Miss Ravenel's conversion from secession to loyalty Part 27

"You are right, sir," said Authority, with suave dignity. "It is a matter of great instant importance. It may become a military necessity.

Suppose we should have a war with France, (I don't say, sir, that there is any danger of it,) we might be cut off from the rest of the Union.

Louisiana would then have to live on her own resources, and feed her own army. These negroes _must_ be induced to work. They must be put at it immediately; they must have their hoes in the soil before six weeks are over; otherwise we are in danger of a famine. I have arranged a plan, Doctor. The provost-marshals are to pick up every unemployed negro, give him his choice as to what plantation he will work on, but see that he works somewhere. There is to be a fixed rate of wages,--so much in clothes and so much in rations. Select your plantation, my dear sir, and I will see that it is a.s.signed to you. You will then obtain your laborers by making written application to the Superintendent of Negro Labor."

The Doctor was honestly and intelligently delighted. He expressed his admiration of the commanding general's motives and wisdom in such terms that the latter, high as he was in position and mighty in authority, felt flattered. You could not possibly talk with Ravenel for ten minutes without thinking better of yourself than before; for, perceiving that you had to do with a superior man, and that he treated you with deference, you instinctively inferred that you were not only a person but a personage. But the compliments and air of respect which he accorded the commanding general were not mere empty civilities, nor well-bred courtesies, nor expressions of consideration for place and authority. Ravenel's enthusiasm led him to believe that, in finding a man who sympathised with him in his pet project, he had found one of the greatest minds of the age.

"At last," he said to his daughter when he reached home, "at last we are likely to see wise justice meted out to these poor blacks."

"Is the Major-General pleasant?" asked Lillie, with an inconsequence which was somewhat characteristic of her. She was more interested in learning how a great dignitary looked and behaved than in hearing what were his opinions on the subject of freemen's labor.

"I don't know that a major general is obliged to be pleasant, at least not in war time," answered the Doctor, a little annoyed at the interruption to the train of his ideas. "Yes, he is pleasant enough; in fact something too much of deportment. He put me in mind of one of my adventures among the Georgia Crackers. I had to put up for the night in one of those miserable up-country log shanties where you can study astronomy all night through the c.h.i.n.ks in the roof, and where the man and wife sleep one side of you and the children and dogs on the other.

The family, it seems, had had a quarrel with a neighboring family of superior pretensions, which had not yet culminated in gouging or shooting. The eldest daughter, a ragged girl of seventeen, described to me with great gusto an encounter which had taken place between her mother and the female chieftain of the hostile tribe. Said she, "Miss Jones, she tried to come the dignerfied over mar. But thar she found her beater. My mar is h.e.l.l on dignerty."--Well, the Major-General runs rather too luxuriantly to dignity. But his ideas on the subject of reorganizing labor are excellent, and have my earnest respect and approbation. I believe that under his administration the negroes will be allowed and encouraged to take their first certain step toward civilization. They are to receive some remuneration,--not for the bygone centuries of forced labor and oppression,--but for what they will do hereafter."

"I don't see, papa, that they have been treated much worse than they might expect," responds Lillie, who, although now a firm loyalist, has by no means become an abolitionist.

"Perhaps not, my dear, perhaps not. They have no doubt been better off in the Dahomey of America than they would have been in the Dahomey of Africa; and certainly they couldn't expect much from a Christianity whose chief corner-stone was a hogshead of slave-grown sugar. The negroes were not foolish enough to look for much good in such a moral atrocity as that. They have put their trust in the enemies of it; in Fremont a while ago, and in Lincoln now. At present they do expect something. They believe that 'the year of jubilo am come.' And so it is.

Before this year closes, many of these poor creatures will receive what they never did before--wages for their labor. For the first time in their lives they will be led to realize the idea of justice. Justice, honesty, mercy, and nearly the whole list of Christian virtues, have hitherto been empty names to them, having no practical signification, and in fact utterly unknown to their minds except as words that for some unexplained purpose had been inserted in the Bible. How could they believe in the things themselves? They never saw them practiced; at least they never felt their influence. Of course they were liars and hypocrites and thieves. All const.i.tuted society lied to them by calling them men and treating them as beasts; it played the hypocrite to them by preaching to them the Christian virtues, and never itself practising them; it played the thief by taking all the earnings of their labor, except just enough to keep soul and body together, so that they might labor more. Our consciences, the conscience of the nation, will not be cleared when we have merely freed the negroes. We must civilize and Christianize them. And we must begin this by teaching them the great elementary duty of man in life--that of working for his own subsistence.

