The Old Plantation : How We Lived in Great House and Cabin Before

I I K\( w^T I \ K^Vr The Old Plantation How We Lived in Great House AND Cabin Before the War BY JAMES BATTLE AVIRETT Author of "Ashby and His Compeers," "Who Was the Traitor?" etc. F. TENNYSON NEELY CO. NEW YORK CHICAGO LONDON THE NE">« YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 704855 ASTOR, LENOX AND TILD6.N FOUHDATI0N8 R 1916 \- Copyright, 1901, by JAMES BATTLE AVIRETT. THIS VOLUME IS GRATEFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF THE OLD PLANTER AND HIS WIFE— THE ONLY REAL SLAVES ON THE OLD PLANTATION OF MANY OVERGROWN CHILDREN, SERVANTS ON THE ESTATE, FROM 1817 TO 1865— THE FATHER AND MOTHER OF THE AUTHOR. INTRODUCTION. Action and reaction—ebb and flow—seem to be the rule of life in its varied manifestations. Winter and Summer—Seedtime and Harvest, with their death into life—are in striking illustration of this rule. To the be- numbing influences of that form of imperialism which swept over Europe, holding down as in a vise all effort at asserted individuality in citizenship, the student of history and its philosophies will recollect, came slow but sure reaction. Coming in form of the French Revolution, it was far, very far, from being an unmixed blessing. It liberated the individual from everybody and every- thing but himself. This it was powerless to do, because in its chaos it refused to recognize the condition precedent of all healthful life. It turned a deaf ear to the great truth, in its blind worship of Eeason, that Order is Heaven's first Law. A power so strong as this social cyclone, work- ing in the orbit of human weakness, could not be confined to France. It overleaped the channel and, though strongly resisted by the conservative forces of Anglo-Saxon Eng- land, it has left its influence upon that virile polity which had successfully withstood the mutations of centuries. Intrenching itself in Exeter Hall, London, it threw its vi Introduction. forces across the Atlantic and fortified them in Fanueil Hall, Boston. And thus it came about that it was the be- numbing shadows of the French Kevolution, in its con- tempt for law, order and precedent, which left such giants in the state as Mr. Webster, and Bishop Hopkins of Vermont in the Church without a counteracting follow- ing. Thus it was that the John Brown Raid, called into being by that bold, bad, strong book, "Uncle Tom's Cabin,'* proved to be the avant-coureur of the Civil War. This fearful struggle between the two sections, North and South, closed in one of its forms many long years ago. Pending this long, dark period of suffering, in- volving a proud people in some forms of sorrow, keener far than that known to either Poland or Hungary, in the manumission and enfranchisement of a race inferior both from heredity and servility, the South, possessing her soul in patience, has waited. Yes ! wretchedly misunderstood, we have waited for the pendulum of public opinion to swing around to our side of the arc. God only knows in what bitterness of heart we have waited. We have waited in full loyalty to the Government, both State and Federal, and though in waiting we may not have grown strong, yet we have waited long enough, under the inspiring ex- ample and memory of the Christian Lee at Lexington, Virginia, to be full of hope that the tide is now setting in from the high seas of error, and that the day of our vindication in the world's judgment is nigh at hand. Men, very thoughtful men, lacking in no element of manly loyalty to the powers that be, are free to assert that in the reaction which has set in, erroneous views as to the causes which led up to the war, as well as the facts in its conduct, are giving place to the truth. The Supreme Court of the country, in its appellate jurisdiction of last Introduction. vii resort, is affirming and reaffirming the constitutional doctrine of Statehood in its distinct autonomy. Public opinion from the lakes to the gulf, is voicing American utterance as to the superiority of the Caucasian race. From ocean to ocean there is a growing recognition that the tide has turned, in the steadily increasing thrift of the South. And thus it would seem to be that all things come to him who waits. The writer of this book, the chaplain on the staff of that matchless Cavalier, Gen. Turner Ashby, Chief of Cavalry under Stonewall Jackson, has patiently waited for nearly forty years to t^ll his own story. While envy, hatred and malice ruled the hour, he well knew that it would be worse than "Love's Labor Lost," to do anything but wait—bide his time. He has waited until he hears falling from the lips of the distinguished Senator Hoar of Massachusetts largely the same arguments in his op- position to the imperialism at Manila as were employed by Southern senators in the United States Senate in the spring of 1861. He has waited until Colonel Henderson of the British Army, in his "Life of Stonewall Jackson," has placed Lee's lieutenant in the forefront of the world's great captains; and in doing so he has shown in a very striking manner that the appeal, which the silence of the South has slowly brought about, is largely vindicatory of her men and measures. He has waited, until the social conditions at the South before the war are necessarily assuming the misty forms of traditions, and will presently, unless rescued, become to the oncoming generations of the South as mythical as much of the Koman and Grecian stories. He has waited until to wait longer would be treasonable to duty. Having waited long, he now writes in loyalty to past generations of the South—such men viii Introduction. and women as those from whom sprang such pure patriots as Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, and that incom- parable army of Northern Virginia and their comrades in gray all over the Southland. In vindicating his people from the ignorant aspersions of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and kindred exhalations from a distempered brain, he indulges in no criminations or re- criminations. To the ex parte statement of this gifted member of a very gifted family, he simply says what the good old Common Law has said in all its wise judgments, ''Audi alteram 'partem"—the wisdom of which legal maxim is further promulged by that higher injunction, "Judge nothing before the time." The author, a University man and bred to the law, has given nearly forty years of his life under the auspices of the Episcopal Church. We would, therefore, expect a thoughtful book from him. Born and reared to full man- hood on one of the largest plantations on tidewater, Xorth Carolina, one will see that with him is the great advantage of writing as an eyewitness, and not from hear- say or second hand. Urged to write this book by such men of the South as the late United States Senator Vance of North Carolina, and encouraged therein by the Bishop of Central New York and others of his Northern friends, we think he has justified their appreciation of his capacity for this work. The reader will observe that he takes hold of none of the many weak threads in the sensational and overwrought story, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which he might well have done by showing that the worst character in the book is a New Englander, while the best is largely tlie product of those social forces which Mrs. Stowe is undermining. He simply tells you how the servants on his father's estate Introduction. ix were treated, and unfolds, under that treatment, the gradual uplift of a pagan race to that point of high character which, in the judgment (?) of those in power, fitted them for all the high duties of that citizenship so grace- fully adorning such men as Chauncey Depew and Mark Hanna. In laying the scene of his recitals on his father's plantation he is fortunate in knowing whereof he speaks, and he does not intimate that the treatment of the servants there was in anywise more humane than elsewhere in the South. In his painstaking portrayal of the social conditions on this plantation, of which he could write both creditably and intelligently, he says : *'Ex uno disce omnia/' Of all the arguments in his contention with Mrs. Stowe and all her kidney, our author uses this one most tellingly. He says if the system of labor on Southern estates was so cruel and barbarous, if the negroes were slaves abject and not servants trusted and well cared for, why was it that when the Southern homes were stripped of their defenders, then in the Confederate armies, the negroes did not reenact the bloody scenes of San Domingo—why did they not rise, with blazing torch in hand, and kill and burn? By so doing, in eight and forty hours they could have broken up the organized Confederate armies in front of Eichmond and Atlanta, whose soldiers would have rushed back home to protect their wives and children. And yet, not one single torch of incendiarism was kindled. If any change came, the negroes of the old plantation, conscious of their power, were more loyal and tenderly dutiful than at any time in their history. No ! no ! The truth is, as shown on these pages, the institution had knit the hearts of the two races together too tenderly, in the happy life on the old plantation, to X Introduction.

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