The Iron Furnace; or, Slavery and Secession

“I read the report of your address in the newspaper, and through the aid of my comrade, I have succeeded in finding you. We have met before, at Tupelo.”

At the mention of Tupelo, I immediately recognised in the speaker the man who, after labouring with the others in sundering my chain, engaged the guard, who sat in the doorway, in conversation, while I watched an opportunity to disappear under the prison. Grasping him warmly by the hand, I said: “I now recognise you. You are Mr. Howell Trogdon, of Missouri, late my fellow-prisoner in Tupelo. How and when did you succeed in leaving that prison?”

“Being a Federal prisoner, I was removed from Tupelo to Mobile, and there parolled on the 26th of August last.”

“When was I missed after my escape, and how did the officers act when they learned that I was gone?”

“You were missed at roll-call, the next morning, and in a short time, many officers came into the prison. They were greatly enraged at this, your second flight. The prisoners were closely questioned as to their complicity in your escape, but they denied all knowledge of the matter. Soon all the prison-guards on duty during the night, thirty-three in number, were brought into the prison in chains. The cavalry was ordered out in search of you, and directed to shoot you down wherever found. The mode of your escape was not discovered, and the officers were of the opinion that you had bribed the guards. From that time, the officers became more cruel than ever, and in two weeks, thirty-two of our fellow-prisoners were taken out and shot! We never learned whether you had succeeded in escaping to the Union lines. We feared that you were overtaken and shot, or that you perished in the swamps from hunger, thirst, and fatigue. I hope soon to see McHatten, Speer, De Grummond, and Soper, who are also parolled, and they will rejoice to learn that you still live. During the night of your escape, we slept but little, through fear that our chaplain might be shot by the guards, and I assure you many fervent prayers ascended to Heaven for your safety.”

CHAPTER VII.

SOUTHERN CLASSES – CRUELTY TO SLAVES

Sandhillers – Dirt-eating – Dipping – Their Mode of Living – Patois – Rain-book – Wife-trade – Coming in to see the Cars – Superstition – Marriage of Kinsfolks – Hardshell Sermon – Causes which lead to the Degradation of this Class – Efforts to Reconcile the Poor Whites to the Peculiar Institution – The Slaveholding Class – The Middle Class – Northern Isms – Incident at a Methodist Minister’s House – Question asked a Candidate for Licensure – Reason of Southern Hatred toward the North – Letter to Mr. Jackman – Barbarities and Cruelties of Slavery – Mulattoes – Old Cole – Child Born at Whipping-post – Advertisement of a Keeper of Bloodhounds – Getting Rid of Free Blacks – The Doom of Slavery – Methodist Church South.

The sojourner in the Slave States is struck with the wretched and degraded appearance of a class of people called by the slaveholders, “poor white folks,” and “the tallow-faced gentry,” from their pallid complexion. They live in wretched hovels, dress slatternly, and are exceedingly filthy in their habits. Many of them are clay or dirt-eaters, which is said to cause their peculiar complexion. Their children, at a very early age, form this filthy and disgusting habit; and mere infants may be found with their mouths filled with dirt. The mud with which they daub the interstices between the logs of their rude domicils, must be frequently renewed, as the occupants pick it all out in a very short time, and eat it. This pernicious practice induces disease. The complexion becomes pale, similar to that occasioned by chronic ague and fever.

Akin to this is the practice of snuff-dipping, which is not confined exclusively to females of the poor white caste, though scarcely one in fifty of this class is exempt from the disgusting habit. The method is this: The female snuff-dipper takes a short stick, and wetting it with her saliva, dips it into her snuff-box, and then rubs the gathered dust all about her mouth, and into the interstices of her teeth, where she allows it to remain until its strength has been fully absorbed. Others hold the stick thus loaded with snuff in the cheek, a la quid of tobacco, and suck it with a decided relish, while engaged in their ordinary avocations; while others simply fill the mouth with the snuff, and imitate, to all intents and purposes, the chewing propensities of the men. In the absence of snuff, tobacco in the plug or leaf is invariably resorted to as a substitute. Oriental betel-chewing, and the Japanese fashion of blacking the teeth of married ladies, are the height of elegance compared with snuff-dipping. The habit leads to a speedy decay of the teeth, and to nervous disorders of every kind. Those who indulge in it become haggard at a very early age.

