An old negress, whom we passed after we had crossed back to Lady’s Island, followed us wearily, on foot, through the broiling sun, many miles, down to the landing. “I want to see Massa Richard—I used to b’long to him,” was her only explanation. The dumb expression of grief on her rude features, when she found him gone, and realized that she had probably missed her last chance of seeing him, haunts me yet.
Returning from St. Helena, Doctor Fuller was asked what he thought of the experiment of free labor, as exhibited among his former slaves, and how it contrasted with the old order of things. “I never saw St. Helena look so well,” was his instant reply. “I never saw as much land there under cultivation—never saw the same general evidences of prosperity, and never saw the negroes themselves appearing so well or so contented.” What has been said, from time, about the improved condition of the emancipated Sea Islanders, has been said by Northern men, with limited opportunities for previous observation; but this, it must be noted, is the testimony of an old planter, re-visiting the slaves emancipation has taken from him, whose interests and prejudices would alike make him a critic hard to please.
But, it should be added, that the islands about Beaufort are in a better condition than those nearer the encampments of our soldiers. Wherever poultry could be profitably peddled in the camps, cotton has not been grown, nor have the negroes crystalized, so readily, into industrious and orderly communities. What has been done on the more secluded of these sea islands, may be taken as a fair evidence of what may be expected (when not more than the average discouragements are encountered) of the most ignorant and degraded of the Southern slaves. With such negroes as we saw at Charleston, the progress would be incomparably more rapid.
The question about the slaves being self-supporting, is a question no longer. On St. Helena, and wherever else they have had the opportunity, the negroes have bought the titles to their little farms—or “plantations,” as they still ambitiously style them. They have erected their own cabins, secured whatever cheap furniture they contain, and clothed, themselves far better than their masters ever clothed them. All who have been established more than a year, have paid back to the Government the rations drawn in their first destitution. They have stocked their plantations, paying the highest prices, and often bidding against white men, at the auction sales of condemned Government property. I saw one man who had paid three hundred dollars in cash for a condemned Government horse, and plenty who had paid prices ranging from a hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars. A single horse only, is needed to cultivate one of their little places; and the instances have been rare in which, after a year or two of work, the negro was not able to command enough money to secure it. Their purchases at the trade stores have been so liberal that the military authorities have occasionally been compelled to interfere, to prevent what they thought extravagance. Cloth they sometimes buy, in their new-born thrift, by the piece, to secure a lower price; flour they are able to get by the barrel, as an industrious Northern mechanic does. In the houses, chairs have made their appearance; dishes and knives and forks are no longer the rarities they were when our troops arrived. And, for whatever they have thus bought, be sure they have paid twice or thrice the New York price.
To some extent this prosperity is delusive; as for the matter of that, the prosperity of the whole country, during the same period, has been delusive. The soldiers paid them three or four prices for their vegetables, eggs and poultry; and when their cotton was ready for market it brought, in some cases, nearly ten times the old price. Naturally they are prosperous. It is more important to observe that they exhibit the industry which deserves prosperity, and, in most cases, the thrift which insures its continuance. Their money has been spent for articles they needed for stocking their farms, clothing their families, or, in some way, bettering their condition. It has not always been spent economically, but they may learn to make better bargains with the Yankee traders, by-and-by; and, for the present, it is sufficient to know that they have enough left to establish a National Bank with their savings, and that in this Bank one hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of United States bonds have been bought by the freedmen! This last statement seemed to me utterly incredible; but General Saxton vouches for it, and explains that when the young negroes from the islands volunteered to enter the military service, they each received (precisely like other volunteers) three hundred dollars bounty, of which, in nearly all cases, at least two hundred were, of their own motion, given to their families, used in stocking the farms, or invested in Government bonds.
Withal, they work less, and have more time for self-improvement, or for society, than when slaves. It is the common testimony, on those islands where white men have bought the plantations, and employed the negroes as laborers, that the old task, which the slave worked at from sunrise to sunset, is now readily performed by the freedman in six or seven hours. Still, the exports from the sea islands will not be as great as during the existence of slavery. Then, they were mere machines, run with as little consumption as possible, to the single end of making money for their masters. Now, as it was in the West Indies, emancipation has enlarged the negro’s wants, and, instead of producing solely to export, he now produces also to consume. Then he ate with his fingers from the hominy pot, in the fire-place; now he must have plates, knives and forks, with a table on which to spread them. Then he wore the scant summer and winter suits of negro cloth; now he must have working suits and Sunday suits, and each must be cut with some vague reference to prevailing fashions, and made up by hands that, under the old regime, would have been busy beside his own in the cotton field.
These are undeniable evidences of progress in physical well-being. When it comes to mental culture, less can be said. Of the crowd at the St. Helena church, not one in twenty of the adults can read, though they have had three years of partial and interrupted opportunities. But, on the other hand, not one in twenty of the boys and girls was unable to read. They do not seem so anxious themselves to get “white folks’ larnin” as at Charleston and other points to the northward; but every parent is painfully desirous that his children should learn; and many of them are known to take private lessons at home from their children. The latter learn rapidly; they tell the same story everywhere here, just as it has been told down the whole coast from Fortress Monroe. Experienced teachers say they can see no difference in the facility with which these and ordinary white children at the North learn to read. But this is comparatively valueless as a test of negro intellectual capacity. Reading, writing, memorizing, whatever is imitative, or may be learned by rote, will be rapidly acquired; and no schools have yet advanced far enough to show what the average negro mind will do when it grapples with higher branches that require original thought.
Nearly thirty thousand negroes have been settled by General Saxton, (as he informed us over his hospitable dinner table, on our return from St. Helena,) on these islands and adjacent plantations of the main land. Of these, seventeen thousand are now self-supporting. Between twelve and thirteen thousand of those who have come in latest from the interior still draw rations, but all do it with the distinct understanding that they and their farms will be held responsible for the re-payment; and the experience of the Government with the others shows that this debt may be reckoned a safe and short one. None have been forced to come, and the locations upon the plantations have all been made to the satisfaction of the negroes themselves.
General Saxton found a charming wife among the bright Yankee teachers sent down to these schools, and he has established himself in the house of a runaway slaveholder, condemned by the Government authorities, and legally sold to the highest bidder. Two thousand dollars thus gave the General a home among these people, and put him in possession of a fine, airy, large-windowed, many-porched Southern residence, stripped of furniture (which has been sold by the Treasury Agent as abandoned property), and, like the lands on which the negroes are located, with still a worrying doubt about the security of the title. Rebels, who have abandoned their houses, may, some of these days, return, get pardon, and propose to take possession. Barnwell Rhett’s house, for example, is next door; suppose he should profess repentance, for the sake of getting back his property, precisely what is there to prevent this fervently-loyal Major-General from having the prince of all fire eaters for a neighbor? In Beaufort, as at Hilton Head, there are wonderful efforts to create a flame of speculation; but capital is timid, and looks sharply to the guarantees of title deeds.