Showing posts with label Overseers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Overseers. Show all posts

Sunday, January 7, 2024

Senator John C. Calhoun to Anna Maria Calhoun Clemson, June 15, 1849

Fort Hill 15th June 1849

MY DEAR DAUGHTER, I do hope by this time, you are all safe in London, after a pleasant voyage. I shall be on the lookout for a letter dated at London in about two weeks from now.

I wrote to Mr Clemson subsequent to the receipt of your letter, and addressed to Brussels, where I hope he will find it, on his arrival. I stated in it, that I would write you the next week, which would have been Sunday last, but when I was about commencing to write, Cornelia brought me a letter to you, to be put under cover, which I did and forward[ed] to the State Department, to be sent by the first opportunity. You will probably find it at Brussels on your arrival. Cornelia gave you, I doubt not, all the news.

In consequence of her writing, I postponed my letter for a week, which will give it the opportunity to go by the next Steamer after that which took yours.

We all felt, my dear daughter, as you described your feelings to be, at your departure. It is, indeed, distressing to be so far off and for so long a time from those so dear to us; but let us rather look forward to when we shall again meet, than indulge in unavailing sorrows. I trust two years, at the utmost, will terminate your residence in Europe, and return you all again safe to our country. It is due to the children, that your stay should not be longer. Their habits and mode of thinking will, by that time, begin to be formed; and it is important, that they should be such, as to conform to the conditions of the country, which is to be their home. I often think of them, and how much delighted they would be, to be enjoying themselves in our green and shady yard. The season has been wet, and everything looks beautiful. Even the old field beyond the yard looks as green as a meadow. In the field beyond it, (Speeds field), now containing 125 acres, by the addition of clearing, has a fine crop of oats, just fully shot out, which completely covers the whole ground, presenting an unbroken mass of green in that direction. The big bottom on the other side is covered, with a superb crop of corn, the best at this season, I ever had on it, which covers the whole with a deep green. Back of it, lies fort hill, with its harvested wheat in shocks. The spring has been too cool and wet for cotton, but mine looks well, and, with my hill side drains and serpentine rows, really looks handsome. The place is altogether, in fine order. I ride or walk, according to the weather twice a day, morning and evening, over it, for the double purpose of exercise and superintendence. I have no trouble, as Fredrick has become a first rate overseer, and takes as much interest as I do in everything about the place. I would be delighted to have you and the children with me occasionally, in my walks. It would be wearisome to take them as often as I do.

My health and strength are as good, as I could expect at my time of life. I take all necessary care of them, except being rather more overtasked, than I could wish. I devote all the time left me, to finishing the work, I commenced three years ago, or more; but which I had to suspend the last two I ought not to delay its execution any longer, and aim to put it to press, if I can finish it in the recess, next Spring, or Summer. I finished yesterday, the preliminary work, which treats of the elementary principles of the Science of Government, except reading it over and making final corrections, previous to copying and publishing. It takes 125 pages of large foolscap closely written for me. I am pretty well satisfied with its execution. It will be nearly throughout new territory; and, I hope, to lay a solid foundation for political Science. I have written, just as I thought, and told the truth without fear, favour, or affection.

After a few days of relaxation, I shall commence to treat of the Government of the United States. It will be more than twice as voluminous as the elementary work, but not near so difficult of execution. It will take me four, or five months, I suppose. I have got a good deal of it blocked out. I should like to read both to you and Mr Clemson before I publish, and regret that I shall not have the opportunity to do so.1 . . .
_______________

1 These two works, posthumously published, "A Disquisition on Government" and "A Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States," constitute Vol. I of Calhoun's collected works.

SOURCE: J. Franklin Jameson, Editor, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1899, Volume II, Calhoun’s Correspondence: Fourth Annual Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, Correspondence of John C. Calhoun, p. 766-8

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Nathaniel Peabody Rogers: Color-phobia, November 10, 1838

COLOR-PHOBIA.

Our people have got it. They have got it in the blue, collapse stage. Many of them have got it so bad, they can't get well. They will die of it. It will be a mercy, if the nation does not. What a dignified, philosophic malady! Dread of complexion. They don't know they have got it — or think, rather, they took it the natural way. But they were inoculated. It was injected into their veins and incided into their systems, by old Doctor Slavery, the great doctor that the famous Dr. Wayland studied with. There is a kind of varioloid type, called colonization. They generally go together, or all that have one are more apt to catch the other. Inoculate for one, (no matter which,) and they will have both, before they get over it. The remedy and the preventive, if taken early, is a kine-pock sort of matter, by the name of anti-slavery. It is a safe preventive and a certain cure. None that have it, genuine, ever catch slavery or colonization or the color-phobia. You can't inoculate either into them. It somehow changes and redeems the constitution, so that it is unsusceptible of them. An abolitionist can sleep safely all night in a close room, where there has been a colonization meeting the day before. He might sleep with It. R. Gurley and old Dr. Proudfit, three in a bed, and not catch it. The remedy was discovered by Dr. William Lloyd Jenner-Garrison.

