Old Times in Dixie Land Part 7

"Didn't dem white folks scatter quick? I tell yer, Aunt Becky, it done me good all over to see 'em so fl.u.s.trated," and he burst into a loud guffaw.

"When sumpin don' go to suit de Templetons, dey'll paw dirt, dey'll do it, every time, frum ole marster down to de baby one. Whut did Miss Vine say about it?"

"Well," said Becky, "lemme tell yer 'bout Miss Vine; de fust thing she done arter I bounced in en tole de news--she gathered up de spoons en forks, en dem silver tumblers, en sich, belonging to ole Mis', en den she look 'roun' en seed de men wus all gone; den she clinched her teeth, en des doubled up her fis', she did, en shuck it t'wards dat big ole boat es she come puffin' en blowin' up de river, wid de great big cannons a-sticken outen her sides, en des a-swarmin' all over wid de blue-coats, en says she: 'Dern you infernal black souls! I wish to Gawd every one of you was drownded in de bottom of de river.'"

"Lord!" said Monroe, catching his breath, "now didn't she cuss?"

"Yes, sirree! she did dat; en so would you, en me," said Becky.

"But she's white," said the man. "I don't keer ef she is; ain't white folks got feelin's same as we is?" asked Becky. "No," said Monroe, "dey ain't; some of um is mighty mean, yes, a heap of 'em."

"Yo cayn't set down here and 'buse Miss Vine," said Becky, "we're 'bleeged to gib her de praise. Ef its 'fo' her face or 'hine her back, um boun' to say it; she's de feelin'est creetur, de free-heartedest, de most corndescendin'est young white 'oman, I ever seed in all my life,--fer a fac'. But when she done _so_"--here Becky shook her fist in imitation of Vine's pa.s.sionate outbreak, en said dat I done tole yer, Miss Eliza put in en spoke up she did, en says she, 'Laviney, yo must certinly forgit yo is er lady!' Whew! Miss Vine never heerd her. 'Twan't no use fer n.o.body to say nuthin'. I tell you dat white gal rared en pitched untwel she bust into be bitteres' cry yo ever heerd in yo life. She said dem devils warn't satisfied wid killin' her Paul, en makin' her a lonesome widder, but here dey comes agin, jes' as she were joyin' herse'f, jes' es she were takin'

a little plesyure, here dey comes a knockin' uv it all in de haid, en spillin' de fat in de fire.

"I was sorry for de chile, fer it was de Gawd's trufe she spoke, so I comes back in heah, I did, en got some of dat strong coffee I dun saved for yo en me, en I het a cupful an brung it to her. 'Here, honey,' says I, 'drink dis fer yo Becky, en d-o-n't cry no mo', dat's my good baby!' She wipe up her eyes, en stop cryin', she did, en drunk de coffee. Dar I was, down on my knees, jes' facin' of her, and she handed back de cup. 'Twas one er ole Mis' fine chaney cups. 'Dat's yo, honey,' says I, 'you musn't grieve!' en I was er pattin' of her on de lap, when she tuck a sudden freak, en I let yo know she ups wid dem little foots wid de silver shoes on, en she kicked me spang over, broadcast, on de flo'.

"Den ole Miss Lizer, she wall her eyes at Miss Vine, en say, 'Laviney, um 'stonished to see yo ax so.' She mout as well er hilt her mouf--fer it didn't do dat much good," said Becky, snapping her fingers. "Den arter er while, Miss Vine seed me layin' dar on de floor en she jumped up she did, en gin me her two han's to pull me up. I des knowed I was too heavy for her to lif, but I tuck a holt of her, en drug her down in my lap en hugged her in my arms, pore young thing! Den I jes' put her down e-a-s-y on de hath-rug, 'fo' de fire, en kiver her up wid a shawl. Den I run up-sta'rs en fotch a piller, en right dar on de foot of de bed she had done laid out dat spangly tawlton dress, en I des knowed she wus gwine to put it on, en dance de Highlan' fling dis very ebenin'. Can't she out-dance de whole river anyhow?" said Becky.

"Oh!" said Monroe, "I don't 'spute dat. I love to see her in her brother Frank's close a-jumpin' up to my fiddle! den she bangs a circus--dat she do!"

Becky continued her narration: "I comes back en lif's her head on de piller, en pushed up the chunks to men' de fire, en lef' her dar sobbin'

herself down quiet." Becky sighed and went on: "I tell yo, man, when dat little creetur dar in de house takes a good start--yo cayn't hole her, n.o.body nee'n' to try; you cayn't phase her I tell you. En dar's Beth, she's gwine be jes' sich er nother--I loves dat chile too! She don't feature her mar neither, 'ceppen her curly head.

