POLITICS AND FREE LABOR IN GEORGIA.
At Milledgeville,—a mere village (of twenty-five hundred inhabitants
before the war), surrounded by a beautiful hilly and wooded country,—I
saw something of the Georgia State Legislature. It was at work on a
cumbersome and rather useless freedmen’s code, which, however, contained
no very objectionable features. In intelligence and political views this
body represented the State very fairly. I was told that its members,
like the inhabitants of the State at large, were, with scarce an
exception, believers in the right of secession. The only questions that
ever divided them on that subject, were not as to the right, but as to
the policy; and whether the State should secede separately, or coöperate
with the other seceding States.
Since the Rebel State debt had been repudiated, there existed a feeling
among both legislators and people that all debts, public and private,
ought to be wiped out with it. I remember well the argument of a
gentleman of Morgan County. “Two thirds of the people in this county are
left hopelessly involved by the loss of the war debt. There is a law to
imprison a man for paying what the act of the convention takes from him
the power of paying. The more loyal portion of our citizens would not
invest in Confederate scrip, but put their money into State bonds, which
they thought safe from repudiation. A large number of debts are for
negro property. Now, since slavery is abolished, all debts growing out
of slavery ought to be abolished. Four or five men in this county,” he
added, “have the power to ruin over thirty families, whose obligations
they bought up with Confederate money. As that money turns out to have
never been legally good for anything, all such obligations should be
cancelled.”
Throughout the State I heard the bitterest complaints against the Davis
despotism. “There was first a tax of ten per cent. levied on all our
produce; then of twelve per cent. on all property. Worse still, our
property was seized at the will of the government, and scrip given in
exchange, which was not good for taxes or anything else. There was
public robbery by the government, and private robbery by the officers of
the government. The Secretary of War, Seddon, had grain to sell; so he
raised the price of it to forty dollars a bushel, when it should have
sold for two dollars and a half. The conscript act was executed with the
most criminal partiality. A man of an influential family had no
difficulty in evading it. During the last year of the war, there were
one hundred and twenty-two thousand young Confederates in bomb-proof
situations. But an ordinary conscript was treated like a prisoner,
thrown into jail, and often handcuffed.”
The value of slave property was the subject of endless debate. Said a
Georgia planter: “I owned a hundred niggers; their increase paid me
eight per cent., their labor four per cent.; and I’ve sixty thousand
dollars’ worth of property buried in that lot,”—pointing to the
plantation graveyard. The convention that reconstructed the State had
not the grace to accept emancipation without inserting in the new Bill
of Rights the proviso “that this acquiescence in the action of the
United States Government is not intended as a relinquishment, or waiver
or estoppel of such claim for compensation of loss sustained by reason
of the emancipation of his slaves as any citizen of Georgia may
hereafter make upon the justice and magnanimity of that government.” And
there existed in most minds a growing hope that, when the Southern
representatives got into Congress, measures would be carried, compelling
the government not only to pay for slaves, but for all other losses
occasioned by the war.
Not one of the men elected as members of Congress could take the
Congressional test-oath. The mere fact that a man could take that oath
was sufficient to insure his defeat.
Georgia has no common-school system. The poor, who can show that they
are unable to pay for the tuition of their children, are permitted to
send them to private schools on the credit of the county in which they
reside. Few, however, take advantage of a privilege which involves a
confession of poverty. There is great need of Northern benevolent effort
to bring forward the education of the poor whites in all these States.
I found the freedmen’s schools in Georgia supported by the New-England
Freedmen’s Aid Society, and the American Missionary Association. These
were confined to a few localities,—principally to the large towns. There
were sixty-two schools, with eighty-nine teachers, and six thousand six
hundred pupils. There were in other places, self-supporting schools,
taught by colored teachers, who did not report to the State
Superintendent. The opposition to the freedmen’s schools, on the part of
the whites, was generally bitter; and in several counties school-houses
had been burned, and the teachers driven away, on the withdrawal of the
troops. Occasionally, however, I would hear an intelligent planter make
use of a remark like this: “The South has been guilty of the greatest
inconsistency in the world, in sending missionaries to enlighten the
heathen, and forbidding the education of our own servants.”
