Chapter III (2)

Hereabouts the plantations were generally small, ten to twenty negroes on each; sometimes thirty or forty. Where he used to live they were big ones—forty or fifty, sometimes a hundred on each. He had lived here ten years. I could not make out why he had not accumulated wealth, so small a family and such an inexpensive style of living as he had. He generally planted twenty to thirty acres, he said; this year he had sixteen in cotton and about ten, he thought, in corn. Decently cultivated, this planting should have produced him five hundred dollars’ worth of cotton, besides supplying him with bread and bacon—his chief expense, apparently. I suggested that this was a very large planting for his little family; he would need some help in picking time. He ought to have some now, he said; grass and bushes were all overgrowing him; he had to work just like a nigger; this durnation rain would just make the weeds jump, and he didn’t expect he should have any cotton at all. There warn’t much use in a man’s trying to get along by himself; every thing seemed to set in agin him. He’d been trying to hire somebody, but he couldn’t, and his wife was a sickly kind of a woman.

His wife reckoned he might hire some help if he’d look round sharp.

My horse and dog were as well cared for as possible, and a “snack” of bacon and corn-bread was offered me for noon, which has been unusual in Mississippi. When I asked what I should pay, the man hesitated and said he reckoned what I had had, wasn’t worth much of anything; he was sorry he could not have accommodated me better. I offered him a dollar, for which he thanked me warmly. It is the first instance of hesitation in charging for a lodging which I have met with from a stranger at the South.

* * * * *

_Northern Alabama, June 15th._—I have to-day reached a more distinctly hilly country—somewhat rocky and rugged, but with inviting dells. The soil is sandy and less frequently fertile; cotton-fields are seen only at long intervals, the crops on the small proportion of cultivated land being chiefly corn and oats. I notice also that white men are more commonly at work in the fields than negroes, and this as well in the cultivation of cotton as of corn.

The larger number of the dwellings are rude log huts, of only one room, and that unwholesomely crowded. I saw in and about one of them, not more than fifteen feet square, five grown persons, and as many children. Occasionally, however, the monotony of these huts is agreeably varied by neat, white, frame houses. At one such, I dined to-day, and was comfortably entertained. The owner held a number of slaves, but made no cotton. He owned a saw mill, was the postmaster of the neighbourhood, and had been in the Legislature.

I asked him why the capital had been changed from Tuscaloosa to Montgomery. He did not know. “Because Montgomery is more central and easy of access, probably,” I suggested. “No, I don’t think that had anything to do with it.” “Is Tuscaloosa an unhealthy place?” “No, sir; healthier than Montgomery, I reckon.” “Was it then simply because the people of the southern districts were stronger, and used their power to make the capital more convenient of access to themselves?” “Well, no, I don’t think that was it, exactly. The fact is, sir, the people here are not like you northern people; they don’t reason out everything so. They are fond of change, and they got tired of Tuscaloosa; the Montgomery folks wanted it there and offered to pay for moving it, so they let ’em have it; ’t was just for a change.” “If there really was no better reason, was it not rather wasteful to give up all the public buildings at Tuscaloosa?” “Oh, the Montgomery people wanted it so bad they promised to pay for building a new State House; so it did not cost anything.”

Quite on a par with the economics of southern commercial conventions.

I passed the night at the second framed house that I saw during the day, stopping early in order to avail myself of its promise of comfort. It was attractively situated on a hilltop, with a peach orchard near it. The proprietor owned a dozen slaves, and “made cotton,” he said, “with other crops.” He had some of his neighbours at tea and at breakfast; sociable, kindly people, satisfied with themselves and their circumstances, which I judged from their conversation had been recently improving. One coming in, remarked that he had discharged a white labourer whom he had employed for some time past; the others congratulated him on being “shet” of him; all seemed to have noticed him as a bad, lazy man; he had often been seen lounging in the field, rapping the negroes with his hoe if they didn’t work to suit him. “He was about the meanest white man I ever see,” said a woman; “he was a heap meaner ’n niggers. I reckon niggers would come somewhere between white folks and such as he.” “The first thing I tell a man,” said another, “when I hire him, is, ‘if there’s any whippin’ to be done on this place I want to do it myself.’ If I saw a man rappin’ my niggers with a hoe-handle, as I see him, durned if I wouldn’t rap him—the lazy whelp.”

One of the negroes complimented my horse. “Dar’s a heap of genus in dat yar hoss’s head!” The proprietor looked after the feeding himself.

These people were extremely kind; inquiring with the simplest good feeling about my domestic relations and the purpose of my journey. When I left, one of them walked a quarter of a mile to make sure that I went upon the right road. The charge for entertainment, though it was unusually good, was a quarter of a dollar less than I have paid before, which I mention, not as Mr. De Bow would suppose,[10] out of gratitude for the moderation, but as an indication of the habits of the people, showing, as it may, either closer calculation, or that the district grows its own supplies, and can furnish food cheaper than those in which attention is more exclusively given to cotton.

