On Sunday the 18th of December, two members of this Society, the militia Colonel Sass, a native Hessian, who had already passed fifty-two years in this country, and Mr. Strohhecker, came to take me to the Lutheran church. The Lutheran preacher, Mr. Bachman, a native of Troy, in the State of New York, administered divine service in the English language. The church has been built but a few years. It is simple within, but in very good taste. The organ is good, and was well played, and the hymns sung in unison by the congregation. Mr. Bachman delivered an excellent sermon upon the story of Cornelius, from the Acts of the Apostles. Afterwards he detailed a report of a journey of about eight hundred miles, which he had performed through the interior of this state, for the purpose of examining the condition of the various Lutheran congregations. The report upon churches and schools appeared very favourable. This service displayed so much benevolence, and real goodness, that I felt truly edified.
Upon the following day I was accompanied by Mr. Bacott and his brother-in-law, to St. Michael’s episcopal church, to see the building, and particularly the steeple, one hundred and eighty-six feet high. We mounted two hundred and thirty-six steps, and enjoyed a very handsome prospect over the regular built city, the bay, and adjacent country. The bay, with its protecting forts, showed to great advantage; the surrounding district not so agreeably, it being very level and overgrown with wood. In the city several buildings reared their heads, among others, the churches, and there are here twenty-two churches belonging to various sects, then the orphan-house and custom-house. St. Michael’s church contains in itself nothing worthy of remark, if you except some simple funeral tablets. The churches, moreover, stand in the centre of burial grounds, and the custom still prevails, so injurious to health, of entombing the dead in the city.
On the same day, the last of my stay in Charleston, I was present at a dinner which the German Friendly Society gave in compliment to me, having invited me by a deputation. The party met at half past three o’clock. The company was composed, with the exception of the mayor, Dr. Johnson, of more than sixty persons, for the most part Germans or of German origin. It was assembled in a house belonging to the society, in which, besides the large assembly room, was also a school for the children of the members, and the dwellings of the preceptors. The society was instituted in the year 1766, the principal founder was Captain Kalteisen, a native Wirtemburger, who had raised a volunteer corps of fusileers from the Germans then living there, with which he not only distinguished himself in the defence of Fort Moultrie against the English, but also personally, during the whole war, rendered the most important services as adjutant quarter-master-general in the staff of the southern army. The company of fusileers always preserved their connection with the German Society. Kalteisen himself died in the year 1807, as commandant of Fort Johnson; he was so attached to this German association, that he had himself buried in the yard of the building, the bricks of the pavement mark the form of his coffin over it, and a tablet of marble in the hall contains an inscription to the memory of the deceased. In the great hall, his portrait hangs next to that of Colonel Sass, who after him commanded the company, and of a Wormser, named Strobel, who was a joint founder of the society, and whose sons and nephew appeared at table. Two brothers, Messrs. Horlbeck, presided at the dinner, which was very well arranged. They had the politeness to nominate me an honorary member of the society, and to present me their laws for my signature; under them were here and there crosses only. Several of the usual toasts were given out; my health being drank, I returned my thanks in the German language. There was also singing. The melody was guided by an old Mr. Eckhardt, a Hessian that had come to America with the Hessian troops, as a musician, and remained here. He is now organist of one of the churches, and three of his sons occupy the same station in other churches. The German society possesses, moreover, a library, which owes its origin to donations. In the school-room there was a planetarium, very neatly finished, set in motion by clock-work.
[CHAPTER XVI.]
Journey from Charleston, through Augusta, Milledgeville, Macon, and the country of the Creek Indians, to Montgomery, in the State of Alabama.
My design had been to travel from Charleston to Savannah. I understood, however, that the stage to Savannah was very bad; that the steam-boat went very irregularly; that Savannah had lost its importance as a place of trade, and on the whole, contained nothing worthy of observation. As this tour would cost me many days, and a circuitous route, I resolved to relinquish the visit to Savannah, and betake myself the nearest way to Augusta, one hundred and twenty-nine miles distant; thence by Milledgeville through the Creek Indians, to go into the state of Alabama. Colonel Wool liked my plan, as also did Mr. Temple Bowdoin, an Anglo-American, a very polished man, who had travelled, and who in his younger days served in the British army. We had engaged the mail stage for ourselves alone, and in it left Charleston on the 20th of December.