At Augusta, I visited a number of colored schools; among others, a
private one kept by Mr. Baird, a colored man, in a little room where he
had secretly taught thirty pupils during the war. The building,
containing a store below and tenements above, was owned and occupied by
persons of his own race; the children entered it by different doors, the
girls with their books strapped under their skirts, the boys with theirs
concealed under their coats; all finding their way in due season to the
little school-room. I was shown the doors and passages by which they
used to escape and disperse, at the approach of white persons.
Mr. Baird told me that during ten years previous to the War, he taught a
similar school in the city of Charleston, South Carolina. The laws
prohibited persons of color from teaching; and accordingly he employed a
white woman to assist him. She sat and sewed, and kept watch, until the
patrol looked in, when she appeared as the teacher, and the real teacher
(a small man) fell back as a pupil. It was ostensibly a school for free
colored children, the teaching of slaves to read being a criminal
offence; yet many of those were taught.
* * * * *
On the road to Augusta, my attention was attracted by the conversation
of two gentlemen, a Georgian and a Mississippian, sitting behind me in
the car.
We had just passed Union Point, where there was considerable excitement
about an unknown negro found lying out in the woods, sick with the
small-pox. Nobody went to his relief, and the citizens, standing with
hands in their pockets, allowed that, if he did not die of his disease,
he would soon perish from exposure and starvation.
“The trouble is just here,” said the Georgian behind me. “The niggers
have never been used to taking care of their own sick. Formerly, if
anything was the matter with them, their masters had them taken care of;
and now they don’t mind anything about disease, except to be afraid of
it. If they’ve a sick baby, they let it die. They’re like so many
children themselves, in respect to sickness.”
“How much better off they were when slaves!” said the Mississippian. “A
man would see to his own niggers, like he would to his own stock. But
the niggers now don’t belong to anybody, and it’s no man’s business
whether they live or die.”
“I exercise the same care over _my_ niggers I always did,” replied the
Georgian. “They are all with me yet. Only one ever left me. He was a
good, faithful servant, but sickly. He said one day he thought he ought
to have wages, and I told him if he could find anybody to do better by
him than I was doing, he’d better go. He went, and took his family; and
in six weeks he came back again. ‘Edward,’ I said, ‘how’s this?’ ‘I want
to come and live with you again, master, like I always have,’ he said.
‘I find I ain’t strong enough to work for wages.’ ‘Edward,’ I said, ‘I
am very sorry; you wanted to go, and I got another man in your place;
now I have nothing for you to do, and your cabin is occupied.’ He just
burst into tears. ‘I’ve lived with you all my days, master,’ he said,
‘and now I have no home!’ I couldn’t stand that. ‘Take an ax,’ I said;
‘go into the woods, cut some poles, and build you a cabin. As long as I
have a home, you shall have one.’ He was the happiest man you ever saw!”
“A Yankee wouldn’t have done that,” said the Mississippian. “Yankees
won’t take care of a poor white man. I’ve travelled in the North, and
seen people there go barefoot in winter, with ice on the ground.”
“Indeed!” said I, turning and facing the speaker. “What State was that
in?”
“In the State of New York,” he replied. “I’ve seen hundreds of poor
whites barefoot there in the depth of winter.”
“That is singular,” I remarked. “I am a native of that State; I lived in
it until I was twenty years old, and have travelled through it
repeatedly since; and I never happened to see what you describe.”
“I have seen the same thing in Massachusetts too.”
“I have been for some years a resident of Massachusetts, and have never
yet seen a man there barefoot in the snow.”
The Mississippian made no direct reply to this, but ran on in a strain
of vehement and venomous abuse of the Yankees, in which he was cordially
joined by his friend the Georgian. Although not addressed to me, this
talk was evidently intended for my ear; but I had heard too much of the
same sort everywhere in the South to be disturbed by it. At length the
conversation turned upon the Freedmen’s Bureau.
“General Tillson” (Assistant Commissioner for the State) “has done a
mighty mean thing!” said the Georgian. “I’ve just made contracts to pay
my freedmen seventy-five and a hundred dollars a year. And now he is
going to issue an order requiring us to pay them a hundred and
forty-four dollars. That will ruin us. Down in South-western Georgia
they can afford to pay that; but in my county the land is so poor we
can’t feed our people at that rate. I’m going to Augusta now to see
about it. If Tillson insists upon it, I shall throw up my contracts: I
can’t do it: I’ll sell out: I won’t live in a country that’s ruled in
this way.”
