potatoes, I got enough to carry me out de year. I had tc bought my own clo'es, besides. Gov'ment don't help me none." He had his forty-acre lot, and would not peril his claim to it by talking about a contract.

In one cabin we found a very old negro lying on the floor, miserably sick with the dropsy. He had been "a faithful old family servant," as the phrase is; and was accounted a wise head by the planters. When asked if he thought the freedmen could be prevailed upon to contract, he replied:

"What little we do will be sarvice to we-self. We don't want to work for rest," meaning the planters.

Speaking of himself, he said:

"My time is all burnt out." He said there was a heap of idlers on the island. "Dey 'm on a full spree now. Dey got a sort of frolic in de brains." There had been considerable destitution even among the industrious ones the past year; but many of them had made fair crops, and had corn sufficient to keep them till another harvest. Dey 'm more situated better now." The small-pox had raged on the island, and "a sight of our people had died."

66

We lingered at these cabins, waiting for a guard the officer at head-quarters thought it prudent to send with us. At last he arrived, — a shining black youngster in soldier-clothes, overflowing with vanity and politeness. "I'm waiting on your occupation, gentlemen," he said; and we started on.

We passed a field in which there were several women at work. As they had no mule, they did everything by hand, chopping up the turf and weeds with their great awkward hoes, and scraping them, with the surface soil, into little ridges, on which cotton or corn was to be planted. This process of preparing the ground is called "listing"; it answers the purpose of ploughing, and the refuse stuff scraped together, rotting, serves instead of manure.

My companion inquired on what terms they would consent to give up their forty-acre lot. One of them, poising her formidable hoe, replied in accents that carried conviction with them:

OUR GUARD. — FREEDMEN'S DISADVANTAGES. 543

"Gov'ment drap we here. Can't go 'till Gov'ment take we off."

As we were now proceeding to a more remote part of the island, our colored guard walked proudly on to protect us from danger. "Dey can't make no raid on you, widout dey makes raid on me fus'!"

He evidently felt himself vastly superior to these low-down plantation niggers. And I noticed that when we stopped to talk with any of them, and my friend recorded their names. and numbers, and I also took notes, this shining black fellow in blue likewise produced a piece of card and a percil, and appeared to be writing down very interesting and amusing memoranda.

A mile or so from head-quarters we found negro men and women working in the fields.

"Is this your farm?" my friend inquired of one of them. "I calls it mine. General Saxton told me to come and stake out my forty acres, and he'd give me a ticket for it." "Would n't it be better for you to contract for good wages, than to work in this way?"

"No, I don't want to contract. I'll eat up my corn and peas fus'."

"Did you raise much last year?"

"I begun too late. Den de drought hit us bad. Heap of places didn't raise much. But I got a little."

Observing a strange looking thing of skin and bones standing in the weeds, I asked, "Is that a horse?"

"Dat's a piece o' one.

When he gits tired, I can take my

arms; I've good strong arms."

Upon that one of the women struck in vehemently: "I can plough land same as a hoss. Wid dese hands I raise cotton dis year, buy two hosses!"

Seeing the immense disadvantage under which these poor people labored, without teams, without capital, and even without security in the possession of their little homesteads, I urged them to consider well what the planters had to offer.

"If I contract, what good does my forty acres do me?"

"But you are not sure of your forty acres. This year or next they may be given back to the former owner. Then you will have nothing; for you will have spent all your time and strength in trying to get a start. But if you work for wages, you will have, if you are prudent, a hundred and fifty dollars in clear cash at the end of the year. At that rate it will not be long before you will be able to buy a little place and stock it handsomely; when you will probably be much better off than you would be working here in this way."

I could see that this argument was not without its weight with the men. They appeared troubled by it, but not convinced. The women clamored against it, and almost made me feel that I was an enemy, giving them insidious ill advice. And when I saw the almost religious attachment of these people to their homes, and their hope and ambition bearing up resolutely against poverty and every discouragement, it would have caused me a pang of remorse to know that I had pursuaded any of them to give up their humble but worthy and honest aims. Then the children came around us, carrying primers, out of which they read with pleased eagerness, either for the fun of the thing, or to show us what they could do. The parents, forgetting the disheartening words we had spoken, said cheerily, "Richard, Helen, time for school!" and the little ones scampered away; the older ones resumed their work, and we walked on.

I was pleased to see some of the forty-acre lots enclosed by substantial new fences. But every question of benefit has two sides. The other side to this was that the fine old plantation shade-trees had been cut down and split into rails; a circumstance which made my friend the planter look glum.

The island is level, with handsome hedged avenues running through it in various directions. It is nine miles in length and three in breadth. We extended our walk as far as Fort Pemberton, on Stono River, which bounded my friend's plantations in that direction. On our return, he thought he would try one more freedman with the offer of a contract.

The man was working with his wife on a little farm of in

definite extent.

HIS OWN DRIVER.

545

"I don't know how much land I have. I

guessed off as near as I could forty acres.'

He said he had "a large fambly," and that he came from Charleston. "I heard there was a chance of we being our own driver here; that's why we come." He could get along very well if he only had a horse. "But if I can git de land, I'll take my chances."

"But if you can't get the land?”.

"If a man got to go crost de riber, and he can't git a boat, he take a log. If I can't own de land, I'll hire or lease land, but I won't contract."

"Come, then," said my friend, "we may as well go home."

Ј

CHAPTER LXXVI.

SHERMAN IN SOUTH CAROLINA.

"THE march of the Federals into our State," says a writer in the "Columbia Phoenix," "was characterized by such scenes of license, plunder, and conflagration as very soon showed that the threats of the Northern press, and of their soldiery, were not to be regarded as a mere brutum fulmen. Daily long trains of fugitives lined the roads, with wives and children, and horses and stock and cattle, seeking refuge from the pursuers. Long lines of wagons covered the highways. Half-naked people cowered from the winter under bush-tents in the thickets, under the eaves of houses, under the railroad sheds, and in old cars left them along the route. All these repeated the same story of suffering, violence, poverty, and nakedness. Habitation after habitation, village after village,one sending up its signal flames to the other, presaging for it the same fate, lighted the winter and midnight sky with crimson horrors.

"No language can describe, nor can any catalogue furnish, an adequate detail of the wide-spread destruction of homes and property. Granaries were emptied, and where the grain was not carried off, it was strewn to waste under the feet of the cavalry, or consigned to the fire which consumed the dwelling. The negroes were robbed equally with the whites of food and clothing. The roads were covered with butchered cattle, hogs, mules, and the costliest furniture. Valuable cabinets, rich pianos, were not only hewn to pieces, but bottles of ink, turpentine, oil, whatever could efface or destroy, were employed to defile and ruin. Horses were ridden into the houses. People were forced from their beds, to permit the search after hidden treasures.