Part 10
Cotton was booming at Savannah and New Orleans, and despite talk of the weevil destroying the pod, and of bad weather and bad crops, it was clear that Georgia was very prosperous. Men and women discussed the price of cotton as they might horse races or State-lottery results or raffles. Everyone wanted room to store his cotton and hold it till the maximum price was reached. My impression of Georgia now was that it was not nearly so rich in live stock and in food as it had been in the time of Sherman. In his day it grew its own food and was the supply source of two armies. To-day it imports the greater part of its food. It sells its cotton and buys food from the more agricultural States of the South. It might have been thought to be a land overflowing with fruit and honey and milk, but fruit and honey are cheaper in New York than there, and there is no margin of milk to give away. Meat is scarce and dear. There is no plenty on the table unless it be of sweet potatoes. I imagine that after Sherman’s raid the farmers felt discouraged, and decided never to be in a position to feed an enemy army again. There are many always urging the Georgian to grow corn and raise stock, and so make Georgia economically independent, but the farmer always meets the suggestion with the statement that cotton gives the largest return on any given outlay and takes least trouble. That is true, but it is largely because the Negro cotton picker is such a cheap laboring hand. A farm laborer would automatically obtain more than a cotton picker. The hypnotic effect of the slave past is strong and binding upon the Negroes. Perhaps it is still the curse of Georgia. There are still planters who drive their laborers with the whip and the gun—though the shortage of labor during the war caused these to be put up. It is not in money in the bank that one must reckon true prosperity. However, in this material way, Georgia has quite recovered from the Civil War. But she has lost a good many of the compensations of true agriculture; cotton is so commercial a product that there is no glamour about it, not even about the old plantations, unless it be that of the patient melancholy of the cotton pickers.
VI
TRAMPING TO THE SEA
I passed through two ancient capitals of Georgia, first Milledgeville, and then Louisville. The relationship which Milledgeville bore to Atlanta reminded me of the relationship of the old Cossack capital of the Don country to the modern industrial wilderness of South Russia called Rostof-na-Donu. But business is business, and there is only business in this land. Even along the way to the old capital it is always so many miles to Goldstein’s on the mile-posts instead of so many miles to Milledgeville.
The old legislature sat at Milledgeville, but it fled at the approach of Sherman. It was a day of great astonishment when General Slocum paused in his supposed march upon Augusta and General Howard in his attack on Macon, and one came south from Madison while the other marched north from McDonough. There was an extraordinary sauve qui peut. Panic seized the politicians and the rich gentry of the place, for the rumor of the terrible ways of the foragers was flying ahead of the Union Army. Everyone strove to carry off or hide his treasures. They must have had terrible privations and some adventures on the road trying to race the army, and they would have done better to remain to face the music, for no private effects were destroyed in this city. Similar scenes were enacted as at Covington. The darkies made a great day of jubilee, and hugged and kissed the soldiers who had set them free. The cotton was burned and made a great flare—seventeen hundred bales of it even in those days. The depots, magazines, arsenals, and factories were blown up. Governor Brown had fled with all his furniture, and Sherman in the governor’s house slept on a roll of army blankets on the bare floor.
There are many signs of ease and refinement in the spacious streets of Milledgeville, though it has increased little in size since the war. It has large schools for the training of cadets and the training of girls. These are model institutions and are very valuable in Georgia. The place, however, seemed to lack the cultural significance it ought to have. But it is true that churches and Sunday schools were full. No shops of any kind were open on Sundays; the people had forgotten the taste of alcoholic drink and were ready to crusade against tobacco. They are not given to lynching, though they allowed some wild men from Atlanta to break open their jail some years ago and take away a Jew and hang him. But they are too content. At church on Sunday morning the pastor complained that while all were willing to give money to God none were willing to offer themselves. He invited any who were ready to give themselves unreservedly to God to step forth, and none did. And it was an eloquent appeal by a capable orator. I met an old recluse who was at the back of the church. He had tried to give himself to God but was now living at the asylum where he had found shelter, being otherwise without means. He had been a Baptist minister at a church near Stone Mountain, but rheumatism had intervened after twenty years’ work, and he could no longer stoop to immerse the candidates for baptism. He was an Englishman who had listened to Carlyle’s and Ruskin’s lectures, and he talked of Dean Farrar’s sermons and the good deeds of the Earl of Shaftesbury. He spoke as no one speaks to-day, good old measured Victorian English. He was a touching type of the despised and rejected. He loved talking to the Negro children in the “colored” school till the townsfolk warned him against it. His books form the nucleus of the town library, but the rats have gnawn all the bindings of his “Encyclopedia Britannica,” and I formed the opinion that poor R—— living on sufferance in the lunatic asylum was probably the best read man in Milledgeville.
