Manigault Family Papers

361

chinson of South Carolina. Her family had been wealthy and she was the owner of the plantation, the two having been there to look after the property soon after the war had commenced, although they, in ordinary times, had usually been non-residents. A few weeks before we moved into their neighborhood a yankee steamer had come up the Combahee river as far as the ferry, and carried off most of the slaves from the plantation near by. It was a very damaging thing to us and opened our eyes to our defenceless state. The Tedini negroes were much demoralised by this raid, as they had been so near, and the talk among them was such that the Count and his wife were in constant fear lest on any morning they might find that the whole gang had disappeared in the direction of Beaufort and Hilton Head, which were Yankee headquarters, and consequently places which they longed to go to and be free.

The count had not had much satisfaction or sympathy in his trouble from the cavalry company which had preceded us, composed as it was of plain country men who were quite indifferent as to whether his negroes remained to work the crops or departed secretly in the night. But as soon as the Dragoons were at hand, he began sending for a squad of two or three at a time, all of whom he dined and wined most hospitably, with the hope that they would be more interested in his anxiety, and that their presence would over awe the discontented slaves. Sergeant Holland and some privates were those ginerally sent when the Count asked for their presence.

Julius Pringle was one of the latter who went once, and he found the Italian a polished gentleman, who was desperately worried by the situation, for the income of his wife and self was derived from the plantation, but he had nothing beyond sympathy to offer him. The only occasion upon which I was sent was to arrest his negro foreman or driver who had been too outspoken about his intentions to abscond. He came along very quietly after being handcuffed, and we placed him temporarily in a little log cabin where commissary stores had been kept, to be sent the next day to the prison at Walterboro. That evening however the order came for our departure in the morning for Charleston, and through the negligence of the sentry the man was allowed to escape in the night.

Divorces were utterly unknown in South Carolina in those days, as they are still, with the exception of those granted under the reconstruction or carpet bag State government, and so strong was the feeling against them that I do not remember having known of a case where a man or woman divorced in another State, had afterwards married in this. Among the people that I knew the only interference of the law to allow a couple to separate, whose tempers were utterly incompatible, was to allow them to live apart, without the power of marrying again, - the provision as to the support of the woman from the income of the man being regulated by the Courts. A few such cases had occurred among the respectable people of the seaboard of South Carolina, but actual divorce was regarded with abhorrence. Under such circumstances it can be understood that, when in camp one day, among a group of Dragoons, the Tedini troubles were being

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for his family, commencing in May 1864, in Pitt St between Calhoun & Vanderhost Sts, and in the following November he moved to our farm where he remained until February, two days before the city was occupied by the Federal troops. Our furnitures had been left stored away in one room of the Pitt St house which was locked, and it there had a narrow escape from being taken by the federal soldiers who searched in every direction for chairs, tables, bedsteads and other necessary things which they required for the empty dwellings into which they had moved. The lady then living in the house made some excuse to the federal sergeant who inquired for the furniture which he had been told was there, for not having the key of the room, and immediately afterwards notified the owners of the importance of removing everything without delay. In this way everything was rescued from the clutches of the enemy, and when I entered our dwelling in Gibbes St it looked as though nothing in the form of cruel war had ever disturbed the serenity of its precincts.

The family had many anecdotes to tell of the behaviour of the servants as the day of their freedom was approaching. They were more communicative of their plans to the French maid than to my sisters, and the new masters of the city having given out that all unoccupied dwellings not wanted for the military could be occupied by the blacks, there was a rush for these by the latter who soon found, especially the women, that to play the fine lady, as they had seen their mistresses do, required a great deal more than merely an empty house.

The negroes on the whole behaved fairly well to those who had owned them, after their emancipation. They soon saw that law and order would be enforced at any cost, and the men of certain of the federal regiments seemed to have an unconquerable aversion to them, having killed with their bayonets, it was said, quite a number on several succeeding Saturday nights in the market and the streets around. A New York regiment was ordered off elsewhere on account of its brutality to the blacks, and, after my return, a regiment of New York Zouaves bayoneeted to death several in the market on a Saturday evening.

It must have puzzled the poor darky just then to know who was really his friend, the one who had held him in bondage or the one who had removed his shackles.

With regard to the amount of information possessed by the slaves concerning the agitation at the North in favor of their emancipation, it seems to have varied according to location. In the border states it was doubtless generally known among them that such efforts were being made, and the arrangements for receiving runaway slaves in the border Northern States and hurrying them

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further North were so undisguised, that, with the partial education that existed there, it must have been very much a matter of choice whether many remained with their masters or not. The difficulty of removing clandestinely the wives and children doubtless was the principal obstacle to a more general exodus. But in the cotton States and especially among the rice plantations of the seaboard of South Carolina, where there were but few whites to many thousands of blacks, and an ability to read was almost unknown, not only was there scarcely any knowledge of what was being done elsewhere in their interests, but there seemed also no desire on their part for their condition to be changed.