"But dis won't do me. Less go up frum here, Monroe. Yo make up a light, en less go to de hen-house en ketch a pasel of dem young chickens, en put 'em in de coop. I wants to brile one soon in de mawnin' en take it to Miss Vine wid some hot co'n cakes. She's used to eatin' when she fust wakes up, en um gwine to have sumpen ready fer her, fer I give you my word, dey ain't de fust Gawd's bit er nuthin 'tall lef' frum dat ar' dinner party."

CHAPTER X.

OUR FEDERAL FRIENDS AND THE COLORED BROTHER.

The bewilderment of the negroes in the great social upheaval that came with peace was outdone by that of the white people. The conditions of the war times had been peaceable and simple compared with the perplexities of existence now precipitated upon us. The Confederacy's 175,000 surrendered soldiers--and these included the last fifteen-year-old boy--were scattered through the South, thousands of them disabled for work by wounds, and thousands more by ill-health and ignorance of any other profession than that of arms. The Federal soldiers garrisoned all important places. A travesty of justice was meted out by a semi-civil military authority.

Every community maintained an active skirmish-line against the daily aggressions of the freedmen and the oppressions of the military arm. Large sums were paid by citizens to recover property held by the enemy; and, for a time, the people paid a per cent. out of every dollar to the revenue office for a permit to spend that dollar at stores opened by Yankees--our only source of supply.

Few persons had property readily convertible into greenbacks, and Confederate money was being burned or used by the bale to paper rooms in the home of its possessor. No man knew how to invest money that had escaped the absorption of war, and when he did invest it he usually lost it. For the next ten years what the sword had not devoured the "canker worm" (cotton worm, with us) ate up.

The people were in favor of reorganizing the States in accord with the Union. But the iniquities of carpet-bag governments and the diabolisms of "black and tan" conventions for a long time kept respectable men out of politics. It was indeed too "filthy a pool" to be entered. At a longer perspective this seems to have been a mistake. If the best men of the country had gone into the people's service--as did General Longstreet with most patriotic but futile purpose--they might have arrested incessant lootings of the people's hard-wrested tax-money and the nefarious legislation that enriched the despised carpet-bagger and scalawag--present, like the vultures, only for the prey after the battle.

So many men, however, had been disfranchised by reason of Confederate service that it is doubtful if enough respectability was eligible for office, to have had any purifying effect on public affairs.

In this crisis our Northern friends advised us after the following fas.h.i.+on. Major A. L. Brewer, Mr. Merrick's uncle, who had belonged to Sherman's army, sent me, in 1865, a letter from New Lisbon, Ohio:

"MY DEAR CARRIE,--Your devotion to Edwin makes you very dear to me.

You know my attachment to him and that I regard him as a son. He was always my favorite nephew. Since the war is over I trust that he will now take the oath of allegiance, and should he need any aid I can render it. The Secretary of War, Postmaster-General, Senators Nolle and Sherman of Ohio, and many others, are my staunch friends.

"As far as suffering is concerned you have had your share; but I would gladly have endured it for you if I could have saved my dear boy Charlie, who fell in battle. He was n.o.ble and brave, and my heart is chilled with grief for his loss.

"This was a foolish, unnatural war, and after four years of bloodshed and destruction I rejoice that it is over, and that discord will never again disturb the peace in our country. But the authors of the rebellion have paid dearly for their folly and wickedness. When I reflect upon the misery brought about by a few arch villains, I find it hard to control my feelings;--I should feel differently had they been the only sufferers. When I look upon the distress which has fallen upon the ma.s.ses in the South, I have no sympathy for the instigators of the war.

"But, my dear, you have fared better than many who came within my observation; as I followed Sherman, I have seen whole plantations utterly destroyed, houses burnt and women and children driven into the woods without warning. The torch was applied to everything. Sometimes the women would save a few things, but in most cases they went forth bareheaded to make the ground their bed and the sky their roof. The next day when the hungry children came prowling around our camps in search of something to eat, the Federal soldiers who left wives and children at home, and who had the hearts of men, were sorry for them.

But such is the cruelty of war and military discipline."

Captain Charles B. White, a West Point officer in the United States service in New Orleans, wrote my daughter Clara, after his return to New York, in this manner: "I find your experiences in the kitchen very amusing. Our Northern ladies have an idea that you of the South know nothing practically of housekeeping. Quite erroneous is it not? I have been for some time in Boston and find the girls here prettier as a cla.s.s, than those of any other city I have visited, not excepting Baltimore. They are so sensible and self-a.s.sisting. You see that army people look at the practical side of life. As our salaries are not large it is essential that our domestic establishments should be as good as possible with the least outlay of cash. We are therefore compelled to think of our future life companions in the light of these considerations.