It is a delightful walk to Sandersville, over Buffalo Creek and over many streams crossed by the most fragile of bridges apparently never properly rebuilt since Wheeler’s cavalry destroyed them in the face of the oncoming army. Georgia used to have many excellent bridges, but it never really hindered the Yankee army by destroying them. It seems rather characteristic of the psychology of the people that they would not replace what they had had to destroy. Now at the foot of each long hill down which the automobiles tear is a trap of mere planks and gaps which chatters and indeed roars when passed over. Many motorists get into the mud.
Sandersville is a busy town hung in gloomy bunting which no one has had time to take down since the last county fair. It has a large, dusty, sandy square with a clock tower in the middle. There are great numbers of cars and lorries parked around. Cotton bales, old and new, fresh and decayed, lie on every street. Huge gins are working, and Negroes are busy shoveling oily-looking cottonseed into barns; cotton fluff is all over the roadways in little clots; every man is in his shirt; the soda bars do a great trade even in November. A stranger said to me “Come and have a drink” and we went in and had a “cherry dope.” There is an impressive-looking public library, much larger than at Milledgeville, with high frontal columns of unadorned old bricks mortared and laid in diamond fashion, a barred door, and an entrance so deep in cotton fluff, brickdust, and refuse that one might be pardoned for assuming that learning was not now in repute. On the other hand there is a fine, well-kept cemetery with large mausoleums for the rich and tiny stones for the poor.
Sandersville was the scene of one or two combats during the war. But when it is borne in mind that only a hundred of Sherman’s army died from all causes on its march to the sea, it will be understood that the strife was not serious. Sherman has been called a Prussian, and he certainly possessed military genius and understood soldiering as a mental science, but he always tried to save his men. He wished to win victories with the smallest possible loss of men, and he thought out his unorthodox plans of campaign with that in view. He could have lost half his army on this adventurous march to the sea. It was a most daring exploit, and if it had failed the whole responsibility would have been laid at Sherman’s door. But Sherman had thought the matter out, and he completely deceived his enemy. Once more after Milledgeville Slocum is seen to be threatening Augusta in the north and Howard is striking south. The cavalry is driving the enemy ahead and plunges northward to Louisville and Waynesboro, well on the way to Augusta. The enemy evacuates the central regions of Georgia, and Sherman’s infantry moves through unscathed. Foraging has become organized and systematic. The wagons amount to many thousands, and it is curious that the population did not destroy all vehicles and so prevent the army from carrying away so much. The doubt which General Sherman expressed at the beginning of the march that supplies might prove inadequate has entirely vanished, and the army has a crowd of Negro camp followers almost as big as itself. These eventually became a great hindrance, but they were evidently encouraged to join themselves to the soldiers in the Milledgeville and Sandersville district. They proved invaluable helps in the seeking out of hidden treasure and the pillaging of farmhouses. They knew the likely spots where valuables would be buried, and the soldiers knew how to worm out secrets even from the most faithful black servants on the big estates. One reason why Georgia burns and hangs more Negroes than any other State is probably because of the bitterness caused by the unstinted foraging and the “setting of the niggers against us” as they say.
Be that as it may, the seeds of future hate are always sown in present wars, and “Sherman’s bummers” in their quest of spoil took little heed of any future reckoning. The Negroes led the soldiers even to the deepest recesses of swamps or forests, and showed the hollow tree or cave or hole where lay deposited the precious family plate and jewelry and money and even clothing. It was common to take from the planter not only hams, flour, meal, yams, sorghum molasses, but above all things turkeys, so rare to-day along the line of Sherman’s march—
How the turkeys gobbled which our commissaries found, How the sweet potatoes even started from the ground, When we were marching thro’ Georgia!
But the bummer did not stick at these. He would borrow grandfather’s dress coat and hat surviving from the old colonial days, and his mate would array himself in grandmother’s finery, and so attired would drive their wagon back to camp, hailed by the jests of the whole army; and if they met an officer on the way they would cry out mirthfully the text of the army order—_The army will forage liberally on the country._
It is said that no forager would ever sell any of his loot, that indeed it was a point of honor not to sell. The veterans of the North must therefore preserve many interesting mementoes of the South. Both officers and men took many tokens. There used to be an amusing euphemism current in Sherman’s army: it was—“A Southern lady gave me that for saving her house from being burned”—and if anyone said, “That’s a nice gold watch; where did you get it?” the soldier replied, “Oh, a Southern lady gave it to me,” etc.
