The months of February and March, with a portion of April, I spent mainly on Louisiana and Mississippi plantations, seeking to gain some insight into the workings of the free-labor system on these large estates, and especially to study the various developments of the plantation negro character. It has been popularly supposed that the negroes in the cotton-growing regions of the South-west were, from their isolation in the swamps and their rarer contact with the whites, the most ignorant, degraded, and unfit for freedom of their race. They had escaped the careful observation given to the character of the emancipated slaves along the coast; and, as it seemed, offered therefore a comparatively fresh and inviting field for study.

Whether these plantation negroes would do less or more work now than in a state of slavery, I found to be an unsettled point. Every old slaveholder, I might almost say everybody in the old slaveholding communities, vehemently argued that “niggers wouldn’t do more’n half as much, now that the lash was no longer behind them.” On the other hand, Northern experimenters told different stories. Some were disgusted with the slowness and stupidity of the negroes; others said all they needed was prompt pay. Give them that, and they would work better than the average of uneducated white laborers.

On three plantations, where I had the opportunity of watching their performance critically at various periods during a couple of months, I was convinced that when they were employed in gangs, under the supervision of an overseer who had the judgment to handle them to advantage, they did as well as any laborers. They seemed, by nature, gregarious. Put one at some task by himself, and there was every probability that he would go to sleep or go fishing. Even in gangs, not half of them could be depended on for steady work, except under the eye of the overseer or driver; but, with his direction, they labored cheerfully and steadily. Doubtless they worked more hours per day while in slavery; but, they were perfectly willing now to work as many hours as any employer ought to ask.

On many plantations they rose half an hour before daybreak, when the horn first sounded. A few minutes before sunrise, the horn sounded again, and they all started for the fields. By sunrise the whole force, nearly one hundred and seventy hands, were at work. At noon they stopped for an hour and a half—then worked till sunset. On others, the first bell rang at four o’clock; at daybreak the second rang, and every hand started for the fields—the wages of the tardy ones being docked. They carried their corn-bread, boiled pork, and greens in little tin buckets, and about eight o’clock all stopped for breakfast. In half an hour the drivers called them to work again, which continued till twelve. Then came an hour and a half’s rest, then work again till sundown.

I never saw hands more cheerful or contented than some managed on this last plan were. They had a new plantation, cut out of the swamp, to cultivate. It had eight hundred acres of arable land, nearly the whole of it incumbered with fallen logs. The cypress trees had been “deadened” in 1859 and 1860; during the years of the war, they had fallen, until the place was perfectly covered with them; and the task of rolling the logs and preparing for the plow, was almost as great as that of the original clearing. They had begun this work about the middle of January, with only forty-two hands, little and big. The working force was gradually increased, till in April they had sixty-five. By the first of April they had six hundred and seventy-five acres bedded up and ready for planting. The old estimate was, that each first-class hand should cultivate ten acres. Here were hands, not first class, but men, women, and children, who had under unusually unfavorable circumstances, cleared off and prepared for planting, an average of nearly thirteen acres to the hand. And the overseer, an old Southern one, said he had no doubt at all about being able to cultivate all the cotton he could get planted.

I observed, however, that when he thought they were not getting on fast enough, he always found it necessary to offer some reward in addition to their regular wages, to revive their drooping energies. One day he would promise the plowmen all a drink of whisky, provided they finished a certain “cut” by evening. Then a plug or two of tobacco would be given to the hand who did the best work through the entire day. If they got all the land cleared off in time for planting, they were to quit for a day, go off to the lake across the swamp in a body and have a big fish-fry. Still, the main motive, under the stimulus of which pretty steady work was secured, was always that “at fust ob next month, Mass’r —— (the proprietor) will be ’long wid greenbacks enuff to shingle a house for us.”

The house servants seem singularly worthless. The praises of this class of Southern slaves have always been loudly sung by their owners, but the good cooks and rare housekeepers have certainly disappeared. On one plantation which I visited, there resided at the “big house” only the overseer and, for perhaps half of each week, the young proprietor. To keep house for these two men, required the united energies of four able-bodied negresses. One cooked; another assisted her; the third waited on the table and swept the rooms; and the fourth milked the cows—two or three in number—and made the butter! With all this muster of servants, the two much waited-on white men lived no better than the average of Northern day-laborers.

