Mr. Hill, summoned before the Provost-Marshal on the charge of having driven Uncle John off, said: “The man sitting out there in my buggy can tell you whether I did that.” The testimony of the black witness was conclusive, the Provost dismissed the case. Mr. Hill went to the commons.
Lying in the sun, stone-blind, was Uncle John. He raised his head and listened. “Mistuh, fuh Gawd’s sake, please do suppin fuh me!” “Old man, why are you here?” “Lemme hear dat voice again!” “Uncle John!” “Bless de Lawd, Marster! you done come. Marster, a ’oman robbed me uf all I had an’ den th’owed me out. Fuh Gawd’s sake, take me home!” “I will have you cared for tonight, and tomorrow I will come in the wagon for you.” “Lawd, Marster, I sho is glad I gwine home! I kin res’ easy in my min’, now I know I gwine home!”
Mr. Hill returned to the Provost: “I shall come or send for the old man tomorrow,” he said. “Meanwhile, he must be cared for.” The Provost was indifferent. This was one of many cases. “If you do not provide food and shelter for that negro,” he was sharply assured, “I shall report you to the authorities at Washington.” The Provost promised and sent two orderlies to attend to the matter. Next morning the master was back. The old man was dead. He had been put in the scale-house, an open shed. There, instead of in his old home surrounded by friends who loved him, Uncle John had breathed his last.
From many other stories, companions in pathos, I choose Mammy Lisbeth’s. Her son went with the Yankee army. She grieved for him till her mistress’ heart ached. The mistress returned one day from a visit to find Lisbeth much excited. “Law, Miss, I done hyerd f’om my chile!” “How, Mammy?” “A Yankee soldier come by an’ I ax ’im is he seed my son whar he been goin’ ’long? An’ I tell ’im all ’bout how my chile look. An’ he say he done been seen ’im. An’ I say, ‘Law, mister, ain’t my chile gwi come home?’ An’ he gimme de answer: ‘He can’t come ef he ain’ got no money.’ An’ I answer, ‘Law, marster, I got a fi’-dollar gol’ piece my ole miss dat’s done dade gimme long time ago. Does you know any safe passin’?’ An’ he answer, jes ez kin’, how he gwine datter way hisse’f, an’ he’ll kyar it. I run in de house an’ got dat fi’-dollar gol’ piece an’ gi’ to ’im. An’ now my chile’s comin’ home, Miss! my chile’s comin’ home! He say, ‘In ’bout two weeks, you go to de kyars evvy day an’ look fuh im.’” Her mistress had not the heart to tell her the man had robbed her. Never before had a white man robbed her; it was second nature to trust the white face.
“It is heart-breaking,” her mistress wrote, “to see how she watches for him. She is at the depot every day, scanning the face of every coloured passenger getting off. I’ve been to the Bureau making inquiries. The Agent says if he could catch the rascal, the robber, he would string him up by the thumbs, but her description fits any strolling private. He says: ‘Any woman who would trust a stranger so with her money deserves to be fooled. I wouldn’t trouble about it, Madam!’ Yankees do not understand our coloured people and us. How can I help being troubled by anything that troubles Mammy Lisbeth?”
Here is another old letter: “Cousin mine: I came home from school a few days ago. Railroads all broken up and it took several days to make the journey in the carriage, stopping over-night along the route. At most houses, there was hardly anything to offer but shelter, but hospitality was perfect. Only cornbread and sassafras tea at one place; no servants to render attention; silver gone; family portraits punctured with bayonets; furniture and mirrors broken. Reaching home, found everything strange because of great change in domestic regime. Our cook, who has reigned in our kitchen for thirty years, is in Richmond, coining money out of a restaurant. Most of our servants have gone to the city. Our old butler and Mammy abide. I think it would have killed me had Mammy gone!
“I cannot tell you how it oppressed me to miss the familiar black faces I have loved all my life, and to feel that our negroes cared so little for us, and left at the first invitation. I have something strange to tell you. Mammy has been free since before I was born. I never knew till now. I was utterly wretched, and exclaimed: ‘Well, Mammy, I reckon you’ll go too!’ She took it as a deadly insult; I had to humble myself. While she was mad, the secret burst out: ‘Ef I’d wanted to go, I could ha’ gone long time ago. No Yankees sot me free! My marster sot me free.’ She showed me her manumission papers in grandfather’s hand, which she has worn for I don’t know how long, in a little oil-silk bag around her neck, never caring to use them. Domestic cares are making me gray! But I get some fun trying to do things I never did before, while Mammy scolds me for ‘demeaning’ myself.” There was honour in the “gritty” way the Southern housewife adapted herself to the situation, humour in the way spoiled maidens played the part of milkmaid or of Bridget.
