Chapter Eight.

The Yankees Occupy Hilton Head and Beaufort.

     After the fall of Fort Walker and Fort Beauregard, the whole of South Carolina and Georgia  lay open to invasion by Federal troops.  "The waterborne force pointed straight at the soul -- if not the heart -- of the Confederacy," writes historian Rowena Reed.[1]  Except for Fort Pulaski on Cockspur Island, Savannah was essentially defenseless against Yankee gunboats moving upriver from the open sea.  Farther inland, also easily approachable via the Savannah River, was Augusta, Ga., a critical railroad center and the site of a major ammunitions factory.  The southern approaches to Charleston by way of the North Edisto River, the Stono River, and James Island were devoid of significant fortifications.  General Sherman had approximately 13,000 troops backed up by a mighty armada of invincible gunboats and frigates, while Lee had to make do with some 4,000 soldiers strung out along the coast from Georgetown, S. C., to Brunswick, Ga with virtually no navy to help them.  The Yankees, says Reed, had cracked the "thin shell of the enemy's coastal defense system."[2]

     Robert E. Lee faced a formidable challenge in trying to keep the Yankees bottled up on the coast and protecting the tracks of the Charleston and Savannah Railroad, a vital lifeline of the Confederacy. "Gen. Robert Lee has come to help -- he is not a lucky man," observed diarist Mary Chestnut.[3] Lee expected DuPont and Sherman to attack him in the very near future. "I consider we have not an hour to lose," he proclaimed.[4]  Lee was aware that the Federal shallow draft gunboats, called "double-enders" because they had a double bow and a rudder and paddlewheel at each end, could navigate in just 8 feet of water and could therefore steam upriver to within four miles of Coosawhatchie.   By seizing the railroad, the Yankees could prevent the movement of supplies and troops between Charleston and Savannah. They would then move against first one and then the other of these two major Confederate ports.  Lee was so concerned about the prospect of losing control of the Charleston and Savannah Railroad that he urged Confederate officials to proceed quickly with  connecting  two railroads that terminated in Augusta, Ga.  As late as February, 1862, he was still urging this course of action.  "I have the honor to call your attention to the importance to the defense of the cities of Charleston, Augusta, & Savannah, as well as to the states of Georgia & South Carolina, of connecting the Augusta & Savannah Railroad with the Georgia or South Carolina at Augusta," he told Georgia Governor and Yale graduate Joseph E. Brown (1821-1895).[5]

     The Confederacy was "never able to exert an effective supervision over its railroads," writes  historian Robert C. Black III.[6]  Part of the problem was technological.  Serving sparsely settled regions that produced minimal traffic, most Southern lines were  crudely constructed.  Bridges along coastal railroads such as the Charleston and Savannah were  highly flammable, open pile, wooden trestles.  Most of the rail in the Confederacy was of rolled wrought-iron and did not possess the strength or  durability to support persistent heavy use.   In most instances there was no ballast beneath the ties.  This made track unstable, because the rails rested directly upon the ground.   Accidents were recurrent.  William S. Ashe (1814-1862), after serving as assistant quartermaster in charge of railroad transportation to the Confederate armies in Virginia, was killed in September, 1862, on the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad, of which he was president, when a freight train overtook a handcar on which he was riding.  That same month, Alfred Waddell, a resident of Wilmington, was traveling by train across South Carolina when he experienced a "dreadful railroad accident."  " . . . two young ladies sitting immediately behind me were killed and every person in the car except one was hurt," Waddell reported.  He had to walk the last ten miles to Wilmington, because the engine had jumped the track -- for the second time on the trip.  "The railroad was in a very dilapidated condition," Waddell declared.[7] 

