THE SEA ISLANDS.
The plantation negro of the great cotton and rice-growing States is a
far more ignorant and degraded creature than the negro of Virginia and
Tennessee. This difference is traceable to a variety of causes. First,
the farmers of the slave-breeding States were formerly accustomed to
select, from among their servants, the most stupid and vicious class, to
be sold in the Southern market. To the same destination went all the
more modern importations of raw savages from the coast of Africa. The
negro is susceptible to the influences of civilization; and in the
border States his intelligence was developed by much intercourse with
the white race. His veins also received a generous infusion of the
superior blood. The same may be said of house and town servants
throughout the South. The slaves of large and isolated plantations,
however, enjoyed but limited advantages of this sort; seeing little of
civilized society beyond the overseer, whose lessons were not those of
grace, and the poor whites around them, scarcely more elevated in the
scale of being than themselves.
In South Carolina the results of these combined causes are more striking
than in any other State. The excess of her black population, and the
unmitigated character of slavery within her borders, afford perhaps a
sufficient explanation of this fact. In 1860 she had 291,388 white,
402,406 slave, and 9,914 free colored inhabitants. Even these figures do
not indicate the overwhelming predominance of black numbers in certain
localities. In the poorer districts, as counties are here called, the
whites are in a majority; while in certain others there were three and
four times as many negroes as white persons. Herded together in great
numbers, and worked like cattle, the habits of these wretched people,
their comforts and enjoyments, were little above those of the brute.
Under such circumstances it was hardly possible for them to make any
moral or intellectual advancement, but often, even to the third
generation, they remained as ignorant as when brought from the wilds of
Africa.
It was owing much no doubt to this excessive black population and its
degraded character, that labor appeared to be more disorganized, and the
freedmen in a worse condition in South Carolina, than elsewhere. The
Sea-Island question, however, had had a very marked and injurious effect
upon labor in the State, and should be taken into consideration.
The most ignorant of the blacks have certain true and strong instincts,
which stand them in the place of actual knowledge. Their faith in
Providence has a depth and integrity which shames the halting belief of
the more enlightened Christian. Next to that, and strangely blended with
it, is the faith in the government which has brought them out of
bondage. Along with these goes the simple and strong conviction, that,
in order to be altogether free, and to enjoy the fruits of their
freedom, they must have homes of their own. The government encouraged
them in that belief and hope. Conscious of their own loyalty, and having
a clear understanding of the disloyalty of their masters, they expected
confidently, long after the war had closed, that the forfeited lands of
these masters would be divided among them. It was only after earnest and
persistent efforts on the part of the officers of the Bureau, to
convince them that this hope was futile, that they finally abandoned it.
But by this time it had become known among the freed people of South
Carolina and Georgia, that extensive tracts of land on the coast of
these States had been set aside by military authority for their use.
There the forty thousand bondmen who followed Sherman out of Georgia,
together with other thousands who had preceded them, or come after, were
established upon independent farms, in self-governing communities from
which all white intruders were excluded. These settlements were chiefly
upon the rich and delightful Sea Islands, which the Rebel owners had
abandoned, and which now became the paradise of the freedmen’s hopes.
“Go there,” they said, “and every man can pick out his lot of forty
acres, and have it secured to him.”
With such fancies in his brain, the negro of the interior was not likely
to remain contented on the old plantation, after learning that no acre
of it was to be given him. He was naturally averse to accepting a white
master, when he might be his own master elsewhere. His imaginative soul
sang too, in its rude way:—
“Oh, had we some sweet little isle of our own,
In a blue summer ocean, far off and alone!”
And so the emigration to the coast set in.
In October, 1865, orders were issued that no more allotments of land
should be made to the Freedmen. But this did not avail to stop entirely
the tide of emigration; nor did it inspire with contentment those who
remained in the interior. “If a freedman has forty acres on the coast,”
they reasoned, “why shouldn’t we have as much here?” Hence one of the
most serious troubles the officers of the Bureau had to contend against.
In October, General Howard visited the Sea Islands with the intention of
restoring to the pardoned owners the lands on which freedmen had been
settled, under General Sherman’s order. According to the President’s
theory, a pardon entitled the person pardoned to the immediate
restoration of his property. Hence arose a conflict of authority and
endless confusion. Secretary Stanton had approved of Sherman’s order,
and earnestly advised the freedmen to secure homesteads under the
government’s protection. General Saxton, Assistant Commissioner of the
Bureau, had in every way encouraged them to do the same. So had General
Hunter. Chief Justice Chase had given them similar counsel. General
Howard found the land-owners urgent in pressing their claims, and the
freedmen equally determined in resisting them. Impressed by the immense
difficulty of the problem, he postponed its immediate solution by a
compromise, leaving the main question to be settled by Congress.
Congress settled it, after a fashion, in the provisions of the
Freedmen’s Bureau Bill; but that, in consequence of the President’s
veto, did not become a law.
By General Howard’s plan, abandoned lands on which there were no
freedmen settled under Sherman’s order, or only “a few,” were to be
restored to pardoned owners. Other estates, on which there were more
than “a few,” were also to be restored, provided arrangements could be
made, satisfactory to both the owners and the freedmen. So nothing was
settled. The owners claimed the lands, and wished the freedmen to make
contracts to work for them. The freedmen claimed the lands, and
positively refused to make contracts.
The freedmen’s crops for the past year had generally proved failures, or
nearly so. Their friends argued that this result was owing to causes
that could not be controlled,—the lack of capital, of seed, of mules and
farming implements, and the lateness of the season when most of them
commenced work. The owners of the lands contended that the negro, under
the best conditions, could not make a crop of cotton. The truth probably
lies between these two extremes. The freedmen lacked experience in
management, as well as planting capital; and I have no doubt but many of
them thought more of a gun and a fishing-rod, sources of a pleasure so
new to them, than of hard work in the field, which was anything but a
novelty.
I regret to add that the freedmen’s prospects for the coming year did
not appear flattering. The uncertainty of their titles caused them deep
trouble and discouragement, and they did not exhibit much energy in
improving lands which might be taken from them at any moment. The
feeling, “This is my home and my children’s,” seemed no longer to
inspire them. The majority were at work; but others were sullenly
waiting to see what the government would do.
This whole question is one of great embarrassment and difficulty, and it
is not easy to say how it should be decided. The plan proposed by
Congress, of securing to the freedmen the possession of the lands for
three years, did not seem to me a very wise one. It would take them
about three years, under the most favorable circumstances, to overcome
the obstacles against which their poverty and inexperience would have to
struggle; and the knowledge that, after all, those homes were not to be
permanently their own, would tend to discourage industry and promote
vagabondism. It would be better to remove them at once, if they are to
be removed at all; but then the question presents itself, can a great
and magnanimous government afford to break its pledges to these helpless
and unfortunate people?
On the other hand, to make their titles perpetual, is to give over to
uncertain cultivation, by a race supposed to exist only for the
convenience of another, the most valuable cotton-lands of those
States,—for it is here alone that the incomparable long-fibred
“Sea-Island” staple is produced,—a conclusion deemed inadmissible and
monstrous, especially by the Rebel owners of the lands.