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
All the Georgians will go back this fall, but all the people
Fuller[186] _took_ with him (excuse me, I should say _went_ with him)
will return here in a few weeks. Fuller hasn't any cotton this year,
only corn and potatoes. When he returned from here he told them the
people down here were very poor and in miserable condition;
nevertheless, they seem willing to come down and share the misery of
freedom to staying up there with Fuller in comfort. At the time he was
here, 17th of June, he never had said a word to the people with him
that they were free, and did not until they made a plan among
themselves to go up to him in a body and make him tell them. Then
Fuller took the old driver one side and told him he wanted him and all
the people to stay with him and plant another year, and wanted him to
use his influence to persuade the people to stay. So next morning he
called them all up and had them stand on his right hand, and as he
called their names he wanted those who were willing to stay with him
another year to step over to his left hand. So he commenced with Old
Gib, the driver (January's father). He turned right round and walked
towards the negro quarters. Fuller says, "Why, Gib, you will stay,
won't you?" "No, Sir." Then he went through the whole list, and every
one marched straight home and none to his left hand, much to his
disgust.
The next extract reports E. S. P.'s final decision as to the
price for which he should offer land to the negroes.
E. S. P. TO W. C. G.[187]
_Boston, Oct. 5._ C. F. Williams has gone down to finish surveying my
land, and will cut up and sell for me to the negroes about as much
land as they have been in the habit of using,--good, arable land, at
$5 per acre, where they are not already provided.
R. S., JR., TO C. P. W.
_Coffin's Point, Oct. 9._ I have no reason to complain of my people
for any extraordinary delinquencies, for they have worked as well as
we shall probably ever be able to get these negroes to work; but I
have frequently had occasion to be vexed at their slow, shiftless
habits and at their general stupidity. It is a very great trial to
any Northern man to have to deal with such a set of people, and I am
satisfied that if Northerners emigrate to the South and undertake
agriculture or anything else here, they will be compelled to import
white laborers. In the first place, they will not have the patience to
get along with the negroes, even if there were enough of these
freedmen to do all the work. But, in the second place, there will not
be one quarter enough of them to supply the demand there will be for
laborers when the uncleared land at the South is brought under
cultivation. The old slaveholders could never get hands enough, and
yet they cultivated only about one tenth of the land that is fit for
cotton.
It need hardly be said that this prophecy has not yet been
fulfilled.
E. S. P. TO W. C. G.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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