without paying any attention to my request. I waited some
time, during which a negro came into the room, and went out again. I
then repeated my request, necessarily aloud, and in such a way as to be
understood, not only by the boy, but by all the company. Immediately
all conversation ceased, and every head was turned to look at me. The
lad paused a moment, spit upon the stove, and then—
“Want a room to yourself?”
“Yes, if convenient.”
No answer and no movement, all the company staring at me as if at a
detected burglar.
“Perhaps you can’t accommodate me?”
“Want a fire made in your room?”
“Why, yes, if convenient; but I should like to go to my room, at any
rate; I am very tired.”
After puffing and spitting for a moment, he rose and pulled a bell;
then took his seat again. In about five minutes a negro came in, and
during all this time there was silence.
“What’ll you drink, Baker?” said the lad, rising and going to the bar,
and taking no notice of the negro’s entrance. A boozy man followed him,
and made some reply; the lad turned out two glasses of spirits, added
water to one, and drank it in a gulp.[26]
“Can this boy show me to my room?” I asked.
“Anybody in number eleven, Peter?”
“Not as I knows on, sar.”
“Take this man’s baggage up there.”
I followed the negro up to number eleven, which was a large back room
in the upper story, with four beds in it.
“Peter,” said I, “I want a fire made here.”
“Want a fire, sar?”
“Yes, I want you to make a fire.”
“Want a fire, master, this time o’ night?”
“Why, yes; I want a fire. Where are you going with the lamp?”
“Want a lamp, massa?”
“Want a lamp? Certainly, I do.”
After about ten minutes, I heard a man splitting wood in the yard,
and, in ten more, Peter brought in three sticks of green wood, and
some chips; then, the little bed-lamp having burned out, he went into
an adjoining room, where I heard him talking to some one, evidently
awakened by his entrance to get a match; that failing, he went for
another. By one o’clock, my fire was made.
“Peter,” said I, “are you going to wait on me, while I stay here?”
“Yes, sar; I ’tends to dis room.”
“Very well; take this, and, when I leave, I’ll give you another, if you
take good care of me. Now, I want you to get me some water.”
“I’ll get you some water in de morning, sar.”
“I want some to-night—some water and some towels; don’t you think you
can get them for me?”
“I reckon so, massa, if you wants ’em. Want ’em ’fore you go to bed?”
“Yes; and get another lamp.”
“Want a lamp?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Won’t the fire do you?”
“No; bring a lamp. That one won’t burn without filling; you need not
try it.”
The water and the lamp came, after a long time.
In the morning, early, I was awakened by a knock at the door.
“Who’s there?”
“Me, massa; I wants your boots to black.”
I got up, opened the door, and returned to bed. Falling asleep, I was
soon again awakened by Peter throwing down an armful of wood upon the
floor. Slept again, and was again awakened, by Peter’s throwing up
the window, to empty out the contents of the wash bowl, etc. The room
was filled with smoke of the fat light wood: Peter had already made
a fire for me to dress by; but I again fell asleep, and, when I next
awoke, the breakfast bell was ringing. Peter had gone off, and left the
window and door open, and the fire had burned out. My boots had been
taken away, and the bell-wire was broken. I dressed, and walking to the
bar-room, asked the bar-keeper—a complaisant, full-grown man—for my
boots. He did not know where they were, and rang the bell for Peter.
Peter came, was reprimanded for his forgetfulness, and departed. Ten
minutes elapsed, and he did not return. I again requested that he
should be called; and this time he brought my boots. He had had to stop
to black them; having, he said, been too busy to do it before breakfast.
The following evening, as it grew too cold to write in my room, I went
down, and found Peter, and told him I wanted a fire again, and that he
might get me a couple of candles. When he came up, he brought one of
the little bed-lamps, with a capacity of oil for fifteen minutes’ use.
I sent him down again to the office, with a request to the proprietor
that I might be furnished with candles. He returned, and reported that
there were no candles in the house.
“Then, get me a larger lamp.”
“Aint no larger lamps, nuther, sar;—none to spare.”
“Then go out, and see if you can’t buy me some candles, somewhere.”
“Aint no stores open, Sunday, massa, and I don’t know where I can buy
’em.”
“Then go down, and tell the bar-keeper, with my compliments, that I
wish to write in my room, and I would be obliged to him if he would
send me a light, of some sort; something that will last longer, and
give more light, than these little lamps.”
“He won’t give you none, massa—not if you hab a fire. Can’t you see by
da light of da fire? When a gentlemen hab a fire in his room, dey don’t
count he wants no more light ’n dat.”
“Well, make the fire, and I’ll go down and see about it.”
As I reached the foot of the stairs, the bell rang, and I went in to
tea. The tea table was moderately well lighted with candles. I waited
till the company had generally left it, and then said to one of the
waiters—
“Here are two dimes: I want you to bring me, as soon as you can, two of
these candles to number eleven; do you understand?”
“Yes, sar; I’ll fotch ’em, sar.”
And he did.
About eight o’clock, there was an alarm of fire. Going into the street,
I was surprised to observe how leisurely the people were walking toward
the house in flames, standing very prominently, as it did, upon a hill,
at one end of the town. As I passed a church, the congregation was
coming out; but very few quickened their step above a strolling pace.
Arrived near the house, I was still more astonished to see how few,
of the crowd assembled, were occupied in restraining the progress of
the fire, or in saving the furniture, and at the prevailing stupidity,
confusion, and want of system and concert of action, in the labour for
this purpose. A large majority of those engaged were negroes. As I
returned toward the hotel, a gentleman, walking, with a lady, before
me, on the side walk, accosted a negro whom he met:
“What! Moses! That you? Why were you not here sooner?”
“Why, Mass Richard, I was singing, an’ I didn’ her de bells and——I see
twant in our ward, sar, and so I didn’ see as dar was zactly ’casion
for me to hurry myself to def. Ef eed a been in our ward, Mass Richard,
I’d a rallied, you knows I would. Mose would ha rallied, ef eed a been
in our ward—ha! ha! ha!—you knows it, Mass Richard!”
And he passed on, laughing comically, without farther reproof.
* * * * *
_Fayetteville._—The negroes employed in the turpentine business, to
which during the last week I have been giving some examination, seem
to me to be unusually intelligent and cheerful, decidedly more so than
most of the white people inhabiting the turpentine forest. Among the
latter there is a large number, I should think a majority, of entirely
uneducated, poverty-stricken vagabonds. I mean by vagabonds, simply,
people without habitual, definite occupation or reliable means of
livelihood. They are poor, having almost no property but their own
bodies; and the use of these, that is, their labour, they are not
accustomed to hire out statedly and regularly, so as to obtain capital
by wages, but only occasionally by the day or job, when driven to it by
necessity. A family of these people will commonly hire, or “squat” and
build, a little log cabin, so made that it is only a shelter from rain,
the sides not being chinked, and having no more furniture or pretension
to comfort than is commonly provided a criminal in the cell of a
prison. They will cultivate a little corn, and possibly a few roods of
potatoes, cow-peas, and coleworts. They will own a few swine, that find
their living in the forest; and pretty certainly, also, a rifle and
dogs; and the men, ostensibly, occupy most of their time in hunting.
