The Departed Glories of the South Land  
My memories would be incomplete were I to fail to include in them a description of plantation life that may be taken as a type of the beautiful homes of the South in that long ago before the Civil War. From Maryland to Louisiana there had reigned, since colonial times, an undisturbed, peaceful, prosperous democracy, based upon an institution beneficial alike to master and servant. It was implanted in the South by the English settlers, approved by the English rulers, and fostered by thrifty merchants of New England, glad to traffic in black men so long as there were black men upon the African coasts who might be had in exchange for a barrel of rum. Generations living under these conditions had evolved a domestic discipline in Southern homes which was of an ideal order. Nothing resembling it had existed in modern times. To paraphrase the nursery rhyme, the planter was in his counting-house counting out his money; his wife was in the parlour eating bread and honey; the man servant was by his master’s side, the maid with her mistress, the meat-cook at his spit and the bread-cook at the marble block where the delicious beaten biscuit were made in plenty. The laundress was in the laundry (Chinamen then in China), and in the nursery lived, ever at her post, the sable sentinel of cribs and cradles, the skilful manufacturer of possets and potions. None but a Southerner to the manner born can appreciate or imagine the tie that bound us of that old-time South to our dear black mammy, in whose 212capacious lap the little ones confided to her care cuddled in innocent slumber.
Fruitful vineyards and gardens furnished our luxuries, and talent and faithful public service were the criterion of social standing. Of those bygone days, Mr. E. Spann Hammond[31] recently wrote, “To me it seems as if I had been in two worlds, and two existences, the old and the new, and to those knowing only the latter, the old will appear almost like mythology and romance, so thorough has been the upheaval and obliteration of the methods and surroundings of the past.”
Yes! the old glories have passed away, but even those who destroyed them, looking back to that time and that Southern civilisation, recognise to-day how enviable were our solidarity as a people, our prosperity and the moral qualities that are characteristic of the South. “I have learned not only to respect, but to love the great qualities which belong to my fellow-citizens of the Southern States,” said Senator Hoar, recently. “Their love of home, their chivalrous respect for women, their courage, their delicate sense of honour, their constancy, which can abide by an appearance or a purpose or an interest for their States through adversity, and through prosperity, through years and through generations, are things by which the more mercurial people of the North may take a lesson. And there is another thing,” he added, “the low temptation of money has not found any place in our Southern politics.”
 
SENATOR JAMES H. HAMMOND
 
of South Carolina
213It was my good fortune during the late autumn and winter of 1864 to be invited to take refuge in a spacious and representative plantation home in South Carolina, where the conditions that obtained were so typically those of the Southern home that I could choose no better example for description, were I to scan here the numberless instances of a similar character, known to me before those unquiet days. “Redcliffe,” the home of Senator Hammond, is still a point of interest to travellers, and a beautiful feature of the landscape in which it is set. It is built upon a high knoll on Beech Island, South Carolina, and is visible to the naked eye at a distance of thirty-five miles. It lies within view of Sand Hill, where the famous Madame Le Vert spent her declining years, and is pointed out to the visitor by the residents of Augusta, Georgia, and the smaller towns about, as an object of local admiration and pride. In the decades preceding the war it was owned by Governor, afterward Senator, James H. Hammond, a wealthy man in his own right, whose possessions were greatly increased by his marriage to Miss Catherine Fitzsimmons. Miss Fitzsimmons was a daughter of one of South Carolina’s richest citizens, and brought to Governor Hammond a splendid dowry. Her sister became the wife of Colonel Wade Hampton, who had been on General Jackson’s staff at the battle of New Orleans, and whose son, General and Senator Wade Hampton, served in the same Congress with Senator Hammond. While in Washington, the latter, distinguished alike for his reserve and scholarliness, became known as the “Napoleon of the Senate.” He was no lover of public life, however, and the senatorial office was literally thrust upon him. Especially as the strenuousness in Congress increased, his desire deepened to remain among his people and to develop what was, in fact, one of the most productive plantations in South Carolina. The estate of “Redcliffe” was stocked with the finest of Southdowns, with sleek, blooded kine, and horses, and a full flock of Angora goats. The prolific “Redcliffe” vineyards yielded unusual varieties of grapes, planted and cared for by white labourers. Four hundred slaves or more were owned by Senator Hammond, but these were set to less skill-demanding duties. For the planting of this vineyard, forty acres of land, sub-soiled 214to a depth of three feet, were set apart, and the clear, straw-coloured wine for which the Senator’s cellar was famous came from his own wine-presses.
