CHICORA WOOD.Photograph by Amelia M. Watson.
CHICORA WOOD.Photograph by Amelia M. Watson.
CHICORA WOOD.
Photograph by Amelia M. Watson.
the things on the place and take the money, never supposing there was any possibility of mamma’s being informed in time to get up to prevent it. But he reckoned without knowing the negroes or mamma. As soon as they had all left, she summoned Mr. Yates and had a talk with him. She told him she would not need his services any more, that he had quite exceeded his authority in sending the negroes off without consulting her, and that the fact of his having advertised an auction without her consent also showed that he misunderstood the situation. He was quite insolent and said he would not go unless he was paid in full. To which she answered she had no intention of letting him go unpaid, asked for his accounts, looked over them, and gave him a check on Mr. Malloy in Cheraw.
Mamma found that below the salt was a large pile of rough rice which would not burn, and which was ample provision for the negroes. On examination we found that only the outside of the pile of rough rice was scorched. Rough rice (which is the rice still encased in its thick, rough, outer shell) cannot burn, and there was enough rice there to keep the people well fed a long time, and they prefer rice to any other food. They beat it in mortars made by taking about three feet of thetrunk of a hardwood-tree and burning out the centre, so as to hold about six quarts of grain. Then they make a pestle from a smaller limb of hardwood neatly smoothed and rounded at the end; and with these crude implements the stiff, hard, almost indestructible hull is easily removed.
Mamma also found that away from the path of the enemy there were supplies of sorghum syrup and potatoes, etc., which people would gladly bring to exchange for salt and rice. So we turned home, an immense load lifted from our hearts. The people would not really suffer!
Mamma made a little talk to the negroes, and told them just to stay quietly there and do their ordinary work, and that she had made arrangements for provisions for them to be brought to the farm every week, and that very soon she would have the flats come up from Chicora Wood and take them all back to the low country, and begged them not to lose their good reputation by breaking the law in any way, now that the whole country was so upset. And she thanked them for having behaved so well ever since papa had been taken, and having made it easy for her by their good conduct. And they courtesied and said: “Tank Gawd” that she had come to “luk after” her people and not let them be driven away by “Po’ buckra.” Altogether it was a very comforting little scene. Daddy Hamedy made a little speech, assuring her of his fidelity to her, and that he would look after everything and let her know if anything went wrong. He apologized much for not having been able to protect the property, but he said General Kilpatrick and the soldiers wouldn’t listen to him at all, and just cut the dam and drained off the water and got Maussa’s wine, and got drunk on it, and sent some off in wagons, and were so harsh to him he just had to keep out of sight of them. By the time they set fire to the gin-house, full of good provisions and all the fine cotton-crop, he was struck down by a severe chill and had to go to bed. And, when one looked at his face, one had to believe in his distress. Three of the young men had gone off with the soldiers. They wanted to take many more, but “tank de Lawd,” they had more sense than to go. We left early the next morning and returned to Crowley.
AFTER this things are vague in my mind, only an impression of distress and gloom. I got a letter from my cousin and friend, Hal Lesesne, telling of the successive falling back which was so terrible to them all. He had been so long in the forts around Charleston, and so greatly desired to see active service in Virginia, and now, alas, things were so black, no one could help fearing. “But be assured,” he said, “we are fighting every step of the way, and make the enemy pay dearly for their gain.” When I got that letter he had already fallen, killed in the very last battle of the war, Averysboro, I think. This was a great sorrow to me; and the surrender was just crushing and numbing to all my being. Men began to come in on their way home from the front, worn, weary, gaunt, and hungry. They had lived days and days and fought on a handful of parched corn. Their shoes were worn out, their uniforms ragged; only their spirit was undimmed, and that made them suffer so in the sense of failure.
My dear brother Charley finally came, a ghost of his former self, shoulders bowed down by marching with his heavy knapsack. He looked so ill and changed, we were not surprised when we found he had typhoid fever. He had been taken in and kindly nursed by friends on his way home, but he was a pitiful sight.
THEN one day, to our amazement, Sam Galant came with two horses which he had brought back safe all the way from Virginia! They were thin and so was he, but it was a wonderful feat, without money and without food, at a time when the soldiers returning home on foot were desperate for a horse to till and cultivate the little farms to which they were returning empty-handed. How was it possible for Sam to escape capture by some of them, almost hopeless at the great distance from their homes, which they must travel mostly afoot! Sam had wonderful tales to tell of his experiences. He kept with Hampton’s Cavalry all the time, leading horses to be at hand to replace those killed in battle. He gave a thrilling account of the death of Bill, the mail horse. Edward Wells, of the Charleston Light Dragoons, was riding him, and as they were galloping out of Cheraw, just over the bridge, a shell went through Bill from tail to head, without exploding, leaving Mr. Wells standing on his feet unhurt. “Sam, a horse,” he called,and, according to Sam’s tale, he stepped up instantly with a fresh horse, Mr. Wells mounted and was gone. Sam concluded:
“Yes, ma’am, Mr. Wells is the bravest man in the world, I believe. He neber mind de shell busting all ’round him, en I was dere right alongside him, ready to his han’.”
Oh, if I had only got Sam to come and tell it all to me quietly long afterward, so that I could write it down as I did Daddy Ancrum’s story! But Sam was comparatively young, some years younger than myself, and I always thought there was time. I never thought of his dying.
One day a messenger arrived from the plantation to mamma, with a badly scribbled line on brown paper: “Miss, cum quick, dem de ’stribute ebry ting.” Mamma questioned the boy. He said the people had gone wild, that “a Capting from de Yankee A’my kum en a kerridge en tell de people dem is free en ebry ting belongst to dem. No wite peeple ’ill neber jum back, en den him ’stribute ebery ting.”
