_March 14._ Mr. Philbrick has bought in all thirteen plantations,[121]
at an expense of about $7000: three places for R., two for Wells, two
for Hull on Ladies Island, six places within five miles of this place.
I remain here, and shall probably assume Cherry Hill and Mulberry
Hill, my old places; G. comes to Pine Grove, and takes that, the
Point, and Captain John Fripp Homestead. The people are all starting
well, we are in excellent spirits, and are in proper season for the
crops; and "if God spare life," "if nothing strange happens," "if we
live to see," we shall "_see_ crop make, sir."
This drafting business is simply folly. Hunter is an ignorant,
obstinate fool.[122] General Saxton is very much opposed to the
measure, especially after promising the men again and again that they
would not be taken unless they were willing to go; but he says he has
done all he can to dissuade Hunter without any effect, and if he
should go further in the matter, either he or Hunter would have to go
home, and he is not willing at this crisis to raise this additional
difficulty. Hunter's order was published in the _New South_[123] last
Monday. For a full week before the negroes had been anxiously
questioning us about this strange news that "they want to take we to
make soldiers." Up to Monday I was able to tell them that I had heard
such stories, but did not believe them; but Tuesday night, when I got
home, I told them how matters stood, and they confessed that for a
full week before hardly a man on the plantation under sixty years of
age had slept in his bed. A strange white face drives them from the
field into the woods like so many quails; they will not go to church,
they will not go to the Ferry. Two Sundays ago I happened to ask one
of the elders at church, to make talk merely, how soon the next
Society meeting took place at Pine Grove. It was last Saturday
evening. My question to Demus was reported at the meeting, they
immediately became suspicious of some trap to catch them, they grew
anxious, a cry arose that there were soldiers out on the plantation,
the men left the praise-house, and the meeting, instead of continuing
all night, broke up about midnight with some confusion.[124] They were
caught last year, they will not be caught again. They cannot
understand how it is that the Government, for whom they have been
working, and in whom they have learned to place confidence as a
protection, should wish to interrupt their work here. It is a terrible
discouragement to them, just as they are starting their first fair
trial for themselves, to be forced, I do not say into the military
service, for very few will be caught, but forced to abandon their
crops, and skulk and hide and lead the life of hunted beasts during
all this precious planting season. The women would be physically able
to carry on for some time the men's share with their own, but they
would be very much disheartened, and would need constant
encouragement. Under this terrible uncertainty and fear, the work has
begun to slacken. Even the head men on the plantations are losing
courage. I make as light of the evil as I can, but I am always met by
the remark: "We are a year older than we was last year, sir." Their
trust in me is a little surprising. They converse in my presence about
their dodging life, and I could easily take any ten of them I chose
alone; or, with the aid of one other, I could take the whole
plantation. "If we didn't trust to you, sir, we should have to leave
the plantation entirely; you are the only person to protect we now,
sir." It is hardly necessary to remark that their confidence is not
misplaced. Help catch them? "I wouldn't do it first."
In accordance with Hunter's order, referred to above, Saxton
issued a general order to superintendents, which bade them
send to Captain Hooper a list of all able-bodied freedmen
between eighteen and fifty on the plantations, and
instructed them to urge the negroes to enlist by appealing
to "their reason, sense of right, their love of liberty and
their dread of returning to the rule of their late masters,"
adding: "The General Commanding expects to form a pretty
correct judgment of the comparative efficiency of the
different superintendents and the amount of influence for
good they are capable of exerting over their people, by the
proportion of the whole number subject to draft which they
are able to bring in without the aid of physical force."
Referring to this last sentence as a "mean insinuation," C.
P. W. goes on:
For my people, I know there is about as much use in asking them to
enlist as in requesting my horse, a very intelligent animal, to drink
salt water. I hope they will draft, they may possibly enlist, the
loafers at Hilton Head and Beaufort, and those whose proximity to
camps, or general worthless character, prevents them from taking much
interest in their crops. But these men, who have been paid up in full
for last year's crop, and have seen that their crop, slim as it was,
brought them a fair compensation, are bound to show _a crop_ this
year. Crop-raising is their business, their trade, and they intend to
show what they can do at it this year for the Government, which
protects them, for me, who "see them justice" (they have a vague idea
that I reap a certain percentage from their crop--they say, "You will
have a bigger crop of cotton than Mr. Philbrick, sir"--they also think
that if I "overlook" four hundred hands, I ought to get more pay than
a man who only sees to two hundred), and last, and principally, for
themselves. They have not been learning cotton-raising, perforce, all
these years for nothing. Now their enforced knowledge comes out in
tending a crop of which they are to own a share, and the little tricks
of the trade, which had to be watchfully enforced in the old time, are
now skillfully produced, especially in the food crops, which are more
evidently their own. I let them go ahead very much as they choose; I
make regulations for the good of all, as in the matter of carts, oxen,
etc., but the minutiæ I do not meddle with, except as a matter of
curiosity and acquirement of knowledge. They work well, some of them
harder than in the old time; the lazy ones are stimulated to exertion
for their own benefit, the energetic ones _race like sixty_.