Among the Pines Part 10

"Come, Scip, you've played this game long enough. Tell me, now, what that look you gave each other when you shook hands meant."

"What look, ma.s.sa? Oh! I s'pose 'twar 'cause we'd both _heerd_ ob each oder afore."

"'Twas more than that, Scip. Be frank; you know you can trust _me_."

"Wal, den, ma.s.sa," he replied hesitatingly, adding, after a short pause, "de ole woman called you a Yankee, sar--you can guess."

"If I should guess, 't would be that it meant _mischief_."

"It don't mean mischief, sar," said the darky, with a tone and air that would not have disgraced a Cabinet officer; "it mean only RIGHT and JUSTICE."

"It means that there is some secret understanding between you."

"I toled you, ma.s.sa," he replied, relapsing into his usual manner, "dat de blacks am all Freemasons. I gabe Jim de grip, and he knowd me. He'd ha knowd my name ef you hadn't toled him."

"Why would he have known your name?"

"'Cause I gabe de grip, dat tole him."

"Why did he call you Scip_io_? I called you _Scip_."

"Oh! de darkies all do dat. n.o.body but de white folks call me _Scip_. I can't say no more, ma.s.sa; I SHUD BREAK DE OATH EF I DID!"

"You have said enough to satisfy me that there is a secret league among the blacks, and that you are a leader in it. Now, I tell you, you'll get yourself into a sc.r.a.pe. I've taken a liking to you, Scip, and I should be _very sorry_ to see you run yourself into danger."

"I tank you, ma.s.sa, from de bottom ob my soul I tank you," he said, as the tears moistened his eyes. "You bery kind, ma.s.sa; it do me good to talk wid you. But what am my life wuth? What am any _slave's_ life wuth?

_Ef you war me you'd do like me!_"

I could not deny it, and I made no reply.

The writer is aware that he is here making an important statement, and one that may be called in question by those persons who are accustomed to regard the Southern blacks as only reasoning brutes. The great ma.s.s of them _are_ but a little above the brutes in their habits and instincts, but a large body are fully on a par, except in mere book-education, with their white masters.

The conversation above recorded is, _verbatim et literatim_, TRUE. It took place at the time indicated, and was taken down, as were other conversations recorded in this book, within twenty-four hours after its occurrence. The name and the locality, only, I have, for very evident reasons, disguised.

From this conversation, together with others, held with the same negro, and from after developments made to me at various places, and at different times, extending over a period of six weeks, I became acquainted with the fact that there exists among the blacks a secret and wide-spread organization of a Masonic character, having its grip, pa.s.s-word, and oath. It has various grades of leaders, who are competent and _earnest_ men, and its ultimate object is FREEDOM. It is quite as secret and wide-spread as the order of the "Knights of the Golden Circle," the kindred league among the whites.

This latter organization, which was inst.i.tuted by John C. Calhoun, William L. Porcher, and others, as far back as 1835, has for its sole object the dissolution of the Union, and the establishment of a Southern Empire--Empire is the word, not Confederacy, or Republic; and it was solely by means of its secret but powerful machinery that the Southern States were plunged into revolution, in defiance of the will of a majority of their voting population.

Nearly every man of influence at the South (and many a pretended Union man at the North) is a member of this organization, and sworn, under the penalty of a.s.sa.s.sination, to labor "in season and out of season, by fair means and by foul, at all times, and all occasions," for the accomplishment of its object. The blacks are bound together by a similar oath, and only _bide their time_.

The knowledge of the real state of political affairs which the negroes have acquired through this organization is astonishingly accurate; their leaders possess every essential of leadership--except, it may be, military skill--and they are fully able to cope with the whites.

The negro whom I call Scipio, on the day when Major Anderson evacuated Fort Moultrie, and before he or I knew of that event, which set all South Carolina in a blaze, foretold to me the breaking out of this war in Charleston harbor, and as confidently predicted that it would result in the freedom of the slaves!

The fact of this organization existing is not positively known (for the black is more subtle and crafty than any thing human), but it is suspected by many of the whites, the more moderate of whom are disposed to ward off the impending blow by some system of gradual emanc.i.p.ation--declaring all black children born after a certain date free--or by some other action that will pacify and keep down the slaves.

These persons, however, are but a small minority, and possess no political power, and the South is rushing blindly on to a catastrophe, which, if not averted by the action of our government, will make the horrors of San Domingo and the French Revolution grow pale in history.

I say the action of our government, for with it rests the responsibility. What the black wants is freedom. Give him that, and he will have no incentive to insurrection. If emanc.i.p.ation is proclaimed at the head of our armies--emanc.i.p.ation for _all_--confiscation for the slaves of rebels, compensation for the slaves of loyal citizens--the blacks will rush to the aid of our troops, the avenging angel will pa.s.s over the homes of the many true and loyal men who are still left at the South, and the thunderbolts of this war will fall only--where they should fall--on the heads of its blood-stained authors. If this is not done, after we have put down the whites we shall have to meet the blacks, and after we have waded knee-deep in the blood of both, we shall end the war where it began, but with the South desolated by fire and sword, the North impoverished and loaded down with an everlasting debt, and our once proud, happy, and glorious country the by-word and scorn of the civilized world.

