Part 1

Transcriber's Note:

Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

OLD PLANTATION DAYS

OLD PLANTATION DAYS

BEING RECOLLECTIONS OF SOUTHERN LIFE BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR

BY MRS. N. B. DE SAUSSURE

NEW YORK DUFFIELD & COMPANY 1909

COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY N. B. DE SAUSSURE

THE TROW PRESS, NEW YORK

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The following reminiscences are published at the request of many friends who, after reading the manuscript, have urged that the recollections be given more permanent form and a wider circulation.

N. B. DESAUSSURE.

OLD PLANTATION DAYS

Old Plantation Days

MY DEAR GRANDDAUGHTER DOROTHY:

Grandmother is growing to be an old lady, and as you are still too young to remember all she has told you of her own and your mother's people, she is going to write down her recollections that you may thus gain a true knowledge of the old plantation days, now forever gone, from one whose life was spent amid those scenes.

The South as I knew it has disappeared; the New South has risen from its ashes, filled with the energetic spirit of a new age. You can only know the New South, but there is a generation, now passing away, which holds in loving memory the South as it used to be. Those memories are a legacy to the new generation from the old, and it behooves the old to hand them down to the new.

"The days that are no more" come crowding around me, insistent that I interpret them as I knew them; there are the happy plantation days, the recollection of which causes my heart to throb again with youthful pleasure, and near them are the days, the dreadful days, of war and fire and famine. I shrink as the memory of these draws near.

The spirit of those early days is what I chiefly desire to leave with you; the bare facts are history, but just as the days come back to my recollection I will write about them, and necessarily the record will be fitful memories woven together but imperfectly.

My father, your great-grandfather, was a direct descendant on his mother's side of Landgrave Smith, first Colonial Governor of South Carolina, his mother being Landgrave Smith's granddaughter; his grandfather was Pierre Robert, a Huguenot minister who emigrated to America, after the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and led the Huguenot colony to South Carolina.

My father was born in 1791 in the old homestead situated forty miles up the river from Savannah. He had twelve children, and I was one of the younger members of his large family. His early life was similar to the life of any present-day boy, with school days and holidays. During the holidays he enjoyed the excellent hunting and fishing which our large plantation afforded and which gave him great skill in those sports; later in life he brought up his own sons to enjoy them with him. He used to tell us, to our great entertainment, many incidents of his childhood days. When a little boy he used to drive through the country with his grandmother in a coach and four.

After he left South Carolina College he made a trip through the North on horseback, as this was before the time of railroads. It took him a month to reach Pennsylvania and New York State, and as it was in the year of 1812, he happened to ride out of Baltimore as the British rode in.

We children were always delighted when father told us of his many adventures, and the strange sights he saw during his travels. One episode always greatly shocked us, which was that of his seeing men in the public bakeries in Pennsylvania mixing bread dough with their bare feet.

After father returned home he married a cousin, Miss Robert. He had one son by this marriage, at whose birth the young mother died. This son returning from a Northern college on the first steamboat ever run between Charleston and New York, was drowned; for the vessel foundered and was lost off the coast of North Carolina.

Father's second wife was a descendant of the Mays of Virginia, who were descendants of the Earl of Stafford's younger brother. This lady was my own dear mother and your great-grandmother.

I must now tell you something about _her_ grandmother, for my mother inherited much of her wonderful character from this stalwart Revolutionary character. My great-grandmother's eldest son, at nineteen, was a captain in the Revolutionary War, and she was left alone, a widow on her plantation. When the British made a raid on her home, carrying off everything, she remained undaunted, and, mounting a horse, rode in hot haste to where the army was stationed, and asked to see the general in command. Her persistence gained admittance. She stated her case and the condition in which the British soldiers had left her home, and pleaded her cause with so much eloquence that the general ordered the spoils returned to her.

Dearest child, in the intrepid spirit of this ancestor you will find the keynote to the brave spirit of the women of the South.

This old lady, who was your great-great-great-grandmother, lived to be a hundred and six years old; her skin was like parchment and very wrinkled; she died at last from an accident. I have heard my mother say that she was a remarkable character, never idle, and her mind perfectly clear until the day of her death. At her advanced age she knitted socks for my eldest brother, a baby then, thus always finding something useful to employ her mind and her hands.

Her son, my mother's father, was one of the most generous and benevolent of men, a pioneer of Methodism in that section of the country. He had a room in his house called "the minister's room." The ministers who went from place to place preaching were called circuit riders. These ministers always stayed at his house, hence "the minister's room" was very seldom vacant, and some ministers lived with him always.

