After the War: A Southern Tour. May 1, 1865 to May 1, 1866Reid, Whitelaw
History
After the War: A Southern Tour. May 1, 1865 to May 1, 1866
Reid, Whitelaw
Plantation life; Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877); Southern States -- Description and travel
General Saxton found a charming wife among the bright Yankee teachers
sent down to these schools, and he has established himself in the house
of a runaway slaveholder, condemned by the Government authorities, and
legally sold to the highest bidder. Two thousand dollars thus gave the
General a home among these people, and put him in possession of a fine,
airy, large-windowed, many-porched Southern residence, stripped of
furniture (which has been sold by the Treasury Agent as abandoned
property), and, like the lands on which the negroes are located, with
still a worrying doubt about the security of the title. Rebels, who have
abandoned their houses, may, some of these days, return, get pardon, and
propose to take possession. Barnwell Rhett’s house, for example, is next
door; suppose he should profess repentance, for the sake of getting back
his property, precisely what is there to prevent this fervently-loyal
Major-General from having the prince of all fire eaters for a neighbor?
In Beaufort, as at Hilton Head, there are wonderful efforts to create a
flame of speculation; but capital is timid, and looks sharply to the
guarantees of title deeds.
* * * * *
In the evening, there was another immense meeting of negroes in the
outskirts of Beaufort. It was again found that no church would hold
them, and so God’s first temples—it must have been live-oak groves
Bryant thought of, when he wrote the well-known lines—were again sought.
Crowding through the throng that obstructed all the approaches, and
ascending the platform, one was struck with the impressiveness of a
scene as peculiar as that in the morning on St. Helena, and yet widely
differing from it. Great live-oaks again reared their stately pillars of
gray, and spread their glorious canopy of green, beside and above the
platform; negroes, old and young, again spread out in a sea of black
humanity before us; but for the rows of carts, and the old
meeting-house, and the moss-grown gravestones that shut in the view on
St. Helena, we had here the serried ranks of two full regiments of
negroes. Black urchins clambered up into the live-oak boughs, above our
heads; black girls adjusted their scarfs, and fidgeted about the front
of the platform; white-wooled, but black-faced, old men leaned against
the railing; the mass of the congregation in front were women, and, as
for the young men, they were clad in blue, and they stood in ranks
outside the rest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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