"Children, what are you going to do when you grow up?"
"Going to work, Sir."
"On what?"
"Cotton and corn, Sir."
"What are you going to do with the corn?" [pg 313] "Eat it."
"What are you going to do with the cotton?"
"Sell it."
"What are you going to do with the money you get for it?"
One boy answered in advance of the rest,—
"Put it in my pocket, Sir."
"That won't do. What's better than that?"
"Buy clothes, Sir."
"What else will you buy?"
"Shoes, Sir."
"What else are you going to do with your money?"
There was some hesitation at this point. Then the question was put,—
"What are you going to do Sundays?"
"Going to meeting."
"What are you going to do there?"
"Going to sing."
"What else?"
"Hear the parson."
"Who's going to pay him?"
One boy said,—"Government pays him"; but the rest answered,—
"We's pays him."
"Well, when you grow up, you'll probably get married, as other people do, and you'll have your little children; now, what will you do with them?"
There was a titter at this question; but the general response came,—
"Send 'em to school, Sir."
"Well, who'll pay the teacher?"
"We's pays him."
One who listens to such answers can hardly think that there is any natural incapacity in these children to acquire with maturity of years the ideas and habits of good citizens.
The children are cheerful, and, in most of the schools, well-behaved, except that it is not easy to keep them from whispering and talking. They are joyous, and you can see the boys after school playing the soldier, with corn-stalks for guns. The memory is very susceptible in them,—too much so, perhaps, as it is ahead of the reasoning faculty.
The labor of the season has interrupted attendance on the schools, the parents being desirous of having the children aid them in planting and cultivating their crops, and it not being thought best to allow the teaching to interfere in any way with industrious habits.
A few freedmen, who had picked up an imperfect knowledge of reading, have assisted our teachers, though a want of proper training materially detracts from their usefulness in this respect. Ned and Uncle Cyrus have already been mentioned. The latter, a man of earnest piety, has died since my visit. Anthony kept four schools on Hilton Head Island last summer and autumn, being paid at first by the superintendents, and afterwards by the negroes themselves; but in November he enlisted in the negro regiment. Hettie was another of these. She assisted Barnard at Edisto last spring, continued to teach after the Edisto people were brought to St. Helena village, and one day brought some of her pupils to the school at the Baptist Church, saying to the teachers there that she could carry them no farther. They could read their letters and words of one syllable. Hettie had belonged to a planter on Wadmelaw Island, a kind old gentleman, a native of Rhode Island, and about the only citizen of Charleston who, when Samuel Hoar went on his mission to South Carolina, stood up boldly for his official and personal protection. Hettie had been taught to read by his daughter; and let this be remembered to the honor of the young woman.
Such are the general features of the schools as they met my eye. The most advanced classes, and these are but little ahead of the rest, can read simple stories and the plainer passages of Scripture; and they could even pursue self-instruction, if the schools were to be suspended. The knowledge they have thus gained can never be extirpated. They could read with much profit a newspaper specially prepared for them and adapted to their condition. They are learning that the world is not bounded north [pg 314] by Charleston, south by Savannah, west by Columbia, and east by the sea, with dim visions of New York on this planet or some other,—about their conception of geography when we found them. They are acquiring the knowledge of figures with which to do the business of life. They are singing the songs of freemen. Visit their schools; remember that a little more than a twelve-month ago they knew not a letter, and that for generations it has been a crime to teach their race; then contemplate what is now transpiring, and you have a scene which prophets and sages would have delighted to witness. It will be difficult to find equal progress in an equal period since the morning rays of Christian truth first lighted the hill-sides of Judea. I have never looked on St. Peter's, or beheld the glories of art which Michel Angelo has wrought or traced; but to my mind the spectacle of those poor souls struggling in darkness and bewilderment to catch the gleams of the upper and better light transcends in moral grandeur anything that has ever come from mortal hands.
