CHAPTER LXVIII.

POLITICS AND FREE LABOR IN GEORGIA.

At Milledgeville,—a mere village (of twenty-five hundred inhabitants before the war), surrounded by a beautiful hilly and wooded country,—I saw something of the Georgia State Legislature. It was at work on a cumbersome and rather useless freedmen’s code, which, however, contained no very objectionable features. In intelligence and political views this body represented the State very fairly. I was told that its members, like the inhabitants of the State at large, were, with scarce an exception, believers in the right of secession. The only questions that ever divided them on that subject, were not as to the right, but as to the policy; and whether the State should secede separately, or coöperate with the other seceding States.

Since the Rebel State debt had been repudiated, there existed a feeling among both legislators and people that all debts, public and private, ought to be wiped out with it. I remember well the argument of a gentleman of Morgan County. “Two thirds of the people in this county are left hopelessly involved by the loss of the war debt. There is a law to imprison a man for paying what the act of the convention takes from him the power of paying. The more loyal portion of our citizens would not invest in Confederate scrip, but put their money into State bonds, which they thought safe from repudiation. A large number of debts are for negro property. Now, since slavery is abolished, all debts growing out of slavery ought to be abolished. Four or five men in this county,” he added, “have the power to ruin over thirty families, whose obligations they bought up with Confederate money. As that money turns out to have never been legally good for anything, all such obligations should be cancelled.”

Throughout the State I heard the bitterest complaints against the Davis despotism. “There was first a tax of ten per cent. levied on all our produce; then of twelve per cent. on all property. Worse still, our property was seized at the will of the government, and scrip given in exchange, which was not good for taxes or anything else. There was public robbery by the government, and private robbery by the officers of the government. The Secretary of War, Seddon, had grain to sell; so he raised the price of it to forty dollars a bushel, when it should have sold for two dollars and a half. The conscript act was executed with the most criminal partiality. A man of an influential family had no difficulty in evading it. During the last year of the war, there were one hundred and twenty-two thousand young Confederates in bomb-proof situations. But an ordinary conscript was treated like a prisoner, thrown into jail, and often handcuffed.”

The value of slave property was the subject of endless debate. Said a Georgia planter: “I owned a hundred niggers; their increase paid me eight per cent., their labor four per cent.; and I’ve sixty thousand dollars’ worth of property buried in that lot,”—pointing to the plantation graveyard. The convention that reconstructed the State had not the grace to accept emancipation without inserting in the new Bill of Rights the proviso “that this acquiescence in the action of the United States Government is not intended as a relinquishment, or waiver or estoppel of such claim for compensation of loss sustained by reason of the emancipation of his slaves as any citizen of Georgia may hereafter make upon the justice and magnanimity of that government.” And there existed in most minds a growing hope that, when the Southern representatives got into Congress, measures would be carried, compelling the government not only to pay for slaves, but for all other losses occasioned by the war.

Not one of the men elected as members of Congress could take the Congressional test-oath. The mere fact that a man could take that oath was sufficient to insure his defeat.

Georgia has no common-school system. The poor, who can show that they are unable to pay for the tuition of their children, are permitted to send them to private schools on the credit of the county in which they reside. Few, however, take advantage of a privilege which involves a confession of poverty. There is great need of Northern benevolent effort to bring forward the education of the poor whites in all these States.

I found the freedmen’s schools in Georgia supported by the New-England Freedmen’s Aid Society, and the American Missionary Association. These were confined to a few localities,—principally to the large towns. There were sixty-two schools, with eighty-nine teachers, and six thousand six hundred pupils. There were in other places, self-supporting schools, taught by colored teachers, who did not report to the State Superintendent. The opposition to the freedmen’s schools, on the part of the whites, was generally bitter; and in several counties school-houses had been burned, and the teachers driven away, on the withdrawal of the troops. Occasionally, however, I would hear an intelligent planter make use of a remark like this: “The South has been guilty of the greatest inconsistency in the world, in sending missionaries to enlighten the heathen, and forbidding the education of our own servants.”

