ſiaturu milliam - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BILL YOPP “1 O-CENT BILL’’ ºwº w LNWTLV HWOH SHIHIGITOS ELHAGGE-INO O |- |- W. E. McALLISTER, SUPERINTENDENT SOLDIERS HOME. 3/utrmitrfimit. It seems impossible for one living else- where to understand conditions in the South. It requires residence in what were known as the slave states to comprehend the relations between the whites and blacks in those states. - Just prior to the Civil War, the wife of a clergyman recently arrived from Connec- ticut, said to the writer that she thought she was coming to a missionary field where an enslaved and oppressed people suffered injustice and cruelty at the hands of a piti- less dominant class, and was surprised to find, as a rule, the whites kind and gener- ous, and the blacks not regarded as slaves, but as servants, contented and happy. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, on her way to Florida, where she spent several win- ters after the war between the states, said to a sister of Mr. John I. Stoddard, of Ta- coma Park, D. C., “If I had known when I wrote that book (Uncle Tom's Cabin) what I do now, it never would have been writ- ten.” And yet Bishop Wilmer, of Alabama, said Mrs. Stowe paid the highest tribute to slavery in the South if it could produce such a character as Uncle Tom. - - Some years after the Civil War, a young lady, after living a couple of years in Geor- gia, and returning to her old home in Mas- sachusetts, said she was reproved by an uncle when she told him of her impressions of conditions in the South; to which she replied: “You will have to go and see for yourself.” 4 BILL YOPP (TEN-cent BILL) The following narrative is a relation of facts and not the fancy of a prejudiced mind, and so portrays the actual condition in the South, preceding and subsequent to emancipation of the slaves. In the history of Bill Yopp (10c Bill) we have the life of a Southern slave and the relationship as it really existed between the whites and blacks. R. de T. Lawrence. March 1st, 1920. - BILL YOPP. “Ten-cent Bill” was born on a plantation in Laurens County, Georgia. His mother had eight children, of which he was the fourth. It was the custom on the planta- tions in the South to select the brighter and more intelligent negro boys and girls, for butlers, house maids, and valets, or body- servants. So when seven years old Bill be- came the constant companion of his young master—like Mary’s little lamb, as he de- scribes it, where Mr. Yopp went, he was sure to go. He accompanied him when fish- ing and hunting, of which they were both fond, and which Bill afterwards took every opportunity to enjoy. On these occasions, as a boy, he held the horses and acted as assistant cook, and Bill had a portion of whatever his master had, venison, trout, coffee, bread, syrup and cakes. Thus there grew a cord of sympathy and affection be- tween them—the servant looking upon his master with respect and admiration, the latter regarding his black companion with consideration and helpfulness. When quite 6 CAPTAIN YOPP, TEN-CENT BILL's OLD MASTER, WHO LATELY DIED A1 SOLDIERS HOME. - young, Bill passed his time, as did other little picannies (as he termed himself) half- clad and barefooted, in the free enjoyment of play and sport. All the servants on the plantation shared Mr. Yopp's kindness and thoughtulness for their welfare, visiting them in their cabins at night; Bill gener- ally accompanying him. And the religious education of the slaves was not neglected. In most homes the negroes were called together on Sunday afternoons, Bible stories read to them and the fundamentals of the Christian religion taught them. On some large plantations a chapel was built and a clergyman employed; so that years after the war visitors were surprised to find that every negro in the neghborhood of the chapel could repeat correctly the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Com- mandments and the Apostles' Creed. On the Yopp and adjoining plantations, a part of the neighborhood church was set aside for the use of the blacks and they were invited to every religious service. Prior to the Civil War, some clergymen in Virginia were required for each service held for the whites in the morning to preach to the ne- groes in the afternoon. The writer remembers well that in the years immediately preceding the war at Ma- rietta, Ga., the Methodists had appointed to preach to the negroes, the saintly Rev. John Sanges, whose stentorian voice was heard each Sunday evening within a radius of a mile of the neat and churchly building in which the negroes were congregated for worship. 8 So it is not surprising that after one gen- eration of the Africans brought by the North and sold in the South, not only no case of idol worship was to be found in the slave states, but not an infidel or an agnostic. The declaration of Mr. Lincoln in his in- augural address that he had “no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with slav- ery in the states where it exists”, and that he believed he had “no lawful right to do so”, had no influence in the South ; the whites doubting his sincerity—subsequent events proving their suspicions to be well- founded, and the negroes, either ignorant or indifferent as to Mr. Lincoln's inaugural or other utterances. So it is not a matter of surprise that with the cordial relation and mutual dependence existing between them that the negroes of the South felt some of the sentiment and enthusiasm in regard to the war that their masters did, When in the Spring of 1861 Mr. Yopp volunteered in a Company, afterwards Co. H, 14th Georgia Regiment, he noticed that Bill wanted to go with him. Bill gladly ac- cepted the offer to do so and in Virginia served his master and through him the Con- federate Cause as faithfully as did his fel- low-servants who remained at home, pro- viding for and protecting the family of which they were nominally the slaves, thus creating a condition in which it was unnec- essary to place guards over public property. The writer on one occasion in 1864 slept on the platform of the freight depot in Ma- con, Ga., and was not disturbed by a single foot-step during the night. 