Chapter 13

'Why should _you_ interfere between them and him? Has he not insulted you often enough to make you let him alone? Can you so easily forgive his taunting you with'--He did not finish the sentence, but what I had learned on the previous evening from the old nurse gave me a clue to its meaning. A red flame flushed the face and neck of the octoroon woman--her eyes literally flashed fire, and her very breath seemed to come with pain; in a moment, however, this emotion passed away, and she quietly said, 'Let me settle that in my own way. He has served _you_ well--_you_ have nothing against him that the law will not punish.'

'By ----, you are the most unaccountable woman I ever knew,' exclaimed the Colonel, striding up and down the piazza, the angry feeling passing from his face, and giving way to a mingled expression of wonder and admiration. The conversation was here interrupted by Jim, who just then made his appearance, hat in hand.

'Well, Jim, what is it?' asked his master.

'We'se gib'n Sam twenty lashes, ma'am, but he beg so hard, and say he so sorry, dat I tole him I'd ax you 'fore we gabe him any more.'

'Well, if he's sorry, that's enough; but tell him he'll get fifty another time,' said the lady.

'What Sam is it?' asked the Colonel.

'Big Sam, the driver,' said Jim.

'Why was he whipped?'

'He told me _you_ were his master, and insisted on whipping Moye,' replied the lady.

'Did he dare to do that? Give him a hundred, Jim, not one less,' roared the Colonel.

'Yas, massa,' said Jim.

The lady looked significantly at the negro and shook her head, but said nothing, and he left.

'Come, Alice, it is nearly time for meeting, and I want to stop and see Sandy on the way.'

'I reckon I won't go,' said Madam P----.

'You stay to take care of Moye, I suppose,' said the Colonel, with a slight sneer.

'Yes,' replied the lady; 'he is badly hurt, and in danger of inflammation.'

'Well, suit yourself. Sir. K----, come, _we'll_ go--you'll meet some of the _natives_.'

The lady retired to the house, and the Colonel and I were soon ready. The driver brought the horses to the door, and as we were about to enter the carriage, I noticed Jim taking his accustomed seat on the box.

'Who's looking after Sam?' asked the Colonel.

'Nobody, Cunnul; de ma'am leff him gwo.'

'How dare you disobey me? Didn't I tell you to give him a hundred?'

'Yas, massa, but de ma'am tole me notter.'

'Well, another time you mind what _I_ say--do you hear?' said his master.

'Yas, massa,' said the negro, with a broad grin, 'I allers do dat.'

'You _never_ do it, you d---- nigger; I ought to have flogged you long ago.'

Jim said nothing, but gave a quiet laugh, showing no sort of fear, and we entered the carriage. I afterwards learned from him that he had never been whipped, and that all the negroes on the plantation obeyed the lady when, which was seldom, her orders came in conflict with their master's. They knew if they did not, the Colonel would whip them.

As we rode slowly along the Colonel said to me, 'Well, you see that the best people have to flog their niggers sometimes.'

'Yes, _I_ should have given that fellow a hundred lashes, at least. I think the effect on the others would have been bad if Madam P---- had not had him flogged.'

'But she generally goes against it. I don't remember of her having it done in ten years before. And yet, though I've the worst gang of niggers in the district, they obey her like so many children.'

'Why is that?'

'Well, there's a kind of magnetism about her that makes everybody love her; and then she tends them in sickness, and is constantly doing little things for their comfort; _that_ attaches them to her. She is an extraordinary woman.'

'Whose negroes are those, Colonel?' I asked, as, after a while, we passed a gang of about a dozen, at work near the roadside. Some were tending a tar-kiln, and some engaged in cutting into fire-wood the pines which a recent tornado had thrown to the ground.

'They are mine, but they are working now for themselves. I let such as will, work on Sunday. I furnish the "raw material," and pay them for what they do, as I would a white man.'

'Would'nt it be better to make them go to hear the old preacher; could'nt they learn something from him?'

