Ashtabula weekly telegraph. [volume] (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1853-1873, 1867-10-19
The Poor Whites and blacks of Ten
n6SS60,

Gail Hamilton, in "Wool Gathering"
writes as follows;
Through Middle and Southern Tennes-
see, and down in Alabama-sweet,s softly
flowing names, lands rich in promise and
possibility;5b but wretched and squalid, We
read of p ivation and suffering; but the
book that opens before our eyes tells a
tale utterly new and unexpected Can
one dream of q life so miserable and mea-
ger as that which stagnates here? 1t is
not life but listlessncss. The station vii
lagos show a huddle of dirty, white frame
houses, small, disorderlv, mean, set ap-
parently with no attempt at regularity,
built with no thought of Symmetry or
beauty scarcely, one you'd say, OF COM
fort or thrift-they might be workshops
rather than houses. Groups of unkept,
unshorn, unwashed men lounge on the
stoops men and village are dirty-white
together.
But this is the class of houses. BY far
the larger number OH the road, all except
those in the villages, are huts, cabins,
built perhaps of logs, sometimes of the
toughest boards. One shudders to think
Of human beings living in such houses,
and content to live there. Sometimes
house, and barn and shed are under one
roof the shed in the middle. Oltener no
barn appears. The chimneys are rudely
built up from the ground at the end Of
the house, with stones OF various sizes
gathered from the pastures, sticks and
bits of board piled transversely, and daub7
ed with clay. Black and white side by
side, as it is easy to see, for the doorways
are generally filled with gazers, looking
even more wretched and squalid than
their houses. One door is adusk with
SWart faces; at various distance from the
ground, and a few feet away another how
el oyertlows with tow heads. The whites
seem the most pitable They have a gray,
earthly look, as if the Lord God had form
ed them Of the dust of the ground, par
ticularly of Tennessee clay, but had hard
ly yet breathed into their nostrils the
breath Of life. The dress of the women
is no dress ut all, but a very partial COW
ering. Bare feet, bare legs, lank skirts,
mOppy hair, is the costume. One would
not mind a group or two here and there,
but a coantry peopled with such beings,
a country dotted with such dwellings,
leaves a hopeleSsneSs on the soul. TO
ride hour after hour past these dreary,
despairirg habilations, to see swarm af-
ter swarm of these pallid, dull faces-
homes with all that makes home desira-
bIe faded cut, life with all that makes life
lovely vanished away-O, the sudden
4 = -
sort ones country had suffered change.
You thought all was prosperity and pro
gress, even sometimes little noisy and
rude But here are silence, submission
and degradation. .t...--
We drive all along the bottom of the
basin in which Chattanooga stands. The
houses of the freedmen are scattered over
the sometimes crammed close to-
gether, and sometimes straylng out into
the fields adventurous and alone. They
are comical little shanties, curiously
.qwry, 'laboriously patched, boards TO
jecting beyond the walls at irregular
length, broken backed roofs, and not a
straight line anywhere, but every variety
of shapelessness. They are such houses
as very small boys might build in play
hours, pens rather than houses; but shey
arc whitewashed, and look far less squal-
id than the huts we have seen on our
journey hither. They embody ambition,
Improvement, personal effort to better
ones condition. You cannot help being
amused at their comical and ingenious
crookedness, yet there is little twinge
Iof pathos behind the sHYiie. The women
are at work, washing, knitting, and per-
haps gossipping, and the children are
playing in the, common door-yard-the
open pasture. i'-t af