Part 9
The Southern white man builds large, has great joy in his home, and would love to live on a grand scale with an army of retainers. The Negro landowner does not imitate him, and builds a less impressive type of home, neither so large nor so inviting. Rich colored farmers are, however, infrequent. The mass of the Negro population is of the laboring class, and even those who rent land and farm it for themselves are very poor and sunk in economic bondage. Their houses are mostly one-roomed wooden arks, mere windowless sheds resting on four stones, a stone at each corner. Furniture, if any, was of a rudimentary kind. “See how they live,” said a youth to me. “Just like animals, and that’s all they are.”
“Why don’t you have any windows?” I asked of a girl sitting on the floor of her cabin.
“They jus’ doan’ make ‘em with windows,” she replied. “But we’ve got a window in this side.”
“Yes, but without glass.”
“Ah, no, no glass.”
“Is it cold in winter?”
“Yes, mighty cold.”
Some cabins were poverty-stricken in the extreme. But in others there were victrolas, and in cases where the merest amenities of life were lacking you would find a ramshackle Ford car. On the road Negroes with cars were almost as common as white men, and some Negroes drove very furiously and sometimes very skillfully. There were no foot passengers on the road. I went all the way to Milledgeville before I fell in with a man on foot going a mile to a farm. The current Americanism, _Don’t walk if you can ride_ seemed to have been changed into, _Don’t stir forth till you can get a lift_, and white men picked up Negroes and Negroes white men without prejudice, but with an accepted understanding of use and wont. I was looked upon with some doubt, and scanned from hurrying cars with puzzlement. Lonely Jasper County had not seen my like before. But saying “Good day!” and “How d’ye do?” convinced most that the strange foot traveler was an honest Christian. Lifts were readily proffered by men going the same way. Those who whirled past the other way may have reflected that since I was on foot I must have lost my car somewhere.
A common question put to me was, “What are you selling?” and people were a little dumbfounded when I said I was following in Sherman’s footsteps. That had not occurred to them as a likely occupation on a hot afternoon. I felt rather like a modern Rip Van Winkle who had overslept reveille by half a century and was trying in vain to catch up with the army which had long since turned the dusty corner of the road. Still, the Southerners were surprisingly friendly. They said they knew nothing about it themselves, and then took me to the old folk who remembered. The old folk quavered forth—“It’s a long, long time ago now.” It interested them always that I had been in the German war and had marched to the Rhine, and they were full of questions about that. “Oh, but this war was not a patch on that one,” they said. “I tell them they don’t know what war is yet—what we suffered then, what ruin there was, how we had to work and toil and roughen our white hands, and eat the bread of bitterness like Cain——”
After the Civil War the initial struggle of the settlers and pioneers in the founding of the colony had to be repeated. Everyone had to set to and work. The help of the Negroes was at first diminished or entirely cut off. Even the necessary tools were lacking. Nevertheless there was now a surprising absence of bitterness. “The war had to be. Slavery was bad for the South, and it took the war to end it” was an opinion on all men’s mouths. “When President McKinley said that the character of Robert E. Lee was the common inheritance of both North and South he healed the division the war had made,” I heard someone say. Even of Sherman, though there were bitter memories of him, there were not a few ready to testify to his humaneness—for instance, this from a poor store keeper:
“I suppose you’re not old enough to remember the Civil War?”
“’Deed, sir, I do.”
“Do you remember Sherman’s march?”
“Yes, I was only a child, but it made a powerful impression on me. My father was killed in the war. And we were scared to death when we heard Sherman was coming. But he never did me any harm. An officer came up, asked where my father was, learned he was dead. And he made all the soldiers march past the house, waited till the last one had gone, then saluted and left us. Captain Kelly was his name, and I shall never forget his face, it was all slashed about with old scars. He was a brave man, I’m sure.... No, they didn’t do much harm hereabout, except to those who had a lot of slaves or to those who had treated their niggers badly. If they found out that a man had been ill-treating his niggers they stripped his house and left him with not a thing——”
On the other hand the rich, the owners of large plantations, remained in many cases still virulent.