'Not much; Old Pomp never read anything but the Bible, and he don't understand that; besides, they can't be taught. You can't make "a whistle out of a pig's tail;" you can't make a nigger into a white man.'

Just here the carriage stopped suddenly, and we looked out to see the cause. The road by which we had come was a mere opening through the pines; no fences separated it from the wooded land, and being seldom traveled, the track was scarcely visible. In many places it widened to a hundred feet, but in others tall trees had grown up on its opposite sides, and there was scarcely width enough for a single carriage to pass along. In one of these narrow passages, just before us, a queer-looking vehicle had upset, and scattered its contents in the road. We had no alternative but to wait till it got out of the way; and we all alighted to reconnoitre.

The vehicle was a little larger than an ordinary hand-cart, and was mounted on wheels that had probably served their time on a Boston dray before commencing their travels in Secessiondom. Its box of pine boarding and its shafts of rough oak poles were evidently of Southern home manufacture. Attached to it by a rope harness, with a primitive bridle of decidedly original construction, was--not a horse, nor a mule, nor even an alligator, but a 'three-year-old heifer.'

The wooden linch-pin of the cart had given way, and the weight of a half-dozen barrels of turpentine had thrown the box off its balance, and rolled the contents about in all directions.

The appearance of the proprietor of this nondescript vehicle was in keeping with the establishment. His coat, which was much too short in the waist and much too long in the skirts, was of the common reddish gray linsey, and his nether garments, of the same material, stopped just below the knees. From there downwards, he wore only the covering that is said to have been the fashion in Paradise before Adam took to fig-leaves. His hat had a rim broader than a political platform, and his skin a color half way between that of tobacco-juice and a tallow candle.

'Wal, Cunnul, how dy'ge?' said the stranger, as we stepped from the carriage.

'Very well, Ned; how are you?'

'Purty wal, Cunnul; had the nagur lately, right smart, but'm gittin' 'roun.'

'You're in a bad fix here, I see. Can't Jim help you?'

'Wal, p'raps he moight. Jim, how dy'ge?'

'Sort o' smart, ole feller. But come, stir yerseff; we want ter gwo 'long,' replied Jim, with a manifest lack of courtesy that showed he regarded the white man as altogether too 'trashy' to be treated with much ceremony.

With the aid of Jim, a new linch-pin was soon whittled out, the turpentine rolled on to the cart, and the vehicle put in a moving condition.

'Where are you hauling your turpentine?' asked the Colonel.

'To Sam Bell's, at the "Boro'."'

'What will he pay you?'

'Wal, I've four barr'ls of "dip," and tu of "hard." For the hull, I reckon he'll give three dollars a barr'l.'

'By tale?'

'No, for two hun'red and eighty pound.'

'Well, _I'll_ give you two dollars and a half by weight.'

'Can't take it, Cunnel; must get three dollar.'

'What, will you go sixty miles with this team, and waste five or six days, for fifty cents on six barrels--three dollars?'

'Can't 'ford the time, Cunnel, but must git three dollar a barr'l.'

'That fellow is a specimen of our "natives,"' said the Colonel, as we resumed our seats in the carriage. 'You'll see more of them before we get back to the plantation.'

'He puts a young cow to a decidedly original use,' I remarked.

'Oh no, not original here; the ox and the cow with us are both used for labor.'

'You don't mean to say that cows are generally worked here?'

'Of course I do. Our breeds are good for nothing as milkers, and we put them to the next best use. I never have cow's milk on my plantation.'

'You don't! why, I could have sworn it was in my coffee this morning.'

'I wouldn't trust you to buy brandy for me, if your organs of taste are not keener than that. It was goat's milk.'

'Then how do you get your butter?'

'From the North. I've had mine from my New York factors for over two years.'

We soon arrived at Sandy the negro-hunter's, and halted to allow the Colonel to inquire as to the health of his family of children and dogs,--the latter the less numerous, but, if I might judge by appearances, the more valued of the two.

