THE RIDE TO WINNSBORO’.
For a distance of thirty miles north of Columbia, I had an interesting
experience of staging over that portion of the Charlotte and South
Carolina Railroad destroyed by Sherman. Much of the way the stage route
ran beside or near the track. Gangs of laborers were engaged in putting
down new ties and rails, but most of the old iron lay where our boys
left it.
It was the Seventeenth Corps that did this little job, and it did it
well. It was curious to note the different styles of the destroying
parties. The point where one detail appeared to have left off and
another to have begun was generally unmistakable. For a mile or two you
would see nothing but hair-pins, and bars wound around telegraph posts
and trees. Then you would have corkscrews and twists for about the same
distance. Then came a party that gave each heated rail one sharp wrench
in the middle, and left it perhaps nearly straight, but facing both
ways. Here was a plain business method, and there a fantastic style,
which showed that its authors took a wild delight in their work.
Early in the morning I rode with the driver, in the hope of learning
something of him with regard to the country. But he proved to be a
refugee from East Tennessee, where he said a rope-noose was waiting for
him. An active Rebel, he had been guilty of some offences which the
Union men there could not forgive.
Finding him as ignorant of the country as myself, I got down, and took a
seat inside the coach. Within, an animated political discussion was at
its height. Two South Carolinians and a planter from Arkansas were
dissecting the Yankees in liveliest fashion; while a bitter South
Carolina lady and a good-natured Virginian occasionally put in a word.
It was some time before I was recognized as a representative of all that
was mean and criminal in the world. At length something I said seemed to
excite suspicion; and the Arkansan wrote something on a card, which was
passed to every one of the company except me. An alarming hush of
several minutes ensued. It was as if a skeleton had appeared at a
banquet. The abuse of the Yankees was the banquet; and I was perfectly
well aware that I was the skeleton. At last the awful silence was broken
by the Arkansan.
“What is thought of negro suffrage at the North?”
The question was addressed to me. I replied that opinion was divided on
that subject; but that many people believed some such security was
necessary for the freedmen’s rights. “They do not think it quite safe,”
I said, “to leave him without any voice in making the laws by which he
is to be governed,—subject entirely to the legislation of a class that
cannot forget that he was born a slave.”
“I believe,” said one of the South Carolinians, “all that is owing to
the lies of the newspaper correspondents travelling through the South,
and writing home whatever they think will injure us. I wish every one of
’em was killed off. If it wasn’t for them, we should be left to attend
to our own business, instead of being ridden to death by our Yankee
masters. It isn’t fair to take solitary instances reported by them, as
representing the condition of the niggers and the disposition of the
whites. Some impudent darkey, who deserves it, gets a knock on the head,
or a white man speaks his mind rather too freely to some Yankee who has
purposely provoked him, and a long newspaper story is made out of it,
showing that every nigger in the South is in danger of being killed, and
every white man is disloyal.”
“Certainly,” I said, “isolated cases do not represent a whole people.
But the acts of a legislative body may be supposed to represent the
spirit and wishes of its constituents. We consider the negro code
enacted by your special legislature simply abominable. It is enough of
itself to show that you are not quite ready to do the freedmen justice.
Your present governor appears to be of the same opinion, judged by his
veto of the act to amend the patrol laws, and his excellent advice to
your representatives who passed it. You are wholly mistaken, my friend,
in supposing that the people of the North wish anything of you that is
unnecessary, unreasonable, or unjust. They may be mistaken with regard
to what is necessary, but they are honest in their intentions.”
“All we want,” said the South Carolinian, “is that our Yankee rulers
should give us the same privileges with regard to the control of labor
which they themselves have.”
“Very well; what privileges have they which you have not?”
“In Massachusetts, a laborer is obliged by law to make a contract for a
year. If he leaves his employer without his consent, or before the term
of his contract expires, he can be put in jail. And if another man hires
him, he can be fined. It is not lawful there to hire a laborer who does
not bring a certificate from his last employer. All we want is the same
or a similar code of laws here.”