The army made camp by three o’clock every day, and it was after three that most of the unauthorized foraging expeditions took place. They were gay afternoons spent in singing and gambling, athletics and cock fighting. The South was found to be possessed of a wonderful race of fighting cocks. The enthusiasts of the sport rushed from farm yard to farm yard for astonished chanticleer, and having captured him fed him well and brought him up to a more martial type of life than that which in domesticated bliss he had enjoyed with his hens. Every company had its cock fighting tournament. Each regiment, each brigade, each division, and indeed each corps, had its champion. The winners of many bloody frays were soon nicknamed “Bill Sherman” or “Johnny Logan,” but the losing bird which began to fear to face its adversary would be hailed as Beauregard or Jeff Davis. The cock fight finals were of as great interest as the combat of the Reds and White Sox to-day, and perhaps more real.
Besides game cocks each regiment had a great number of pets. These were mostly poor, homeless creatures on which the soldier had taken pity; dogs, singing birds, kids, who followed with the army and had the army’s tenderness lavished on them.
So they went, marching and camping by old Louisville and the broad waters of the Ogeechee down to Millen. The old farmers say what an impressive sight it was to watch them go by on the Millen road with seemingly more wagons than men, with all the wagons bulging with spoil and drawn by well-fed horses and mules, with long droves of cattle, and thousands of frenzied Negroes so frantic with joy that they seemed to have lost their heads and to be expecting the end of the world.
* * * * *
Davisboro is a dust-swept settlement two sides of a road at the foot of a hill. Doors stand open, and the general stores in all their disorder spread their wares. At one end of the little town a large gin is hard at work steaming and blowing, ravishing cotton seed from cotton fluff, and many bales are waiting. Louisville, the old capital, is a dozen miles further on beyond the woods and swamps of a sparsely settled country. It is now “the slowest town in Georgia.” It is, however, none the less pleasant for that.
There are many old houses, and in the midst of the way stands the original wooden “Slave Market” built in 1758, according to a notice affixed, but now used as a fire station. In the old colonial days when Louisville was the capital, slaves used to be brought there in large batches on market days. There was a little platform on which the all-but-naked victims had to stand and be exhibited and auctioned. As I sat on a bench and considered the building a young townsman joined himself to me and gave me a gleeful description of the slaves—“Their front teeth were filed, they spoke no English; when they saw our big green grasshoppers they ran after them and caught them and ate them. The men wore loin cloths and the women cotton chemises halfway to the knee. Lots of cows, hogs, mules, and niggers were put up and sold as cattle in a lump. Animals, that’s all they were and all they are now——” And he laughed in a curious, self-conscious way.
“It is strange to think of the history of them,” said I, “from the African wastes to the slave ship, from the slave ship to the harbors of the New World, then to these market places and to the plantations, taught baby English and hymn-singing, obtaining the Bible as an only and all-comprehending book, petted and fondled like wonderful strays from the forest in many families, tortured in others, becoming eventually a bone of fierce political contention though innocent themselves, the cause of a great war, and then released in that war and given the full rights of white American citizens.”
The young townsman’s imagination was not touched by the romance of the Negro. He was full of the wrong done to the white South by putting it under the dominance of a free Negro majority.
“You know we lynch them down here,” said he, with a smile. “They want social equality, but they are not going to get it. The nigger can’t progress any further.”
“Well, there’s a vast difference between the Negro of 1860 and the Negro of to-day,” said I. “Hundreds of universities and colleges have arisen, thousands of schools and Negro organizations for self-education. The Negro has gone a long way since in yelling crowds he followed the banners of Sherman. I do not think he is going to stop short, and I wonder where he is going to and where at last he will arrive.”
I passed through Eatonton, the birthplace of Joel Chandler Harris, on my way to the sea. He taught us much about the Negro. In England Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit have become as cherished as the toys of the nursery. I think Uncle Remus meant as much to us as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” The genial point of view and the genial books do as much to help humanity as the strong and bitter ones. Both certainly have their place. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” stirred people out of a lazy attitude of mind toward the Negro slaves, but in America it aggravated a bitterness which no other book has been able to allay. The very intensity of the white man’s thought about the Negro bodes ill for the future. The White men of the North deliberately have made the effort to rear a Negro _intelligentsia_. The idealists of the North said, “You shall go on”; others said, “No, you shall stay as you were”; the clash of the two wills lit up racial war, but the Negro has sided with the idealists who sought to raise him, with the Friends of Pennsylvania and the humanitarians of New England.