"It is very agreeable to be here with those in full accord on social and political subjects,--not that I am a politician; but since we are the victors, I hold that we cannot ignore the principles for which we fought.

I think that it behooves Wade Hampton, Toombs, Cobb and Robert Ould to hold their tongues, and to be thankful that they are not punished for their evil deeds, rather than be so blatant of their own shame. I am sorry to find you in favor of Mr. Seymour. He is from my own State, but he is a blot upon it; personally he is a gentleman,--as far as a dough-face and a copper-head can be one. A few Northern politicians may, for self-interest, humble themselves and praise traitors, but the ma.s.ses are as much disposed as ever to make treason odious. The South ought not again to fall into the error of 1860, and estrange their real friends, and irritate the Northern ma.s.ses. We have undisguised admiration for General Longstreet and his cla.s.s who became reconstructed and attend to business.

"I do not admire Mr. S. W. Conway nor other adventurers in Louisiana, but their opponents are still more unreasonable and unprincipled. It will take me some time to become convinced that plantation negroes will make good legislators. I have not been in favor of negro suffrage, but now it seems the only expedient left us for the reconstruction of the turbulent South.

All sorts of lies are trumped up by the Democrats about Grant and Colfax.

I always object to personal abuse in a political controversy.

"I see my services will be no longer required in Louisiana, and my leave expires next month. I see with equal clearness that beyond my immediate circle of friends I shall scarcely be missed. How humbling to a conceited man, who thinks himself essential, to return and find the household going on just as well without him!"

With such amenities of intercourse between the conquered and the conquerors it may not seem to some observers extraordinary that reconstruction progressed so slowly. Mr. Richard Grant White said in the _North American Review_ respecting the great struggle of the Sections: "The South had fought to maintain an inequality of personal rights and an aristocratic form of society. The North had fought, not in a crusade for equality and against aristocracy, but for _money_--after the first flush of enthusiasm caused by 'firing on the flag' had subsided. The Federal Government was victorious simply because it had the most men and the most money. The Confederate cause failed simply because its men and its money were exhausted; for no other reason. Inequality came to an end in the South; equality was established throughout the Union; but the real victors were the money-makers, merchants, bankers, manufacturers, railwaymen, monopolists and speculators. It was their cause that had triumphed under the banners of freedom."

Words cannot give so strong a confirmation of the above as the fact of the South's pitiful 175,000 men against the 1,000,000 men of the North mustered out of service after the surrender. But it is not my purpose to enter upon the history of the civil war farther than it touched my own life.

"Write our story as you may, ----------------but even you, With your pen, could never write Half the story of our land---- -------------- "Warrior words--but even they Fail as failed our men in gray;---- Fail to tell the story grand Of our cause and of our land."

A pretty young creature said to her aged relative: "Why, money can never make people happy!"

"No, my child," replied the old lady, "but it can make them very comfortable." The South learned in the direst way--through the want of it--the comfort of money. It has learned also through the aggressions of trusts and monopolies how comfortable and dangerous a thing money may prove to be to the liberties of a people. It was during the war and soon after it that vast fortunes were made at the North.

The South has long ago accepted its destiny as an integral element of the United States and the great American people. It has set its face resolutely forward with historic purpose. It clings to its past only as its traditions and practices safe-guarded const.i.tutional rights and the integrity of a true republic. Its simpler social structure has enabled it to keep a clearer vision of the purposes of our forefathers in government than the North, with its tremendous infiltration of foreigners ingrained with monarchical antecedents, and with the complex interests of many cla.s.ses. Never, perhaps, so much as now has a "solid South" been needed to help to keep alive the principles of true democracy. But "old, sore cankering wounds that pierced and stung,--throb no longer."

Money is comfort, but love is happiness. The love of one G.o.d and a common country "has welded fast the links which war had broken."

The negro question of the South has become the problem of the nation. This is retributive justice; for the North introduced slavery into the colonial provinces, and sold the slaves to the South when they had ceased to be profitable in Ma.s.sachusetts. The South found them renumerative and kept them. This branch of the subject may be dismissed with the reflection that it is a disposition common to humanity to use any sort of sophistry to excuse or palliate bias of feeling and departures in conduct from the right way. Everybody--North and South--is equally glad that slavery is now abolished, notwithstanding differences of opinion as to the methods by which it was accomplished.