“Do you know how to make lightbread?” one of our friends inquired, and proceeded to brag of her new accomplishments, adding: “I had never gotten a meal in my life until the morning after the Yankees passed, when I woke to find not a single servant on the place. There was a lone cow left. I essayed to milk her, but retired in dire confusion. I couldn’t make the milk go in the pail to save my life! It squirted in my face and eyes and all over my hair. The cow switched her tail around and cut my countenance, made demonstrations with her hind feet, and I retired. One of my daughters sat on the milking-stool and milked away as if she had been born to it.”
“The first meal I got,” another friend wrote, “my sons cooked. They learned how in the army. I thought the house was coming down while they were beating the biscuit! They drove me from the kitchen. ‘We don’t hate the Yankees for thrashing us,’ they said, ‘but God knows we hate them for turning our women into hewers of wood and drawers of water.’ Now, I’m as good a cook as my boys. Can do everything domestic except kill a chicken. I turn the chicken loose every time.”
“I write in a merry vein,” was another recital, “because it is no good to write in any other. But I have the heart-break over things. I see this big plantation, once so beautifully kept up, going to rack and ruin. I see the negroes I trained so carefully deteriorating every day. We suffer from theft, are humiliated by impertinence; and cannot help ourselves. Negroes call upon me daily for services that I, in Christian duty, must render whether I am able or not. And I cannot call upon them for one thing but I must pay twice over – and I have nothing to pay with. This is the first rule in their lesson of freedom – to get all they can out of white folks and give as little as possible in return.”
Letters teemed with experiences like this: “We went to sleep one night with a plantation full of negroes, and woke to find not one on the place – every servant gone to Sherman in Atlanta. Negroes are camped out all around that city. We had thought there was a strong bond of affection on their side as well as ours! We have ministered to them in sickness, infancy, and age. But poor creatures! they don’t know what freedom is, and they are crazy. They think it the opening of the door of Heaven. Some put me in mind of birds born and raised in a cage and suddenly turned loose and helpless; others, of hawks, minks and weasels, released to do mischief.
“We heard that there was much suffering in the camps; presently our negroes were all back, some ill from exposure. Maum Lucindy sent word for us to send for her, she was sick. Without a vehicle or team on the place, it looked like an impossible proposition, but my little boys patched up the relics of an old cart, borrowed the only steer in the neighbourhood, and got Maum Lucindy back. The raiders swept us clean of everything. We are unable to feed ourselves. How we shall feed and clothe the negroes when we cannot make them work, I do not know.”
My cousin, Mrs. Meredith, of Brunswick, Virginia, congratulated herself, when only one of her servants deserted his post to join Sheridan’s trail of camp-followers. A week after Simeon’s departure, she woke one morning to discover that six women had decamped, one leaving her two little children in her cabin from which came pitiful wails of “Mammy!” “Mammy!” Simeon had come in the night, and related of Black’s and White’s (now Blackstone) where a garrison had been established, that calico dresses were as plentiful as leaves on trees and that coloured women were parading the streets with white soldiers for beaux. My cousin, Mrs. White, said a whole wagon-load of negro women passed her house going to Blackstone, and that one of them insisted upon presenting her with a four-year-old child, declaring it too much trouble. It was not an unknown thing for negro mothers to leave their children along the roadsides.
Blackstone drew recruits until there was just one woman-servant remaining with the Merediths. Why she stayed was a mystery, but as she was “the only pebble on the beach,” everything was done to make home attractive. One day she asked permission (why, could not be imagined) to go visiting. She did not return. Shortly, Captain Meredith was haled before the Freedmen’s Bureau at Black’s and White’s to answer the charge of thrashing Viny. Marched into court, he took a chair. “Get up,” said the Bureau Agent, “and give the lady a seat.” He rose, and Viny dropped into it. She was shamefaced and brazen by turns; finally, burst into tears and begged “Mars Tawm’s” pardon, saying she had brought the charge because she had “no ’scuse for leavin’” and had to invent one; “nevver knowed Mars Tawm was gwi be brung in cote ’bout it.”