Mamma told Daddy Aleck to have the carriage ready early the next morning, and she and I started off, leaving Della and Jane still at Crowley, with all the servants. Charley rode with us onhorseback and, to our surprise, Julius Pringle turned up the evening before and said he would ride along with us too. The presence of these two, just home from all the dangers and suffering of the war, now here safe and sound, made the journey a great pleasure. Mr. Pringle rode Jerry, Charley’s young half-Arab stallion, which mamma had sent on to Virginia for him, and which he rode as one of Hampton’s scouts all the last year of the war. We had not gone far when a runner on foot from Chicora Wood met us.
He said: “Miss, I got a pa’tikler messidge fu yu, en I wan’ to speak to yu private.” So mamma got out of the carriage and went a little way into the woods with him. He said: “A’nt Milly say don’t kum, ’tis dang’us, but ef yu does kum, don’t keep de publik road. Dem de watch fu yu! Kum troo de ’oods.” Mamma thanked and told him to go on to Crowley and rest and Miss Adèle would give him plenty to eat, and when he was rested, he could start back. She got into the carriage and we drove on.
I never have understood that message from Maum Milly, whether it was a genuine anxiety on her part, or whether it was to keep mamma from coming and asserting her rights, by intimidatingher. Maum Milly had always been greatly considered and trusted. She held herself and her family as vastly superior to the ordinary run of negroes, the aristocracy of the race. Whatever her intention was, the message had no effect on mamma’s plans, and we never left the public road.
That night we stopped at a house where dark caught us, and asked for shelter, simply that; we had provisions. The family were from Georgetown and had refugeed here, the Sampsons, and they received us with enthusiastic hospitality and kindness, making us most comfortable for the night, and giving us a delicious and abundant supper and breakfast of fried chicken, so that we were able to keep our supplies for the next day. I do not think I ever saw as beautiful a young Jewess as the daughter of the family, Deborah Sampson.
When we got to Plantersville we drove to Mrs. Weston to ask about them all, for we knew nothing of how they had fared in these dark days. Cousin Lizzie was rejoiced to see us after all we had both gone through, and Mr. Weston and herself and Pauline most hospitably invited us to stay with them, until we could make arrangements to get the log house in order for us tooccupy, as it had been shut up a long time. There was so much to hear and so much to tell that it was hard to go to bed. They had been through a great trial in the Bunker raid, when this Yankee had come through the little village in an open carriage, followed by a throng of negroes, whooping and yelling with joy, in response to his announcement that they were free, and that everything belonged to them. He went to every house and seized every article of value, took the earrings from women’s ears and the rings from their fingers; for the inhabitants of the little hamlet had been so far removed from the centre of war that they had not thought of concealing their valuables and jewelry, as no one had any fear of the negroes. This seems to me a wonderful tribute to them, and they deserve to have the changes rung on it. When this man, announcing himself as “A N’united State Officer,” as they called it, authorized them to take possession of everything as their own, it is a marvel that license and shooting did not ensue on their part; for the end had not come yet, and none of the men had come home from the army. There were only women and children and two old men in the village, and there might have been frightful scenes there.They took all Bunker gave them, but touched nothing themselves where the white owners were present. It was only on the plantations, where the owners were absent, that, on his persuasion, they pitched in and “stributed” the contents of the houses. That darky word for it is good, for each one took what he selected as fast as he could till there was nothing left.
The next day Mr. Pringle rode up with a note from his mother, asking us to go down and stay with her at the White House, their plantation, twelve miles south of Plantersville, on the Pee Dee River,—that is, the Pee Dee ran in front of the house, and the Black River half a mile away at the back. Mamma accepted the invitation with much pleasure. Mrs. Pringle and her husband and Mary had been in Europe when the war broke out. The sons, Julius, Poinsett, and Lynch, were at Heidelberg University. The young men at once left, ran the blockade, and entered the Confederate service. Mr. and Mrs. Pringle and Mary remained in Italy. Mr. Pringle died and was buried in the beautiful cemetery in Rome in 1863, and the next spring Mrs. Pringle and Mary came to America, and stayed with Fanny Butler (daughter of Fanny Kemble), at Butler Place, outside ofPhiladelphia, until they were able to slip through the lines and get into Virginia, only to find the darling of them all, Poinsett, had been recently killed in battle. It was too awful for them. They stayed where they could occasionally see the other two boys, until this winter, when they made their way down to the plantation, to remain there.
I had never been to the White House before, though I had always heard of it as very beautiful; a picturesque, rambling house with three gables, set facing the river about 200 yards away, in a most beautiful garden, which had been planted by Mr. Poinsett, who was a specialist on gardens, a botanist. The White House was even more beautiful than I had imagined. As soon as you left the road you entered on a lane bordered on each side with most luxuriant climbing roses, now in riotous bloom, long garlands of white roses swaying in the breeze, high up, and quarrelling for supremacy with long garlands of pink roses. This lane took you direct to the Pee Dee River, where you made a sharp turn and drove along the avenue of live oaks just on the edge of the river, which had here a sand beach like the seashore. The effect was delightful; on the left the river, only a few feet away, onthe right a green lawn, until you came to the vegetable-garden. A picture garden! All the vegetables sedately in straight rows, and having nothing to do with each other. The French artichokes standing in stately stiff rows, not so much as glancing at the waving asparagus bed, nor the rows of pale-green mammoth roses, which turn out to be heads of lettuce. I had never seen a vegetable-garden which was ornamental before. While I was taking it in we entered the flower-garden, with a wilderness of roses, azaleas, camellias, and other beautiful shrubs and plants.
