became still narrower and more straight, assuming the appearance of an
artificial cut or canal, which indeed it is, having been dug by General
Oglethorpe's men (tradition says, in one night), and afforded him the
only means of escape from the Spaniards and Indians, who had surrounded
him on all sides, and felt secure against all possibility of his eluding
them. The cut is neither very deep nor very long, and yet both
sufficiently to render the general's exploit rather marvelous. General
Oglethorpe was the first British governor of Georgia; Wesley's friend
and disciple. The banks of this little canal were mere dykes, guarding
rice-swamps, and presented no species of beauty; but in the little
creek, or inlet, from which we entered it, I was charmed with the beauty
and variety of the evergreens growing in thick and luxuriant underwood,
beneath giant, straggling cypress trees, whose branches were almost
covered with the pendant wreaths of gray moss peculiar to these southern
woods. Of all parasitical plants (if, indeed, it properly belongs to
that class) it assuredly is the most melancholy and dismal. All
creepers, from the polished, dark-leaved ivy, to the delicate clematis,
destroy some portion of the strength of the trees around which they
cling, and from which they gradually suck the vital juices; but they, at
least, adorn the forest-shafts round which they twine, and hide, with a
false, smiling beauty, the gradual ruin and decay they make. Not so this
dismal moss: it does not appear to grow, or to have root, or even
clinging fibre of any sort, by which it attaches itself to the bark or
stem. It hangs in dark gray, drooping masses from the boughs, swinging
in every breeze like matted, grizzled hair. I have seen a naked cypress
with its straggling arms all hung with this banner of death, looking
like a gigantic tree of monstrous cobwebs,--the most funereal spectacle
in all the vegetable kingdom.
After emerging from the cut, we crossed another arm of the Altamaha (it
has as many as Briareus)--I should rather, perhaps, call them mouths,
for this is near its confluence with the sea, and these various branches
are formed by a numerous sisterhood of small islands, which divide this
noble river into three or four streams, each of them wider than
England's widest, the Thames. We now approached the low, reedy banks of
Butler's Island, and passed the rice-mill and buildings surrounding it,
all of which, it being Sunday, were closed. As we neared the bank, the
steersman took up a huge conch, and in the barbaric fashion of early
times in the Highlands, sounded out our approach. A pretty schooner,
which carries the produce of the estate to Charleston and Savannah, lay
alongside the wharf, which began to be crowded with negroes, jumping,
dancing, shouting, laughing, and clapping their hands (a usual
expression of delight with savages and children), and using the most
extravagant and ludicrous gesticulations to express their ecstasy at our
arrival.
On our landing from the boat, the crowd thronged about us like a swarm
of bees; we were seized, pulled, pushed, carried, dragged, and all but
lifted in the air by the clamorous multitude. I was afraid my children
would be smothered. Fortunately, Mr. O----, the overseer, and the
captain of the little craft above-mentioned, came to our assistance, and
by their good offices the babies and nurse were protected through the
crowd. They seized our clothes, kissed them--then our hands, and almost
wrung them off. One tall, gaunt negress flew to us, parting the throng
on either side, and embraced us in her arms. I believe I was almost
frightened; and it was not until we were safely housed, and the door
shut upon our riotous escort, that we indulged in a fit of laughing,
quite as full, on my part, of nervousness as of amusement. Later in the
day I attempted to take some exercise, and thought I had escaped
observation; but, before I had proceeded a quarter of a mile, I was
again enveloped in a cloud of these dingy dependents, who gathered
round me, clamoring welcome, staring at me, stroking my velvet pelisse,
and exhibiting at once the wildest delight and the most savage
curiosity. I was obliged to relinquish my proposed walk, and return
home. Nor was the door of the room where I sat, and which was purposely
left open, one moment free from crowds of eager faces, watching every
movement of myself and the children, until evening caused our audience
to disperse. This zeal in behalf of an utter stranger, merely because
she stood to them in the relation of a mistress, caused me not a little
speculation. These poor people, however, have a very distinct notion of
the duties which ownership should entail upon their proprietors, however
these latter may regard their obligation towards their dependents; and
as to their vehement professions of regard and affection for me, they
reminded me of the saying of the satirist, that "gratitude is a lively
sense of benefits to come."