I am, mainly, repeating the statements of one of the turpentine
distillers, but it was confirmed by others, and by my own observation,
so far as it went.
A gentleman of Fayetteville told me that he had, several times,
appraised, under oath, the whole household property of families of
this class at less than $20. If they have need of money to purchase
clothing, etc., they obtain it by selling their game or meal. If
they have none of this to spare, or an insufficiency, they will work
for a neighbouring farmer for a few days, and they usually get for
their labour fifty cents a day, _finding themselves_. The farmers
and distillers say, that they do not like to employ them, because
they cannot be relied upon to finish what they undertake, or to work
according to directions; and because, being white men, they cannot
“drive” them. That is to say, their labour is even more inefficient and
unmanageable than that of slaves.
That I have not formed an exaggerated estimate of the proportion
of such a class, will appear to the reader more probable from the
testimony of a pious colporteur, given before a public meeting in
Charleston, in February, 1855. I quote from a Charleston paper’s
report. The colporteur had been stationed at —— county, N.C.:—“_The
larger portion_ of the inhabitants seemed to be totally given up to
a species of mental hallucination, which carried them captive at its
will. They nearly all believed implicitly in witchcraft, and attributed
everything that happened, good or bad, to the agency of persons whom
they supposed possessed of evil spirits.”
The majority of what I have termed turpentine-farmers—meaning the
small proprietors of the long-leafed pine forest land—are people but
a grade superior, in character or condition, to these vagabonds. They
have habitations more like houses—log-cabins, commonly, sometimes
chinked, oftener not—without windows of glass, but with a few pieces
of substantial old-fashioned heir-loom furniture; a vegetable garden,
in which, however, you will find no vegetable but what they call
“collards” (colewort) for “greens;” fewer dogs, more swine, and larger
clearings for maize, but no better crops than the poorer class.
Their property is, nevertheless, often of considerable money value,
consisting mainly of negroes, who, associating intimately with their
masters, are of superior intelligence to the slaves of the wealthier
classes.
Some of the larger proprietors, who are also often cotton planters,
cultivating the richer low lands, are said to be gentlemen of good
estate—intelligent, cultivated, and hospitable.
North Carolina has a proverbial reputation for the ignorance and
torpidity of her people; being, in this respect, at the head of the
Slave States. I do not find the reason of this in any innate quality
of the popular mind; but, rather, in the circumstances under which it
finds its development. Owing to the general poverty of the soil in the
Eastern part of the State, and to the almost exclusive employment of
slave labour on the soils productive of cotton; owing, also, to the
difficulty and expense of reaching market with bulky produce from the
interior and western districts, population and wealth is more divided
than in the other Atlantic States; industry is almost entirely rural,
and there is but little communication or concert of action among the
small and scattered proprietors of capital. For the same reason, the
advantages of education are more difficult to be enjoyed, the distance
at which families reside apart preventing children from coming together
in such numbers as to give remunerative employment to a teacher. The
teachers are, generally, totally unfitted for their business; young
men, as a clergyman informed me, themselves not only unadvanced beyond
the lowest knowledge of the elements of primary school learning, but
often coarse, vulgar, and profane in their language and behaviour, who
take up teaching as a temporary business, to supply the demand of a
neighbourhood of people as ignorant and uncultivated as themselves.
The native white population of North Carolina is 550,267
The whole white population under 20 years, is 301,106
Leaving white adults over 20 249,161
Of these there are natives who cannot read and write[27] 73,226
Being more than one-fourth of the native white adults.
But the aspect of North Carolina with regard to slavery, is, in some
respects, less lamentable than that of Virginia. There is not only
less bigotry upon the subject, and more freedom of conversation, but
I saw here, in the institution, more of patriarchal character than
in any other State. The slave more frequently appears as a family
servant—a member of his master’s family, interested with him in his
fortune, good or bad. This is a result of the less concentration of
wealth in families or individuals, occasioned by the circumstances I
have described. Slavery thus loses much of its inhumanity. It is still
questionable, however, if, as the subject race approaches civilization,
the dominant race is not proportionately detained in its onward
progress. One is forced often to question, too, in viewing slavery
in this aspect, whether humanity and the accumulation of wealth, the
prosperity of the master, and the happiness and improvement of the
subject, are not in some degree incompatible.
These later observations are made after having twice again passed
through the State, once in a leisurely way on horseback. In some of the
Western and Northern central parts of the State, there is much more
enterprise, thrift, and comfort than in the Eastern part, where I had
my first impressions.
* * * * *
I left Fayetteville in a steamboat (advertised for 8 o’clock, left at
8.45) bound down Cape Fear River to Wilmington. A description of the
river, with incidents of the passage, will serve to show the character
of most of the navigable streams of the cotton States, flowing into the
Atlantic and the Gulf, and of the manner of their navigation.
The water was eighteen feet above its lowest summer stages; the
banks steep, thirty feet high from the present water surface—from
fifty to one hundred feet apart—and covered with large trees and
luxuriant vegetation; the course crooked; the current very rapid;
the trees overhanging the banks, and frequently falling into the
channel—making the navigation hazardous. The river is subject to very
rapid rising. The master told me that he had sometimes left his boat
aground at night, and, on returning in the morning, found it floating
in twenty-five feet water, over the same spot. The difference between
the extremes of low stages and floods is as much as seventy feet.
In summer, there are sometimes but eighteen inches of water on the
bars: the boat I was in drew but fourteen inches, light. She was a
stern-wheel craft—the boiler and engine (high pressure) being placed
at opposite ends, to balance weights. Her burden was three hundred
barrels, or sixty tons measurement. This is the character of most of
the boats navigating the river—of which there are now twelve. Larger
boats are almost useless in summer, from their liability to ground; and
even the smaller ones, at low stages of water, carry no freight, but
are employed to tow up “flats” or shallow barges. At this season of the
year, however, the steamboats are loaded close to the water’s edge.
The bulk of our freight was turpentine; and the close proximity of
this to the furnaces suggested a danger fully equal to that from snags
or grounding. On calling the attention of a fellow-passenger to it, he
told me that a friend of his was once awakened from sleep, while lying
in a berth on one of these boats, by a sudden, confused sound. Thinking
the boiler had burst, he drew the bed-clothing over his head, and laid
quiet, to avoid breathing the steam; until, feeling the boat ground,
he ran out, and discovered that she was on fire near the furnace.
Having some valuable freight near by, which he was desirous to save,
and seeing no immediate danger, though left alone on the boat, he
snatched a bucket, and, drawing water from alongside, applied it with
such skill and rapidity as soon to quench the flames, and eventually
to entirely extinguish the fire. Upon the return of the crew, a few
repairs were made, steam was got up again, and the boat proceeded to
her destination in safety. He afterwards ascertained that three hundred
kegs of gunpowder were stowed beneath the deck that had been on fire—a
circumstance which sufficiently accounted for the panic-flight of the
crew.
Soon after leaving, we passed the Zephyr, wooding up: an hour later,
our own boat was run to the bank, men jumped from her fore and aft,
and fastened head and stern lines to the trees, and we also commenced
wooding.