This color-phobia is making terrible havoc among our communities. Anti-slavery drives it out, and after a while cures it. But it is a base, low, vulgar ailment. It is meaner, in fact, than the itch. It is worse to get rid of than the “seven years' itch.” It is fouler than Old Testament leprosy. It seems to set the dragon into a man, and make him treat poor, dark-skinned folks like a tiger. It goes hardest with dark-complect white people. They have it longer and harder than light-skinned people. It makes them sing out “Nigger—nigger,” sometimes in their sleep. Sometimes they make a noise like this, “Darkey—darkey— darkey.” Sometimes, “Wully—wully—wully.” They will turn up their noses, when they see colored people, especially if they are of a pretty rank, savory habit of person, themselves. They are generally apt to turn up their noses, as though there was some “bad smell” in the neighborhood, when they have it bad, and are naturally pretty odoriferous. It is a tasty disorder — a beautiful ailment; very genteel, and apt to go in “first families.” We should like to have Hogarth take a sketch of a community that had it — of ours, for instance, when the St. Vitus’ fit was on. We have read somewhere of a painter, who made so droll a picture, that he died a-laughing at the sight of it. Hogarth might not laugh at this picture. It would be a sight to cry at, rather than laugh, especially if he could see the poor objects of our frenzy, when the fit is on — which indeed is all the time, for it is an unintermittent. Our attitude would be most ridiculous and ludicrous, if it were not too mortifying and humiliating and cruel. Our Hogarth would be apt to die of something else than laughter, at sight of his sketch.

The courtly malady is the secret of all our anti-abolition, and all our mobocracy. It shuts up all the consecrated meetinghouses — and all the temples of justice, the court-houses, against the friends of negro liberty. It is all alive with fidgets about desecrating the Sabbath with anti-slavery lectures. It thinks anti-slavery pew-owners can't go into them, or use their pulpit, when it is empty, without leave of the minister whom they employ to preach in it. It will forcibly shut people out of their own houses and off their own land, — not with the respectful violence of enemies and trespassers, but the contemptuous unceremoniousness of the plantation overseer — mingled moreover with the slavish irascibility of the poor negro, when he holds down his fellow-slave for a flogging. It sneers at human rights through the free press. It handed John B. Mahin over to the alligators of Kentucky. It shot Elijah P. Lovejoy at Alton. It dragged away the free school, at Canaan. It set Pennsylvania Hall a-fire.

It broke Miss Crandall's school windows, and threw filth into her well. It stormed the female prayer meeting in Boston, with a “property and standing” forlorn hope. It passed the popish resolution at Littleton, in Grafton county. It shut up the meeting-house at Meredith Bridge, against minister and all, — and the homely court-house there, and howled like bedlam around the little, remote district school-house, and broke the windows at night. It excludes consideration and prayer in regard to the forlorn and christian-made heathenism of the American colored man, from county conferences and clerical associations. It broods over the mousings of the New York Observer, and gives keenness to the edge and point of its New Hampshire name-sake. It votes anti-slavery lectures out of the New Hampshire state house, and gives it public hearing on petitions, in a seven by nine committee room. It answers the most insulting mandate of southern governors, calling for violations of the state constitution and bill of rights, by legislative report and resolves that the paramount rights of slavery are safe enough in New Hampshire, without these violations. It sneers and scowls at woman's speaking in company, unless to simper, when she is flattered by a fool of the masculine or neuter gender. It won't sign an anti-slavery petition, for fear it will put back emancipation half a century. It votes in favor of communing with slaveholders, and throwing the pulpit wide open to men-stealers, to keep peace in the churches, and prevent disunion. It will stifle and strangle sympathy for the slave and " remembrance of those in bonds," to prevent disturbance of religious revivals. It will sell the American slave to buy Bibles, or hire negro-hating and negro-buying missionaries for foreign heathen of all quarters but christian-wasted Africa. It prefers American lecturers on slavery, to having that foreign emissary, George Thompson, come over here, to interfere with American rights and prejudices. It abhors "church action" and "meddling with politics." In short, it abhors slavery in the abstract — wishes it might be done away, but denies the right of any body or any thing to devise its overthrow, but slavery itself and slaveholders. It prays for the poor slave, that he might be elevated, while it stands both feet on his breast to keep him down. It prays God might open a way in his own time for the deliverance of the slave, while it stands, with arms akimbo, right across the way he has already opened. Time would fail us to tell of its extent and depth in this free country, or the deeds it has done. Anti-slavery must cure it, or it must die out like the incurable drunkards.

SOURCE: Collection from the Miscellaneous Writings of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, Second Edition, p. 44-7 which states it was published in the Herald of Freedom of November 10, 1838.