After the new planter had once secured their confidence, nothing seemed more characteristic of the negroes than their constant desire to screw a little higher wages out of him; or, in one way or another, to make him turn over to them his superabundant greenbacks. All regarded him either as an adventurous swindler, without any money at all, or as a Crœsus, made of money. So long as they doubted his ability to pay them, they were suspicious and watchful; captious as to the quality of the flour and meal furnished them; severely critical on the pork, and perfect almanacs as to the approach of pay-day. The crisis passed, supplies abundant, money promptly paid when due, the planter then found himself under constant siege, perpetually approached under covered ways, which infallibly led to the citadel—his pocket.

“Mass’r, I’se got my own ’pinion ob you,” I heard one gray-wooled fellow say to his employer, with scrape of foot, tug at cap, and every insinuating means of expressing profoundest respect and regard; “I doesn’t tink your’m de hardest mass’r in de world; an’ all I wants is to hab you ’sidah my case. I’s all ’lone; I’s allus been good niggah. Rain or shine, me an’ my hoss am at your service. We hauls de feed for de mules to de lowah place ebery day; and on Saturdays we hauls for Sundays too, kase I’s ’ligious, an’ wouldn’t work on Sundays no how. Now, mass’r, I wants you to please ’sidah my case. Doesn’t you tink dat for dat extra work on Saturday you ought to ’low me anoder day’s wages?” and he tugged off his cap again, and gave an extra scrape to the No. 14 shoe which encased his foot.

The facts in his “case” were, that he was employed to drive a wagon from the granary on one place, each day, to the stables on the one below it, both being controlled by one man, who, living at the upper place, preferred to keep all his supplies under his own eye. The old man never handled the grain; it was put in and taken out by others, and his sole duty was to drive this wagon from one place to the other once a day. This work done, he was generally sent to the swamp for a load of wood. But on Saturdays, in consideration of his having two days’ supply of grain to haul, he was given no other task. Now the shrewd old fellow proposed to get extra pay for what he thus called extra work.

A sickly young man, on one plantation which I visited in April, had been hired to watch the stables at night; mules not being safe even from the negroes on the place, much less from those roaming about over the country. He could not make a “half hand” in the fields, but, in the hope that good wages would make him faithful, he was engaged at precisely the same rate with the first-class hands, although his work was the easiest, and, during the greater part of the year, the pleasantest on the place. He seemed perfectly satisfied for two or three months; then, suddenly, he discovered that he was working Saturday and Sunday nights extra, and for them must have extra pay. “Didn’t you contract to watch those nights as well as the rest?” “Yes.” “Didn’t you contract to do this work regularly for fifteen dollars a month?” “Yes.” “Well, what right have you to charge extra for these two nights, after that bargain?” “Well, it’s been mighty cold, sah, nights; but I wanted to watch to ’blige you; but I’s sure you pay me extra for workin’ when de oder hands don’t work!”

At one place a man who was unable to do field work, had been hired to feed the mules. He made his bargain, and was supposed to be entirely satisfied. At first the mules were fed only at noon and in the evening. After a while, orders were given to feed also in the morning. Straightway Morton presented his claim for extra pay for this extra duty. Soon afterward he had another claim for extra work—throwing in corn to the mules on Sunday! And yet the whole work of this man consisted in putting corn and hay for thirty mules in the troughs, both being delivered to him at the door; and for this he was being paid the same wages as the plowmen!

“We’s worked mighty hard for you;” thus said a stout, pleasant-faced negress on an upper-coast plantation to the proprietor, on the occasion of his long-expected visit. “We’s cut down de briars, all de briars on de whole plantation for you, and dey was mighty high an’ tough; an’ we’s all in rags, for de briars done tore up all our coats,^[75] an’ we want you to gib us new ones.”