The Petersburg (Va.) Express estimates the number of women in that State as one hundred and twenty-five thousand, one hundred thousand of whom are snuff-dippers. Every five of these will use a two-ounce paper of snuff per day; that is, to the hundred thousand dippers, two thousand five hundred pounds a day, amounting, in one year, to the enormous quantity of nine hundred and twelve thousand pounds. This practice prevails generally, it says, among the poor whites, though some females of the higher classes are guilty of it.

The poor whites obtain their subsistence, as far as practicable, in the primitive aboriginal mode, viz., by hunting and fishing. When these methods fail to afford a supply, they cultivate a truck-patch, and some of them raise a bale or two of cotton, with the proceeds of the sale of which they buy whiskey, tobacco, and a few necessary articles. When all other methods fail, they resort to stealing, to which many of them are addicted from choice, as well as from necessity. They are exceeding slovenly in their habits, cleanliness being a rare virtue. Indolence is a prevailing vice, and its lamentable effects are everywhere visible. They fully obey the scriptural injunction, take no thought for the morrow. A present supply, sufficient to satisfy nature’s most urgent demands, being obtained, their care ceases, and they relapse into listless inactivity. They herd together upon the poor sand-hills, the refuse land of the country, which the rich slaveholder will not purchase, for which reason, they are sometimes called sand-hillers, and here they live, and their children, and their children’s children, through successive generations, in the same deplorable condition of wretchedness and degradation.

They are exceedingly ignorant; not one adult in fifty can write; not one in twenty can read. They can scarcely be said to speak the English language, using a patois which is scarcely intelligible. An old lady thus related an incident of which her daughter “Sal” was the heroine. “My darter Sal yisterday sot the lather to the damsel tree, and clim up, and knocked some of the nicest saftest damsels I ever seed in my born days.” I once called to make some inquiry about the road, at a small log tenement, inhabited by a sand-hiller and family. A sheet was hanging upon the wall, containing the portraits of the Presidents of the United States. I remarked to the lady of the house that those were, I believed, the pictures of the Presidents.

“Yes!” she replied; “they is, and I’ve hearn tell of ’em a long time. They must be gittin’ mighty old, ef some of ’em aint dead. That top one,” she continued, “is Gineral Washington. I’ve hearn of him ever sence I was a gal. He must be gittin’ up in years, ef he aint dead. Him and Gineral Jackson fit the British and Tories at New Orleans, and whipped ’em, too.”

She seemed to pride herself greatly on her historical knowledge.

One of these geniuses once informed me of a peculiar kind of book “he’d hearn tell on,” that the Yankees had. He had forgotten its name, but thus described it: “It told the day of the week the month come in on. It told when we was a gwine to have rain, and what kind of wether we was gwine to have in gineral. May-be they call it a rain-book.”

I replied that I had heard of the book, and I believed that it was called an Almanac.

“You’ve said it now,” remarked the man. “It’s a alminick, and I’d give half I’s wuth to have one. I’d no when to take a umberell, and if I haddent nary one, I’d no when I could go a huntin’ without gittin’ wet.”

Two of these semi-savages had resolved to remove to the West, in hope of bettering their condition. One wished to remove to Arkansas, the other to Texas. The wife of the former wished to go to Texas, the latter to Arkansas. The husbands were desirous of gratifying their spouses, but could devise no plan that seemed likely to prove satisfactory, till one day when hunting, finding game scarce, they sat down upon a log, when the following dialogue took place:

“Kit, I’m sort o’ pestered about Dilsie. She swars to Rackensack she’ll go, and no whar else. I allers had a hankerin’ arter Texas. Plague take Rackensack, I say! Ef a man war thar, the ager and the airthquakes ed shake him out on it quicker en nothin’.”

“When a woman’s set on a gwine anywhar, they’re a gwine. It’s jest no use to talk. I’ve coaxed Minnie more’n a little to go long with me to Arkansas, and the more I coax, the more she wont go.”

“Well, Kit, ’sposen we swap women.”

“Well, Sam, what trade’ll ye gin?”

“Oh! a gentleman’s trade, of course!”

“Shucks, Sam! ’sposen I had a young filly, and you a old mar, ye wouldn’t ax an even trade, would ye?”