Thursday, March 30, 2017

Diary of 1st Sergeant John L. Ransom: February 30 [sic], 1864

Rebels in hot water all night and considerably agitated. Imagined we could hear firing during the night. This morning small squads of tired out union soldiers marched by our prison under guard, evidently captured through the night. Look as if they was completely played out. Go straggling by sometimes not more than half a dozen at a time. Would give something to hear the news. We are all excitement here. Negroes also go by in squads sometimes of hundreds in charge of overseers, and singing their quaint negro melodies. It is supposed by us that the negroes work on the fortifications, and are moved from one part of the city to another, for that purpose. Our troops have evidently been repulsed with considerable loss. We hear that Dahlgreen has been shot and killed. At the very first intimation that our troops were anywhere near, the prisoners would have made a break.

SOURCE: John L. Ransom, Andersonville Diary, p. 37

Saturday, October 15, 2016

Diary of William Howard Russell: June 6, 1861

My chattel Joe, “adscriptus mihi domino awoke me to a bath of Mississippi water with huge lumps of ice in it, to which he recommended a mint-julep as an adjunct. It was not here that I was first exposed to an ordeal of mint-julep, for in the early morning a stranger in a Southern planter's house may expect the offer of a glassful of brandy, sugar, and peppermint beneath an island of ice — an obligatory panacea for all the evils of climate. After it has been disposed of, Pompey may come up again with glass number two: “Massa say fever very bad this morning —much dew.” It is possible that the degenerate Anglo-Saxon stomach has not the fine tone and temper of that of an Hibernian friend of mine, who considered the finest thing to counteract the effects of a little excess was a tumbler of hot whiskey and water the moment the sufferer opened his eyes in the morning. Therefore, the kindly offering may be rejected. But on one occasion before breakfast the negro brought up mint-julep number three, the acceptance of which he enforced by the emphatic declaration, “Massa says, sir, you had better take this, because it'll be the last he make before breakfast.”

Breakfast is served: there is on the table a profusion of dishes — grilled fowl, prawns, eggs and ham, fish from New Orleans, potted salmon from England, preserved meats from France, claret, iced water, coffee and tea, varieties of hominy, mush, and African vegetable preparations. Then come the newspapers, which are perused eagerly with ejaculations, “Do you hear what they are doing now — infernal villains! that Lincoln must be mad!” and the like. At one o'clock, in spite of the sun, I rode out with Mr. Lee, along the road by the Mississippi, to Mr. Burnside's plantation, called Orange Grove, from a few trees which still remain in front of the overseer's house. We visited an old negro, called “Boatswain,” who lives with his old wife in a wooden hut close by the margin of the Mississippi. His business is to go to Donaldsonville for letters, or meat, or ice for the house — a tough row for the withered old man. He is an African born, and he just remembers being carried on board ship and taken to some big city before he came upon the plantation.

“Do you remember nothing of the country you came from, Boatswain?” “Yes, sir. Jist remember trees and sweet things my mother gave me, and much hot sand I put my feet in, and big leaves that we play with — all us little children — and plenty to eat, and big birds and shells.” “Would you like to go back, Boatswain?” “What for, sir? no one know old Boatswain there. My old missus Sally inside.” “Are you quite happy, Boatswain?” “I'm getting very old, massa. Massa Burnside very good to Boatswain, but who care for such dam old nigger? Golla Mighty gave me fourteen children, but he took them all away again from Sally and me. No budy care much for dam old nigger like me.”

Further on Mr. Seal salutes us from the veranda of his house, but we are bound for overseer Gibbs, who meets us, mounted, by the roadside — a man grim in beard and eye, and silent withal, with a big whip in his hand and a large knife stuck in his belt. He leads us through a magnificent area of cane and maize, the latter towering far above our heads; but I was most anxious to see the forest primeval which borders the clear land at the back of the estate, and spreads away over alligator-haunted swamps into distant bayous. It was not, however, possible to gratify one's Curiosity very extensively beyond the borders of the cleared land, for rising round the roots of the cypress, swamp-pine, and live-oak, there was a barrier of undergrowth and bush twined round the cane-brake which stands some sixteen feet high, so stiff that the united force of man and horse could not make way against the rigid fibres; and indeed, as Mr. Gibbs told us, “When the niggers take to the cane-brake they can beat man or dog, and nothing beats them but snakes and starvation.”

He pointed out some sheds around which were broken bottles where the last Irish gang had been working, under one “John Loghlin,” of Donaldsonville, a great contractor, who, he says, made plenty of money out of his countrymen, whose bones are lying up and down the Mississippi. “They duer work like fire,” he said. “Loghlin does not give them half the rations we give our negroes, but he can always manage them with whiskey; and when he wants them to do a job he gives them plenty of forty-rod,’ and they have their fight out — reglar free fight, I can tell you, while it lasts. Next morning they will sign anything and go anywhere with him.”