The trees had been cut away so as to leave a clear space to the top
of the bank, which was some fifty feet from the boat, and moderately
steep. Wood, cut, split, and piled in ranks, stood at the top of it,
and a shoot of plank, two feet wide and thirty long, conveyed it nearly
to the water. The crew rushed to the wood-piles—master, passengers,
and all, but the engineer and chambermaid, deserting the boat—and the
wood was first passed down, as many as could, throwing into the shoot,
and others forming a line, and tossing it, from one to another, down
the bank. From the water’s edge it was passed, in the same way, to its
place on board, with great rapidity—the crew exciting themselves with
yells. They were all blacks, but one.
On a tree, near the top of the bank, a little box was nailed, on which
a piece of paper was tacked, with this inscription:
“_Notic_
“_to all ‘persons takin wood from this
landin pleas to leav a ticket payable to
the subscriber, at $1,75 a cord as
heretofore._
“_Amos Sikes._”
and the master—just before the wood was all on board—hastily filled
a blank order (torn from a book, like a check-book, leaving a
memorandum of the amount, etc.) on the owner of the boat for payment,
to Mr. Sikes, for two cords of pine-wood, at $1 75, and two cords
of light-wood, at $2—and left it in the box. The wood used had been
measured in the ranks with a rod, carried for the purpose, by the
master, at the moment he reached the bank.
Before, with all possible haste, we had finished wooding, the Zephyr
passed us; and, during the rest of the day, she kept out of our sight.
As often as we met a steamboat, or passed any flats or rafts, our men
were calling out to know how far ahead of us she was; and when the
answer came back each time, in an increasing number of miles, they told
us that our boat was more than usually sluggish, owing to an uncommonly
heavy freight; but still, for some time, they were ready to make bets
that we should get first to Wilmington.
Several times we were hailed from the shore, to take on a passenger,
or some light freight; and these requests, as long as it was possible,
were promptly complied with—the boat being run up, so as to rest her
bow upon the bank, and then shouldered off by the men, as if she had
been a skiff.
There were but three through-passengers, besides myself. Among
them, was a glue-manufacturer, of Baltimore—getting orders from
the turpentine-distillers,—and a turpentine-farmer and distiller.
The glue-manufacturer said that, in his factory, they had formerly
employed slaves; had since used Irishmen, and now employed Germans.
Their operations were carried on night and day, and one gang of the
men had to relieve another. The slaves they had employed never would
be _on hand_, when the hour for relieving came. It was also necessary
to be careful that certain operations should be performed at a certain
time, and some judgment and watchfulness was necessary, to fix this
time: the slaves never could be made to care enough for the matter,
to be depended upon for discretion, in this respect; and great injury
was frequently done in consequence. Some of the operations were
disagreeable, and they would put one another up to thinking and saying
that they ought not to be required to do such dirty work—and try to
have their owners get them away from it.
Irishmen, he said, worked very well, and to a certain extent
faithfully, and, for a time, they liked them very much; but they found
that, in about a fortnight, an Irishman always thought he knew more
than his master, and would exercise his discretion a little too much,
as well as often directly disregard his orders. Irishmen were, he said,
“_too_ faithful”—that is, self-confident and officious.
At length, at a hurried time, they had employed one or two Germans.
The Irishmen, of course, soon quarrelled with them, and threatened
to leave, if they were kept. Whereupon, they were, themselves, all
discharged, and a full crew of Germans, at much less wages, taken; and
they proved excellent hands—steady, plodding, reliable, though they
never pretended to know anything, and said nothing about what they
could do. They were easily instructed, obeyed orders faithfully, and
worked fairly for their wages, without boasting or grumbling.
The turpentine-distiller gave a good account of some of his men;
but said he was sure they never performed half as much work as he
himself could; and they sometimes would, of their own accord, do twice
as much in a day, as could usually be got out of them. He employed
a Scotchman at the “still;” but he never would have white people at
ordinary work, because he couldn’t drive them. He added, with the
utmost simplicity—and I do not think any one present saw, at the time,
how much the remark expressed more than it was intended to—“I never can
drive a white man, for I know I could never bear to be driven, myself,
by anybody.”
The other passenger was “a North of England man,” as I suspected from
the first words I heard from him—though he had been in this country for
about twenty years. He was a mechanic, and employed several slaves;
but testified strongly of the expensive character of their labour;
and declared, without any reserve, that the system was ruinous in its
effects upon the character and value of all classes of working men.
The country on the river-bank was nearly all wooded, with,
occasionally, a field of corn, which, even in the low alluvial meadows,
sometimes overflowed by the river, and enriched by its deposit, had
evidently yielded but a very meagre crop—the stalks standing singly, at
great distances, and very small. The greater part, even of these once
rich low lands, that had been in cultivation, were now “turned out,”
and covered either with pines or broom-sedge and brushwood.
At some seventy or eighty miles, I should think, below Fayetteville,
the banks became lower, and there was much swamp land, in which the
ground was often covered with a confusion of logs and sawn lumber,
mingled with other rubbish, left by floods of the river. The standing
timber was very large, and many of the trees were hung with the long,
waving drapery of the tylandria, or Spanish moss, which, as well as
the mistletoe, I here first saw in profusion. There was also a thick
network among the trees, of beautiful climbing plants. I observed some
very large grape-vines, and many trees of greater size than I ever saw
of their species before. I infer that this soil, properly reclaimed,
and protected from floods of the river, might be most profitably used
in the culture of the various half-tropical trees and shrubs, of whose
fruits we now import so large and costly an amount. The fig, I have
been informed, grows and bears luxuriantly at Wilmington, seldom or
never suffering in its wood, though a crop of fruit may be occasionally
injured by a severe late spring frost. The almond, doubtless, would
succeed equally well, so also the olive; but of none of these is there
the slightest commercial value produced in North Carolina, or in all
our country.
In the evening we passed many boats and rafts, blazing with great
fires, made upon a thick bed of clay, and their crews singing at their
sweeps. Twenty miles above Wilmington, the shores became marshy, the
river wide, and the woody screen that had hitherto, in a great degree,
hid the nakedness of the land, was withdrawn, leaving open to view only
broad, reedy savannahs, on either side.
We reached Wilmington, the port at the mouth of the river, at
half-past nine. Taking a carriage, I was driven first to one hotel
and afterwards to another. They were both so crowded with guests, and
excessive business duties so prevented the clerks from being tolerably
civil to me, that I feared if I remained in either of them I should
have another Norfolk experience. While I was endeavouring to ascertain
if there was a third public-house, in which I might, perhaps, obtain
a private room, my eye fell upon an advertisement of a new railroad
line of passage to Charleston. A boat, to take passengers to the
railroad, was to start every night, from Wilmington, at ten-o’clock.
It was already something past ten; but being pretty sure that she
would not get off punctually, and having a strong resisting impulse to
being packed away in a close room, with any chance stranger the clerk
of the house might choose to couple me with, I shouldered my baggage
and ran for the wharves. At half-past ten I was looking at Wilmington
over the stern of another little wheel-barrow-steamboat, pushing back
up the river. When or how I was to be taken to Charleston, I had not
yet been able to ascertain. The captain assured me it was all right,
and demanded twenty dollars. Being in his power I gave it to him, and
received in return a pocketful of tickets, guaranteeing the bearer
passage from place to place; of not one of which places had I ever
heard before, except Charleston.