“No; it ’ud be too hard. I tell you what I’ll do, Kit. Here’s a shot-gun that’s wuth ten dollars, ef it’s wuth a red. I’ll give it and that ar b’ar-skin hangin’ on the side of my shanty, to boot, and say it’s a trade.”

“Nuff sed, ef the women’s agreed.”

Home they went, and stated the case to the women, who, after due deliberation, acceded to the proposition, having also made a satisfactory arrangement about the children, and they all soon went on their way rejoicing to their respective destinations in that

“American’s haven of eternal rest,Found a little farther West.”

On the Sabbath after the completion of the Memphis and Charleston railroad, a large number of the sand-hillers came to Iuka Springs, to witness the passing of the cars. Arriving too early, they visited a church where divine service was progressing. Whilst the minister was in the midst of his sermon, the locomotive whistle sounded, when a stampede took place to the railroad. The exodus left the parson almost alone in his glory. The passing train caused the most extravagant expressions and gestures of wonder and astonishment by these rude observers. It was an era in their life.

Once while standing on the railroad-track, I observed a crowd of these people coming to see the “elephant.” They came so near, that I overheard their conversation. One young lass, of sweet sixteen, with slattern dress and dishevelled hair, looking up the road, which was visible for a great distance, thus expressed her astonishment at what she saw: “O, dad! what a long piece of iron!” Soon the whistle sounded; this they had never heard before, and came to the conclusion that it was a dinner-horn. As soon as the cars came in sight, they scattered like frightened sheep, some on one side of the road, and some on the other. Nor did they halt till they had placed fifty yards at least between them and the track.

Superstition prevails amongst them to a fearful extent. Almost every hut has a horse-shoe nailed above the door, or on the threshold, to keep out witches. In sickness, charms and incantations are used to drive away disease. Their physicians are chiefly what are termed faith-doctors, who are said to work miraculous cures. They are strong believers in luck. If a rabbit cross their path, they will turn round to change their luck. If, on setting out on a journey, an owl hoot on the left hand, they will return and set out anew. If the new moon is seen through brush, or on the left hand, it is a bad omen. They will have trouble during the lunar month. When the whippoorwill is first heard in the spring, they turn head over heels thrice, to prevent back-ache during the year. Dreams are harbingers of joy or wo. To dream of snakes, is ominous. To dream of seeing a coffin, or conversing with the dead, is a sign of approaching dissolution, and many have no doubt perished through terror, occasioned by such dreams. Fortune-tellers are rife amongst them – those sages whose comprehensive view knows the past, the present, and the future. They seek unto familiar spirits, that peep and mutter, for the living to the dead.

They have many deformed, and blind, and deaf among them, in consequence of the intermarriage of relatives. Cousins often marry, and occasionally they marry within the degrees of consanguinity prohibited by the law of God. Perhaps this divine law forbids the marriage of cousins when it declares, “Thou shalt not marry any that is near of kin.” The sad effects on posterity, both mentally and physically, lead to the conviction that if the law of God does not condemn it, physiological law does.

These sand-hillers do not (when no serious preventive occurs) fail to attend the elections, where the highest bidder obtains their vote. Sometimes their vote will command cash, and sometimes only whiskey. It is sad to witness the elective franchise, that highest and most glorious badge of a freeman, thus prostituted.

The proverb holds good – Like people, like priest. Their ministers are ignorant, ranting fanatics. They despise literature, and every Sabbath fulminate censures upon an educated ministry. The following is a specimen of their preaching. Mr. V – is a Hard-shell Baptist, or, as they term themselves, “Primitive Baptists.” Entering the pulpit on a warm morning in July, he will take off his coat and vest, roll up his sleeves, and then begin:

My Brethering and Sistern – I air a ignorant man, follered the plough all my life, and never rubbed agin nary college. As I said afore, I’m ignorant, and I thank God for it. (Brother Jones responds, “Passon, yer ort to be very thankful, fur yer very ignorant.”) Well, I’m agin all high larnt fellers what preaches grammar and Greek fur a thousand dollars a year. They preaches fur the money, and they gits it, and that’s all they’ll git. They’ve got so high larnt they contradicts Scripter, what plainly tells us that the sun rises and sets. They seys it don’t, but that the yerth whirls round, like clay to the seal. What ud cum of the water in the wells ef it did. Wodent it all spill out, and leave ’em dry, and whar ed we be? I may say to them, as the sarpent said unto David, much learning hath made thee mad.