“From what county are you, sir?” I inquired.
“Oglethorpe; my name is C——. Are you an agent of the Bureau?”
“No, sir.” But from some remark I made, he got the impression that I was
connected with it. His abuse of the Yankees ceased; and after a while he
said:—
“I believe General Tillson is a very fair man; and I understand why he
intends to issue such an order. To one planter who is willing to do
right by the freedmen, there are five that will be unjust towards them.
I wouldn’t accept the agency of the Bureau in my county, because so many
contracts have been made that I couldn’t approve; and they would get me
into trouble with my neighbors. One man has hired a good fair field
hand, his wife, who is a good cook, his sister, a good field hand, and
his daughter, a good house servant, all for a hundred dollars a
year,—twenty-five dollars apiece; and he doesn’t clothe them, either.
That’s a specimen. I think the Bureau ought to interfere in such cases.
But it a’n’t fair to make honest men suffer for the conduct of these
sharpers.”
I said I thought so too.
“Then I hope you’ll tell General Tillson so.”
“I’ll tell him so, if you wish me to.”
“And tell him you think I’m an honest man.”
“I am inclined to think you are an honest man, and I’ll tell him that
too.”
“But see here: don’t mention what I said about the Yankees, will you?”
“Certainly not: that’s of no consequence.”
C—— appeared quite anxious on that point. After serious reflection, he
said:—
“If you overheard me damn the Yankees, you’ll forgive me, when I tell
you how they treated me. It was after the war was over, and that’s what
made it hurt so. Seven of Stoneman’s men came to my house, and put a
carbine to my breast, and demanded my watch. ‘You may shoot me,’ I said,
‘but you can’t have my watch.’ ‘Then give us some dinner,’ they said. I
got dinner for them, and waited on them with my own hands. They paid me
for my trouble by stealing seven of my horses. While I was absent from
home, trying to get back my horses, some more Yankees came and robbed my
house; they broke open the bureau with a chisel, and injured more than
they took. You don’t blame me for cursing ’em, do you?”
“Not in the least. According to your story, they were very great
rascals.”
After another interval of silence, C—— resumed:—
“Tell General Tillson I am willing to pay my laborers every dollar
they’re worth: and that I treat them well. I’ve one boy that has always
been with me, and is a better overseer than any white man I ever had. He
looks after my interest better than I can myself, for he is younger. I
trust everything in his hands,—all my keys, and sometimes money.” He
could not forbear adding,—“Your fanatics at the North wouldn’t believe I
treat this man so well.”
“Very likely. But it seems you have good reason for treating him well.
What do you pay him?”
“I pay him two hundred dollars a year.”
“And what would you have to pay a white overseer?”
“I couldn’t get a white man to do for me what he does, for eight hundred
dollars.”
“I am quite sure,” I said, “that our fanatics at the North would _not_
see your extraordinary kindness to this man in the same light you do.
They would think him worth considerably more than you pay him. If he
does the work of a white overseer, they would say he ought to have the
salary of a white overseer. They are such an unreasonable set, they
would consider six hundred dollars, the difference between his wages and
a white man’s, a pretty heavy tax to pay on the color of his skin.”
C—— did not seem inclined to pursue the subject, but commenced talking
in a very candid, sensible manner, of the old Southern methods.
“If the war only breaks them up, it will have done some good. Our large
planters generally gave no attention to business. The men were fast and
reckless; the women, helpless and luxurious. We gave so much attention
to cotton and niggers we couldn’t stop to think of the comforts of life.
And after all we were just working to enrich Northern capitalists. There
are no millionaires amongst us. Three hundred thousand dollars is a rare
and large fortune in Georgia.”
Arriving in Augusta that night, I went the next morning to call on
General Tillson. In our conversation, I took early occasion to speak to
him of my yesterday’s acquaintance, Mr. C——, of Oglethorpe County. “He
will be here soon, and explain to you why it is that planters in
Northern Georgia cannot afford to pay the twelve dollars a month you
insist upon.”
“He will not be the first who has come to me on that business,” replied
the clear-headed general. “I shall give him a patient hearing, and if he
convinces me that I am wrong, he will do more than any have done yet.
When it was white man against white man, these planters paid one hundred
and fifty and two hundred dollars a year for first-class field-hands.