At Augusta, I visited a number of colored schools; among others, a private one kept by Mr. Baird, a colored man, in a little room where he had secretly taught thirty pupils during the war. The building, containing a store below and tenements above, was owned and occupied by persons of his own race; the children entered it by different doors, the girls with their books strapped under their skirts, the boys with theirs concealed under their coats; all finding their way in due season to the little school-room. I was shown the doors and passages by which they used to escape and disperse, at the approach of white persons.

Mr. Baird told me that during ten years previous to the War, he taught a similar school in the city of Charleston, South Carolina. The laws prohibited persons of color from teaching; and accordingly he employed a white woman to assist him. She sat and sewed, and kept watch, until the patrol looked in, when she appeared as the teacher, and the real teacher (a small man) fell back as a pupil. It was ostensibly a school for free colored children, the teaching of slaves to read being a criminal offence; yet many of those were taught.

* * * * *

On the road to Augusta, my attention was attracted by the conversation of two gentlemen, a Georgian and a Mississippian, sitting behind me in the car.

We had just passed Union Point, where there was considerable excitement about an unknown negro found lying out in the woods, sick with the small-pox. Nobody went to his relief, and the citizens, standing with hands in their pockets, allowed that, if he did not die of his disease, he would soon perish from exposure and starvation.

“The trouble is just here,” said the Georgian behind me. “The niggers have never been used to taking care of their own sick. Formerly, if anything was the matter with them, their masters had them taken care of; and now they don’t mind anything about disease, except to be afraid of it. If they’ve a sick baby, they let it die. They’re like so many children themselves, in respect to sickness.”

“How much better off they were when slaves!” said the Mississippian. “A man would see to his own niggers, like he would to his own stock. But the niggers now don’t belong to anybody, and it’s no man’s business whether they live or die.”

“I exercise the same care over _my_ niggers I always did,” replied the Georgian. “They are all with me yet. Only one ever left me. He was a good, faithful servant, but sickly. He said one day he thought he ought to have wages, and I told him if he could find anybody to do better by him than I was doing, he’d better go. He went, and took his family; and in six weeks he came back again. ‘Edward,’ I said, ‘how’s this?’ ‘I want to come and live with you again, master, like I always have,’ he said. ‘I find I ain’t strong enough to work for wages.’ ‘Edward,’ I said, ‘I am very sorry; you wanted to go, and I got another man in your place; now I have nothing for you to do, and your cabin is occupied.’ He just burst into tears. ‘I’ve lived with you all my days, master,’ he said, ‘and now I have no home!’ I couldn’t stand that. ‘Take an ax,’ I said; ‘go into the woods, cut some poles, and build you a cabin. As long as I have a home, you shall have one.’ He was the happiest man you ever saw!”

“A Yankee wouldn’t have done that,” said the Mississippian. “Yankees won’t take care of a poor white man. I’ve travelled in the North, and seen people there go barefoot in winter, with ice on the ground.”

“Indeed!” said I, turning and facing the speaker. “What State was that in?”

“In the State of New York,” he replied. “I’ve seen hundreds of poor whites barefoot there in the depth of winter.”

“That is singular,” I remarked. “I am a native of that State; I lived in it until I was twenty years old, and have travelled through it repeatedly since; and I never happened to see what you describe.”

“I have seen the same thing in Massachusetts too.”

“I have been for some years a resident of Massachusetts, and have never yet seen a man there barefoot in the snow.”

The Mississippian made no direct reply to this, but ran on in a strain of vehement and venomous abuse of the Yankees, in which he was cordially joined by his friend the Georgian. Although not addressed to me, this talk was evidently intended for my ear; but I had heard too much of the same sort everywhere in the South to be disturbed by it. At length the conversation turned upon the Freedmen’s Bureau.

“General Tillson” (Assistant Commissioner for the State) “has done a mighty mean thing!” said the Georgian. “I’ve just made contracts to pay my freedmen seventy-five and a hundred dollars a year. And now he is going to issue an order requiring us to pay them a hundred and forty-four dollars. That will ruin us. Down in South-western Georgia they can afford to pay that; but in my county the land is so poor we can’t feed our people at that rate. I’m going to Augusta now to see about it. If Tillson insists upon it, I shall throw up my contracts: I can’t do it: I’ll sell out: I won’t live in a country that’s ruled in this way.”

