Chronicles of Chicora Wood

by Elizabeth W. Allston Pringle

He took the paper and looked at it, but there rose a sullen murmur from the crowd, and a young man who had stood a little way off, balancing a sharp stone in his hand and aiming it at mamma from time to time, now came nearer and leaned on the wheel of the carriage. Mamma thought he wanted to intimidate her, and so she stepped out of the carriage into the very midst of them. I motioned to follow, but she said in a low tone, as she shut the door, “Stay where you are,” and I obeyed.

The foreman said: “How we gwine eat ef we gie yu de key? We haf fu hab bittle.”

Mamma answered: “Mack, you know that every man, woman, and child on this place has full ration for a year! You know, for you measured it and gave it out yourself. If anything should be wanted, I will come down and give it out myself.”

At that the young man, still balancing the stone, laughed, and all followed in a great shout, and he said: “Yu kyant do dat, dat de man wuk. Yu kyan do um, en we’ll starve.”

But mamma held her ground, and walking up and down among them, speaking to each one by name, asking after their children and babies, all by name. Gradually the tension relaxed, and after a long time, it seemed to me ages, in which she showed no irritation, no impatience, only friendly interest, no sense that they could possibly be enemies, Mack gave her the keys without any interference from the others, and we left. She did not think it wise to go to the barn to look at the crops. Having gained her point, she thought it best to leave. We were both terribly exhausted when we got home, and enjoyed a good night’s rest in our own very original-looking log house in Plantersville, which Charley had succeeded in getting made clean and comfortable for us.

The next morning, after breakfast, we started to Chicora Wood to get the keys there. Mamma did not take Charley, for he was very weak from his illness, and having made the trip down before he was strong enough. Besides that, in the condition of the country, the negroes were apt to be more irritated by the presence of a returned soldier than with ladies only. Besides which, it was a very mortifying position for a man, whose impulse, under insolence or refusal to do the right thing, was naturally to resent it, and, being perfectly powerless, not having taken the oath, he was not even recognized as a citizen, and had no rights and would have no support from the law. Therefore, it was certainly the part of wisdom to leave him behind, though I did not fully understand it at the time. We did not have much trouble at Chicora. Daddy Primus had been the man to whom the keys were given, and he was a very superior, good old man. He had been head carpenter ever since Daddy Thomas’s death. He took mamma into each barn and showed her the splendid crops, and as he locked the door to each, she just held out her hand for it, and he placed the key to that barn in her hands without question. And here the people seemed glad to see her and to see me, and we walked about over the place and talked with every one.

We looked at the house; it was a wreck,—the front steps gone, not a door nor shutter left, and not a sash. They had torn out all the mahogany framework around the doors and windows—there were mahogany panels below the windows and above the doors there were panels painted—the mahogany banisters to the staircase going upstairs; everything that could be torn away was gone. The pantry steps being there, we went into the house, went all through, even into the attic. Then the big tank for the supply of the water-works, which was lined with zinc, had been torn to pieces, and the bathroom below entirely torn up. It was a scene of destruction, and papa’s study, where he kept all his accounts and papers, as he had done from the time he began planting as a young man, was almost waist-deep in torn letters and papers. Poor things, they were looking, I suppose, for money or treasure of some kind in all those bundles of letters and papers most methodically and carefully tied up with red tape, each packet of accounts having a wooden slat, with the date and subject of account upon it. We looked through every corner, and then went out on the piazza and sat down and ate the lunch we had brought. It is wonderful to me, as I look back, that we were so cheerful; but we were, and after a good lunch with some hard-boiled eggs Maum Mary brought us, we got into the carriage and drove home to the dear, peaceful log house.

The next morning we started early in the carriage for Guendalos, mamma and I, driven by Daddy Aleck. This plantation belonged to my elder brother, Colonel Ben Allston, who had been in the army since the beginning of the war, never having been home at all. There had been no white man on the place, and we heard the negroes were most turbulent and excited. As we neared the place the road was lined on either side by angry, sullen black faces; instead of the pleasant smile and courtesy or bow to which we were accustomed, not a sign of recognition or welcome, only an ominous silence. As the carriage passed on they formed an irregular line and followed.

This would be a test case, as it were. If the keys were given up, it would mean that the former owners still had some rights. We drove into the barnyard and stopped in front of the barn. Several hundred negroes were there, and as they had done the day before, they crowded closer and closer around the carriage, and mamma got out into the midst of them, as she had done at Nightingale. She called for the head man and told him she wished to see the crop, and he cleared the way before us to the rice barn and then to the corn barn. Mamma complimented him on the crops. As she was about to leave the corn barn a woman stretched her arms across the wide door so as to hold up the passageway. Mamma said, “Sukey, let me pass,” but Sukey did not budge. Then mamma turned to Jacob. “This woman has lost her hearing; you must make her move from the doorway.” Very gently Jacob pushed her aside and we went out and Jacob locked the door. Then mamma said: “And now, Jacob, I want the keys.” “No, ma’am, I kyant gie yu de key. De officer gen me de key, en I kyant gie um to nobody but de officer.”

“I have the officer’s written order to you to give me the keys—here it is”—and she drew from her reticule the paper and handed it to Jacob. He examined it carefully and returned it to her, and proceeded slowly to draw the keys from his pocket and was about to hand them to mamma, when a young man who had stood near, with a threatening expression sprang forward and shouted, “Ef yu gie up de key, blood’ll flow,” shaking his fist at Jacob. Then the crowd took up the shout, “Yes, blood’ll flow for true,” and a deafening clamor followed. Jacob returned the keys to the depths of his pocket. The crowd, yelling, talking, gesticulating, pressed closer and closer upon us, until there was scarcely room to stand. Daddy Aleck had followed with the carriage as closely as the crowd would allow without trampling some one, and now said to mamma: “Miss, yu better git een de carriage.” Mamma answered by saying: “Aleck, go and bring Mas’ Charles here.”