* * * * *

SOUTHERN AIDS TO THE NORTH.

II.

If war did little else, it would have its value from the fact that it acts so extensively as an institution for the dissemination of useful knowledge. Every murmur of political dissension sends thousands to consult the map, and repair their early neglect of geography. Perhaps if atlases and ethnographical works were more studied we should have less war. And it is by no means impossible that the mutual knowledge which has been or is to be acquired by the people of the South and the North during this present war will eventually aid materially in establishing a firm bond of union.

That we have much to learn is shown in the firm faith with which so many have listened to the threats of 'a united South.' Until recently the fierce and furious assurances of the rebel press, that south of Mason and Dixon's line all were wedded heart and soul to their cause, were taken almost without a doubt. Who has forgotten the late doleful convictions of the dough-faces that the South would hold together to the last in spite of wind or weather, concluding invariably with the old refrain,--'Suppose we conquer them--what then?' Had the country at large known in detail, as it _should_ have known from a common-school education, what the South _really_ is,--or from experience of life what human nature really is,--it would never have believed that this boasted unanimity was based on aught save ignorance or falsehood. The Southern press itself, almost without an exception, betrays gross ignorance of its own country, and is very superficial in its statistics, inclining more than any other to warp facts and figures to suit preconceived views. We, like it, have tacitly adopted the belief that south of a certain line a certain climate invariably prevailed, and that under its influences, from the Border to the Gulf of Mexico, there has been developed a race essentially alike in all its characteristics. The planter and the slave-owner, or the city merchant, has been the type with which our writers have become familiar at the hotel and the watering-place, or in the 'store,' and we have accepted them as speaking for the South, quite forgetful that in America, as in other countries, the real man of the middle class travels but little, and when he does, is seldom to be found mingling in the 'higher circles.' Yet even this Southern man of the middle class and of 'Alleghania,' when at the North frequently affects a 'Southern' air, which is not more natural to him than it is to the youthful scions of Philadelphia and New York, who, when in Europe, so often talk pro-slavery and bowie knife, as though they lived in the very heart of planterdom. But the truth is that when we search the South out closely we find that in reality there is a very great difference between its districts and their inhabitants, and, in _fact_, as has been very truly said, 'not only is there no geographical boundary between the free and slave States, but no moral and intellectual boundary.'

In the great temperate region which, parting from either side of the Alleghanies, extends from Virginia to Alabama, and is still continued in the pleasant level of Texas, slavery has rolled away from either mountain side like a flood, leaving it the home of a hardy population which regards with jealousy and dislike both the wealthy planter and the negro. James W. Taylor, in his valuable collection of facts, claims that through the whole extent of the Southern Alleghania slavery has relatively diminished since 1850, and that the forthcoming census tables will establish the assertion. 'The superintendent of the census,' he says, 'would furnish a document, valuable politically and for military use, if he would anticipate the publication of this portion of his voluminous budget.' If government, indeed, were to communicate to the public what information it now holds, and has long held, relative to the numbers and strength of the Union men of the South, an excitement of amazement would thrill through the North. It was on the basis of this knowledge that our great campaign was planned,--and it can not be denied that thousands of stanch Union men were greatly astonished at the revelations of sympathy which burst forth most unexpectedly in districts where the stars and stripes have been planted. But the Cabinet 'knew what it knew' on this subject. Much of its knowledge never can be revealed, but enough will come to-night to show that in our darkest hour we had an enormous mass of aid, little suspected by those weaker brethren who stood aghast at the Southern bugbear, and who, falling prostrate in nerveless terror at the windy spectre, quaked out repeated assurances that _they_ had no intention of 'abolitionizing the war,' and even earnestly begged and prayed that the emancipationists might all be sent to Fort Warren,--so fearful were the poor cowards lest the united South, in the final hour of victory, might include them in its catalogue of the doomed. What would they say if they knew the number and power of the ABOLITIONISTS OF THE SOUTH,--a body of no trifling significance, whose fierce grasp will yet be felt on the throat of rebellion and of slavery? It is grimly amusing to think of the aid which the South counted on receiving from these Northern dough-faces,--little thinking that within itself it contained a counter-revolutionary party, far more dangerous than the Northern friends were helpful.

