Letters from Port Royal Part 27

[Footnote 157: An ambulance.]

[Footnote 158: Cf. E. S. P.'s letter of February 22, p. 251.]

[Footnote 159: Early in April the steamer _City of New York_, carrying sixty-one bales of Mr. Philbrick's cotton, was wrecked in Queenstown harbor. The cotton was insured for $1.50 a pound, but would have brought more in the market.]

[Footnote 160: See p. 219. The idea was by no means new. Frederick Law Olmstead had devoted a great deal of s.p.a.ce to proving the truth of it, and indeed had quoted many planters who admitted that, as a system of labor, slavery was expensive.]

[Footnote 161: (Dated April 26, in the _Independent_.) On St. Helena to-day it is always possible to hire men for common work at fifty cents per day.]

[Footnote 162: Dated May 2.]

[Footnote 163: The National Union Convention which met on June 7.]

[Footnote 164: The hero of the _Planter_ episode; see p. 46.]

[Footnote 165: See p. 145.]

[Footnote 166: One of many minor raids, very likely up the Combahee River.]

[Footnote 167: As General commanding the Department of the South.]

[Footnote 168: Husband of f.a.n.n.y Kemble.]

[Footnote 169: Compare J. A. S. on p. 265.]

[Footnote 170: Evidently G.'s suggestion was practically for the plan Mr. Philbrick did in fact adopt finally, that of selling some of his land to negroes and some to white men. The price at which he sold to the negroes was determined by the ideas here expressed.]

[Footnote 171: A mulatto, educated in the North, who had gone to help at Port Royal.]

[Footnote 172: Colonel Milton S. Littlefield, Twenty-First United States Colored Troops.]

[Footnote 173: Foster's order was dated August 16.]

[Footnote 174: "The First South," as the First South Carolina Volunteers was always called by the negroes, had in the spring been enrolled among the United States Colored Troops as the Thirty-Third Regiment.]

[Footnote 175: See p. 187.]

[Footnote 176: Both in the Fifty-Fifth Ma.s.sachusetts Volunteers (colored).]

[Footnote 177: The battle of Honey Hill (near Grahamville), fought November 30.]

[Footnote 178: Of the Fifty-Fifth Ma.s.sachusetts.]

[Footnote 179: F. H. was to take charge of Coffin's Point on C. P.

W.'s leaving permanently for home a few weeks later. In connection with Mr. Philbrick's words about him and in preparation for his own letters, it is worth while to record something he had written in the autumn:

Oct. 7. St. Helena. I am slowly recovering from my three weeks'

sickness,--more buoyant and hopeful than ever before. I seem to have a new birth, with new aspirations, and new views--particularly in regard to life and its duties and prospects among the freed people of South Carolina.

If _G.o.d_ is not in it, then I am laboring under hallucination.]

[Footnote 180: The crop of 1864 had cost Mr. Philbrick about $1.00 a pound, and he thought it quite possible that the crop of 1865 might not fetch more than that in the market. It will be seen that his fears were more than justified.]

[Footnote 181: General Oliver O. Howard.]

[Footnote 182: The only thoroughfare by land from Beaufort to Charleston. At Port Royal Ferry it crosses the Coosaw.]

[Footnote 183: F. H.]

[Footnote 184: "Yellow cotton" was cotton which for any reason had been stained in the pod.]

[Footnote 185: Concerning this horse-buying fever Mr. Philbrick has elsewhere an amusing anecdote:

[Jan. 8.] The latest case of dest.i.tution I have heard of was the case of old Robert at the Oaks, cow-minder,--you remember him. He and old Scylla applied to Mr. Tomlinson for rations, pleading utter poverty.

It turned out next day that Robert and Scylla's husband were in treaty for Mr. Fairfield's horse, at the rate of $350! They didn't allege _inability_ to pay the price, but thought they would look around and see if they couldn't get one cheaper. I daresay it will end by their buying it.]

[Footnote 186: Fuller, of Fuller Place, who had succeeded in keeping with him on a plantation elsewhere the negroes he had induced to accompany him when the war broke out.]

[Footnote 187: In Europe.]

[Footnote 188: By President Johnson's instructions.]

[Footnote 189: The original owners of the Sea Island plantations were subsequently reimbursed by Congress for their loss (minors receiving again their actual land); but inasmuch as the sums paid them did not include the value of their slaves, they considered the payment inadequate.]

[Footnote 190: New York _Nation_, November 30, 1865.]

[Footnote 191: The cotton when ginned should have weighed between one third and one quarter as much as it weighed before ginning. See p.

236.]

[Footnote 192: In one of his letters to the _Nation_ (December 14), Dennett quotes Richard Soule as saying that he thought the past four years had encouraged and confirmed the faults of the negro.

"Demoralized on the negro question," therefore, seems to mean, not that Richard Soule and F. H. were finding the negro worse than they had thought him, but that they considered that present conditions were rapidly making him worse.]

[Footnote 193: General Saxton was a.s.sistant Commissioner for South Carolina under the Freedmen's Bureau.]

[Footnote 194: Reuben Tomlinson had been made State Superintendent of Education.]

[Footnote 195: The Union Store was finished, stocked, and operated, but its life was brief. From the first, its vitality was sapped by the claim of the stockholders to unlimited credit; then a dishonest treasurer struck the death-blow.]

[Footnote 196: See p. 312.]

[Footnote 197: This was Grant's famous "car-window" report, in which he stated his belief that "the ma.s.s of thieving men at the South accept the situation in good faith."]

[Footnote 198: Mr. Waters bought Cherry Hill and lived there for a short time.]

[Footnote 199: "Corner" was the Captain John Fripp place.]

[Footnote 200: At the auction referred to, the Government offered for sale the plantations which had been reserved for the support of schools.]

[Footnote 201: A negro who worked a plantation "on shares" was independent of the owner, merely paying a rent in cotton.]