The cabin was small, dirty, crowded, close, and smoky. Finding a warm
spot in the deck, over the furnace, and to leeward of the chimney, I
pillowed myself on my luggage and went to sleep.
The ringing of the boat’s bell awoke me, after no great lapse of time,
and I found we were in a small creek, heading southward. Presently
we reached a wharf, near which stood a locomotive and train. A long,
narrow plank having been run out, half a dozen white men, including
myself, went on shore. Then followed as many negroes, who appeared to
be a recent purchase of their owner. Owing, probably, to an unusually
low tide, there was a steep ascent from the boat to the wharf, and I
was amused to see the anxiety of this gentleman for the safe landing
of his property, and especially to hear him curse them for their
carelessness, as if their lives were of much greater value to him
than to themselves. One was a woman. All carried over their shoulders
some little baggage, probably all their personal effects, slung in a
blanket; and one had a dog, whose safe landing caused him nearly as
much anxiety as his own did _his_ owner.
“Gib me da dog, now,” said the dog’s owner, standing half way up the
plank.
“Damn the dog,” said the negro’s owner; “give me your hand up here.
Let go of the dog; d’ye hear! Let him take care of himself.”
But the negro hugged the dog and brought him safely on shore.
After a short delay the train started: the single passenger car was a
fine one (made at Wilmington, Delaware), and just sufficiently warmed.
I should have slept again if it had not been that two of the six
inmates were drunk—one of them uproariously.
Passing through long stretches of cypress swamps, with occasional
intervals of either pine-barrens, or clear water ponds, in about two
hours we came, in the midst of the woods, to the end of the rails. In
the vicinity could be seen a small tent, a shanty of loose boards, and
a large, subdued fire, around which, upon the ground, a considerable
number of men were stretched out asleep. This was the camp of the hands
engaged in laying the rails, and who were thus daily extending the
distance which the locomotive could run.
The conductor told me that there was here a break of about eighty miles
in the rail, over which I should be transferred by a stage coach, which
would come as soon as possible after the driver knew that the train had
arrived. To inform him of this, the locomotive trumpeted loud and long.
The negro property, which had been brought up in a freight car, was
immediately let out on the stoppage of the train. As it stepped on to
the platform, the owner asked, “Are you all here?”
“Yes, massa, we is all heah,” answered one. “Do dysef no harm, for we’s
all heah,” added another, in an under tone.
The negroes immediately gathered some wood, and taking a brand from
the railroad hands, made a fire for themselves; then, all but the
woman, opening their bundles, wrapped themselves in their blankets and
went to sleep. The woman, bare-headed, and very inadequately clothed
as she was, stood for a long time alone, erect and statue-like, her
head bowed, gazing in the fire. She had taken no part in the light chat
of the others, and had given them no assistance in making the fire.
Her dress too was not the usual plantation apparel. It was all sadly
suggestive.
The principal other freight of the train was one hundred and twenty
bales of Northern hay. It belonged, as the conductor told me, to a
planter who lived some twenty miles beyond here, and who had bought
it in Wilmington at a dollar and a half a hundred weight, to feed his
mules. Including the steamboat and railroad freight, and all the labour
of getting it to his stables, its entire cost to him would not be much
less than two dollars a hundred, or at least four times as much as it
would have cost to raise and make it in the interior of New York or New
England. There are not only several forage crops which can be raised in
South Carolina, that cannot be grown on account of the severity of the
winter in the Free States, but, on a farm near Fayetteville, a few days
before, I had seen a crop of natural grass growing in half-cultivated
land, dead upon the ground; which, I think, would have made, if it
had been cut and well treated in the summer, three tons of hay to the
acre. The owner of the land said that there was no better hay than it
would have made, but he hadn’t had time to attend to it. He had as much
as his hands could do of other work at the period of the year when it
should have been made.
Probably the case was similar with the planter who had bought this
Northern hay at a price four times that which it would have cost a
Northern farmer to make it. He had preferred to employ his slaves at
other business.
The inference must be, either that there was most improbably-foolish,
bad management, or that the slaves were more profitably employed in
cultivating cotton, than they could have been in cultivating maize, or
other forage crops.
I put the case, some days afterwards, to an English merchant, who had
had good opportunities, and made it a part of his business to study
such matters.
“I have no doubt,” said he, “that if hay cannot be obtained here, other
valuable forage can, with less labour than anywhere at the North;
and all the Southern agricultural journals sustain this opinion, and
declare it to be purely bad management that neglects these crops,
and devotes labour to cotton, so exclusively. Probably, it is so—at
the present cost of forage. Nevertheless, the fact is also true, as
the planters assert, that they cannot afford to apply their labour
to anything else but cotton. And yet, they complain that the price
of cotton is so low that there is no profit in growing it, which is
evidently false. You see that they prefer buying hay to raising it at,
to say the least, three times what it costs your Northern farmers to
raise it. Of course, if cotton could be grown in New York and Ohio,
it could be afforded at one-third the cost it is here—say at three
cents per pound. And that is my solution of the slavery question.
Bring cotton down to three cents a pound, and there would be more
abolitionists in South Carolina than in Massachusetts. If that can be
brought about, in any way—and it is not impossible that we may live to
see it, as our railways are extended in India, and the French enlarge
their free-labour plantations in Algiers—there will be an end of
slavery.”
It was just one o’clock when the stage-coach came for us. There was
but one passenger beside myself—a Philadelphia gentleman, going to
Columbia. We proceeded very slowly for about three miles, across a
swamp, upon a “corduroy road;” then more rapidly, over rough ground,
being tossed about in the coach most severely, for six or eight
miles further. Besides the driver, there was on the box the agent or
superintendent of the coach line, who now opened the doors, and we
found ourselves before a log stable, in the midst of a forest of large
pines. The driver took out a horse, and, mounting him, rode off, and
we collected wood, splitting it with a hatchet that was carried on the
coach, and, lighting it from the coach lamp, made a fire. It was very
cold, ice half an inch thick, and a heavy hoar frost. We complained
to the agent that there was no straw in the coach bottom, while there
were large holes bored in it, that kept our feet excessively cold. He
said there was no straw to be had in the country. They were obliged to
bed their horses with pine leaves, which were damp, and would be of
no service to us. The necessity for the holes he did not immediately
explain, and we, in the exercise of our Yankee privilege, resolved that
they were made with reference to the habit of expectoration, which we
had observed in the car to be very general and excessive.
In about half an hour the driver of the new stage came to us on the
horse that the first had ridden away. A new set of horses was brought
out and attached to the coach, and we were driven on again. An hour
later, the sun rose; we were still in pine-barrens, once in several
miles passing through a clearing, with a log farm-house, and a few
negro huts about it; often through cypress swamps, and long pools of
water. At the end of ten miles we breakfasted, and changed horses and
drivers at a steam saw-mill. A few miles further on, we were asked to
get on the top of the coach, while it was driven through a swamp, in
which the water was over the road, for a quarter of a mile, to such a
depth that it covered the foot-board. The horses really groaned, as
they pushed the thin ice away with their necks, and were very near
swimming. The holes in the coach bottom, the agent now told us, were to
allow the water that would here enter the body to flow out. At the end
of these ten miles we changed again, at a cotton planter’s house—a very
neat, well-built house, having pine trees about it, but very poor, old,
negro quarters.