Our butler or principal houseservant, a very worthy man who still lives (1892) once told me that for years there were rumors among the slaves of an eventual emancipation, and, on the other hand, an elderly man, who when a slave was owned by one of my neighbors on Cooper river, told me shortly after his freedom that, when the federal officers came to the plantation where he was he was off in the woods, and when it was announced to him on returning that he was a free man thenceforward he considered it at first an idle joke.

Another view of the matter is that all the slaves at the South having been born in slavery, except for a few native Africans imported by the yacht Wanderer in 58 or 59, they regarded that condition as their normal one, and perhaps the desire for a life of freedom was confined to only a few of the young and adventurous, who in the cotton States sometimes managed to make their escape in the holds of vessels sailing from the seaports. That a longing for freedom was a general one was disproved by the experiences of the John Brown raid. This occurred near the dividing line between Virginia and Pennsylvania, where there should have been, according to the accepted belief, many slaves ready for an uprising. To the surprise however of Brown and his confederates the number of blacks who joined them was extremely small.

The "underground railroad" as it was called, which was an organised system existing at the North for enticing slaves out of the border southern States and hurrying them on to Canada probably produced a good many escapes. During one of my visits to Niagara I met several of these on the British side and those to whom I spoke were from Kentucky. They had been assisted doubtless in leaving their masters and they seemed puzzled at the difficulties of making a living in such a cold region. During the summer when I saw them they were managing to earn a living out of the constant stream of tourists. It was the winter that they dreaded.

Our French maid servant Victoire had no fondness for negroes, and the relations between her and the house servants were as a rule somewhat strained. She usually had a girl to partly wait on her by carrying her meals to her room every day from our dinner table, and while not otherwise employed the same girl would be learning to sew under her direction. She was a strict disciplinarian and when the girl misbehaved and required correction she was quite equal to its thorough administration.

Negroes purchased at Gowrie 1st Jany 1833

same family

		Age	Cloth	Quality
Charles	cooper, Gardiner & Wood Cutter	50		½
Nancy		35		P
Friday	(a runaway Sold July 33 for $450)	26		P
Charlotte		16		P
Sampson	child	10

		Age	Quantity of Cloth	Quality
Maria		23		P
Sandy	child	2

		Age	Quantity of Cloth	Quality
Minda		26		P
Binky		24		P

		Age	Quantity of Cloth	Quality
Toney		50		P
Betsey		27		P

Demensions of Mill, 82½ ft by 40 & has 13 Pestles Mill hands - Billy, Stephen, Lonnon and Two Girls Each tide it turns out from 8 to 10 Bbls and this season from 10 Oct to 1st Jany 1833 it has pounded 460 Barrels

Negroes purchased at Gowrie (Savannah River) 1st Jany 1833

Same family

						Age	Yards	Quality
S C	y	Harry	Driver		x	40		P (prime)
S Cloths	y	Bina	twins		x	42		P
S C	y	Patty	twins	Blanket	x	42		¾ P
S C	y	Bina	Henley	B	x	20		P
S C	y	Matilda			x	18		P
S C	y	Becky	child		x	5
S C	y	Peggy	child		x	4
S C	y	John	(dead) child
S o C	y	Ned			x	50		P
S C	y	Stephen			x	28		P
S C	y	Binah	Curry	B		25		P
S C	y	Louisa	child		x	2
S C o	y	Nancy			x	16	5	P
	y	Hector	waiting boy to overseer			13

						Age	Yards	Quality
y	S C	Mary			x	50		H (half)
y	S o C	Maria		B	x	32		P
y	S o C	Chloe		B	x	28	6	P
	S C	Susy		B	x	24	6	P
	S o C	Charles	(2d Driver)		x	21	6	P
	S o C	Ben	i frost bitten hands & feet		x	30	3	H
y	S C	Martha	child		x	4

						Age	Yards	Quality
S C	y	Scotland			x	45	3	P
S C	y	Hannah		B	x	25	6	P
S C	y	Minty		B	x	24	6	P
S C	y	Rinah	child		x	10
S C	y	Paris	child		x	3
S C	y	William	child		x	3
S C	y	Molly	child		x	1

						Age	Yards	Quality
	S C o	Abram	runaway		x	40		P
y	o S C	Rachel			x	50	6	¾
y	S C	Click	cooper		x	30		P
	S C	London	miller		x	24		P
y	S C	Jemimah	Sick Dead Nov 1833			24		¾
y	S C	Jane	Dead child			2