The church is a long way off, only available by a boat and
then a drive in a carriage. In the morning a child brings in my water and boots
— an intelligent, curly-headed creature, dressed in a sort of sack, without any
particular waist, barefooted. I imagined it was a boy till it told me it was a
girl. I asked if she was going to church, which seemed to puzzle her
exceedingly; but she told me finally she would hear prayers from “uncle” in one
of the cottages. This use of the words “uncle” and “aunt” for old people is
very general. Is it because they have no fathers and mothers? In the course of
the day, the child, who was fourteen or fifteen years of age, asked me “whether
I would not buy her. She could wash and sew very well, and she thought missus
wouldn't want much for her.” The object she had in view leaked out at last. It
was a desire to see the glories of Beaufort, of which she had heard from the
fishermen; and she seemed quite wonderstruck when she was informed I did not
live there, and had never seen it. She had never been outside the plantation in
her life.
After breakfast we loitered about the grounds, strolling
through the cotton-fields, which had as yet put forth no bloom or flower, and
coming down others to the thick fringes of wood and sedge bordering the marshy
banks of the island. The silence was profound, broken only by the husky mid-day
crowing of the cocks in the negro quarters.
In the afternoon I took a short drive “to see a tree,” which
was not very remarkable, and looked in at the negro quarters and the
cotton-mill. The old negroes were mostly indoors, and came shambling out to the
doors of their wooden cottages, making clumsy bows at our approach, but not
expressing any interest or pleasure at the sight of their master and the
strangers. They were shabbily clad; in tattered clothes, bad straw hats and
felt bonnets, and broken shoes. The latter are expensive articles, and negroes
cannot dig without them. Trescot sighed as he spoke of the increase of price
since the troubles broke out.
The huts stand in a row, like a street, each detached, with
a poultry-house of rude planks behind it. The mutilations which the poultry
undergo for the sake of distinction are striking. Some are deprived of a claw,
others have the wattles cut, and tails and wings suffer in all ways. No attempt
at any drainage or any convenience existed near them, and the same remark
applies to very good houses of white people in the south. Heaps of oyster
shells, broken crockery, old shoes, rags, and feathers were found near each
hut. The huts were all alike windowless, and the apertures, intended to be
glazed some fine day, were generally filled up with a deal board. The roofs
were shingle, and the whitewash which had once given the settlement an air of
cleanliness, was now only to be traced by patches which had escaped the action
of the rain. I observed that many of the doors were fastened by a padlock and
chain outside. “Why is that?” “The owners have gone out, and honesty is not a
virtue they have towards each other. They would find their things stolen if
they did not lock their doors.” Mrs. Trescot, however, insisted on it that
nothing could exceed the probity of the slaves in the house, except in regard
to sweet things, sugar, and the like; but money and jewels were quite safe. It
is obvious that some reason must exist for this regard to the distinctions
twixt meum and tuum in the case of masters and mistresses, when it does not
guide their conduct towards each other, and I think it might easily be found in
the fact that the negroes could scarcely take money without detection. Jewels
and jewelry would be of little value to them; they could not wear them, could
not part with them. The system has made the white population a police against
the black race, and the punishment is not only sure but grievous. Such things
as they can steal from each other are not to be so readily traced.
One particularly dirty looking little hut was described to
me as “the church.” It was about fifteen feet square, begrimed with dirt and
smoke, and windowless. A few benches were placed across it, and “the preacher,”
a slave from another plantation, was expected next week. These preachings are
not encouraged in many plantations. They “do the niggers no good” — “they talk
about things that are going on elsewhere, and get their minds unsettled,” and
so on.
On our return to the house, I found that Mr. Edmund Rhett,
one of the active and influential political family of that name, had called — a
very intelligent and agreeable gentleman, but one of the most ultra and violent
speakers against the Yankees I have yet heard. He declared there were few
persons in South Carolina who would not sooner ask Great Britain to take back
the State than submit to the triumph of the Yankees. “We are an agricultural
people, pursuing our own system, and working out our own destiny, breeding up
women and men with some other purpose than to make them vulgar, fanatical,
cheating Yankees — hypocritical, if as women they pretend to real virtue; and
lying, if as men they pretend to be honest. We have gentlemen and gentlewomen
in your sense of it. We have a system which enables us to reap the fruits of
the earth by a race which we save from barbarism in restoring them to their
real place in the world as laborers, whilst we are enabled to cultivate the
arts, the graces, and accomplishments of life, to develop science, to apply
ourselves to the duties of government, and to understand the affairs of the
country.”
This is a very common line of remark here. The Southerners
also take pride to themselves, and not unjustly, for their wisdom in keeping in
Congress those men who have proved themselves useful and capable. “We do not,”
they say, “cast able men aside at the caprices of a mob, or in obedience to
some low party intrigue, and hence we are sure of the best men, and are served
by gentlemen conversant with public affairs, far superior in every way to the
ignorant clowns who are sent to Congress by the North. Look at the fellows who
are sent out by Lincoln to insult foreign courts by their presence.” I said
that I understood Mr. Adams and Mr. Dayton were very respectable gentlemen, but
I did not receive any sympathy; in fact, a neutral who attempts to moderate the
violence of either side, is very like an ice between two hot plates. Mr. Rhett
is also persuaded that the Lord Chancellor sits on a cotton bale. “You must
recognize us, sir, before the end of October.” In the evening a distant
thunder-storm attracted me to the garden, and I remained out watching the broad
flashes and sheets of fire worthy of the tropics till it was bedtime.
SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and
South, p. 146-8
