The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 71, September, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
Religion
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 71, September, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
My recent visit to Port Royal extended from March 25th to May 10th. It
was pleasant to meet the first colonists, who still toiled at their
posts, and specially grateful to receive the welcome of the freedmen,
and to note the progress they had made. There were interesting scenes to
fill the days. I saw an aged negro, Cæsar by name, not less than one
hundred years old, who had left children in Africa, when stolen away.
The vicissitudes of such a life were striking,--a free savage in the
wilds of his native land, a prisoner on a slave-ship, then for long
years a toiling slave, now again a freeman under the benign edict of the
President,--his life covering an historic century. A faithful and
industrious negro, Old Simon, as we called him, hearing of my arrival,
rode over to see me, and brought me a present of two or three quarts of
pea-nuts and some seventeen eggs. I had an interview with Don Carlos,
whom I had seen in May, 1862, at Edisto, the faithful attendant upon
Barnard, and who had been both with him and Phillips during their last
hours,--now not less than seventy years of age, and early in life a
slave in the Alston family, where he had known Theodosia Burr, the
daughter of Aaron Burr, and wife of Governor Alston. He talked
intelligently upon her personal history and her mysterious fate. He had
known John Pierpont, when a teacher in the family of Colonel Alston, and
accompanying the sons on their way North to college after the completion
of their preparatory studies. Pierpont was a classmate of John C.
Calhoum at Yale College, and, upon graduating, went South as a private
tutor.
Aunt Phillis was not likely to be overlooked,--an old woman, with much
power of expression, living on the plantation where my quarters had
formerly been. The attack on Charleston was going on, and she said, "If
you're as long beating Secesh everywhere as you have been in taking the
town, guess it'll take you some time!" Indeed, the negroes had somewhat
less confidence in our power than at first, on account of our not having
followed up the capture of Bay Point and Hilton Head. The same quaint
old creature, speaking of the disregard of the masters for the feelings
of the slaves, said, with much emphasis, "They thought God was dead!"
I visited Barnwell Island, the only plantation upon which is that of
Trescot, formerly Secretary of Legation at London, a visit to whom
Russell describes in his "Diary." But the mansion is not now as when
Russell saw it. Its large library is deposited in the Smithsonian
Institution at Washington. Its spacious rooms in the first and second
stories, together with the attics, are all filled with the families of
negro refugees. From this point, looking across the water, we could see
a cavalry-picket of the Rebels. The superintendent who had charge of the
plantation, and accompanied me, was Charles Follen, an inherited name,
linked with the struggles for freedom in both hemispheres.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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