9 ºsiºſiº svwisſ & Ho Halsw w dºlo si H 9 N 10 N18 a TTIE INHO-NEL First as Sergeant, then as 1st Lieutenant, Mr. Yopp must now be known as Captain, as he became the head of his Company, af- ter a short preparation and journey to Vir- ginia. His first service was in West Vir- ginia. Here Bill was often between the lines, but to quote his words: “I had no in clination to go to the Union side, as I did not know the Union soldiers and the Con- federate soldiers I did know, and I believed then as now, tried and true friends are bet- ter than friends you do not know.” Upon an occasion that Captain Yopp got a short furlough, Bill went foraging with two sol- diers, and after crossing a river at the risk of their lives, in the valley found the far- mers very feirndly. One of these sent the trio into the orchard while his wife pre- pared a meal for them. In addition to the apples, the soldiers put two live hens in Bill’s sack. All went on well 'till, while eating, the hens began to cackle. Bill said he felt he could have gone through the floor from the trick the men played on him, but this, he says, “Is the only bad thing the boys did to me, as they were always kind and considerate for me,” as, for example, in the retreat from West Virginia, appoint- ing him a teamster that he might have the benefit of riding. Bill made only one other foraging trip, when he brought in some roasting ears for Capt. Yopp told him he would chastise him if he found him stealing again, for the Captani could not stand for wrong-doing, as Bill expressed it. One of the members of the Company car- ried a cook with him. Bill got a brush and 11 box of blacking and shined the shoes of the men of the Regiment, charging for this and any other duty he performed, however large, ten cents, and thus got the nickname in the 14th Ga. Regt. of “10-Cent Bill” by which he has since been known better than by any other name. Thus Bill had more money than did the soldiers, who, he says, never spoke an unkind word to him, taught him to read and write, and when sick, took as good care of him as possible. Bill at this time was appointed drummer for the Regiment, and he says that for two years he never failed to beat reveille each morning on time. Bill kept as near to his master as cir- cumstances would permit, so when Captain Yopp was wounded in the shoulder at Seven Pines, he accompanied him to the hospital, and thence back to Laurens County, where he dressed his wound, faithfully waiting on him till he was able to return to his com- mand, going back with him to Virginia. At Fredericksburg, a shell burst over Capt. Yopp, rendering him unconscious, Here Bill ministered to him till he was com- pletely recovered. The time now came for Bill and his old master to be temporarily separated. Once previously, when sick, with the local attachment common to his race, he longed for his old home and Capt. Yopp provided him with funds to make the trip to Georgia. But the monotony of plantation life no longer had any attraction for Bill and he soon returned to the Regi. ment in Virginia. After participating in all the great battles in Virginia, Capt. Yopp, in 12 Gov. DoRSEY DISTRIBUTING TO THE OLD MEN AT THE soup1=Rs Home $3.00 APIECE, Yopp's COLLECTION FOR 1919. BILL 1864, was transferred to the Navy, and was on the Cruiser Patrick Henry when the war ended. Bill was now sent home, where, un- til 1870, he worked on the plantation, and, with his brother, “ran” a still; but Bill Says doing very much as he pleased. In May, 1865, learning that Capt. Yopp had returned, Bill set out at once to meet him and in doing so, saw the wagon train pass that was accompanying Mr. Davis. The Yopps (as did other planters) onw called their negroes together and notified them they were free to go as they pleased, Some, mostly the younger, went off, re- turning at intervals; others, mostly the old- er, preferred to remain with their “Boss”, confident of getting food and shelter, and the same kind and generous treatment they had always received under his guidance. The land was rented, the owners receiv- ing a per cent of the crop. But during the transition period, many of the ex-slaves, Bill among them, supplied the white families with free-will offerings of such supplies as they had. In some plantations for a year or more the writer knows of instances where the negroes brought food each Sat- urday to the families of their former own- ers. Some of the younger generation wrote their thanks for the care and training that had been given them. Where Sherman had destroyed the old homesteads, negroes pleaded with their old masters to return and renew their former relations. Some ne- groes who had become separated in the