Letters from Port Royal: Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868)
History
Letters from Port Royal: Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868)
African Americans -- South Carolina; Beaufort (S.C.) -- History; South Carolina -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865
_Oct. 24._ Nothing happens here now, so that even this delightful
country, with its charming variety of scenery and its delicious
climate, its bracing air, its sparkling streams, its richness of
autumnal tints, the ever-varying play of light and shade upon the
steep hillsides and through the green valleys often cease to charm.
For myself, I may say that even the continual excitement incident to
the task of weighing cotton, selling sugar, or counting rails, not to
mention the no less important duty of seeing that my hat is not stolen
from my head, or the shingles off my roof,--even these interesting and
exciting occupations sometimes grow wearisome, and fail to afford that
continued gratification and satisfaction to enjoy which is the object
of a life in this Department. Although the statement seems absurd, I
must nevertheless affirm, that it is more bother to take care of a
plantation of one hundred and twenty working hands than it is to
exercise that number in the "School of the Company;" and that the
satisfaction derived from the faithfulness and honesty of perhaps
thirty is hardly sufficient to atone for the anxiety and distrust with
which one regards the remaining ninety, who lie by habit and steal on
the least provocation, who take infinite pains to be lazy and shirk,
who tell tales of others, of which themselves are the true subjects,
and from whom all the artifices of the lawyer cannot draw a fair
statement of fact, even when it is obviously for their own interest to
tell the whole truth. "Wherefore he is called the everlasting Niggah."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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