Mamma and Mrs. Pringle were rejoiced to see each other, but it was sad, for both had suffered much sorrow since their last meeting. Papa had been taken from us and Mrs. Pringle had lost both her husband and beautiful son, so it was a long time before they could become composed. That evening, however, they made up, for there was so much to be told. First of all, Mrs. Pringle told mamma that the government had ordered that all property belonging to Mrs. Allston, the sister of James L. Petigru, should be protected from all damage. This seemed to impress Mrs. Pringle very much, but mamma did not seem to attach much importance to it. She said she did notthink it was at all to be depended on, that she must go to Georgetown and get the commanding officer there to send a detachment of men to take from the negroes the keys of the barns at each plantation, where the large crops made were locked up. These keys they had given to the negroes, and mamma could get no corn for the horses nor provisions for herself, and they must restore the keys to her. Mrs. Pringle said it would be quite useless for her to ask anything until she took the oath of allegiance to the United States, that she had wanted something done and their reply was until she took the oath of allegiance no request could be considered; that she had declined to do so at the time, but now felt it must be done. So it was arranged that mamma would take Mrs. Pringle down in her carriage to Georgetown the next day to take the oath, while I should remain with Mary and her brothers at the White House.
Oh, what a white day that stands out in my memory! I was embroidering a waist in black silk, to make a Russian blouse out of the everlasting purple calico we were all wearing. As I sewed in a big chair in the beautiful library, filled with most delightful books, exquisite engravingson the walls and marble busts around the room, Mr. Pringle read aloud to me. He picked up the first book his hand came upon,—I think it was “Eugene Aram.” But the book was nothing; it was his voice, so beautifully modulated, and his presence, safe back from the awful danger, and in his own beautiful home. It cast a spell over me; and long afterward he told me he had no idea of what he was reading; nothing of it entered his mind; it was the simple fact of having me sitting there in his own home, sewing as if I belonged there, that intoxicated him, so that he was afraid to speak, and so took refuge in reading! So there we were, a pair of idiots, in a fool’s paradise, some might think, but such moments are immortal. Soul speaks to soul, though no voice be heard.
THAT evening reality returned heavily when the two mothers, widows and managers of large estates and property, returned. The day had been very trying. The oath was taken as the first thing, they having made up their minds to take it at once. Then mamma asked the colonel to send a guard or a single soldier to take back the keys which they had given to the negroes and give them to her, the rightful owner of the foodstuffs in the barns. He said quite nonchalantly that she could take the keys; it was not at all necessary for him to send a guard; he would give her a written order. She remonstrated with him, saying she believed in authority, and as an officer had delivered the key to the negroes, taking it from the overseer, a white man who was in charge of the plantation, she thought it was absolutely necessary that an official or a man wearing the United States uniform should take the keys from the negroes and deliver them to her; that, without that, there was an opening for dispute and contention and disrespect. The colonel saidshortly he did not agree with her. She then asked about the order from Washington as to the protection of her property. Yes, he said that he had received such an order, but they knew of nothing to which it would apply. He wrote an order for the negroes to deliver the keys to her, and the interview was ended. She had some business of a different nature which she attended to in Georgetown, and then they drove back to the White House, very tired and very indignant at the want of courtesy, and desire to facilitate the return of things to a possible working order. The negroes were free—no one had a word to say on that score—but they were not owners of the land, and in order for things to assume a condition when the land could be planted, or, rather, prepared for planting, in the new order of things, the negroes would look to the officers for the tone they were expected to assume to their former owners. But it was evident these men absolutely refused to back up the white people in any way. The talk that evening was not cheering, to say the least.
Mrs. Pringle told us, after the Georgetown matter had been fully discussed, of her experience with the man, Bunker, who had led the negroes to Plantersville and behaved so outrageouslythere, after turning over all the houses on the river, Chicora Wood included, to the negroes, to distribute all the contents among themselves. It was two days afterward that he came down to the White House, followed by an immense throng of negroes, and demanded wine and money. Mrs. Pringle, who was as bold as a lion and very clever, tall, stout, and of commanding presence, with the face of a man, met them on the piazza and refused to let them enter the house. Bunker had been drinking heavily and also some of the negroes. She spoke with authority, and said she knew the United States Government would not sanction the seizure of her things by a drunken mob, even though one man, the leader, had on the United States uniform; and the army regulations were severe against intoxication. She was a Northern woman herself and knew all about it, and had friends in the government and the army at that moment. Bunker was a little dashed, but very angry at being talked to in that haughty manner before his followers, and things looked ugly for a moment, so that Mary, who was standing behind her mother, began to cry, and, Bunker’s attention being diverted to her, he began to try to console her. She was a very beautiful girl. He brought forward some of the things he had stolen from the Plantersville people and presented them to her—silver pitchers, etc. Mary indignantly pushed them away, but her mother bent down and said: “Take them; you can restore them to the owner.” So Mary let him bring them into the piazza and present them to her, but when he began to try to console her by complimentary speeches and admiring looks, she dropped her full length on the piazza in a dead faint! Mrs. Pringle took her by the feet and dragged her in through the hall to the dining-room, and, locking the door, put the key in her pocket, and returned to the mob; but they had vanished away, leaving rapidly and quietly. They, no doubt, thought Mary was dead; those kind of people do not faint, and to see her brilliant, radiant color suddenly turn to deadly white and her mother drag her limp body away like that sobered them. In the meantime the man whom they trusted as house-servant had busied himself getting out—the keys being in the basket in the drawing-room—all the wine and liquor there was in the house. He packed it up, and took it out of the back door to a cart which he had there, and went off with the party. He was never seen by them again. When they had all gone, Mrs.Pringle unlocked the door, and used restoratives, and finally succeeded in bringing Mary to life, but she was terribly weak and ill for some days. Mrs. Pringle reviled Mary for being such a weakling and failing her at a critical moment, but we all felt and she knew that Mary had really saved the day, diverting the unsteady mind of Bunker from his original intention of plunder, first her tears and then her faint had converted his rage first to pity and then to fright.
