The winds of freedom had scarcely reached the more remote western districts. A planter of Union District told me that he was hiring good men for twenty-five dollars a year. “Heap on ’em, round here, just works for their victuals and clothes, like they always did. I reckon they’ll all be back whar they was, in a few years.”
The South Carolina lands and modes of culture are not well adapted to corn. A rotation of crops is deemed necessary to keep the soil in a condition to raise it successfully. The decay of cotton seed and waste cotton is its best fertilizer. During the war, when little cotton was raised, planters became alarmed at the yearly decrease of the corn crop. The average yield, throughout the State, the first year, was fifteen bushels to the acre; the second, twelve bushels; the third, nine bushels; and the fourth, six bushels.
Before the war, the city of Charleston exported annually one hundred and twenty-five thousand tierces of rice. This year, it is importing rice of an inferior quality from the West Indies. This fact indicates the condition of that culture. Yet in the face of it, rice-planters were raising the price of their lands from fifty dollars an acre, for which they could be bought before the war, to one hundred dollars.
As the rice plantations are confined to the tide-water region, where the fields can be flooded after sowing, their present prospects were more or less embarrassed by the knotty Sea-Island question. “If our people this year make one sixth of an average rice-crop,” said Governor Orr, “they will be fortunate, and they will be doing well. In old times, our annual crop brought upwards of three and a half million dollars, when rice was only five cents a pound.”
The railroads of South Carolina were nearly worn out during the war. All sorts of iron were used to keep them in repair; and the old rolling-stock was kept running until it was ready to fall to pieces. Then Sherman came. The South Carolina Road, wealthy before the war, was relaying its torn-up track and rebuilding its extensive trestle-work and bridges, as fast as its earnings would permit. The branch to Columbia was once more in operation; but, on the main road to Augusta, travel was eked out by a night of terribly rough staging.
The finances of South Carolina were at a low ebb. Governor Orr told me that there had not been a dollar in the State treasury since his inauguration. The current expenses of the war were mostly met by taxation; and the annual interest on the foreign debt of two and a half millions had been promptly paid, up to July, 1865, by the exportation of cotton. The State bank was obliged to suspend its operations, but the faith of the State was pledged for the redemption of the bills. The other banks had been ruined by loans made to the Confederate government. Their stock had been considered the safest in the market, and the property of widows and orphans was largely invested in it. The estates of the stockholders, liable for double the amount of the bills issued, were insufficient to redeem them. In January, 1866, two National Banks had been organized in the State.
The aggregate of debts, old and new, in South Carolina, were estimated to be worth not more than twenty-five per cent. of their par value.
South Carolina had suffered more than any other State by the Sale of lands for United States taxes, during the war. I heard of one estate, worth fifteen thousand dollars, which had been sold for three hundred dollars. Governor Orr instanced another, the market value of which was twenty-four thousand dollars, which was bought in by the government for eighty dollars. Such was the fate of abandoned coast lands held by the United States forces. Their owners, absent in the interior, were in most instances ignorant even of the proceedings by which their estates were sacrificed. In this way, according to the governor, “the entire parish of St. Helena, and a portion of St. Luke’s, have completely changed hands, and passed either into the possession of the government, or of third parties.”
The prevalence of crime in remote districts was alarming. I was assured by General Sickles that the perpetrators were in most cases outlaws from other States, to which they dared not return. Union soldiers and negroes were their favorite victims. They rode in armed bands through the country, defying the military authorities. The people would not inform against them for fear of their vengeance. Many robberies and murders of soldiers and freedmen, however, were unmistakably committed by citizens.
Much ill-feeling had been kept alive by United States treasury agents, searching the country for Confederate cotton and branded mules and horses. Many of these agents, as far as I could learn, both in this and in other States, were mere rogues and fortune-hunters. They would propose to seize a man’s property in the name of the United States, but abandon the claim on the payment of heavy bribes, which of course went into their own pockets. Sometimes, having seized “C. S. A.” cotton, they would have the marks on the bales changed, get some man to claim it, and divide with him the profits. Such practices had a pernicious effect, engendering a contempt for the government, and a murderous ill-will which too commonly vented itself upon soldiers and negroes.