_June 17th._—The country continues hilly, and is well populated by farmers, living in log huts, while every mile or two, on the more level and fertile land, there is a larger farm, with ten or twenty negroes at work. A few whites are usually working near them, in the same field, generally ploughing while the negroes hoe.

About noon, my attention was attracted towards a person upon a ledge, a little above the road, who was throwing up earth and stone with a shovel. I stopped to see what the purpose of this work might be, and perceived that the shoveller was a woman, who, presently discovering me, stopped and called to others behind her, and immediately a stout girl and two younger children, with a man, came to the edge and looked at me. The woman was bareheaded, and otherwise half-naked, as perhaps needed to be, for her work would have been thought hard by our stoutest labourers, and it was the hottest weather of the summer, in the latitude of Charleston, and on a hill-side in the full face of the noon sun. I pushed my horse up the hill until I reached them, when another man appeared, and in answer to my inquiries told me that they were getting out iron ore. One was picking in a vein, having excavated a short adit; the other man picked looser ore exterior to the vein. The women and children shovelled out the ore and piled it on kilns of timber, where they roasted it to make it crumble. It was then carted to a forge, and they were paid for it by the load. They were all clothed very meanly and scantily. The women worked, so far as I could see, as hard as the men. The children, too, even to the youngest—a boy of eight or ten—were carrying large lumps of ore, and heaving them into the kiln, and shovelling the finer into a screen to separate the earth from it.

Immediately after leaving them I found a good spot for nooning. I roped my horse out to graze, and spread my blanket in a deep shade. I noticed that the noise of their work had ceased, and about fifteen minutes afterwards, Jude suddenly barking, I saw one of the men peering at me through the trees, several rods distant. I called to him to come up. He approached rather slowly and timidly, examined the rope with which my horse was fastened, eyed me vigilantly, and at length asked if I was resting myself. I replied that I was; and he said that he did not know but I might be sick, and had come to see me. I thanked him, and offered him a seat upon my blanket, which he declined. Presently he took up a newspaper that I had been reading, looked at it for a moment, then he told me he couldn’t read. “Folks don’t care much for edication round here; it would be better for ’em, I expect, if they did.” He began then to question me closely about my circumstances—where I came from, whither I was going, etc.

When his curiosity was partially appeased he suddenly laughed in a silly manner, and said that the people he had been working with had watched me after I left them; they saw me ride up the hill and stop, ride on again, and finally take off my saddle, turn my horse loose and tote my saddle away, and they were much frightened, thinking I must be crazy at least. When he started to come toward me they told him he wouldn’t dare to go to me, but he saw how it was, well enough—I was just resting myself.

“If I should run down hill now,” said he, “they’d start right off and wouldn’t stop for ten mile, reckoning you was arter me. That would be fun; oh, we have some good fun here sometimes with these green folks. There’s an amazin’ ignorant set round here.”

I asked if they were foreigners.

“Oh, no; they are common, no account people; they used to live over the hill, here; they come right nigh starvin’ thar, I expect.”

They had not been able to get any work to do, and had been “powerful poor,” until he got them to come here. They had taken an old cabin, worked with him, and were doing right well now. He didn’t let them work in the vein—he kept that for himself—but they worked all around, and some days they made a dollar and a half—the man, woman, and children together. They had one other girl, but she had to stay at home to take care of the baby and keep cattle and hogs out of their “gardien.” He had known the woman when she was a girl; “she was always a good one to work. She’d got a voice like a bull, and she was as smart as a wild cat; but the man warn’t no account.”

He had himself followed this business (mining) since he was a young man, and could earn three dollars a day by it if he tried; he had a large family and owned a small farm: never laid up anything, always kept himself a little in debt at the store.

He asked if I had not found the people “more friendly like” up in this country to what they were down below, and assured me that I would find them grow more friendly as I went further North, so at least he had heard, and he knew where he first came from (Tennessee) the people were more friendly than they were here. “The richer a man is,” he continued, pursuing a natural association of ideas, “and the more niggers he’s got, the poorer he seems to live. If you want to fare well in this country you stop to poor folks’ housen; they try to enjoy what they’ve got, while they ken, but these yer big planters they don’ care for nothing but to save. Now, I never calculate to save anything; I tell my wife I work hard, and I mean to enjoy what I earn as fast as it comes.”

Sometimes he “took up bee-huntin’ for a spell,” and made money by collecting wild honey. He described his manner of finding the hives and securing the honey, and, with a hushed voice, told me a “secret,” which was, that if you carried three leaves, each of a different tree (?) in your hand, there was never a bee would dare to sting you.

I asked about his children. He had one grown-up son, who was doing very well; he was hired by the gentleman who owned the forge, to cart ore. He had nothing to do but to drive a team; he didn’t have to load, and he had a nigger to take care of the horses when his day’s teaming was done.