The next morning mamma and I left the hospitable, beautiful White House after breakfast and drove to Nightingale Hall, about two miles away. Here the negroes had been specially turbulent. The overseer there, Mr. Sweat, was a very good, quiet man, and had been liked by all the negroes, but in the intoxication of freedom their first exercise of it was to tell Mr. Sweat if he left the house they would kill him, and they put a negro armed with a shotgun to guard the house and see that he did not leave alive. Mr. Sweat seems to have been something of a philosopher, for he assured them he had no intention of leaving, and settled himself quite cheerfully to pass the time of his imprisonment. The key of the barns having been given to the negroes, he kept a little journal of allthey did. From his window he watched them take supplies from the barns, corn and rice, using the baskets which were always used in measuring grain, open baskets made to hold a bushel, which is thirty-two quarts. In this way, as he knew exactly what was in the barns, having superintended the planting, harvesting, and threshing of the grains, he could tell just how much was left. He had written all of this to my mother, getting a friendly negro who cooked for him to take charge of the letter.
When we drove in the yard the negroes soon assembled in great numbers. Mamma had not seen them at all yet. She talked with the foreman, Mack, very pleasantly from the seat in the carriage, asking after all the old people on the place, and his family, etc. Then, finally, she said:
“And now, Mack, I want the keys to the barn.”
He said: “De officer giv me de key, ma’am, en I kyant gie um to yu.”
She drew from her silk reticule the order, and said: “I have here the officer’s order to you to give the key to me.”
He took the paper and looked at it, but there rose a sullen murmur from the crowd, and a young man who had stood a little way off, balancing asharp stone in his hand and aiming it at mamma from time to time, now came nearer and leaned on the wheel of the carriage. Mamma thought he wanted to intimidate her, and so she stepped out of the carriage into the very midst of them. I motioned to follow, but she said in a low tone, as she shut the door, “Stay where you are,” and I obeyed.
The foreman said: “How we gwine eat ef we gie yu de key? We haf fu hab bittle.”
Mamma answered: “Mack, you know that every man, woman, and child on this place has full ration for a year! You know, for you measured it and gave it out yourself. If anything should be wanted, I will come down and give it out myself.”
At that the young man, still balancing the stone, laughed, and all followed in a great shout, and he said: “Yu kyant do dat, dat de man wuk. Yu kyan do um, en we’ll starve.”
But mamma held her ground, and walking up and down among them, speaking to each one by name, asking after their children and babies, all by name. Gradually the tension relaxed, and after a long time, it seemed to me ages, in which she showed no irritation, no impatience, onlyfriendly interest, no sense that they could possibly be enemies, Mack gave her the keys without any interference from the others, and we left. She did not think it wise to go to the barn to look at the crops. Having gained her point, she thought it best to leave. We were both terribly exhausted when we got home, and enjoyed a good night’s rest in our own very original-looking log house in Plantersville, which Charley had succeeded in getting made clean and comfortable for us.
The next morning, after breakfast, we started to Chicora Wood to get the keys there. Mamma did not take Charley, for he was very weak from his illness, and having made the trip down before he was strong enough. Besides that, in the condition of the country, the negroes were apt to be more irritated by the presence of a returned soldier than with ladies only. Besides which, it was a very mortifying position for a man, whose impulse, under insolence or refusal to do the right thing, was naturally to resent it, and, being perfectly powerless, not having taken the oath, he was not even recognized as a citizen, and had no rights and would have no support from the law. Therefore, it was certainly the part of wisdom toleave him behind, though I did not fully understand it at the time. We did not have much trouble at Chicora. Daddy Primus had been the man to whom the keys were given, and he was a very superior, good old man. He had been head carpenter ever since Daddy Thomas’s death. He took mamma into each barn and showed her the splendid crops, and as he locked the door to each, she just held out her hand for it, and he placed the key to that barn in her hands without question. And here the people seemed glad to see her and to see me, and we walked about over the place and talked with every one.
We looked at the house; it was a wreck,—the front steps gone, not a door nor shutter left, and not a sash. They had torn out all the mahogany framework around the doors and windows—there were mahogany panels below the windows and above the doors there were panels painted—the mahogany banisters to the staircase going upstairs; everything that could be torn away was gone. The pantry steps being there, we went into the house, went all through, even into the attic. Then the big tank for the supply of the water-works, which was lined with zinc, had been torn to pieces, and the bathroom below entirelytorn up. It was a scene of destruction, and papa’s study, where he kept all his accounts and papers, as he had done from the time he began planting as a young man, was almost waist-deep in torn letters and papers. Poor things, they were looking, I suppose, for money or treasure of some kind in all those bundles of letters and papers most methodically and carefully tied up with red tape, each packet of accounts having a wooden slat, with the date and subject of account upon it. We looked through every corner, and then went out on the piazza and sat down and ate the lunch we had brought. It is wonderful to me, as I look back, that we were so cheerful; but we were, and after a good lunch with some hard-boiled eggs Maum Mary brought us, we got into the carriage and drove home to the dear, peaceful log house.