On the Orange Grove Plantation, although the crops were so fine, the negroes unquestionably seemed less comfortable than those in the quarters of Houmas, separated from them by a mere nominal division. Then, again, there were more children with fair complexions to be seen peeping out of the huts; some of these were attributed to the former overseer, one Johnson by name, but Mr. Gibbs, as if to vindicate his memory, told me confidentially he had paid a large sum of money to the former proprietor of the estate for one of his children, and had carried it away with him when he left. “You could not expect him, you know,” said Gibbs, “to buy them all at the prices that were then going in ’56. All the children on the estate,” added he, “are healthy, and I can show my lot against Seal's over there, though I hear tell he had a great show of them out to you yesterday.”

The bank of the river below the large plantation was occupied by a set of small Creole planters, whose poor houses were close together, indicating very limited farms, which had been subdivided from time to time, according to the French fashion; so that the owners have at last approached pauperism; but they are tenacious of their rights, and will not yield to the tempting price offered by the large planters. They cling to the soil without enterprise and without care. The Spanish settlers along the river are open to the same reproach, and prefer their own ease to the extension of their race in other lands, or to the aggrandizement of their posterity; and an Epicurean would aver, they were truer philosophers than the restless creatures who wear out their lives in toil and labor to found empires for the future.

It is among these men that, at times, slavery assumes its harshest aspect, and that the negroes are exposed to the severest labor; but it is also true that the slaves have closer relations with the families of their owners, and live in more intimate connection with them than they do under the strict police of the large plantations. These people sometimes get forty bushels of corn to the acre, and a hogshead and a half of sugar. We saw their children going to school, whilst the heads of the houses sat in the veranda smoking, and their mothers were busy with household duties; and the signs of life, the voices of women and children, and the activity visible on the little farms, contrasted not unpleasantly with the desert-like stillness of the larger settlements. Rode back in a thunder-storm.

At dinner in the evening Mr. Burnside entertained a number of planters in the neighborhood, — M. Bringier, M. Coulon (French Creoles), Mr. Duncan Kenner, a medical gentleman named Cotmann,. and others; the last - named gentleman is an Unionist, and does not hesitate to defend his opinions; but he has, during a visit to Russia, formed high ideas of the necessity and virtues of an absolute and centralized government.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 276-9

Saturday, October 1, 2016

Diary of William Howard Russell: June 3, 1861

At five o'clock this morning, having been awakened an hour earlier by a wonderful chorus of riotous mocking-birds, my old negro attendant brought in my bath of Mississippi water, which, Nile-like, casts down a strong deposit, and becomes as clear, if not so sweet, after standing. “Le seigneur vous attend;” and already I saw, outside my window, the Governor mounted on a stout cob, and a nice chestnut horse waiting, led by a slave. Early as it was, the sun felt excessively hot, and I envied the Governor his slouched hat as we rode through the fields, crisp with dew. In a few minutes our horses were traversing narrow alleys between the tall fields of maize, which rose far above our heads. This corn, as it is called, is the principal food of the negroes; and every planter lays down a sufficient quantity to afford him, on an average, a supply all the year round. Outside this spread vast fields, hedgeless, wall-less, and unfenced, where the green cane was just learning to wave its long shoots in the wind — a lake of bright green sugar-sprouts, along the margin of which, in the distance, rose an unbroken boundary of forest, two miles in depth, up to the swampy morass, all to be cleared and turned into arable land in process of time. From the river front to this forest, the fields of rich loam, unfathomable, and yielding from one to one and a half hogsheads of sugar per acre under cultivation, extend for a mile and a half in depth. In the midst of this expanse white dots were visible like Sowers seen on the early march in Indian fields, many a time and oft. Those are the gangs of hands at work — we will see what they are at presently. This little reminiscence of Indian life was further heightened by the negroes who ran beside us to whisk flies from the horses, and to open the gates in the plantation boundary. When the Indian corn is not good, peas are sowed, alternately, between the stalks, and are considered to be of much benefit; and when the cane is bad, corn is sowed with it, for the same object. Before we came up to the gangs we passed a cart on the road containing a large cask, a bucket full of molasses, a pail of hominy, or boiled Indian corn, and a quantity of tin pannikins. The cask contained water for the negroes, and the other vessels held the materials for their breakfast; in addition to which, they generally have each a dried fish. The food was ample, and looked wholesome; such as any laboring man would be well content with. Passing along through maize on one side, and cane at another, we arrived at last at a patch of ground where thirty-six men and women were hoeing.

Three gangs of negroes were at work: one gang of men, with twenty mules and ploughs, was engaged in running through the furrows between the canes, cutting up the weeds, and clearing away the grass, which is the enemy of the growing shoot. The mules are of a fine, large, good-tempered kind, and understand their work almost as well as the drivers, who are usually the more intelligent hands on the plantation. The overseer, a sharp-looking creole, on a lanky pony, whip in hand, superintended their labors, and, after a salutation to the Governor, to whom he made some remarks on the condition of the crops, rode off to another part of the farm. With the exception of crying to their mules, the negroes kept silence at their work.