up- heaval, came back to their old homes, as children would do, receiving as they knew 14 - they would, a warm welcome, and a share of the food and shelter which had hereto- fore been their portion. It was the custom in the South for the negroes to take the surname of their own- ers. So Bill must now be known “official- ly” as Bill Yopp, though still called “10- Cent Bill”. The days of re-construction and the rapid fall in the price of cotton, created a period of hardship to both whites and blacks in the South ; so Bill (with the taste and habit of adventure acquired in his experience during the war) in 1870, went to Macon, and got a position as bell-boy at the Brown House, which being at the time the rendezvous of the politicians, he be- came known to the leading men of the state. The elder Mr. Brown, becoming very ill, Bill was selected to accompany him to his former home in Connecticut. This duty ful- filled Bill was given tickets and money to return South, but the sight of the steam- ers, and the bustle of New York City was too much for his roving disposition and he soon afterwards returned to New York. But in 1873 he came back to Laurens County, from whence he afterwards got a place on the Charleston & Savannah R. R., a road then so poor that the employees had to wait until some customer paid his freight, when the money would be distributed among them. Here Bill took the yellow fever, but as soon as he could walk, went back to what he termed “the dear old plantation”, where he was soon nursed to health and strength, after losing 50 pounds in weight. Meeting his old friend, Capt. Yopp, he spent some 15 3 WoH ,saesaldı.Os lºw SN wael3A OL HS w O 0 N 11 na 181siq da OA （1-118 time in fishing and hunting, living over their former days together. - Bill now again went to New York and from then until 1910 spent a roving life. First at a hotel in Albany, where he became, he says, quite a politician, now meeting the politicians of New York, as he had done at the Brown House the politicians of Geor- gia. Then as servant to some white friends he went to California. On his return to New York he felt completely broken down and in need of rest. In all his intercourse with the whites, Bill never “lost his head”, was never impertinent or bigoted, as many of the younger generation of his race be- came, but the lessons of courtesy and po- liteness learned in his early days followed him through life and gained him friends at the North as well as at the South. So now, wearied and sick, his white friends assist- ed him to make a trip to Europe, where he visited London, Paris, Brussels and Ber- lin—at which latter place he was treated, he says, as if he was a white man. - Getting back to New York he was given the place of porter on the private car of the Preisdent of the Delaware & Hudson R. R., where he spent ten placid, happy years, for at times he could indulge in his old sports of fishing and hunting. After making a second trip to the West, he got a place in the Navy, on the Collier Brutus, and now on the ocean travelled 28,000 miles, visiting all parts of the world. - Old age now creeping on Bill, on his re- turn to the United States went back to Laurens County, where he found his old 17 friend and master, past 80 years old, impov- erished, and ready to enter the Confederate Soldiers Home, near Atlanta, where he was provided with every comfort and conveni- e11 Ce. Bill now got a place on the Central Rail- road of Georgia, and in the run from Sa- vannah to Atlanta and also subsequently from Camp Wheeler (where with the as- sistance of his white friends, he got an easy place during the great European War), he was able to make frequent visits to the Soldiers' Home, when he divided his money with Capt. Yopp, furnishing him at the same time with fruit and delicacies. Bill's po liteness and courtesy won for him the es- teem of the officers at Camp Wheeler, so that at parting with him they presented him with a gold watch of which he is justly proud. In visiting the Soldiers' Home, Bill's sym- pathies were aroused for others of the old men in addition to his old master, several of whom he had known in the 60's. So he conceived the idea of furnishing with some money each of the old Veterans. Enlisting the sympathy and securing the assistance of Mr. Anderson, of the Macon Telegraph, he was enabled to distribute at Christmas 1917, 1918 and 1919 to the inmates of the Home, an amount in cash which in the lat- ter year reached as much as $3.00 apiece. On each of these occasions, Bill was taken into the Chapel, where he made a speech to the old men. In appreciation of his con- sideration for them, a fund was raised among the inmates of the Soldiers' Home 18 for a medal, which was formerly presented to him in March, 1920. Previously at their meeting in January, 1920, the Board of Trustees of the Soldiers’ Home, in recognition of his fidelity, unani- mously voted him a home with the old Confederates, enabling him at the same time to minister to his old master, now pass- ing away from old age. Upon the death of Capt. Yopp in his 92nd year, Bill, at his fun- eral, made an address, expressing his ad- miration of the kind and generous disposi- tion of his old master and of the affection- ate regard each had for the other. So now, as long as the old Confederates have a place for themselves, Bill Yopp will be provided in his old age with a comfort- able home. 19 C sºrces Q. aſe 7, 39 ºn Lºw T. ºpº lº -