I am so interested in the problem that I have resolved to devote myself personally to its solution."

"What! And give up your hospital?"

"Yes, my dear. I have already given it up, and got my plantation a.s.signed to me."

"Oh, papa! Where?"

Of course Lillie feared that in her new home she might not be able to see her husband; and of course the Doctor divined this charming anxiety, and hastened to relieve her from it.

"It is at Taylorsville, my dear. Taylorsville forms a part of Colonel Carter's military jurisdiction, and the fort there is garrisoned by a detachment from his brigade. He can come to see us without neglecting his duties."

Lillie colored, and said nothing for a few minutes. She was so unused as yet to her husband, that the thought of being visited by him thrilled her nerves, and took temporary possession of all her mind.

"But, papa," she presently inquired, "will this support you as well as the hospital?"

"I don't know, child. It is an experiment. It may be a failure, and it may be a pecuniary success. We shall certainly be obliged to economize until our autumn crops are gathered. But I am willing to do that, if I meet with no other reward than my own consciousness that I enter upon the task for the sake of a long oppressed race. I believe that by means of kindness and justice I can give them such ideas of industry and other social virtues as they could not obtain, and have not obtained, from centuries of robbery and cruelty."

Lillie was lost in meditation, not concerning the good of the blacks, but concerning the probable visits of Colonel Carter at Taylorsville.

Affectionately selfish woman as she was, she would not have given up the alarming joy of one of those antic.i.p.ated interviews for the chance of civilizing a capering wilderness of negroes.

Taylorsville, a flouris.h.i.+ng village before the war, is situated on the Mississippi just where it is tapped by Bayou Rouge, which is one of the dozen channels through which the Father of Waters finds the Gulf of Mexico. It is on the western bank of the river, and for the most part on the southern bank of the bayou; and is protected from both by that continuous system of levees which alone saves southern Louisiana from yearly inundations. At the time of which I speak, a large portion of the town consisted of charred and smoke-blackened ruins. Its citizens had been mad enough to fire on our fleet, and Farragut had swept it with his iron besoms of destruction. On the same bank of the Mississippi, but on the northern bank of the bayou, at the apex of the angle formed by the diverging currents, is Fort Winthrop, a small star-shaped earth-work, faced in part with bricks, surrounded by a ditch except on the river side, and provided with neither casemate nor bombproof. Ordered by Butler and designed by Weitzel, it had been thrown up shortly after the little victory of Georgia Landing. It was to be within reach of this fort in case of an attack from raiding rebels, that Ravenel had selected a plantation for his philanthropic experiment in the neighborhood of Taylorsville. Haste was necessary to success, for the planting season was slipping away. Within a week or so after the marriage he had bought a stock of tools and provisions, obtained a ragged corps of negroes from the Superintendent of Colored Labor, s.h.i.+pped every thing on board a Government transport, and was on the spot where he proposed to initiate the re-organization of southern industry.

The plantation house was a large, plain wooden mansion, very much like those which the country gentility of New England built about the beginning of this century, except that the necessities of a southern climate had dictated a s.p.a.cious veranda covering the whole front, two stories in height, and supported by tall square wooden pillars. In the rear was a one-storied wing, containing the kitchen, and rooms for servants. Farther back, at the extremity of a deep and slovenly yard, where pigs had been wont to wander without much opposition, was a hollow square of cabins for the field-hands, each consisting of two rooms, and all alike built of rough boards coa.r.s.ely whitewashed. Neither the cabins nor the family mansion had a cellar, nor even a foundation wall; they stood on props of brick-work, leaving room underneath for the free circulation of air, dogs, pigs and pickaninnies. On either side of the house the cleared lands ran a considerable distance up and down the bayou, closing in the rear, at a depth of three or four hundred yards, in a stretch of forest. An eighth of a mile away, not far from the winding road which skirted the sinuous base of the levee, was the most expensive building of the plantation, the great brick sugar-house, with vast expanses of black roof and a gigantic chimney. No smoke of industry arose from it; the sound of the grinding of the costly steam machinery had departed; the vats were empty and dry, or had been carried away for bunks and fire-wood by foraging soldiers and negroes.

