Chapter 67 - Page 2

supreme human
virtue, and never wearying of prating their devotion to the highest
standard of intrepidity, they never produced a General who was even
mediocre; nor did any one ever hear of a South Carolina regiment gaining
distinction. Regarding politics and the art of government as, equally
with arms, their natural vocations, they have never given the Nation a
statesman, and their greatest politicians achieved eminence by advocating
ideas which only attracted attention by their balefulness.

Still further resembling the French 'grandes seigneurs' of the eighteenth
century, they rolled in wealth wrung from the laborer by reducing the
rewards of his toil to the last fraction that would support his life and
strength. The rice culture was immensely profitable, because they had
found the secret for raising it more cheaply than even the pauper laborer
of the of world could. Their lands had cost them nothing originally, the
improvements of dikes and ditches were comparatively, inexpensive, the
taxes were nominal, and their slaves were not so expensive to keep as
good horses in the North.

Thousands of the acres along the road belonged to the Rhetts, thousands
to the Heywards, thousands to the Manigault the Lowndes, the Middletons,
the Hugers, the Barnwells, and the Elliots--all names too well known in
the history of our country's sorrows. Occasionally one of their stately
mansions could be seen on some distant elevation, surrounded by noble old
trees, and superb grounds. Here they lived during the healthy part of
the year, but fled thence to summer resort in the highlands as the
miasmatic season approached.

The people we saw at the stations along our route were melancholy
illustrations of the evils of the rule of such an oligarchy. There was
no middle class visible anywhere--nothing but the two extremes. A man
was either a "gentleman," and wore white shirt and city-made clothes,
or he was a loutish hind, clad in mere apologies for garments. We
thought we had found in the Georgia "cracker" the lowest substratum of
human society, but he was bright intelligence compared to the South
Carolina "clay-eater" and "sand-hiller." The "cracker" always gave hopes
to one that if he had the advantage of common schools, and could be made
to understand that laziness was dishonorable, he might develop into
something. There was little foundation for such hope in the average low
South Carolinian. His mind was a shaking quagmire, which did not admit
of the erection of any superstructure of education upon it. The South
Carolina guards about us did not know the name of the next town, though
they had been raised in that section. They did not know how far it was
there, or to any