We hear by your letter the list of the passengers lost on the Melville. All our worst fears are confirmed, and you were right in supposing that it was our acquaintances who were lost. This miserable steamer I once talked of coming on, by her previous trip, but gave it up when I found her character.
FROM W. C. G.
Jan. 23. I think I suggested in a previous letter the possibility of my staying here. Sherman's operations have opened a wider sphere for negro work and thrown a great number of refugees into our hands. And his approaching campaign will have a similar effect. General Saxton has been appointed "Inspector General," with control of all negro affairs from Key West to Charleston and thirty miles inland. The first thing proposed is to recolonize Edisto and the other deserted Sea Islands with the refugees, and men are wanted to assist in their settlement. I have been offered a situation of this kind, or rather the General has simply asked a few of us to stay, and Mr. Tomlinson, Folsom, and myself will all remain for the present at least. I know nothing more than this, but I look forward to a rough life, something like our first year here. I shall probably go to Edisto in a day or two. There will be no danger from attack, etc., as a regiment is to be stationed there. The island is described by all as the finest and healthiest of all the Sea Islands.
If there is any movement afoot in Boston for the assistance of the negro refugees that Sherman's operations throw into our hands, it can be of the greatest benefit. The efforts three years ago were made chiefly for persons left in their own homes, and with their own clothing and property, besides their share of the plunder from their masters' houses. And in many cases too much was given. But now hundreds and thousands are coming in, shivering, hungry, so lean and bony and sickly that one wonders to what race they belong. Old men of seventy and children of seven years have kept pace with Sherman's advance, some of them for two months and over, from the interior of Georgia; of course little or nothing could be brought but the clothing on their backs and the young children in arms. Since their arrival in comparatively comfortable quarters, great sickness has prevailed, and numbers and numbers have died. The Government gives them rations, and has tried to give out clothing. But if clothes, cooking utensils, etc., can be sent by Northern friends, nowhere can generosity be better extended.
Savannah, Feb. 16. As you see, my destination has been changed. General Saxton needed a kind of colonization office here, and I am sent as an assistant. How long this will continue my headquarters I don't know. I am writing in a very large and fine house formerly occupied by Habersham, rebel. It is full of fine furniture. Our office, too, is one of the City Bank buildings. The prices are regal, too—$15 per week for board, e. g.
Mar. 7. The work at the office continues the same in kind, and the stream of waiters increases. We hope to send quite a company off to some of the more distant islands before long, but are terribly embarrassed for want of transportation. First, no steamer! then no coal! And when one can be had, the other can't. General Saxton is still, as ever previously, left to get round on one leg. His work is of course always inferior in importance to the needs of the military service, so there is never an absence of reason for refusing him what he wants. "Bricks!—without straw," has so far been the usual fortune. Soon a gentleman is going out towards the Ogeechee to report numbers and condition there. It seems to be a Central Asia, from the population that swarms in for rations. Compared with those who apply, few are allowed them. No one who can show a finger to pick with and reports an oyster to pick, is allowed to come on the Government for support.
Here follows the last letter from G., written three months later, not long before he came away.
FROM W. C. G.
Savannah, June 9. Our business has slacked greatly, and is now mainly kept up by recent refugees from the up-country. We have stopped more than half the rations, and almost every family within a dozen miles has been represented at the office and been furnished with the proper papers. But slavery still exists in the interior and is spending its last moments in the old abominations of whipping and punishing. Of course it is nearly dead,—the people know they are free and the masters have to own it,—but the ruling passion is strong in death.
W. C. G. left the South in June; H. W. and C. P. W. had gone several months before him. The letters written at intervals during the next two years are mostly addressed to the latter by F. H. and T. E. R. They report the gradually changing conditions and increasing difficulties of plantation superintendence.