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 planter, I am sure, can get rich on six sevenths.'

crop, the

"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.1

"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.

1 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 De most disastrous if the military force scattered through the South should be at once removed."

BRIBES. FINES.-JAYHAWKERS.

499

"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 jayhawkers 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.

SHERMAN'S HAIR-PINS.

501

CHAPTER LXIX.

SHERMAN IN EASTERN GEORGIA.

THE track of the Central Railroad, one hundred and ninetyone miles in length, was destroyed with conscientious thoroughness by Sherman's army. From Gordon, twenty miles below Macon, to Scarborough Station, nine miles below Millen, a distance of one hundred miles, there was still an impassable hiatus of bent rails and burnt bridges, at the time of my journey; and in order to reach Savannah from Macon, it was necessary to proceed by the Georgia road to Augusta, either returning by railroad to Atlanta, or crossing over by railroad and stage to Madison, between which places the Georgia road, destroyed for a distance of sixty-seven miles, had been restored. From Augusta I went down on the Augusta and Savannah road to a station a few miles below Waynesboro', where a break in that road rendered it necessary to proceed by stages to Scarborough. From Scarborough to Savannah the road was once more in operation.

The relaid tracks were very rough; many of the old rails having been straightened and put down again. "General Grant and his staff passed over this road a short time ago," said a citizen; "and as they went jolting along in an old boxcar, on plain board seats, they seemed to think it was great fun they said they were riding on Sherman's hair-pins,' apt name applied to the most frequent form in which the rails were bent.

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“Sherman's men had all sorts of machinery for destroying the track. They could rip it up as fast as they could count. They burnt the ties and fences to heat the iron; then two men would take a bar and twist it or wrap it around a tree or a telegraph post. Our people found some of their iron

benders, and they helped mightily about straightening the rails again. Only the best could be used. The rest the devil can't straighten."

Riding along by the destroyed tracks, it was amusing to see the curious shapes in which the iron had been left. Hair-pins predominated. Corkscrews were also abundant. Sometimes we found four or five rails wound around the trunk of a tree, which would have to be cut before they could be got off again. And there was an endless varity of most ungeometrical twists and curves.

The Central Railroad was probably the best in the State. Before the war its stock paid annual dividends of fifteen per cent., one year as high as twenty seven and a half per cent. It owned property to the amount of a million and a half dollars, mostly invested in Europe. This will be nearly or quite sunk in repairing the damage done by Sherman. Then the road will have all of its bent iron,- for Sherman could not carry it away or burn it; and this was estimated to be worth two thirds as much as new iron. The track, composed partly of the T and partly of the U rail, was well laid; and the station-houses were substantially built of brick. I was told that the great depot building at Millen, although of wood, was equal in size and beauty to the best structures of the kind in the North. Sherman did not leave a building on the road, from Macon to Savannah. For warehouses, I found box-cars

stationed on the side tracks.

The inhabitants of Eastern Georgia suffered even more than those of Middle Georgia from our army operations, the men having got used to their wild business by the time they arrived there, and the General having, I suspect, slipped one glove off. Here is the story of an old gentleman of Burke County:

"It was the 14th Corps that came through my place. They looked like a blue cloud coming. They had all kinds of music, -horns, cow-bells, tin-pans, everything they could pick up that would make a hideous noise. It was like Bedlam broke loose. It was enough to frighten the old stumps in the dead