The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862

'I am glad to see you are as good at planting as you are at preaching.'

'Bless you,' he replied, 'it isn't me—it's Joe. Joe is acknowledged to be the best farmer in Jones county.'

At the gateway we met such a greeting as is unknown all the world over, outside of a Southern plantation. Perched in the fences, swinging on the gate, and hanging from the trees, were a score of young ebonies of both sexes, who, as we came in sight, set up a chorus of discordant shouts that made the woods ring. Among the noises I made out: 'Gorry, massa am come!' 'Dar dey is.' 'Dat'm de strange gem-man.' 'How's 'ou, massa?' 'Glad 'ou's come, massa; 'peared like we'd neber see 'ou no more, massa;' and a multitude of similiar exclamations, that told unmistakably the character of the discipline to which they were accustomed. The young chattels are an infallible barometer—they indicate the real state of the weather on a plantation. One may never see among the older slaves of even a cruel master, any but sunshiny faces, for they know the penalty of surliness before a stranger; but the little darkies cannot be so restrained. They will slink away into by-corners, or scamper out of sight whenever their owner appears, if they are not treated kindly.

'Massa's well. Are you all well?'

'Yes, massa, we's right smart; an' all on we's good little nigs eber sense 'ou's 'way.'

'I'm glad to hear it; now, scamper back to the house, and tell 'missus' we're coming.'

'Missus knows 'ou's comin', massa; massa Joe am dar; missus knows 'ou's I comin'.'

After a short drive over a narrow winding avenue, strewn with leaves and shaded with the long branches of the pine, the oak, and the holly, we came to the mansion, which stood on a gentle mound in the midst of a green lawn, sloping gently down to a small lake. It had once been a square, box-like structure; but Preston had so transformed it, that but for its rustic surroundings and the thick groups of giant evergreens which clustered at its sides, it might have been taken for a suburban villa. Projecting eaves, large dormers, which sprang out from the roof-line and rested on a broad porch and balcony, a rustic porte cochere, and here and there a vine-covered bay or oriole window, broke up the regularity of its outline, and proclaimed its designer a true poet—and poetry, now-a-days, is more often written on the walls of country houses than in the corners of country newspapers.

Nearly all of the 'family,' excepting the field hands, had gathered to witness our arrival; but there was no shouting or noisy demonstrations. After we had greeted Mrs. Preston and her two little daughters—her twin roses, as she called them—my host turned to the assembled negroes, and gave each one his hand and a kind word. The hearty 'Lord bress 'ou, good massa,' and 'Glad 'ou's come, massa,' which broke from all of them, would have gladdened the heart of even the bitterest opponent of the peculiar institution. One old woman, whose head was as white as snow, and whose bent form showed great age, sat on a lower step of the porch, surrounded by a cluster of children. Her mistress raised her to her feet as Preston approached; and throwing her trembling arms around his neck, she sobbed out:

'Oh, massa Robert, ole nussy am happy now; she'll neber leff 'ou gwo 'way agin.'

Mrs. Preston shortly turned to lead the way into the house. As she did so, I noticed peeping from out the folds of her dress, where she had shyly hid away, a younger child, of strange and wonderful beauty. She had not, like the others, the fair complexion and pure Grecian features of her mother. Her skin was dark, and her hair, which fell in glossy curls over her neck, was as black as the night when the clouds have shut out the stars. Her cheeks seemed two rose leaves thinly sprinkled with snow; her eyes, coals which held a smouldering flame. Her face was one of those caught now and then by the old painters—a thing dreamed of, but seldom seen: the pure expression of an ideal loveliness which is more than human. She seemed some pure, spiritual being, which had left its ethereal home and come to earth to make the world brighter and better by its presence. I reached out my hands to her, and said:

'Come here, my little one. This is one I have not seen, Mrs. Preston.'

'No, sir; we have never taken her North; she is too young yet. Go to the gentleman, my pet.'

The child came timidly toward me, and suffered me to lift her in my arms:

'And what is your name, my little one?'

'Selly, sar,' she replied, with the soft, mellow accent, which the planter's children acquire from the negroes.

