"You relieved G——of the —th regiment?" I said.
"Yes, and I often think of our meeting at the dépôt. He had about two minutes before taking the train to Vicksburg. 'Cap,' he said, 'go to Sim's to board. Real Southern hospitality, and his wife's a mother if you are sick—bound to have bilious fever, you know. And, Cap, those confounded niggers think the Bureau is bound to back them up, right or wrong, and in about ninety-nine cases out of a hundred they're wrong. Clerk's got the reports and papers.'"
"Well?" I said.
"He was right. The way those planters allowed the negroes to impose upon their good-nature and true generosity confounded me. I went to relieve an oppressed race, and, by Jove! I was inclined to consider the planters in that light."
"But I don't understand."
"I'll show you. When the planters found they could still have the practised slave-labor in the cotton-fields by paying fair wages, they made contracts with the negroes by the year. It was my fortune to be the referee on all disputes on the accounts of the first year of such contracts, and I solemnly declare the liberality and consideration of the planters would astonish the hard-fisted business-men of some of our factories. They knew the improvidence of the race, and out of regard for them, instead of paying them in money, they allowed them to obtain goods in their names at the leading stores. Almost invariably these bills exceeded the amount stipulated for in the contract, but I never knew one case where the employer made the negroes work out their debt. When I would tell them how the accounts came out, they said: 'Well, captain, let it go: I'll pay the bills. These poor fellows do not understand the use of money yet.'
"But the negroes had the laws of possession, the rights of freedom and privileges of slavery in such a hopeless muddle that no Gordian knot ever required more patience than an effort to enlighten[page 243] them as to their rights and wrongs. The only limit set to their credit at the stores was that the purchases were to be confined to food and clothing. Without any idea of money or economy, they were wasteful, and heard with long faces that the pile of money they confidently expected was awaiting them had already been spent. Conversations like the following occurred many times a day:
"'No money, Mars' Cap'n? Why, ole mars' he done 'greed to gib me fou' hund'ed dollars dis year, an' I done worked faithful, Mars' Cap'n; an' now I ain't to have nuffin'!'
"'But you have had nearly five hundred dollars.'
"'Clare to Goodness, Mars' Cap'n, I ain't had one cent—not one cent.'