other year. The man who does best will be worth the most But if you are lazy and unfaithful, I shall dismiss you when your contracts are ended, and hire better men. Do you know why some overseers are always wandering about in search of a situation?' 'Because nobody wants 'em,' said the negroes. Why not?' Because they a'n't good for their business.' 'Why did I keep John Bird only one year?' Because, soon as your back was turned, he slipped off to a grocery, or went a-fishing.' And why did I keep William Hooker eight years, and increase his salary every year?' 'Because he stuck by and always looked after your interest.' Now,' said the planter, you are in the condition of these overseers. You can always have good situations, and your prospects will be continually improving, if you do well. Or you may soon be going about the country with bundles on your backs, miserable low-down niggers that nobody will hire.' In this way he instructed and encouraged the freedmen; and he assured me they were working better than ever. But by your serf-codes you would crush 'all hope and manhood out of them."

"Well, there may be something in all that. I can't say, for I never thought of trying but one way with a nigger. But nigger suffrage the South a'n't going to stand anyhow. We've already got a class of voters that 's enough to corrupt the politics of any country. I used to think the nigger was the meanest of God's creatures. But I've found a meaner brute than he; and that 's the low-down white man. If a respectable man hires a nigger for wages, one of those low-down cusses will offer him twice as much, to get him away. They want him to prowl for them. A heap of these no-account whites are getting rich, stealing cotton; they 're too lazy or cowardly to do it themselves, so they get the niggers to do it for 'em. These very men hold the balance of political power in this district. They'll vote for the man who gives 'em the most whiskey. Just before the war, at an election in Columbia, over a hundred sand-hillers sold their votes beforehand, and were put into jail till the polls opened, and then marched out to vote."

SPIRIT OF THE PEOPLE.

"By what right were they put in jail?"

575

"It was in the bargain. They knew they could n't be trusted not to sell their votes to the next man that offered more whiskey, and they like going to jail well enough, if they can go drunk. Make the niggers voters, and you'll have just such another class to be bought up with whiskey."

"It seems to me more reasonable," I replied, "to suppose that the franchise will elevate the negro; and by elevating him you will elevate the white man who has been degraded by the negro's degradation. Some of both races will no doubt be found willing to sell their votes, as well as their souls, for whiskey; but that is no more a reason why all blacks should be deprived of the right of suffrage, than that all whites should be."

This is a specimen of the talk that was kept up during the day.

We stopped to dine at a house, where I was told by a young lady that the Yankees were the greatest set of rogues, and that some passed there every day.

"Is it possible!" I said. "Are you not afraid of them?" "I have nothing whatever to do with them. I should be ashamed to be seen talking with one."

"Then be careful that no one sees you now."

"You are not a Yankee !" she exclaimed.

"Yes," said I, "I am one of that set of rogues."

"I am very sorry to hear it, for I had formed a more favorable opinion of you."

Only the good-natured Virginian went in with me to the dining-room. The lady of the house, sitting at the table with us, soon began to talk about the Yankees. "They often dine. here," she said. "But I have nothing to say to them. As soon as I know who they are, I go out of the room." She was very sociable; and when I informed her at parting that she had been entertaining a Yankee, she appeared confused and incredulous.

Such was the spirit commonly shown by the middle class of South Carolinians. But I remember some marked exceptions.

Late in the afternoon we stopped at a place which a sturdy old farmer said was Ridgeway before Sherman came there: "I don't know what you 'd call it now."

"If the devil don't get old Sherman," said one of my travelling companions, "there a'n't no use having a devil."

"We did it ourselves," said the farmer. "We druv the nail and the Yankees clinched it."

In the coach, the South Carolinians had just been denying that any outrages were committed on the freedmen in that part of the country. So I asked this man if he had heard of any such.

"Heard of 'em? I hear of 'em every day. I'm going to Columbia to-night to attend the trial of one of my neighbors for shooting a negro woman."