His wages were seven dollars a month, and board for himself and wife. They ate at the same table with the gentleman, and had good living, beside having something out of the store, “tobacco and so on—tobacco for both on ’em, and two people uses a good deal of tobacco you know; so that’s pretty good wages—seven dollars a month besides their keep and tobacco.” Irishmen, he informed me, had been employed occasionally at the forge. “They do well at first, only they is apt to get into fights all the time; but after they’ve been here a year or two, they get to feel so independent and keerless-like, you can’t get along with ’em.” He remained about half an hour, and not till he returned did I hear again the noise of picking and shovelling, and cutting timber.

At the forges, I was told, slave labour is mainly employed—the slaves being owned by the proprietors of the forges.

I spent that night at a large inn in a village. In the morning as I sat waiting in my room, a boy opened the door. Without looking up I asked, “Well?”

“I didn’t say nuthin’, sar,” with a great grin.

“What are you waiting there for?” “Please, massa, I b’leve yours owin’ me suthin’, sar.” “Owing you something? What do you mean?” “For drying yer clothes for yer, sar, last night.” I had ordered him immediately after tea to go up stairs and get my clothes, which had been drenched in a shower, and hang them by the kitchen fire, that they might be dry if I should wish to leave early in the morning. When I went to my bedroom at nine o’clock I found the clothes where I had left them. I went down and reported it to the landlord, who directly sent the boy for them. In the morning, when I got them again I found they were not dry except where they were burned. I told him to be gone; but with the door half open, he stood putting in his head, bowing and grinning. “Please, sar, massa sent me out of an errand, and I was afeard you would be gone before I got back; dat’s the reason why I mention it, sar; dat’s all, sar; I hope you’ll skuse me, sar.”

During the afternoon I rode on through a valley, narrow and apparently fertile, but the crops indifferent. The general social characteristics were the same that I met with yesterday.

At night I stopped at a large house having an unusual number of negro cabins and stables about it. The proprietor, a hearty old farmer, boasted much of his pack of hounds, saying they had pulled down five deer before he had had a shot at them. He was much interested to hear about Texas, the Indians and the game. He reckoned there was “a heap of big varmint out thar.”

His crop of cotton did not average two bales to the hand, and corn not twenty bushels to the acre.

He amused me much with a humorous account of an oyster supper to which he had been invited in town, and his attempts to eat the “nasty things” without appearing disconcerted before the ladies.

An old negro took my horse when I arrived, and half an hour afterward, came to me and asked if I wanted to see him fed. As we walked toward the stables, he told me that he always took care not to forget gentlemen’s hosses, and to treat them well; “then,” he said, bowing and with emphasis, “they looks out and don’t forget to treat me well.”

The same negro was called to serve me as a candlestick at bedtime. He held the candle till I got into bed. As he retired I closed my eyes, but directly afterward, perceiving the light return, I opened them. Uncle Abram was bending over me, holding the candle, grinning with his toothless gums, winking and shaking his head in a most mysterious manner.

“Hush! massa,” he whispered. “You hain’t got something to drink, in dem saddle-bags, has you, sar?”

The farmer told me something about “nigger dogs” they didn’t use foxhounds, but bloodhounds—not pure, he thought, but a cross of the Spanish bloodhound with the common hounds, or curs. There were many men, he said, in the country below here, who made a business of nigger-hunting, and they had their horses trained, as well as the dogs, to go over any common fence, or if they couldn’t leap it, to break it down. Dogs were trained, when pups, to follow a nigger—not allowed to catch one, however, unless they were quite young, so that they couldn’t hurt him much, and they were always taught to hate a negro, never being permitted to see one except to be put in chase of him. He believed that only two of a pack were kept kenneled all the time—these were old, keen ones, who led the rest when they were out; they were always kept coupled together with a chain, except when trailing. He had seen a pack of thirteen who would follow a trail two days and a half old, if rain had not fallen in the mean time. When it rained immediately after a negro got off, they had to scour the country where they supposed he might be, till they scented him.

When hard pushed, a negro always took to a tree; sometimes, however, they would catch him in an open field. When this was the case the hunter called off the dogs as soon as he could, unless the negro fought—“that generally makes ’em mad (the hunters), and they’ll let ’em tear him a spell. The owners don’t mind having them kind o’ niggers tore a good deal; runaways ain’t much account nohow, and it makes the rest more afraid to run away, when they see how they are sarved.” If they caught the runaway within two or three days, they got from $10 to $20; if it took a longer time, they were paid more than that; sometimes $200. They asked their own price; if an owner should think it exorbitant, he supposed, he said in reply to an inquiry, they’d turn the nigger loose, order him to make off, and tell his master to catch his own niggers.