'What an odd name!' I remarked,

'Yes, sir, it is singular. Her full name is Selma,' replied her mother.

'What! who have we here?' exclaimed Preston, as he turned away from the negroes, and stepped up on the piazza.

'Why, Robert, it's Selly—don't you know your own child?'

Preston took the little girl in his arms, and said:

'It's like you, Lucy. No man ever had a wife like mine, Kirke.'

'No one but Mr. Kirke himself, you mean, Robert,' replied the lady, smiling; then she added:

'Selly has been in Newbern for a time, Mr. Preston did not expect to find her at home.'

We entered the house, and took seats in the drawing room to await dinner. We had not been there long, when 'Master Joe' burst into the apartment, and rushing up to me, exclaimed:

'Come, Mr. Kirke, Joe is outside; he wants to see you—come.'

'Tell Joe to wait; don't disturb Mr. Kirke now,' said his father,

'Oh no, Preston; let me see him at once;' and rising, I followed the lad from the room.

Joe was a dark-colored mulatto, about fifty years of age. He was dressed in a suit of 'butternut homespun,' and held in his hand the ordinary slouched hat worn by the 'natives.' His hair, the short, crispy wool of the African, was sprinkled with gray, and he had the thick lips and broad, heavy features of his race. He was nearly six feet high, stoutly and compactly built; and but for a disproportion in the size of his legs, one of which was smaller and two or three inches shorter than the other, he might have rated as a 'prime field hand.' There was nothing about him but his high, massive head, clear, piercing eye, and a certain self-poised manner, to indicate that he was more than an ordinary negro.

'Now, Joe, this is Mr. Kirke; make your best bow, old fellow,' shouted the lad, as we opened the door, and stepped out on the piazza. Joe made the requisite bow, and reaching out his hand, said:

'I'se bery glad ter see you, Mr. Kirke.'

'I'm very glad to see you, Joseph; I feel well acquainted with you,' I replied, returning his cordial greeting.

'I feels well 'quainted wid you, sar. I'se wanted ter see you bery much, Mr. Kirke. You'll 'scuse my sturbin' you; but de boy'—and he laid his hand on the lad's head—' 'sisted ou my comin' ter onst.'

Before I could reply, his master came out of the house.

'Welcome home, massa Robert,' said the black man, taking Preston warmly by the hand, and then adding in a quick, anxious tone:

'What luck in Virginny? Did you do it, massa Robert?'

'No,' said Preston, 'I couldn't get a dollar—not a dollar, Joe.'

'I feared dat—I feared dat, massa Robert. Nobody keer nuffin' fur you but ole Joe—nobody but ole Joe, massa Robert!' His eyes moistened, and he spoke in an inexpressibly tender tone—the tone of a mother when speaking to her child.

'Nobody but Mr. Kirke, Joe. He has paid the judgment.'

'Bress you, Mr. Kirke, de Lord bress you, sar. But dar's more you knows, massa Robert. You tole Mr. Kirke 'bout dem?'

'No, Joe. I know I ought to; but I couldn't.

'P'raps Mr. Kirke wouldn't hab paid dat, if he'd know'd de whole!' said Joe, in a hesitating tone.

'Undoubtedly I would, Joe. It's no great matter, I'm sure,' I replied.

'Well, Joe, never mind this now. We'll talk affairs all over with Mr. Kirke before he goes,' said Preston.

'Dat's right, massa Robert; gemman like Mr. Kirke knows 'bout dese tings better'n you nor me.'

Saying we would see him again that day, Preston and I then reëntered the mansion.

ENLISTING!

 
There's not a trade agoing,
Worth knowing or showing,
Like that from glory growing!
Says the bold soldier boy.
 