The next morning we started early in the carriage for Guendalos, mamma and I, driven by Daddy Aleck. This plantation belonged to my elder brother, Colonel Ben Allston, who had been in the army since the beginning of the war, never having been home at all. There had been no white man on the place, and we heard the negroes were most turbulent and excited. As we neared theplace the road was lined on either side by angry, sullen black faces; instead of the pleasant smile and courtesy or bow to which we were accustomed, not a sign of recognition or welcome, only an ominous silence. As the carriage passed on they formed an irregular line and followed.
This would be a test case, as it were. If the keys were given up, it would mean that the former owners still had some rights. We drove into the barnyard and stopped in front of the barn. Several hundred negroes were there, and as they had done the day before, they crowded closer and closer around the carriage, and mamma got out into the midst of them, as she had done at Nightingale. She called for the head man and told him she wished to see the crop, and he cleared the way before us to the rice barn and then to the corn barn. Mamma complimented him on the crops. As she was about to leave the corn barn a woman stretched her arms across the wide door so as to hold up the passageway. Mamma said, “Sukey, let me pass,” but Sukey did not budge. Then mamma turned to Jacob. “This woman has lost her hearing; you must make her move from the doorway.” Very gently Jacob pushed her aside and we went out and Jacob locked the door.Then mamma said: “And now, Jacob, I want the keys.” “No, ma’am, I kyant gie yu de key. De officer gen me de key, en I kyant gie um to nobody but de officer.”
“I have the officer’s written order to you to give me the keys—here it is”—and she drew from her reticule the paper and handed it to Jacob. He examined it carefully and returned it to her, and proceeded slowly to draw the keys from his pocket and was about to hand them to mamma, when a young man who had stood near, with a threatening expression sprang forward and shouted, “Ef yu gie up de key, blood’ll flow,” shaking his fist at Jacob. Then the crowd took up the shout, “Yes, blood’ll flow for true,” and a deafening clamor followed. Jacob returned the keys to the depths of his pocket. The crowd, yelling, talking, gesticulating, pressed closer and closer upon us, until there was scarcely room to stand. Daddy Aleck had followed with the carriage as closely as the crowd would allow without trampling some one, and now said to mamma: “Miss, yu better git een de carriage.” Mamma answered by saying: “Aleck, go and bring Mas’ Charles here.”
Most reluctantly the old man obeyed, and droveoff, leaving us alone in the midst of this raging crowd. I must say my heart sank as I saw the carriage with the faithful old man disappear down the avenue—for there was no white person within five miles and in this crowd there was certainly not one friendly negro. Jacob, the head man, was the most so, but evidently he was in great fear of the others and incapable of showing his good feeling openly. I knew that Daddy Aleck would have to drive five miles to find Charley and then back, and that must consume a great deal of time.
The crowd continued to clamor and yell, first one thing and then another, but the predominant cry was: “Go for de officer—fetch de Yankee.” Mamma said: “By all means bring the officer; I wish to see him quite as much as you do.”
The much-desired and talked-of officer was fourteen miles away. In the midst of the uproar a new man came running and shouting out that the officers were at a plantation three miles away, so six men started at a run to fetch him. Mamma and I walked slowly down the avenue to the public road, with a yelling mob of men, women, and children around us. They sang sometimes in unison, sometimes in parts, strange words which wedid not understand, followed by a much-repeated chorus:
“I free, I free!I free as a frog!I free till I fool!Glory Alleluia!”
“I free, I free!I free as a frog!I free till I fool!Glory Alleluia!”
“I free, I free!I free as a frog!I free till I fool!Glory Alleluia!”
They revolved around us, holding out their skirts and dancing—now with slow, swinging movements, now with rapid jig-motions, but always with weird chant and wild gestures. When the men sent for the officer reached the gate they turned and shouted, “Don’t let no white man een dat gate,” which was answered by many voices, “No, no, we won’t let no white pusson een, we’ll chop um down wid hoe—we’ll chop um to pieces sho”—and they brandished their large, sharp, gleaming rice-field hoes, which looked most formidable weapons truly. Those who had not hoes were armed with pitchforks and hickory sticks, and some had guns.
It was a strange situation: Two women, one fifty, the other eighteen, pacing up and down the road between two dense hedges of angry blacks, while a little way off in the woods was a company of men, drawn up in something like military order—guns held behind them—solemn, silent, gloomy, a contrast to the noisy mob around us.There we paced for hours while the autumn day wore on.
In the afternoon Daddy Aleck returned without Charley, having failed to find him. It was a great relief to me, for though I have been often laughed at for the opinion, I hold that there is a certain kind of chivalry in the negroes—they wanted blood, they wanted to kill some one, but they couldn’t make up their minds to kill two defenseless ladies; but if Charley had been found and brought, I firmly believe it would have kindled the flame. When the carriage came, I said to mamma in a low tone: “Let us go now.”
She answered with emphasis, but equally low, “Say not one word about going; we must stay until the officers come”—so we paced on, listening to blasphemous mutterings and threats, but appearing not to hear at all—for we talked together as we walked about the autumn flowers and red berries, and the brilliant skies, just as though we had been on our own piazza. I heard the little children say to each other: “Luk a dem buckra ’oman, ain’t ’fraid.”
The sun sank in a blaze of glory, and I began to wonder if we would spend the night there, when there was a cry, “Dey comin’!” We thought itwas the officers, and how I did wish they could come and see us there, but it turned out to be four of the runners, who had returned, saying they had not found the officers, and that Jacob and one of the men had gone on to Georgetown to see them. Then we got into the carriage and drove home. We were hungry and exhausted, having tasted no morsel of food or drop of water through the long day. We went to bed in our log castle, which had no lock of any kind on the door, and slept soundly.
