"Did you pray, my son?"
"Yes, sir; and I feel that through the mercy of Jesus Christ my sins are pardoned."
It was a simple narrative, and expressed with evident consciousness of the solemnity of the declaration. It was plain that in spiritual things these people were further advanced than in business matters. The evidence was satisfactory, and the member received by an extension of right hand of fellowship on the part of the pastor. In the evening Rev. Mr. Murchison preached from the text, "And they shall call upon the rocks and mountains to fall upon them," &c.
It was a crude, disjointed discourse, having very little logic, a great many large words, some of them ludicrously misapplied, yet contained striking thoughts, and appropriate similes. This was a congregation standing on the lowest step of civilization. Minister and people were but a twelvemonth out of bondage. All behind them was barbarism. Before them was a future, unrevealed, but infinitely better than what their past had been. Their meeting was orderly, and I have seen grave legislative bodies in quite as much of a muddle over a simple question as that congregation of black men emerging from their long night of darkness.
On the following Sunday I was present at a service on Ladies' Island. The owner of the plantation where the meeting was held erected his house in full view of Beaufort, and near the bank of the stream where the tide ebbs and flows upon the sandy beach. It was a mean mansion, standing on posts, to give free circulation to the air underneath. In hot summer days the shade beneath the house was the resort of all the poultry of the premises. Thousands of hard-working New England mechanics live in better houses, yet from Beaufort the place made an imposing show, surrounded by orange and magnolia trees. The sandy acres of the plantation stretched towards St. Helena. A short distance from the planter's house were the weather-beaten cabins of the negroes, mere hovels, without window-panes, with mud chimneys,—the homes of generations who had gone from the darkness and hopelessness of a wearying life to the rest and quiet of the grave.
On that morning when Admiral Dupont shelled the Rebels out of the forts at Hilton Head and Bay Point, the owner of these acres made a hasty exit from his house. He sent his overseer to the cabins to hurry up the negroes, but to his surprise not a negro was to be found. The colored people had heard the thundering down the bay. They knew its meaning. It set their hearts beating as they never had throbbed before. It was the sweetest music they ever had heard. A horseman came riding furiously up to the house, with terror in his countenance. The master hastened out to know how the battle was going.
"The Yankees have taken the forts!" said the messenger. The master became pale.
"You had better get your negroes together, and be ready for a move," said the messenger.
Sharp ears had heard all this,—the ears of Sam, a colored man, who, seeing the herald arrive in hot haste, had the curiosity to hear what he had to say, then bounded like a deer to the cabins, running from door to door, whispering to the inmates, "To the woods! to the woods! De Yankees hab taken de forts,—massa is going to de mainland, and is going to take us wid him."
The cabins were deserted in an instant; and five minutes later, when the overseer came round to gather his drove of human cattle, he found empty hovels. The planter and his overseer were obliged to do their own hasty packing up.