BUTLER'S ISLAND, GEORGIA, January 8th, 1839.
I have some doubt whether any exertion whatever of your imaginative
faculties could help you to my whereabouts or whatabouts this day,
dearest Emily; and therefore, for your enlightenment, will refer you to
my date, and inform you that yesterday I paid my first visit to the Sick
House, or infirmary, of our estate; and this morning spent three hours
and a half there, cleaning with my own hands the filthy room where the
sick lay, and washing and dressing poor little nearly new-born negro
babies. My avocations the whole morning have been those of a sister of
charity, and I doubt if the unwearied and unshrinking benevolence of
those pious creatures ever led them, for their souls' sake, into more
abominable receptacles of filth, degradation, and misery.
It is long enough since I first mentioned to you my intention of coming
down to these plantations, if I was permitted to do so. As the time for
setting forth on our journey drew near, I became not a little appalled
at the details I heard of what were likely to be the difficulties of the
mere journey: at the very end of December, with a baby at the breast,
and a child as young as S----, to travel upwards of a thousand miles, in
this half-civilized country, and through the least civilized part of it,
was no joke. However, happily, it was accomplished safely, though not
without considerable suffering and heart-achings on my part.... These
and other befallings may serve for talking matter, if ever we should
meet again. We all arrived here safely on Sunday last, and my thoughts
are engrossed with the condition of these people, from whose labor we
draw our subsistence; of which, now that I am here, I feel ashamed.
The place itself is one of the wildest corners of creation--if, indeed,
any part of this region can be considered as thoroughly _created_ yet.
It is not consolidated, but in mere process of formation,--a sort of
hasty-pudding of amphibious elements, composed of a huge, rolling river,
thick and turbid with mud, and stretches of mud banks, forming quaking
swamps, scarcely reclaimed from the water. The river wants _straining_
and the land draining, to make either of them properly wet or dry.
This island, which is only a portion of our Georgia estate, contains
several thousand acres, and is about eight miles round, and formed of
nothing but the deposits (leavings, in fact) of the Altamaha, whose
brimming waters, all thick with alluvial matter, roll round it, and
every now and then threaten to submerge it. The whole island is swamp,
dyked like the Netherlands, and trenched and divided by ditches and a
canal, by means of which the rice-fields are periodically overflowed,
and the harvest transported to the threshing mills. A duck, an eel, or a
frog might live here as in Paradise; but a creature of dry habits
naturally pines for less wet. To mount a horse is, of course,
impossible, and the only place where one can walk is the banks or dykes
that surround the island, and the smaller ones that divide the
rice-fields.
I mean to take to rowing, boats being plentiful, and "water, water
everywhere"; indeed, in spring, the overseer tells me we may have to go
from house to house in boats, the whole island being often flooded at
that season.
There is neither shade nor shelter, tree nor herbage, round our
residence, though there is no reason why there should not be; for the
climate is delicious, and the swampy borders of the mainland are full of
every kind of evergreen--magnolias, live oak (a species of ilex),
orange-trees, etc., and trailing shrubs, with varnished leaves, that
bind the tawny, rattling sedges together, and make summer bowers for the
alligators and snakes which abound and disport themselves here in the
hot season.
I am wrong in saying that there are no trees on the island, though there
are as bad as none now. They formerly had a great number of magnificent
orange-trees, that were all destroyed by an unusually severe winter;
there are a few left, however, which bear most excellent oranges....
BUTLER'S ISLAND, January 8th, 1839.
DEAREST HARRIET,
The stars are shining like one vast incrustation of diamonds; and though
'tis the 8th of January, I have been out with bare neck and arms,
standing on the brink of the Altamaha, and seeking relief from the
oppressive heat of the house. I am here, with the children, in the midst
of our slaves; and it seems to me, as I look over these wild wastes and
waters, as though I were standing on the outer edge of creation. That
this is not absolutely the case, however, or that, if it is,
civilization in some forms has preceded us hither, is abundantly proved
by the sights and sounds of busy traffic, labor, and mechanical
industry, which, encountered in this region (still really half a
wilderness), produce an impression of the most curiously anomalous
existence you can imagine.
