“Ye-e-s! that cup? Oh, that was given me by a lady in Columbia for saving her households gods from destruction.”
An enterprising officer in charge of a foraging party would return to camp with a substantial family coach, well filled with hams, meal, etc.
How are you, captain? Where did you pick up that carriage?”
“Elegant vehicle, isn’t it?” was the reply; “that was a gift from a lady out here whose mansion was in flames. Arrived at the nick of time—good thing—she said she didn’t need the carriage any longer—answer for an ambulance one of these days.”
After a while this joke came to be repeated so often that it was dangerous for any one to exhibit a gold watch, a tobacco-box, any uncommon utensil of kitchen ware, a new pipe, a guard-chain, or a ring, without being asked if “a lady at Columbia had presented that article to him for saving her house from burning.”—Story of the Great March.
[23]. “The grass will grow in the Northern cities, where the pavements have been worn off by the tread of commerce. We will carry war where it is easy to advance—where food for the sword and torch await our armies in the densely populated cities; and though they (the enemy) may come and spoil our crops, we can raise them as before, while they cannot rear the cities which took years of industry and millions of money to build.”—Jeff Davis in 1861—Speech at Stevenson, Ala.
CHAPTER LXXVIII.
NOTES ON SOUTH CAROLINA.
At a distance from the Sea Islands, the free-labor system in South Carolina, was fast settling down upon a satisfactory basis. General Richardson, commanding the Eastern District of the State,—comprising all the districts east of the Wateree and Santee, except Georgetown and Horry, on the coast,—assured me that there was going to be more cotton raised in those districts this year than ever before.
In the districts west of the Wateree, the soil is not so well adapted to cotton, and the country abounds in ignorant small planters and poor whites. A planter of the average class, in York District, said to me: “The people of this country formerly lived on nigger-raising. That was the crop we depended on. If we could raise corn and pork enough to feed the niggers, we did well. Now this great staple is tuk from us.”
The planters here love to dwell upon the advantages they derived from that crop. One said to me; “Let a young man take three likely gals, set ’em to breedin’ right away, and he mought make a fortune out on ’em, ’fore he was old. But them times is past.”