"You must expect such things to happen when the niggers are impudent," observed one of my companions.

"They're

"The niggers a'n't to blame," said the farmer. never impudent, unless they 're trifled with or imposed on. Only two days ago a nigger was walking along this road, as peaceably as any man you ever saw. He met a white man right here, who asked him who he belonged to. 'I don't belong to anybody now,' he says; 'I'm a free man.' 'Sass me? you black devil!' says the white fellow; and he pitched into him, and cut him in four or five places with his knife. I heard and saw the whole of it, and I say the nigger was respectful, and that the white fellow was the only one to blame." "What became of the negro?"

"I don't know; he went off to some of his people." "And what was done with the white man ?"

"Nothing. There's nobody to do anything in such cases, unless the nigger goes all the way to the Freedmen's Bureau and makes a complaint. Then there's little chance of getting the fellow that cut him."

Three miles further on, we reached a point to which the railroad had been repaired, and took the cars for Winnsboro'. While we were waiting by moonlight in the shelterless and stumpy camping-ground which served as a station, one of my

SHERMAN'S "BUMMERS."

'577

South Carolina friends said to me: "We may as well tell the whole truth as half. The Yankees treated us mighty badly; but a heap of our own people followed in their track and robbed on their credit."

On the train I found a hotel-keeper from Winnsboro' drumming for customers. He was abusing the Yankees with great violence and passion until he found that I was one. After that he kept remarkably quiet, and even apologized to me for his remarks, until I told him I had concluded to go to the house of a rival runner. Thereupon he broke forth again.

-

They had no object I'm like a whipped I shall love 'em.

say

"They've left me one inestimable privilege to hate 'em. I git up at half-past four in the morning, and sit up till twelve at night, to hate 'em. Talk about Union! in coming down here, but just to steal. cur; I have to cave in; but that don't I owned my own house, my own servants, my own garden, and in one night they reduced me to poverty. My house was near the State House in Columbia. It was occupied by Howard's head-quarters. When they left, they just poured camphene over the beds, set 'em afire, locked up the house, and threw away the key. That was after the burning of the town, and that's what made it so hard. Some one had told 'em I was one of the worst Rebels in the world, and that's the only truth I reckon, that was told. I brought up seven boys, and what they had n't killed was fighting against 'em then. Now I have to keep a boarding-house in Winnsboro' to support my wife and children."

At Winnsboro' I passed the night. A portion of that town also had been destroyed; and there too Sherman's "bummers" were said to have behaved very naughtily. For instance: "When the Episcopal church was burning, they took out the melodeon, and played the devil's tunes on it till the house was well burned down; then they threw on the melodeon."

37

CHAPTER LXXX.

A GLIMPSE OF THE OLD NORTH STATE.

THE next day I entered North Carolina.

Almost immediately on crossing the State line, a change of scene was perceptible. The natural features of the country improved; the appearance of its farms improved still more. North Carolina farmers use manures, and work with their own hands. They treat the soil more generously than their South Carolina neighbors, and it repays them.

That night I passed at the house of a Connecticut man, in a country village, a warm and comfortable New-England home transported to a southern community, and went on

the next day to Raleigh.

-

At Raleigh I found the Legislature, composed mostly of a respectable and worthy-looking yeomanry-battling over the question of negro testimony in the civil courts; spending day after day in the discussion of a subject which could be settled in only one way, and which ought to have been settled at once. One member remarked outside: "I'll never vote for that bill unless driven to it by the bayonet." Another said: "I'm opposed to giving niggers any privileges." These men represent a large class of North Carolina farmers; but fortunately there is another class of more progressive and liberal ideas, which are sure at last to prevail.

The business of Raleigh was dull, the money in the country being exhausted. A few Northern men, who had gone into trade there, were discouraged, and anxious to get away.

"So great is the impoverishment of our State," Governor Worth said to me, "that a tax of any considerable amount would bring real estate at once into the market." Among other causes, the repudiation of the entire State debt con