Now they are not willing to pay the negro for his labor one half what
they formerly paid his owner. When I took charge of the Bureau’s affairs
in this State, last September, I found the ordinary wages to be from two
to seven dollars a month,—sometimes as low as twelve bushels of corn for
a year’s labor. And the planters complained that the freedman wouldn’t
work for those prices. Now all I ask is that they should pay what his
labor is worth in the open market. Men from Alabama, Mississippi,
Arkansas, say it is worth fifteen dollars, and stand ready to give it.
Since that is the case, to permit him to make contracts for very much
less, is to permit him to be swindled. A little while ago many of these
men were wishing the negroes all driven out of the State; and now they
are in a great panic, because I am allowing them to go. They come to me
to remonstrate against sending off any more laborers. ‘Gentlemen,’ I
say, ‘if you cannot afford to pay the freedman what his services are
worth, it is not his fault, but your misfortune.’
“But they _can_ afford it. Here is a careful statement of facts relating
to free labor in Wilkes County, which adjoins Oglethorpe. ‘One
field-hand will cultivate nine acres of cotton, on which he will raise
three and a half bales, worth—say three hundred and seventy-five
dollars. The same hand will also cultivate nine acres of corn, raising
one hundred and eight bushels, worth one hundred and eight dollars.
Total, four hundred and eighty-three dollars.
“’Expenses:—Board, fifty-two dollars. Rent of cabin, six. Fuel, six.
Wages, one hundred forty-four. Total, two hundred and eight dollars.’
Deducting two hundred and eight from four hundred and eighty-three, you
have a clear profit of two hundred and seventy-five dollars on each man;
that, too, at the rate of wages I prescribe.
“These, understand, are the planters’ own estimates. In South-western
Georgia, where the land is much richer than in this section, the most
extravagant charges against the plantation show a nett income of three
hundred and twenty-five dollars from the labor of a full field freedman.
This estimate is from data furnished by several of the most popular and
extensive planters in that region.
“Now,” added the Commissioner, “when your friend, Mr. C——, of
Oglethorpe, comes to make his complaint, if he is the honest man you
represent him to be, I will show him, by his own figuring, that so far
from being impoverished by paying his men twelve dollars a month, he
will make a handsome profit from them.”
As I went out, I found Mr. C——, of Oglethorpe, in the ante-room, waiting
to see the General. He regarded me with a curious, uneasy expression,
fearing no doubt lest I had reported to the Commissioner his indiscreet
remarks of yesterday concerning the Yankees and the Bureau. I introduced
him to General Tillson, however, in a manner that seemed to reassure
him, and left them closeted together.
That evening, by appointment, I saw the General at his residence.
“Well,” I asked, “how did you and my friend C—— get along?” and received
from him the following statement, which he had kindly had copied for me.
“_Statement of —— —— C——, of Oglethorpe County, leading planter of that
county._
“Good hands in county will work 8½ acres in
cotton—2 bales $300 00
8½ acres in corn—85 bush. 85 00
————————— —————————
Gross Income, $385 00
“Expenses.
3 lbs. bacon a week, 60 cts. }
1 peck meal, 25 cts. }
Board of hand for year $44 20
Rent of Cabin 10 00
Fuel 25 00
Wages 144 00
————————— —————————
Total Expenses, $223 20
Nett Income from each hand, $161 80.”
“Here,” said General Tillson, “the profits of the labor are placed as
low, and the expenses as high, as Mr. C—— could figure them, after
considerable study. From the labor of a hundred freedmen, on his two
plantations, he would clear, according to his own account, upwards of
sixteen thousand dollars,—sufficient to cover all risks, and all other
expenses of the plantation, and leave him a little fortune at the end of
the year.”
Mr. C—— had repeated to General Tillson his statement to me, regarding
the dishonest contracts made with the freedmen in his county. “The truth
is,” said the General, “he wants to hire them himself for about half
what they are worth, and he is indignant because others have hired them
for less. He can really afford to pay his help twice what I demand, and
then make two hundred dollars a year from the labor of each freedman.
The other day some leading planters from South-western Georgia made the
same complaint with regard to wages. ‘Very well,’ I said, ‘if you can’t
pay twelve dollars a month, give your laborers a part of the crops.’
They thought one seventh of the cotton was more than they ought to give,
declaring that the negro would get rich on that. ‘If sixty freedmen,’ I
said, ‘can get rich on one seventh of a crop, the planter, I am sure,
can get rich on six sevenths.’