There was not a soul in any of the buildings or about the grounds when the Ravenels arrived. The Secessionist family of Robertson had fled before Weitzel's advance into the Lafourche country, and its chief, a man of fifty, had fallen at the head of a company of militia at the fight at Georgia Landing. Then the field-hands, who had hid in the swamps to avoid being carried to Texas, came upon the house like locusts of destruction, broke down its doors, shattered its windows, plundered it from parlor to garret, drank themselves drunk on the venerable treasures of the wine closet, and diverted themselves with soiling the carpets, breaking the chairs, ripping up the sofas, and defacing the family portraits. Some gentle sentiment, perhaps a feeble love for the departed young "missus," perhaps the pa.s.sion of their race for music, had deterred them from injuring the piano, which was almost the only unharmed piece of furniture in the once handsome parlor. The single living creature about the place was a half-starved grimalkin, who caterwauled dolefully at the visitors from a distance, and could not be enticed to approach by the blandishments of Lillie, an enthusiastic cat-fancier. To the merely sentimental observer it was sad to think that this house of desolation had not long since been the abode of the generous family life and prodigal hospitality of a southern planter.

"Oh, how doleful it looks!" sighed Lillie, as she wandered about the deserted rooms.

"It _is_ doleful," said the Doctor. "As doleful as the ruins of Babylon--of cities accursed of G.o.d, and smitten for their wickedness. My old friend Elderkin used to say (before he went addled about southern rights) that he wondered G.o.d didn't strike all the sugar planters of Louisiana dead. Well He _has_ stricken them with stark madness; and under the influence of it they are getting themselves killed off as fast as possible. It was time. The world had got to be too intelligent for them. They could not live without r.e.t.a.r.ding the progress of civilization. They wanted to keep up the social systems of the middle ages amidst railroads, steamboats, telegraphs, patent reapers, and under the noses of Humboldt, Leverrier, Lyell, and Aga.s.siz. Of course they must go to the wall. They will be pinned up to it _in terrorem_, like exterminated crows and chicken-hawks. The grand jury of future centuries will bring in the verdict, 'Served them right!' At the same time one cannot help feeling a little human sympathy, or at any rate a little poetic melancholy, on stepping thus into the ruins of a family."

Lillie, however, was not very sentimental about the departed happiness of the Robertsons; she was planning how to get the house ready for the expected visit of Colonel Carter; in that channel for the present ran her poesy.

"But really, papa, we must go to work," she said. "The nineteenth century has turned out the Robertsons, and put us in--but it has left these rooms awfully dirty, and the furniture in a dreadful condition."

In a few minutes she had her hat off, her dress pinned up to keep it out of the dust, her sleeves rolled back to her elbows, and was flying about with remarkable emphasis, dragging broken chairs, etc., to the garret, and brooming up such whirlwinds of dust, that the Doctor flew abroad for refuge. What she could not do herself she set half a dozen negroes, male and female, to doing. She was wild with excitement and gayety, running about, ordering and laughing like a threefold creature.

It was delightful to remember, in a sweet under-current of thought which flowed gently beneath her external glee, that she was working to welcome her husband, slaving for him, tiring herself out for his dear sake. In a couple of hours she was so weary that she had to fling herself on a settee in the veranda, and rest, while the negroes continued the labor.

Women in general, I believe, love to work by spasms and deliriums, doing, or making believe do, a vast deal while they are at it, but dropping off presently into languor and headache.

"Papa, we shall have five whole chairs," she called. "You can sit in one, I in another, and that will leave three for Mr. Carter. Why don't you come and do something? I have f.a.gged myself half to death, and you haven't done a thing but mope about with your hands behind your back.

Come in now, and go to work."

"My dear, there are so many negroes in there that I can't get in."

"Then come up and talk to me," commanded the young lady, who had meant that all the while. "You needn't think you can find any Smithites or Robinsonites. There isn't a mineral in Louisiana, unless it is a brickbat. Do come up here and talk to me. I can't scream to you all the afternoon."

