Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 December 1889 — DYING, QUICKLY DYING. [ARTICLE]

DYING, QUICKLY DYING.

The Old-Fashioned Southern Negro Passing Out of Existence. They are passing away—the old-fash-ioned negroes of the ante-bellum South —and the places which knew them once will soon know them no more forever, writes a Florida correspondent. They will in a few years be entirely supplanted by a progeny little like their ancestors. The old plantation—“de white folks’ house”—the happy negro quarters—the family ties which bound the two races together in bonds of affection and tender consideration which one must have experienced to appreciate—gone, all gone! Old massa, old missus and the young massas and misses. What a happy family! And who ever mourned with more unfeigned grief than the old family servants the breaking up of the family when “ole massa” died? Alas, it always fell upon the former with a bitterness born of the uncertain fate which awaited them afterward. But they are fast dying out; the old plantation songs have faded from lips on which alone they were once so musical, which no other conditions may ever realize. Did you ever see the long procession of family servants—so or a 100 or more—follow the coffin which bore “ole massa” to his last resting place? Down in de cornfield, Hear dat mournful sound; All de darkies am a-weeping, Massa's in de cold, cold ground. Talk about the negro dialect! No writer has ever approximated it unless he was born and reared on the old Southern plantation from childhood to age. And Christmas times “bofo’ de war.” The happy hearts in the “negio quarters” were up and singing like the lark before the dawn of day, for the “aunts” and “uncles,” those monarchs of that realm which has no succession—had been awake half the night “waitin’ for Christmas.” Were tnose the days of slavery and barbarism, when white and black alike were happy only because they were ignorant? But who would exchange these brand-new days for the old? These days when the “colored ladies and gentlemen” wear bangs, or cairy a razor or a cigarette? Still, it is sad to think of the complete dying ont of a race, one of the most interesting in the annals of time —one peculiar to itself, and one which can never be reproduced. As the Indian passed beyond the Rocky Mountains to die away on the Western plains, so this race, as it was known of yore, is passing over the dividing ridge of two generations, to be known no more.