Once there was a great scarcity of corn caused by a drought. Grandfather came to the rescue of the neighborhood. He sent a raft down to Savannah, which was the nearest town, and had brought back, at his expense, two thousand bushels of corn. He then sent out word to the poor of the surrounding country to come to him for what corn they needed, making each applicant give him a note for what he received. When he had thus provided for the immediate wants of the people, he generously tore up the notes; for he had only taken them to prevent fraud.

You will naturally wish me to tell you something of my mother, your great-grandmother. She was born on March 25, 1801, and was educated at the Moravian School in North Carolina, which is still in existence. I saw a very interesting description of this school in the _Tribune_ of March, 1904.

Mother was well educated in all branches taught during her girlhood. Even after she was seventy-five years old she could repeat every rule of grammar and she always wrote with ease and correctness. This shows that what was taught in those days was taught with thoroughness, even if the studies were few and simple compared to the intricate and manifold ones of the present day. Mother was a woman of remarkable sweetness of disposition and intelligence, and had great executive ability, which latter quality was indispensable in the mistress of a large household of children and servants. She gave unceasing care and attention to her children, and personally supervised every detail of their education. Besides these duties, the negroes of the plantation, their food and clothing, care of their infants and the sick, all came under her control.

My father and mother inherited most of their negroes, and there was an attachment existing between master and mistress and their slaves which one who had never borne such a relation could never understand.

"Uncle Tom's Cabin" has set the standard in the North, and it seems useless for those who owned and loved the negroes to say there was any other method used in their management than that of strictest severity; but let me tell you that in one of my rare visits South to my own people, the old-time darkies, our former slaves, walked twenty miles to see "Miss Nancy" and her little daughter, and the latter, your dear mother, would often be surprised, when taken impulsively in their big black arms, and hugged and kissed and cried over "for ol' times' sake."

When I would inquire into their welfare and present condition I heard but one refrain, "I'd never known what it was to suffer till freedom came, and we lost our master." Yes, Dorothy dear, a lot of children unprepared to enjoy the Emancipation Proclamation were suddenly confronted with life's problems.

I have beside me a letter from a friend, now in South Africa. She says in part: "I am sure you, too, would have thought much on the many problems presented by this black people. It is perfectly appalling when one thinks that they are really human beings! Human beings without any humanity, and not the slightest suggestion that there is any vital spark on which to begin work, for apparently they have no affection for anybody or anything, and it is an insult to a good dog to compare them to animals."

Such, my dear child, is the African in his native country at the present day, the twentieth century, and such was the imported African before he was Christianized and humanized by the people of the South. In order to show you that I am not prejudiced in favor of the Southerners' treatment of their slaves I will insert a letter from Dr. Edward Lathrop, whose daughter was an old schoolmate of mine at Miss Bonney's in Philadelphia.

JULY 23, 1903.

MY DEAR MRS. DE SAUSSURE:

I will proceed to answer your inquiries. You know I am Southern born and raised. I am a Georgian, and although never a slaveholder I was nursed by a negro woman to whom I was most fondly attached, and who, I believe, loved me as she would her own son. I have had the opportunity to mingle freely with slaveholders of different characters and dispositions, and while I regard slavery as such an enormous evil and am heartily glad that it has been abolished in this country, I am bound in candor to say that my observation, during all these years of my residence in Georgia and South Carolina, thoroughly convinced me that in the majority of cases slaves were more kindly treated and brought into more intimate and kindly relations to white families than they are now, though free. This, of course, is not given as an apology for slavery, but it is a simple statement of facts. I might refer, for example, to what I witnessed and _felt_, while a guest, on more than one occasion, in the house of your honored father and mother. Your father seemed to me to be as watchful of the interests, both temporal and spiritual, of his slaves as of his own immediate white family. It was, to my mind, a beautiful illustration of patriarchal slavery, as it existed in the days of Abraham. Of course there were exceptions to this treatment of slaves by their owners, but, as a rule, so far as my observation extended, your father's methods were universally approved, while the cruel slaveholder was indignantly condemned and repudiated.

You may remember that I was for three years the associate of Rev. Dr. Fuller, then pastor of the Baptist Church in Beaufort, S. C.

Beaufort District (now county) was probably the largest slaveholding district in the State.

Most that I have stated above, as to the kindly treatment of slaves was emphatically true of Beaufort. The Baptist Church, in addition to its white membership, embraced about two thousand slaves. These slaves, as church members, enjoyed equal privileges with the whites. Dr. Fuller or myself preached to them every Sunday. The Lord's Supper was administered to them and to the whites impartially and at the same time. And any grievance that they complained of, among themselves, was as patiently listened to and adjusted as was the case with the white members. In a word, all that could be done for them, in their circumstances, was promptly and cheerfully done. I could add much more of the same tenor to what I have written, but I will not weary you with a long discourse.