“My dear sir,” said I, “all any man could wish is that you might have
just such laws here as they have in Massachusetts. But with regard to
the code you speak of, it does not exist there, and it does not exist in
any Northern State with which I am acquainted. There is nothing like it
anywhere.”
“How do you manage without such laws? How can you get work out of a man
unless you _compel_ him in some way?”
“Natural laws compel him; we need no others. A man must work if he would
eat. A faithful laborer is soon discovered, and he commands the best
wages. An idle fellow is detected quite as soon; and if he will not do
the work he has agreed to do, he is discharged. Thus the system
regulates itself.”
“You can’t do that way with niggers.”
“Have you ever tried? Have you ever called your freedmen together and
explained to them their new condition? A planter I saw in Alabama told
me how he managed this thing. He said to his people, ‘If you do well, I
shall want you another year. The man who does best will be worth the
most to me. But if you are lazy and unfaithful, I shall dismiss you when
your contracts are ended, and hire better men. Do you know why some
overseers are always wandering about in search of a situation?’ ‘Because
nobody wants ’em,’ said the negroes. ‘Why not?’ ‘Because they a’n’t good
for their business.’ ‘Why did I keep John Bird only one year?’ ‘Because,
soon as your back was turned, he slipped off to a grocery, or went
a-fishing.’ ‘And why did I keep William Hooker eight years, and increase
his salary every year?’ ‘Because he stuck by and always looked after
your interest.’ ‘Now,’ said the planter, ‘you are in the condition of
these overseers. You can always have good situations, and your prospects
will be continually improving, if you do well. Or you may soon be going
about the country with bundles on your backs, miserable low-down niggers
that nobody will hire.’ In this way he instructed and encouraged the
freedmen; and he assured me they were working better than ever. But by
your serf-codes you would crush all hope and manhood out of them.”
“Well, there may be something in all that. I can’t say, for I never
thought of trying but one way with a nigger. But nigger suffrage the
South a’n’t going to stand anyhow. We’ve already got a class of voters
that’s enough to corrupt the politics of any country. I used to think
the nigger was the meanest of God’s creatures. But I’ve found a meaner
brute than he; and that’s the low-down white man. If a respectable man
hires a nigger for wages, one of those low-down cusses will offer him
twice as much, to get him away. They want him to prowl for them. A heap
of these no-account whites are getting rich, stealing cotton; they’re
too lazy or cowardly to do it themselves, so they get the niggers to do
it for ’em. These very men hold the balance of political power in this
district. They’ll vote for the man who gives ’em the most whiskey. Just
before the war, at an election in Columbia, over a hundred sand-hillers
sold their votes beforehand, and were put into jail till the polls
opened, and then marched out to vote.”
“By what right were they put in jail?”
“It was in the bargain. They knew they couldn’t be trusted not to sell
their votes to the next man that offered more whiskey, and they like
going to jail well enough, if they can go drunk. Make the niggers
voters, and you’ll have just such another class to be bought up with
whiskey.”
“It seems to me more reasonable,” I replied, “to suppose that the
franchise will elevate the negro; and by elevating him you will elevate
the white man who has been degraded by the negro’s degradation. Some of
both races will no doubt be found willing to sell their votes, as well
as their souls, for whiskey; but that is no more a reason why all blacks
should be deprived of the right of suffrage, than that all whites should
be.”
This is a specimen of the talk that was kept up during the day.
We stopped to dine at a house, where I was told by a young lady that the
Yankees were the greatest set of rogues, and that some passed there
every day.
“Is it possible!” I said. “Are you not afraid of them?”
“I have nothing whatever to do with them. I should be ashamed to be seen
talking with one.”
“Then be careful that no one sees you now.”
“_You_ are not a Yankee!” she exclaimed.
“Yes,” said I, “I am one of that set of rogues.”