“I know Sherman is in hell,” said a Mr. R—— of historic family. “When my mother lay sick in bed the soldiers came and set fire to our cotton gin and all our barns. They came upon us like a tribe of Indians and burst into every room, ransacking the place for jewelry and valuable property. I was a small boy at the time, but I shall never forget it. They took the bungs from all our barrels and let the syrup run to waste in the yard because they themselves wanted no more of it. They killed our hogs and our cows before our eyes and threw the meat to the niggers. Yes, sir. A year or so back Sherman’s son said he was going to make a tour along the way his daddy had gone—to see what a wonderful thing his daddy had done. Lucky for him he changed his mind. We’d a strung him to a pole, sure——”
Such sharp feeling was, however, certainly exceptional. Near Eatonton was a Mr. Lynch of Lynchburg, storekeeper, postmaster, wheelwright, and blacksmith all in one. He averred that they were “hugging and kissing the Yankees now, just as they would be hugging and kissing the Germans in a few years.”
“There’s mean fellows on every side,” said he. “You don’t tell me that there’s no mean fellows among the English, the French, and the Italians. I don’t believe all the stories about the Germans. I remember what they used to say about the Yankees. They get mighty mad with me when I tell ‘em, but there’s plenty of mean fellows on both sides.”
The village was named after the old man’s grandfather—an Irish settler. It is just beside the old Eatonton factory which Sherman burned down. At the next turn in the road there is a roaring as of many waters. A screen of pine and rank grass undergrowth hides an impressive sight. A step inward takes you to the romantic stone foundation of the old factory; you can climb up on one of the pillars and look out. The interior of the factory is all young trees and moss and tangles of evergreen, but beyond it rushes a mighty stream over a partially dammed broad course, red as blood, but wallowing forward in creamy billows and white foam.
The factory was used to weave coarse cotton cloth, and had evidently been worked by water power. Quite forgotten now, unvisited, it was yet a picturesque memorial of the march, and I was surprised to see no names of visitors scrawled on the walls of its massive old foundations.
I walked into Eatonton by a long and picturesque wooden bridge over the crimson river, a strange and wonderful structure completely roofed, and shady as a tunnel. The evening sun blazed on the old wood and on the red tide and on the greenery beyond, making the scene look like a colored illustration of a child’s tale.
Eatonton, where Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox were actually born, is now a hustling “city” with bales of cotton fluff higglety-pigglety down its streets, and again beautiful bales of extra quality in the windows of its cotton brokers. There are also modern mills where cotton is being spun. The business men on the streets talk of “spots” and “futures”—spot cotton being apparently that which you have on the spot and can sell now, and futures being crops yet to be picked, which, presuming on kind Providence, may be sold and re-sold many times before being grown. What is said of Eatonton may be said of Milledgeville, twenty miles further on. It is a cotton town. It is a gracious seat as well, with a scent of history about its old buildings, but it impresses one as a great cotton center. The streets of Milledgeville were almost blocked with cotton bales. It would have been easy to fight a battle of barricades there. The principal church looked as if it were fortified with cotton bales, and it would have been possible to walk fifty or a hundred yards stepping on the tops of the bales. Bales were on the tidy lawns of shady villas or stacked on the verandas, and everywhere the hard-working gins were roaring and grinding as they tore out the cottonseed from the white fluff and left cotton that could be spun. Wisps of cotton lint blew about all over the streets, and cotton was entangled in dogs’ fur and children’s hair. In the porches of Negro cabins it was heaped high till the entrance to the doorway itself was blocked.