    The greater reason for the absence of a coordinated Confederate railroad policy was the States' Rights philosophy that undergirded the South's governmental thinking.  "Too many endeavored to restrain the Confederate Government within the rigid bounds they formerly had prescribed for the Federal Government," says Robert C. Black III about Southern politicians.[8]  Dedicated to the primacy of the prerogatives of private property owners and local political interests, the Confederate Congress drew back from any action that would have infringed upon the authority of each railroad to establish its own modes of operation.  There was no standard rate structure or agreement between railroads about the sharing of freight cars, even when the gauge of the lines was the same.  Each company followed its own timetable and gave little or no regard to the scheduling of trains on other railroads.  North Carolina provided an especially striking example of the fatal provincialism of Confederate railroad management.  Powerful Tar Heel economic interests resisted the building of a line from Greensboro to Danville, Va., a distance of just 40 miles, because they feared that it would divert too much freight business away from North Carolina and into Virginia.  " . . . this road is viewed with almost universal disfavor in the State, as entirely ruinous to many east of it," proclaimed North Carolina Governor Zebulon Vance.[9]  According to Black, Southern society was "invertebrate and disunified, incapable of either cohesion or the management of large enterprise."[10]  It was within such a political and cultural milieu that Robert E. Lee had to operate.

    Outnumbered and outgunned in South Carolina, Lee had no choice but to let the enemy seize the initiative.  No matter how hard he worked, no matter how many hours he devoted to the multitude of tasks he faced, the Confederate commander could not render null the simple truth that the Union forces arrayed against him possessed greater firepower and greater mobility than he did.  Lee poured out his frustrations on this issue repeatedly during his stay on the South Carolina and Georgia coasts.   "They can bring such overwhelming force in all their movements that it has the effect to demoralize our new troops,” he lamented in a letter to his wife.[11]  "The forces of the enemy are accumulating, & apparently increase faster than ours," Lee told Confederate Adjutant and Inspector General Samuel Cooper (1798-1876).[12]

     The tone of Lee's commentary on the state of affairs  sometimes became bitter and waspish, at least in letters to members of his family.  His inability to prevent the Yankees from plundering and pillaging the plantations on the Sea Islands near Beaufort made him especially angry.  "But he can move with great facility & rapidity," Lee remarked in a letter to his son. The Union commander "brings his steamers, & burns, pillages & destroys, & we cannot prevent him."[13]  Sometimes Lee's disdain for the Yankees  broke through his seemingly impenetrable persona of civility and gentlemanly deportment.  Lee called Northerners a people full of "malice and revenge."[14]  On one occasion he remarked how smug the Yankees were.   "The enemy is quiet & safe in his big boats," he told his son.  "He is threatening every avenue.  Pillaging, burning & robbing where he can venture with impunity & alarming women & children.  Every day I have reports of landing in force, marching &c, which turns out to be some marauding party."[15]

     The Union occupation of Hilton Head Island and the taking of Beaufort two days later did have a sobering impact upon Southern morale in the region.  "I have never so fully realised that we are engaged in a war which threatens to desolate our firesides," wrote Ella Thomas.  Living on her family's plantation near Augusta, Ga., she heard rumors that the Yankees had brought hundreds of blacks with them and were about to set them loose to wreak havoc in the  Georgia and South Carolina hinterland.  "There is one feature I particularly dislike," she complained.  "In their company they have it is reported 1000 Negroes whom they have stolen or who have run away from their owners in Virginia.  These they might scatter through our state and do us some harm."[16]  Mary Chestnut was also disheartened by the "horrible news" that Union troops had occupied Hilton Head.  "I immediately went to Camden to hear more  -- felt overwhelmed."[17]  She believed that the Yankees would soon be in Columbia in the very heart of South Carolina. North Carolinian Catherine Edmondston understood the import of what had transpired.   "On the 7^th fell the long expected blow," she proclaimed.  "Then commenced a wholesale system of plundering such as we never dreamed civilized nations could be guilty of."  Union troops, she insisted, discovered "household furniture, books, plate, wine, etc., which they most unscrupulously appropriated, in many instances loading vessels with private property and shipping it to N Y!"[18]

      Robert E. Lee drew upon his vast knowledge of fortifications to devise a defensive strategy to keep the Yankees at bay and away from Ella Thomas's and Mary Chestnut's  door. Lee's approach, as one would expect from an engineer, was methodical and analytical. The first task was to travel along the shore and make an assessment of the significance of each district.  He went to Charleston.  He went to Savannah, where he had begun his military career 32 years before.  Time had altered his still handsome visage.  "I have a beautiful white beard," Lee told his daughter Mildred.  "It is much admired."[19]   He journeyed to Cumberland Island on  the southern end of the Georgia coast.  In addition to fulfilling his military responsibilities there, Lee took time to visit the tiny cemetery where his father was buried.