“But, girls, I’ve just paid you off. Now, you ought to take that money and buy your own clothes; that’s the way free laborers do up North, and the world over.” “But we done tore our coats cuttin’ down you’ briars, and we’s all rags. Why, if anybody’d come along heah you’d be ’shamed ob us, ’deed you would, we looks so bad. An’ we all wants you to gib us new coats. Den we fix up Sundays, an’ you be mighty proud o’ yo’ niggers.” This last appeal was irresistible, and the girls got their “coats,” at a cost to the planter of about two hundred and fifty dollars.^[76]

The feeling among the negroes about education varied considerably with the locality.

On the Fish Pond plantation a few soldiers, just discharged, had recently been added to the working force. The old hands, most of whom had belonged to the owner of the plantation, and had rarely traveled a dozen miles from its lines, were disposed to look with critical eyes upon the new-comers. The latter, in turn, were very eager to dazzle the “home niggers” with a display of their acquirements.

“Don’t you know figgers?” inquired one of them, rather pityingly, of the young head-driver; selecting as the time for making his inquiry, an occasion when a number of girls from another plantation were making them a visit. The driver had not been at all satisfied with the questioner’s performance in the field. “No, I doesn’t pretend to nuffin’ more ’n I does know, like some people dat’s lately come to dis plantation. But I tell you, Dan, if I’d a had you heah fo’ yeah ago, and you didn’t wuck no better’n you’m doin’ now, I’d made figgers on you’ back! You miserable, good-for-nothin’ nigger, you done broke more barrers dan you’m wuf already, an’ you ha’n’t wuck two days yet!”

“Wat’s de use ob niggers pretendin’ to lurnin?” he continued, warming with his subject. “Dey’s men on dis yeah plantation, old ’s I am, studyin’ ober spellin’-book, an’ makin’ b’lieve’s if dey could larn. Wat’s de use? Wat’ll dey be but niggers wen dey gits through? Niggers good for nothin’ but to wuck in de fiel’ an’ make cotton. Can’t make white folks ob you’-selves, if you is free.”

“Dere’s dat new boy, Reuben,” chimed in one of the others. “Massa Powell sent me to weigh out his ’lowance. He brag so much ’bout readin’ an’ edication dat I try him. I put on tree poun’ po’k, an’ I say, ‘Reub, kin you read?’ He say, ‘Lord bress ye, didn’t ye know I’s edicated nigger?’ I say, ‘Well, den, read dat figger, an’ tell me how much po’k you’m got dar.’ He scratch him head, an’ look at de figger all roun’, an’ den he say, ‘Jus seben poun’ zacly.’ Den I say to de po’ fool, ‘Take you’ seben poun’ an’ go ’long!’ Much good his larnin’ did him! He los’ a poun’ ob po’k by it, for I was a gwine to gib him fo’ poun’!”

I was surprised to find a good deal of this talk among many of the plantation negroes. Wherever old Southern overseers retained the control, and the place was remote from the towns, there was at least an indifference to education, strikingly in contrast with the feverish anxiety for initiation into the mysteries of print, everywhere strikingly manifest among the negroes in cities and along the great lines of travel.

Elsewhere, however, I saw plantations where the negroes asked the proprietors to reserve out of their wages enough to hire a teacher for their children. All were willing to consent to this; those without families as well as the rest. They preferred a white teacher, if possible, but were willing to take one of their own color, if no white one could be obtained.

Even here, the proportion of young men and women who could spell out simple sentences was not more than one or two in a hundred. Men of middle age, often of considerable intelligence, professed their utter inability to learn the alphabet. “’Pears like taint no use for we uns to be tryin’ to larn; but ou’ chil’n, dey kin do better.”

On an extensive Mississippi River plantation, thirty or forty miles below Natchez, which I visited two or three times in the months of February and March, I was shown a negro who, in the old times, had been considered the most vicious and dangerous slave in the entire neighborhood. His owner, so the neighborhood gossip ran, had once sent him over to Black River to be killed; and, at another time, had himself been on the point of shooting him, but had been persuaded by his neighbors to try milder measures. Twice, last year, the overseer had tried to shoot him, but each time the cap on his revolver had snapped, and before he could try again the negro had escaped behind the quarters.

“When I came here,” said the present overseer, himself a Southern man, who had been an overseer all his life, “I was warned against him, and told that I had better drive him off the place; but I liked his looks and thought I could make a good nigger out of him.”

