C—— appeared quite anxious on that point. After serious reflection, he said:—
“If you overheard me damn the Yankees, you’ll forgive me, when I tell you how they treated me. It was after the war was over, and that’s what made it hurt so. Seven of Stoneman’s men came to my house, and put a carbine to my breast, and demanded my watch. ‘You may shoot me,’ I said, ‘but you can’t have my watch.’ ‘Then give us some dinner,’ they said. I got dinner for them, and waited on them with my own hands. They paid me for my trouble by stealing seven of my horses. While I was absent from home, trying to get back my horses, some more Yankees came and robbed my house; they broke open the bureau with a chisel, and injured more than they took. You don’t blame me for cursing ’em, do you?”
“Not in the least. According to your story, they were very great rascals.”
After another interval of silence, C—— resumed:—
“Tell General Tillson I am willing to pay my laborers every dollar they’re worth: and that I treat them well. I’ve one boy that has always been with me, and is a better overseer than any white man I ever had. He looks after my interest better than I can myself, for he is younger. I trust everything in his hands,—all my keys, and sometimes money.” He could not forbear adding,—“Your fanatics at the North wouldn’t believe I treat this man so well.”
“Very likely. But it seems you have good reason for treating him well. What do you pay him?”
“I pay him two hundred dollars a year.”
“And what would you have to pay a white overseer?”
“I couldn’t get a white man to do for me what he does, for eight hundred dollars.”
“I am quite sure,” I said, “that our fanatics at the North would not see your extraordinary kindness to this man in the same light you do. They would think him worth considerably more than you pay him. If he does the work of a white overseer, they would say he ought to have the salary of a white overseer. They are such an unreasonable set, they would consider six hundred dollars, the difference between his wages and a white man’s, a pretty heavy tax to pay on the color of his skin.”