Finding I was too early for the boat, I took a stroll along the wharves, and visited the colonies of homeless plantation negroes who had sought shelter under the open coal-sheds.
There were at that time in Charleston fifteen hundred freed people of this class waiting for transportation back to their former homes, or to the plantations of new masters who had hired them. A more wretched and pitiable herd of human beings I never saw; nor had I witnessed anything like it out of South Carolina.
Families were cooking and eating their breakfasts around smoky fires. On all sides were heaps of their humble household goods,—tubs, pails, pots and kettles, sacks, beds, barrels tied up in blankets, boxes, baskets, bundles. They had brought their live-stock with them; hens were scratching, pigs squealing, cocks crowing, and starved puppies whining.
One colony was going to Beaufort. “Mosser told we to go back. We’se no money, and we’se glad to git on gov’ment kindness, to git off.” But the government was not yet ready to send them.
Many seemed deeply to regret that they were so much trouble to the government. “We wants to git away to work on our own hook. It’s not a good time at all here. We does nothing but suffer from smoke and ketch cold. We wants to begin de planting business.”
Another colony had been two weeks waiting for transportation back to their old homes in Colleton District. Their sufferings were very great. Said an old woman, with a shawl over her head: “De jew and de air hackles we more’n anyting. De rain beats on we, and de sun shines we out. My chil’n so hungry dey can’t hole up. De Gov’ment, he han’t gib we nottin’. Said dey would put we on board Saturday. Some libs and some dies. If dey libs dey libs, and if dey dies dey dies.” Such was her dim philosophy. I tried to converse with others, who spoke a wild jargon peculiar to the plantations, of which I understood hardly one word in ten.
General Scott, who had recently succeeded General Saxton as Assistant Commissioner of the Bureau in South Carolina, was hastening measures for the relief of these poor people, and to prevent any more from coming to the city.
I walked around by the delightful residences on East Bay and South Bay, commanding fine views of the harbor and Ashley River; and reached the wharf from which we were to embark.
Opposite lay James Island, with its marshy borders, and its dark-green line of pines. Boats—mostly huge cypress dug-outs, manned by negroes—were passing to and fro, some coming from the island with loads of wood, others returning, heavily laden, with families of freedmen going to their new homes, and with household goods and supplies.
“This is interesting,” said one of the planters, whom I found in waiting. “That wood comes from our plantations. The negroes cut it off, bring it over to the city, and perhaps sell it to the actual owners of the land they have taken it from. We are buying our own wood of the darkey squatters. The negroes are still going to the island, picking their lands, and staking out forty-acre lots, though the Bureau is giving no more titles.”