Four of the original delegation have died. William S. Clark died at Boston, April 25th, 1863, a consumptive when he entered on the work, which he was obliged to leave six months before his death. He was a faithful and conscientious teacher. Though so many months had passed since he left these labors, their fascination was such that he dwelt fondly upon them in his last days.
The colony was first broken by the death of Francis E. Barnard, at St. Helena Island, October 18th, 1862. He was devoted, enthusiastic,—and though not fitted, as it at first appeared, for the practical duties of a superintendent, yet even in this respect disappointing me entirely. He was an evangelist, also, and he preached with more unction than any other the gospel of freedom,—always, however, enforcing the duties of industry and self-restraint. He was never sad, but always buoyant and trustful. He and a comrade were the first to be separated from the company, while at Hilton Head, and before the rest went to Beaufort,—being assigned to Edisto, which had been occupied less than a month, and was a remote and exposed point; but he went fearlessly and without question. The evacuation of Edisto in July, the heat, and the labor involved in bringing away and settling his people at the village on St. Helena Island, a summer resort of the former residents, where were some fifty vacant houses, were too much for him. His excessive exertions brought on malarious fever. This produced an unnatural excitement, and at mid-day, under a hot sun, he rode about to attend to his people. He died,—men, women, and children, for whom he had toiled, filling the house with [pg 306] their sobs during his departing hours. His funeral was thronged by them, his coffin strewn with flowers which they and his comrades had plucked, and then his remains were borne to his native town, where burial-rites were again performed in the old church of Dorchester. Read his published journal, and find how a noble youth can live fourscore years in a little more than one score. One high privilege was accorded to him. He lived to hear of the immortal edict of the twenty-second of September, by which the freedom of his people was to be secured for all time to come.
Samuel D. Phillips was a young man of much religions feeling, though he never advertised himself as having it, and a devout communicant of the Episcopal Church. He was a gentleman born and bred, inheriting the quality as well as adding to it by self-discipline. He had good business-capacity, never complained of inconveniences, was humane, yet not misled by sentiment, and he gave more of his time, otherwise unoccupied, to teaching than almost any other superintendent. I was recently asking the most advanced pupils of a school on St. Helena who first taught them their letters, and the frequent answer was, "Mr. Phillips." He was at home in the autumn for a vacation, was at the funeral of Barnard in Dorchester, and though at the time in imperfect health, he hastened back to his charge, feeling that the death of Barnard, whose district was the same as his own, rendered his immediate return necessary to the comfort of his people. He went,—but his health never came back to him. His quarters were in the same house where Barnard had died, and in a few days, on the 5th of December, he followed him. He was tended in his sickness by the negroes, and one day, having asked that his pillow might be turned, he uttered the words, "Thank God," and died. There was the same grief as at Barnard's death, the same funeral-rites at the St. Helena Church, and his remains were borne North to bereaved relatives.
Daniel Bowe was an alumnus of Yale College, and a student of the Andover Theological Seminary, not yet graduated when he turned from his professional studies at the summons of Christian duty. He labored faithfully as a superintendent, looking after the physical, moral, and educational interests of his people. He had a difficult post, was overburdened with labor, and perhaps had not the faculty of taking as good care of himself as was even consistent with his duties. He came home in the summer, commended the enterprise and his people to the citizens and students of Andover, and returned. He afterwards fell ill, and, again coming North, died October 30th, a few days after reaching New York. The young woman who was betrothed to him, but whom he did not live to wed, has since his death sought this field of labor; and on my recent visit I found her upon the plantation where he had resided, teaching the children whom he had first taught, and whose parents he had guided to freedom. Truly, the age of Christian romance has not passed away!
On the first of July, 1862, the administration of affairs at Port Royal having been transferred from the Treasury to the War Department, the charge of the freedmen passed into the hands of Brigadier-General Rufus Saxton, a native of Massachusetts, who in childhood had breathed the free air of the valley of the Connecticut, a man of sincere and humane nature; and under his wise and benevolent care they still remain. The Sea Islands, and also Fernandina and St. Augustine in Florida, are within our lines in the Department of the South, and some sixteen or eighteen thousand negroes are supposed to be under his jurisdiction.
The negroes of the Sea Islands, when found by us, had become an abject race, more docile and submissive than those of any other locality. The native African was of a fierce and mettlesome temper, sullen and untamable. The master was obliged to abate something of the [pg 307] usual rigor in dealing with the imported slaves. A tax-commissioner, now at Port Royal, and formerly a resident of South Carolina, told me that a native African belonging to his father, though a faithful man, would perpetually insist on doing his work in his own way, and being asked the threatening question, "A'n't you going to mind?" would answer, with spirit, "No, a'n't gwine to!" and the master desisted! Severe discipline drove the natives to the wilderness, or involved a mutilation of person which destroyed their value for proprietary purposes. In 1816, eight hundred of these refugees were living free in the swamps and everglades of Florida. There the ancestors of some of them had lived ever since the early part of the eighteenth century, rearing families, carrying on farms, and raising cattle. They had two hundred and fifty men fit to bear arms, led by chiefs brave and skilful. The story of the Exiles of Florida is one of painful interest. The testimony of officers of the army who served against them is, that they were more dangerous enemies than the Indians, fighting the most skilfully and standing the longest. The tax-commissioner before referred to, who was a resident of Charleston during the trial and execution of the confederates of Denmark Vesey, relates that one of the native Africans, when called to answer to the charge against him, haughtily responded,—"I was a prince in my country, and have as much right to be free as you!" The Carolinians were so awe-struck by his defiance that they transported him. Another, at the execution, turned indignantly to a comrade about to speak, and said, "Die silent, as I do!" and the man hushed. The early newspapers of Georgia recount the disturbances on the plantations occasioned by these native Africans, and even by their children, being not until the third generation reduced to obedient slaves.