In the panic of Sherman’s approach the planters and their wives told their slaves that the Yanks would flog them and burn them or put them in the front of the battle, and drown the women and children in the Ogeechee or the Chattahoochee. Many believed and fled with their masters; others hid in the woods, but the rumor of salvation was on the lips of most. The Southerner has a saying, “The nigger is the greatest union in the country.” News indeed travels faster among slaves and servants than among employers and masters. There was not much hesitation when the army arrived. The Negroes saw and believed. The incredulous were converted and the scared persuaded out of their hiding places. All with one accord forgot their fear and then went to the other extreme; that is, as far in credulity as their dull minds had lodged in incredulity. The arrival of the victors gave rise to the most extravagant hopes. The Negro had never reasoned about anything in an informed way. He knew nothing of the world except the simplicity of the plantation. He had on the one hand slavery, and on the other the vague and vast idealism of Christian hymns; the melancholy of bondage and the emotionalism of Evangelical religion. He did not think of New York, London, Paris, St. Petersburg, of the workingmen’s movement, of free thought, of political economy, but only of “de ole plantation,” and then “de ribber.” From drab slavery he looked straight to Jordan and the golden gates, and to a no-work, easy-going paradise happy as the day is long, with God as Massa, and Mary and the Son to play with. There were no between stages to which to aspire. They expected, as did the Puritan churches about them, the huge combustion of the Last Day, and they did not set much store by this world. Hence their exalted state of mind following Sherman’s army. They were ready to shout _Glory_ when the world was afire, and they displayed all the emotion which should have been saved for the coming of the Lord.
At first Sherman’s army was quite pleased, and encouraged the emotion of the freed men. But it got to be too much for the Yankee soldiers, who felt at last that the Blacks were overdoing it and that in any case they were a nuisance. The nearer they got to Savannah the more impatient did they become. At last they began to destroy bridges between themselves and the Negroes, and put rivers between them. Then, after leaving Millen for the pine forests of the Savannah shore, they deliberately destroyed the bridge over Ebenezer Creek. There was a wild panic, a stampede, and many, it is said, were drowned in the stream. The splendor of the army went by, the brass bands, the cheering and the singing of the soldiers and the standard bearers of the North in the midst of them, the wagons, the many wagons laden with spoil, and the droves of cattle. But for Georgia and the Negro there set in the twilight of ruin and disillusion.
Rural Georgia is not very much better off to-day than it was in slavery days. The large tracts of land which the Blacks thought would be given them they neither could nor would farm. They lacked experience and initiative. They could be too easily deceived by their white neighbors, and were too subservient to their erstwhile masters to make good in the race of human individuals striving one against another.
“No Negroes own land hereabout,” said some Negro renters to me between Shady Dale and Eatonton. “They did, but got into debt and lost it. We rent a thirty-acre farm and pay two bales of cotton rent.” At the current price of cotton, 38 cents a pound, that amounted to 380 dollars in American currency, or 95 pounds in British currency, but the tenants paid in cotton, and as cotton boomed their rents advanced.
It seemed to be everywhere customary to reckon rent in cotton bales, and it is easy to see what an economic serf the Negro can become under such terms. This system, known as “truck” in England, was long since abolished, but its evils were so notorious that truck has remained a proverbial expression for chicane—hence the phrase “to have no truck with it.” The Negro is better off as a laborer on a white man’s plantation than he is when having the responsibility of picking a crop for master before he picks one for himself.
There are many features of life on the modern plantation, be it of sugar or cotton, which suggest slavery. Virtual slavery is called _peonage_ and many examples were given me by Negroes. It is arranged in some places that the Negro handles as little money as possible. Instead of money he has credit checks, metal or cardboard disks, which he can use at the general store to purchase his provisions. He is kept in debt so that he can never get out, and so lives with a halter round his neck. Especially during the war, when the rumor of war wages was tempting the colored labor of the South to migrate North in huge numbers, efforts were made to keep the Negro without the means of straying from the locality where the labor of his hands was the foundation of the life of the community. Other forms of _peonage_ prevalent in rural parts is the commuting of punishment for forced labor, the hiring out of penal labor to companies or public authorities. This resembles the use made of prisoners during the recent world war, and is virtual slavery.