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CHAPTER LXXV.

A VISIT TO JAMES ISLAND.

A COMPANY of South Carolina planters, who were going over to look at their estates on James Island, and learn if any arrangements could be made with the freedmen, invited me to accompany them; and on the morning of the day appointed, I left my hotel for the purpose.

Finding I was too early for the boat, I took a stroll along the wharves, and visited the colonies of homeless plantation negroes who had sought shelter under the open coal-sheds.

There were at that time in Charleston fifteen hundred freed people of this class waiting for transportation back to their former homes, or to the plantations of new masters who had hired them. A more wretched and pitiable herd of human beings I never saw; nor had I witnessed anything like it out of South Carolina.

Families were cooking and eating their breakfasts around smoky fires. On all sides were heaps of their humble household goods, tubs, pails, pots and kettles, sacks, beds, barrels tied up in blankets, boxes, baskets, bundles. They had brought their live-stock with them; hens were scratching, pigs squealing, cocks crowing, and starved puppies whining. One colony was going to Beaufort. "Mosser told we to go back. We 'se no money, and we 'se glad to git on gov 'ment kindness, to git off." But the government was not yet ready to send them.

Many seemed deeply to trouble to the government. on our own hook. It's not a good time at all here. We does nothing but suffer from smoke and ketch cold. We wants to begin de planting business."

regret that they were so much "We wants to git away to work

Another colony had been two weeks waiting for transpor tation back to their old homes in Colleton District. Their sufferings were very great. Said an old woman, with a shawl. over her head: "De jew and de air hackles we more 'n anyting. De rain beats on we, and de sun shines we out. My chil'n so hungry dey can't hole up. De Gov'ment, he han't gib we nottin'. Said dey would put we on board Saturday. Some libs and some dies. If dey libs dey libs, and if dey dies dey dies." Such was her dim philosophy. I tried to converse with others, who spoke a wild jargon peculiar to the plantations, of which I understood hardly one word in ten.

General Scott, who had recently succeeded General Saxton as Assistant Commissioner of the Bureau in South Carolina, was hastening measures for the relief of these poor people, and to prevent any more from coming to the city.

I walked around by the delightful residences on East Bay and South Bay, commanding fine views of the harbor and Ashley River; and reached the wharf from which we were to embark.

Opposite lay James Island, with its marshy borders, and its dark-green line of pines. Boats-mostly huge cypress dugouts, manned by negroes-were passing to and fro, some coming from the island with loads of wood, others returning, heavily laden, with families of freedmen going to their new homes, and with household goods and supplies.

"This is interesting," said one of the planters, whom I found in waiting. "That wood comes from our plantations. The negroes cut it off, bring it over to the city, and perhaps sell it to the actual owners of the land they have taken it from. We are buying our own wood of the darkey squatters. The negroes are still going to the island, picking their lands, and staking out forty-acre lots, though the Bureau is giving no more titles."

A large cypress dug-out came to the wharf, rowed by a black man and his son.

"These boats all belonged to the planters, till the negroes took possession of them. Now a man has to hire a passage

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in his own canoe, and like as any way of one of his own negroes.'

The grim, silent boatman seemed to understand well that he was master of the situation. There were seven individuals in our party, and his charge for taking us over to the Island and back was ten dollars. He made no words about it: we could accept his terms, or find another boat. The gravity and taciturnity of this man indicated decided character, and no mean capacity for self-ownership. As he and his son rowed. us across the river, he attended strictly to his business, hearing the talk of the planters about the race he represented — talk by no means complimentary-with an impenetrability of countenance quite astonishing.