Judge Tourgee, in his "Fool's Errand," said: "The negroes were brought here against their will. They have learned in two hundred years the rudiments of civilization, the alphabet of religion, law, mechanic arts, husbandry. Freed without any great exertion upon their part, enfranchised without any intelligent or independent cooperation--no wonder they deem themselves the special pets of Providence." Seven years ago when cotton was selling for four cents a pound and starvation was staring in the face alike the planter and the negro tenant, the owner of a large plantation said to one of her old slaves: "Oh, these are dreadful times, Maria! How are we to live through them! I'm distressed for the people on the place. I fear they will suffer this winter!" "Lor, Miss Annie," Maria replied, "I ain't 'sturbin' my mine 'bout it. White folks dun tuk keer me all my life an' I spec's they gwine ter keep on ter the eend!" The negro Providence is "white folks." If they seem a bit slow in doling out to their desire they know how to help themselves, and it is well they do.

The sudden freedom of the black man as a war measure and his enfranchis.e.m.e.nt as a political necessity of the Republican party was a social earthquake for the South and a sort of moral cataclysm for the North. The one was too stunned by the shock, the other too delirious with success to be able to grasp the portent of such an event in the national life. The North approached it with abolition, fanaticism, and expected the liberated slave to be an ally of freedom of which he had no true conception. The South was an instinctive and hereditary ruler, and the freedman was overrunning its daily life and traditions. It is not wonderful that the negro has suffered in this conflict of antagonistic ideas.

The enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the old slave has set back the development of the South for a generation, because it has been compelled to gauge all its movements on the race line. It has hindered the North for an equal time because the political value of the colored brother to the Republican party has seemed to overshadow every other phase of his development. But schooling and training can remodel even the prejudices of intelligent minds and sincere natures. Thirty-five years of mistakes have convinced both North and South that the negro has been long enough sacrificed to political interests.

Those only who have long lived where the negro equals or outnumbers the white population can understand his character, and the grave problem now confronting this nation.

The danger of enfranchising a large cla.s.s uninstructed in the duties of citizens.h.i.+p and totally ignorant of any principles of government, will prove an experiment not in vain if it enforces on the people of the United States the necessity to restrict suffrage to those who are trained in the knowledge and spirit of American inst.i.tutions. It should serve to emphasize the unwisdom and injustice of denying the ballot because of s.e.x to one half of its American born citizens who, by education and patriotism, are qualified for the highest citizens.h.i.+p. Our government will never become truly democratic until it lives up to its own principles, "No taxation without representation, no government without the consent of the governed." Suffrage should be the privilege of those only who have acquired a right to it by educating themselves for its responsibilities. A proper educational qualification for the ballot, without s.e.x or color lines, would actualize our vision of "a government for the people, of the people and by the people," and would eliminate the ignorant foreigner of all nationalities and colors, as well as the white American who is too indolent or unintelligent to fit himself for the duties of citizens.h.i.+p.

Happily the true friend of the Afro-Americans, North and South, begins to distinguish between their accidental and their permanent well-being. The negro himself is coming to realize that he must make the people with whom he lives his best friends; that the conditions which are for the good of the whites of his community are good for him; that his development must be economic instead of political; that only as he learns to cope with the Anglo-Saxon as a breadwinner will he become truly a freed man.

The African in the South is better off than any laboring cla.s.s on earth.

His industrial conditions have less stress in them. He is seldom out of work unless by his own choice or inefficiency. The climate is in his favor. In the agricultural districts land is cheap for purchase or rent.

Gardens, stock, poultry and fruit are easily at his command. For little effort he is well clothed and well fed. Fuel costs him only the gathering.

The soil responds freely to his careless cultivation. In the trades no distinctions are made between the white and the colored mechanic as to wages or opportunity. There is no economic prejudice against him; he is freely employed by the whites even as a contractor. But the Southern white will "ride alone"--even in a hea.r.s.e--rather than ride with the negro socially outside the electric cars. Otherwise his old master is the negro's best friend. A study of the State Report of Education will convince the most skeptical that the public school fund is divided proportionally with the colored schools, though the whites pay nearly the whole tax. Besides, while Ohio, and perhaps other Northern States, prohibit negro teachers in the public schools, the South, with a view to rewarding as well as stimulating the ambition of the student, gives the preference to colored teachers for their own schools.

Removed from the arena of politics the black man has no real enemy but himself. It will not do to judge the ma.s.ses by the few who have been able to lift themselves above their fellows. Their religion is emotional, often without moral standards. Some of them are indolent, improvident and s.h.i.+ftless to a degree that largely affects white prosperity. But though they have faults which do not even "lean to virtue's side," they are good-natured, teachable, forgiving, loving and lovable.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BECKY COLEMAN]