[17]. See, in Special Field-Orders, No. 120, issued Nov. 24th, 1864, the following paragraphs:—
“IV. The army will forage liberally on the country during the march. To this end, each brigade commander will organize a good and sufficient foraging party, under the command of one or more discreet officers, who will gather near the route travelled corn or forage of any kind, meat of any kind, vegetables or corn-meal or whatever is needed by the command; aiming at all times to keep in the wagon trains at least ten days’ provisions for the command, and three days’ forage. Soldiers must not enter the dwellings of the inhabitants, or commit any trespass during the halt or a camp; they may be permitted to gather turnips, potatoes, and other vegetables, and drive in stock in front of their camps. To regular foraging parties must be intrusted the gathering of provisions and forage at any distance from the road travelled.
“V. To army-corps commanders is intrusted the power to destroy mills, houses, cotton-gins, &c., and for them this general principle is laid down: In districts and neighborhoods where the army is unmolested no destruction of such property should be permitted; but should guerillas or bushwhackers molest our march, or should the inhabitants burn bridges, obstruct roads, or otherwise manifest local hostility, then army-corps commanders should order and enforce a devastation more or less relentless according to the measure of such hostility.
“VI. As for horses, mules, wagons, &c., belonging to the inhabitants, the cavalry and artillery may appropriate freely and without limit, discriminating, however, between the rich, who are usually hostile, and the poor or industrious, usually neutral or friendly. Foraging parties may also take mules or horses to replace the jaded animals of their trains, or to serve as pack-mules for the regiments or brigades. In all foraging, of whatever kind, the parties engaged will refrain from abusive or threatening language, and may, when the officer in command thinks proper, give written certificates of the facts, but no receipts; and they will endeavor to leave with each family a reasonable portion for their maintenance.”
CHAPTER LXVII.
PLANTATION GLIMPSES.
In travelling through the South one sees many plantations ruined for some years to come by improper cultivation. The land generally washes badly, and where the hill-sides have been furrowed up and down, instead of being properly “horizontalized,” the rains plough them into gulleys, and carry off the cream of the soil. Or perhaps neglect, during four years of war, has led to the same result. Many worn-out plantations are in this condition, the gulleys cutting the slopes into ridges and chasms.
In Georgia, as in parts of Alabama, one becomes weary of tracts of poor-looking country, overgrown with sedge-grass, or covered with oaks and pines. The roads, never good, in bad weather are frightful. Never a church steeple relieves the monotony of the landscape. Occasionally there is a village, its houses appearing to be built upon props. If standing upon a ridge above the highway or railroad by which you pass, the sight of the blue sky under them gives them a singular appearance.
It is customary, all through the South, to build country-houses in this manner, and rarely with cellars. The props, which are sometimes of brick, but oftener of fat pine, which makes an underpinning almost as durable as brick, lift the building a few feet from the earth and allow a free circulation of air under it. This peculiarity, which strikes a stranger as unnecessary, is not so. A Northern man of my acquaintance, settled in North Carolina, told me that he built his house in the New-England style, with a close underpinning; but soon discovered that the dampness of the earth was causing the lower timbers to rot badly. By opening the underpinning, and ventilating the foundation, he succeeded in checking the decay. Let Northern men emigrating to the South take a hint from his experience. No doubt many Southern customs, which appear to us irrational or useless, will thus be found to have originated in common sense and necessity.
I was too late to see the cotton-picking, and too early for the chopping-out and hoeing, but in season to witness the preparation of the ground for planting. Sometimes, in a gang of fifty or sixty laborers running as many ploughs on the fields of a large plantation, there would be twenty or thirty women and strong girls. The sight of so many ploughs in motion, each drawn by a single mule, and scratching its narrow furrow three inches deep, was of itself interesting; and the presence with the ploughmen of the stout black ploughwomen added to it a certain picturesqueness.
I have already related how my ignorance was enlightened with regard to the manufacture of ploughs on Alabama plantations. I afterwards saw the blacksmiths at work upon these somewhat rude implements, and learned that some of the larger plantations manufactured their own carts and wagons. The plantation harness is a simple affair, and is nearly always made on the place. While the negro women are spinning and weaving cloth in rainy-weather, the men are bending hames, braiding mule-collars of corn husks, and making back-bands of leather or bagging.