“From what county are you, sir?” I inquired.

“Oglethorpe; my name is C——. Are you an agent of the Bureau?”

“No, sir.” But from some remark I made, he got the impression that I was connected with it. His abuse of the Yankees ceased; and after a while he said:—

“I believe General Tillson is a very fair man; and I understand why he intends to issue such an order. To one planter who is willing to do right by the freedmen, there are five that will be unjust towards them. I wouldn’t accept the agency of the Bureau in my county, because so many contracts have been made that I couldn’t approve; and they would get me into trouble with my neighbors. One man has hired a good fair field hand, his wife, who is a good cook, his sister, a good field hand, and his daughter, a good house servant, all for a hundred dollars a year,—twenty-five dollars apiece; and he doesn’t clothe them, either. That’s a specimen. I think the Bureau ought to interfere in such cases. But it a’n’t fair to make honest men suffer for the conduct of these sharpers.”

I said I thought so too.

“Then I hope you’ll tell General Tillson so.”

“I’ll tell him so, if you wish me to.”

“And tell him you think I’m an honest man.”

“I am inclined to think you are an honest man, and I’ll tell him that too.”

“But see here: don’t mention what I said about the Yankees, will you?”

“Certainly not: that’s of no consequence.”

C—— appeared quite anxious on that point. After serious reflection, he said:—

“If you overheard me damn the Yankees, you’ll forgive me, when I tell you how they treated me. It was after the war was over, and that’s what made it hurt so. Seven of Stoneman’s men came to my house, and put a carbine to my breast, and demanded my watch. ‘You may shoot me,’ I said, ‘but you can’t have my watch.’ ‘Then give us some dinner,’ they said. I got dinner for them, and waited on them with my own hands. They paid me for my trouble by stealing seven of my horses. While I was absent from home, trying to get back my horses, some more Yankees came and robbed my house; they broke open the bureau with a chisel, and injured more than they took. You don’t blame me for cursing ’em, do you?”

“Not in the least. According to your story, they were very great rascals.”

After another interval of silence, C—— resumed:—

“Tell General Tillson I am willing to pay my laborers every dollar they’re worth: and that I treat them well. I’ve one boy that has always been with me, and is a better overseer than any white man I ever had. He looks after my interest better than I can myself, for he is younger. I trust everything in his hands,—all my keys, and sometimes money.” He could not forbear adding,—“Your fanatics at the North wouldn’t believe I treat this man so well.”

“Very likely. But it seems you have good reason for treating him well. What do you pay him?”

“I pay him two hundred dollars a year.”

“And what would you have to pay a white overseer?”

“I couldn’t get a white man to do for me what he does, for eight hundred dollars.”

“I am quite sure,” I said, “that our fanatics at the North would _not_ see your extraordinary kindness to this man in the same light you do. They would think him worth considerably more than you pay him. If he does the work of a white overseer, they would say he ought to have the salary of a white overseer. They are such an unreasonable set, they would consider six hundred dollars, the difference between his wages and a white man’s, a pretty heavy tax to pay on the color of his skin.”

C—— did not seem inclined to pursue the subject, but commenced talking in a very candid, sensible manner, of the old Southern methods.

“If the war only breaks them up, it will have done some good. Our large planters generally gave no attention to business. The men were fast and reckless; the women, helpless and luxurious. We gave so much attention to cotton and niggers we couldn’t stop to think of the comforts of life. And after all we were just working to enrich Northern capitalists. There are no millionaires amongst us. Three hundred thousand dollars is a rare and large fortune in Georgia.”

Arriving in Augusta that night, I went the next morning to call on General Tillson. In our conversation, I took early occasion to speak to him of my yesterday’s acquaintance, Mr. C——, of Oglethorpe County. “He will be here soon, and explain to you why it is that planters in Northern Georgia cannot afford to pay the twelve dollars a month you insist upon.”

