26 July 1865, South Carolina

'Johnny [Chesnut] took the Yankee captain with him to Knights Hill. That ceremony is necessary when making a contract with plantation hands now. Johnny called, 'Joe'—'William'—'Milly'—

'But is that a lady?'

'What? She was a woman servant.' The lieutenant said, pointing carelessly toward the group of negroes.

'I did not fight for these. I fought for the Union.'

'And I fought to be out of your Union.'

Then said Johnny to me, 'Aunt Mary, after all, the Yankee was not half a bad fellow.'"

July 1865, South Carolina, in the aftermath

"Yesterday there was a mass meeting of negroes, thousands of them were in town, eating, drinking, dancing, speechifying. Preaching and prayers also a popular amusement. They have no greater idea of amusement than wild prayers—unless it be getting married or going to a funeral.
In the afternoon I had some business on our place, the Hermitage. John drove me down. Our people were all at home—quiet, orderly, respectful, and at their usual work. In point of fact things looked unchanged. There was nothing to show that anyone of them had even seen a Yankee or knew that there was one in existence.
'We are in a new St Domingo all the same. The Yankees have raised the devil, and now they cannot guide him.'"

June 1865, in the aftermath

"Captain [Edward] Barnwell came to see us. We had a dinner for them at Mulberry—out of the Bloomsbury air. Stephen Elliot was there. He said when people began at him with Sherman or Potter raids, &c&c, he clapped his hands to his ears. He was so tired of it. ...
He gave us an account of his father's plantation at Beaufort [South Carolina], from which he has just returned.
'Our negroes are living in great comfort. They were delighted to see me and treated me with overflowing affection. They waited on me as before, gave me beautiful breakfasts, splendid dinners, &c&c. But they firmly and respectfully informed me: "We own this land now. Put it out of your head that it will ever be yours again."'"

4 June 1865, South Carolina, coming & going & coming again

"The black ball is in motion. Mrs DeSaussure's cook shook the dust off her feet and departed from her kitchen today, free, she said. The washerwoman packing to go.
Scipio Africanus, the colonel's body servant, is a soldierly looking black creature to delight the eyes of old Frederick William, who liked them giants. We asked him how the Yankees came to leave him.
'Oh, I told them Marster couldn't do without me nohow, and then I carried them some nice hams that they never could have found, they were hid so good.'
Eben* dressed himself in his best and went at a run to meet his Yankee deliverers, so he said. At the gate he met a squad coming in. He had adorned himself with his watch and a chain, like the cordage of a ship, with a handful of gaudy seals. He knew the Yankees came to rob white people, but he thought they came to save niggers.
'Hand over that watch!' Minus his fine watch and chain, Eben returned a sadder and wiser man. He was soon in his shirtsleeves, whistling at his knife board.
'Why? You here? Why did you come back so soon?'
'Well, I thought maybe better stay with ole Marster that give me the watch and not go with them that stole it.'
The watch was the pride of his life. The iron had entered his soul."

*Chesnut slave butler

June 1865, in the aftermath

Ruins of Millwood Plantation, Columbia, South Carolina
(family home of Wade Hampton II, father of Gen. Wade Hampton III)
destroyed by fire during Sherman's occupation in February 1865

"New York Herald today quotes General Sherman, who says, 'Columbia was burnt by Hampton's sheer stupidity.' But then, who burnt everything before they got to Columbia and after the Sherman army left it? We came down, for three days' travel, on a road laid bare by Sherman's torches. There were nothing but smoking ruins left in Sherman's track. That I saw with my own eyes–no living thing left, no house left for man or beast. They who burnt the countryside for a belt of forty miles—did they not burn the town? Hampton's stupidity is an afterthought. This Herald announces that Jeff Davis will be hung at once—not so much for treason as for his assassination of Lincoln. 'Stanton,' the Herald says, 'has all the papers in his hands to convict him.'
The Yankees here say: 'The black man must go—as the red man has gone. This is a white man's country.'
The negroes want to run with the hare but hunt with the hounds. They are charming in their profession to us but declare that they are to be paid in lands and mules for having been slaves—by those blessed Yankees.
'They were so faithful to us—why should the Yankees reward them?'
'It would be by way of punishing the rebels only.'"

1 June 1865, South Carolina

"Went to the Hermitage yesterday (our plantation). Saw no change–not a soul absent from his or her post. I said, 'Good colored folks, when are you going to kick off the traces and be free?'
In their furious emotional way they swore devotion to us to their dying day.
All the same, the minute they see an opening to better themselves they will move on.
William, my husband's foster brother, came up.
'Well, William, what do you want?'
'Only to look at you, Marster—it does me good.' No doubt it paid. Both parties, white and black, talked beautifully."

April 1865, in the aftermath

"Mrs Huger says, 'In Richmond a too grateful and affectionate, fat, greasy negro barber threw his arms around a Yankee general and hugged in a close embrace. The Yankee freed himself and shot him dead.'"

March 1865, Lincolnton, North Carolina

"Yarn is our circulating medium. It is the current coin of the realm. At a factory here, Mrs Glover traded off a negro woman for yarn. The woman wanted to go there as a factory hand, so it suited all round. I held up my hands! Mrs Munro said:
'Mrs Glover knows she will be free in a few days. Besides, that's nothing. Yesterday a negro man was sold for a keg of nails.'
'God's will be done,' escaped from Mr Martin's lips, in utter amazement.
'This shows slavery is in its death throes.'
'General C said we were lighthearted at the ruin of the great slave-owners. An unholy joy.'
They will have no negroes now to lord it over. They can swell and peacock about and tyrannize now over only a small parcel of women and children—those only who are their very own family."