      Think about how Lee must have felt as he gazed for the first time upon the tombstone of the man who had influenced his life so profoundly but whom Lee had never really known.  He poured out his emotions in a letter to his wife.  "While at Fernandina I went over to Cumberland Island & walked up to Dungeness, the former residence of Genl. Greene," Lee began.  "It was my first visit to the house & I had the gratification at length of visiting my father's grave. . . .  The spot is marked by a plain marble slab, with his name, age, & date of his death."  Lee went on to tell his wife about the loveliness of the natural surroundings.  "The garden was beautiful, enclosed by the finest hedge I have ever seen.  It was of the wild olive."[20]  But Dungeness, for all its attractiveness,  was also a reminder of the abominable nature of military conflict.  Lee reported that the furniture was still in the house.  Portraits still hung on the walls.  China and silverware were still in the cupboards.  But the people were gone.  Like virtually all of their counterparts along the coast, the owners had fled inland with their slaves to escape the dreaded Yankees.  "I was also at Dungeness," Lee wrote in a letter to his son.  "The garden was beautiful.  Filled with roses &c., which had not so far been touched with frost this winter.  The place is deserted."[21]

     Lee's probative procedures exasperated some of his subordinate officers.  His cool, calculated manner seemed uninspiring and totally inappropriate to some, especially to the always irascible General Ripley.  Governor Pickens  told  Jefferson Davis about Ripley's criticisms of Lee and expressed concern that the relationship between the two men might have an adverse impact upon military operations.  "His habit is to say extreme things even before junior officers," said Pickens about Ripley, "and this is well calculated to do great harm to General Lee's command."  As for the Governor, he had nothing but praise for Robert E. Lee.  "General Lee is a perfect head, quiet and retiring," insisted Pickens.  "His reserve is construed disadvantageously.  I find him all that a gentleman should be, and all that ought be expected of a thorough and scientific officer."[22]

     Lee's defensive plan, which he summarized in a dispatch to Samuel Cooper on January 8, 1862,  involved the withdrawal of troops and artillery from exposed positions on the coast and placing them inland in earthen fortifications beyond the reach of the Union gunboats but astride the approaches to the railroad, Charleston, and Savannah.  "The farther he can be withdrawn from his floating batteries the weaker he will become," said Lee about the enemy, "and lines of defense, covering objects of attack, have been selected with this view."[23] Using the railroad as his interior line of mobility, Lee placed troops at Coosawhatchie and nearby Pocotaligo about midway between Charleston and Savannah.  Telegraph lines, he reasoned, would enable him to obtain news fast enough to dispatch  troops from there  to either end of the line and, if necessary, to send reinforcements from Charleston and Savannah to other points of major Yankee attacks along the coast.  The essential purpose of Lee's fortifications was to retard the enemy's advance long enough to give him sufficient time to respond with adequate strength to hold the Yankees back.

      Lee attempted to  safeguard the most vital parts of the coastline between Charleston and the northern tip of Florida, while relinquishing control of those sections that he did not consider crucial. "It will be impossible to find sufficient troops to garrison the whole line of the coast," he insisted.[24]  Lee was particularly concerned about Union gunboats steaming up the major rivers of the region, the Savannah, Broad, North Edisto, and Stono.  The width and depth of these murky waterways would allow the enemy to move farther inland  and with greater firepower.  "I have thought his purpose would be to seize upon the Charleston and Savannah Railroad near the head of the Broad River," he told Cooper. [25]  On November 26^th, Ripley received orders to "urge forward" the placement of "obstructions to the Ashepoo and Edisto."[26]  "I am now endeavoring to procure chains and anchors from Savannah, and, by the aid of the rafts as supports to the chain cables, present a very strong resistance to any advancing boats," another of Lee's subordinates stated.[27]

