From H. W.
Jan. 2. At sunset we all adjourned to the cotton-house, where the tree was all ready to be lighted. It was a very pretty sight, and after we had let the children in I sent word that the grown people might come and see, if they liked. Then, before anything was cut down, the children sang a number of the songs I have taught them, standing in classes, the smallest in front, their little eager faces irresistibly comic. The older people soon filled up the building, making rather a crowd, and a less manageable one than the children alone; but they were pleased at the sight, and when the noise became overpowering, I could stop it for the time being by starting a song, which the children would instantly catch up. Then I let the children sing some of their own songs in genuine, shouting style, a sight too funny in the little things, but sad and disagreeable to me in the grown people, who make it a religious act. It is impossible to describe it—the children move round in a circle, backwards, or sideways, with their feet and arms keeping energetic time, and their whole bodies undergoing most extraordinary contortions, while they sing at the top of their voices the refrain to some song sung by an outsider. We laughed till we almost cried over the little bits of ones, but when the grown people wanted to “shout,” I would not let them, and the occasion closed by their “drawing” candy from C. as they passed out. I daresay this sounds pleasant, and I know they all had a good time; but if you could have looked in, you would have thought it Bedlam let loose!
The “Georgia refugees” referred to in several of the subsequent letters were hundreds of negroes who had followed Sherman’s army northward. “They are said,” says C. P. W., “to be an excellent set of people, more intelligent than most here, and eager for work. They will get distributed onto the plantations before a great while.”
Jan. 6. Miss Towne gave us quite an interesting account of the Georgia refugees that have been sent to the Village. The hardships they underwent to march with the army are fearful, and the children often gave out and were left by their mothers exhausted and dying by the roadside and in the fields. Some even put their children to death, they were such a drag upon them, till our soldiers, becoming furious at their barbarous cruelty, hung two women on the spot. In contrast to such selfishness, she told us of one woman who had twelve small children—she carried one and her husband another, and for fear she should lose the others she tied them all together by the hands and brought them all off safely, a march of hundreds of miles. The men have all been put to work in the quartermaster’s department or have gone into the army, and the families are being distributed where they can find places for them.