HOME LIFE OF THE FREEDMEN.
After dinner we visit the negroes in their cabins. The home life of the freedmen is at once the most noticeable and most interesting feature of their new condition. Even in former days, however often the sanctity of their homes may have been violated, with however weary limbs and suffering souls they may have gone to them, yet here they must have found their chiefest joy. Now, the humble cabins have become transfigured, and we find therein not only joy, but peace and comfort, and, indeed, in greater or less degree, every element of that domestic order which makes the home the corner stone of our free institutions. I have frequently, when conversing with the freedmen about the flight of their former masters, asked them why they did not accompany them, and have invariably received the reply, 'Oh, sah, we couldn't do dat. We belongs yere. Dese are our homes.' This strong attachment to the soil, which has been made still stronger by the removal of everything which could in any way remind them of their former condition, has proved to be the great lever to raise them into the dignity of free laborers. It is true their cabins are not yet free-holds; but the assurance that, unless the Government itself fails, no fault or misfortune of another can ever deprive them of their homes, puts them at once on their good behavior, that they may retain in their possession what they prize so dearly. The good results of this transformation of the home are seen in every direction. The marriage relation is observed with a constantly increasing strictness. Family ties are knitted more closely together. Parents take a deep interest in the education of their children, and the children become in turn teachers to the parents of much that is improving and civilizing. In the field there are generous rivalries between families to see which will cultivate the largest patches of corn and cotton. Greater neatness and order are observable about the dwellings, and wherever new cabins have been erected—always by negro carpenters—there has been marked improvement in the style and comfort of the buildings. Freedom has also created new wants, and the freedman purchases from time to time, as he has ability, articles of luxury and of ornament for his home.
I must, however, acknowledge a feeling of disappointment at not finding the negroes more joyous in this new condition of freedom and progress. Those who know them best—the superintendents and teachers—testify to the happiness of their daily lives and their light-hearted enjoyment of all their blessings; but to the casual observer there seems to be a general absence among the freedmen of that cheerfulness and mirth which he naturally expects to find in their homes. A simple explanation of this fact may be found in the sense of insecurity which the uncertain issue of the civil war that rages about them creates in their minds. They have seen one after another of those islands which have been in our possession given up to the reoccupation of the rebels; the disastrous battles of James's Island and Pocotaligo and the fruitless campaigns in Florida are fresh in their minds; while that wearisome waiting for something to be accomplished which spreads such a spirit of restlessness and discontent among our soldiers, is felt even more keenly by the freedmen. There is very much in the uncertainties of their present condition to justify the favorite allusion of their preachers, who often compare the freedmen to the children of Israel before they had fairly gained the promised land. Until a permanent peace shall give to these people that feeling of security, without which, though there may be contentment, there can be little joyousness, it is absurd for us to 'require of them mirth,' or ask them to sing songs of gladness.