God's Children

By Archibald Rutledge, Henry Middleton Rutledge and Seldon B Hill

This 1940s memoir provides a glimpse into the life and thoughts of a South Carolina plantation owner in the post-Civil War, pre-Civil Rights era.

In 1937, after decades in the North, Archibald Rutledge returned to what he described as the “hyacinth days and camellia nights” of his native Carolina Lowcountry to restore his ancestral home, Hampton Plantation, which had been in his family since 1730.

Originally published in 1947, these pages describe, in intimate and fascinating detail, the plantation life he found upon his return. In the simple, lyrical language of the first poet laureate of South Carolina, Rutledge portrays the black men and women, descendants of slaves, who labored alongside him in the marshes of the Santee, the stories they shared, and his interactions with them. God’s Children serves as a vivid snapshot of day-to-day activity on a plantation in the American South in the first half of the twentieth century, and of a lifestyle that was ever so slowly disappearing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781625842886

Archibald Rutledge

Archibald Rutledge (1883–1973) was South Carolina’s most prolific writer and the state’s first poet laureate. His nature writings garnered him the prestigious John Burroughs Medal.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Black Henchmen

My father bequeathed to me many friends. Nor could there be a richer heritage than this. Among these were many of the plantation Negroes he had trained in particular skills. Always keen to recognize and to appreciate special aptitudes, he took great pride in his black henchmen, as he called them. They are my best workers today, belonging to a fine old school which took delight in craftsmanship, and knew nothing of mass production. I call these henchmen mine; and I inherited them from my father. They are a part of his fine legacy to me.

While some publicity has been given the American Negro as an artist, and while a very great deal, on the stage, on the screen, and in novels and short stories, has been made of his laziness, his apprehensive superstitions and his general laissez faire attitude toward life, no tribute of which I know has ever been paid to him as a loyal and intelligent worker. And since it is as a worker that I know the Negro best, I should like to give an account of certain of my black henchmen and of the labors they perform. Mention will be made also of what we call special aptitudes. I believe that my story will be heartening to all those who really love the Negro and wish him well. I hope also to reveal other aspects of his character. It appears wise to attempt to do so by recounting certain authentic happenings of plantation life and by telling some true stories of what I have known Negroes to do.

Of course, I live in the wilderness, and on my remote Carolina plantation things are somewhat as they have always been. My Negroes—I call them mine, for they are my people; but more truly, I am theirs—are Nubians; that is, their ancestors were brought from North Africa. Undoubtedly in their veins was some admixture of Egyptian, Moorish and Arab blood. Many of my henchmen are tall, straight and handsome; and their native intelligence is such that I frequently go to them for advice, even on rather intimate personal matters. They know nothing of literature and little of the modern world; but they know, it seems to me, everything about life and about human character. I have long made it a practice never to start any project on the plantation without first consulting some of my henchmen. They can often see farther than I do; and they have the quaint and eerie gift of being able to see around corners.

Recently I decided to put a trunk in the bank of an old abandoned rice field. My place is directly on the river, ten miles above the ocean; and we have fresh tidewater.

This I wanted to control, so that I could dry or flow the field at will. A trunk or floodgate is the only device by which this can be done. In the old days of rice growing in coastal Carolina, there were thousands of trunks made and put into operation; and there were many good trunkmakers, also all among the Negroes. But today old Sambo Green is the only Negro I know who can make one of these wooden floodgates which, by a kind of hydraulic magic, harness the tides; and though we do not often consider this fact, behind every tide is the incredible might of the ocean.

Sambo Green is old, small, mild-mannered, peering. He is well over seventy, and he walks stoopingly and unsteadily. To me he perfectly illustrates the fine principle that skill, intelligence and gentleness are often of far more effect than brute strength. I have many Negroes who could tie Sambo up with one hand, but not one of them can make a trunk. Nature endowed him with this certain, if slight, wizardry, and long experience has made him a master in his field.

Set deeply under the banks of old rice fields on my place are similar trunks. Since immediately above some of them grow stately pines and cypresses which cannot be less than a century old, the floodgates beneath them must be much older. Yet with a little work on their doors, these trunks could be made to work today. Therefore the trunk that mild Sambo made for me will be effective a hundred years hence. How few examples of human handicraft, especially those exposed to the elements, last so long!

When the massive lumber was assembled on the bank, near the cut in the dike into which the trunk, when completed, would be lowered, Sambo went to work. Incidentally, he lives four miles from me, but he does not mind walking to and from work. Both on arriving and on departing he can be heard whistling—mildly broadcasting cheerfulness.

Most workmen of today, if they were confronted by the task Sambo faced, would have to be supplied with a multitude of modern gadgets. Sambo had only the elementals: an auger, a saw, a hatchet and an old plane, the box of which he himself had made. Of course his real tools were his understanding heart, his seeing eye and his sensitive, intelligent hands. He likes to work alone. If I appeared on the scene, he tolerated me very courteously, but I could tell that he knew exactly how to do to the thing, whereas I did not. While I questioned him a little, out of curiosity, I refrained from making any suggestions. One must not make suggestions to an artist. Genius is a solitary thing, and knows its way