Presently General Saxton introduced the Chief Justice, and the whole audience rose and burst out into cheer after cheer, that continued unintermittedly till we had counted at least nine, and possibly one or two more. The negroes may be very ignorant, but it is quite evident that they know, or think they know, who their friends are. The little “talk” that followed was like its author, simple, straightforward and weighty, till, at the close, it rose into a strain of unaffected eloquence that almost carried the excitable audience off their feet. “’Tisn’t only what he says,” whispered an enthusiastic negro behind me to his neighbor, “but it’s de man what says it. He don’t talk for nuffin, and his words hab weight.”[15] After more tumultuous cheering, the audience called for Gillmore, till the great artillerist absolutely blushed in his embarrassment. _His_ speeches for Charleston were made from the muzzle of the Swamp Angel. * * * * * I spent the evening in the Charleston _Courier_ office. The old library remained, and _Congressional Globes_ and arguments on the divine right of slavery stood side by side with Reports of the Confederate Congress, and official accounts of battles, while on the wall was pasted one of the most bombastic proclamations of the runaway Governor. Several of the old _attaches_ of the concern remain, among them a phonographic reporter and the cashier. The circulation of this most flourishing Southern paper in the seaboard States, had dwindled down to less than a thousand. “We wrote our reports,” said the phonographer, “on the backs of old grocery bills, and in blank pages torn out of old account books.” “We deserved all we got,” he continued, “but you ought not to be hard on us now. The sun never shone on a nobler or kinder-hearted people than the South Carolinians, and this was always the nicest town to live in, in the United States.” Encountering a so-called South Carolina Unionist, from the interior, I asked about the relations between the negroes and their old masters. “In the main, the niggers are working just as they used to, not having made contracts of any sort, because there was no competent officer accessible before whom the contracts could be approved. A few have been hired by the day; and some others have gone to work for a specified share in the crops. In a great many cases the planters have told them to work ahead, get their living out of the crops, and what further share they were entitled to should be determined when the officers to approve contracts came. Then, if they couldn’t agree, they could separate.” “Have there been no disturbances between the negroes and their former masters, no refusals to recognize the destruction of slavery?”