Another gang consisted of forty men, who were hoeing out the grass in Indian corn. The third gang, of thirty-six women, were engaged in hoeing out cane. Their clothing seemed heavy for the climate; their shoes, ponderous and ill-made, had worn away the feet of their thick stockings, which hung in fringes over the upper leathers. Coarse straw hats and bright cotton handkerchiefs protected their heads from the sun. The silence which I have already alluded to, prevailed among these gangs also — not a sound could be heard but the blows of the hoe on the heavy clods. In the rear of each gang stood a black overseer, with a heavy-thonged whip over his shoulder. If “Alcíbíades” or  “Pompée” were called out, he came with outstretched hand to ask “How do you do,” and then returned to his labor; but the ladies were coy, and scarcely looked up from under their flapping chapeaux de paille at their visitors.

Those who are mothers leave their children in the charge of certain old women, unfit for anything else, and “suckers,” as they are called, are permitted to go home, at appointed periods in the day, to give the infants the breast. The overseers have power to give ten lashes; but heavier punishment ought to be reported to the Governor; however, it is not likely a good overseer would be checked, in any way, by his master. The anxieties attending the cultivation of sugar are great, and so much depends upon the judicious employment of labor, it is scarcely possible to exaggerate the importance of experience in directing it, and of power to insist on its application. When the frost comes, the cane is rendered worthless — one touch destroys the sugar. But if frost is the enemy of the white planter, the sun is scarcely the friend of the black man. The sun condemns him to slavery, because it is the heat which is the barrier to the white man's labor. The Governor told me that, in August, when the crops are close, thick-set, and high, and the vertical sun beats down on the laborers, nothing but a black skin and head covered with wool can enable a man to walk out in the open field and live.

We returned to the house in time for breakfast, for which our early cup of coffee and biscuit and the ride had been good preparation. Here was old France again. One might imagine a lord of the seventeenth century in his hall, but for the black faces of the servitors and the strange dishes of tropical origin. There was the old French abundance, the numerous dishes and efflorescence of napkins, and the long-necked bottles of Bordeaux, with a steady current of pleasant small talk. I saw some numbers of a paper called "La Misachibée? which was the primitive Indian name of the grand river, not improved by the addition of sibilant Anglo-Saxon syllables.

The Americans, not unmindful of the aid to which, at the end of the War of Independence, their efforts were merely auxiliary, delight, even in the North, to exalt France above her ancient rival: but, as if to show the innate dissimilarity of the two races, the French Creoles exhibit towards the New Englanders and the North an animosity, mingled with contempt, which argues badly for a future amalgamation or reunion. As the South Carolinians declare, they would rather return to their allegiance under the English monarchy, so the Louisianians, although they have no sentiment in common with the people of republican and imperial France, assert they would far sooner seek a connection with the old country than submit to the yoke of the Yankees.

After breakfast, the Governor drove out by the ever-silent levee for some miles, passing estate after estate, where grove nodded to grove, each alley saw its brother. One could form no idea, from the small limited frontage of these plantations, that the proprietors were men of many thousands a year, because the estates extend on an average for three or four miles back to the forest. The absence of human beings on the road was a feature which impressed one more and more. But for the tall chimneys of the factories and the sugar-houses, one might believe that these villas had been erected by some pleasure-loving people who had all fled from the river banks for fear of pestilence. The gangs of negroes at work were hidden in the deep corn, and their quarters were silent and deserted. We met but one planter, in his gig, until we arrived at the estate of Monsieur Potier, the Governor's brother-in-law. The proprietor was at home, and received us very kindly, though suffering from the effects of a recent domestic calamity. He is a grave, earnest man with a face like Jerome Bonaparte, and a most devout Catholic; and any man more unfit to live in any sort of community with New England Puritans one cannot well conceive; for equal intensity of purpose and sincerity of conviction on their part could only lead them to mortal strife. His house was like a French chateau erected under tropical influences, and he led us through a handsome garden laid out with hot-houses, conservatories, orange-trees, and date-palms, and ponds full of the magnificent Victoria Regia in flower. We visited his refining factories and mills, but the heat from the boilers, which seemed too much even for the all-but-naked negroes who were at work, did not tempt us to make a very long sojourn inside. The ebony faces and polished black backs of the slaves were streaming with perspiration as they toiled over boilers, vat, and centrifugal driers. The good refiner was not gaining much money at present, for sugar has been rapidly falling in New Orleans, and the 300,000 barrels produced annually in the South will fall short in the yield of profits, which on an average may be taken at £11 a hogshead, without counting the molasses for the planter. With a most perfect faith in States' Rights, he seemed to combine either indifference or ignorance in respect to the power and determination of the North to resist secession to the last. All the planters hereabouts have sowed an unusual quantity of Indian corn, to have food for the negroes if the war lasts, without any distress from inland or sea blockade. The absurdity of supposing that a blockade can injure them in the way of supply is a favorite theme to descant upon. They may find out, however, that it is no contemptible means of warfare.