Since the long ford we had kept the top, the inside of the coach being
wet, and I had been greatly pleased with the driving—the coachman, a
steady-going sort of a fellow, saying but little to his horses, and
doing what swearing he thought necessary in English; driving, too, with
great judgment and skill. The coach was a fine, roomy, old-fashioned,
fragrant, leathery affair, and the horses the best I had seen this side
of Virginia. I could not resist expressing my pleasure with the whole
establishment. The new team was admirable; four sleek, well-governed,
eager, sorrel cobs, and the driver, a staid, bronzed-faced man, keeping
them tight in hand, drove quietly and neatly, his whip in the socket.
After about fifteen minutes, during which he had been engaged in
hushing down their too great impetuosity, he took out a large silver
hunting-watch, and asked what time it was.
“Quarter past eleven,” said the agent.
“Twelve minutes past,” said the Philadelphian.
“Well, fourteen, only, I am,” said the agent.
“Thirteen,” said I.
“Just thirteen, I am,” said the driver, slipping back his watch to its
place, and then, to the agent, “ha’an’t touched a hand of her since I
left old Lancaster.”
Suddenly guessing the meaning of what had been for some time
astonishing me—“You are from the North?” I asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“And you, too, Mr. Agent?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And the coach, and the cattle, and all?”
“All from Pennsylvania.”
“How long have you been here?”
“We have been here about a fortnight, stocking the road. We commenced
regular trips yesterday. You are the first passenger through, sir.”
It was, in fact, merely a transfer from one of the old National Road
lines, complete. After a little further conversation, I asked, “How do
you like the country, here?”
“Very nice country,” said the agent.
“It’s the cussedest poor country God ever created,” napped out the
driver.
“You have to keep your horses on——”
“_Shucks!_[28] damn it.”
The character of the scenery was novel to me, the surface very flat,
the soil a fine-grained, silvery white sand, shaded by a continuous
forest of large pines, which had shed their lower branches, so that we
could see from the coach-top, to the distance of a quarter of a mile,
everything upon the ground. In the swamps, which were frequent and
extensive, and on their borders, the pines gave place to cypresses,
with great pedestal trunks, and protuberant roots, throwing up an
awkward dwarf progeny of shrub, cypress, and curious bulbous-like
stumps, called “cypress-knees.” Mingled with these were a few of our
common deciduous trees, the white-shafted sycamore, the gray beech,
and the shrubby black-jack oak, with broad leaves, brown and dead, yet
glossy, and reflecting the sunbeams. Somewhat rarely, the red cedar,
and more frequently than any other except the cypress, the beautiful
American holly. Added to these, there was often a thick undergrowth of
evergreen shrubs. Vines and creepers of various kinds grew to the tops
of the tallest trees and dangled beneath and between their branches,
in intricate net-work. The tylandria hung in festoons, sometimes
several feet in length, and often completely clothed the trunks, and
every branch of the trees in the low ground. It is like a fringe of
tangled hair, of a light gray pearly colour, and sometimes produces
exquisite effects when slightly veiling the dark green, purple, and
scarlet of the cedar, and the holly with their berries. The mistletoe
also grew in large, vivid, green tufts, on the ends of the branches
of the oldest and largest trees. A small fine and wiry dead grass,
hardly perceptible, even in the most open ground, from the coach-tops,
was the only sign of herbage. Large black buzzards were constantly
in sight, sailing slowly, high above the tree-tops. Flocks of larks,
quails, and robins were common, as were also doves, swiftly flying in
small companies. The red-headed woodpecker could at any time be heard
hammering the old tree-trunks, and would sometimes show himself, after
his rat-tat, cocking his head archly, and listening to hear if the worm
moved under the bark. The drivers told me that they had on previous
days, as they went over the road, seen deer, turkeys, and wild hogs.
At every tenth mile, or thereabout, we changed horses; and, generally,
were allowed half an hour to stroll in the neighbourhood of the
stable—the agent observing that we could reach the end of the staging
some hours before the cars should leave to take us further; and, as
there were no good accommodations for sleeping there, we would pass
the time quite as pleasantly on the road. We dined at “Marion County
House,” a pleasant little village (and the only village we saw during
the day), with a fine pine-grove, a broad street, a court-house, a
church or two, a school-house, and a dozen or twenty dwellings. Towards
night, we crossed the Great Pedee of the maps, the _Big_ Pedee of the
natives, in a flat boat. A large quantity of cotton, in bales, was upon
the bank, ready for loading into a steamboat—when one should arrive—for
Charleston.
The country was very thinly peopled; lone houses often being several
miles apart. The large majority of the dwellings were of logs, and
even those of the white people were often without glass windows. In
the better class of cabins, the roof is usually built with a curve,
so as to project eight or ten feet beyond the log-wall; and a part of
this space, exterior to the logs, is enclosed with boards, making an
additional small room—the remainder forms an open porch. The whole
cabin is often elevated on four corner-posts, two or three feet from
the ground, so that the air may circulate under it. The fire-place is
built at the end of the house, of sticks and clay, and the chimney is
carried up outside, and often detached from the log-walls; but the roof
is extended at the gable, until in a line with its outer side. The
porch has a railing in front, and a wide shelf at the end, on which a
bucket of water, a gourd, and hand-basin, are usually placed. There are
chairs, or benches, in the porch, and you often see women sitting at
work in it, as in Germany.
The logs are usually hewn but little; and, of course, as they are laid
up, there will be wide interstices between them—which are increased
by subsequent shrinking. These, very commonly, are not “chinked,” or
filled up in any way; nor is the wall lined on the inside. Through the
chinks, as you pass along the road, you may often see all that is going
on in the house; and, at night, the light of the fire shines brightly
out on all sides.
Cabins, of this class, would almost always be flanked by two or three
negro huts. The cabins of the poor whites, much the largest in number,
were of a meaner sort—being mere square pens of logs, roofed over,
provided with a chimney, and usually with a shed of boards, supported
by rough posts, before the door.
Occasionally, where, near the banks of a water-course, the silvery
sand was darkened by a considerable intermixture of mould, there would
be a large plantation, with negro-quarters, and a cotton-press and
gin-house. We passed half a dozen of these, perhaps, during the day.
Where the owners resided in them, they would have comfortable-looking
residences, not unlike the better class of New England farm-houses.
On the largest, however, there was no residence for the owner, at
all, only a small cottage, or whitewashed cabin, for the overseer.
The negro-cabins, here, were the smallest I had seen—I thought not
more than twelve feet square, inside. They stood in two rows, with a
wide street between them. They were built of logs, with no windows—no
opening at all, except the doorway, with a chimney of sticks and mud;
with no trees about them, no porches, or shades, of any kind. Except
for the chimney—the purpose of which I should not readily have guessed
if I had seen one of them in New England—I should have conjectured that
it had been built for a powder-house, or perhaps an ice-house—never for
an animal to sleep in.