     To gather the number of men and artillery pieces he needed to defend critical places Lee had to leave much of the coastline unprotected.   "The guns from the less important points have been removed, and are employed in strengthening those considered of greater consequence," he announced.  "The entrance to Cumberland Sound and Brunswick and the water approaches to Savannah and Charleston are the only points which it is proposed to defend."[28]  General Ripley disagreed with Lee's decision to withdraw troops some distance from the shoreline.  ". . . it seems to me," Ripley wrote, "as far forward as we can go with safety from Charleston the better we are for its defense."[29] Ripley called Lee's attention to the fact their pulling back from the coast would subject many of  the plantations on the Sea Islands  to plunder and destruction by the rapacious Yankees.

  Lee was adamant.  He had analyzed the situation and had made his decision. There was to be no turning back.  "I am in favor of abandoning all exposed points as far as possible within reach of the enemy's fleet of gunboats and of taking interior positions, where we can meet on more equal terms" he told Ripley.[30] Lee was resolute in his belief that his troops should make their stand at carefully prepared fortifications away from the shoreline.  Accordingly, Lee ordered the construction of an intricate system of defensive works on James Island and on Cole's Island at the mouth of the Stono River.  He reasoned that by concentrating men and artillery at these sites he would have a reasonable chance of stopping Union troops if they landed at Stono Inlet and attempted to march across James Island to Charleston Harbor and take the birthplace of the Confederacy "by the back door." The job was mostly done by mid-December.  "The land defenses around the city . . . are in good state of progress," he told Secretary of War Benjamin on December 16^th.  "I hope they will be completed this week."[31]

      In November and early December, 1861, General Sherman and Commodore DuPont possessed an overwhelming strategic advantage over Lee and could almost certainly have advanced inland and cut  the Charleston and Savannah Railroad with relative ease. During this opportune period, however, the Union commanders directed their energies instead toward fortifying Hilton Head Island, taking control of Port Royal Island and the port of Beaufort, and conducting desultory reconnaissance raids on nearby coastal districts.  Lee, by instinct an aggressive commander, was bemused by the cautious actions of the Yankees.  "I yesterday visited Port Royal Sound, with the view of organizing a light force to cut off, if possible, the enemy's marauding parties on the islands," he reported on December 2nd.  "No attempts have yet been made on the main-land, nor could I discover any indication of any movement.  The fleet in large force lay extended across the sound from Hilton Head to Bay Point, perfectly quiescent, and no troops were visible except at Hilton Head Ferry."[32]  William Lusk also took note of the lack of Union activity.  "Such little excursions give a zest to the dullness of camp," he told his mother.[33] 

There were many reasons why General Sherman did not take the offensive against Lee in the opening weeks of the campaign.  The purpose of capturing Port Royal Sound was to establish a base of operations for the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, not to capture and occupy the South Carolina and Georgia hinterlands.  Indicative of this truth was the fact that Sherman had been provided with no cavalry and few pieces of field artillery -- both indispensable components of any  military force expected to advance inland. "I am inclined towards seizing upon the south end of the Charleston and Savannah Railroad as soon as I can get the cavalry" Sherman stated on December 19^th.[34] Sherman maintained that he needed a bigger army if he was to invade the South Carolina and Georgia backcountry. "We have now a wide field before us, but we want boats, cavalry, and more force," Sherman proclaimed on December 10^th.[35]  He wanted to attack the Charleston and Savannah Railroad but believed that he lacked the number of men required to safeguard Hilton Head Island and Beaufort and  concurrently overrun Lee's line of fortifications. "After well securing these important points, and establishing a firm base from which to operate inland, there will not be left a very large force disposable for internal operations" he advised his superiors. "I would therefore recommend that an additional force of 10,000 men be sent to this point as early as practicable, and among them some regular troops, including some companies of artillery, for garrisoning the forts."[36] "In order, therefore, to meet the wants of the operations of this portion of the Army," he wrote on November 27, 1861, "I have to request that as much cavalry, not exceeding a regiment, ten regiments of infantry, and one regiment of regular artillery be sent here as soon as practicable."[37]