“The trouble is, these men wish to make everything there is to be made,
and leave the freedman nothing. They resort to the meanest schemes to
cheat him. They tell the negroes that if they go with the agents of the
Bureau to other places, the able-bodied among them will be carried off
and sold into Cuba, and the women and children drowned in the
Mississippi.[18]
“I have not yet sent a thousand negroes out of the State,” continued
General Tillson. “But I have sent off enough to alarm the people, and
raise the rate of wages. I told the planters on the coast of Georgia,
that they must pay the women twelve dollars a month, and the men
fifteen, or I would take the colored population out of their counties.
That brought them to terms, after all their talk about wanting to get
rid of the niggers.
“The freed people in most parts of the State are still so ignorant of
their condition, that they are glad to make contracts to work for only
their food and clothes. There are many, however, who will live vagrant
lives, if permitted. It is necessary to compel such to enter into
contracts.” Firmly convinced of this necessity, General Tillson had
issued an order directing his agents to make contracts for all freedmen
without other means of support, who should neglect to make contracts for
themselves after a given time. The Commissioner at Washington
disapproved the order, for what reason I cannot divine, unless it was
feared that the over-zealous friends of the negro at the North might be
alarmed by it. No contracts were made for the vagrant blacks under it;
but its effect, in inducing them to make contracts for themselves, was
immediate, wholesome, and very gratifying.
The officers of the Bureau were everywhere subject to the temptation of
bribes; and I often heard planters remark that they could do anything
with the Bureau they pleased, if they had plenty of money. General
Tillson said, “I could make a million dollars here very shortly, if I
chose to be dishonest. Only to-day I was offered a thousand dollars for
one hundred freedmen, by a rich planter.” He had made it a rule of the
Bureau to receive no personal fees whatever for any services.
Over three thousand dollars had been paid in fines by the people of
Georgia for cruelties to the freedmen during the past three months. “It
is considered no murder to kill a negro. The best men in the State admit
that no jury would convict a white man for killing a freedman, or fail
to hang a negro who had killed a white man in self-defence.”
The General added: “As soon as the troops were withdrawn from Wilkes
County, last November, a gang of jay-hawkers went through, shooting and
burning the colored people, holding their feet and hands in the fire to
make them tell where their money was. It left such a stigma on the
county that the more respectable class held a meeting to denounce it.
This class is ashamed of such outrages, but it does not prevent them,
and it does not take them to heart; and I could name a dozen cases of
murder committed on the colored people by young men of these first
families.”
General Tillson, by his tact, good sense, business capacity, freedom
from prejudice for or against color, and his uniform candor, moderation,
and justice, had secured for the Bureau the coöperation of both the
State Convention and the Legislature, and was steadily winning the
confidence and respect of the planters. The most serious problem that
remained to be solved was the Sea-Island question, of which I shall
speak hereafter.
The prospect was favorable for a good cotton crop in Georgia, although
anxiety was felt with regard to the vitality of the seed, much of which,
being several years old, had no doubt been injured by keeping.
-----
Footnote 18:
Since my return from the South, I have received a letter from a
gentleman of character, late an officer in the Federal army, from
which I make the following extract bearing on this subject:—
“After leaving you at Grand Gulf, I rode twenty or thirty miles into
the interior, but could find little inducement for a Northern man to
settle in that portion of the South. The further you go from main
routes, the more hostile you find the inhabitants. I finally
determined to locate on or near the Mississippi, and recent experience
only confirms my earlier impressions. I am now located on the river,
one hundred and sixty miles below Memphis, on the Arkansas side, and
am making preparations to plant one thousand acres of cotton. It has
been very difficult to secure help here, and I determined to make a
trip to Georgia for the purpose of obtaining the requisite number of
hands. I succeeded tolerably well, and could have hired many more than
I needed, had not the people induced the negroes to believe that we
were taking them to Cuba to sell them. I award the palm to the
Georgians, as the meanest and most despicable class of people it was
ever my misfortune to meet. While they are constantly urging that the
negro will not work, they use every means to dissuade him from
securing honorable and profitable employment. I was never so grossly
insulted as when in Georgia. They fear the powerful arm of the
government, but are to-day as bitter Rebels as at any time during the
war. The consequences would be most disastrous if the military force
scattered through the South should be at once removed.”