“He will not be the first who has come to me on that business,” replied the clear-headed general. “I shall give him a patient hearing, and if he convinces me that I am wrong, he will do more than any have done yet. When it was white man against white man, these planters paid one hundred and fifty and two hundred dollars a year for first-class field-hands. Now they are not willing to pay the negro for his labor one half what they formerly paid his owner. When I took charge of the Bureau’s affairs in this State, last September, I found the ordinary wages to be from two to seven dollars a month,—sometimes as low as twelve bushels of corn for a year’s labor. And the planters complained that the freedman wouldn’t work for those prices. Now all I ask is that they should pay what his labor is worth in the open market. Men from Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, say it is worth fifteen dollars, and stand ready to give it. Since that is the case, to permit him to make contracts for very much less, is to permit him to be swindled. A little while ago many of these men were wishing the negroes all driven out of the State; and now they are in a great panic, because I am allowing them to go. They come to me to remonstrate against sending off any more laborers. ‘Gentlemen,’ I say, ‘if you cannot afford to pay the freedman what his services are worth, it is not his fault, but your misfortune.’

“But they _can_ afford it. Here is a careful statement of facts relating to free labor in Wilkes County, which adjoins Oglethorpe. ‘One field-hand will cultivate nine acres of cotton, on which he will raise three and a half bales, worth—say three hundred and seventy-five dollars. The same hand will also cultivate nine acres of corn, raising one hundred and eight bushels, worth one hundred and eight dollars. Total, four hundred and eighty-three dollars.

“’Expenses:—Board, fifty-two dollars. Rent of cabin, six. Fuel, six. Wages, one hundred forty-four. Total, two hundred and eight dollars.’ Deducting two hundred and eight from four hundred and eighty-three, you have a clear profit of two hundred and seventy-five dollars on each man; that, too, at the rate of wages I prescribe.

“These, understand, are the planters’ own estimates. In South-western Georgia, where the land is much richer than in this section, the most extravagant charges against the plantation show a nett income of three hundred and twenty-five dollars from the labor of a full field freedman. This estimate is from data furnished by several of the most popular and extensive planters in that region.

“Now,” added the Commissioner, “when your friend, Mr. C——, of Oglethorpe, comes to make his complaint, if he is the honest man you represent him to be, I will show him, by his own figuring, that so far from being impoverished by paying his men twelve dollars a month, he will make a handsome profit from them.”

As I went out, I found Mr. C——, of Oglethorpe, in the ante-room, waiting to see the General. He regarded me with a curious, uneasy expression, fearing no doubt lest I had reported to the Commissioner his indiscreet remarks of yesterday concerning the Yankees and the Bureau. I introduced him to General Tillson, however, in a manner that seemed to reassure him, and left them closeted together.

That evening, by appointment, I saw the General at his residence. “Well,” I asked, “how did you and my friend C—— get along?” and received from him the following statement, which he had kindly had copied for me.

“_Statement of —— —— C——, of Oglethorpe County, leading planter of that county._

“Good hands in county will work 8½ acres in cotton—2 bales $300 00

8½ acres in corn—85 bush. 85 00

————————— —————————

Gross Income, $385 00

“Expenses.

3 lbs. bacon a week, 60 cts. }

1 peck meal, 25 cts. }

Board of hand for year $44 20

Rent of Cabin 10 00

Fuel 25 00

Wages 144 00

————————— —————————

Total Expenses, $223 20

Nett Income from each hand, $161 80.”

“Here,” said General Tillson, “the profits of the labor are placed as low, and the expenses as high, as Mr. C—— could figure them, after considerable study. From the labor of a hundred freedmen, on his two plantations, he would clear, according to his own account, upwards of sixteen thousand dollars,—sufficient to cover all risks, and all other expenses of the plantation, and leave him a little fortune at the end of the year.”

Mr. C—— had repeated to General Tillson his statement to me, regarding the dishonest contracts made with the freedmen in his county. “The truth is,” said the General, “he wants to hire them himself for about half what they are worth, and he is indignant because others have hired them for less. He can really afford to pay his help twice what I demand, and then make two hundred dollars a year from the labor of each freedman. The other day some leading planters from South-western Georgia made the same complaint with regard to wages. ‘Very well,’ I said, ‘if you can’t pay twelve dollars a month, give your laborers a part of the crops.’ They thought one seventh of the cotton was more than they ought to give, declaring that the negro would get rich on that. ‘If sixty freedmen,’ I said, ‘can get rich on one seventh of a crop, the planter, I am sure, can get rich on six sevenths.’