Cotton was booming at Savannah and New Orleans, and despite talk of the weevil destroying the pod, and of bad weather and bad crops, it was clear that Georgia was very prosperous. Men and women discussed the price of cotton as they might horse races or State-lottery results or raffles. Everyone wanted room to store his cotton and hold it till the maximum price was reached. My impression of Georgia now was that it was not nearly so rich in live stock and in food as it had been in the time of Sherman. In his day it grew its own food and was the supply source of two armies. To-day it imports the greater part of its food. It sells its cotton and buys food from the more agricultural States of the South. It might have been thought to be a land overflowing with fruit and honey and milk, but fruit and honey are cheaper in New York than there, and there is no margin of milk to give away. Meat is scarce and dear. There is no plenty on the table unless it be of sweet potatoes. I imagine that after Sherman’s raid the farmers felt discouraged, and decided never to be in a position to feed an enemy army again. There are many always urging the Georgian to grow corn and raise stock, and so make Georgia economically independent, but the farmer always meets the suggestion with the statement that cotton gives the largest return on any given outlay and takes least trouble. That is true, but it is largely because the Negro cotton picker is such a cheap laboring hand. A farm laborer would automatically obtain more than a cotton picker. The hypnotic effect of the slave past is strong and binding upon the Negroes. Perhaps it is still the curse of Georgia. There are still planters who drive their laborers with the whip and the gun—though the shortage of labor during the war caused these to be put up. It is not in money in the bank that one must reckon true prosperity. However, in this material way, Georgia has quite recovered from the Civil War. But she has lost a good many of the compensations of true agriculture; cotton is so commercial a product that there is no glamour about it, not even about the old plantations, unless it be that of the patient melancholy of the cotton pickers.
VI
TRAMPING TO THE SEA
I passed through two ancient capitals of Georgia, first Milledgeville, and then Louisville. The relationship which Milledgeville bore to Atlanta reminded me of the relationship of the old Cossack capital of the Don country to the modern industrial wilderness of South Russia called Rostof-na-Donu. But business is business, and there is only business in this land. Even along the way to the old capital it is always so many miles to Goldstein’s on the mile-posts instead of so many miles to Milledgeville.
The old legislature sat at Milledgeville, but it fled at the approach of Sherman. It was a day of great astonishment when General Slocum paused in his supposed march upon Augusta and General Howard in his attack on Macon, and one came south from Madison while the other marched north from McDonough. There was an extraordinary sauve qui peut. Panic seized the politicians and the rich gentry of the place, for the rumor of the terrible ways of the foragers was flying ahead of the Union Army. Everyone strove to carry off or hide his treasures. They must have had terrible privations and some adventures on the road trying to race the army, and they would have done better to remain to face the music, for no private effects were destroyed in this city. Similar scenes were enacted as at Covington. The darkies made a great day of jubilee, and hugged and kissed the soldiers who had set them free. The cotton was burned and made a great flare—seventeen hundred bales of it even in those days. The depots, magazines, arsenals, and factories were blown up. Governor Brown had fled with all his furniture, and Sherman in the governor’s house slept on a roll of army blankets on the bare floor.
There are many signs of ease and refinement in the spacious streets of Milledgeville, though it has increased little in size since the war. It has large schools for the training of cadets and the training of girls. These are model institutions and are very valuable in Georgia. The place, however, seemed to lack the cultural significance it ought to have. But it is true that churches and Sunday schools were full. No shops of any kind were open on Sundays; the people had forgotten the taste of alcoholic drink and were ready to crusade against tobacco. They are not given to lynching, though they allowed some wild men from Atlanta to break open their jail some years ago and take away a Jew and hang him. But they are too content. At church on Sunday morning the pastor complained that while all were willing to give money to God none were willing to offer themselves. He invited any who were ready to give themselves unreservedly to God to step forth, and none did. And it was an eloquent appeal by a capable orator. I met an old recluse who was at the back of the church. He had tried to give himself to God but was now living at the asylum where he had found shelter, being otherwise without means. He had been a Baptist minister at a church near Stone Mountain, but rheumatism had intervened after twenty years’ work, and he could no longer stoop to immerse the candidates for baptism. He was an Englishman who had listened to Carlyle’s and Ruskin’s lectures, and he talked of Dean Farrar’s sermons and the good deeds of the Earl of Shaftesbury. He spoke as no one speaks to-day, good old measured Victorian English. He was a touching type of the despised and rejected. He loved talking to the Negro children in the “colored” school till the townsfolk warned him against it. His books form the nucleus of the town library, but the rats have gnawn all the bindings of his “Encyclopedia Britannica,” and I formed the opinion that poor R—— living on sufferance in the lunatic asylum was probably the best read man in Milledgeville.