 Sherman was angered by certain newspapers in the North that were criticizing his command for its supposed inactivity. "I have presumed to write you thus, as I am pained to believe that there is a growing distrust among a portion of the people as to the activity and usefulness of this portion of the Army'" an obviously disgruntled Sherman proclaimed in a dispatch to Secretary of War Cameron on December 21^st. "The amount of labor and activity here I would gladly submit to the judgment of the most enlightened men."[38]   Sherman was convinced that he should focus his attention upon strengthening his positions along the coast.  Learning that the Confederates had abandoned Tybee Island at the mouth of the Savannah River, Sherman approved on December 4^th the launching of an extended campaign to establish rifled artillery batteries on that deserted isle and compel the Confederate garrison in nearby Fort Pulaski garrison on Cockspur Island  to capitulate or suffer destruction.

     Sherman  also maintained that he needed a better army if he was expected to launch a major offensive.  Most of his troops were inexperienced and were  not of the highest quality.  Discipline was difficult to maintain among the Union  soldiers, many of whom came from the slums of New York City and Boston. "The general commanding is pained to know that some of the troops of his command have, without orders, invaded the premises of private individuals and committed gross depredations upon their property," Sherman wrote on November 11^th.[39]  One lady saw a Yankee trooper try to beat a horse to death simply because the perpetrator was bored.  "The walk through the town was so painful," she said about Beaufort, "not only from the desertion and desolation, but more than that from the crowd of soldiery lounging, idling, growing desperate for amusement and occupation, till they resort to brutality for excitement."[40]  William Lusk was likewise  dismayed by the behavior of some of his compatriots.  "The country for many miles around has fallen into the hands of ours armies, and, unhappily victors are apt to be ruthless in destroying the property of conquered enemies," he lamented.[41] On one occasion Lusk advised his mother not to come to Beaufort for a visit.  "In the first place," he explained, "we have some four thousand men on the island, of whom the best are long separated from the refining influence of home, and, in consequence, the two or three ladies who are visiting here are subject to a deal of coarse remark, to which I would not be willing that any woman should be subjected, where it lay in my power to prevent."[42]

 The Union attack against Port Royal Sound had been the most ambitious amphibious operation  undertaken by the United States up until that time.  The logistical challenges  of bringing supplies and equipment ashore to support so sizeable a military force were therefore unprecedented in both scope and complexity.  Even William Lusk, who frequently criticized General Sherman for being too cautious, appreciated this fact.   "What we still need is a sufficiently efficient organization to enable us to strike with rapidity," he observed.  "Here we are, nearly five weeks in possession of this point, and as yet we have hardly been able to get the stores ashore, which we originally brought with us."[43] "

Complicating the logistical situation for the Yankees on the Sea Islands of South Carolina in late 1861 and early 1862 were the large numbers of slaves who flocked into Union camps.  Abandoned by their masters, having been deprived of all opportunities to develop any sense of independence and self initiative, and naively optimistic about their  prospects under Federal occupation, most of the blacks were totally unprepared to face the rigors of everyday life. The Federal soldiers made matters more difficult for the slaves by accepting the prevailing racial attitudes of the times.  Most had no doubts about the inferiority of the black race and  were generally disparaging in their remarks about the slaves. They are "vainly dreaming that all toil is in future to be spared, and that henceforth they are to lead that life of lazy idleness which forms the Nigger's Paradise," William Lusk declared.[44]  General Sherman contended that the slaves were "naturally slothful and indolent."[45]  Another Yankee, brought South to superintend a plantation which had been abandoned by its owners, also characterized the blacks as a sluggish and apathetic people.  "I am surprised to find how little most of these people appreciate their present prospects," he declared.  "Once in a while you find an intelligent man who does so, but the mass plod along in the beaten track with little thought about the future and no sort of feeling of responsibility."[46] William Lusk advised his mother to send him clothes that were "as plain as possible."  " . . . anything that has a tinge of red, or yellow or blue, it is impossible to prevent the negroes from appropriating to their own use," he explained.[47] 