The “boy” walked across the space in front of the house, as he was speaking, and respectfully lifted his hat to the overseer. He was a model of muscular strength, and had a fine intelligent face; though there were lines about it that spoke of high temper and a very strong will of his own.

He had now been under the new overseer’s management two months. There was no better hand on the plantation. He had naturally taken the place of foreman of the log-rolling gang; the negroes cheerfully followed him as a leader, and he was doing splendid work. There had not been the slightest trouble with him; had never been need for the use of a single harsh word to him. “I believe he’ll steal when he gets a chance,” said the overseer; “but I’d like to see the nigger on this or any other plantation that won’t do that.” In fact, so handsomely had the vicious slave behaved under the altered conditions of freedom and kindly confidence, that his wages had been voluntarily increased one-third, and he had once or twice been sent out as a trusty man to try and hire more hands for the plantation.

“There’s a proof,” said the Northern proprietor who had recently come into possession, “of the evil influences of the old system. A man of any spirit was sure to be driven into revolt by slavery, and then you had a very dangerous nigger. Freedom makes a first-class hand of him.”

The case seemed clear and convincing; and, for myself, I was fully satisfied. During the next fortnight I remember often referring to it, in conversations with the old slaveholders, and always, as I thought, with clinching effect. But they all shook their heads, and said they knew that nigger too well to be hoaxed that way.

The next time I visited the plantation there was a manifest commotion among the hands, although they were working steadily and well. “It’s all along o’ that d——d reformed nigger of ours,” growled the overseer. “I’ll never give in to the new-fangled notions again. A nigger’s a nigger, and you only make a fool of yourself when you try to make anything else out of him!”

It seemed that, the previous Saturday, when the overseer came to give out rations, he discovered that the lock of his “smoke-house” had been tampered with, and that nearly half a barrel of mess pork, (costing, at that time, thirty-four dollars per barrel, delivered,) had been stolen. A little investigation revealed the loss of several gallons of whisky, and of sundry articles, from the store-room. He said little about it, but quietly made some inquiries; saying nothing, however, to or about the “reformed nigger.” But on Monday morning the boy failed to go out to work with the rest. Being asked the reason, he replied that “the niggers had been lying on him, saying he had stolen pork and whisky, and he wasn’t gwine to stay among no such set; he was gwine to leab de plantation.” The overseer told him that would be a breach of his contract; but he said he didn’t care, and privately told some of the hands that “he wasn’t afraid of the overseer nor of no other d——d white man arrestin’ him!”

An hour or two later, the overseer, on riding out to the plow-gang, found the fellow sitting there among them with a loaded gun in his hand. One of the drivers told him Philos had threatened to kill “two niggers on dis plantation ’fore he leave.”

“I never carried arms in the field afore in my life,” said the overseer, “but I rode straight back to the house then, and buckled on a ‘Navy-six’ under my coat. I ’spect, if that nigger had stayed there, holding up his gun, and lookin’ so sassy, I’d a shot him when I got back; but he suspected something, and put out. At night, however, the scoundrel came back, and fired off his gun back of the cabin where one of the drivers lives. He’s got two guns and a pistol, and the niggers is all afraid of him as death. One of the men he has threatened to kill is his own brother-in-law. He’s hangin’ ’round the place somewhar yet, tryin’, I suppose, to sneak off his clothes, and get his wife and some of the other niggers to go with him.”

I found, on careful inquiry, that the story was true in all its details. My model reformed negro had back-slidden, and proved a sad reprobate. He had been stealing whisky for weeks, by means of a false key, and had been selling it at nights and on Sundays, to the negroes at a wood yard, a few miles further down the river. He was enraged at being found out, and particularly at the negroes whom he suspected of having informed on him.

It is very rarely, indeed, that one negro will expose another. “They think it’s taking the part of the white man against their own people,” explained a Mississippi overseer. “If, by any chance, some house servant does tell you of the thefts of a hand, it will only be after exacting innumerable promises that you will never, never, on any account, tell how you found it out.”