Right and left, as the eye follows the broad and brimming surface of
this vast body of turbid water, it rests on nothing but low swamp lands,
where the rattling sedges, like a tawny forest of reeds, make warm
winter shelters for the snakes and alligators, which the summer sun will
lure in scores from their lurking-places; or hoary woods, upon whose
straggling upper boughs, all hung with gray mosses like disheveled hair,
the bald-headed eagle stoops from the sky, and among whose undergrowth
of varnished evergreens the mocking-birds, even at this season, keep a
resounding jubilee. All this looks wild enough; and as the peculiar
orange light of the southern sunset falls upon the scene, I almost
expect to see the canoes of the red man shoot from the banks, which were
so lately the possession of his race alone. Immediately opposite to me,
however (only about a mile distant, the river and a swampy island
intervening), lies the little town of Darien, whose white gable-ended
warehouses, shining in the sun, recall the presence of the prevailing
European race, and we can hear distinctly the sound of the steam which
the steamboat at the wharf is letting off.
Upon this island of ours (I think I look a little like Sancho Panza) we
enjoy the perpetual monotonous burden of two steam-engines working the
rice mills, and instead of red men and canoes, my illustrious self and
some prettily built and gaily painted boats, which I take great delight
in rowing.
The strangeness of this existence surprises me afresh every hour by its
contrast with all my former experiences; and as I sat resting on my oars
at the Darien wharf the other evening, watching a huge cotton-raft float
down the broad Altamaha, my mind wandered back to my former life--the
scenes, the people, the events, the feelings which made up all my
former existence; and I felt like the little old woman whose petticoats
were cut all round about. "O Lord a mercy! sure this is never I!" But,
then, she had a resource in her dog, which I have not; and so I am not
quite sure that it is I....
The climate is too warm for me, and I almost doubt its being as
wholesome for the children as a colder one. We have now summer heat,
tempered in some degree by breezes from the river and the sea, which is
only fifteen miles off; but the people of the place complain of the
cold, and apologize to me for the chilliness of the weather, which they
assure me is quite unusual. I have come home more than once, however,
after a walk round the rice banks, with a bad headache, in consequence
of the fierce sunshine pouring down upon these swamps, and do not think
that I should thrive in such a climate. It is impossible here to take
exercise on horseback, which has become almost indispensable to me; and
though I have adopted rowing as a substitute I find it both a fatiguing
and an inadequate one.
We live here in a very strange manner. The house we inhabit, which was
intended merely as the overseer's residence, is inferior in appearance
and every decent accommodation to the poorest farm-house in any part of
England. Neither cleanliness nor comfort enter into our daily
arrangements at all. The little furniture there is in the rooms is of
the coarsest and roughest description; and the household services are
performed by negroes, who run in and out, generally barefooted, and
always filthy both in their clothes and person, to wait upon us at our
meals. How I have wished for a decent, tidy, English servant of all
work, instead of these begrimed, ignorant, incapable poor creatures, who
stumble about round us in zealous hindrance of each other, which they
intend for help to us. How thankful I should be if I could substitute
for their unsavory proximity while I eat, that of a clean dumb waiter.
This unlimited supply of untrained savages, (for that is what they
really are) is anything but a luxury to me. Their ignorance, dirt, and
stupidity seem to me as intolerable as the unjust laws which condemn
them to be ignorant, filthy, and stupid.
The value of this human property is, alas! enormous; and I grieve to
think how great is the temptation to perpetuate the system to its
owners. Of course I do not see, or at any rate have not yet seen,
anything to shock me in the way of positive physical cruelty. The
refractory negroes are flogged, I know, but I am told it is a case of
rare occurrence; and it is the injustice, and the kind, rather than the
severity, of the infliction that is the most odious part of it to me.
The people are, I believe, regularly and sufficiently fed and clothed,
and they have tolerably good habitations provided for them, nor are they
without various small indulgences; but of their moral and intellectual
wants no heed whatever is taken, nor are they even recognized as
existing, though some of these poor people exhibit intelligence,
industry, and activity, which seem to cry aloud for instruction and the
means of progress and development. These are probably rare exceptions,
though, for the majority of those I see appear to be sunk in the lowest
slough of benighted ignorance, and lead a lazy, listless, absolutely
animal existence, far more dirty and degraded (though more comfortable,
on account of the climate) than that of _your_ lowest and most miserable
wild "bog trotters."