* * * * *

_Sunday._—I rode on, during the cool of the morning, about eight miles, and stopped for the day, at a house pleasantly situated by a small stream, among wooded hills. During the forenoon, seven men and three women, with their children, gathered at the house. All of them, I concluded, were non-slaveholders, as was our host himself; though, as one told me, “with his five boys he makes a heap more crop than Mrs. ——, who’s got forty niggers.” “How is that?” “Well, she’s a woman, and she can’t make the niggers work; she won’t have a overseer, and niggers won’t work, you know, unless there’s somebody to drive ’em.”

Our host, when I arrived, had just been pulling weeds out of his potato patch, which he mentioned as an apology for not being a little clean, like the rest.

Beside the company I have mentioned, and the large family of the house, there was another traveller and myself to dinner, and three bountiful tables were spread, one after another.

The traveller was said to be a Methodist preacher, but gave no indication of it, except that he said grace before meat, and used the Hebrew word for Sunday. He was, however, a man of superior intelligence to the others, who were ignorant and stupid, though friendly and communicative. He asked me “what a good nigger man could be bought for in New York;” he didn’t seem surprised, or make any further inquiry, when I told him we had no slaves there. Some asked me much about crops, and when I told them that my crops of wheat for six years had averaged twenty-eight bushels, and that I had once reaped forty from a single acre, they were amazed beyond expression, and anxious to know how I “put it in.” I described the process minutely, which astonished them still more; and one man said he had often thought they might get more wheat if they put it in differently; he had thought that perhaps more wheat would grow if more seed were sown, but he never tried it. The general practice, they told me, was to sow wheat on ground from which they had taken maize, without removing the maize stumps, or ploughing it at all; they sowed three pecks of wheat to the acre, and then ploughed it in—that was all. They used the cradle, but had never heard of reaping machines; the crop was from five to ten bushels an acre; ten bushels was extraordinary, six was not thought bad. Of cotton, the ordinary crop was five hundred pounds to the acre, or from one to two bales to a hand. Of maize, usually from ten to twenty bushels to the acre; last year not over ten; this year they thought it would be twenty-five on the best land.

The general admiration of Jude brought up the topic of negro dogs again, and the clergyman told a story of a man who hunted niggers near where he lived. He was out once with another man, when after a long search, they found the dogs barking up a big cottonwood tree. They examined the tree closely without finding any negro, and concluded that the dogs must have been foiled, and they were about to go away, when Mr. ——, from some distance off, thought he saw a negro’s leg very high up in the tree, where the leaves and moss were thick enough to hide a man lying on the top of a limb with his feet against the trunk. He called out, as if he really saw a man, telling him to come down, but nothing stirred. He sent for an axe, and called out again, saying he would cut the tree to the ground if he didn’t come down. There was no reply. He then cut half through the tree on one side, and was beginning on the other, when the negro halloed out that if he would stop he would come down. He stopped cutting, and the negro descended to the lowest limb, which was still far from the ground, and asked the hunter to take away his dogs, and promise they shouldn’t tear him. But the hunter swore he’d make no conditions with him after having been made to cut the tree almost down.

The negro said no more, but retained his position until the tree was nearly cut in two. When it began to totter, he slid down the trunk, the dogs springing upon him as soon as he was within their reach. He fought them hard, and got hold of one by the ear; that made them fiercer, and they tore him till the hunter was afraid they’d kill him, and stopped them.

“Are dogs allowed to tear the negroes when they catch them?”

“When the hunters come up they always call them off, unless the nigger fights. If the nigger fights ’em that makes ’em mad, and they let ’em tear him good,” said the clergyman.

There were two or three young women present, and the young men were sparking with them in the house, sitting on the beds for want of sofas, the chairs being all in use outside; the rest of the company sat on the gallery most of the time, but there was little conversation. It was twice remarked to me, “Sunday’s a dull day—nothing to do.”

As the Methodist and I were reading after dinner, I noticed that two or three were persuading the others to go with them somewhere, and I asked where they purposed to go. They said they wanted to go over the mountain to hunt a bull.

“To shoot him?”

“Oh, no, it’s a working bull; they got his mate yesterday. There ain’t but one pair of cattle in this neighbourhood, and they do all the hauling for nine families.” They belonged, together with their waggon, to one man, and the rest borrowed of him. They wanted them this week to cart in their oats. The stray bull was driven in toward night, yoked with another to a waggon, and one of the women, with her family, got into the waggon and was carried home. The bulls were fractious and had to be led by one man, while another urged them forward with a cudgel.

Last night by the way a neighbour came into the house of Uncle Abram’s master, and in the course of conversation about crops, said that on Sunday he went over to John Brown’s to get him to come out and help him at his harvesting. He found four others there for the same purpose, but John said he didn’t feel well, and he reckoned he couldn’t work. He offered him a dollar and a half a day to cradle for him; but when he tried to persuade him, John spoke out plainly and said, “he’d be d—d if he was going to work anyhow;” so he said to the others, “Come, boys, we may as well go; you can’t make a lazy man work when he’s determined he won’t.” He supposed that remark made him mad, for on Thursday John came running across his cotton patch, where he was ploughing. He didn’t speak a word to him, but cut along over to his neighbour’s house, and told him that he had shot two deer, and wanted his hounds to catch ’em, promising to give him half the venison if he succeeded. He did catch one of them, and kept his promise.