In the case of the backslider, a warrant was at once procured for his arrest on the charge of theft. “The officer told me there was another law, recently passed, under which I could arrest and imprison him for carrying weapons on the plantation without my consent. He appointed me special constable to make the arrest, and promised me that if the boy would agree to go to work, after I’d had him shut up in jail three or four days, he’d waive proceedings; let me take him out and try him, and then arrest him again if he made any trouble. Fact is, this officer’s very much like the old provost marshal, last year. You just tell him exactly what you want done, and he’ll be very apt to do just about that thing.”

The remark may serve to illustrate how laws are administered, amid the difficulties of the present chaotic state of affairs, in most cases, when the subject race is involved.

Hearing of the warrant, the boy ran away. In about three weeks he returned, very defiant, and boasting that no white man could arrest him. He had been to the Bureau, and knew the law; he was armed, and meant to go where he pleased. But he was promptly taken, without resistance, before a justice of the peace. Three negro witnesses conclusively established his guilt, and he was committed to jail to await a trial by court, with every prospect of being sent to the penitentiary for a year or two. Among the witnesses against him was one of the men he had threatened to shoot. When Philos was being locked up he called to this man and said:

“Arthur, you know I’s allus hated you, and talked ’bout you; but you was right, when you tole me not to git into no sich troubles as dis.”

“Philos,” ejaculated Arthur, precipitating his words out in shotted volleys, “I allus tole you so. You said, when you come back, dat you’d been to de Bureau—know’d de law—dat no white man could arrest you. I tole you den you didn’t know nuffin ’bout law—dat no law ’lowed you to carry on mean.”

“Well, I t’ought I did know sumfin ’bout law, den, but I shore, now, I don’t.”

“Dat’s so, Philos; but I tell ye, you’m got in a mighty safe place now, whar you’m got nuffin in de wo’ld to do but to study law! Reckon, Philos, by de time you git out you’ll be mighty larned nigger ’bout de law! Good-bye, Philos.”

“The worst thing about these niggers,” explained the justice, “is that they seem to have no conception of their responsibility. That boy, Philos, can’t see why a word from his employer isn’t enough now to release him, as it would have done while he was a slave. He doesn’t comprehend the fact that he has committed an offense against the State, as well as against his master.”

“Tol’able well, myself, but I’m not well contented,” replied one of the best plowmen in the gang, on another plantation, which I visited in March, to the inquiry of the young Northern proprietor, as to how he was getting along.

“Why, what’s the matter, Stephen?”

“Sah, I tell you de trufe, I don’t git enuff to eat. Matter enuff, dat is, for a man as works hard all day long.”

“But, Stephen, you get the same rations with the rest, and the same that your employers gave you all last year.”

“Shore, sah, but I nebber had enuff, den, nuther, dough I nebber say nuffin to nobody ’bout it, kase I’s not one de talkin’ kine.”

“Bress you, sah,” grinned the plow-driver, who had been listening to the conversation, “he nebber had ’nuff in his life. He’m allus hungry. He ’s de power-fullest eater I eber did see.”

“Dat’s fac’. I don’t brag on myself, but I kin eat a heap. I’s good hand. I plows wid de bestest, and no man nebber pass me. When I hire for man, I do best I kin for him, and take de best care I kin ob his mule; but it mighty hard not to hab enuff to eat.”

The difficulty of making an allowance in the weekly issues of rations, for his inordinate appetite, without making the other hands dissatisfied, was explained to him.

“I’s got common sense. I kin see dat. But I don’t want to work for a man and den have to buy what I eat. To be shore, I got de money, and de chilen do eat a heap; but you don’t make no ’lowance for dem, and I don’t want to spend de money what I earn by hard work buyin’ bread for dem.”

