Letters from the South. Schurz Carl

      The Sea Islands and Free Labor

       Table of Contents

      Letters from the South

       Table of Contents

      NO. I.

       THE SEA ISLANDS AND FREE LABOR.

      [FROM A REGULAR CORRESPONDENT.]

      Charleston, S. C., July 17, 1865

       While the steamer was approaching Hilton Head, I was sitting on deck engaged in conversation with a rebel officer who had been spending several months on Johnson's Island as a prisoner of war, and was now on his way to his Southern home. He was a fine, stalwart fellow, in the very bloom of manhood, of pleasant address and an intelligent expression of countenance. The conversation was soon turned upon his personal situation and prospects. I would not attach much value to what was said, had I not heard the same sentiments expressed by a number of other Southern men, and had I not reasons to believe that they are indicative of the way of thinking of a large and influential class of people.

      He was glad to get home again, very glad. He had entered the army in 1861, and had not been home since. For many months he had not heard a word from his family.

      “I am a planter,” said he, “or rather I was a planter before the war. My plantation is in Georgia, south of Savannah, not far from Darien. I have 4000 acres of land and about ninety negroes. I was well off, I assure you. But what am I now? My slaves are all gone; I am sure they are. Whether my house is still standing I do not know, but I am sure every thing about my plantation is gone to wreck and ruin.”

      “Well, what are you going to do when you get home?”

      “Do? I don't know, sir, no more than the man in the moon. May be some of my negroes, when they hear that I have come home, will come back to me. They were always faithful to me. I treated them well; lost but one in four years by death, of congestive fever.”

      “Well, then, if some of them come back to you, you will make contracts with them, give them fair wages, and go to work again, will you not?”

      He looked surprised. “How so, make contracts with them?”

      “Well,” said I, “you know slavery is abolished, and if you want the negroes to work for you at all, you will have to make agreements with them, as with free laborers.”

      “Yes,” said he, “I have heard of this. I know that's the intention. But now, really, do you think this is a settled thing? Now, niggers won't work when they are not obliged to. A free nigger is never good for any thing. I know the thing won't work. No Southern man expects it will. No use trying.”

      He grew quite animated. I endeavored to convince him in as forcible language as I could command that the emancipation of the slave was indeed a settled thing, and that the Southern people would be obliged to try.

      He still remained incredulous. “Yes, yes,” said he, “I know that's the intention. But I tell you I know the nigger. I know him, sir. He isn't fit for freedom, sir. President Johnson is a Southern man, and he knows the nigger too, sir. He knows him as well as I do, sir. He knows that the niggers must be made to work somehow. You can't make a contract with any of them. They do not know what a contract is. They won't keep a contract.”

      I remarked that the system which he deemed impossible was carried out at a great many places, and that where the military power of the government saw to it that the contracts were fairly made, the system worked well.

      “Yes,” said he, “as long as the Federal troops are there, the thing may work. But the troops will soon be withdrawn, won't they? And the people of the Southern States will manage their own affairs again, won't they?”

      “May be, by and by,” said I, meeting his anxious eye with a smile.

      “Well, isn't that the policy of the administration? You see, then, the thing won't work.”

      I tried once more to convince him that he would have to make up his mind to treat the negro as a free laborer, and suggested that if he thought he could not, he ought to sell part of his land and keep only as much as he could cultivate himself. The idea struck him as absolutely inadmissible.

      “Sell my land?” said he. “What shall I do if I sell my plantation? I have not learned any thing with which I could make a living.”

      “You