In the early dawn of the next morning there was a knock at the door, and before we could reach the hallway the door was opened, and a black hand thrust through, with the keys. No word was spoken—it was Jacob; he gave them in silence, and mamma received them with the same solemnity.
The bloodless battle had been won.
During the war there was great demand for horses, which increased as the time went on. My father always raised a few horses, and at this time there was a gray stallion (part Arab), just four years old, that my father had given to me thewinter before he died; there were also several other horses, saddle and draft. After my father’s death, my mother, in the summer of 1864, made an arrangement with some friends in the Cavalry Service, C. S. A., Butler’s Command, to take and use our horses, with the promise that any that survived should be returned to us after the war.
One of the horses was killed under Edward L. Wells, of the Charleston Light Dragoons, as Butler’s Scouts were leaving Cheraw, S. C., by a Parrot shell that passed through him, going in at the tail and coming out of the chest, did not explode, and left Wells uninjured.
My gray stallion was ridden by Julius Pringle all through Virginia, wherever Butler’s Cavalry went, and returned safe and sound. The other two horses, a gray gelding and a bay filly, were alive at the time of the surrender, and Julius Pringle turned them over to a young negro of ours, who had been sent along with the horses, in charge of them (Sam Galant) somewhere in Virginia, and told him to make his way back home, and to get away before the actual surrender. The lad was of a family who had been long in our service, family servants for generations; his father had been my father’s body-servant for years, andthen been succeeded in that office by one of his sons, and Sam had grown up with me. My father had sent him to Charleston to be instructed in music by Mr. Dauer, a German, with three others, and he played the violin very well. This boy had no money that we knew of, food was scarce, straggling marauders many, the horses in pretty poor shape, yet he managed to work his way with two horses through the country, and arrive at Crowley Hill safe, but nearly starved, both he and the horses, specially the gray. I asked him afterward how he managed it; he said he seldom moved during the day, but got out of the way as much as possible, and let the horses eat grass; then at night he travelled, but was careful to avoid all other travellers, and also all camp-fires. He must have done some very adroit foraging, also, or he would surely have starved. Horses were specially valuable then, and we were glad to see these two return.
After things settled down somewhat, in May, 1865, I think, my mother decided that she would have to go to the plantation home in Georgetown County to look after affairs there, and try to restore order. A deserter from the fleet off the coast had gone through all the plantations nearGeorgetown, and incited the negroes to plunder and rob in every direction, and had caused much trouble and demoralization. Several fine dwellings had been completely destroyed, and all of them robbed of every movable article. My mother and one of my sisters started in the carriage, with a pair of horses driven by old Aleck—I rode along on horseback—Julius Pringle, also on horseback, joined us. There was practically no law in the land, but the influence of established authority in the past kept a very fair semblance of order. We had a journey of over ninety miles ahead of us, roads and everything uncertain, but we made the trip safely and with little incident, and arrived safely at Plantersville, which was a collection of houses built irregularly in the pineland, as summer homes for the rice-planters along the rivers, who had to leave the comfortable plantation homes in May and go to the rough pineland houses until November, on account of malaria fever. Our summer house was on the sea, and could not be occupied at all during the war, so my father had built by his carpenters in this settlement a large log house, on lightwood pillars ten feet high, to escape damp, and put on it a double roof of cypress shingles, in which therewas not a single metal nail; they were securely fastened on with wooden pins. (Up to the year 1900 this roof did not have to be renewed.) To this log house my mother, sister, and myself were to go.
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After a while we had to set to work to gather in some of the furniture which the negroes had carried off and hidden, for we had not enough to get along with; my mother, having taken the oath as soon as she returned to the low country, some time before, applied to the military authorities, and a corporal and three men were detailed to assist in recovering what we could find.... There were some wild and weird scenes enacted. The nigs had been told that everything would belong to them; that the government would punish the whites for the war, by taking their property and dividing it among the nigs, giving forty acres to each head of family, etc. So when we arrived, backed by soldiers, to take from them what they had collected of our belongings, they were much taken aback, and some of them were inclined to resist. However, we gathered up enough furniture and stuff to get along comfortably.
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Then came the agreements as to planting; what portion of the crop they should have in payment of their labor, and what portion we, the owners of the land, should have; here again the military had to be called in. One lieutenant, who was trying to argue with a violent gang, finally turned to my mother and said, with a most troubled face: “Mrs. Allston, I think I would rather have white help.” He could do nothing with them, and a man of sterner mould had to come another day and make the contract with that gang.
But in Plantersville we young folk took every opportunity possible to have a dance or some frolic at night. It was certainly most wholesome to have some diversion from the serious problems of the day.
Log Castle, Plantersville, July 10th, 1865.
IT seems too wonderful to be at home again in my own dear low country after being refugees so long. It is a delight to be alive, and know most of those we love are alive too after the terrible sufferings and anxieties of the War. We miss Papa more and more every day; it seems impossible it should be only a year and three months since he died, it seems years and years. Poor Mamma, who was perfectly unaccustomed to business, has had every thing upon her, and it is a perfect wonder to see her rise to each emergency as it comes. Yesterday she called Daddy Aleck and told him she had not the money to pay his wages and he would have to find another place.