“The trouble is, these men wish to make everything there is to be made, and leave the freedman nothing. They resort to the meanest schemes to cheat him. They tell the negroes that if they go with the agents of the Bureau to other places, the able-bodied among them will be carried off and sold into Cuba, and the women and children drowned in the Mississippi.[18]

“I have not yet sent a thousand negroes out of the State,” continued General Tillson. “But I have sent off enough to alarm the people, and raise the rate of wages. I told the planters on the coast of Georgia, that they must pay the women twelve dollars a month, and the men fifteen, or I would take the colored population out of their counties. That brought them to terms, after all their talk about wanting to get rid of the niggers.

“The freed people in most parts of the State are still so ignorant of their condition, that they are glad to make contracts to work for only their food and clothes. There are many, however, who will live vagrant lives, if permitted. It is necessary to compel such to enter into contracts.” Firmly convinced of this necessity, General Tillson had issued an order directing his agents to make contracts for all freedmen without other means of support, who should neglect to make contracts for themselves after a given time. The Commissioner at Washington disapproved the order, for what reason I cannot divine, unless it was feared that the over-zealous friends of the negro at the North might be alarmed by it. No contracts were made for the vagrant blacks under it; but its effect, in inducing them to make contracts for themselves, was immediate, wholesome, and very gratifying.

The officers of the Bureau were everywhere subject to the temptation of bribes; and I often heard planters remark that they could do anything with the Bureau they pleased, if they had plenty of money. General Tillson said, “I could make a million dollars here very shortly, if I chose to be dishonest. Only to-day I was offered a thousand dollars for one hundred freedmen, by a rich planter.” He had made it a rule of the Bureau to receive no personal fees whatever for any services.

Over three thousand dollars had been paid in fines by the people of Georgia for cruelties to the freedmen during the past three months. “It is considered no murder to kill a negro. The best men in the State admit that no jury would convict a white man for killing a freedman, or fail to hang a negro who had killed a white man in self-defence.”

The General added: “As soon as the troops were withdrawn from Wilkes County, last November, a gang of jay-hawkers went through, shooting and burning the colored people, holding their feet and hands in the fire to make them tell where their money was. It left such a stigma on the county that the more respectable class held a meeting to denounce it. This class is ashamed of such outrages, but it does not prevent them, and it does not take them to heart; and I could name a dozen cases of murder committed on the colored people by young men of these first families.”

General Tillson, by his tact, good sense, business capacity, freedom from prejudice for or against color, and his uniform candor, moderation, and justice, had secured for the Bureau the coöperation of both the State Convention and the Legislature, and was steadily winning the confidence and respect of the planters. The most serious problem that remained to be solved was the Sea-Island question, of which I shall speak hereafter.

The prospect was favorable for a good cotton crop in Georgia, although anxiety was felt with regard to the vitality of the seed, much of which, being several years old, had no doubt been injured by keeping.

Footnote 18:

Since my return from the South, I have received a letter from a gentleman of character, late an officer in the Federal army, from which I make the following extract bearing on this subject:—

“After leaving you at Grand Gulf, I rode twenty or thirty miles into the interior, but could find little inducement for a Northern man to settle in that portion of the South. The further you go from main routes, the more hostile you find the inhabitants. I finally determined to locate on or near the Mississippi, and recent experience only confirms my earlier impressions. I am now located on the river, one hundred and sixty miles below Memphis, on the Arkansas side, and am making preparations to plant one thousand acres of cotton. It has been very difficult to secure help here, and I determined to make a trip to Georgia for the purpose of obtaining the requisite number of hands. I succeeded tolerably well, and could have hired many more than I needed, had not the people induced the negroes to believe that we were taking them to Cuba to sell them. I award the palm to the Georgians, as the meanest and most despicable class of people it was ever my misfortune to meet. While they are constantly urging that the negro will not work, they use every means to dissuade him from securing honorable and profitable employment. I was never so grossly insulted as when in Georgia. They fear the powerful arm of the government, but are to-day as bitter Rebels as at any time during the war. The consequences would be most disastrous if the military force scattered through the South should be at once removed.”