A promise of a drink of whisky pacified him. As we rode off the overseer burst out into a hearty laugh. “Why, do you know now,” and his manner indicated that he thought it a capital joke; “do you know—that fellow’s just the biggest thief on these plantations! Lor’ bless you, how he can steal! He not got enough to eat! Well, hog meat must be mighty scarce in all the nigger cabins around him when he hasn’t got enough! Why, I had to discharge him last year for stealing. It got so bad that the very niggers couldn’t stand it. Even Uncle William’s piety was disturbed by him. One Sunday morning Uncle William’s pig was gone, and he couldn’t find hide nor hair of it. He knowed where to hunt, and he pitched into Stephen’s cabin. I got down there just then; and Uncle William was a talkin’ at him, I tell you. There was some hair there, which Uncle William declared come off his pig; and he wanted to know what that hair was doin’ in Stephen’s cabin, if Stephen hadn’t seen the pig! Nigger meetin’ was broke up, that day, with the row. So things kept goin’ on till I had to discharge Stephen. He cried like a baby, and begged to be took back, but I wouldn’t. Then he went off. Three days later, back comes Stephen with a first-rate mule. He cried and begged so that I let him go to work again, and hired his mule. Three days afterward, who do you think should come along, but a nigger guard a huntin’ for Stephen. But that nigger was too sharp for them. They got the mule; but Stephen took for the tall cotton, and nobody saw him for two days. Come to find out, he had gone back into the country, when I turned him off, and had found an old nigger woman on some little patch in the woods plowin’ with a mule. He told her that was too hard work for her, and that if she would go to the cabin and get some dinner for him he’d plow for her. Soon as her back was turned, he mounts mule, cuts and runs. Do you think, when I scolded him for it, the nigger said he wouldn’t have stole the mule, but he was afraid I wouldn’t let him come back, and he thought if he brought me a nice mule I might be more favorable to him! That’s the kind o’ niggers you believe, when they tell you they don’t get enough to eat!” And again the overseer enjoyed his hearty laugh.

A succession of rains kept me shut up on a Louisiana cotton plantation for several days, early in April. When Sunday came I accompanied the overseer down to the negro church. It stood at the end of the street, on either side of which were ranged the quarters. It had originally been a double cabin, intended for a couple of slave families, like the rest of the quarters; but the middle partition had been knocked out; and space enough was thus secured to accommodate a much larger congregation than that which we found gathered. But with frugal mind, the worthy overseer had determined not to waste all this valuable room. A couple of beds had accordingly been set up at one end of the cabin, and a negro family with a sleepy-looking baby and one or two grown daughters had this for their home. As you entered you had your choice—you could visit the family or go to church, as you preferred.^[77] At the other end stood the pulpit—a rough platform, fronted by a contrivance which looked like the first bungling effort of a carpenter’s apprentice at the manufacture of a rough, pine mantle-piece. Four or five benches in front served for pews; and on either side of the pulpit other benches were ranged, on which gathered the fathers and mothers of this negro Israel. Square holes in the walls, filled with swinging wooden shutters, answered the purpose of windows. Above were the joists, brown with the smoke of many a year, festooned with cobwebs, hung with here and there a string of red-peppers, or a poke of garden herbs “for the ager,” and covered with a collection of carefully preserved fishing rods. Against the weather-boarding, which served also instead of ceiling or plastering, were fastened pictures of Grant and Joe Johnson; and near the pulpit was a rough, enlarged copy of Brady’s well-known photograph of Mr. Lincoln, with “Tad” standing at his knee, looking over an album. The imaginative copyist however had added a meaningless face, with hair smoothly gummed to the temples, which was supposed to represent Mrs. Lincoln. Directly behind the preacher’s head was nailed a New Orleans merchant’s advertising almanac-card.

Services were just beginning as we entered. One or two of the headmen bustled about to get chairs for us; the rest continued their singing with less staring and turning of heads than many a white congregation exhibits over late comers. The women all wore comparatively clean calico dresses; and the heads of all were wrapped in the inevitable checkered and gay-colored handkerchief. Even the preacher’s head was bound up in a handkerchief, none too clean, and over this his brass-rimmed spectacles were made secure by means of a white cotton string.

The old fellow, (who was none other than the plantation gardener,) was not one of those who fail to magnify their office. He seemed pleased at the chance to level his broadsides at two white men, and he certainly showed us no mercy. “White men might tink dey could git ’long, because dey was rich; but dey’d find demselves mistaken when damnation and hell-fire was after dem. No, my breddering an’ sistering, black an’ white, we must all be ’umble. ’Umbleness’ll tote us a great many places, whar money won’t do us no good. De Lo’d, who knows all our gwines in an’ coming out, he’ll ’ceive us all at de las’, if we behave ou’selves heah. Now, my breddering an’ sistering, white an’ black, I stand heah for de Lo’d, to say to ebery one ob you heah, be ’umble an’ behave you’selves on de yearth, an’ you shall hab a crown ob light. Ebery one ob you mus’ tote his cross on de yearth, eben as our bressed Master toted his’n.”