I had desired very earnestly to have the opportunity of judging of this
matter of slavery for myself; not, of course, that I ever doubted that
to keep human beings as slaves was in itself wrong, but I supposed that
I might, upon a nearer observation of the system, discover at any rate
circumstances of palliation in the condition of the negroes: hitherto,
however, this has not been the case with me; the wrong strikes me more
forcibly every hour I live here. The theory of human property is more
revolting to every sentiment of humanity; and the evil effect of such a
state of things _upon the whites_, who inflict the wrong, impresses me
as I did not anticipate that it would, with still more force.
The habitual harsh tone of command towards these men and _women_, whose
labor is extorted from them without remorse, from youth to age, and
whose hopeless existence seems to me sadder than suffering itself,
affects me with an intolerable sense of impotent pity for them.... Then,
too, the disrepute in which honest and honorable labor is held, by being
thus practiced only by a degraded class, is most pernicious.
The negroes here, who see me row and walk hard in the sun, lift heavy
burthens, and make various exertions which are supposed to be their
peculiar _privilege_ in existence, frequently remonstrate with me, and
desire me to call upon them for their services, with the remark, "What
for you work, missus! You hab niggers enough to wait upon you!" You may
suppose how agreeable such remonstrances are to me.
When I remember, too, that here I see none of the worst features of this
system: that the slaves on this estate are not bought and sold, nor let
out to hire to other masters; that they are not cruelly starved or
barbarously beaten, and that members of one family are not parted from
each other for life, and sent to distant plantations in other
States,--all which liabilities (besides others, and far worse ones)
belong of right, or rather of wrong, to their condition as slaves, and
are commonly practiced throughout the southern half of this free
country,--I remain appalled at a state of things in which human beings
are considered fortunate who are _only_ condemned to dirt, ignorance,
unrequited labor, and, what seems to me worst of all, a dead level of
general degradation, which God and Nature, by endowing some above
others, have manifestly forbidden.
Do you remember your admiration of philanthropy because I blew the dirty
nose of a little vagabond in the street with my embroidered
handkerchief? I wish you could see me cleansing and washing and
poulticing the sick women and babies in the infirmary here; I think you
would admit that I have what Beatrice commends Benedict for, "an
excellent stomach."
God bless you, dear! I am not well; this slavish sunshine dries up my
vitality. I have hardly any time for writing, but shall find it to write
to you.
Ever affectionately yours,
F. A. B.
BUTLER'S ISLAND, January 20th, 1839.
DEAR MRS. JAMESON,
To you who have, besides "swimming in a gondola" (which many of the
vulgar do nowadays), paddled in a canoe upon the wild waters of this
wild western world, my present abode, savage as it seems to me, might
appear comparatively civilized. Certain it is that we are within view of
what calls itself a town, and, moreover, from that town I have received
an invitation to what calls itself a _cotillon party_! and yet, right
and left, stretch the swamps and forests of Georgia, where the red men
have scarcely ceased to skulk, and where the rattlesnakes and
alligators, who shared the wilderness with them, still lurk in
undisturbed possession of the soil, if soil that may be called which is
only either muddy water or watery mud, a hardly consolidated sponge of
alluvial matter, receiving hourly additions from the turbid current of
the Altamaha.
We are here on our plantation, and if you will take a map of North
America, and a powerful magnifying-glass, you may perceive the small
speck dignified by the title of "Butler's Island," the Barataria where I
am now reigning.
Before I say any more upon this subject, however, I wish to thank you
for your kind information about my father and sister. I had a letter
from her not long ago, but it was written during her tour in Germany,
before our poor mother's death, and, of course, contained little of what
must be her present thoughts and feelings, and even little indeed by
which I could understand what their plans were for the winter; but a
long and very interesting account of your friends, the Thuns, whom I
should like to know....