Affectionately yours,

EDWARD LATHROP.

To this let me add this editorial from the New York _Sun_ of February 1, 1907, bearing on the question.

"UNCLE REMUS ON THE NEGRO

"We see no occasion for the astonishment that has been aroused in this part of the country by the eloquent and touching tribute to the negro's virtues by Mr. Joel Chandler Harris, of Georgia. It is by no means the first time he has spoken to the same effect, nor is he the only Southerner of his class who has proclaimed similar opinions. It ought to be perfectly well known to the entire country that the better class of whites dwell in peace and kindness and good will with their colored fellow-creatures, and that practically all of the so-called 'race conflicts' are the product of an ancient hate dating back far beyond the Civil War and involving, now as always hitherto, no one of whom either race is at all proud.

"This is a flagrant truth which Northern people have had the opportunity of assimilating any time during the past forty years. The emancipation of the slaves, effected in reality after the surrender of Lee, Johnson and Kirby Smith, made no change in the purely personal relations between the freedmen and their former masters. Not even the abominable episode of reconstruction availed to eradicate the affectionate entente of the classes and turn them against each other to the evil ends of animosity and vengeance. The old slaveholders knew that their quondam servants and dependents were innocent of vicious purpose. The latter understood full well that when in need of help and sympathy and pitying ministrations the former offered them their only sure refuge and relief. No actor in this mournful tragedy has forgotten anything. No political or social transmutation has changed anything so far as these two are concerned. The quarrels and the violent and bloody clashes of which so much is made in our newspapers, whether through honest ignorance or malign intent, are far outside of the philosophy of any important element of the Southern population.

"Joel Chandler Harris tells the simple truth when he says that the negroes of the South are moving onward, accumulating property, making themselves useful citizens and cementing the hallowed ties of respect and confidence between the classes which represent the South's righteousness and civilization. In this section we concern ourselves too much with the insignificant minority. We accept the testimony of the 'educated' few on the negro side--educated to little more than a fruitless smattering of vanity and conceit--and we much too easily imagine that the Southern 'cracker' stands for the ideas and illustrates the methods of the whites. No falser or more misleading hypothesis could be presented. The negro who typifies violence and barbarism is one in ten thousand. The white man who employs the shotgun and the torch is quite as unimportant. We shower our solicitudes on the pestiferous exception and overlook the wholesome rule.

"Uncle Remus knows what he is talking about--knows it to its deepest depth."

I think if I were to give you an account of one day as spent by my mother, it would best present an idea of the arduous duties of an old-time Southern lady on a plantation. My mother had a magnificent constitution or she could never have accomplished the amount of work required of her. I never knew her to have until her latter years a physician for herself. But for family needs we had colored nurses who, under a physician, were competent and devoted in sickness.

The day was always begun with family prayers, for my father's religious principles were his staff in life, and he derived much strength from them. His devotion to Christ was unusual, and I never knew him to doubt for an instant that he himself was a child of God. Having a most affectionate disposition, he loved his wife and children intensely, and lived in and for them. Fortunately, the love he gave them was fully returned, and I doubt if there was ever a more devoted and united family.

At sunset it was a sacred custom of his to go into a room in a wing of the house, removed from all noise, and kneel in prayer. Every child and grandchild would follow him to the quiet room, and as we knelt by his side, he would commend us to God's loving care, and rise from his knees to kiss each one of us, sons and daughters alike. No matter what our occupation or pleasures were, we would hasten home that we might not miss this sunset prayer, for then all differences that had grown up between us in the day would be healed, and we felt ourselves drawn into one united family again. My brothers and sisters, old men and women now, can never speak of that sacred hour without tears.

I will here copy a letter received not long ago from a dear friend, Miss Morse, for years one of the faculty of Vassar College, that you may see how our home life affected "strangers within our gates."

MY PRECIOUS FRIEND:

In asking me to give you my recollections of that cultivated consecrated home where I spent a delightful half year, you have given me a privilege. I love to recall that period, so unique in my experience.

Your father had arranged for my journey. A son came from Princeton to go with me to the steamer, and at Savannah his factor placed me in your father's boat, going up the river by night, to his plantation home.

This was my first acquaintance with negroes. At first I was afraid, being the only white person on board, but as I remembered that it was your father's plan, I knew it must be safe, and gave myself up to the enjoyment of the scene. A happier set of beings than the negroes on board it would be hard to find.

