On the Plantation: A Story of a Georgia Boy's Adventures during the War

by Joel Chandler Harris

The old-fashioned loom and spinning-wheel were kept going, and the women made their own dyes. The girls made their hats of rye and wheat straw, and some very pretty bonnets were made of the fibrous substance that grows in the vegetable known as the bonnet squash.

It was agreed on all sides that times were very hard, and yet they seemed very pleasant and comfortable to Joe Maxwell. He had never seen money more plentiful. Everybody seemed to have some, and yet nobody had enough. It was all in Confederate bills, and they were all new and fresh and crisp. Joe had some of it himself, and he thought he was growing rich. But the more plentiful the money became, the higher went the price of everything.

After a while Joe noticed that the older men became more serious. There were complaints in the newspapers of speculators and extortioners—of men who imposed on and mistreated the widows and wives of the soldiers. And then there was a law passed preventing the farmers from planting only so many acres of land in cotton, in order that more food might be raised for the army. After this came the impressment law, which gave the Confederate officials the right to seize private property, horses, mules, and provisions. And then came the conscription law.

There was discontent among the men who were at home, but they were not left to make any serious complaints. One by one the conscript officers seized all except those who were exempt and hurried them off to the front. Those who thought it a disgrace to be conscripted either volunteered or hired themselves as substitutes.

This is the summing up of the first three years of the war, so far as it affected Joe Maxwell. The impression made upon him was of slow and gradual growth. He only knew that trouble and confusion were abroad in the land. He could see afterward what a lonely and desperate period it must have been to those who had kinsmen in the war; but, at that time, all these things were as remote from him as a dream that is half remembered. He set up the editor’s articles, criticising Governor Joe Brown for some attacks he had made on the Confederate Government, without understanding them fully; and he left Mr. Wall, the hatter, who was a violent secessionist, to discuss the situation with Mr. Bonner, the overseer, who was a Whig, and something of a Union man.

Late one afternoon, after listening to a heated dispute between Mr. Wall and Mr. Bonner, Joe concluded that he would take a run in the fields with the harriers. So he called and whistled for them, but they failed to come. Harbert thought they had followed some of the plantation hands, but, as this rarely happened, Joe was of the opinion that they had gone hunting on their own account. They were very busy and restless little dogs, and it was not uncommon for them to go rabbit-hunting for themselves. Going toward Mr. Snelson’s, Joe thought he could hear them running a rabbit on the farther side of the plantation. He went in that direction, but found, after a while, that they were running in the Jack Adams place, and as he went nearer they seemed to get farther away. Finally, when he did come up with the dogs, he found that they were not the harriers at all, but a lot of curs and “fices.” And then—how it happened he was never able to explain—Joe suddenly discovered that he was lost.

Perhaps if the idea had never occurred to him he would never have been lost, but the thought flashed in his mind and stayed there. He stood still in his tracks and looked all around, but the idea that he was really lost confused him. He was not frightened—he was not even uneasy. But he knew he was lost. Everything was strange and confusing. Even the sun, which was preparing to go to bed, was in the wrong place. Joe laughed at himself. Certainly he could return the way he came, so he faced about, as he thought, and started home.

Walking and running he went forward rapidly, and he had need to, for the sun had gone behind a cloud, and the cloud, black and threatening, was rising and filling the sky. How long he had been going Joe did not know, but suddenly he found himself near an old cabin. It was built of logs, and the chimney, which had been made of sticks and red clay, had nearly fallen down. The lad knew that this cabin was neither on the Turner plantation nor on the Jack Adams place. He had never heard any of the negroes allude to it, and he realized the fact that he had been running away from home.

Near the deserted house were the remnants of an orchard. A pear-tree, jagged and unshapely, grew not far from the door, while an apple-tree, with a part of its trunk rotted away, stood near a corner of the cabin. A growth of pines and scrub-oak showed that the place had been deserted for many a long year. A quarter of a mile away, through the gathering darkness, Joe could see a white fringe gleaming against the horizon. He knew that this was a fog, and that it rose from the river. Following the line of the fog, he could see that the cabin was in a bend of the river—the Horseshoe, as he had heard it called—and he knew that he was at least four miles from home. By this time the cloud had covered all the heavens. Away off in the woods he could hear the storm coming, sounding like a long-drawn sigh at first, and then falling with a sweeping rush and roar. Joe had no choice but to seek shelter in the old house. He was a stout-hearted youngster, and yet he could not resist the feeling of uneasiness and dread that came over him at the thought of spending the night in that lonely place. But there was no help for it. He could never find his way home in the darkness, and so he made the best of what seemed to him a very bad matter. The cabin was almost a wreck, but it served to keep off the rain.