The cabin of one of these steamers, in the month of May, is
not favorable to sleep. The wooden beams of the engines creak and scream “consumedly,”
and the great engines themselves throb as if they would break through their thin, pulse covers of pine, — and the whistle
sounds, and the calliope shrieks out “Dixie” incessantly. So, when I was up and
dressed, breakfast was over, and I had an opportunity of seeing the slaves on
board, male and female, acting as stewards and stewardesses, at their morning
meal, which they took with much good spirits and decorum. They were nicely
dressed — clean and neat. I was forced to admit to myself that their Ashantee
grandsires and grandmothers, or their Kroo and Dahomey progenitors were
certainly less comfortable and well clad, and that these slaves had other
social advantages, though I could not recognize the force of the Bishop of
Georgia's assertion, that from slavery must come the sole hope of, and
machinery for, the evangelization of Africa. I confess I would not give much
for the influence of the stewards and stewardesses in Christianizing the
blacks.
The river, the scenery, and the scenes were just the same as
yesterday's — high banks, cotton-slides, wooding stations, cane brakes, —and a
very miserable negro population, if the specimens of women and children at the
landings fairly represented the mass of the slaves. They were in strong
contrast to the comfortable, well-dressed domestic slaves on board, and it can
well be imagined there is a wide difference between the classes, and that those
condemned to work in the open fields must suffer exceedingly.
A passenger told us the captain's story. A number of
planters, the narrator among them, subscribed a thousand dollars each to get up
a vessel for the purpose of running a cargo of slaves, with the understanding
they were to pay so much for the vessel, and so much per head if she succeeded,
and so much if she was taken or lost. The vessel made her voyage to the coast,
was laden with native Africans, and in due time made her appearance off Mobile.
The collector heard of her, but, oddly enough, the sheriff was not about at the
time, the United States Marshal was away, and as the vessel could no[t] be seen
next morning, it was fair to suppose she had gone up the river, or somewhere or
another. But it so happened that Captain Maher, then commanding a river steamer
called the Czar (a name once very appropriate for the work, but since the serf
emancipation rather out of place), found himself in the neighborhood of the
brig about nightfall; next morning, indeed, the Czar was at her moorings in the
river; but Captain Maher began to grow rich, he had fine negroes fresh run on
his land, and bought fresh acres, and finally built the “Southern Republic.”
The planters asked him for their share of the slaves. Captain Maher laughed
pleasantly; he did not understand what they meant. If he had done anything
wrong, they had their legal remedy. They wrere completely beaten; for they
could not have recourse to the tribunals in a case which rendered them liable
to capital punishment. And so Captain Maher, as an act of grace, gave them a
few old niggers, and kept the rest of the cargo.
It was worth while to see the leer with which he listened to
this story about himself. “Wall now! You think them niggers I’ve abord came,
from Africa! I'll show you. Jist come up here, Bully!" A boy of some
twelve years of age, stout, fat, nearly naked, came up to us; his color was jet
black, his wool close as felt, his cheeks were marked with regular parallel
scars, and his teeth very white, looked as if they had been filed to a
point, his belly was slightly protuberant, and his chest was marked with
tracings of tattoo marks.
“What's your name, sir?”
“My name Bully.”
"Where were you born?"
"Me born Sout Karliner, sar!'
“There, you see he wasn't taken from Africa," exclaimed
the Captain, knowingly. "I've a lot of these black South Caroliny niggers
abord, haven't I, Bully?”
“Yas, sar.”
“Are you happy, Bully?”
“Yas, sar.”
"Show how you're happy."
Here the boy rubbed his stomach, and grinning with delight,
said, “Yummy! yummy! plenty belly full.”
“That's what I call a real happy feelosophical chap,” quoth
the Captain. “I guess you've got a lot in your country can't at their stomachs
and say, ‘yummy, yummy, plenty belly full!’”
“Where did he get those marks on his face?”
“Oh, them? Wall, it's a way them nigger women has of marking
their children to know them; isn't it, Bully?”
“Yas, sar! me 'spose so!”
“And on his chest?”
“Wall, r'ally I do b'l'eve them's marks agin the smallpox.”
“Why are his teeth filed?”
“Ah, there now! You'd never have guessed it; Bully done that
himself, for the greater ease of biting his vittels.”
In fact, the lad, and a good many of the hands, were the
results of Captain Maher's little sail in the Czar.
“We're obleeged to let 'em in some times to keep up the
balance agin the niggers you run into Canaydy.”
From 1848 to 1852 there were no slaves run; but since the
migrations to Canada and the personal liberty laws, it has been found
profitable to run them. There is a bucolic ferocity about these Southern people
which will stand them good stead in the shock of battle. How the Spartans would
have fought against any barbarians who came to emancipate their slaves, or the
Romans have smitten those who would manumit slave and creditor together!
To-night, on the lower deck, amid wood fagots, and barrels,
a dance of negroes was arranged by an enthusiast, who desired to show how “happy
they were.” That is the favorite theme of the Southerners; the gallant Captain
Maher becomes quite eloquent when he points to Bully's prominent “yummy,” and
descants on the misery of his condition if he had been left to the precarious
chances of obtaining such developments in his native land; then turns a quid,
and, as if uttering some sacred refrain to the universal hymn of the South,
says, ‘Yes, sir, they're the happiest people on the face of the airth!”
There was a fiddler, and also a banjo-player, who played
uncouth music to the clumsiest of dances, which it would be insulting to
compare to the worst Irish jig; and the men with immense gravity and great
effusion of sudor, shuffled and cut and heeled and buckled to each other
with an overwhelming solemnity, till the rum-bottle warmed them up to the
lighter graces of the dance, when they became quite overpowering. “Yes, sir,
jist look at them, how they're enjoying it; they're the happiest people on the
face of the earth.” When “wooding” and firing up, they don't seem to be in the
possession of the same exquisite felicity.
SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and
South, p. 186-9
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