The night was dark, but on deck they gathered in groups about their bright fires, roasting corn and singing their quaint and wonderfully sweet plantation songs.

At daybreak we reached your father's landing, where you were waiting for me in the carriage, and when we drove up to the beautiful home, there were your parents at the door, ready to give me a truly Southern welcome.

Breakfast was served, and as your father asked the blessing, he prayed most earnestly that old Maum Mary might be found that day; every day the prayer was repeated, till he felt she could not be living, and then it was changed to a request that they might find her body to give it burial. She was an old negress, who had lost her mind, and, fearing she might stray away and get lost, your father had placed her daughter-in-law, a bright young negress, in the house with her, to care for her and specially to watch, lest in her mental weakness she might stray away; what he feared happened, for the daughter-in-law proved less tender and faithful than the master, and the old woman escaped.

When all hope of finding her alive was gone, the prayer of the master was that they might find her body and give it burial, but even this was not granted him.

It was a revelation to me of the tender care that old patriarch gave to his slaves, no wonder that they loved him.

You used to ask me, almost daily, to go with you to see some feeble old woman, who might be lonely and would be looking for you to come and see her, and I could hardly help shrinking as you would allow yourself to be gathered into her arms, and the petting would be mutual.

If a negro was sick, your father would always send him food from his own table, which was received with great pleasure.

At the time I was there your mother had become too feeble to continue her daily rounds among the sick and feeble, taking medicine, looking after bandages on broken limbs, etc., but an older daughter had taken her place to some extent.

I enjoyed very much the prayer-meeting evenings of the negroes. The Methodists had one evening and the Baptists another. They always held them in a building especially made for that purpose, and the singing, as it came through our open windows, was very sweet. Your father had to limit the time or they would have continued the services all night.

On Sunday they attended the same churches as the family, the galleries being reserved for them. I might have added in telling of their prayer meeting, that when we were present they always prayed for "Ole Massa and Missus," and the various members of the family, including the "young Missus from the North."

The little negro children would leave their play to gather around me as they saw me walking about the grounds.

As I recall a day in that home, so filled with love and peace, I think of the morning and evening prayers where the dear old patriarch seemed to be talking to a friend whom he trusted and loved.

Every morning his horse was brought to the door for him to ride over the plantation. His daughter Nannie never failed to be there to help him on with his coat, and at his return to take off his wraps, bring him his dressing-gown, and cover him as he lay down to rest.

In fact, from morning till night she seemed always to have him in her thoughts, to anticipate every wish, and give him most devoted attention. I am sure it must always be a sweet memory to her that she never overlooked a possible opportunity of adding to his happiness. Few fathers receive such devoted attention from their children.

Do you remember how I used to enjoy the blaze of the pine knots in the fireplace in your room at night, and how, as they burned out, you would say to Susan, your maid, "Now throw on another knot for Miss Morse?" And do you remember how I used to ride about alone on your pet horse?

Oh, what a happy winter that was! The whole atmosphere was one of love--love between parents and children, and love that overflowed till it seemed to me that every negro on the place must feel the effects of it. Certainly every sick or aged one received tenderest care.

I remember your mother, in telling me of her heavy duties in caring for so large a family, mentioned an instance in which she had to go every day to dress a broken arm of a negro child, because the mother was too indolent to attend to it.

On Sundays your mother and her daughters used to go around to the negroes' houses to read the Bible, and teach the children Bible verses.

I hope that the reading of these memories will recall to you something of the sweetness of that dear home, consecrated by your parents' prayers.

Lovingly,

Your "MORSIE."

This has been a long digression from the one day in my mother's life I promised to depict for you, but those early scenes come into my mind so fast that the letter from my dear friend telling of them seemed most appropriately to come into the story just at that point. But to return--after breakfast it was customary for the head nurse to report any cases of sickness on the plantation to my mother. Mother's medicine chest was brought out and together they consulted about the condition of each patient. If anyone were very ill, a man was sent to call in a physician who lived several miles away. My mother then hastened to the negro quarters, and if the invalids could be removed they were brought to the sick house--a large, long building fitted with cots--where they could be better cared for.

One of my earliest recollections was to follow mother with my brothers and sisters, each child carrying a plate filled with food from the table for the convalescents, and, although at this day contagious diseases are so carefully avoided, I can remember going fearlessly in and out of the cabins, carrying dainty dishes to many little ones who were suffering with what they then called putrid sore throat. It was really diphtheria, and, strange to say, not one of our family took the disease, though there were forty cases on the plantation. They were taken to the pine land, so that the good air might aid their recovery.