At night, there are regular patrols and watchmen, who look after the levee and the negroes. A number of dogs are also loosed, but I am assured that the creatures do not tear the negroes; they are taught “merely” to catch and mumble them, to treat them as a well-broken retriever uses a wounded wild duck.

At six, A. M., Morse came to ask me if I should like a glass of absinthe, or anything stomachic. At breakfast was Doctor Laporte, formerly a member of the Legislative Assembly of France, who was exiled by Louis Napoleon ; in other words, he was ordered to give in his adhesion to the new régime, or to take a passport for abroad. He preferred the latter course, and now, true Frenchman, finding the Emperor has aggrandized France and added to her military reputation, he admires the man on whom but a few years ago he lavished the bitterest hate.

The carriage is ready, and the word farewell is spoken at last. M. Alfred Roman, my companion, has travelled in Europe, and learned philosophy; is not so orthodox as many of the gentlemen I have met who indulge in ingenious hypotheses to comfort the consciences of the anthropo-proprietors. The negro skull won't hold as many ounces of shot as the white man's. Potent proof that the white man has a right to sell and to own the creature! He is plantigrade, and curved as to the tibia! Cogent demonstration that he was made expressly to work for the arch-footed, straight-tibiaed Caucasian. He has a rete mucosum and a colored pigment! Surely he cannot have a soul of the same color as that of an Italian or a Spaniard, far less of a flaxen-haired Saxon! See these peculiarities in the frontal sinus — in sinciput or occiput! Can you doubt that the being with a head of that shape was made only to till, hoe, and dig for another race? Besides, the Bible says that he is a son of Ham, and prophecy must be carried out in the rice-swamps, sugar-canes, and maize-fields of the Southern Confederation. It is flat blasphemy to set yourself against it. Our Saviour sanctions slavery because he does not say a word against it, and it is very likely that St. Paul was a slave-owner. Had cotton and sugar been known, the apostle might have been a planter! Furthermore, the negro is civilized by being carried away from Africa and set to work, instead of idling in native inutility. What hope is there of Christianizing the African races, except by the agency of the apostles from New Orleans, Mobile, or Charleston, who sing the sweet songs of Zion with such vehemence, and clamor so fervently for baptism in the waters of the “Jawdam”?

If these high physical, metaphysical, moral and religious reasonings do not satisfy you, and you are bold enough to venture still to be unconvinced and to say so, then I advise you not to come within reach of a mass meeting of our citizens, who may be able to find a rope and a tree in the neighborhood.

As we jog along in an easy rolling carriage drawn by a pair of stout horses, a number of white people meet us coming from the Catholic chapel of the parish, where they had been attending the service for the repose of the soul of a lady much beloved in the neighborhood. The black people must be supposed to have very happy souls, or to be as utterly lost as Mr. Shandy's homunculus was under certain circumstances, for I have failed to find that any such services are ever considered necessary in their case, although they may have been very good — or, where the service would be most desirable — very bad Catholics. The dead, leaden uniformity of the scenery forced one to converse, in order to escape profound melancholy: the levee on the right hand, above which nothing was visible but the sky; on the left plantations with cypress fences, whitewashed and pointed wooden gates leading to the planters' houses, and rugged gardens surrounded with shrubs, through which could be seen the slave quarters. Men making eighty or ninety hogsheads of sugar in a year lived in most wretched tumble-down wooden houses not much larger than ox sheds.

As we drove on, the storm gathered overhead, and the rain fell in torrents — the Mississippi flowed lifelessly by — not a boat on its broad surface.

At last we reached Governor Manning's place, and went to the house of the overseer, a large heavy-eyed old man.

“This rain will do good to the corn,” said the overseer. “The niggers has had sceerce nothin' to do leetly, as they 'eve cleaned out the fields pretty well.”