It should be borne in mind that where such an evil as slavery exists there will be numbers of grave, sensible men, who, however quiet they may keep, will have their own opinions as to the expediency of maintaining it. The bigots of the South may rave of the beauty of 'the institution,' and make many believe that they speak for the whole,--a little scum when whipped covers the whole pail,--but beneath all lies a steadily-increasing mass of practical men who would readily enough manifest their opposition should opportunity favor free speech. Such people, for instance, are not insensible to the enormously corrupting influence of negroes on their children. Let the reader recall Olmsted's experiences,--that, for example, where he speaks of three negro women who had charge of half a dozen white girls of good family, 'from three to fifteen years of age.'

Their language was loud and obscene, such as I never heard before from any but the most depraved and beastly women of the streets. Upon observing me they dropped their voices, but not with any appearance of shame, and continued their altercation until their mistresses entered. The white children, in the mean time, had listened without any appearance of wonder or annoyance. The moment the ladies opened the door, they became silent.--_Cotton Kingdom_, vol. i. p. 222.

The Southern _Cultivator_ for June, 1855, speaks of many young men and women who have 'made shipwreck of all their earthly hopes, and been led to the fatal step by the seeds of corruption which in the days of childhood and youth were sown in their hearts by the indelicate and lascivious manners and conversation of their fathers' negroes.' If we had no other fact or cause to cite, this almost unnamable one might convince the reader that there must be a groundwork somewhere in the South among good, moral, and decent people, for antipathy to slavery,--human nature teaches us as much. And such people exist, not only among the hardy inhabitants of the inland districts, who are not enervated by wealth and 'exclusiveness,' but in planterdom itself.

There are few in the North who realize the number of persons in the South who silently disapprove of slavery on sound grounds, such as I have mentioned. Does it seem credible that nearly _ten millions_ of people should socially sympathize with some three hundred thousand slave-holders, who act with intolerable arrogance to all non-slave-holders? 'Even in those regions where slavery is profitable,' as a writer in the Boston _Transcript_ well expresses it, 'the poor whites feel the slaveocracy as the most grinding of aristocracies.'

In those regions where it is not profitable, the population regard it with a latent abhorrence, compared with which the rhetorical and open invectives of Garrison and Phillips are feeble and tame. Anybody who has read Olmsted's truthful narrative of his experience in the slave States can not doubt this fact. The hatred to slavery too often finds its expression in an almost inhuman hatred of 'niggers,' whether slave or free, but it is none the less significant of the feelings and opinions of the white population.

As I write, every fresh thunder of war and crash of victory is followed by murmurs of amazement at the enthusiastic receptions which the Union forces meet in most unexpected strongholds of the enemy, in the very heart of slavedom. Yet it was _known_ months ago, and prophesied, with the illustration of undeniable facts, that this counter-revolutionary element existed. One single truth was forgotten,--that these Southern friends of the Union, even while avowing that slavery must be supported, had no love of it in their hearts. Emancipation has been sedulously set aside under pretence of conciliating them; but it was needless,--'old custom' had made them cautious, and mindful of 'expediency;' but the mass of them hate 'the institution.' It is for the traitorous Northern _dough-faces_, and the paltry handful of secessionists, 'on a thin slip of land on the Atlantic,' that slavery is, at present, cherished. The great area of the South is free from it,--and ever will be.

