“You of course hear many complaints that the blacks will not work?”
“Yes, and they are true in certain cases: they will not work for such wages as their late owners are willing to give; in other words, they will not work for less than nothing. But when they have encouragement they work very well, in their fashion,—which is not the Yankee fashion, certainly, but the fashion which slavery has bred them up to. They have not yet learned to appreciate, however, the binding character of a contract. It is a new thing to them. Besides, the master too often sets them bad examples by failing to keep his own engagements. He has been in the habit of breaking his promises to them at his convenience; and now he finds fault that they do not keep theirs any better. The masters have not yet learned how to treat their old servants under the new conditions. They cannot learn that they are no longer slaves. That is one great source of trouble. On the other hand, where the freedman receives rational, just, and kind treatment, he behaves well and works well, almost without exception. I expect a good deal of difficulty soon. The negroes have in many places made contracts to work for a part of the crop; now when the corn comes to be divided, their ideas and their master’s, with regard to what ‘a part’ of the crop is, will be found to differ considerably. I was not an anti-slavery man at home,” he added; “and I give you simply the results of my observation since I have been in the South.”
“What do you think would be the effect if our troops were withdrawn?”
“I hardly know; but I should expect one of two things: either that the freedmen would be reduced to a worse condition than they were ever in before, or that they would rise in insurrection.”
The landlord wished me to go and look at his corn. It was certainly a noble crop. The tops of the monstrous ears towered six or eight feet from the ground; the tops of the stalks at least twelve or fourteen feet. He maintained that it would average fifty bushels (of shelled corn) to the acre. I thought the estimate too high.
“Good corn,” said he, “measures finely; sorry corn porely. And consider, not a spoonful of manure has been put on this ground fo’ fou’ years.”
“But the ground has been resting; and that is as good as manure.”
“Yes; but it’s mighty good soil that will do as well as this. Now tell your people, if they want to buy good land cheap, hyer’s their chance. I’ve got a thousand acres; and I’ll sell off seven hundred acres, claired or timber land, to suit purchasers. It’s well wo’th twenty dollars an acre; I’ll sell for ten. It a’n’t fur from market; and thar’s noth’n’ ye can’t raise on this yer land.”
Of all his thousand acres he had only about fifteen under cultivation. His cornfield was not as large as it appeared; for, running through the centre of it, like a titanic furrow, were Lee’s tremendous intrenchments. These few acres were all the old man had been able to enclose. There was not another fence on his farm. “I had over ten thousand panels of fence burnt up for me during the wa’; over eighty thousand rails.”
“By which army?”