We passed Ashley river at the same place, and in the same team-boat, as I did eight days back. It was at low ebb, and many oyster banks were exposed dry. This was a novel spectacle to me. The oysters stood straight up, close together, and had somewhat the appearance of a brush. Several negroes were employed in taking them out of the mud, in baskets. Even on the piers of the bridge, many oysters were sticking fast. On the opposite shore the road ran through a country generally woody, but partly ornamented with plantations. Several of these plantations are pretty, commonly an avenue of ancient, well preserved live oaks, leads up to the mansion-house, at the entrance of which a grated gate is placed. Maize and cotton are planted here, and in some places also rice, which is the staple of the lower part of South Carolina. The rice fields must stand several months of the year under water. On this account they are situated in swampy districts, and surrounded by ditches of water. But in consequence of this, these places are so unhealthy, that hardly a white planter can remain during the summer on his plantation; he is obliged to resort to Charleston, or the northern states. The climate of Charleston is such, that whoever is there in the beginning of the hot season, dares not to sleep a single night during the continuance of it, upon a plantation, without exposing his life to imminent danger. The blacks are the only human beings on whom this deadly climate has no bad effect, and they are, therefore, indispensable for the cultivation of this district. The vegetation was again extremely beautiful, noble live oaks, laurel trees, magnolias, cabbage and macaw trees. The road ran upon light bridges over small rivers, on the banks of which negroes were busied in angling. We saw the family of a planter in an elegant boat, manned by six black oarsmen, rowing to their plantation. In a large inn, which was itself the mansion-house of a plantation, we found a particularly good dinner. In the evening we crossed the Edisto river in a narrow ferry-boat, for the arrival of which we were obliged to delay a long time. The soil was mostly very sandy, partly also marshy, and the jolting log causeways made us tired of our lives. On this side of the river we arrived at the village of Edisto. We travelled through the whole night, and I suffered much from the cold in my airy seat. Otherwise, it was a clear moonlight, and if it had been a little warmer would deserve the appellation of a fine night. We changed our stage during the night, but gained nothing.
The succeeding morning exhibited all the ponds of water covered with a crust of ice. We passed the Salkechee and Cambahee rivers upon bridges, and noticed nothing worthy of observation. The vegetation was less beautiful than on the preceding day; the plantations were also less considerable. At a new plantation, at which we arrived about break of day, I spoke to the overseer of the negroes. The man’s employment I recognised from his whip, and from the use he made of it, in rousing up the negroes to make a fire. He told us that in the district, where the plantation was situated, and where maize and cotton were planted, but a little time before there was nothing but forest; his employer had commenced in 1816, with two negroes, and now he possessed one hundred and four, who were kept at work in clearing the wood, and extending the plantation. The cotton crop was finished in most of the fields, and cattle were driven in, to consume the weeds and tops of the bushes. We passed several mill-ponds, and saw some saw-mills. Only pine trees appeared to flourish in this part of the country; upon the whole, it was hilly, and the progress was tedious through the deep sand. We passed the river Savannah three miles from Augusta, in a little ferry-boat. The left bank appeared here and there to be rocky, and pretty high; the right is sandy. When we crossed the river, we left the state of South Carolina, and entered that of Georgia, the most southern of the old thirteen United States, which in fifty years have grown to twenty-four in number. We reached Augusta in the evening at nine o’clock, on a very good road, a scattered built town of four thousand six hundred inhabitants, of both complexions. We took up our quarters in the Globe Hotel, a tolerable inn; during the whole day it was very clear, but cold weather, in the evening it froze hard. The old remark is a very just one, that one suffers no where so much from cold as in a warm climate, since the dwellings are well calculated to resist heat, but in nowise suited to repel cold.
We were compelled to remain in Augusta during the 22d of December, as the mail stage for the first time went to Milledgeville on the following day, and Colonel Wool had to inspect the United States’ arsenal here, which contained about six thousand stand of arms for infantry. We understood that Mr. Crawford, formerly embassador of the United States, in Paris, afterwards secretary of state, and lastly, candidate for the office of president, was here at a friend’s house. We therefore paid him a visit. Mr. Crawford is a man of gigantic stature, and dignified appearance; he had a stroke of apoplexy about a year since, so that he was crippled on one side, and could not speak without difficulty. To my astonishment, he did not speak French, though he had been several years an envoy in Paris. They say, that Mr. Crawford’s predecessor in Paris, was chancellor Livingston, this gentleman was deaf; both Livingston and Crawford were introduced to the Emperor Napoleon at the same time; the emperor, who could carry on no conversation with either of them, expressed his surprise, that the United States had sent him a deaf and dumb embassy. I likewise reaped very little profit from Mr. Crawford’s conversation. As he was an old friend of Mr. Bowdoin, almost all the benefit of it fell to his share, and I addressed myself chiefly to his daughter, and one of her female friends, who were present. Much indeed was to be anticipated as the result of a conversation with the daughter of such a statesman. She had been educated in a school of the southern states. My conclusion was, the farther south I advanced, so much the firmer am I convinced that the inhabitants of these states suffer in comparing their education with those of the north. To conclude, Mr. Crawford was the hero of the democratic party, and would, in all probability, have been chosen president in the spring of 1825, had not his apoplectic attack supervened. On account of his indisposition, General Jackson was pushed before him; and so much was brought forward against the individual character of this person in opposition, that the present incumbent, Adams, on that account, succeeded.