We stopped, for some time, on this plantation, near where some thirty
men and women were at work, repairing the road. The women were in
majority, and were engaged at exactly the same labour as the men;
driving the carts, loading them with dirt, and dumping them upon the
road; cutting down trees, and drawing wood by hand, to lay across the
miry places; hoeing, and shovelling. They were dressed in coarse gray
gowns, generally very much burned, and very dirty; which, for greater
convenience of working in the mud, were reefed up with a cord drawn
tightly around the body, a little above the hips—the spare amount of
skirt bagging out between this and the waist-proper. On their legs
were loose leggins, or pieces of blanket or bagging wrapped about, and
lashed with thongs; and they wore very heavy shoes. Most of them had
handkerchiefs, only, tied around their heads, some wore men’s caps, or
old slouched hats, and several were bareheaded.
The overseer rode about among them, on a horse, carrying in his hand a
raw-hide whip, constantly directing and encouraging them; but, as my
companion and I, both, several times noticed, as often as he visited
one end of the line of operations, the hands at the other end would
discontinue their labour, until he turned to ride towards them again.
Clumsy, awkward, gross, elephantine in all their movements; pouting,
grinning, and leering at us; sly, sensual, and shameless, in all their
expressions and demeanour; I never before had witnessed, I thought,
anything more revolting than the whole scene.
At length, the overseer dismounted from his horse, and, giving him
to a boy to take to the stables, got upon the coach, and rode with
us several miles. From the conversation I had with him, as well as
from what I saw of his conduct in the field, I judged that he was
an uncommonly fit man for his duties; at least ordinarily amiable
in disposition, and not passionate; but deliberate, watchful, and
efficient. I thought he would be not only a good economist, but a firm
and considerate officer or master.
If these women, and their children after them, were always naturally
and necessarily to remain of the character and capacity stamped on
their faces—as is probably the opinion of their owner, in common with
most wealthy South Carolina planters—I don’t know that they could be
much less miserably situated, or guided more for their own good and
that of the world, than they were. They were fat enough, and didn’t
look as if they were at all overworked, or harassed by cares, or
oppressed by a consciousness of their degradation. If that is all—as
some think.
Afterwards, while we were changing at a house near a crossing of roads,
strolling off in the woods for a short distance, I came upon two small
white-topped waggons, each with a pair of horses feeding at its pole;
near them was a dull camp fire, with a bake-kettle and coffee-pot, some
blankets and a chest upon the ground, and an old negro sitting with
his head bowed down over a meal sack, while a negro boy was combing
his wool with a common horse-card. “Good evening, uncle,” said I,
approaching them. “Good evening, sar,” he answered, without looking up.
“Where are you going?”
“Well, we ain’t gwine nower, master; we’s peddlin’ tobacco roun.”
“Where did you come from?”
“From Rockingham County, Norf Car’lina, master.”
“How long have you been coming from there?”
“’Twill be seven weeks, to-morrow, sar, sin we leff home.”
“Have you most sold out?”
“We had a hundred and seventy-five boxes in both waggons, and we’s sold
all but sixty. Want to buy some tobacco, master?” (Looking up.)
“No, thank you; I am only waiting here, while the coach changes. How
much tobacco is there in a box?”
“Seventy-five pound.”
“Are these the boxes?”
“No, them is our provision boxes, master. Show de gemman some of der
tobacco, dah.” (To the boy.)
A couple of negroes here passed along near us; the old man hailed them:
“Ho dah, boys! Doan you want to buy some backey?”
“No.” (Decidedly.)
“Well, I’m sorry for it.” (Reproachfully.)
“Are you bound homeward, now?” I asked.
“No, master; wish me was; got to sell all our backey fuss; you don’t
want none, master, does you? Doan you tink it pretty fair tobacco, sar?
Juss try it: it’s right sweet, reckon you’ll find.”
“I don’t wish any, thank you; I never use it. Is your master with you?”
“No, sar; he’s gone across to Marion, to-day.”
“Do you like to be travelling about, in this way?”
“Yes, master; I likes it very well.”
“Better than staying at home, eh?”
“Well, I likes my country better dan dis; must say dat, master; likes
my country better dan dis. I’se a free nigger in my country, master.”
“Oh, you are a free man, are you! North Carolina is a better country
than this, for free men, I suppose.”
“Yes, master, I likes my country de best; I gets five dollar a month
for dat boy.” (Hastily, to change the subject.)
“He is your son, is he?”
“Yes, sar; he drives dat waggon, I drives dis; and I haant seen him
fore, master, for six weeks, till dis mornin’.”
“How were you separated?”
“We separated six weeks ago, sar, and we agreed to meet here, last
night. We didn’, dough, till dis mornin’.”
The old man’s tone softened, and he regarded his son with earnestness.
“’Pears, dough, we was bofe heah, last night; but I couldn’t find um
till dis mornin’. Dis mornin’ some niggars tole me dar war a niggar
camped off yander in de wood; and I knew ’twas him, and I went an’
found him right off.”
“And what wages do you get for yourself?”
“Ten dollars a month, master.”
“That’s pretty good wages.”
“Yes, master, any niggar can get good wages if he’s a mind to be
industrious, no matter wedder he’s slave or free.”
“So you don’t like this country as well as North Carolina?”
“No, master. Fac is, master, ’pears like wite folks doan’ ginerally
like niggars in dis country; day doan’ ginerally talk so to niggars
like as do in my country; de niggars ain’t so happy heah; ’pears like
de wite folks was kind o’ different, somehow. I doan’ like dis country
so well; my country suits me very well.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking, myself, the niggars did not look so well
here as they did in North Carolina and Virginia; they are not so well
clothed, and they don’t appear so bright as they do there.”
“Well, master, Sundays dey is mighty well clothed, dis country; ’pears
like dere an’t nobody looks better Sundays dan dey do. But Lord!
workin’ days, seems like dey haden no close dey could keep on ’um at
all, master. Dey is a’mos’ naked, wen deys at work, some on ’em. Why,
master, up in our country, de wite folks—why, some on ’em has ten or
twelve niggars; dey doan’ hev no real big plantation, like dey has
heah, but some on ’em has ten or twelve niggars, may be, and dey juss
lives and talks along wid ’em; and dey treats ’um most as if dem was
dar own chile. Dey doan’ keep no niggars dey can’t treat so; dey won’t
keep ’em, won’t be bodered wid ’em. If dey gets a niggar and he doan
behave himself, day won’t keep him; dey juss tell him, sar, he must
look up anudder master, and if he doan’ find hisself one, I tell ’ou,
when de trader cum along, dey sells him, and he totes him away. Dey
allers sell off all de bad niggars out of our country; dat’s de way all
de bad niggar and all dem no-account niggar keep a cumin’ down heah;
dat’s de way on’t, master.”
“Yes, that’s the way of it, I suppose; these big plantations are not
just the best thing for niggers, I see that plainly.”
“Master, you wan’t raise in dis country, was ’ou?”
“No; I came from the North.”
“I tort so, sar; I knew ’ou wan’t one of dis country people; ’peared
like ’ou was one o’ my country people, way ’ou talks; and I loves dem
kine of people. Won’t you take some whisky, sar? Heah, you boy! bring
dat jug of whisky dah, out o’ my waggon; in dah,—in dat box under dem
foddar.”