How little pleasure you lost, in my opinion, in not proceeding further
south in this country! for your perception of beauty would have been
almost as much starved as your sense of justice would have been
outraged; at least it is so with me. The sky, God's ever blessed
storehouse of light and loveliness, is almost my only resource here: for
though the wide, brimming waters of this Briareus of a river present a
striking object, and the woods, with their curtains of gray moss waving
like gigantic cobwebs from every tree, and these magical-looking
thickets of varnished evergreens, have a charm, partly real, and partly
borrowed from their mere strangeness; yet the absence of all cultivation
but these swampy rice-fields, and of all population but these degraded
and unfortunate slaves, render a residence here as depressing to the
physical as the moral sense of loveliness.
In contemplating the condition of women generally (a favorite subject of
speculation with you, I know), it is a pity that you have not an
opportunity of seeing the situation of those who are recognized as
slaves (all that are such don't wear the collar, you know, nor do all
that wear it show it); it is a black chapter, and no _joke_, I can tell
you.
You ask after the Sullys, and I am sorry to say that the little I saw or
heard of them previous to my leaving Philadelphia was not pleasant. He
had had some disagreeable contention with the St. George's Society about
the exhibition of his picture of the queen. The dispute ended, I
believe, in his painting two; the one for the society, and the other for
his own purposes of exhibition, sale or engraving. He spoke with delight
of having made your acquaintance, and of some evenings he spent at your
house. I think it very probable that he will revisit Europe; and I hope
for his sake that he will get to Italy....
F. A. B.
BUTLER'S ISLAND, Georgia, January 30th, 1839.
DEAREST EMILY,
I am told that a total change in my opinions upon slavery was
anticipated from my residence on a plantation; a statement which only
convinces me that one may live in the most intimate relations with
one's fellow-creatures, and really know nothing about them after all. On
what ground such an idea could be entertained I cannot conceive, or on
what part of my character it could be founded, to which (if I do not
mistake myself, even more than I am misunderstood by others) injustice
is the most revolting species of cruelty.
My dear friend, do not, do not repine, but rather rejoice for your
brother's own sake, that wealth is cut off from him at such a source as
slavery. [Mr. Fitzhugh had owned West Indian property, which his sister
thought had been rendered worthless by the emancipation of the slaves.]
It would be better in my mind to beg, and to see one's children beg,
than to live by these means, thinking of them as I do....
It seems to me as if the worst result of this system, fraught as it is
with bad ones, is the perversion of mind which it appears to engender in
those who uphold it. I remember how hard our Saviour pronounced it to be
for a rich man to enter into heaven, and as I look round upon these
rice-fields, with their population of human beings, each one of whom is
valued at so much silver and gold, and listen to the beat of that
steam-mill, which I heard commended the other day as a "mint of money,"
and when I am told that every acre of this property is worth ten per
cent. more than any free English land, however valuable, it seems almost
impossible to expect that this terrible temptation to injustice should
be resisted by any man; but with God all things are possible! and
doubtless He weighs the difficulty more mercifully than I can....
Since this letter was begun, we have had a death on the plantation; a
poor young fellow was taken off, after a few days' illness, yesterday.
The attack was one to which the negroes are very subject, arising from
cold and exposure.... We went to his burial, which was a scene I shall
not soon forget. His coffin was brought out into the open air, and the
negroes from over the whole island assembled around it. One of their
preachers (a slave like the rest) gave out the words of a hymn, which
they all sang in unison; after which he made an exhortation, and bade us
pray, and we all kneeled down on the earth together, while this poor,
ignorant slave prayed aloud and spoke incoherently, but fervently
enough, of Life and Death and Immortality. We then walked to the grave,
the negroes chanting a hymn by the light of pine torches and the
uprising of a glorious moon. An old negro, who possessed the rare and
forbidden accomplishment of letters, read part of the burial service;
and another stood forward and told them the story of the raising of
Lazarus. I have no room for comments, and could make none that could
convey to you what I felt or how I prayed and cried for those I was
praying with....
You know, I did not think my former calling of the stage a very
dignified one; I assure you it appears to me magnificent compared with
my present avocation of living by the unpaid labor of others, and those
others half of them women like myself. There is nothing in the details
of the existence of the slaves which mitigates in my opinion the sin of
slavery; and this is forced upon me every hour of the day--so painfully
to my conscience, that I feel as if my happiness for life would be
affected by my involuntary participation in it. Their condition seems to
me accursed every way, and only more accursed to those who hold them in
it, on whom the wrong they commit reacts frightfully.