It has frequently been insisted on that the mere _geographical_ obstacles to disunion are such as to render the cause of slavery hopeless in the long run. Yet to this most powerful Southern aid to the North, men seem to have been strangely blind during the days of doubt which so long afflicted us. These obstacles are, briefly, the enormous growing power of the West, and its inevitable outlet, the Mississippi river. 'For it is the mighty and free _West_ which will always hang like a lowering thunder-cloud over them.'[N] On this subject I quote at length from an article, in the Danville (Ky.) _Review_, by the Rev. R. J. Breckenridge, D.D.:--

Whoever will look at a map of the United States, will observe that Louisiana lies on both sides of the Mississippi river, and that the States of Arkansas and Mississippi lie on the right and left banks of this great stream--eight hundred miles of whose lower course is thus controlled by these three States, unitedly inhabited by hardly as many white people as inhabit the city of New York. Observe, then, the country drained by this river and its affluents, commencing with Missouri on its west bank and Kentucky on its east bank. There are nine or ten powerful States, large portions of three or four others, several large Territories--in all, a country as large as all Europe, as fine as any under the sun, already holding many more people than all the revolted States, and powerful regions of the earth. Does any one suppose that these powerful States--this great and energetic population--will ever make a peace that will put the lower course of this single and mighty national outlet to the sea in the hands of a foreign government far weaker than themselves? If there is any such person he knows little of the past history of mankind, and will perhaps excuse us for reminding him that the people of Kentucky, before they were constituted a State, gave formal notice to the federal government, when Gen. Washington was President, that if the United States did not require Louisiana they would themselves conquer it. The mouths of the Mississippi belong, by the gift of God, to the inhabitants of its great valley. Nothing but irresistible force can disinherit them.

Try another territorial aspect of the case. There is a bed of mountains abutting on the left bank of the Ohio, which covers all Western Virginia, and all Eastern Kentucky, to the width, from east to west, in those two States, of three or four hundred miles. These mountains, stretching south-westwardly, pass entirely through Tennessee, cover the back parts of North Carolina and Georgia, heavily invade the northern part of Alabama, and make a figure even in the back parts of South Carolina and the eastern parts of Mississippi, having a course of perhaps seven or eight hundred miles, and running far south of the northern limit of profitable cotton culture. It is a region of 300,000 square miles, trenching upon eight or nine slave States, though nearly destitute of slaves itself; trenching upon at least five cotton States, though raising no cotton itself. The western part of Maryland and two-thirds of Pennsylvania are embraced in the north-eastern continuation of this remarkable region. Can anything that passes under the name of statesmanship be more preposterous than the notion of permanent peace on this continent, founded on the abnegation of a common and paramount government, and the idea of the supercilious domination of the cotton interest and the slave-trade over such a mountain empire, so located and so peopled?

As a further proof of the utter impossibility of peace except under a common government, and at once an illustration of the import of what has just been stated, and the suggestion of a new and insuperable difficulty, let it be remembered that this great mountain region, throughout its general course, is more loyal to the Union than any other portion of the slave States. It is the mountain counties of Maryland that have held treason in check in that State; it is forty mountain counties in Western Virginia that have laid the foundation of a new and loyal commonwealth; it is the mountain counties of Kentucky that first and most eagerly took up arms for the Union; it is the mountain region of Tennessee that alone, in that dishonored State, furnished martyrs to the sacred cause of freedom; it is the mountain people of Alabama that boldly stood out against the Confederate government till their own leaders deserted and betrayed them.

It is not a strong point, but it is worth noting, that even in South Carolina there is an Alleghanian area of 4,074 square miles, equal to the State of Connecticut, in which the diminished proportion of slaves, with other local causes, are sufficient to indicate the Union feeling which indeed struggles there in secret. These counties are:--

FREE. SLAVE. Spartanburgh, 18,311 8,039 Greenville, 13,370 6,691 Anderson, 13,867 7,514 Pickens, 13,105 3,679

Slavery is here large, as compared to the other counties of 'Alleghania,' but the great proportion of free inhabitants, as contrasted with the districts near the Atlantic, makes it worth citing. In accordance with a request, I give from Jas. W. Taylor's collection, illustrating this subject, the table of population in East Tennessee:--