At the ferry-house I was attended by one stout young slave, who was to row me over. Two flat-bottomed skiffs lay on the bank. The negro groped under the shed, and pulled out a piece of wood like a large spatula, some four feet long, and a small round pole a little longer. “What are those?” quoth I. “Dem's oars, Massa,” was my sable ferryman's brisk reply. “I'm very sure they are not; if they were spliced they might make an oar between them.” “Golly, and dat's the trute, Massa.” “Then go and get oars, will you?” While he was hunting about we entered the shed at the ferry for shelter from the rain. We found “a solitary woman sitting smoking a pipe by the ashes on the hearth, blear-eyed, low-browed and morose — young as she was. She never said a word nor moved as we came in, sat and smoked, and looked through her gummy eyes at chicked about the size of sparrows, and at a cat not larger than a rat which ran about on the dirty floor. A little girl, some four years of age, not overdressed — indeed, half-naked, “not to put too fine a point upon it” — crawled out from under the bed, where she had hid on our approach. As she seemed incapable of appreciating the use of a small piece of silver presented to her — having no precise ideas in coinage or toffy — her parent took the obolus in charge, with unmistakable decision; but still the lady would not stir a step to aid our guide, who now insisted on the “key ov de oar-house.” The little thing sidled off and hunted it out from the top of the bedstead, and when it was found, and the boat was ready, I was not sorry to quit the company of the silent woman in black. The boatman pushed his skiff, in shape a snuffer-dish, some ten feet long and a foot deep, into the water — there was a good deal of rain in it. I got in too, and the conscious waters immediately began vigorously spurting through the cotton wadding wherewith the craft was calked. Had we gone out into the stream we should have had a swim for it, and they do say that the Mississippi is the most dangerous river in the known world, for that healthful exercise. “Why! deuce take you” (I said at least that, in my wrath), “don't you see the boat is leaky?” “See it now for true, Massa. Nobody able to tell dat till Massa get in though.” Another skiff proved to be more stanch. I bade good-by to my friend Roman, and sat down in my boat, which was forced by the negro against the stream close to the bank, in order to get a good start across to the other side. The view from my lonely position was curious, but not at all picturesque. The world was bounded on both sides by a high bank, which constricted the broad river, just as if one were sailing down an open sewer of enormous length and breadth. Above the bank rose the tops of tall trees and the chimneys of sugarhouses, and that was all to be seen save the sky.

A quarter of an hour brought us to the levee on the other side. I ascended the bank, and across the road, directly in front appeared a carriage gateway and wickets of wood, painted white, in a line of park palings of the same material, which extended up and down the road far as the eye could see, and guarded wide-spread fields of maize and sugar-cane. An avenue lined with trees, with branches close set, drooping and overarching a walk paved with red brick, led to the house, the porch of which was visible at the extremity of the lawn, with clustering flowers, rose, jasmine, and Creepers, clinging to the pillars supporting the veranda. The view from the belvedere on the roof was one of the most striking of its kind in the world.

If an English agriculturist could see six thousand acres of the finest land in one field, unbroken by hedge or boundary, and covered with the most magnificent crops of tasselling Indian corn and sprouting sugar-cane, as level as a billiard-table, he would surely doubt his senses. But here is literally such a sight — six thousand acres, better tilled than the finest patch in all the Lothians, green as Meath pastures, which can be turned up for a hundred years to come without requiring manure, of depth practically unlimited, and yielding an average profit on what is sold off it of at least £20 an acre, at the old prices and usual yield of sugar. Rising up in the midst of the verdure are the white lines of the negro cottages and the plantation offices and sugarhouses, which look like large public edifices in the distance. My host was not ostentatiously proud in telling me that, in the year 1857, he had purchased this estate for £300,000 and an adjacent property, of 8000 acres, for £150,000, and that he had left Belfast in early youth, poor and unfriended, to seek his fortune, and indeed scarcely knowing what fortune meant, in the New World. In fact, he had invested in these purchases the geater part, but not all, of the profits arising from the business in New Orleans, which he inherited from his master; of which there still remained a solid nucleus in the shape of a great woollen magazine and country house. He is not yet fifty years of age, and his confidence in the great future of sugar induced him to embark this enormous fortune in an estate which the blockade has stricken with paralysis.

I cannot doubt, however, that he regrets he did not invest his money in a certain great estate in the North of Ireland, which he had nearly decided on buying; and, had he done so, he would now be in the position to which his unaffected good sense, modesty, kindliness, and benevolence, always adding the rental, entitle him. Six thousand acres on this one estate all covered with sugar-cane, and 16,000 acres more of Indian corn, to feed the slaves; — these were great possessions, but not less than 18,000 acres still remained, covered with brake and forest and swampy, to be reclaimed and turned into gold. As easy to persuade the owner of such wealth that slavery is indefensible as to have convinced the Norman baron that the Saxon churl who tilled his lands ought to be his equal.

I found Mr. Ward and a few merchants from New Orleans in possession of the bachelor's house. The service was performed by slaves, and the order and regularity of the attendants were worthy of a well-regulated English mansion. In Southern houses along the coast, as the Mississippi above New Orleans is termed, beef and mutton are rarely met with, and the more seldom the better. Fish, also, is scarce, but turkeys, geese, poultry, and preparations of pig, excellent vegetables, and wrine of the best quality, render the absence of the accustomed dishes little to be regretted.

The silence which struck me at Governor Roman's is not broken at Mr. Burnside's; and when the last thrill of the mocking-bird's song has died out through the grove, a stillness of Avernian profundity settles on hut, field, and river.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 261-9

Monday, June 6, 2016

Diary of Dolly Lunt Burge: July 22, 1864

[The day of the battle of Atlanta]

We have heard the loud booming of cannon all day. Mr. Ward [the overseer] went over to the burial of Thomas Harwell, whose death I witnessed yesterday. They had but just gone when the Rev. A. Turner, wife, and daughter drove up with their wagons, desiring to rest awhile. They went into the ell [a large back room] and lay down, I following them, wishing to enjoy their company. Suddenly I saw the servants running to the palings, and I walked to the door, when I saw such a stampede as I never witnessed before. The road was full of carriages, wagons, men on horseback, all riding at full speed. Judge Floyd stopped, saying: “Mrs. Burge, the Yankees are coming. They have got my family, and here is all I have upon earth. Hide your mules and carriages and whatever valuables you have.”