This man Brown, they told me, had a large family, and lived in a little cabin on the mountain. He pretended to plant a corn patch, but he never worked it, and didn’t make any corn. They reckoned he lived pretty much on what corn and hogs he could steal, and on game. The children were described as pitiably, “scrawny,” half-starved little wretches. Last summer his wife had come to one of them, saying they had no corn, and she wanted to pick cotton to earn some. He had let her go in with the niggers and pick. She kept at it for two days, and took her pay in corn. Afterward he saw her little boy “toting” it to the mill to be ground—much too heavy a load for him.

I asked if there were many such vagabonds.

“Yes, a great many on the mountain, and they make a heap of trouble. There is a law by which they might be taken up [if it could be proved that they have no ‘visible means of support’] and made to work to support their families; but the law is never used.”

Speaking of another man, one said: “He’ll be here to breakfast, at your house to dinner, and at Dr. ——’s to supper, leaving his family to live as best they can.” They “reckoned” he got most of his living in that way, while his family had to get theirs by stealing. He never did any work except hunting, and they “reckoned” he killed about as many shoats and yearlings as deer and turkeys.

They said that this sort of people were not often intemperate; they had no money to buy liquor with; now and then, when they’d sold some game or done a little work to raise money, they’d have a spree; but they were more apt to gamble it off or spend it for fine clothes and things to trick out their wives.

* * * * *

_June —._ To-day, I am passing through a valley of thin, sandy soil, thickly populated by poor farmers. Negroes are rare, but occasionally neat, new houses, with other improvements, show the increasing prosperity of the district. The majority of dwellings are small log cabins of one room, with another separate cabin for a kitchen; each house has a well, and a garden inclosed with palings. Cows, goats, mules and swine, fowls and doves are abundant. The people are more social than those of the lower country, falling readily into friendly conversation with a traveller. They are very ignorant; the agriculture is wretched and the work hard. I have seen three white women hoeing field crops to-day. A spinning-wheel is heard in every house, and frequently a loom is clanging in the gallery, always worked by women; every one wears homespun. The negroes have much more individual freedom than in the rich cotton country, and are not unfrequently heard singing or whistling at their work.

* * * * *

_Tennessee, June 29th._—At nightfall I entered a broader and more populous valley than I had seen before during the day, but for some time there were only small single room log cabins, at which I was loath to apply for lodging. At length I reached a large and substantial log house with negro cabins. The master sat in the stoop. I asked if he could accommodate me.

“What do you want?”

“Something to eat for myself and horse, and room to sleep under your roof.”

“The wust on’t is,” he said, getting up and coming toward me, “we haven’t got much for your horse.”

“You’ve got corn, I suppose.”

“No, hain’t got no corn but a little that we want for ourselves, only just enough to bread us till corn comes again.”

“Well, you have oats?”

“Hain’t got an oat.”

“Haven’t you hay?”

“No.”

“Then I must go further, for my horse can’t travel on fodder.”

“Hain’t got nary fodder nuther.”

Fortunately I did not have to go much farther before I came to the best house I had seen during the day, a large, neat, white house, with negro shanties, and an open log cabin in the front yard. A stout, elderly, fine-looking woman, in a cool white muslin dress sat upon the gallery, fanning herself. Two little negroes had just brought a pail of fresh water, and she was drinking of it with a gourd, as I came to the gate. I asked if it would be convenient for her to accommodate me for the night, doubtingly, for I had learned to distrust the accommodations of the wealthy slaveholders.

“Oh yes, get down; fasten your horse there, and the niggers will take care of him when they come from their work. Come up here and take a seat.”

I brought in my saddle-bags.

“Bring them in here, into the parlour,” she said, “where they’ll be safe.”

The interior of the house was furnished with unusual comfort. “The parlour,” however, had a bed in it. As we came out, she locked the door.

We had not sat long, talking about the weather (she was suffering much from the heat), when her husband came. He was very hot also, though dressed coolly enough in merely a pair of short-legged, unbleached cotton trousers, and a shirt with the bosom spread open—no shoes nor stockings. He took his seat before speaking to me, and after telling his wife it was the hottest day he ever saw, squared his chair toward me, threw it back so as to recline against a post, and said gruffly, “Good evening, sir; you going to stay here to-night?”

I replied, and he looked at me a few moments without speaking. He was, in fact, so hot that he spoke with difficulty. At length he got breath and asked abruptly: “You a mechanic, sir, or a dentist, eh—or what?”