It is a delightful walk to Sandersville, over Buffalo Creek and over many streams crossed by the most fragile of bridges apparently never properly rebuilt since Wheeler’s cavalry destroyed them in the face of the oncoming army. Georgia used to have many excellent bridges, but it never really hindered the Yankee army by destroying them. It seems rather characteristic of the psychology of the people that they would not replace what they had had to destroy. Now at the foot of each long hill down which the automobiles tear is a trap of mere planks and gaps which chatters and indeed roars when passed over. Many motorists get into the mud.
Sandersville is a busy town hung in gloomy bunting which no one has had time to take down since the last county fair. It has a large, dusty, sandy square with a clock tower in the middle. There are great numbers of cars and lorries parked around. Cotton bales, old and new, fresh and decayed, lie on every street. Huge gins are working, and Negroes are busy shoveling oily-looking cottonseed into barns; cotton fluff is all over the roadways in little clots; every man is in his shirt; the soda bars do a great trade even in November. A stranger said to me “Come and have a drink” and we went in and had a “cherry dope.” There is an impressive-looking public library, much larger than at Milledgeville, with high frontal columns of unadorned old bricks mortared and laid in diamond fashion, a barred door, and an entrance so deep in cotton fluff, brickdust, and refuse that one might be pardoned for assuming that learning was not now in repute. On the other hand there is a fine, well-kept cemetery with large mausoleums for the rich and tiny stones for the poor.
Sandersville was the scene of one or two combats during the war. But when it is borne in mind that only a hundred of Sherman’s army died from all causes on its march to the sea, it will be understood that the strife was not serious. Sherman has been called a Prussian, and he certainly possessed military genius and understood soldiering as a mental science, but he always tried to save his men. He wished to win victories with the smallest possible loss of men, and he thought out his unorthodox plans of campaign with that in view. He could have lost half his army on this adventurous march to the sea. It was a most daring exploit, and if it had failed the whole responsibility would have been laid at Sherman’s door. But Sherman had thought the matter out, and he completely deceived his enemy. Once more after Milledgeville Slocum is seen to be threatening Augusta in the north and Howard is striking south. The cavalry is driving the enemy ahead and plunges northward to Louisville and Waynesboro, well on the way to Augusta. The enemy evacuates the central regions of Georgia, and Sherman’s infantry moves through unscathed. Foraging has become organized and systematic. The wagons amount to many thousands, and it is curious that the population did not destroy all vehicles and so prevent the army from carrying away so much. The doubt which General Sherman expressed at the beginning of the march that supplies might prove inadequate has entirely vanished, and the army has a crowd of Negro camp followers almost as big as itself. These eventually became a great hindrance, but they were evidently encouraged to join themselves to the soldiers in the Milledgeville and Sandersville district. They proved invaluable helps in the seeking out of hidden treasure and the pillaging of farmhouses. They knew the likely spots where valuables would be buried, and the soldiers knew how to worm out secrets even from the most faithful black servants on the big estates. One reason why Georgia burns and hangs more Negroes than any other State is probably because of the bitterness caused by the unstinted foraging and the “setting of the niggers against us” as they say.