This was the third visit of the planters to the island, since the war. On the first occasion, they were met by a party of negroes, about forty in number, who rushed down to the landing, armed with guns, and drove them away, with threats to kill them if they came to disturb them in their homes again; whereupon they discreetly withdrew. On their second visit they were accompanied by Captain Ketchum, special agent of the Bureau for the Sea Islands, to whose influence they probably owed their lives. They were met as before, surrounded by fierce black faces and levelled guns, captured, and not permitted to regain their boat until their leaders, who could read a little, became satisfied, from an examination of the Captain's papers, that he was an officer of the government. "We are ready to do anything for gov'ment," they said. "But we have nothing to do with these men."

They asked the Captain, who were the real owners of the land, they who had been placed there by the government, or the planters who had been fighting against the government?

"That is uncertain,” replied the conscientious Captain.

The planters, who had hoped for a different reply, well aware that the negroes could not be brought to terms without a positive assurance from an officer of the Bureau that they had no good title to the lands, were very much disgusted. "We may as well go back now," said they. And scarcely

any effort was made to induce the negroes to abandon their claims and make contracts.

This was now their third visit, and it remained to be seen how they would be received. We rowed a short distance. down Wappoo Creek, which separates the island from the main land, and disembarked at a plantation belonging to three orphan children, whose guardian was a member of our party. The freedmen, having learned that the mere presence of the planters on the soil could effect nothing, had changed their tactics, and now not one of them was to be seen. Although there were twenty-two hundred on the island, it appeared as solitary and silent as if it had not an inhabitant.

We found the plantation house occupied as head-quarters by an officer of the Bureau, recently sent to the island. The guardian of the three orphans took me aside, showed me the desolated grounds without, shaded by magnificent live-oaks, and the deserted chambers within.

"You can understand my feelings coming here," he said. "My sister expired in this room. She left her children to me. This estate, containing seventeen hundred acres, and worth fifty thousand dollars, is all that remains to them; and you see the condition it is in. Why does the Government of the United States persist in robbing orphan children? They have done nothing; they have n't earned the titles of Rebels and traitors. Why not give them back their land?"

I sympathized sincerely with this honest gentleman and his orphan wards. "But you forget," I said, " that such a war as we have passed through cannot be, without involving in its calamities the innocent as well as the rest. It would have been well if that fact had not been overlooked in the beginning."

He made no reply. I afterwards learned from his friends that he was one of the original and most fiery secessionists of Charleston. He made a public speech, early in 'sixty-one, — printed in the newspapers at the time, in which he expressly pledged his life and his fortune to the Confederate His life he had managed to preserve; and of his for

cause.

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541

tune sufficient remained for the elegant maintenance of his own and his sister's children; so that it appeared to me quite unreasonable for him to complain of the misfortune which he himself had been instrumental in bringing upon the orphans.

The party separated, each man going to look at his own estate. I accompanied one who had three fine plantations in the vicinity. A Northern man by birth, his sympathy had been with the government, while he found his private interest in working for the Confederate usurpation under profitable contracts. By holding his tongue and attending to business he had accumulated a handsome fortune, wisely investing his Confederate scrip in real estate, which he thought somewhat more substantial. These plantations were a part of his earnings. Being a Northern man, and at heart a Union man, he deemed it hard that they should not be at once restored to him. The fact that they were his reward for aiding the enemies of his country, - rich gains, so to speak, snatched from the wreck of a pirate ship on board which he had served, — did not seem to have occurred to him as any bar to his claims.

At first we found all the freedmen's houses shut up, and as silent as if the inhabitants had all gone to a funeral. By pressing into some of them, we discovered a few wonien and children, but the men had disappeared. Since they were not to resist our coming, it seemed their policy to have nothing whatever to do with us. At last we found an old negro too decrepit to run away, who sullenly awaited our approach.

"What is your name, uncle?"

"Samuel Butler."

"Where are you from?"

"From St. John."

"How did you come here?"

"Yankees fotch me."

"Don't you want to go back to St. John?"

"Yankees fotch me here," repeated the old man, “and I won't go back widout de Yankees send me back."

We inquired about his family and his prospects.

"My chil'n 's out in soldiering. I made corn, peas, and