Supper was cooked by two young women, daughters of the master of the house, assisted by the two little negro boys. The cabin in front of the house was the kitchen, and when the bacon was dished up, one of the boys struck an iron triangle at the door. “Come to supper,” said the host, and led the way to the kitchen, which was also the supper-room. One of the young ladies took the foot of the table, the other seated herself apart by the fire, and actually waited on the table, though the two negro boys stood at the head and foot, nominally waiters, but always anticipated by the Cinderella, when anything was wanted.

A big lout of a youth who came from the field with the negroes, looked in, but seeing me, retired. His father called, but his mother said, “’t wouldn’t do no good—he was so bashful.”

Speaking of the climate of the country, I was informed that a majority of the folks went barefoot all winter, though they had snow much of the time four or five inches deep, and the man said he didn’t think most of the men about here had more than one coat, and they never wore any in winter except on holidays. “That was the healthiest way,” he reckoned, “just to toughen yourself and not wear no coat; no matter how cold it was, he didn’t wear no coat.”

The master held a candle for me while I undressed, in a large room above stairs; and gave me my choice of the four beds in it. I found one straw bed (with, as usual, but one sheet), on which I slept comfortably. At midnight I was awakened by some one coming in. I rustled my straw, and a voice said, “Who is there in this room?”

“A stranger passing the night; who are you?”

“All right; I belong here. I’ve been away and have just come home.”

He did not take his clothes off to sleep. He turned out to be an older son who had been fifty miles away, looking after a stray horse. When I went down stairs in the morning, having been wakened early by flies, and the dawn of day through an open window, I saw the master lying on his bed in the “parlour,” still asleep in the clothes he wore at supper. His wife was washing her face on the gallery, being already dressed for the day; after using the family towel, she went into the kitchen, but soon returned, smoking a pipe, to her chair in the doorway.

Yet everything betokened an opulent and prosperous man—rich land, extensive field crops, a number of negroes, and considerable herds of cattle and horses. He also had capital invested in mines and railroads, he told me. His elder son spoke of him as “the squire.”

A negro woman assisted in preparing breakfast (she had probably been employed in the field labour the night before), and both the young ladies were at the table. The squire observed to me that he supposed we could buy hands very cheap in New York. I said we could hire them there at moderate wages. He asked if we couldn’t buy as many as we wanted, by sending to Ireland for them and paying their passage. He had supposed we could buy them and hold them as slaves for a term of years, by paying the freight on them. When I had corrected him, he said, a little hesitatingly, “You don’t have no black slaves in New York?” “No, sir.” “There’s niggers there, ain’t there, only they’re all free?” “Yes, sir.” “Well, how do they get along so?” “So far as I know, the most of them live pretty comfortably.” (I have changed my standard of comfort lately, and am inclined to believe that the majority of the negroes at the North live more comfortably than the majority of whites at the South.) “I wouldn’t like that,” said the old lady. “I wouldn’t like to live where niggers was free, they are bad enough when they are slaves: it’s hard enough to get along with them here, they’re so bad. I reckon that niggers are the meanest critters on earth; they are so mean and nasty” (she expressed disgust and indignation very strongly in her face). “If they was to think themselves equal to we, I don’t think white folks could abide it—they’re such vile saucy things.” A negro woman and two boys were in the room, as she said this.

* * * * *

_North Carolina, July 13th._—I rode late last night, there being no cabins for several miles in which I was willing to spend the night, until I came to one of larger size than usual, with a gallery on the side toward the road and a good stable opposite it. A man on the gallery was about to answer (as I judged from his countenance), “I reckon you can,” to my inquiry if I could stay, when the cracked voice of a worryful woman screeched out from within, “We don’t foller takin’ in people.”

“No, sir,” said the man, “we don’t foller it.”

“How far shall I have to go?”

“There’s another house a little better than three quarters of a mile further on.”

To this house I proceeded—a cabin of one room and a loft, with a kitchen in a separate cabin. The owner said he never turned anybody away, and I was welcome. He did not say that he had no corn, until after supper, when I asked for it to feed my horse. The family were good-natured, intelligent people, but very ignorant. The man and his wife and the daughters slept below, the boy and I in the cock-loft. Supper and breakfast were eaten in the detached kitchen. Yet they were by no means poor people. The man told me that he had over a thousand acres of rich tillable land, besides a large extent of mountain range, the most of which latter he had bought from time to time as he was able, to prevent the settlement of squatters near his valley-land. “There were people who would be bad neighbours, I knew,” he said, “that would settle on most any kind of place, and everybody wants to keep such as far away from them as they can.” (When I took my bridle off, I hung it up by the stable-door; he took it down and said he’d hang it in a safer place. “He’d never had anything stolen from here, and he didn’t mean to have—it was just as well not to put temptation before people,” and he took it into the house and put it under his bed.)