Sadai [Mrs. Surge's nine-year-old daughter] said:

“Oh, Mama, what shall we do?”

“Never mind, Sadai,” I said. “They won't hurt you, and you must help me hide my things.”

I went to the smoke-house, divided out the meat to the servants, and bid them hide it. Julia [a slave] took a jar of lard and buried it. In the meantime Sadai was taking down and picking up our clothes, which she was giving to the servants to hide in their cabins; silk dresses, challis, muslins, and merinos, linens, and hosiery, all found their way into the chests of the women and under their beds; china and silver were buried underground, and Sadai bid Mary [a slave] hide a bit of soap under some bricks, that mama might have a little left. Then she came to me with a part of a loaf of bread, asking if she had not better put it in her pocket, that we might have something to eat that night. And, verily, we had cause to fear that we might be homeless, for on every side we could see smoke arising from burning buildings and bridges.

Major Ansley, who was wounded in the hip in the battle of Missionary Ridge, and has not recovered, came with his wife, sister, two little ones, and servants. He was traveling in a bed in a small wagon. They had thought to get to Eatonton, but he was so wearied that they stopped with me for the night. I am glad to have them. I shall sleep none to-night. The woods are full of refugees.

SOURCE: Dolly Lunt Burge, A Woman's Wartime Journal, p. 4-6

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Diary of 5th Sergeant Alexander G. Downing: Wednesday, January 18, 1865

The weather is very pleasant. We are still on duty guarding the main road to Beaufort. The trains have all gone in for supplies. All is quiet in front. This low-country, before the war, was planted to cotton, the planters living in town while their plantations were managed by overseers and worked by slaves brought down from the border states. We can see rows of the vacant negro huts on these large plantations, set upon blocks so as to keep the floors dry. The negroes are all gone, being employed in the armies of both sections.1
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1 When I think of the vacant plantations I saw all through the South, when I recall the hardships of the negroes, and the different modes of punishment Inflicted upon the slaves, all with the consent of the Southern people, then I can understand how they could be so cruel in their treatment of the Union prisoners of war. They put them in awful prison pens and starved them to death without a successful protest from the better class of the people of the South. The guards of these prisons had lived all their lives witnessing the cruel tortures of slaves; they had become hardened and thus had no mercy on an enemy when in their power. Many an Andersonvllle prisoner was shot down Just for getting too close to an imaginary dead-line when suffering from thirst and trying to get a drink of water.

Not all Southerners were so cruel, for I lived in the same house with an ex-Confederate soldier from Georgia, when in southern Florida during the winter of 1911 and know that he had some feeling. He had been guard at Andersonville for a short time, and told me that he would have taken water to them by the bucketful, for he could not bear to hear the poor fellows calling for water; but that he did not dare to do it. This man's name was McCain, and at the time I met him his home was at College Park, Atlanta, Ga. — A. G. D.

Source: Alexander G. Downing, Edited by Olynthus B., Clark, Downing’s Civil War Diary, p. 247

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Diary of Mary Brockenbrough Newton: June 11, 1862

Yesterday evening we had another visit from the Lancers: they fed their horses at M's barn, ripping off the planks that the corn might roll out. The door was opened by the overseer, but that was too slow a way for thieves and robbers. They encamped for the night in front of W.  C. was detained here yesterday by rain, and was not at home all day, and they took that opportunity for searching every thing. While they were filling the wagons at the bam, four officers went over every part of the house, even the drawers and trunks. They were moderate in their robberies, only taking some damask towels and napkins from the drawers, and a cooked ham and a plate of rolls from the pantry. These men wore the trappings of officers! While I write, I have six wagons in view at my brother's barn, taking off his corn, and the choice spirits accompanying them are catching the sheep and carrying them off. This robbery now goes on every day. The worst part of our thraldom is, that we can hear nothing from our own army

SOURCE: Judith W. McGuire, Diary of a Southern Refugee, During the War, p. 141-2

Monday, March 10, 2014

Diary of Alexander G. Downing: Monday, May 11, 1863

We started this morning at 5 o'clock and marched about eight miles, when we stacked our arms until 3 p. m. We continued our march to Perkins's Landing about forty-five miles below Vicksburg as the river runs, or twenty miles as the crow flies. Here we bivouacked for the night. The country here is very low and often overflows. The large plantations, such as Perkins's, Holmes's and Jeff Davis's, are usually planted to cotton. The work is all done by slaves driven by overseers who live on the plantations, while the owners, planters, reside in more healthy localities.

Source: Alexander G. Downing, Edited by Olynthus B., Clark, Downing’s Civil War Diary, p. 114