Be that as it may, the seeds of future hate are always sown in present wars, and “Sherman’s bummers” in their quest of spoil took little heed of any future reckoning. The Negroes led the soldiers even to the deepest recesses of swamps or forests, and showed the hollow tree or cave or hole where lay deposited the precious family plate and jewelry and money and even clothing. It was common to take from the planter not only hams, flour, meal, yams, sorghum molasses, but above all things turkeys, so rare to-day along the line of Sherman’s march—
How the turkeys gobbled which our commissaries found, How the sweet potatoes even started from the ground, When we were marching thro’ Georgia!
But the bummer did not stick at these. He would borrow grandfather’s dress coat and hat surviving from the old colonial days, and his mate would array himself in grandmother’s finery, and so attired would drive their wagon back to camp, hailed by the jests of the whole army; and if they met an officer on the way they would cry out mirthfully the text of the army order—_The army will forage liberally on the country._
It is said that no forager would ever sell any of his loot, that indeed it was a point of honor not to sell. The veterans of the North must therefore preserve many interesting mementoes of the South. Both officers and men took many tokens. There used to be an amusing euphemism current in Sherman’s army: it was—“A Southern lady gave me that for saving her house from being burned”—and if anyone said, “That’s a nice gold watch; where did you get it?” the soldier replied, “Oh, a Southern lady gave it to me,” etc.
The army made camp by three o’clock every day, and it was after three that most of the unauthorized foraging expeditions took place. They were gay afternoons spent in singing and gambling, athletics and cock fighting. The South was found to be possessed of a wonderful race of fighting cocks. The enthusiasts of the sport rushed from farm yard to farm yard for astonished chanticleer, and having captured him fed him well and brought him up to a more martial type of life than that which in domesticated bliss he had enjoyed with his hens. Every company had its cock fighting tournament. Each regiment, each brigade, each division, and indeed each corps, had its champion. The winners of many bloody frays were soon nicknamed “Bill Sherman” or “Johnny Logan,” but the losing bird which began to fear to face its adversary would be hailed as Beauregard or Jeff Davis. The cock fight finals were of as great interest as the combat of the Reds and White Sox to-day, and perhaps more real.
Besides game cocks each regiment had a great number of pets. These were mostly poor, homeless creatures on which the soldier had taken pity; dogs, singing birds, kids, who followed with the army and had the army’s tenderness lavished on them.
So they went, marching and camping by old Louisville and the broad waters of the Ogeechee down to Millen. The old farmers say what an impressive sight it was to watch them go by on the Millen road with seemingly more wagons than men, with all the wagons bulging with spoil and drawn by well-fed horses and mules, with long droves of cattle, and thousands of frenzied Negroes so frantic with joy that they seemed to have lost their heads and to be expecting the end of the world.
* * * * *
Davisboro is a dust-swept settlement two sides of a road at the foot of a hill. Doors stand open, and the general stores in all their disorder spread their wares. At one end of the little town a large gin is hard at work steaming and blowing, ravishing cotton seed from cotton fluff, and many bales are waiting. Louisville, the old capital, is a dozen miles further on beyond the woods and swamps of a sparsely settled country. It is now “the slowest town in Georgia.” It is, however, none the less pleasant for that.
There are many old houses, and in the midst of the way stands the original wooden “Slave Market” built in 1758, according to a notice affixed, but now used as a fire station. In the old colonial days when Louisville was the capital, slaves used to be brought there in large batches on market days. There was a little platform on which the all-but-naked victims had to stand and be exhibited and auctioned. As I sat on a bench and considered the building a young townsman joined himself to me and gave me a gleeful description of the slaves—“Their front teeth were filed, they spoke no English; when they saw our big green grasshoppers they ran after them and caught them and ate them. The men wore loin cloths and the women cotton chemises halfway to the knee. Lots of cows, hogs, mules, and niggers were put up and sold as cattle in a lump. Animals, that’s all they were and all they are now——” And he laughed in a curious, self-conscious way.