My first journey as wagoner to Savannah was a successful one. There was
still some cotton through the country that escaped the Sherman
depredators. Mr. W. G. Brown let me have two bales. Mr. Pinkus Happ let
me have one. My tariff was $5.00 per 100 pounds, and the same returning.
I took the Davisboro road from Sandersville, having only two mules
hitched to the wagon. I had sent word to Mr. Jordan to meet me with my
horse and mule still in his possession. The road was heavy for it was a
rainy season and to make it lighter pulling I concluded to have a four
mule team. So we put the harness on the horse and mule and hitched them
in the lead. About that time a negro I knew, named Perry, came up and
made himself useful. I said, Perry, what are you doing? Nothing, Marse
Ike. How would you like to wagon for me at $15.00 a month and rations?
Very well, said he. Well, jump in the saddle, I am on my way to
Savannah. It was about four o'clock p. m. Perry took hold of the line
and cracked his whip, when the horse, whose other qualities, except a
saddle horse I did not know, commenced to kick in a spirited manner, so
as to skin his legs with the trace chains in which he became entangled,
I had to unhitch him. Mr. John Salter was present and saw the whole
proceeding. I remarked, Well. I am sorry for that for I had expected to
have a four horse team, and now can have only a spike team. Salter said,
Hermann, what will you take for this horse? You say he is a good saddle
horse? I never straddled a better one. What will you give me? He said he
had no money but had two bales of cotton under his gin house and I could
have it for the horse. How far do you live from here? Two miles only.
All right, the horse is yours. Perry, let us go and get the cotton. Mr.
Salter led the way where the cotton was. We loaded the same and drove
that night to the Fleming place and camped. The trip was uneventful. We
made the journey to Savannah in four days. There was a firm of cotton
factors named Bothwell and Whitehead doing business in the City, and
they were my objective point. However, before arriving into the city,
about thirty miles this side, I met men wanting to buy my cotton. They
offered me from fifteen to fifty cents per pound. I did not know what
the value was; I knew that before the war started it brought about eight
cents. However, I drove up to the firms office on Bay street. I saw Mr.
Bothwell; after the usual greeting I said, What is cotton selling at?
It brought .62½ this a. m., but I think I can get more than that if it
is good cotton. To make matters short I got .65 per pound and the two
bales Salter let me have for my horse weighed 600 pounds a bale, netting
me $720.00. I bought me another mule and now I was again fully equipped
and made the voyage regularly every week. I took a partner, as the
business was more than I could attend to by myself; his name was Solomon
Witz. He would engage freight during my absence, and we sometimes made
the trip together. The country was forever in a state of excitement. New
edicts appeared from time to time from Washington, D. C., Congress
promulgated laws to suit their motives, and notwithstanding the
agreement between General Lee and General Grant at Appomattox that the
men should return, build up their waste places and not again to take up
arms until properly exchanged and they should not be molested as long as
they should attend to their daily avocations, Congress established what
was then known as the Freedmen's Bureau, seemingly for the protection of
the negroes, as if they needed any, as their devotion to their master
and their behavior at home while every white man able to bear arms was
at the front fighting for their homes and firesides, leaving their
families in the hands of their slaves whose devotion was exemplary, was
not that a sufficient guarantee of the relationship between slaves and
masters? The attachment was of the tenderest kind and a white man would
have freely offered his life for the protection of his servants; but
that condition did not suit our adversaries. Although we thought the war
was over, it was not over and more terrible things awaited the Southern
people. Emissaries of every description, like vultures, surnamed carpet
baggers, for all they possessed could be enclosed into a hand bag,
overran this country to fatten on the remnants left. School mams of the
far East, of very questionable reputation, opened what were called
schools, presumably to teach the negroes how to read and write, but
rather to inculcate into their minds all sorts of deviltry, embittering
their feelings against their former owners and life long friends, urging
them to migrate for unless they did they would still be considered as
bondsmen and bondswomen, thus breaking up the kind relation existing
between the white man and the negro. And all this under the protection
of the Freedmen's Bureau backed up by a garrison of Federals stationed
in every town and city throughout the Southern States. In fact the
South was made to feel the heels of the despots. Military Governors were
appointed. All those who bore arms or aided or abetted in the cause of
the South were disfranchised, the negro was enfranchised and allowed the
ballot, with a military despot at the helm and negroes and carpet
baggers, and a few renegades such as can be found in any country, as
legislators. The ship of state soon run into shallow waters and was
pounded to pieces on the reeves of bankruptcy. Taxes were such that
property owners could not meet them and they had the misfortune to see
their lifelong earnings sacrificed under so called legal process, of the
hammer, for a mere song. These were the actual conditions in the days of
the so called reconstruction. Bottom rail on top, was the slogan of
those savage hordes. Forty acres and a mule, and to every freedman,
Government rations, was the prelude of legislation. Men who took up arms
in defense of their sacred rights could not be expected to endure such a
state of affairs forever, the women and children must be protected. The
garrisons were gradually withdrawn; the carpet baggers remained and
ruled; negroes formed themselves into clubs and organizations under
their leadership, when as an avalanche all over the Southern states
appeared the K. K. K.'s, called the Ku Klux Klan, or the Boys Who Had
Died at Manassas, who have come back to regulate matters. Terror struck
into the ranks of the guilty and of the would be organizers and the
country soon resumed its normal state, Governors fled and Legislators
took to the bush. But I am deviating from my subject.