“No, don’t trouble yourself, I am very much obliged to you; but I don’t
like to drink whisky.”
“Like to have you drink some, master, if you’d like it. You’s right
welcome to it. ’Pears like I knew you was one of my country people.
Ever been in Greensboro,’ master? dat’s in Guilford.”
“No, I never was there. I came from New York, further North than your
country.”
“New York, did ’ou, master? I heerd New York was what dey calls a Free
State; all de niggars free dah.”
“Yes, that is so.”
“Not no slaves at all; well, I expec dat’s a good ting, for all de
niggars to be free. Greensboro’ is a right comely town; tain’t like
dese heah Souf Car’lina towns.”
“I have heard it spoken of as a beautiful town, and there are some fine
people there.”
“Yes, dere’s Mr. —— ——, I knows him—he’s a mighty good man.”
“Do you know Mr. ——?”
“O yes, sar, he’s a mighty fine man, he is, master; ain’t no better
kind of man dan him.”
“Well, I must go, or the coach will be kept waiting for me. Good-bye to
you.”
“Far’well, master, far’well; ’pears like it’s done me good to see a man
dat’s cum out of my country again. Far’well, master.”
* * * * *
We took supper at a neat log-cabin, standing a short distance off the
road, with a beautiful evergreen oak, the first I had observed, in
front of it. There was no glass in the windows, but drapery of white
muslin restrained the currents of air, and during the day would let in
sufficient light, while a blazing wood-fire both warmed and lighted
the room by night. A rifle and powder-horn hung near the fire-place,
and the master of the house, a fine, hearty, companionable fellow,
said that he had lately shot three deer, and that there were plenty of
cats, and foxes, as well as turkeys, hares, squirrels, and other small
game in the vicinity. It was a perfectly charming little backwoods
farm-house—good wife, supper, and all; but one disagreeable blot
darkened the otherwise most agreeable picture of rustic civilization—we
were waited upon at table by two excessively dirty, slovenly-dressed,
negro girls. In the rear of the cabin were two hovels, each lighted by
large fires, and apparently crowded with other slaves belonging to the
family.
Between nine and ten at night, we reached the end of the completed
railroad, coming up in search for that we had left the previous night.
There was another camp and fire of the workmen, and in a little white
frame-house we found a company of engineers. There were two trains and
locomotives on the track, and a gang of negroes was loading cotton into
one of them.
I strolled off until I reached an opening in the woods, in which was a
cotton-field and some negro-cabins, and beyond it large girdled trees,
among which were two negroes with dogs, barking, yelping, hacking,
shouting, and whistling, after ’coons and ’possums. Returning to the
railroad, I found a comfortable, warm passenger-car, and, wrapped
in my blanket, went to sleep. At midnight I was awakened by loud
laughter, and, looking out, saw that the gang of negroes had made a
fire, and were enjoying a right merry repast. Suddenly, one raised such
a sound as I never heard before; a long, loud, musical shout, rising
and falling, and breaking into falsetto, his voice ringing through
the woods in the clear, frosty night air, like a bugle-call. As he
finished, the melody was caught up by another, and then another, and
then by several in chorus. When there was silence again, one of them
cried out, as if bursting with amusement: “Did yer see de dog?—when I
began eeohing, he turn roun’ an’ look me straight into der face; ha!
ha! ha!” and the whole party broke into the loudest peals of laughter,
as if it was the very best joke they had ever heard.
After a few minutes I could hear one urging the rest to come to
work again, and soon he stepped towards the cotton bales, saying,
“Come, brederen, come; let’s go at it; come now, eoho! roll away!
eeoho-eeoho-weeioho-i!”—and the rest taking it up as before, in a few
moments they all had their shoulders to a bale of cotton, and were
rolling it up the embankment.
About half-past three, I was awakened again by the whistle of the
locomotive, answering, I suppose, the horn of a stagecoach, which in a
few minutes drove up, bringing a mail. A negro man and woman who had
been sleeping near me, replenished the fire; two other passengers came
in, and we started.
In the woods I saw a negro by a fire, while it was still night, shaving
shingles very industriously. He did not even stop to look at the train.
No doubt he was a slave, working by task, and of his own accord at
night, that he might have the more daylight for his own purposes.
The negroes enjoy fine blazing fires in the open air, and make them
at every opportunity. The train on this road was provided with a man
and maid-servant to attend to the fire and wait on the passengers—a
very good arrangement, by the way, yet to be adopted on our own long
passenger trains. When we arrived at a junction where we were to change
cars, as soon as all the passengers had left the train, they also left;
but instead of going into the station-house with us, they immediately
collected some pine branches and chips, and getting a brand from the
locomotive, made a fire upon the ground, and seated themselves by it.
Other negroes soon began to join them, and as they approached were
called to: “Doan’ yer cum widout som’ wood! Doan’ yer cum widout som’
wood!” and every one had to make his contribution. At another place,
near a cotton plantation, I found a woman collecting pine leaves into
heaps, to be carted to the cattle-pens. She, too, had a fire near her.
“What are you doing with a fire, aunty?” “Oh, jus’ to warm my hans wen
dey gits cold, massa.” The weather was then almost uncomfortably warm.
We were running during the forenoon, for a hundred miles, or more,
in a southerly direction, on nearly a straight course, through about
the middle of the State of South Carolina. The greater part of this
distance, the flat, sandy pine barrens continued, scarcely a foot
of grading, for many miles at a time, having been required in the
construction of the railroad. As the swamps, which were still frequent,
were crossed on piles and tressel-work, the roads must have been built
very cheaply—the land damages being nothing. We passed from the track
of one company to that of another, several times during the day—the
speed was from fifteen to twenty miles an hour, with long stoppages
at the stations. A conductor said they could easily run forty miles,
and had done it, including stoppages; but they were forbidden now to
make fast time, from the injury it did the road—the superstructure
being much more shaken and liable to displacement in these light
sands than on our Northern roads. The locomotives that I saw were all
made in Philadelphia; the cars were all from the Hartford, Conn.,
and Worcester, Mass., manufactories, and invariably, elegant and
comfortable. The roads seemed to be doing a heavy freighting business
with cotton. We passed at the turn-outs half a dozen trains, with
nearly a thousand bales on each, but the number of passengers was
always small. A slave country can never, it is evident, furnish a
passenger traffic of much value. A majority of the passenger trains,
which I saw used in the South, were not paying for the fuel and wages
expended in running them.
For an hour or two we got above the sandy zone, and into the second,
middle, or “wave” region of the State. The surface here was extremely
undulating, gracefully swelling and dipping in bluffs and dells—the
soil a mellow brown loam, with some indications of fertility,
especially in the valleys. Yet most of the ground was occupied by pine
woods (probably old-field pines, on exhausted cotton-fields). For a few
miles, on a gently sloping surface of the same sort of soil, there were
some enormously large cotton-fields.
