I ought, perhaps, before this, to have explained that my genial room mate, whom I have been rather irreverently terming the Dominie, is Rev. Dr. Fuller, of Baltimore, now a noted Baptist clergyman, formerly a leading South Carolina lawyer and planter. He still owns large plantations on the sea islands, and, down to the date of the emancipation proclamation, had on them between two hundred and two hundred and fifty slaves, who came to him by inheritance, and whom, under the laws of South Carolina, he was unable either to educate or emancipate. Governor Bradford said to him once: “Mr. Lincoln’s emancipation idea has been an expensive one to you, Doctor. It must have cost you over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.” “Yes, I presume it did; but then, Governor, it took over a hundred and fifty thousand pounds of iron off my conscience!” So great had been the change since he held his public discussion with President Wayland, on the rightfulness of, and Scriptural warrant for, slavery!
All the Doctor’s connections were with the South, and nearly all his relations, who have not been killed, are living here. It was his nephew who held Fort Sumter to the last; a near relative of his laid out the fortifications at Fort Fisher; another was the Rebel engineer at Norfolk. Last night he found a granddaughter, of perhaps the most prominent member of the first Congress, living on Government rations! Another, equally destitute, bears a historic name, and is the granddaughter of one of Washington’s most confidential friends and intimate advisers in the Revolutionary war.
It has been naturally supposed that the bitterest drop in all the bitter cup of humiliation for these haughty South Carolinians, must be the necessity of accepting alms from the Government they had been seeking to overthrow. But the ingenious high priestesses of secession regard the matter in no such light. The Dominie found a number of them living solely on Government rations. He hastened to offer them assistance. Their Northern relatives had already repeatedly volunteered similar offers, but they refused them all, and persisted in living on the bacon and hard bread issued by the United States Commissary. They explained that they preferred to make “the Washington Government” support them. It had robbed them of all they had, and now the very least it could do was to pay their expenses.[[13]] Every penny of cost to which they put it was so much got back from the fortunes of which it had robbed them, by waging this wicked war for their subjugation! Doesn’t somebody think it a shame that these repentant South Carolinians should be treated with so little magnanimity as the Government is displaying; and that Northern Abolitionists should quit watching them critically, and “mind their own business?” Already, a few of the South Carolinians talk thus; and in a few months, if freedom of expression is allowed them, we shall see much of the old vituperation of the Government and of the North.
[12]. A proposition has since been made to re-establish it, as an organ of the freedmen—to be edited by negroes!
[13]. The same idea prevailed among some of the Richmond Rebels. A Richmond letter to the Boston Commonwealth, dated 30th June, describing the scenes at the points where rations were gratuitously issued to the destitute, says:
“‘We are all beggars, now!’ I heard one of them say, apologetically. But most of the high-born were coarse and imperious. ‘This is not begging,’ one of the most inveterate beggars said. ‘It is taking from the United States Government a very small portion of what it owes us.’ ‘As long as the Yankees have taken possession of Richmond, of course it’s their place to feed us,’ more than one said. To the few who gave thanks, and to the many who cursed, all the Commissions gave largely, for several weeks.”
CHAPTER IX.
“Unionism”—Black and White, in Charleston and Through South Carolina.
A very few Union men could be seen. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say, a few could be found less treasonable than the majority of South Carolinians.
“To be frank with you,” said one of these men, a sallow-faced country lawyer, from the mountain district, “to be frank with you, we were all Rebels. The North has never understood, and I doubt if it ever will understand, the absolute unanimity with which, after the war was begun, we all supported it. While there was any use in it, we resisted secession; but after the State seceded, our district, which was always strongly Union, sent more and better volunteers to the war than any other.”