"I am so glad you can't," grinned papa, and strolled obstinately away in the direction of the sugar-house. He was studying the nature of the soil, and proposing to subject it to a chemical a.n.a.lysis, in order to see if it could not be made to produce as much corn to the acre as the bottom lands of Ohio. Indian corn and sweet potatoes, with a little seasoning of onions, beets, squashes, and other kitchen garden vegetables, should be his only crop that season. Also he would raise pigs and chickens by the hundred, and perhaps three or four cows, if promising calves could be obtained in the country. What New Orleans wanted, and what the whole department would stand in desperate need of, should a war break out with France, was, not sugar, but corn and pork.

All that summer the possibility of a war with France was a prominent topic of conversation in Louisiana, so that even the soldiers talked in their rough way of "revelling in the halls of the Montezumas, and filling their pockets with little gold Jesuses." As for making sugar, unless it might be a hogshead or so for family consumption, it was out of the question. It would cost twenty thousand dollars merely to put the sugar-house and its machinery to rights--and the Doctor had no such riches, nor any thing approaching to it, this side of heaven.

Nevertheless he was perfectly happy in strolling about his unplanted estate, and revolving his unfulfilled plans, agricultural and humanitarian. He proposed to produce, not only a crop of corn and potatoes, but a race of intelligent, industrious and virtuous laborers.

He would make himself a.n.a.lytically acquainted, not only with the elements and possibilities of the soil, but with those of the negro soul. By the way, I ought to mention that he was not proprietor of the plantation, but only a tenant of it to the United States, paying a rent which for the first year was merely nominal, so anxious was Authority to initiate successfully the grand experiment of freedmen's labor.

When he returned to the house from a stroll of two hours Lillie favored him with a good imitation of a sound scolding. What did he mean by leaving her alone so, without anybody to speak a word to? If he was going to be always out in this way, they might as well live in New Orleans where he would be fussing around his hospital from morning till night. She was tired with overseeing those stupid negroes and trying to make them set the chairs and tables right side up.

"My dear, don't reproach them for being stupid," said Ravenel. "For nearly a century the whole power of our great Republic, north and south, has been devoted to keeping them stupid. Your own State has taken a demoniac interest in this infernal labor. We mustn't quarrel with our own deliberate productions. We wanted stupidity, we have got it, and we must be contented with it. At least for a while. It is your duty and mine to work patiently, courteously and faithfully to undo the horrid results of a century of selfishness. I shall expect you to teach all these poor people to read."

"Teach them to read! what, set up a n.i.g.g.e.r school!"

"Yes, you born barbarian,--and daughter of a born barbarian,--for I felt that way myself once. I want you in the first place to teach them, and yourself too, how to spell negro with only one _g_. You must not add your efforts to keep this abused race under a stigma of social contempt.

You must do what you can to elevate them in sentiment, and in knowledge."

"But oh, what a labor! I would rather clean house every day."

"Not so very much of a labor--not so very much of a labor," insisted the Doctor. "Negro children are just as intelligent as white children until they find out that they are black. Now we will never tell them that they are black; we will never hint to them that they are born our inferiors.

You will find them bright enough if you won't knock them on the head.

Why, you couldn't read yourself till you were seven years old."

"Because you didn't care to have me. I learned quick enough when I set about it."

"Just so. And that proves that it is not too late for our people here to commence their education. Adults can beat children at the alphabet."

"But it is against the law, teaching them to read."

The Doctor burst into a hearty laugh.

"The laws of Dahomey are abrogated," said he. "What a fossil you are!

You remind me of my poor doting old friend, Elderkin, who persists in declaring that the invasion of Louisiana was a violation of the Const.i.tution."

By this time the dozen or so of negroes had brought the neglected mansion to a habitable degree of cleanliness, and decked out two or three rooms with what tags and amputated fragments remained of the once fine furniture. A chamber had been prepared for Lillie, and another for the Doctor. A tea-table was set in a picnic sort of style, and crowned with corn cake, fried pork, and roasted sweet potatoes.

"Are you not going to ask in our colored friends?" inquired Lillie, mischievously.

"Why no. I don't see the logical necessity of it. I always have claimed the right of selecting my own intimates. I admit, however, that I have sat at table with less respectable people in some of the most aristocratic houses of New Orleans. Please to drop the satire and put some sugar in my tea."