Soldier's Retreat, near Natchez, Aug. 23d, 1823.
Since my last
letter, my dear Col. Brush, I have been a refugee from Natchez, where the
yellow fever is raging. Our bar is quartered at various country-seats — not
boarding; a Mississippi planter would be insulted by such a proposal; but we
are enjoying the hospitalities that are offered to us on all sides. The awful
pestilence in the city brings out, in strong relief, the peculiar virtues of
this people. The mansions of the planters are thrown open to all comers and
goers free of charge. Whole families have free quarters during the epidemic,
and country wagons are sent daily to the verge of the smitten city with fowls,
vegetables, etc., for gratuitous distribution to the poor. I am now writing
from one of those old mansions, and I can give you no better notion of life at
the South than by describing the routine of a day. The owner is the widow of a
Virginia gentleman of distinction, a brave officer, who died in the public
service during the last war with Great Britain.1 She herself is a
native of this vicinity, of English parents settled here in Spanish times. She
is an intimate friend of my first friend, Mrs. Griffith, and I have been in the
habit of visiting her house ever since I came South. The whole aim of this
excellent lady seems to be to make others happy. I do not believe she ever
thinks of herself. She is growing old, but her parlor is constantly thronged
with the young and gay, attracted by her cheerful and never-failing kindness.
There are two large families from the city staying here, and every day some ten
or a dozen transient guests. Mint-juleps in the morning are sent to our rooms,
and then follows a delightful breakfast in the open veranda. We hunt, ride,
fish, pay morning visits, play chess, read or lounge until dinner, which is
served at two P.M. in great variety, and most delicately cooked in what is here
called the Creole style — very rich, and many made or mixed dishes. In two
hours afterward every body — white and black — has disappeared. The whole
household is asleep—the siesta of
the Italians. Tho ladies retire to their apartments, and the gentlemen on
sofas, settees, benches, hammocks, and often, gipsy fashion, on the grass under
the spreading oaks. Here, too, in fine weather, the tea-table is always set
before sunset, and then, until bedtime, we stroll, sing, play whist, or coquet.
It is an indolent, yet charming life, and one quits thinking and takes to
dreaming.
This excellent lady is not rich, merely independent; but by thrifty
housewifery, and a good dairy and garden, she contrives to dispense the most
liberal hospitality. Her slaves appear to be, in a manner, free, yet are
obedient and polite, and the farm is well worked. With all her gayety of
disposition and fondness for the young, she is truly pious, and in her own apartment
every night she has family prayer with her slaves, one or more of them being
often called on to sing and pray. When a minister visits the house, which
happens very frequently, prayers night and morning are always said, and on
these occasions the whole household and the guests assemble in the parlor:
chairs are provided for the servants. They are married by a clergyman of their
own color, and a sumptuous supper is always prepared. On public holidays they
have dinners equal to an Ohio barbecue, and Christmas, for a week or ten days,
is a protracted festival for the blacks. They are a happy, careless,
unreflecting, good-natured race, who, left to themselves, would degenerate into
drones or brutes, but, subjected to wholesome restraint and stimulus, become
the best and most contented of laborers. They are strongly attached to “old
massa” and “old missus,” but their devotion to “young massa” and “young missus”
amounts to enthusiasm. They have great family pride, and are the most arrant
coxcombs and aristocrats in the world. At a wedding I witnessed here last
Saturday evening, where some 150 negroes were assembled, many being invited
guests, I heard a number of them addressed as governors, generals, judges, and
doctors (the titles of their masters), and a spruce, tight-set darkey, who waits
on me in town, was called “Major Quitman.” The “colored ladies” are invariably
Miss Joneses, Miss Smiths, or some such title. They are exceedingly pompous and
ceremonious, gloved and highly perfumed. The “gentlemen” sport canes, ruffles,
and jewelry, wear boots and spurs, affect crape on their hats, and carry huge
cigars. The belles wear gaudy colors, “tote” their fans with the air of Spanish
senoritas, and never stir out, though black as the ace of spades, without their
parasols. In short, these “niggers,” as you call them, are the happiest people
I have ever seen, and some of them, in form, features, and movement, are real
sultanas. So far from being fed on “salted cotton-seed,” as we used to believe
in Ohio, they are oily, sleek, bountifully fed, well clothed, well taken care
of, and one hears them at all times whistling and singing cheerily at their
work.2 They have an extraordinary facility for sleeping. A negro is
a great night-walker. He will, after laboring all day in the burning sun, walk
ten miles to a frolic, or to see his “Dinah,” and be at home and at his work by
daylight next morning. This would knock up a white man or an Indian. But a
negro will sleep during the day — sleep at his work, sleep on the carriage-box,
sleep standing up; and I have often seen them sitting bareheaded in the sun on
a high rail-fence, sleeping as securely as though lying in bed. They never lose
their equipoise, and will carry their cotton-baskets or their water-vessels,
filled to the brim, poised on their heads, walking carelessly and at a rapid
rate, without spilling a drop. The very weight of such burdens would crush a
white man's brains into apoplexy. Compared with the ague-smitten and suffering
settlers that you and I have seen in Ohio, or the sickly and starved operators
we read of in factories and in mines, these Southern slaves are indeed to be
envied. They are treated with great humanity and kindness. I have only heard of
one or two exceptions. And the only drawback to their happiness is that their
owners, sometimes, from extravagance or other bad management, die insolvent,
and then they must be sold to the highest bidder, must leave the old homestead
and the old family, and pass into the hands of strangers. I have witnessed one
of these scenes, and but one, though they occur often, and I never saw such
profound grief as the poor creatures manifested. I am opposed, as you know, to
all relief laws, but, I confess, I never hear of the sale of old family servants
without wishing that there was some provision by which some of them, at least,
might be retained as inalienable. It is a grave question for those interested
in slavery to determine whether some protection of this nature is not a
necessary adjunct of slavery itself.
_______________
1 The late Gen. F. L. Claiborne.
2 Contrast this with life at the North, as
recorded by his brother Henry in a letter dated Rhinebeck, Feb. 3d, 1823: “We
have not had snow enough for sleighing, so every body has to stay at home. In
the morning I feed the cows, take care of the horses, and cut wood until
dinner-time. In the evening I take care of the cattle, and go to bed. I would
willingly exchange my residence here for one where I might do for myself, were
my earnings ever so small, and lay by a little for a rainy day. It is a hard
place to get along in — cold winters and hot summers; snow, or slush, or dust,
or drought. Work, work, work, and money always scarce. I wish I had been
brought up a tailor, or shoemaker, as you say they have none at Natchez.”
SOURCE: John F. H. Quitman, Life and Correspondence of John A. Quitman, Volume 1, p. 83-6