Slavery is the very bones, marrow, and life-blood of this rebellion, and it cannot be crushed till we have destroyed that accursed inst.i.tution.

If a miserable peace is patched up before a death-stroke is given to slavery, it will gather new strength, and drive freedom from this country forever. In the nature of things it cannot exist in the same hemisphere with liberty. Then let every man who loves his country determine that if this war must needs last for twenty years, it shall not end until this root of all our political evils is weeded out forever.

A short half-hour took us to the plantation, where I found the Colonel on the piazza awaiting me. After our greeting was over, noticing my soiled and rather dilapidated condition, he inquired where I had pa.s.sed the night. I told him, when he burst into a hearty fit of laughter, and for several days good-naturedly bantered me about "putting up" at the most aristocratic hotel in South Carolina--the "Mills House."

We soon entered the mansion, and the reader will, I trust, pardon me, if I leave him standing in its door-way till another chapter.

CHAPTER V.

ON THE PLANTATION.

The last chapter left the reader in the door-way of the Colonel's mansion. Before entering, we will linger there awhile and survey the outside of the premises.

The house stands where two roads meet, and, unlike most planters'

dwellings, is located in full view of the highway. It is a rambling, disjointed structure, thrown together with no regard to architectural rules, and yet there is a rude harmony in its very irregularities that has a pleasing effect. The main edifice, with a frontage of nearly eighty feet, is only one and a half stories high, and is overshadowed by a broad projecting roof, which somehow, though in a very natural way, drops down at the eaves, and forms the covering of a piazza, twenty feet wide, and extending across the entire front of the house. At its south-easterly angle, the roof is truncated, and made again to form a covering for the piazza, which there extends along a line of irregular buildings for sixty yards. A portion of the verandah on this side being enclosed, forms a bowling-alley and smoking-room, two essential appendages to a planter's residence. The whole structure is covered with yellow-pine weather boarding, which in some former age was covered with paint of a grayish brown color. This, in many places, has peeled off and allowed the sap to ooze from the pine, leaving every here and there large blotches on the surface, somewhat resembling the "warts" I have seen on the trunks of old trees.

The house is encircled by grand old pines, whose tall, upright stems, soaring eighty and ninety feet in the air, make the low hamlet seem lower by the contrast. They have stood there for centuries, their rough, s.h.a.ggy coats b.u.t.toned close to their chins, and their long green locks waving in the wind; but the long knife has been thrust into their veins, and their life-blood is now fast oozing away.

With the exception of the negro huts, which are scattered at irregular intervals through the woods in the rear of the mansion, there is not a human habitation within an hour's ride; but such a cosy, inviting, hospitable atmosphere surrounds the whole place, that a stranger does not realize he has happened upon it in a wilderness.

The interior of the dwelling is in keeping with the exterior, though in the drawing-rooms, where rich furniture and fine paintings actually lumber the apartments, there is evident the lack of a nice perception of the "fitness of things," and over the whole hangs a "dusty air," which reminds one that the Milesian Bridget does not "flourish" in South Carolina.

I was met in the entrance-way by a tall, fine-looking woman, to whom the Colonel introduced me as follows:

"Mr. K----, this is Madam P----, my housekeeper; she will try to make you forget that Mrs. J---- is absent."

After a few customary courtesies were exchanged, I was shown to a dressing-room, and with the aid of Jim, a razor, and one of the Colonel's shirts--all of mine having undergone a drenching--soon made a tolerably presentable appearance. The negro then conducted me to the breakfast-room, where I found the family a.s.sembled.

It consisted, besides the housekeeper, of a tall, raw-boned, sandy-haired personage, with a low brow, a blear eye, and a sneaking look--the overseer of the plantation; and of a well-mannered, intelligent lad--with the peculiarly erect carriage and uncommon blending of good-natured ease and dignity which distinguished my host--who was introduced to me as the housekeeper's son.

Madam P----, who presided over the "tea-things," was a person of perhaps thirty-five, but a rich olive complexion, enlivened by a delicate red tint, and relieved by thick ma.s.ses of black hair, made her appear to a casual observer several years younger. Her face bore vestiges of great beauty, which time, and, perhaps, care, had mellowed but not obliterated, and her conversation indicated high cultivation. She had evidently mingled in refined society in this country and in Europe, and it was a strange freak of fortune that had reduced her to a menial condition in the family of a backwoods planter.

After some general conversation, the Colonel remarked that his wife and daughter would pa.s.s the winter in Charleston.

"And do _you_ remain on the plantation?" I inquired.

"Oh yes, I am needed here," he replied; "but Madam's son is with my family."

"Madam's son!" I exclaimed in astonishment, forgetting in my surprise that the lady was present.

"Yes, sir," she remarked, "my oldest boy is twenty."

"Excuse me, Madam; I forgot that in your climate one never grows old."

"There you are wrong, sir; I'm sure I _feel_ old when I think how soon my boys will be men."