THE FREED MEN OF THE SOUTH

A question of great magnitude, concerning the fate of vast numbers of freed men in the South, and affecting material interests of world-wide importance, is looming up and shaping itself among the clouds which surround us, and is daily growing more pressing in its demand for solution, and for wise and beneficent action. The entire social and industrial arrangements of the South are likely to be completely disorganized, and more or less permanently broken up. The civil war itself, in its very nature, from its avowed principles and purposes, was well calculated to produce this result; but the proclamation of the President, declaring emancipation after the 1st of January next, in all the rebellious States, comes in at this critical moment speedily to perfect the work which the madness of the rebels had already begun.

We do not propose to consider the legal effect of that measure; its conformity to the Constitution, or to the laws of war; its necessity and propriety under existing circumstances; or its bearing and probable influence on the duration of the war and the ultimate restoration of the Union. It would be worse than useless to embarrass and cripple ourselves with these questions, at the present time, when it is wholly beyond our power to arrest the march of events, and prevent the consummation to which they inevitably tend. The thunderbolt has been launched; and although it pauses in the air or moves slowly in its ominous path, it has been seen of all men, and cannot be effectually recalled. Its inevitable results are already to a great extent secured. The idea of his liberation has been imparted to the slave, and it takes hold of his mind as a spark would adhere to dry wood in a high wind. Every breath of air causes it to spread; it cannot be extinguished.

Whatever view may be taken of Mr. Lincoln's proclamation, and of its effect on the mass of slaves in the rebellious States, a very large and increasing number will certainly escape from bondage and force their way into the lines of our army, with every advance which it makes into the enemy's territory. Our Government invites them and the army will be bound to receive them. It may be safely assumed that many thousands (it is hardly possible to say how many) will throw themselves into our power; and they will certainly have the strongest possible claim to the care and protection of those who have lured them from such homes as they possessed, from regular employment and adequate sustenance, and from all fixed habits of their peculiar condition. Winter will be already upon them, and they will be without homes, and in a great measure, too, without food and clothes. It is not possible that the large numbers destined to abandon their masters at the call of the President, can be advantageously employed as laborers and servants in the army, and it will therefore be absolutely necessary to find other useful and appropriate occupations for them, sufficiently profitable to make them sure of subsistence and of some degree of comfort, from the inception of their new condition.

It must be remembered that the plantation negroes, and, indeed, the negroes generally, in all the rebellious States, have never been accustomed to take care of themselves, or even to direct their own daily labors. They have not the least experience in the management of affairs, except under the control of masters or overseers. They have neither foresight nor enterprise, nor any cultivated capacity to provide for their own wants or for those of their families. If they have lived as families at all, the head of the domestic organization has never had the responsibility which naturally belongs to that position, and, consequently, has not acquired any of the manly and noble impulses which the sense of that responsibility invariably gives. These unfortunate creatures, deprived of all opportunity for education, never having known the cares and blessings of independence, but receiving their daily support from the hand which guided and compelled their labor, emerge from this condition almost as helpless as children. Generally, in the glimmering twilight of their intellects, they entertain no other idea of liberty but that of living without work. Doubtless they will readily arrive at a better understanding of their new condition; but it is of immense importance that they shall be started in the right path and tutored in the ways of freedom.

The authority which will have thus taken them, suddenly and without any preparation, from their recent employments and their old modes of life, must not leave them, helpless and without resources, to find such occupations as they may. The sacred obligation rests upon us to give them some suitable employment from which they can procure present subsistence and commence that career of industry and improvement which, it is to be hoped, will soon prove them to have been worthy of the boon unintentionally bestowed upon them by the authors of this wicked and insane rebellion. Some other governments, in seasons of distress arising from ordinary causes, do not hesitate to acknowledge the duty of finding work for the laboring masses, who would otherwise suffer and become dangerous in their distress and desperation; but there is no case in which the obligations of government toward an unfortunate people are half so strong and imperative as those which, under existing circumstances, rest upon the United States. They have the double responsibility of past complication in the wrong of slavery, and of present participation in the act of suddenly terminating it.