Nowhere has the deterioration of the negroes from their native manhood been carried so far as on these Sea Islands,—a deterioration due to their isolation from the excitements of more populous districts, the constant surveillance of the overseers, and their intermarriage with each other, involving a physical degeneracy with which inexorable Nature punishes disobedience to her laws. The population with its natural increase was sufficient for the cultivation of the soil under existing modes, and therefore no fresh blood was admitted, such as is found pouring from the Border States into the sugar and cotton regions of the Southwest. This unmanning and depravation of the native character had been carried so far, that the special agent, on his first exploration, in January, 1862, was obliged to confess the existence of a general disinclination to military service on the part of the negroes; though it is true that even then instances of courage and adventure appeared, which indicated that the more manly feeling was only latent, to be developed under the inspiration of events. And so, let us rejoice, it has been. You may think yourself wise, as you note the docility of a subject race; but in vain will you attempt to study it until the burden is lifted. The slave is unknown to all, even to himself, while the bondage lasts. Nature is ever a kind mother. She soothes us with her deceits, not in surgery alone, when the sufferer, else writhing in pain, is transported with the sweet delirium, but she withholds from the spirit the sight of her divinity until her opportunity has come. Not even Tocqueville or Olmsted, much less the master, can measure the capacities and possibilities of the slave, until the slave himself is transmuted to a man.
My recent visit to Port Royal extended from March 25th to May 10th. It was pleasant to meet the first colonists, who still toiled at their posts, and specially grateful to receive the welcome of the freedmen, and to note the progress they had made. There were interesting scenes to fill the days. I saw an aged negro, Cæsar by name, not less than one hundred years old, who had left children in Africa, when stolen away. The vicissitudes [pg 308] of such a life were striking,—a free savage in the wilds of his native land, a prisoner on a slave-ship, then for long years a toiling slave, now again a freeman under the benign edict of the President,—his life covering an historic century. A faithful and industrious negro, Old Simon, as we called him, hearing of my arrival, rode over to see me, and brought me a present of two or three quarts of pea-nuts and some seventeen eggs. I had an interview with Don Carlos, whom I had seen in May, 1862, at Edisto, the faithful attendant upon Barnard, and who had been both with him and Phillips during their last hours,—now not less than seventy years of age, and early in life a slave in the Alston family, where he had known Theodosia Burr, the daughter of Aaron Burr, and wife of Governor Alston. He talked intelligently upon her personal history and her mysterious fate. He had known John Pierpont, when a teacher in the family of Colonel Alston, and accompanying the sons on their way North to college after the completion of their preparatory studies. Pierpont was a classmate of John C. Calhoum at Yale College, and, upon graduating, went South as a private tutor.
Aunt Phillis was not likely to be overlooked,—an old woman, with much power of expression, living on the plantation where my quarters had formerly been. The attack on Charleston was going on, and she said, "If you're as long beating Secesh everywhere as you have been in taking the town, guess it'll take you some time!" Indeed, the negroes had somewhat less confidence in our power than at first, on account of our not having followed up the capture of Bay Point and Hilton Head. The same quaint old creature, speaking of the disregard of the masters for the feelings of the slaves, said, with much emphasis, "They thought God was dead!"
I visited Barnwell Island, the only plantation upon which is that of Trescot, formerly Secretary of Legation at London, a visit to whom Russell describes in his "Diary." But the mansion is not now as when Russell saw it. Its large library is deposited in the Smithsonian Institution at Washington. Its spacious rooms in the first and second stories, together with the attics, are all filled with the families of negro refugees. From this point, looking across the water, we could see a cavalry-picket of the Rebels. The superintendent who had charge of the plantation, and accompanied me, was Charles Follen, an inherited name, linked with the struggles for freedom in both hemispheres.
The negro graveyards occasionally attracted me from the road. They are usually in an open field, under a clump of some dozen or twenty trees, perhaps live-oaks, and not fenced. There may be fifty or a hundred graves, marked only by sticks eighteen inches or two feet high and about as large as the wrist. Mr. Olmsted saw some stones in a negro graveyard at Savannah, erected by the slaves, and bearing rather illiterate inscriptions; but I never succeeded in finding any but wooden memorials, not even at Beaufort. Only in one case could I find an inscription, and that was in a burial-place on Ladies Island. There was a board at the head of the grave, shaped something like an ordinary gravestone, about three feet high and six inches wide. The inscription was as follows:—
OLd Jiw
de PArt his
Life on the
2 of WAY
Re st frow
LAuer