Note: This particular diary entry–a document written in 1861–includes terms and topics that may be offensive to many today. No attempt will be made to censor or edit 19th century material to today’s standards.
April 28th.—The church is a long way off, only available by a boat and then a drive in a carriage. In the morning a child brings in my water and boots–an intelligent, curly-headed creature, dressed in a sort of sack, without any particular waist, barefooted. I imagined it was a boy till it told me it was a girl. I asked if she was going to church, which seemed to puzzle her exceedingly; but she told me finally she would hear prayers from “uncle” in one of the cottages. This use of the words “uncle” and “aunt” for old people is very general. Is it because they have no fathers and mothers? In the course of the day, the child, who was fourteen or fifteen years of age, asked me “whether I would not buy her. She could wash and sew very well, and she thought missus wouldn’t want much for her.” The object she had in view leaked out at last. It was a desire to see the glories of Beaufort, of which she had heard from the fishermen; and she seemed quite wonder-struck when she was informed I did not live there, and had never seen it. She had never been outside the plantation in her life.
After breakfast we loitered about the grounds, strolling through the cotton fields, which had as yet put forth no bloom or flower, and coming down others to the thick fringes of wood and sedge bordering the marshy banks of the island. The silence was profound, broken only by the husky mid-day crowing of the cocks in the negro quarters.
In the afternoon I took a short drive “to see a tree,” which was not very remarkable, and looked in at the negro quarters and the cotton mill. The old negroes were mostly indoors, and came shambling out to the doors of their wooden cottages, making clumsy bows at our approach, but not expressing any interest or pleasure at the sight of their master and the strangers. They were shabbily clad; in tattered clothes, bad straw hats and felt bonnets, and broken shoes. The latter are expensive articles, and negroes cannot dig without them. Trescot sighed as he spoke of the increase of price since the troubles broke out.
The huts stand in a row, like a street, each detached, with a poultry house of rude planks behind it. The mutilations which the poultry undergo for the sake of distinction are striking. Some are deprived of a claw, others have the wattles cut, and tails and wings suffer in all ways. No attempt at any drainage or any convenience existed near them, and the same remark applies to very good houses of white people in the south. Heaps of oyster shells, broken crockery, old shoes, rags, and feathers were found near each hut. The huts were all alike windowless, and the apertures, intended to be glazed some fine day, were generally filled up with a deal board.
The roofs were shingle, and the whitewash which had once given the settlement an air of cleanliness, was now only to be traced by patches which had escaped the action of the rain. I observed that many of the doors were fastened by a padlock and chain outside. “Why is that?” “The owners have gone out, and honesty is not a virtue they have towards each other. They would find their things stolen if they did not lock their doors.” Mrs. Trescot, however, insisted on it that nothing could exceed the probity of the slaves in the house, except in regard to sweet things, sugar and the like; but money and jewels were quite safe. It is obvious that some reason must exist for this regard to the distinctions twixt meum and tuum in the case of masters and mistresses, when it does not guide their conduct towards each other, and I think it might easily be found in the fact that the negroes could scarcely take money without detection. Jewels and jewellery would be of little value to them; they could not wear them, could not part with them. The system has made the white population a police against the black race, and the punishment is not only sure but grievous. Such things as they can steal from each other are not to be so readily traced.
One particularly dirty looking little hut was described to me as “the church.” It was about fifteen feet square, begrimed with dirt and smoke, and windowless. A few benches were placed across it, and “the preacher,” a slave from another plantation, was expected next week. These preachings are not encouraged in many plantations. They “do the niggers no good”–”they talk about things that are going on elsewhere, and get their minds unsettled,” and so on.
On our return to the house, I found that Mr. Edmund Rhett, one of the active and influential political family of that name, had called–a very intelligent and agreeable gentleman, but one of the most ultra and violent speakers against the Yankees I have yet heard. He declared there were few persons in South Carolina who would not sooner ask Great Britain to take back the State than submit to the triumph of the Yankees. “We are an agricultural people, pursuing our own system, and working out our own destiny, breeding up women and men with some other purpose than to make them vulgar, fanatical, cheating Yankees–hypocritical, if as women they pretend to real virtue; and lying, if as men they pretend to be honest. We have gentlemen and gentlewomen in your sense of it. We have a system which enables us to reap the fruits of the earth by a race which we save from barbarism in restoring them to their real place in the world as laborers, whilst we are enabled to cultivate the arts, the graces, and accomplishments of life, to develop science, to apply ourselves to the duties of government, and to understand the affairs of the country.”
This is a very common line of remark here. The Southerners also take pride to themselves, and not unjustly, for their wisdom in keeping in Congress those men who have proved themselves useful and capable. “We do not,” they say, “cast able men aside at the caprices of a mob, or in obedience to some low party intrigue, and hence we are sure of the best men, and are served by gentlemen conversant with public affairs, far superior in every way to the ignorant clowns who are sent to Congress by the North. Look at the fellows who are sent out by Lincoln to insult foreign courts by their presence.” I said that I understood Mr. Adams and Mr. Drayton were very respectable gentlemen, but I did not receive any sympathy; in fact, a neutral who attempts to moderate the violence of either side, is very like an ice between two hot plates. Mr. Rhett is also persuaded that the Lord Chancellor sits on a cotton bale. “You must recognize us, sir, before the end of October.” In the evening a distant thunder storm attracted me to the garden, and I remained out watching the broad flashes and sheets of fire worthy of the tropics till it was bed time.