Doubtless an effective system of colonization, beyond our limits, will be gradually established, and the Africans in this country will eventually find it to be their interest to separate themselves from us and to go in large numbers to Central America or to their native continent. But this process must necessarily be slow, and cannot properly take place on any very large scale until the negroes shall be to some extent trained in the proper habits of freedom and prepared to become citizens of some country in which their rights of equality will be fully acknowledged, not merely theoretically and by profession, but in substance and in actual practice. Moreover, they cannot be sent away with advantage to us, or, indeed, by means of any available resources applicable to that end, until their places shall be supplied by European immigrants, or until the increase of our own white population shall enable us to dispense with their services amongst us, and aid them in finding and settling better homes, in which they may pursue their destined course of progress, unhindered by that fatal competition and unconquerable prejudice which meet them here. It is evident that no possible scheme of colonization can relieve us from the duty of providing for the present and immediate necessities of the vast numbers of freed men who will shortly be thrown upon us by the progress of the war, and as the direct result of the President's liberating proclamation.

The vital and momentous question of cotton production, manufacture, and exportation, is involved in this subject. Shall we continue to supply the markets of the world with this indispensable commodity, the raw material and the manufactured products; or shall we become importers of the greatly inferior article from the East Indies at prices largely enhanced, with the consequent destruction of our manufactures and the loss of eight millions of exports of American goods with all the prospective increase of this important branch of the national industry? The annihilation of the cotton trade in the United States would change the face of the world. It would diminish the power and importance of our country among the nations to an incredible extent; and it would seriously affect the relations of other powers among themselves. The attitude of France and England toward us, at this moment, gives but a faint indication of what we should suffer at their hands if the organization of labor at the South should be so utterly destroyed as to prevent the cultivation of the great staple which that favored region is so preëminently fitted to produce. It is the influence imparted by this production which the South has endeavored to use as its most formidable weapon, against us in this gigantic rebellion; and whatever countenance the rebels have received, or hereafter expect to receive from abroad, is the result solely of their command of this indispensable production. It is this which supplies them with arms and munitions of war at home, and which builds the piratical ships with which they prey upon our commerce on the high seas. Indeed, but for this all-powerful product of their soil and labor, stimulating them and their foreign allies with the hope of liberating the vast supplies now on hand, the war would, in all probability, have been long since determined. But motives of still wider scope and bearing instigate the unfriendly acts of England and France. It is a question with these powers, whether they shall hold the rebellious States by such obligations as shall make them a virtual dependency for their own advantage, as the record shows they attempted to do in the case of Texas in 1844; or whether these factious and ambitious fragments of the Union shall be subdued by our own Government and brought back to their true allegiance, with the effect of reinstating our envied and dreaded power, and with our virtual monopoly of cotton confirmed and consolidated. It is easy to see how dazzling is the temptation which induces England and France to play the false and dangerous part which they are so plainly acting, in this, the most critical emergency which has arisen during the whole period of our national existence. But the stake at issue, however valuable to them, is of infinitely greater importance to us.

It is not merely a question of philanthropy to the liberated negroes of our Southern section; nor do we approach the limits of the subject, when we show how deeply the wealth and power of our country and its commercial greatness are involved in it. There are other questions of still greater importance necessarily arising out of it, and they concern the rights and interests of the people of the loyal States, especially of the great mass of laboring white men, in every part of the country, North, South, East, and West. Destroy the labor of the South, cut off its cotton crops, and a fatal blow will be struck at the commerce and manufactures of the whole country. Every other branch of industry, throughout all its minutest ramifications, will feel the shock and languish accordingly. If, instead of using our fine Southern cotton at ten cents per pound, we are compelled to go to a distance of ten or twelve thousand miles, paying fifty or sixty cents for the inferior, coarse, short-staple production of India, it is apparent that the whole fabric of our prosperity would be prostrated, and remain so, until industry and commerce should find new and profitable channels for their enterprise. Clothing would be greatly enhanced in value, and this, to the laboring man, would be equivalent to a corresponding diminution of food and all the other comforts of life. Cleanliness and health, necessarily dependent on the abundance and cheapness of clothing, would be to some extent affected; and, indeed, every interest of society, in all sections and among all classes, would suffer more or less from the same causes. With the cotton production destroyed or materially injured, our means of paying the vast debt which the war will leave against us would be seriously impaired, and the burden of taxation would be to that extent heavier and more intolerable to the masses of our people.

