The South As It Is: 1865-1866 (Seeing the Elephant) by John Richard Dennett

Author:John Richard Dennett [Dennett, John Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780817384852
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Published: 2010-07-07T06:00:00+00:00

CHARLESTON, S. C., November 3, 1865

On Tuesday morning I set out from Kingstree in a thick mist, and rode all day through the dripping trees and over a very thinly peopled country. Just after sunset I succeeded in getting a lodging at the house of a planter, who hospitably took me in, although the arrival of two relatives to pay him a visit had filled his only spare chamber. But it was his rule, he said, never to turn away a stranger, and I should have a bed before the fire in the parlor.

His property, as he informed me in the morning, consisted of something more than sixty-five hundred acres of land, divided into two plantations, one devoted to rice and one to cotton, and a grazing farm stocked with sheep and cattle. His house was a large, weather-beaten building, with piazzas at the front and back, but appeared to contain only four rooms, the windows of which were unglazed and the walls unplastered. In the parlor, which also served as the dining-room, there was but little furniture, and nothing for purposes of ornament.

At supper the conversation, in which I took no part, turned upon the Negro.

“I met Dr. M——,” said one of the ladies, “as I come on down, and he said they’d begun to form a company to protect us against the niggers. He was goin’ to be the commissary, he said, and they’d chosen the commander, too. I told him that’s what ruined us before; there was too many wanting to be officers, and not enough of soldiers.”

“I hadn’t heard anything of that,” said her uncle, “but it’s going to be necessary. I’m told that the nigger soldiers in Georgetown have been getting very independent latterly; but the Yankee officers, they say, make short work of it with ’em. I hear that one or two of ’em were shot down last week, and tumbled into the river, man and gun.”

“Who did it?”

“Their own officers, the Yankees. That’s a case of nigger shooting that won’t be trumpeted all over Lincolndom, I expect.”

“I wish they’d shoot ’em all,” said his wife; “I’m glad when I hear o’ one of ’em got out o’ the way. If I could get up tomorrow morning and hear that every nigger in the country was dead, I’d just jump up and down.”

“I don’t want ’em to go quite so soon as that. They’ll go fast enough for me if they last a few years longer.”

“You want to get a little more out of ’em first, don’t you, uncle? So do I; but I don’t know how it’s to be done. Mine raised me just a hundred bushels of corn this year; not enough to feed the horses.”

“A hundred bushels? That’s pretty well. I’ve got thirteen able to work, and I didn’t get quite sixty bushels for myself, and I’m sure they hav’n’t got enough to last them into May.”

After supper he showed me the prospectus of an emigrant aid society which it is proposed to establish in Charleston.

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