In the same business-like way,
and if they have anything to say in regard to
every-day life in the countries through which
they pass, they forget to thank the compiler of
the guide-book for the information they possess.
There was but one room in the cabin of my
new acquaintance, who represented that class of
piny-woods people called in the south - because
they subsist largely upon corn, - Corn Crackers,
or Crackers. These Crackers are the "poor white
folks" of the planter, and "de white trash" of
the old slave, who now as a freedman is
beginning to feel the responsibility of his position.
These Crackers are a very kind-hearted people,
but few of them can read or write. The children
of the negro, filled with curiosity and a
newborn pride, whenever opportunity permits,
attend the schools in large numbers; but the very
indolent white man seems to be destitute of all
ambition, and his children, in many places in the
south, following close in the father's footsteps,
grow up in an almost unimaginable ignorance.
The news of the arrival of the little Maria
Theresa at Piraway Ferry spread with
astonishing rapidity through the woods, and on Sunday,
after "de shoutings," as the negroes call their
meetings, were over, the blacks came in
numbers to see "dat Yankee-man's paper canno."
These simple people eyed me from head to foot
with a grave sort of curiosity, their great mouths
open, displaying pearly teeth of which a white
man might well be proud. "You is a good man,
capt'n - we knows dat," they said; and when I
asked why, the answer showed their childlike
faith. "'Cause you couldn't hab come all dis
way in a paper boat if de Lord hadn't helped
you. He dono help only good folks."
The Cracker also came with his children to
view the wonder, while the raftsmen were so
struck with the advantages of my double paddle,
which originated with the inhabitants of the
Arctic regions, that they laid it upon a board and
drew its outlines with chalk. They vowed they
would introduce it upon the river.
These Crackers declared it would take more
than "de shoutings," or any other religious
service, to improve the moral condition of
the blacks. They openly accused the colored
preachers of disturbing the nocturnal rest of
their hens and turkeys; and as to hog-stealing
and cow-killing, "Why, we won't have any
critters left ef this carpet-bag government lasts much
longer!" they feelingly exclaimed.
"We does nothing to nobody. We lets the
niggers alone; but niggers will steal - they can't
help it, the poor devils; it's in 'em. Now, ef they
eats us out of house and home, what can a poor
man do? They puts 'em up for justices of peace,
and sends 'em to the legislature, when they can't
read more'n us; and they do say it's 'cause we
fit in the Confederate sarvice that they razes the
nigger over our heads. Now, does the folkes up
north like to see white people tyrannized over
by niggers? Jes tell 'em when you go back,
stranger, that we's got soulds like yours up
north, and we's got feelings too, by thunder! jes
like other white men. This was a white man's
country once - now it's all niggers and dogs.
Why, them niggers in the legislature has
spitboxes lined with gold to spit in! What's this
country a-coming to? We wish the niggers no
harm if they lets our hogs and chickens alone."
After this tirade it was amusing to see how
friendly the whites and blacks were. The
Crackers conversed with these children of Ham, who
had been stealing their hams for so long a time,
in the most kindly way, realizing, perhaps, that
they had various peculiar traits of their own, and
must, after all, endure their neighbors.
A traveller should place facts before his
readers, and leave to them the drawing of the moral.
Northern men and women who go to the
southern states and reside for even the short space of
a year or two, invariably change their life-long
views and principles regarding the negro as a
moral and social creature. When these people
return to their homes in Maine or Massachusetts
(as did the representatives of the Granges of the
northern states after they had visited South
Carolina in 1875) a new light, derived from contact
with facts, dawns upon them, while their
surprised and untravelled neighbors say: "So you
have become Southern in your views. I never
would have thought that of you."
The railroad has become one of the great
mediums of enlightenment to mankind, and joins in
a social fraternity the disunited elements of a
country. God grant that the resources of the
great South may soon be developed by the
capital and free labor of the North. Our sister states
of the South, exhausted by the struggles of the
late war which resulted in consolidating more
firmly than ever the great Union, are now ready
to receive every honest effort to develop their
wealth or cultivate their territory. Let every
national patriot give up narrowness of views and
sectional selfishness and become acquainted with
(not the politicians) the people of the New
South, and a harmony of feeling will soon
possess the hearts of all true lovers of a government
of the people.
The swamp tributaries were swelling the river
into a very rapid torrent as I paddled away from
the ferry on Monday, January 18. A warmer
latitude having been reached, I could dispense
with one blanket, and this I had presented to my
kind host, who had refused to accept payment
for his hospitality.