He was very indignant. “Miss, I don’ want no wagis! Aint I wuk fu yu sence I bin man grown, aint my fadder wuk fu Maussa fadder! En my grandfadder de same! Aint yu feed me on de bes’! An’ clothes me in de bes’. Aint I drive yo’, de Guvna’s lady all de time Maussa binGuv’na, en now yu tink I gwine lef’ yu, en lef’ de hosses. ’Tis true I got but a po’ pair, jes’ wat dem Yankee lef’, but I kin manige wid dem, en I wont lef’ dem en yu to dat triflin niggah boy, no ma’am, not Aleck Pa’ka, e aint mean enuf fu dat!”
It was a distressing scene. Mamma was much moved, but she was firm, and when Daddy Aleck realized that she would not be persuaded, the tears rolled down his shiny black face and I, in my corner pretending to write, ignominiously sobbed. When Daddy Aleck had gone, I remonstrated with Mamma. I did not see how we could get on without the old man, and he did not want to go, he would be content to stay if he had his food and clothes as usual, and I thought it was cruel.
Mamma said, “Child, you don’t understand; Aleck really wants to stay now, but I have no right to keep him. He is a valuable groom and hostler, can manage and drive any horses, and he can easily get a good place in Georgetown, whereas I could not only not pay him, but I could not possibly feed him as he has been accustomed to be fed, sugar and coffee and tea and all the meat he wanted. We barely have what will keep the household, and a very little coffee and tea. Asto clothing him, that means a heavy outlay and is out of the question.”
As I still argued, she said, “My dear Bessie, why make things harder for me? Try and trust to my desire to do the best I can under great trial and strain.” Of course, I was ashamed of my self, and tried to say so; but I am a stubborn brute and find it hard to say I’m sorry even when I am.
Aug. 1st.My days are so happy. I cut and contrive new garments out of old, and sew and dream as I sew. Brother’s wife, Ellen, is very pretty and very sweet, but very ill, it seems to me. She cannot walk or do anything but lie still and read and talk; this last she is always ready to do, and while I rub her, as I do twice a day to try and give some strength to her limbs, she talks most entertainingly. She has been a great belle and was engaged to three other men when she married Brother. She was surprised when she first told me and I appeared shocked. It seems, in Texas, it is thought nothing of, but I solemnly advised her not to mention it here, at which she laughed heartily. Afterwards, I could not help laughing myself, for Brother has had rather a varied career in the way of engagements, but I did not tell her this.
I have been crazy to have some low necked waists to wear in the late afternoon and evenings. I always used to dress for the evenings, and I am so tired of these everlasting calico frocks which we are all wearing. Papa was lucky enough to get a piece of purple calico two years ago, which ran the Blockade. We were enchanted, it was rather a pretty pattern, purple stripes on a white ground and a little flower in each stripe. We were much in need of frocks so Mamma had made for us each two dresses and she had two herself. From that day we have been in uniform. I cut my waist myself so as to have it different. I made a Russian blouse and embroidered the shoulder straps and sleeves and belt in black, but, alas, the difference is only waist deep. The rest is just like the other eight! Two weeks ago I had a brilliant idea. Della’s bedroom curtains were pink and white chintz and were lined with pink paper cambric. The sun has faded the linings hopelessly into every shade of yellow and brown, in some places almost white. That gave me the thought that if I bleached those linings, I might have some white material to make into waists, so I went to the plantation and consulted Maum Milly. She looked at the stuff and thought itcould be done. Told me how to wash it first, then let it lie in cold water a day or so, then spread it on the grass and leave it for the sun and dew to bleach, and she thought, in two or three weeks, it would be white. She has always been our laundress, but now of course we cannot pay her and have just a little girl her granddaughter doing the washing. After having given me all the directions of what to tell the “gal” to do, I said I would not think of trusting it to Clarissa. I was going to do it myself. Then Maum Milly’s heart relented and she said, “Chile, yu kyant do um proper. Gim me dat cloth, I’ll do um fu yu.” So now I know if it can be done, it will be.
Aug. 10th.Maum Milly brought my white stuff, looking like a fine piece of muslin, and I have made two lovely low necked baby waists. They are too sweet, gathered very full and little short sleeves also gathered full, and around the neck and sleeves I have put the beautiful valenciennes lace Mamma gave me, and they are things of beauty. No one would ever dream they were evolved from faded pink paper cambric curtain linings. Mrs. Pringle and Mary, who are very critical, having lived much in the great world, admired my waist very much last night whenthey had a little dance at their house. I was careful not to tell its history.
They are such an addition to this little village for, though in deep grief for the loss of Poinsett who was killed at Haw’s Ship, Mrs. Pringle is so thankful to have her other two sons alive and with her that, though he was the darling of her heart, she keeps herself and her house as cheerful as possible, and does all she can to make the village brighter. Most people think it proper to be very gloomy. Of course, it is hard, all the people who were rich are now very poor but there is no good being gloomy over it. So Mrs. Pringle gives little dances now and then, and they are delightful. Then we have riding parties. Dear old Daddy Aleck saved two of our side saddles for us. I am so glad mine was one.
Thanks to Sam for bringing home the horse and Daddy Aleck for the saddle, I am able to ride; and, as every body is afraid of tête-a-têtes, we go in parties, four girls and four men, all riding together. I say afraid of tête-a-têtes because the War is still so very near, and it is hard to keep to surface talk, and it is awfully dangerous to go below, for we are all paupers.
Mamma has gone to Charleston to see if she canarrange to have our house repaired. Three shells went through the roof and it is impossible to live in it until it is thoroughly repaired. I do hope she will succeed, but she has not a cent of money, and nowhere to borrow any. It does seem desperate, but I must remember when Papa was dying and Mamma in despair said, “What shall we do without you?” He answered steadily, in spite of his gasping breath, “The Lord will provide.” And we have been marvellously helped and guided.