The early stirrings of the social equality problem were curious. Adventurous Aunt Susan tried the experiment of “eatin’ wid white folks.” She was bursting to tell us about it, yet loath to reveal her degradation – “White folks dat’ll eat wid me ain’t fitten fuh me to eat wid,” being the negro position. “But dese folks was rale quality, Miss,” Susan said when murder was out. “I kinder skittish when dee fus’ ax me to set down wid ’em. I couldn’ eat na’er mouthful wid white folks a-lookin’ at me an’ a rale nice white gal handin’ vittles. An’ presen’ly, mum, ef I didn’ see dat white gal settin’ in de kitchen eatin’ her vittles by herse’f. Rale nice white gal! I say, ‘Huccum you didn’ eat wid tur white folks?’ She say, ‘I de servant.’”
Mrs. Betts, of Halifax (Va.), was in her kitchen, her cook, who was in her debt, having failed to put in an appearance. The cook’s husband approached the verandah and requested a dollar. “Where is Jane?” he was asked. “Why hasn’t she been here to do her work?” “She are keepin’ parlour.” “What is that?” “Settin’ up in de house hol’in’ her han’s. De Civilise Bill done been fulfill an’ niggers an’ white folks jes alike now.”
Coloured applicant for menial position would say to the door-opener: “Tell dat white ’oman in dar a cullud lady out here want to hire.” “De cullud lady” was capricious. My sister in Atlanta engaged one for every day in one month, in fact, engaged more than that average, engaged every one applying, hoping if ten promised to come in time to get breakfast, one might appear.
With two hundred black trial justices, South Carolina had more than her share of funny happenings, as of tragic. A gentleman who had to appear before some tribunal, wrote us: “Whom do you suppose I found in the seat of law? Pete, my erstwhile stable-boy. He does not know A from Z, had not the faintest idea of what was to be done. ‘Mars Charles,’ he said, ‘you jes fix ’tup, please, suh. You jes write down whut you think orter be wroted, an’ I’ll put my mark anywhar you tell me.’”
Into a store in Wilmington sauntered a sable alderman whom the merchant had known from boyhood as “Sam.” “What’s the matter with Sam?” the merchant asked as Sam stalked out. Soon, Sam stalked back. “Suh, you didn’ treat me wid proper respecks.” “How, Sam?” “You called me ‘Sam,’ which my name is Mr. Gary.” “You’re a d – d fool! There’s the door!” Gary had the merchant up in the mayor’s court. “What’s the trouble?” asked the mayor. “Dis man consulted me.” “You ought to feel flattered! What did he do to you?” “He called me ‘Sam,’ suh.” “Ain’t that your name?” “My name’s Mr. Gary.” “Ain’t it Sam, too?” “Yessuh, but – ” “Well, there ain’t any law to compel a man to call another ‘Mister.’ Case dismissed.” “Dar gwi be a law ’bout dat,” muttered Sam.
Washington was the place of miracles. When Uncle Peter went there, some tricksters told him his wool could be made straight and his colour changed – “Said dee could make it jes lak white folks’ ha’r,” he informed his mistress mournfully, when he had paid the price – nearly his entire capital – and returned home with flaming red wool. His wife did not know him, or pretended not to, and drove him out of the house. He appealed to his mistress and she made Manda behave herself.
“Ole Miss,” asked my mother’s little handmaiden, “now, I’se free, is I gwi tu’n white lak white folks?” “You must not be ashamed of the skin God gave you, Patsy,” said her mistress kindly. “Your skin is all right.” “But I druther be white, Ole Miss.” And there was something pathetic in the aspiration.
Some of the older and more intelligent blacks held their children back from doffing with undignified haste old ways for new. But in most cases, the Simian quality showed itself promptly ascendant. Negroes did things they saw white people do, not because these things were right or seemly, but because white people did them, selecting for imitation trifles in conduct which they thought marked the social dividing line between white and black. As, for instance, they dropped the old sweet “Daddy” and “Mammy” for the dreadful “Pa” and “Ma,” or the infantile “Popper” and “Mommer” which white people inflict upon parents. It would be laughable to hear a big buck negro addressing his sire as “Popper.”
I have seen in a Southern street-car all blacks sitting and all whites standing; have seen a big black woman enter a car and flounce herself down almost into the lap of a white man; have seen white ladies pushed off sidewalks by black men. The new manners of the blacks were painful, revolting, absurd. The freedman’s misbehaviour was to be condoned only by pity that accepted his inferiority as excuse. Southerners had taken great pains and pride in teaching their negroes good manners; they wanted them to be courtly and polished, and it must be said for the negroes, they took polish well. It was with keen regret that their old preceptors saw them throw all their fine schooling in etiquette to the winds.