Besides this large tract of land here, he owned another tract of two hundred acres with a house upon it, rented for one-third the produce, and another smaller farm, similarly rented; he also owned a grist mill, which he rented to a miller for half the tolls. He told me that he had thought a good deal formerly of moving to new countries, but he had been doing pretty well and had stayed here now so long, he didn’t much think he should ever budge. He reckoned he’d got enough to make him a living for the rest of his life, and he didn’t know any use a man had for more’n that.

I did not see a single book in the house, nor do I think that any of the family could read. He said that many people here were talking about Iowa and Indiana; “was Iowa (Hiaway) beyond the Texies?” I opened my map to show him where it was, but he said he “wasn’t scollar’d enough” to understand it, and I could not induce him to look at it. I asked him if the people here preferred Iowa and Indiana to Missouri at all because they were Free States. “I reckon,” he replied, “they don’t have no allusion to that. Slavery is a great cuss, though, I think, the greatest there is in these United States. There ain’t no account of slaves up here in the west, but down in the east part of this State about Fayetteville there’s as many as there is in South Carolina. That’s the reason the West and the East don’t agree in this State; people out here hates the Eastern people.”

“Why is that?”

“Why you see they vote on the slave basis, and there’s some of them nigger counties where there ain’t more’n four or five hundred white folks, that has just as much power in the Legislature as any of our mountain counties where there’ll be some thousand voters.”

He made further remarks against slavery and against slaveholders. When I told him that I entirely agreed with him, and said further, that poor white people were usually far better off in the Free than in the Slave States, he seemed a little surprised and said, “New York ain’t a Free State, is it?”

Labourers’ wages here, he stated, were from fifty cents to one dollar a day, or eight dollars a month. “How much by the year?” “They’s never lured by the year.”

“Would it be $75 a year?”

“’Twouldn’t be over that, anyhow, but ’tain’t general for people to hire here only for harvest time; fact is, a man couldn’t earn his board, let alone his wages, for six months in the year.”

“But what do these men who hire out during harvest time do during the rest of the year; do they have to earn enough in those two or three months to live on for the other eight or nine?”

“Well, they gets jobs sometimes, and they goes from one place to another.”

“But in winter time, when you say there’s not work enough to pay their board?”

“Well, they keeps a goin’ round from one place to another, and gets their living somehow.”

“The fact on’t is,” he said at length, as I pressed the inquiry, “there ain’t anybody that ever means to work any in this country, except just along in harvest—folks don’t keep working here as they do in your country, I expect.”

“But they must put in their crops?”

“Yes, folks that have farms of their own, they do put in their craps and tend ’em, but these fellows that don’t have farms, they won’t work except in harvest, when they can get high wages [$8 a month]. I hired a fellow last spring for six months; I wanted him to help me plant and tend my corn. You see I had a short crap last year, and this spring I had to pay fifty cents a bushel for corn for bread, and I didn’t want to get caught so again, not this year, so I gin this fellow $6 a month for six months—$36 I gin him in hard silver.”

“Paid it to him in advance?”

“Yes, he wouldn’t come ’less I’d pay him right then. Well, he worked one month, and maybe eight days—no, I don’t think it was more than six days over a month, and then he went away, and I hain’t seen a sight on him since. I expect I shall lose my money—reckon he don’t ever intend to come back; he knows I’m right in harvest, and want him now, if ever I do.”

“What did he go away for?”

“Why, he said he was sick, but if he was, he got well mighty easy after he stopped working.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

“Oh, yes, he’s going round here.”

“What is he doing?”

“Well, he’s just goin’ round.”

“Is he at work for any one else?”

“Reckon not—no, he’s just goin’ round from one place to another.”

At supper and breakfast surprise was expressed that I declined coffee, and more still that I drank water instead of milk. The woman observed, “’twas cheap boarding me.” The man said he must get home a couple more cows; they ought to drink milk more, coffee was so high now, and he believed milk would be just as healthy. The woman asked the price of coffee in New York; I could not tell her, but said I believed it was uncommonly high; the crops had been short. She asked how coffee grew. I told her as well as I was able, but concluded by saying I had never seen it growing. “Don’t you raise coffee in New York?” she asked; “I thought that was where it came from.”

The butter was excellent. I said so, and asked if they never made any for sale. The woman said she could make “as good butter as any ever was made in the yarth, but she couldn’t get anything for it; there warn’t many of the merchants would buy it, and those that did, would only take it at eight cents a pound for goods.” The man said the only thing he could ever sell for ready money was cattle. Drovers bought them for the New York market, and lately they were very high—four cents a pound. He had driven cattle all the way to Charleston himself, to sell them, and only got four cents a pound there. He had sold corn here for twelve and a half cents a bushel.

Although the man could not read, he had honoured letters by calling one of his children “Washington Irving;” another was known as Matterson (Madison?). He had never tried manuring land for crops, but said, “I do believe it is a good plan, and if I live I mean to try it sometime.”