When I preaches, I never takes a tex till I goes inter the pulpit; then I preaches a plain sarment, what even women can understand. I never premedertates, but what is given to me in that same hour, that I sez. Now I’m a gwine ter open the Bible, and the first verse I sees, I’m a gwine to take it for a tex. (Suiting the action to the word, he opened the Bible, and commenced reading and spelling together.) Man is f-e-a-r-f-u-l-l-y – fearfully – and w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l-l-y – wonderfully – m-a-d-e – mad. – “Man is fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Pronounced mad.) Well, it’s a quar tex, but I said I’s a gwine to preach from it, and I’m a gwine to do it. In the fust place, I’ll divide my sarment into three heads. Fust and foremost, I show you that a man will git mad. 2d. That sometimes he’ll git fearfully mad; and thirdly and lastly, when thar’s lots of things to vex and pester him, he’ll git fearfully and wonderfully mad. And in the application I’ll show you that good men sometimes gits mad, for the Posle David hisself, who rote the tex, got mad, and called all men liars, and cussed his enemies, wishen’ ’em to go down quick into hell; and Noah, he got tite, and cussed his nigger boy Ham, just like some drunken masters now cusses their niggers. But Noah and David repented; and all on us what gits mad must repent, or the devil’ll git us.

Thus he ranted, to the great edification of his hearers, who regard him as a perfect Boanerges, to which title his stentorian voice would truly entitle him. This exordium will serve as a specimen of the “sarment,” as it continued in the same strain to the end of the peroration.

Where there is no vision, the people perish. Such blind leaders of the blind are liable, with their infatuated followers, to fall into a ditch worse than Bunyan’s Slough of Despond. This minister had undoubtedly run when he was not sent, though he “had hearn a call; a audible voice had, while he was a shucken corn, said unto him, Preach.” Though God does not need men’s learning, yet he has as little use for their ignorance. Learning is the handmaid of religion, but must not be substituted in its stead.

The causes which induce this “wilderness of mind” are patent to all who make even a cursory examination. There is a tendency in the poor to ape the manners of the rich. Those having slaves to labour in their stead, toil not physically; hence labour falls into disrepute, and the poorer classes, having no slaves to work for them, and not choosing to submit to the degradation of labour, incur all the evils resulting from idleness and poverty. Ignorance and vice of every kind soon ensue, and a general apathy prevails, which destroys in a great measure all mental and physical vigour.

The slaveholders buy up all the fertile lands to be cultivated by their slaves; hence the poor are crowded out, and if they remain in the vicinity of the place of their nativity, they must occupy the poor tracts whose sterility does not excite the cupidity of their rich neighbours. The slaveholders’ motto is, “Let us buy more negroes to raise more cotton, to buy more negroes, and so on ad infinitum.” To raise more cotton they must also buy more land. Small farmers are induced to sell out to them, and move further west. For this reason, the white population of the fertile sections of the older slave States is constantly on the decrease, while the slave population is as constantly increasing. Thus the slaveholder often acquires many square miles of land, and hundreds of human chattels. He is, as it were, set alone in the earth. Priding himself upon his wealth, he will not send his princely sons to the same school with the poor white trash; he either sends them to some distant college or seminary, or employs a private teacher exclusively for his children. The poor whites in the neighbourhood, even should they desire to educate their children, have no means to pay for their tuition. Compelled to live on poor or worn-out lands, honest toil considered degrading, and forced to submit to many inconveniences and disabilities (all the offices of honour and profit being monopolized by the slaveholders,) through the workings of the “peculiar institution,” they find it utterly impossible to educate their offspring, even in the rudiments of their mother tongue. As the power of slavery increases, their condition waxes worse and worse.

The slaveocracy becomes more exacting. Laws are passed by the legislature compelling non-slaveholders to patrol the country nightly, to prevent insurrections by the negroes. They denounce the law, but coercion is resorted to, and the poor whites are forced to obey. When their masters call for them, they must leave their labour, by day or by night, patrol the country, follow the bloodhounds, arrest the fugitive slave, and do all other dirty work which their tyrants demand. If they refuse to obey, they are denounced as abolitionists, and are in danger of death at the hands of Judge Lynch, the mildest punishment they can hope for being a coat of tar and feathers.

