_Dec. 28._ I was in the midst of school when it was announced that Mr.
G. was coming. The children's eyes glistened and they audibly
expressed their delight, but kept their seats very well till he was
fairly in the room and had shaken hands with one or two near him; then
their impatience could resist no longer and they crowded about him
with great delight, tumbling over the benches in their eagerness to
shake hands with him. It was a very pretty sight.
Mr. Philbrick has been entertaining us with an account of his week's
experience, which ended at church to-day in a funny way. A couple came
forward to be married after church, as often happens, when Sarah from
this place got up and remarked that was her husband! Whereupon Mr.
Philbrick was called in from the yard and promised to investigate and
report. Jack said he had nothing against Sarah, but he did not live on
the plantation now, and wanted a wife at Hilton Head.
General Saxton was at church to-day to invite the people to camp
Thursday, telling them that they need not be afraid to go, as no one
would be kept there against their will. They are afraid of a trap, as
they were at the Fourth of July Celebration, but I hope a good many
will have the sense to go.
Mr. Philbrick and C. are having an amiable comparison of relative
plantation work and which has raised the most cotton. The cotton
raised on these places and C.'s and R.'s is more than half of that
raised on all the islands.
The Pine Grove house has been broken into and the furniture we left
there carried off. The way in which those people have degenerated and
these improved since we moved here is a proof of how necessary it is
that they should have the care and oversight of white people in this
transition state. When we lived there, that plantation was the best
behaved and this the worst; now the reverse is the case. The Point
Plantation has not been affected so much any way, as they never had a
"white house" and have the same excellent driver.
Finding that Maria, the old nurse, and some babies were sick, I made a
pilgrimage to the quarters, visited the invalids and also Bacchus'
school, and told the people I hoped they would go to the Celebration
at camp. As I went through the long street, women were washing outside
their doors, sitting on their doorsteps sewing or tending babies,
while the smaller children were rolling in the dirt. In one of the
cabins I accidentally encountered Sarah, the deserted wife, and coming
out found Grace, Jack's mother, holding forth in her dignified way
upon the subject, condemning her son, quietly but earnestly. She
turned to Sarah as she came out and, gesticulating with her hands
respectively, said, "I take Becca in dis han' and carry her to
punishment, an' Sarah in dis right han' and carry her to Christ." She
is a "fine figure of a woman"--I wish I could have drawn her as she
stood. She did more work than any one on the plantation on cotton this
year. Her husband was coachman and was taken off by the overseer the
day after the "gun was fire at Hilton Head."
Minda gave me an amusing account of a conversation she heard between
Mr. Cockloft, the overseer, and his niece, Miss "Arnie," about the
prospect of the Yankees coming here, she telling him, when he was
expressing his gratification at the very large crop raised last year,
that he did not talk sense,--he was just raising it for the Yankees.
And when they had to run off, in the midst of all the crying and
dismay, she could not resist telling him she was glad of it, to prove
her right. Minda said that she knew more than her uncle because she
had been to school, and had "high edicate." They sent Henry to the
other end of the island to see if the forts were really taken, and he
came back and told them that they had better be off, for all the
Yankee ships were "going in procession up to Beaufort, solemn as a
funeral."
_Dec. 30._ My occupation was interrupted by the arrival of William
Hall,[88] bag and baggage. You can think of us as a household of
three[89] pursuing our several occupations, of which more hereafter.
1863
_Celebration of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation--The
land-sales of 1863, Mr. Philbrick's purchase of
plantations--"Shop"--Visit to Camp--Arrest of General
Stevenson--Difficulties with army officers--More drafting by
Hunter--Encouraging signs among the negroes--"The black
draft"--The siege of Charleston--Assault on Fort
Wagner--Care of the wounded--Depredations of the soldiers on
the plantations--Interest in the former owners of
plantations--The "Plantation Commission" an informal civil
court--Negro speech and negro ways--Attacks on Mr. Philbrick
as a "speculator"--Discouraging signs among the
negroes--Plans of the Government for selling land to the
negroes--The cotton crop of 1863--The black draft again._
The first letter of 1863 gives an account of the ceremonies
with which the Sea Islands celebrated the Emancipation
Proclamation. The place was the Smith Plantation, on Port
Royal Island, where the First South Carolina had its camp.