* * * * *

_July 16th._—I stopped last night at the pleasantest house I have yet seen in the highlands; a framed house, painted white, with a log kitchen attached. The owner was a man of superior standing. I judged from the public documents and law books on his table, that he had either been in the Legislature of the State, or that he was a justice of the peace. There were also a good many other books and newspapers, chiefly of a religious character. He used, however, some singularly uncouth phrases common here. He had a store, and carried on farming and stock raising. After a conversation about his agriculture, I remarked that there were but few slaves in this part of the country. He wished that there were fewer. They were not profitable property here, I presumed. They were not, he said, except to raise for sale; but there were a good many people here who would not have them if they were profitable, and yet who were abundantly able to buy them. They were horrid things, he thought; he would not take one to keep it if it should be given to him. ’Twould be a great deal better for the country, he believed, if there was not a slave in it. He supposed it would not be right to take them away from those who had acquired property in them, without any remuneration, but he wished they could all be sent out of the country—sent to Liberia. That was what ought to be done with them. I said it was evident that where there were no slaves, other things being equal, there was greater prosperity than where slavery supplied the labour. He didn’t care so much for that, he said; there was a greater objection to slavery than that, in his mind. He was afraid that there was many a man who had gone to the bad world, who wouldn’t have gone there if he hadn’t had any slaves. He had been down in the nigger counties a good deal, and he had seen how it worked on the white people. It made the rich people, who owned the niggers, passionate and proud, and ugly, and it made the poor people mean. “People that own niggers are always mad with them about something; half their time is spent in swearing and yelling at them.”

“I see you have ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ here,” said I; “have you read it?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And what do you think of it?”

“Think of it? I think well of it.”

“Do most of the people here in the mountains think as you do about slavery?”

“Well, there’s some thinks one way and some another, but there’s hardly any one here that don’t think slavery’s a curse to our country, or who wouldn’t be glad to get rid of it.”

I asked what the people about here thought of the Nebraska Bill. He couldn’t say what the majority thought. Would people moving from here to Nebraska now, be likely to vote for the admission of slavery there? He thought not; “most people would much rather live in a Free State.” He told me that he knew personally several persons who had gone to California, and taken slaves with them, who had not been able to bring them back. There were one or two cases where the negroes had been induced to return, and these instances had been made much of in the papers, as evidence that the slaves were contented.

“That’s a great lie,” he said; “they are not content, and nine-tenths of ’em would do ’most anything to be free. It’s only now and then that slaves, who are treated unusual kind, and made a great deal of, will choose to remain in slavery if freedom is put in their way.” He knew one man (giving his name) who tried to bring two slaves back from California, and had got started with them, when some white people suspecting it, went on board the ship and told him it was against the law to hold negroes as slaves in California, and his negroes shouldn’t go back with him unless they were willing to. Then they went to the slaves and told them they need not return if they preferred to stay, and the slaves said they had wanted very much to go back to North Carolina, yet they would rather remain in California, if they could be free, and so they took them ashore. He had heard the slave owner himself relating this, and cursing the men who interfered. He had told him that they did no more than Christians were obliged to do.

I overtook upon the road, to-day, three young men of the poorest class. Speaking of the price of land and the profit of farming, one of them said, believing me to be a southerner—

“We are all poor folks here; don’t hardly make enough to keep us in liquor. Anybody can raise as much corn and hogs on the mountains as he’ll want to live on, but there ain’t no rich people here. Nobody’s got any black ones—only three or four; no one’s got fifty or a hundred, like as they have down in the East.” “It would be better,” interrupted another, somewhat fiercely, “there warn’t any at all; that’s my mind about it; they’re no business here; they ought to be in their own country and take care of themselves, that’s what I believe, and I don’t care who hears it.” But let the reader not be deceived by these expressions; they indicate simply the weakness and cowardice of the class represented by these men. It is not slavery they detest; it is simply the negro competition, and the monopoly of the opportunities to make money by negro owners, which they feel and but dimly comprehend.

* * * * *

If you meet a man without stopping, the salutation here always is, “How d’ye do, sir?” never “Good morning;” and on parting it is, “I wish you well, sir,” more frequently than “Good-bye.” You are always commanded to appear at the table, as elsewhere throughout the South, in a rough, peremptory tone, as if your host feared you would try to excuse yourself.

“Come in to supper.” “Take a seat.” “Some of the fry?” “Help yourself to anything you see that you can eat.”

They ask your name, but do not often call you by it, but hail you “Stranger,” or “Friend.”

Texas is always spoken of in the plural—“the Texies.” “Bean’t the Texies powerful sickly?”

“Ill” is used for “vicious.” “Is your horse ill?” “Not that I am aware of. Does he appear so?” “No; but some horses will bite a stranger if he goes to handling on ’em.”

“Is your horse ill?” “No, I believe not.” “I see he kind o’ drapt his ears when I came up, ’zif he was playful.”