Interest in and affection for negroes made these new manners the more obnoxious. Here, in one woman’s statement, is the point illustrated: “I considered Mammy part of our family; my family pride would have been aggrieved, I would have tingled with mortification, to see her so far forget what was due herself as to push herself into places where she was not wanted. These are things she could not possibly do of herself, her own good taste, perfect breeding, and sturdy self-respect forbidding. But her husband and son quickly succumbed to the demoralisation of freedom and were vulgar and troublesome; we were in fear and trembling lest they should lead her into some situation in church, theatre, or car, where she would find herself conspicuous and from which she would not know how to withdraw until officially escorted out in the midst of trouble created by her men.”
Many worthy negroes, the old, infirm and children, lost needed protection. Negroes had not been permitted to get drunk – except around corn-shucking and Christmas. There was no such restraint now. Formerly, a negro, if so disposed, could not beat his child unmercifully. Now, women and children might feel a heavy hand unknown before. White people might not interfere in family disputes as formerly, though they continued, at personal risk, to do what they could. A case in point was that of Mr. R., a respected merchant of Petersburg, who ejected his cook’s drunken husband from the kitchen where the brute was cruelly maltreating her. The old gentleman was arrested and marched through the streets, as I have been told, by negro sergeants to trial before a negro magistrate.
A characteristic common to uncultured motherhood is over-indulgence and over-severity by turns. When provoked, the negro mother would descend like a fury upon her offspring, beating it as a former master would never have suffered her to abuse his property. A word or suggestion from a white would bring fresh blows upon the luckless wight, the mother thinking thus to demonstrate independence and ownership.
Under freedom, negroes developed bodily ills from which they had seemed immune. A consumptive of the race was rarely heard of before freedom. After freedom, they began to die of pulmonary complaints. There were frequent epidemics of typhoid fever, quarters not being well kept. “The race is dying out,” said prophets. Negroes began to grow mad. An insane negro was rarely heard of during slavery. Regular hours, regular work, chiefly out of doors, sobriety, freedom from care and responsibility, had kept the negro singularly exempt from insanity and various other afflictions that curse the white. Big lunatic asylums established for negroes soon after the war and their continual enlargement tell their own story.13
Freedom broke up families. Under stress of temptation, the young and strong deserted the aged, the feeble, the children, leaving these to shift for themselves or to remain a burden upon a master or mistress themselves impoverished and, perhaps, old and infirm.
In the face of so much distraction, demoralisation and disorder, the example of those negroes who were not affected by it shines out with greater clearness as witness for the best that is in the race. Thousands stood steadfastly to their posts, superior to temptations which might have shaken white people, performing their duties faithfully, caring for their children, sick and aged, shirking no debt of love and gratitude to past owners. Some negroes still live in families for which their ancestors worked, the bond of centuries never having been broken.
When this is true, the tie between white and black is yet strong, sweet and tender, like the tie of blood. The venerable “uncles” and “aunties” with their courtly manners, their good warm hearts, their love for the whites, are swiftly passing away, and their like will not be seen again. They were America’s black pearl; and America had as good reason to be proud of her faithful and efficient serving-class as of her Anglo-Saxons. They were needed; they filled an honourable and worthy place and filled it well.
This is not to justify slavery. Slavery was forced upon this country over Colonial protests, particularly from Southern sections fearing negroisation of territory; the slave-trade was profitable to the English Crown; our forefathers, coming into independence, faced a problem of awful magnitude in the light of Santo Domingo horrors; New England’s slave-ships and Eli Whitney’s cotton-gin complicated it; it is curious to read in the proceedings of the Sixth Congress how Mr. John Brown, of Rhode Island, urged that this Nation should not be deprived of a right, enjoyed by every civilised country, of bringing slaves from Africa14– particularly as transference to a Christian land was a benefit to Africans, a belief held by many who believed that the Bible sanctioned slavery. Through kindliness of temperament on both sides and the clan feeling fostered by the old plantation life of the South, the white man and the negro made the best they could of an evil thing. But the world has now well learned that a superior race cannot afford to take an inferior into such close company as slavery implies. For the service of the bond-slave the master ever pays to the uttermost in things precious as service, imparting refinements, ideals, standards, morals, manners, graces; in the end he pays that which he considers more precious than service; he pays his blood, and in more ways than one.