This was about the average style of the sermon. Part of it was delivered in a quiet, conversational tone; at other times the preacher’s voice rose into a prolonged and not unmusical cadence. He was really a good man, and wherever any meaning lurked in his numberless repetitions of cant phrases, picked up from the whites to whom he had listened, it was always a good one. The small audience sat silent and perfectly undemonstrative. The preacher once or twice remarked that there were so few present that he didn’t feel much like exhorting; it was hardly worth while to go to much trouble for so few; and finally, with a repetition of this opinion, he told them “dey might sing some if dey wanted to,” and took his seat. “D——n the old fellow,” whispered the overseer, “he don’t do no retail business, it seems. He wants to save souls by hullsale, or else not at all!”

A young man, wearing the caped, light-blue army overcoat, rose and started a quaint chant. The congregation struck in and sung the line over. The young man chanted another line, and the congregation sang it after him; another was chanted, then sung; then another, and so on. It was exactly the old Scotch fashion of “lining out,” except that instead of reading the line which the congregation was to sing, the leader delivered it in the oddest, most uncouth and sense-murdering chant ever conceived. Presently several of the older members joined the young man in the chant; then united with the chorus in thundering over the chanted line again. Meantime, a number of the women began to show signs of an effort to get up hysteric excitement. They drew up their persons to their full hight, swayed back and forth, and right and left, then gave a curious “ducking” motion to the head, bent down, seemed to writhe in their efforts to rise; then drew up and began again. Presently one came marching over toward our side, with eyes nearly shut, an absurdly-affected expression of the ugly black features, grasped my hand with effusion, and squeezed it as if it were a nut she wanted to crack. Then came a squeaking “O-o-oh!” supposed to express unspeakable delight; and she passed to the black man and brother by my side, catching both his hands in the same vice, and going through the same performance. Thus she moved from one to another around the church, while the singing grew fast and furious, and the sisters twisted their bodies about hysterically as they sang, and shouted “glory!” between the lines.

The prayers were made up in about equal proportions of “Oh-a-o-ahs,” “O merciful Father,” “Ooh-ooh-oohs,” profuse snuffling, and wiping of eyes and nostrils, and ludicrously perverted repetitions of the common forms of addressing the Deity, which they had heard among the whites. Many of them seemed almost entirely destitute of any distinct, intelligible meaning. The women furnished a running accompaniment, entirely novel to me. One, a stout negress, with lungs like a blacksmith’s bellows, set up a dismal howl through her nose. The rest joined in, in different keys, and the combination furnished a sort of chant, without one word in it, or one effort to articulate a word, which kept pace with, and sometimes drowned out, the prayer.^[78]

Singing and prayer alternated several times. The demeanor of all was earnest; and, so far as the emotions went, there could be no doubt of their sincerity. Finally the preacher rose, announced that on “next Sunday dere would be baptisin’, an’ all dat was ready for de water mus’ be present. On de Sunday followin’ dere would be de funeral. Some forty or more had died since de las’ one, and he mus’ hab deir names now afore de funeral come off. Ef de water wasn’t too high, he would hab it outside de levee, at de buryin’ groun’; but ef de water was ober dat, dey would try an’ git ’mission of Mr. ——, (naming the overseer,) to hab it in front ob de house, for der’d be a great crowd.”^[79] And with that, he reverently pronounced the benediction; and a few struck up a lively hymn tune, while the rest dispersed to the quarters.

It was very absurd; but, after all, who shall pronounce it valueless? Perhaps they do rise from their knees to steal—even white church members have been known to do the same. Perhaps most of them are too ignorant to comprehend religious matters—but it is on white, not black, shoulders that the sin for their ignorance rests. This very preacher had more than once been dragged from the pulpit and given forty lashes for presuming to repeat passages of the Bible, and talk about them to the slaves.