They were mostly of the pure Congo type; there was no mixture of white blood; intelligent mechanics and “smart niggers” generally were too valuable to be sent here; their masters were absent a great part of the year, and they were left to the humanizing control of the overseers; their provisions were, in many instances, grown elsewhere and sent to them, so that there was not even this diversion of a different culture from the never-ending monotony of the cotton and rice fields. They received, once a week, a peck of corn, and, once a month, a quart of salt, and on this they lived. When the hardest work was required, they received a little molasses and salt meat in addition; and, for a part of each year, a bushel of sweet-potatoes was allowed each week, in place of the corn. Whatever more than this they received, they owed to the generosity of unusually kind masters. They herded together in cabins, twelve by eighteen or twenty feet, sometimes floored, but oftener floorless; they got enough of the coarse negro cloth to make, by close cutting, two suits a year, and at Christmas they had three days to themselves. The other three hundred and sixty-two were given to cotton and rice. Marriage was unknown among them; breeding was enjoined as the first of duties; purity, delicacy and education were alike impossible. If any system of compulsory labor could make brutes out of intelligent men, would not this do it? If any system could fail to make brutish men more brutish, surely it would not be this one!
When the “great confusion” (as they call the sudden flight of their masters on Dupont’s arrival at Hilton Head) came, the house servants, who, by contact with the whites, had necessarily gained some intelligence, were all taken off to the interior. This utterly debased cotton and rice-planting community of Congoes was left; and it is this community, almost unmixed, which now cultivates the sea islands under the supervision of General Saxton. There were some five thousand of them here before the war. I am told that not five hundred of the old stock are now missing from their accustomed places.
The moral of what I have written is plain. If the “negro-elevation” effort of the Abolitionists is to fail anywhere, it would be likely to fail here. If it succeed among these degraded people, it would be likely to succeed anywhere. The experiment has been tried, amid constant uncertainties and discouragements, for three years. The results, whatever they may be, are of the first importance.
When Generals Gillmore and Saxton, therefore, proposed to take our party through Lady’s and St. Helena Islands, without any previous notice to the blacks; to show us the crops, the villages, the negroes at church and on their plantations, I prepared myself for any disappointment. The morning was a beautiful one; and, although the rays of the unclouded sun were intense, a fresh breeze from the ocean made the trip by no means uncomfortable. On steaming up to Beaufort we found carriages, in waiting, on the opposite side, at the upper end of Lady’s Island. Some little cabins, surrounded by unfenced fields of cotton, remarkably free from weeds, stood near the landing; and a few picaninnies watched our debarkation, while their fathers, cleanly clad and respectful, stood by the carriages.
The sandy road led off among the cotton fields down the island. On either side were old wire fences, constructed by the former proprietors, sometimes running along fine avenues of trees, in the stems of which the wires are deeply imbedded, and sometimes propped up on crazy posts. Here and there could be seen frame houses, containing three or four rooms, the old residences of the overseers, or, indeed, sometimes of the planters themselves; for Southern “mansions” were generally inferior, in every particular, save high-sounding titles, to Northern “cottages.” Rude pine-log cabins, sometimes with the bark removed in a rough attempt at hewing, dotted the fields. They were, occasionally, large enough for two rooms, and were nearly always surrounded by a few growing garden vegetables, separated in no way however, from the rows of cotton that extended up to them.
Sometimes, for half a mile, the road passed through a splendid avenue of live-oaks, the pendulous Spanish moss, from the limbs, sweeping across our carriage tops, while the whistle from the mocking-bird came from the upper branches. Then the avenue faded away into a thicket of dwarf live-oaks, trespassing for several yards, each side of the road, upon the cotton fields, and mingling presently with cotton-woods, bayonet plants and other like species of the palmetto, yellow pines and a clambering growth of grape-vines and honeysuckles. Through this undergrowth could still be seen the long rows of cotton stretching along on either hand out of sight.
The fences by the roadside soon faded out, and for miles scarcely any were to be seen. Little stakes, here and there, would mark the boundaries of individual possessions; but besides these, there would be no divisions in fields of two or three hundred acres of cotton. Then would come a tract, equally as large, lying fallow, and covered with a luxurious growth of dewberries that tempted more than one of our party to delay the progress to church while we went “berrying.” In other places great tracts were observed in which the furrows of cotton, cultivated years ago, could still be plainly traced, although the ground was now covered with a dense growth of pines. Since the flight of the slaveholders, however, some of this has been reclaimed; and more land is now under cultivation, both on Lady’s Island and on St. Helena, than when they fell into our hands.
The cotton was still small, but the rich sandy loam seemed to suit it well, and gentlemen familiar with the cotton culture, who accompanied us, said it could not look better. The fields were beautifully clean—it is rare that a Western corn field shows as careful culture—and the women and old men, who now do most of the work on these islands, had carefully hilled it up with the hoe, till, in places, it could hardly be distinguished from the ridges heaped for the sweet-potato plants about the cabins. We did not pass a field, in our twelve miles drive out and as many back (partly by a different road), that would not bear a favorable comparison with the average of Northern farming.[[18]] Since the Government has been offering large bounties for volunteers, most of the young men from these islands have gone into the army, filling up such regiments as that of Colonel Howard, which we saw at Beaufort, and all this work has, therefore, been done by the weaker and more infirm classes of the population. General Saxton has not encouraged it, but the negro women still work freely in the fields. The withdrawal of the young men from the islands has been, in some respects, an advantage. They tell of such sights as the uncles and aunts, gathered in to tie and whip some young scapegrace who persisted in neglecting his crop, and whom they feared, they would, therefore, have to support next winter. No whipping is needed now; the crops are cultivated better than before, and when young scapegrace comes back from the army, he will be found to possess a manliness that will scarcely require the further stimulus of the lash.
A long, wooden bridge, spanning one of the little estuaries that cut up these islands, led us across into St. Helena. By this time the roads were alive with a gaily-dressed throng of blacks, of both sexes and all ages, wending their way, on foot, on horseback, in carts and wagons, and even, in a few cases, in Northern trotting buggies, to the Central Church. Noticing their cheerful, contented air, their gay chat, their cleanly appearance and repartie among themselves, their respectful and cordial greetings to the passing Generals, and the manifest tokens of prosperity evinced in modes of locomotion, personal adornment and the like, one could clearly believe General Saxton’s renewed declaration, that, in all substantial respects, considering their peculiar difficulties, they would contrast not discreditably with any peasantry in the world.