“I am very sorry to hear it, for I had formed a more favorable opinion
of you.”
Only the good-natured Virginian went in with me to the dining-room. The
lady of the house, sitting at the table with us, soon began to talk
about the Yankees. “They often dine here,” she said. “But I have nothing
to say to them. As soon as I know who they are, I go out of the room.”
She was very sociable; and when I informed her at parting that she had
been entertaining a Yankee, she appeared confused and incredulous.
Such was the spirit commonly shown by the middle class of South
Carolinians. But I remember some marked exceptions. Late in the
afternoon we stopped at a place which a sturdy old farmer said was
Ridgeway before Sherman came there: “I don’t know what you’d call it
now.”
“If the devil don’t get old Sherman,” said one of my travelling
companions, “there a’n’t no use having a devil.”
“We did it ourselves,” said the farmer. “We druv the nail and the
Yankees clinched it.”
In the coach, the South Carolinians had just been denying that any
outrages were committed on the freedmen in that part of the country. So
I asked this man if he had heard of any such.
“Heard of ’em? I hear of ’em every day. I’m going to Columbia to-night
to attend the trial of one of my neighbors for shooting a negro woman.”
“You must expect such things to happen when the niggers are impudent,”
observed one of my companions.
“The niggers a’n’t to blame,” said the farmer. “They’re never impudent,
unless they’re trifled with or imposed on. Only two days ago a nigger
was walking along this road, as peaceably as any man you ever saw. He
met a white man right here, who asked him who he belonged to. ‘I don’t
belong to anybody now,’ he says; ‘I’m a free man.’ ‘Sass me? you black
devil!’ says the white fellow; and he pitched into him, and cut him in
four or five places with his knife. I heard and saw the whole of it, and
I say the nigger was respectful, and that the white fellow was the only
one to blame.”
“What became of the negro?”
“I don’t know; he went off to some of his people.”
“And what was done with the white man?”
“Nothing. There’s nobody to do anything in such cases, unless the nigger
goes all the way to the Freedmen’s Bureau and makes a complaint. Then
there’s little chance of getting the fellow that cut him.”
Three miles further on, we reached a point to which the railroad had
been repaired, and took the cars for Winnsboro’. While we were waiting
by moonlight in the shelterless and stumpy camping-ground which served
as a station, one of my South Carolina friends said to me: “We may as
well tell the whole truth as half. The Yankees treated us mighty badly:
but a heap of our own people followed in their track and robbed on their
credit.”
On the train I found a hotel-keeper from Winnsboro’ drumming for
customers. He was abusing the Yankees with great violence and passion
until he found that I was one. After that he kept remarkably quiet, and
even apologized to me for his remarks, until I told him I had concluded
to go to the house of a rival runner. Thereupon he broke forth again.
“They’ve left me one inestimable privilege—to hate ’em. I git up at
half-past four in the morning, and sit up till twelve at night, to hate
’em. Talk about Union! They had no object in coming down here, but just
to steal. I’m like a whipped cur; I have to cave in; but that don’t say
I shall love ’em. I owned my own house, my own servants, my own garden,
and in one night they reduced me to poverty. My house was near the State
House in Columbia. It was occupied by Howard’s head-quarters. When they
left, they just poured camphene over the beds, set ’em afire, locked up
the house, and threw away the key. That was after the burning of the
town, and that’s what made it so hard. Some one had told ’em I was one
of the worst Rebels in the world, and that’s the only truth I reckon,
that was told. I brought up seven boys, and what they hadn’t killed was
fighting against ’em then. Now I have to keep a boarding-house in
Winnsboro’ to support my wife and children.”
At Winnsboro’ I passed the night. A portion of that town also had been
destroyed; and there too Sherman’s “bummers” were said to have behaved
very naughtily. For instance: “When the Episcopal church was burning,
they took out the melodeon, and played the devil’s tunes on it till the
house was well burned down: then they threw on the melodeon.”