Aug. 25th.A letter from Mamma today has upset me completely. She has been very successful in getting the house repaired. A contractor who knew her well and had worked for Papa and done up the house the last time, undertook to do all the work without any payment now; but, when he has finished, Mamma will give him her note promising to pay as soon as she can. This has lifted a great load, but the tremendous announcement is that she has determined to open a boarding and day school, and she expects meto teach! The minute I read the letter I wrote, “Mamma, I cannot teach. Don’t ask me to do it. I just hate the thought. Besides, I don’t know enough of any one thing to teach it. I cannot, indeed, I cannot.” Now that I have sent the letter I amawfully ashamed, and when we were riding this afternoon, we fell a little behind the others and I told Mr. P. He seemed so shocked and surprised. Altogether I am miserable. Am I really just a butterfly? Is my love of pleasure the strongest thing about me? What an awful thought. I try to pray, but I don’t want to pray. I just do want to be for a while like a flower in the sun. I want to open and feel the glow and the beauty and the joy of existing, even if I know I have to wither and die sometime. Flowers don’t think of that, they just rejoice in the life God has made so beautiful for them, and I do believe He likes that. Oh dear, how I wish I was good or dead, one or the other. Now I must go and rub my pretty sweet sister-in-law, and try to forget how wicked I am.
Sept. 1st.A letter from Mamma in answer to my protest that I could not teach. “My dear Bessie, your letter was a great surprise. It would be a serious disappointment if all the money your Father so gladly spent on your education has been wasted. However, I think you do yourself an injustice. At any rate, you will come down for the opening of the school and we will see.”
That is all, no reproaches for my petulance andmiserable selfishness. But I notice she does not confide her plans to me any more, and that hurts more than bitter words. “Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this Death.” I don’t believe I have quoted it right, but that meansself. Mr. Glennie in our Bible lesson once told us that in some Eastern country the punishment for a murderer was to bind the body of his victim with chains on his back, and he must wander ever with this putrifying result of his crime, until it crumbled away. What an awful punishment, and how suitable. Mr. Glennie did not tell us it meant one’s own wretched self in that cry, but I know it does by my own experience. One is never free from that burden self. Happy those, I suppose, in whom it perishes by disintegration before they get old. Alas, alas, in some it seems well nigh indestructible!
Sept. 3rd.We cannot have any service in the dear little old log church, for Mr. Trapier will not pray for the President of the United States, and so we have not the pleasure and comfort of church.
Mr. P. comes every day and reads aloud to me. It is really unique. I sit inside the window and sew on my ingenious remakings of old things and he sits outside the window and reads, “Heknew He was Right.” It is perfectly delightful for me, it is so much easier than talking. People are so disagreeable, the village is all saying we are engaged. I know he is hearing it all the time, as I am, and it is so awkward for both. I thought it would be easier if I referred lightly to it, so this morning, sewing very fast, pricking my first finger brutally, I said, “Last evening I was walking in the village and heard something so absurdly ridiculous.” I got no farther, for in a solemn, hurt voice, from across the window sill, there came, “I’m sorry it seemed so ridiculous to you. It did not seem so to me.” Then I took refuge in immoderate laughter, after which I said, “Please go on with the book.” But I felt I had been defeated in my effort to make things more comfortable.
Sept. 15th.The wild flowers are so beautiful all through the woods. I do not walk in the village now, people are so trying. I go out into the swamp behind the house every afternoon. There are great tiger lilies and the gorgeous Cardinal Flower, I call it scarlet lobelia. In the up country where we have been for four years, I never saw these flowers. Then the ferns and the lovely little partridge berry vine. This is called thelover’s vine sometimes, because there are two lovely sweet little white flowers, with the delicate perfume of the orange blossom, and when they drop there is formed only one scarlet berry, but it has two little eyes. It grows along the ground. Its dark green, regularly placed leaves and bright berries are too pretty. I mean to take some up and plant it in a box to take to Charleston with me, to remind me of this dear darling country.
Riding two afternoons ago, we were galloping along four abreast, as if for a charge, when Dot shied from a snake alongside the road, and my saddle turned completely under her, and I found myself under my neighbour’s horse! He was so frightened and so was every one else that they all seemed indignant at my laughing. It seemed unsuitable to the situation, but it really was too funny, I seated in the middle of the road under Mr. P.’s horse, whose name is Trovatore and who behaved beautifully and did not trample me or hurt me at all. Everyone was pale and clamorous for restoratives, which I did not in the least need. My saddle was put back and secured and we had a very silent ride home in spite of my efforts to talk.
Sept. 26th.Every one said my delightful solitary strolls in the swamp would end in fever, and every one is happy now for they were right and I have been laid low for a week. As there was no one here to take care of me, Ellen requiring great care herself, Mrs. Pringle, who adds to her other great qualities that of being a competent nurse, has been coming over every day to take care of me. It is delightful, for she is so clever and (for the moment) so sympathetic that I positively enjoy the state of things except when I am actually burning up with fever. Dr. Dan Tucker is attending me, and is a delightful Doctor. I was burning up with thirst, my fever so high and the practice of the country is to give water by the teaspoonful in fever. To my delight and the surprise of the inhabitants, especially that revered personage, the oldest, the Doctor, ordered a pail of water brought fresh from the spring and put by my bedside with a dear little gourd dipper, and told me to drink all I wanted! It was so clever of him, for it is so much to satisfy the eye and the imagination. I really do not drink so much, but I feel refreshed and satisfied by its presence and the fact that I can have all I want. I am sitting up today and so bored by the absence of Mrs.