From E. S. P.
Sept. 27. I gave one yard for every task of cotton hoed in July, requiring about 600 yards. The Coffin people all got some, but about half the people on the Fripp plantations had to go without, having neglected the last hoeing. The people who were too lazy to hoe their cotton in July looked rather glum, and those who got their cloth laughed and looked exultant. Some people here got twenty-two yards, and many got only two or three, but all took it thankfully and seemed content that they got any. Those who got so little will have to buy more, which they are doing already. I sell it at about half the price that is asked by our own quartermaster, so I shall be liberally patronized. In dividing up this cotton cloth I deducted from the shares of those people to whom clothing was given last spring the value of that clothing. The only cases were those of Martha, Amaritta, and Rosetta, to each of whom Mr. G. gave a dress. Rosetta’s cotton was only one acre and her share of cloth was therefore but four yards, which was fully paid for last spring. So she got nothing now. She didn’t take it very kindly, and growled about the dress being too small for her, so she couldn’t wear it, whereupon I offered to take it back, but I haven’t heard anything more about it. The more I see of these people, the more I am opposed to the practice of giving them anything except in payment for services actually performed. The cases of destitution are comparatively very few.
At this time some of the superintendents were trying hard to instruct the negroes in military drill. A young enthusiast on one of the Fripp places was very proud of his little squad of black recruits, but found their attendance on the daily drill amazingly irregular. Apropos of his own efforts in this direction, Mr. Philbrick pursues his letter as follows:
I have tried in vain to get my young men together to drill for self-defense; my twenty-five guns are lying useless. One might as well think of a combination among the Boston kittens to scratch the eyes out of all the Boston dogs as to look for an insurrection in this State, if the negroes on these islands are a fair sample of those on the main. If there should be any insurrection in the South, it will not be in this State. The negroes in the sugar plantation districts are different, I suppose, being, a larger portion of them, Kentucky and Virginia born, torn from their old homes or sent South for bad behavior, and therefore more revengeful. But you know the people here are too timid to do any fighting unless driven to it. If General Hunter had not forced them into his regiment last May, we might do more at drilling now. As it is, my men won’t listen to me when I talk about it; they only suspect me of wanting to press them into service by stealth, and lose what little confidence they have in my sincerity.
C. P. W. opens the next letter with a melancholy comparison between the autumnal glories of “home” and the absence thereof on the Sea Islands of South Carolina.