" They have brought children from New
Orleans and from Memphis after an epidemic which had left many orphans.
The young people "do tolerably well."
The founders of this society were "New-Light Presbyterians;" since then
they have been reinforced by "Infidels," Spiritualists, Methodists, and
others.
It is certainly to their credit that, living in a slave state, and
having up to the outbreak of the war a great part of their business with
the states farther south, these Shakers were always anti-slavery and
Union people. Formerly they hired Negro laborers from their masters,
which, I suppose, kept the masters quiet; it did not surprise me to hear
that they always had their choice of the slave population near them. A
Negro knew that he would nowhere be treated so kindly as among the
Shakers. During the war they suffered considerable losses. A saw-mill
and grist-mill, with all their contents, were burned, causing a loss of
seventy-five thousand dollars. They fed the troops of both sides, and
told me that they served at least fifty thousand meals to Union and
Confederate soldiers alike. There was guerrilla fighting on their own
grounds, and a soldier was shot near the Church dwelling. "The war cost
us over one hundred thousand dollars," said one of the elders; and
besides this they lost money by bad debts in the Southern States.
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