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
_Tuesday morning._ I heard that the schooner was at Fuller Place to
take our cotton. We have been at it ever since till yesterday noon,
when we put in the last we had, nearly filling her up. There was about
half of it negro cotton, brought from one hundred and seventy-six
different proprietors, for whom I act as agent in forwarding and
selling it. I drove over to spend the night at Mr. Wells' house on
Wednesday. He had gone to Morgan Island to receive and stow away some
one hundred and fifty Georgia refugees, which were expected by a
steamer from Beaufort. After he had waited for them all day, they
arrived about sunset, and he spent half the night there in the rain,
stowing them in houses and getting their baggage up from the steamer,
which lay at anchor in the river discharging into small boats. They
came from the shore counties near to Savannah, and brought a good deal
of truck, beds, and blankets, and some rice and peas. Mr. Wells gave
them rations for a week, and I suppose will continue to do so, for
they can't get anything to eat till next harvest in any other way. The
able-bodied have all been taken either by the rebels or our Government
for fatigue duty and quartermaster service, so those who come here are
all women, children, or cripples, such as we had before. They will
doubtless be so glad of a home, however, that they will do a good deal
of work. Of course it is not an economical class of labor, for it
takes too much land to feed the non-workers to allow a great deal to
be planted in cotton. In the morning I walked out with Mr. Wells and
sold him both the plantations of which he has had charge for me, viz.,
the Jenkins place, where he lives, for $1600 or $10 per acre, and
Morgan Island for $1200, or about $5 per acre, which is more than any
one would have given a few weeks ago, when we couldn't get a negro to
stay there for fear of the rebels. I daresay he may do very well with
it now, but it is a vexatious thing to get rations to them in such an
out-of-the-way place, and, after all, young Mr. Fripp may make them
another visit some night and carry off some more negroes.
FROM C. P. W.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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