July 5. When two buckra were reported as approaching while we were at breakfast it turned out to be two men from the village picket with a note from the Lieutenant to C. I did not find out the sequel to the story the other night, but it seems that C. and William crossed the creek with the soldiers, only taking two men to row. The blacks certainly behaved extremely well, and Moll told the men they might have the corn, which of course they refused to take. And as they went into the boat a boy put in the watermelon they had taken, saying, "B'longs to you, sah," but the man sent it ashore. The coals were rather hot, I guess, and the men were heartily ashamed of themselves and thoroughly penitent. C. went with them to the mess-room and saw the sergeant, who expressed great regret and said it was the first time any of their men had been guilty of such acts. The Lieutenant was away, and as C. drew paper towards him to report the case in writing, they looked very blank and begged him not to report. After some consideration he concluded not to report them, as he could not see the Lieutenant and they had behaved so well about it, and told them he would not unless some further acts of the kind were perpetrated by their men. They were very grateful, but C. did not feel sure that the Lieutenant would not hear of it. And so he did, in some way; investigated the affair and sent the men to Beaufort to be punished by the Commander of the post, who is now not General Saxton but, as it happens, is their own Colonel,[139] who is not likely to be lenient towards them. The Lieutenant sent a note to this effect to C. this morning, and also wished to know what would repay the negroes for the damage done. (The soldiers had already promised to make it good to them, and were to have been paid off yesterday, but their pay was stopped in consequence of this very occurrence.) So the whole affair has ended very satisfactorily. I am sorry for the poor fellows, for they will probably suffer not so much for what they actually did themselves, but to serve as an example to all other offenders.
July 7. Mr. Wells was to come at nine o'clock to the wharf to take Mr. Soule[140] to Morgan Island, one of his plantations. Mr. Wells appeared at the door to say that he had a large sail-boat—it was only a half-hour's sail to the island, and would not I go too. So I put up a little lunch and C. had his horse saddled and down to the wharf we went, and were soon at our destination. The only white-house on the island now occupied is on quite a bluff looking directly out to sea, pleasantly shaded, with a fresh breeze all the time up the Sound, and is a very healthy situation. But the house is of the roughest description, without paint inside or out, very much like a New Hampshire farmhouse in the back-woods a quarter of a century ago, but not so large, clean, or thrifty-looking, by any means. Here we stopped to see an old man who was brought from Africa when he was over twenty, and remembers his life in his own country, from which he was sold by his brother to pay a debt. Mr. Soule said he was bright and talkative when he last saw him, but now he is very much broken; and after sitting a few minutes we went on to the driver's house, a great contrast in neatness, and the gentleman left me in a rocking-chair under the shade of the large Asia-berry tree in front of the house, while they went off with Bacchus, the foreman, to see the cotton-fields. Here I stayed for a couple of hours, I should think, talking with Elsie, Bacchus' wife, who was not in the field because she had a headache, and very neat and nice she looked in her calico gown. She has no children, but made up for the want as far as she could by the number of chickens and ducks she had round. By and bye she got up, and picking up a piece of brick, pounded it up with an axe, and began to clean a large knife, which I knew meant watermelon. And when the gentlemen came back, Bacchus brought out a small table and put a melon on it which was almost large enough for a tablecloth; then he produced plates, and Mr. Wells carved the huge monster, which we nearly devoured. The air and grace with which one of the men, who came up to clear off the table for Mr. Wells to pay the people, touched his hat with a bow and a scrape would not have misbecome a Commencement Dinner or Wedding Party.
The keen interest which these Northern interlopers took in everything that concerned the people into whose shoes they had stepped, and their constant sense of the strangeness and romance of their situation appear in the extracts that follow. Again the chronology of the letters has been somewhat disregarded.
FROM H. W.
July 14. G. came over here and spent the day. He told us that a man who belonged on his place came back with the troops on one of their late expeditions, and told him that his master, T. J. Fripp, was killed at Darien. He said he (Fripp) had been past here in a boat and came back with his hands all blistered from rowing; they had been hailed by the Kingfisher, but told some story of having come from here, and escaped. He said his master swore the Yankees were everywhere, and that there was a light in every window of Tom Coffin's house.
E. S. P. TO C. P. W.
Boston, Sept. 30. I heard the other day that Captain Boutelle of the Coast Survey, who used to enjoy the hospitality of the planters of St. Helena, Edisto, etc., was dining at Cambridge, Mass., with a classmate of T. A. C.'s. The host inquired what had become of the Captain's former friends, the South Carolina planters. "Oh, they are all scattered and their property ruined." "Well, what has become of my classmate, Thomas A. Coffin?" "Oh, he is gone with the rest, and his fine plantation is in the hands of that confounded Abolitionist, Philbrick."
FROM H. W.
July 10. William has been overhauling the old letters and papers in the garret and has come across many very interesting bits of information among them. They are mostly very old. Old plantation books of Mr. Eben Coffin, the first proprietor of the name of this estate, dated 1800, containing lists of the slaves of former generations, in which some of the oldest here now, like Uncle Sam, are mentioned as two years old; estimates for this house and the building in the yard, etc.
Aug. 5. C. has found a spike of papers in the old overseer house, on which he and Mr. Soule are now expending their eyesight. Letters from Mr. Coffin to Cockloft, etc. They have found out how much he was paid for the year—also some references to an exciting time on Frogmore where the overseer seems to have mismanaged—somebody was shot and there was a trial! We shall ask the negroes about it all.