Thus this question of emancipation to the blacks is intimately connected with that of justice to the whites. It involves in it all the most important considerations which combine to control the prosperity of a people; for it affects taxation, employment, wages, clothing, food, and health, and, as a consequence necessarily resulting from these, the proper education of the working classes, and the cause of free government itself. Nor is it without much weight and importance that the greater part of these effects extend beyond the limits of our own country and affect similarly, and, in some instances, even more severely, the laboring classes of other countries. We ought not to forget the steady heroism and noble self-respect with which, in some parts of England, the middle and working classes of the people, in the midst of great sufferings, and in spite of them, have justly appreciated our cause and have defended it against the selfish, sinister attacks of aristocratic enemies—their own would-be leaders and instructors. To these disinterested friends and sympathizers in our mighty struggle we owe at least a grateful recognition; and it becomes us to do every thing in our power to alleviate and shorten the sufferings which the rebellion has brought on them in common with ourselves. No wild, inconsiderate, and destructive schemes, in the guise of philanthropy, should receive our assent or command our support. The crisis demands some wise, practical, and efficient measure for the organization of the labor of the freed negroes in the profitable and important occupations to which they have mostly been accustomed.

Events are rapidly maturing their results, and developing the occasion for the direct interference of our Government through its legislative department. There is no time to be lost. Instant action is demanded. Congress ought to take up the subject, without delay, immediately after its meeting, and never cease the investigation until some proper measure shall have been matured and adopted. The great fact must be recognized that the Southern slaves will have been liberated by the agency of the Government, as a means of suppressing the rebellion, by taking away its chief cause and its most powerful support. These unfortunate men, placed in their peculiar condition by no fault of their own, must necessarily receive the protection and become the wards of the Government. Some system of apprenticeship ought to be adopted, and rules and regulations established by law for their government, education, and employment. They ought to be employed in cultivating the soil of their native States for the production of cotton and sugar, so that the former course of things may be as little interrupted as possible, except in the altered condition of the laborers. The lands which will fall into our possession ought to be immediately prepared for cultivation, and the new system of free labor put into practical operation at the earliest moment. The improvement and education of the laborer ought to be considered quite as carefully as the success and productiveness of his work. Our armies will be able to give ample protection to the communities which may be organized under this arrangement; the lands, by the confiscation act, will easily be made available to carry out the scheme; and, doubtless, any number of Union men will be found in all parts of the South, to coöperate in this plan, by the inducement of a fair participation in its legitimate profits. It will be easy to prevent the system from degenerating so as to admit any of the old habits of slavery, or to tolerate any of its oppressions and inhuman practices. In the course of time, the present slaveholders themselves, humbled and subdued, as we hope they soon will be, will find themselves compelled to acquiesce in the policy of the Government, and, in the end, will acknowledge the wisdom of the proceeding which substitutes paid and educated labor for that pernicious system of slavery which has blinded and deluded them to their own destruction. Eventually, though gradually, it may well be anticipated, white labor will be employed in the growth of cotton. The Africans will find their advantage in removing farther south, perhaps to Central America, possibly to Africa; and, before many years, the productions of the teeming South will far surpass what they have been, or could be, under the reign of slavery.

We forbear to make any suggestion as to the details of the proposed system. The wisdom of Congress, aided by the experience and the advice of the Executive, will no doubt be sufficient for the great exigency. But in any plan which may be adopted, certain general principles must obtain. They must look to these cardinal points: the actual and complete emancipation of the slave, and his education as far as possible; his subordination to just and necessary, though humane laws which may be made for his control; and, finally, the usefulness and productiveness of his industry, with a fair proportion of the profits allowed to himself, in some proper form, for his own benefit and improvement. With these points securely guarded, we may safely look to the future without much dread of that terrible confusion and disorganization which now threaten the unhappy South. We may at least begin to plant the germs of a reorganization which will speedily bring back again order and prosperity, based on a better foundation than they have ever heretofore had to rest upon.