On the plantation was a large grist-mill, from which every human creature in that vast family was fed. It was a big, heavy timbered building, grey even then with age, and run by water. Here the corn was crushed between the upper and the nether mill-stones, and so skilful was the miller that each could have his hominy ground as coarse or as fine as his fancy dictated, and all the sweetness of the corn left in it besides. The miller could neither read nor write, but he needed no aid to his memory. For years he had known whose mealbag it was that had the red patch in the corner. He knew each different knot as well as he knew the negros’ faces, and if any of the bags presented had holes in it the miller would surely make its owner wait till the last.
Lower down on the same water-course was the sawmill, which had turned out all the lumber used in the building of “Redcliffe.” On one occasion it happened that this mill, needing some repairs, a great difficulty was encountered in the adjustment of the mud-sills, upon which the solidity of the whole superstructure depended. The obstacles to be removed were great, and it cost much time and money to overcome them. While Mr. Hammond was Senator, and in the official chamber was grappling with the problem of labour and capital, his experience with the mud-sills was opportunely recalled, and his application of that name to certain of the labouring classes at once added to his reputation for ready wit.
On the “Redcliffe” plantation the blacksmith was to be found at his forge, the wheelwright in his shop, and the stock-minder guarding the welfare of his charges. Measured by the standard that a man has not lived in vain who makes two blades of grass to grow where but 215one grew before, Senator Hammond might have been crowned King of agricultural enterprise, for his highest producing corn-lands before he rescued them had been impassible swamp-lands. Drained and put under cultivation, their yield was enormous, no less than eighty bushels of corn being the average quantity to the acre. There was scarcely a corner of the old “stake-and-rider fences” in which Mr. Hammond did not cause to be planted a peach or apple or other fruit tree.
Our cousin Miss Comer, who late in the fifties married the son of Senator Hammond, and made her home at “Redcliffe,” though accustomed to affluent plantation life, was at once impressed by the splendid system that directed the colony of slaves at Beech Island. Each marriage and birth and death that took place among them was registered with great exactness. The Senator’s business ability was remarkable. He knew his every possession to the most minute particular. The Hammond slaves formed an exclusive colony, which was conducted with all the strictness of a little republic. They were a happy, orderly, cleanly, and care-free lot, and Mr. Hammond was wont to say that if the doctrine of transmigration of souls was true, he would like to have his soul come back and inhabit one of his “darkies.”
I have said they were an exclusive colony. My pretty little cousin realised this upon her arrival at “Glen Loula,” a charming residence named for her, and set apart for the young couple by the owner of “Redcliffe.”
“The Hammond negro, as I have found him,” she wrote, “has a decided personal vanity, and nothing will offend him more than to have you forget his name. For a long time after coming I felt I was not exactly admitted by the different servants as ‘one ob de fambly.’ In fact, it was plain I was on trial, being ‘weighed in the balance!’ How I wished I knew all about diplomacy! 216I never saw a more august appearance than Daddy ‘Henry,’ an old African, who remembers the slave ship on which he was brought over, his foreign name, and, perhaps, many things which he never tells about. He cleans the silver, polishes the floors and windows and the brasses in the fireplaces, and, besides this, claims the boys’ guns as his by some divine right.
“In order to hasten an expression of their good-will, I thought one day of making a Sterling exchange with the aid of some Washington finery; and, with a black silk dress to one servant and a morning-robe to another, I have pulled through famously, even with Marm Jane, the cook, who is supreme in her ki............