The house-negroes feel themselves several degrees above the poor whites, as they, from their opportunities for observation amongst the higher classes, are possessed of greater information and less rusticity than this less favoured class. The poor whites have no love for the institution of slavery. They regard it as the instrument of inflicting upon them many wrongs, and depriving them of many rights. They dare not express their sentiments to the slaveholders, who hold them completely under their power. A. G. Brown, United States Senator from Mississippi, to reconcile the poor whites to the peculiar institution, used the following arguments in a speech at Iuka Springs, Mississippi. He stated, that if the slaves were liberated, and suffered to remain in the country, the rich would have money to enable them to go to some other clime, and that the poor whites would be compelled to remain amongst the negroes, who would steal their property, and destroy their lives; and if slavery were abolished, and the negroes removed and colonized, the rich would take the poor whites for slaves, in their stead, and reduce them to the condition of the Irish and Dutch in the North, whose condition he represented to be one of cruel bondage. These statements had some effect upon his auditors, who believed, from sad experience, that the rich could oppress the poor as they chose, and might, in the contingency specified, reduce them to slavery. Labour is considered so degrading, that any argument, based upon making labour compulsory on their part, has its weight. Even the beggar despises work. A sturdy beggar asked alms at a house at which I was lodging. As he appeared to be a man of great physical strength, he was advised to go to work, and thus provide for his wants. “Work!” said he, in disgust; “niggers do the work in this country” – and retired highly insulted.

This people form a distinct class, distinguished by as many characteristics from the middle and higher classes of Southern society, as the Jews are from the nations amongst whom they sojourn. The causes which brought about their reduction to their present state of semi-barbarism, must be removed, ere they can rise to the condition whence they have fallen. They must rise upon the ruins of slavery. When the peculiar institution is abolished, then, and not till then, will their disabilities be removed, and they be in reality what they are nominally – freemen.

Slaveholders and their families form a distinct class, characterized by idleness, vanity, licentiousness, profanity, dissipation, and tyranny. There are glorious exceptions, it is true, but those are the distinguishing traits of the class. The middle class is the virtuous class of the South. They are industrious, frugal, hospitable, simple in their habits, plain and unostentatious in their manners. Some of this class are small slaveholders, but the great majority own none. The gross vices of the higher class are not found among them. They labour regardless of the sneers of their aristocratic neighbours. Senator Hammond, of South Carolina, may call them mudsills; they regard it not, but pursue the even tenor of their way. The slow, unmoving finger of scorn may be pointed at them by the sons of pride, yet they refuse to eat the bread of idleness, and labour with their own hands, that they may provide things honest in the sight of all men. Equidistant from poverty and riches, they enjoy the golden mean, and immunity from the temptations incident to the extremes of abject poverty and great riches.

In the slave States all those born north of the “nigger line,” are denominated Yankees. This is applied as a term of reproach. When a southerner is angry with a man of northern nativity, he does not fail to stigmatize him as a Yankee. The slaveholders manifest considerable antipathy against the Yankees, which has been increasing during the last ten years. In 1858, the Legislature of Mississippi passed resolutions recommending non-intercourse with the “Abolition States,” and requesting the people not to patronize natives of those States residing amongst them, and especially to discountenance Yankee ministers and teachers. In the educational notice of Memphis Synodical College, at La Grange, Tennessee, it is expressly stated that the Faculty are of southern birth and education. The principals of the Female Seminaries at Corinth and Iuka, Mississippi, give notice that no Yankee teachers will be employed in those institutions. While on a visit at the house of a Methodist clergyman, quite a number of ministers, returning from Conference, called to tarry for the night. During the evening, one of them, learning that I was “Yankee born,” thus interrogated me: “Why is it, sir, that all kinds of delusions originate in the North, such as Millerism, Mormonism, Spirit-rappings, and Abolitionism?” To which I replied: “The North originates everything. All the text-books used in southern schools, all the books on law, physic, and divinity, are written and published north of Mason & Dixon’s line. The South does not even print Bibles. The magnetic telegraph, the locomotive, Lucifer matches, and even the cotton-gin, are all northern inventions. The South, sir, has not sense enough to invent a decent humbug. These humbugs once originated, the South is always well represented by believers in them. I have known more men to go from this county (Shelby county, Tennessee) to the Mormons, than I have known to go from the whole State of Ohio.”