Next as to industry. The laborers, during their first year under the new system, have acquired the idea of ownership, and of the security of wages, and have come to see that labor and slavery are not the same thing. The notion that they were to raise no more cotton has passed away, since work upon it is found to be remunerative, and connected with the proprietorship of land. House-servants, who were at first particularly set against it, now generally prefer it. The laborers have collected the pieces of the gins which they destroyed on the flight of their masters, the ginning being obnoxious work, repaired them, and ginned the cotton on the promise of wages. Except upon plantations in the vicinity of camps, where other labor is more immediately remunerative, and an unhealthy excitement prevails, there is a general disposition to cultivate it. The culture of the cotton is voluntary, the only penalty for not engaging in it being the imposition of a rent for the tenement and land adjacent thereto occupied by the negro, not exceeding two dollars per month. Both the Government and private individuals, who have become owners of one-fourth of the land by the recent tax-sales, pay twenty-five cents for a standard day's-work, which may, by beginning early, be performed by a healthy and active hand by noon; and the same was the case with the tasks under the slave-system on very many of the plantations. As I was riding through one of Mr. Philbrick's fields one morning, I counted fifty persons at work who belonged to one plantation. This gentleman, who went out with the first delegation, and at the same time gave largely to the benevolent contributions for the enterprise, was the leading purchaser at the tax-sales, and combining a fine humanity with honest sagacity and close calculation, no man is so well fitted to try the experiment. He bought thirteen plantations, and on these has had planted and cultivated eight hundred and sixteen acres of cotton where four hundred and ninety-nine and one twelve-hundredth acres were cultivated last year,—a larger increase, however, than will generally be found in other districts, due mainly to prompter payments. The general superintendent of Port Royal Wand said to me,—"We have to restrain rather than to encourage the negroes to take land for cotton." The general superintendent of Hilton Head Island said, that on that island the negroes had, besides adequate corn, taken two, three, and in a few cases four acres of cotton to a hand, and there was a general disposition to cultivate it, except near the camps. A superintendent on St. Helena Island said, that, if he were going to carry on any work, he should not want bettor laborers. He had charge of the refugees from Edisto, who had been brought to St. Helena village, and who had cleared and fenced patches for gardens, felling the trees for that purpose.
The laborers do less work, perhaps, than a Yankee would think they might [pg 315] do; but they do about as much as he himself would do, after a residence of a few years in the same climate, and when he had ceased to work under the influence of Northern habits. Northern men have sometimes been unjust to the South, when comparing the results of labor in the different sections. God never intended that a man should toil under a tropical sun with the same energy and constancy as in our bracing latitude. There has been less complaint this year than last of "a pain in the small of the back," or of "a fever in the head,"—in other words, less shamming. The work has been greatly deranged by the draft, some features of which have not been very skilfully arranged, and by the fitfulness with which the laborers have been treated by the military authorities. The work both upon the cotton and the corn is done only by the women, children, and disabled men. It has been suggested that field-work does not become women in the new condition; and so it may seem to some persons of just sympathies who have not yet learned that no honest work is dishonorable in man or woman. But this matter may be left to regulate itself. Field-work, as an occupation, may not be consistent with the finest feminine culture or the most complete womanliness; but it in no way conflicts with virtue, self-respect, and social development. Women work in the field in Switzerland, the freest country of Europe; and we may look with pride on the triumphs of this generation, when the American negroes become the peers of the Swiss peasantry. Better a woman with the hoe than without it, when she is not yet fitted for the needle or the book.
The negroes were also showing their capacity to organize labor and apply capital to it. Harry, to whom I referred in my second report, as "my faithful guide and attendant, who had done for me more service than any white man could render," with funds of his own, and some borrowed money, bought at the recent tax-sales a small farm of three hundred and thirteen acres for three hundred and five dollars. He was to plant sixteen and a half acres of cotton, twelve and a half of corn, and one and a half of potatoes. I rode through his farm on the 10th of April, my last day in the territory, and one-third of his crop was then in. Besides some servant's duty to an officer, for which he is well paid, he does the work of a full hand on his place. He hires one woman and two men, one of the latter being old and only a three-quarters hand. He has two daughters, sixteen and seventeen years of age, one of whom is likewise only a three-quarters hand. His wife works also, of whom he said, "She's the best hand I got"; and if Celia is only as smart with her hoe as I know her to be with her tongue, Harry's estimate must be right. He has a horse twenty-five years old and blind in both eyes, whom he guides with a rope,—carrying on farming, I thought, somewhat under difficulties. Harry lives in the house of the former overseer, and delights, though not boastingly, in his position as a landed proprietor. He has promised to write me, or rather dictate a letter, giving an account of the progress of his crop. He has had much charge of Government property, and when Captain Hooper, of General Saxton's staff, was coming North last autumn, Harry proposed to accompany him; but at last, of his own accord, gave up the project, saying, "It'll not do for all two to leave together."