I saw women working again, in large gangs with men. In one case they
were distributing manure—ditch scrapings it appeared to be—and the mode
of operation was this: the manure had been already carted into heaps
upon the ground; a number of the women were carrying it in from the
heap in baskets, on their heads, and one in her apron, and spreading
it with their hands between the ridges on which the cotton grew last
year; the rest followed with great, long-handled, heavy, clumsy hoes,
and pulled down the ridges over the manure, and so made new ridges for
the next planting. I asked a young planter who continued with me a good
part of the day, why they did not use ploughs. He said this was rather
rough land, and a plough wouldn’t work in it very well. It was light
soil, and smooth enough for a parade ground. The fact is, in certain
parts of South Carolina, a plough is yet an almost unknown instrument
of tillage.
About noon we turned east, on a track running direct to Charleston.
Pine barrens continued alternating with swamp, with some cotton and
corn fields on the edges of the latter. A few of the pines were “boxed”
for turpentine; and I understood that one or two companies from North
Carolina had been operating here for several years. Plantations were
not very often seen along the road through the sand; but stations, at
which cotton was stored and loading, were comparatively frequent.
At one of the stations an empty car had been attached to the train; I
had gone into it, and was standing at one end of it, when an elderly
countryman with a young woman and three little children entered and
took seats at the other. The old man took out a roll of deerskin, in
which were bank-bills, and some small change.
“How much did he say ’twould be?” he inquired.
“Seventy cents.”
“For both on us?”
“For each on us.”
“Both on us, I reckon.”
“Reckon it’s each.”
“I’ve got jess seventy-five cents in hard money.”
“Give it to him, and tell him it’s all yer got; reckon he’ll let us go.”
At this I moved, to attract their attention; the old man started, and
looked towards me for a moment, and said no more. I soon afterwards
walked out on the platform, passing him, and the conductor came in, and
collected their fare; I then returned, and stood near them, looking
out of the window of the door. The old man had a good-humoured, thin,
withered, very brown face, and there was a speaking twinkle in his eye.
He was dressed in clothes much of the Quaker cut—a broad-brimmed, low
hat; white cotton shirt, open in front, and without cravat, showing
his hairy breast; a long-skirted, snuff-coloured coat, of very coarse
homespun; short trousers, of brown drilling; red woollen stockings, and
heavy cow-hide shoes. He presently asked the time of day; I gave it to
him, and we continued in conversation, as follows:—
“Right cold weather.”
“Yes.”
“G’wine to Branchville?”
“I am going beyond there—to Charleston.”
“Ah—come from Hamburg this mornin’?”
“No—from beyond there.”
“Did ye?—where’d you come from?”
“From Wilmington.”
“How long yer ben comin’?”
“I left Wilmington night before last, about ten o’clock. I have been
ever since on the road.”
“Reckon yer a night-bird.”
“What?”
“Reckon you are a night-bird—what we calls a night-hawk; keeps a goin’
at night, you know.”
“Yes—I’ve been going most of two nights.”
“Reckon so; kinder red your eyes is. Live in Charleston, do ye?”
“No, I live in New York.”
“New York—that’s a good ways, yet, ain’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Reckon yer arter a chicken, up here.”
“No.”
“Ah, ha—reckon ye are.”
The young woman laughed, lifted her shoulder, and looked out of the
window.
“Reckon ye’ll get somebody’s chicken.”
“I’m afraid not.”
The young woman laughed again, and tossed her head.
“Oh, reckon ye will—ah, ha! But yer mustn’t mind my fun.”
“Not at all, not at all. Where did _you_ come from?”
“Up here to ——; g’wine hum; g’wine to stop down here, next deeper. How
do you go, w’en you get to Charleston?”
“I am going on to New Orleans.”
“Is New York beyond New Orleans?”
“Beyond New Orleans? Oh, no.”
“In New Orleans, is’t?
“What?”
“New York is somewhere in New Orleans, ain’t it?”
“No; it’s the other way—beyond Wilmington.”
“Oh! Been pretty cold thar?”
“Yes; there was a foot and a half of snow there, last week, I hear.”
“Lord o’massy! why! have to feed all the cattle!—whew!—ha!—whew! don’t
wonner ye com’ away.”
“You are a farmer.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I am a farmer, too.”
“Be ye—to New York?”
“Yes; how much land have you got?”
“A hundred and twenty-five acres; how much have you?”
“Just about the same. What’s your land worth, here?”
“Some on’t—what we call swamp-land—kinder low and wet like, you
know—that’s worth five dollars an acre; and mainly it’s worth a dollar
and a half or two dollars—that’s takin’ a common trac’ of upland.
What’s yours worth?”
“A hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars.”
“What!”
“A hundred and fifty to two hundred.”
“Dollars?”
“Yes.”
“Not an acre?”
“Yes.”
“Good Lord! yer might as well buy niggers to onst. Do you work any
niggers?”
“No.”
“May be they don’t have niggers—that is, slaves—to New York.”
“No, we do not. It’s against the law.”
“Yes, I heerd ’twas, some place. How do yer get yer work done?”
“I hire white men—Irishmen generally.”
“Do they work good?”
“Yes, better than negroes, I think, and don’t cost nearly as much.”
“What do yer have to give ’em?”
“Eight or nine dollars a month, and board, for common hands, by the
year.”
“Hi, Lordy! and they work up right smart, do they? Why, yer can’t get
any kind of a good nigger less’n twelve dollars a month.”
“And board?”
“And board em? yes; and clothe, and blank, and shoe ’em, too.”
He owned no negroes himself and did not hire any. “They,” his family,
“made their own crap.” They raised maize, and sweet potatoes, and
cow-peas. He reckoned, in general, they made about three barrels of
maize to the acre; sometimes, as much as five. He described to me,
as a novelty, a plough, with “a sort of a wing, like, on one side,”
that pushed off, and turned over a slice of the ground; from which it
appeared that he had, until recently, never seen a mould-board; the
common ploughs of this country being constructed on the same principles
as those of the Chinese, and only rooting the ground, like a hog or a
mole—not cleaving and turning. He had never heard of working a plough
with more than one horse. He was frank and good-natured; embarrassed
his daughter by coarse jokes about herself and her babies, and asked
me if I would not go home with him, and, when I declined, pressed me
to come and see them when I returned. That I might do so, he gave me
directions how to get to his farm; observing that I must start pretty
early in the day—because it would not be safe for a stranger to try to
cross the swamp after dark. The moment the train began to check its
speed, before stopping at the place at which he was to leave, he said
to his daughter, “Come, gal! quick now; gather up yer young ones!” and
stepped out, pulling her after him, on to the platform. As they walked
off, I noticed that he strode ahead, like an Indian or a gipsy man, and
she carried in her arms two of the children and a bundle, while the
third child held to her skirts.
A party of fashionably-dressed people took the train for
Charleston—two families, apparently, returning from a visit to their
plantations. They came to the station in handsome coaches. Some minutes
before the rest, there entered the car, in which I was then again
alone, and reclining on a bench in the corner, an old nurse, with a
baby, and two young negro women, having care of half a dozen children,
mostly girls, from three to fifteen years of age. As they closed the
door, the negro girls seemed to resume a conversation, or quarrel.
Their language was loud and obscene, such as I never heard before
from any but the most depraved and beastly women of the streets. Upon
observing me, they dropped their voices, but not with any appearance
of shame, and continued their altercation, until their mistresses
entered. The white children, in the mean time, had listened, without
any appearance of wonder or annoyance. The moment the ladies opened the
door, they became silent.[29]