Federal troops were overwhelmed by the social upheaval that their occupation of  the South Carolina Sea Islands was producing. During the first year and a half of the Civil War the North had no intention of doing away with slavery in the  territory it wrested from the Confederacy.  "From the highest levels of government down to the common citizen, Northern war aims at the outbreak of the conflict were thoroughly conservative," writes historian Stephen V. Ash.[48]   In July, 1861, the U.S. Congress passed the Crittenden Resolution, named for Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, asserting "that this war is not waged . . . for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing . . . established institutions but to defend . . . the Constitution and preserve the Union."[49]  This meant that the United States would respect the property rights of all slaveowners.

 Secession was totally unacceptable to most Northerners.  To permit the Confederacy to survive, they contended,  would assure the eventual ruin of the United States.  Northerners also  regarded slavery as morally repugnant.  But they did not seek to destroy the institution of human bondage where it already existed.  To their way of thinking, the rank-and-file white population of the South had been duped by the selfish and exploitive actions of a clique of super rich planters into supporting a rebellion against Federal authority.  "The belief that secession was a conspiracy by an elite cabal dictated a twofold policy:  stern measures against the Rebel leaders, liberation and conciliation for the mass of Southern whites," says Ash.[50]  Above all else, Union officers sought to avoid any statements that would frighten the Confederates into giving credence to the notion that the North would tamper with the  South's peculiar social institutions. To do so would simply  prolong the war by strengthening the hold the planter elite exercised over lower class and middle class whites.

Political considerations had little relationship to the course of daily events in the South Carolina Sea Islands. On January 15, 1862, General Sherman composed a lengthy dispatch in which he described the plight of the slaves within Union lines.  He warned that the supplies of corn and potatoes left on the plantations when the masters had departed would soon be depleted and predicted that the bondsmen and bondswomen would be in a "suffering condition or thrown upon the commissariat of the Army for support."  To assume responsibility for their own welfare and to relieve the army of the duty to sustain them indefinitely the slaves must be "trained and instructed into a knowledge of personal and moral responsibility," Sherman insisted.  He requested that managers for the plantations  as well as teachers be sent from the North. "I have, therefore, the honor to recommend that suitable instructors be sent to them, to teach them all the necessary rudiments of civilization," he declared.[51]   \

One of the many teachers who came from the North to the Sea Islands in 1862 was Laura M. Towne (1825-1901), a Pennsylvanian, an abolitionist, and a devout Christian.  Her letters, which were never intended for publication, provide a fascinating glimpse into what it was like to live among the slaves of St. Helena and the other Sea Islands during the initial period of Yankee occupation.  Hoping to "influence the negroes directly," Towne worked tirelessly to make life better for the blacks who were placed under her care.[52]  She dressed wounds.  She distributed clothes. She provided religious instruction.  "I talked of Christ's love for children and how He would take them to Heaven if they were kind to each other," she wrote in her diary on May 4th.[53]  

Penn School St. Helena's Island.  Operated by Quakers

Towne was aware that slaves had stolen items from plantation houses after the owners had fled.  Living in "wretched hovels with their wooden chimneys," the bondsmen and bondswomen simply could not resist the temptation of pirating the treasures that their masters had left behind.[54] Towne reported that the slaves were so proud of owning shoes that they would carry them to church in their hands rather than put them on their feet and let them get dirty.  One day she entered a slave cabin and saw a "mahogany bureau, besides other things that said plainly 'massa's' house had contributed to the splendor."[55]  On another occasion she visited a black family and noticed they they had covered the dirt floor of their cabin with expensive lumber.  The lady of the house, Towne declared, explained that "after massa left, they took his boards, floored their own cabins and put in lofts."[56]  Laura Towne was herself the victim of robbers.  "I am sorry to say that I have discovered two cases of pilfering, and the cotton house has been entered again and again," she reported on May 19^th.[57]

