“No; before the war we had men trained for this work. We had some niggers, but more white men. We couldn’t git all the niggers we wanted; a fifteen hundred dollar man wore out too quick.”
“The whites were the best, I suppose.”
“The niggers was the best. They was more active getting down bales. They liked the fun. They stand it better than white men. Business stopped, and that set of hands all dropped off,—went into the war, the most of ’em. Now we have to take raw hands. These are all plantation niggers. Not one of ’m’ll ship for another trip; they’ve had enough of it. Thar’s no compellin’ ’em. You can’t hit a nigger now, but these d——d Yankee sons of b——s have you up and make you pay for it.”
I told him if that was the case, I didn’t think I should hit one.
“They’ve never had me up,” he resumed. “When I tackle a nigger, it’ll be whar thar an’t no witnesses, and it’ll be the last of him. That’s what ought to be done with ’em,—kill ’em all off. I like a nigger in his place, and that’s a servant, if thar’s any truth in the Bible.”
This allusion to Scripture, from lips hot with words of wrath and wrong, was especially edifying.
The “Quitman” was a fine boat, and passengers, if not deck-hands, fared sumptuously on board of her. The table was equal to that of the best hotels. An excellent quality of claret wine was furnished, as a part of the regular dinner fare, after the French fashion, which appears to have been introduced into this country by the Creoles, and which is to be met with, I believe, only on the steamboats of the Lower Mississippi.
On the “Quitman,” as on the boat from Memphis to Vicksburg, I made the acquaintance of all sorts of Southern people. The conversation of some of them is worth recording.
One, a Mississippi planter, learning that I was a Northern man, took me aside, and with much emotion, asked if I thought there was “any chance of the government paying us for our niggers.”
“What niggers?”