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XLVIII The Planter 1 I'VE
passed my
eighty-sixth birthday — so how old am I? That's a question I've asked a
good
many times, and even college presidents and educated men are apt to
answer it I've
always lived
in this vicinity a few miles north of Atlanta. At the time of the war I
was in
the farming and milling business. My house was a five-room framed
building with
two chimleys, one outside and one inside. There were four sets of
waterwheels
in my mill, and I ground the wheat and corn that were brought by
customers, and
I bought grain and sold flour and meal. I had some eight hundred acres
of land,
and cotton was the main crop that I raised. My habits
and
opinions have always been somewhat different from those of the mass of
the
people. I don't drink and I don't smoke. I tried smoking once. That was
when I
was sixteen or eighteen years of age, I should say, and felt I was a
man.
Tobacco was raised in this country, and we boys made some cigars. I
smoked half
a one. It nearly killed me, and I gave up smoking. Another thing that
influenced me was the fact that my mother didn’t like for us to get
into
doubtful habits. Her foreparents came from Scotland, and she was pretty
strict
in her views. As I look at things now I wouldn’t use liquor and tobacco
even if
they were harmless. Indeed, I never have felt able to buy what does n't
do any
good. I was
opposed to
the war. I gave a good deal of thought to it before our people went
into it,
and the extreme ones looked on my reluctance to resort to war as rather
cowardice. The popular idol was Jefferson Davis. He was an honest,
conscientious, Christian man. I've seen him and been with him, and
personally I
liked him, but I had a much higher opinion of Stephens, the Confederate
vice-president, as a statesman. I'm the
only person
in the state of Georgia who went so far as to spend a thousand dollars
to
prevent the war. Some others and myself proposed a gradual emancipation
of the
slaves that would free them all by the end of the century. The owners
were to
receive part compensation from the government. We sent men to see what
arrangements could be made for securing a great tract of country in
northern
Texas, where the free negroes could be colonized, The plan was favored
by
Everett of Massachusetts and by other leading men North and South, but
we
didn’t get it much before the public. It was to be urged before our
state
convention that met to decide what course Georgia would take in the
crisis.
However, it was never presented. Sentiment was too strong for secession
among
the politicians; and yet I'm satisfied that the mass of the people
favored the
Union. I did, but I had been outvoted, and I was as true to my
Confederate
state as any man in it. I felt that my duty was to go with the people
here in
the course they'd chosen, or get out of the country. I told the
boys
that left this locality for the front that as long as I was able their
families
should n't suffer. I furnished their home folks with something to eat
when they
were in need and aided the sick. People would come long distances to
get
supplies at my mill. There was lack of food here, and lack of clothing,
and
lack of comforts of all sorts, but I never in my life heard a lady
complaining
of the hardships she had to endure. We don't realize ordinarily how
little a
person can live on. Lots of us found out in war-time. I knew a lady of
wealthy
parents who hadn’t a pair of shoes to wear. She lived eight miles from
my mill,
and she walked there toting forty pounds of corn. After the corn was
ground she
walked home with the meal. One night,
early in
the war, the mill was burnt. I'd raised six or seven hundred bushels of
wheat
that year, and I 'd bought fifteen hundred bushels of corn in the upper
part of
the state. I wasn’t burnt out until I'd just got that all in. I built
up
immediately but the mill gradually grew less profitable. We hadn’t the
grain in
the country to grind, and families lived with more economy as the war
progressed. The
Yankees come
here about the first of June, 1864. I saw very little of them because I
had
refugeed with my family. We moved down about a hundred miles to the
central
part of the state. Some of our things we carried on wagons, but the
family rode
in a carryall. The shift didn’t prove to be any great gain, for later
the
Yankees raided down there and burnt all I had. I was
purchasing
agent for the railroad, and I traveled about to a good many places. At
the time
of the Battle of Atlanta I was living in a wagon five miles below the
city at
what had been my father's old homestead. In fact, the battle was fought
on land
I wunst owned. I knew the country, and during the fighting I was out
where I
could act as a pilot for our troops. For instance, if an officer asked
me where
a certain spot was I told him how to go the quickest and shortest way.
There
was continuous firing for hours. Some of the fighting was done in the
woodland.
That was where the Union General McPherson was killed. He was riding
along a
road and come to where it forked. Right there some one had cut down a
tree that
had bees in it, and it had fallen so it entirely blocked the fork of
the road
that turned to the right, which McPherson would naturally have taken.
He went a
hundred yards on the other fork and was shot down. I was on
the
battlefield after the fighting was over. The Federals had been driven
back from
a portion of the field and had left a good many wounded there. I helped
gather
them up. They were taken down to a church hospital. In
December I came
back to my plantation. The Yankees had gone to Savannah, firing the
buildings
and destroying stock of all kinds as they went. They said the object of
this
devastation was to impoverish the South and make further resistance
impossible.
I believe the soldiers were ordered to burn only barns, but they were
n't very
discriminating, and most of the dwellings were destroyed, too. On my
place here I
found my house, though with comparatively little in it. There had been
twenty
buildings on my premises, and the raiders were kind enough to leave me
two,
Those two were my dwelling and a smokehouse. Not another house was
standing on
the road between Atlanta and Marietta, a score of miles to the north. A
lot of
the soldiers had a camp near here. It covered five acres. They were
there till
cool weather late in the fall season, and they tore a good many
buildings to
pieces to use in making shacks to shelter them in the camp, and to make
bunks
to lie on. If they needed anything they took it. In a few instances
they were
very insulting to some of the local families, but as a rule they didn’t
do
anything but what soldiers would do for their own benefit. When they
started to
leave they burnt everything up in their camp that they didn’t take
along. They had
been
instructed to destroy the railroad as they came down from the north,
and they
had piled up the ties, set fire to them, and thrown the iron rails onto
the
fires. The middle part of the rail would lie on the pile of burning
ties, and
when it got red hot the soldiers took the rail and gave it a twist
around a
tree. Then the rail couldn’t be used again. Some of the rails got so
hot on the
fires that they curved themselves. When I got
back
here not a person within twenty miles had a bushel of corn so far as we
knew,
and I went to Macon and bought some, and I brought back a cow and four
hogs. I
had more hogs then than any of my neighbors. Spring
come and the
war ended. Some of the cowardly scamps who got up the racket tried to
keep it
up, but the brave soldiers buried any feeling they had. They considered
that
the issues on which the war had been fought were settled. _____________ 1 He was an energetic,
philosophic
old man with a craggy face and a bald head. His mind rambled somewhat,
but he
still had a good grip on essentials. His home, where I called on him,
was a few
miles north of Atlanta. It was a large and modern country dwelling
which gave
evidence of taste and wealth. The day was one of summer heat and
buzzing flies,
and we sat and talked on the generous gallery. |