Statue of Collared Slave

Although Towne believed that thievery was immoral, she was quick to point out that many slaves had suffered extreme physical abuse at the hands of their masters.  One should remember that Towne  wanted to believe the worst about slavery.  Many masters treated their slaves well. "I doan 'member much 'bout slavery days 'cept dat my white folkses was good ter us. Dar wus a heap o' slaves, maybe a hundert an' fifty. I 'members dat we wucked hard, but we had plenty ter eat an' w'ar, eben iffen we did w'ar wood shoes" remembered a black man who had been owned by a North Carolina planter.[58]  Still, Towne did hear some shocking stories.  "If slave don't do task, they get licking with lash on their naked back," said a former slave many years after the Civil War.[59]  Towne met a black lady who claimed that her two children had been "whipped to death."  Another woman showed Towne scars on her arms and back "as high and long as my little finger."  The same person insisted that "she had had four babies killed within her by whipping."  A Yankee officer showed Towne the lash that the slaveowner had used to inflict these gruesome wounds.  It had a large ball on the tip to tear  open the flesh of its hapless victims.  "He had the old whip which had a ball at the end," said Towne, "and he had seen the healed marks of this ball on their flesh -- the square welts showed where it had taken the flesh clean out."[60] One slave explained how a plantation owner's wife had gone about disciplining her slaves.  "When she go to whip me, she tie my wrists together with a rope and put that rope through a big staple in the ceiling and draw me up off the floor and give me a hundred lashes."[61] A former slave who had lived on a plantation near Raleigh, N.C. told the following story.

   Once, right here on this plantation I saw a Negro man who was sick beat until he dies because he couldn't chop cotton as fast as the others. Once on a neighboring plantation I saw two Negro boys hanged up on the smoke house by the thumbs and beat for leaving the plantation without permission. Their shirts were so bloody they had to be greased before they would come off.

   Negroes were treated like cows, the weakly ones ruthlessly destroyed. Yes, sir, I have known of a number of deformed Negro babies being killed shortly after they were born. There was very little marrying among the slaves, one big husky Negro being the father of most of the slave children. Another thing was pretty girls bearing children for the white masters, thus mixing white aristocrat blood with Negro blood.[62]

 Not surprisingly, the slaves remained wary even after the Yankees came to the South Carolina Sea Islands. "The negroes . . . are docile generally and require the positive ordering that children of five or ten years of age require," Towne reported one Union official as saying.[63]   When the male slaves were ordered to go to military headquarters on Hilton Head Island in mid-May,  not a few of the black men, Towne wrote, "took to the woods and were hunted out by the soldiers."[64]  The Pennsylvania diarist admitted that violence sometimes threatened to erupt between blacks and their Yankee overseers.  She told how one slave, for example, "drew his knife" when a Federal agent insisted that he devote four hours a  day to picking cotton.[65]  One comes away with the distinct impression that all was not as it first appeared on the Sea Islands during the opening phase of Yankee rule. A profound tension existed just beneath the surface.  The superficial tranquility produced by massive oaks and luxuriant flowers, by lilting mocking birds and soft sea breezes, by black children gathering fiddler crabs at low tide and black women balancing broad baskets on their heads, could not hide the fact that two very different cultures, each with its unique strengths and  weaknesses, were in a state of profound conflict. "The negroes are pretty cunning," Towne observed.[66]

Nowhere was the disdain for black culture more obvious than in the attitudes whites had about  forms of religious devotion practiced by the slaves.  Laura Towne and William Lusk both commented at length about a worship service the slaves called a "shout."  It began with three blacks moving to the center of a room singing and rhythmically clapping their hands together as the other participants formed a large circle and started marching around, waving their hands in the air, bending their knees, and stomping the floor. The commotion would sometimes last all night.   In Towne's opinion, it was a "savage, heathenish dance out."[67]  "There is going to be a 'Nigger shout' tonight," Lusk told his mother.  He labeled it a "relic of native African barbarism."[68]  Towne was also put off  by the cohabitation habits practiced by some black men and black women.  "The men and women living together on this place are not all of them married," she recorded in her diary.[69]  "Slave don't marry; they just live together," admitted a black woman.[70]